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[Ziusudra]

With the UI update has any consideration been given to limiting the line length of text? Perhaps with an init.txt option?

[Schmaven]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean ?

I took it to mean you could mess with the raws for some entities differently in various generated worlds.  Then in the arena, you could select which world, and by extension, which custom changes you want to test in the arena.

[Inarius]

Ok. It was what i understood, then. Thanks.
That's why i said "by tweaking" in the second question.
"Mess with the raws" isn't in my opinion something a player should do by default. Without doing this i don't know what is the difference. At one point i thought i understood that, some day, you would call some histfig in Arena, but unsure of this.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Ok. It was what i understood, then. Thanks.
That's why i said "by tweaking" in the second question.
"Mess with the raws" isn't in my opinion something a player should do by default.

You are mistaken. The raws are written in plain English specifically for players with no coding experience to be able to mess with as much as they like. For the most part it's more of an advanced options menu for tweaking the simulation.
"Object testing arena" is for testing your objects. It's specifically a mode for modders to test their mods.

The way to think of it is like this: Toady made a tool so that he could test his combat systems without having to start a new world every time. It's pretty functional as it is, so he decided to let players use it too.
It's not there to confuse you, just as it's never likely to be made more "user friendly". It's just a tool he thought players would like to play with, and most do.

[Inarius]

it's never likely to be made more "user friendly"

Well i wouldn't be too sure of this. Especially the "never/aways" part, which, in DF, in not so definitive.
But, well, thanks for the information. We'll see !

[LordBaal]

It is whats it is. Most likely it will remain like now until/IF Toady find the need to updated it. As of rigth now it doesn't seem to have any needs of adding anything, but sure, things are bound to change without notice depending on what Toady works with, so it could be possible, just highly unlike for the time being.

[squamous]

1. How will DF's procedural generation be affected by the inclusion of graphics? If procgen creatures are going to have customized sprites, which means more work on the part of the artists as opposed to just ASCII where these things are handled by verbal descriptors, would that mean that future procedural generation stuff will have to be limited or removed to accommodate a graphical overlay?

2. In the past, there was talk about implementing adventurers commanding armies and a general military update prior to the Big Wait but probably after the last of the villains stuff and the steam release. Is that on the table and if so what sort of features can we expect, if any? I for one am interested in the idea of the world as a whole having more cohesion in its military shenanigans. Being able to play a simple hunter in a city as two NPC generals fight over it seems like it'd be a great survival adventure.

[MaxTheFox]

1. How will DF's procedural generation be affected by the inclusion of graphics? If procgen creatures are going to have customized sprites, which means more work on the part of the artists as opposed to just ASCII where these things are handled by verbal descriptors, would that mean that future procedural generation stuff will have to be limited or removed to accommodate a graphical overlay?

The plan is to have even deeper procgen. Maybe we will have sprites for procgen creatures that are "assembled" from sprites for body parts?

[squamous]

1. How will DF's procedural generation be affected by the inclusion of graphics? If procgen creatures are going to have customized sprites, which means more work on the part of the artists as opposed to just ASCII where these things are handled by verbal descriptors, would that mean that future procedural generation stuff will have to be limited or removed to accommodate a graphical overlay?

The plan is to have even deeper procgen. Maybe we will have sprites for procgen creatures that are "assembled" from sprites for body parts?

Well yes but one of the reasons that ASCII was used for DF in the first place was to avoid needing to make a model/sprite for every creature because of how much it slowed down development of DF's predecessor. So I'm wondering if there is a plan to avoid that on this attempt.

[PatrikLundell]

1. How will DF's procedural generation be affected by the inclusion of graphics? If procgen creatures are going to have customized sprites, which means more work on the part of the artists as opposed to just ASCII where these things are handled by verbal descriptors, would that mean that future procedural generation stuff will have to be limited or removed to accommodate a graphical overlay?

The plan is to have even deeper procgen. Maybe we will have sprites for procgen creatures that are "assembled" from sprites for body parts?

Well yes but one of the reasons that ASCII was used for DF in the first place was to avoid needing to make a model/sprite for every creature because of how much it slowed down development of DF's predecessor. So I'm wondering if there is a plan to avoid that on this attempt.

As far as I understand the current plan is to assemble generated creatures from sprite parts. If the discussion about backward joints in the graphics implementation thread is any indication, they're prepared to let the graphics fail to represent some things correctly due to practical reasons, rather than restrict the set of variations generated.

The slowdown of development has largely been handled by offloading the graphics production work to dedicated artists (but there's still need for Toady to both code the underlying functionality and to discuss with the artists and make decisions, so there's still a cost, but a much lower one).

[Shonai_Dweller]

1. How will DF's procedural generation be affected by the inclusion of graphics? If procgen creatures are going to have customized sprites, which means more work on the part of the artists as opposed to just ASCII where these things are handled by verbal descriptors, would that mean that future procedural generation stuff will have to be limited or removed to accommodate a graphical overlay?

The plan is to have even deeper procgen. Maybe we will have sprites for procgen creatures that are "assembled" from sprites for body parts?

Well yes but one of the reasons that ASCII was used for DF in the first place was to avoid needing to make a model/sprite for every creature because of how much it slowed down development of DF's predecessor. So I'm wondering if there is a plan to avoid that on this attempt.

2D is easier than 3D (no need to animate weird wrestling moves or simulate curly arm hair on 2D pixel art sprites, etc). Especially when you have dedicated artists being paid to do the work for you. Now is not the same as then.

[voliol]

1. How will DF's procedural generation be affected by the inclusion of graphics? If procgen creatures are going to have customized sprites, which means more work on the part of the artists as opposed to just ASCII where these things are handled by verbal descriptors, would that mean that future procedural generation stuff will have to be limited or removed to accommodate a graphical overlay?

The plan is to have even deeper procgen. Maybe we will have sprites for procgen creatures that are "assembled" from sprites for body parts?

Well yes but one of the reasons that ASCII was used for DF in the first place was to avoid needing to make a model/sprite for every creature because of how much it slowed down development of DF's predecessor. So I'm wondering if there is a plan to avoid that on this attempt.

Hopefully the system he writes now is robust enough that it won't need to be expanded much during the Big Wait, i.e. when new procedural creatures are next added. We'll see.

[Shonai_Dweller]

1. How will DF's procedural generation be affected by the inclusion of graphics? If procgen creatures are going to have customized sprites, which means more work on the part of the artists as opposed to just ASCII where these things are handled by verbal descriptors, would that mean that future procedural generation stuff will have to be limited or removed to accommodate a graphical overlay?

The plan is to have even deeper procgen. Maybe we will have sprites for procgen creatures that are "assembled" from sprites for body parts?

Well yes but one of the reasons that ASCII was used for DF in the first place was to avoid needing to make a model/sprite for every creature because of how much it slowed down development of DF's predecessor. So I'm wondering if there is a plan to avoid that on this attempt.

Hopefully the system he writes now is robust enough that it won't need to be expanded much during the Big Wait, i.e. when new procedural creatures are next added. We'll see.

Seems that if the system being made now can manage Night Trolls, Bogeymen, Forgotten Beasts, Titans, Experiments and Nightmares it should be able to manage any of the Mythgen proc gen critters.

Next difficult step will be "the centaur problem". How to merge creature A and creature B no matter what the creature. Hard enough in text and body-part raws, pixel art construction will be a real challenge (assuming that's something Toady wants to even think about trying).

[PatrikLundell]

1. How will DF's procedural generation be affected by the inclusion of graphics? If procgen creatures are going to have customized sprites, which means more work on the part of the artists as opposed to just ASCII where these things are handled by verbal descriptors, would that mean that future procedural generation stuff will have to be limited or removed to accommodate a graphical overlay?

The plan is to have even deeper procgen. Maybe we will have sprites for procgen creatures that are "assembled" from sprites for body parts?

Well yes but one of the reasons that ASCII was used for DF in the first place was to avoid needing to make a model/sprite for every creature because of how much it slowed down development of DF's predecessor. So I'm wondering if there is a plan to avoid that on this attempt.

Hopefully the system he writes now is robust enough that it won't need to be expanded much during the Big Wait, i.e. when new procedural creatures are next added. We'll see.

Seems that if the system being made now can manage Night Trolls, Bogeymen, Forgotten Beasts, Titans, Experiments and Nightmares it should be able to manage any of the Mythgen proc gen critters.

Next difficult step will be "the centaur problem". How to merge creature A and creature B no matter what the creature. Hard enough in text and body-part raws, pixel art construction will be a real challenge (assuming that's something Toady wants to even think about trying).

As far as I've heard, Toady has definitely thought about tackling the centaur problem, and I think he want's to solve it (while acknowledging that it won't be trivial). I think "when" is a more relevant question than "if" (and "now" would be a very poor answer...).

[Shonai_Dweller]

1. How will DF's procedural generation be affected by the inclusion of graphics? If procgen creatures are going to have customized sprites, which means more work on the part of the artists as opposed to just ASCII where these things are handled by verbal descriptors, would that mean that future procedural generation stuff will have to be limited or removed to accommodate a graphical overlay?

The plan is to have even deeper procgen. Maybe we will have sprites for procgen creatures that are "assembled" from sprites for body parts?

Well yes but one of the reasons that ASCII was used for DF in the first place was to avoid needing to make a model/sprite for every creature because of how much it slowed down development of DF's predecessor. So I'm wondering if there is a plan to avoid that on this attempt.

Hopefully the system he writes now is robust enough that it won't need to be expanded much during the Big Wait, i.e. when new procedural creatures are next added. We'll see.

Seems that if the system being made now can manage Night Trolls, Bogeymen, Forgotten Beasts, Titans, Experiments and Nightmares it should be able to manage any of the Mythgen proc gen critters.

Next difficult step will be "the centaur problem". How to merge creature A and creature B no matter what the creature. Hard enough in text and body-part raws, pixel art construction will be a real challenge (assuming that's something Toady wants to even think about trying).

As far as I've heard, Toady has definitely thought about tackling the centaur problem, and I think he want's to solve it (while acknowledging that it won't be trivial). I think "when" is a more relevant question than "if" (and "now" would be a very poor answer...).

Since post Mythgen (which we were talking about) is up to a decade away, I doubt anyone was thinking "now".