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[clinodev]

Just a few quick, hopefully fun, questions arising from reddit and the Steam forum:

We still see crayon art trickling out!

How many crayon rewards are left, and how long do you estimate before you're finished?

I know it's been answered that the text colors will be user settable. As the colors do not appear to have subsequently changed in Steam Community Updates, the following questions have arisen:

Are you in fact trolling us with the continued dark blue text on dark background?

Is that dark blue your favorite color?

[Nilsolm]

How do dwarves currently decide which meeting area they go to when they're idling? Do they just go to the nearest one they can find or are there some other factors at play?

[Gtyx1]

Why don't Outsiders have access to any clothing or Leather armor on the starting page? They can get chain mail and what not but why no clothing or leather?

Are there any plans to have a technology slider or anything? Like on one hand you have stone age, then on the other side you have machine guns and modern clothing

[PlumpHelmetMan]

I remember Toady saying that the tech high water mark (in the vanilla game at least) would stay around 1400 to maintain the "medieval fantasy" vibe, but TBH I have no idea whether he's still standing by that or not.

[Toady One]

Does the current version of the game really need IDLERS up front in bold fooling new players into thinking this is somehow a bad thing? Giving dwarves time off to enjoy themselves is an increasingly important part of Fortress life and I've seen new players post in panic that whatever they do the fortress is full of "Idlers".

It's a useful indicator for some people playing in very specific ways but seems a bit too frightening for what it's actually showing (a perfectly healthy fortress).

And yeeaahhh, suggestion maybe. But would like to hear Toady's reasoning on why this is important for people to know all of the time.

clinodev: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8292131#msg8292131
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8292136#msg8292136

I agree it's probably out of date.

Does this mean that the MERCENARY tag opens up another pool for military mercenaries/traveling artists/artists seeking employment (as individuals rather than troupes)/(potentially as traveling/job seeking scientists)?
Otherwise I don't see how the artists that do travel all end up in troupes rather than as individuals.

Ah, sorry, I was just replying as to why a higher percentage of elves are artists, without addressing the troupe vs. individual question by itself.  My mistake!  It's possible the higher proportion of artists leads to more troupes just because there's more artists around.  I don't think there are particular personality effects here, but I can check for next time.

Related bonus question: Is there some similar logic to determine whether mercs go into merc bands, set out alone, or become quest seekers (often in groups)? Some people like hiring mercs, so it would be useful to know if there's a way to influence the ratios between them.

FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8292175#msg8292175
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8292201#msg8292201

For each side, merc groups are founded and added to among the side's mercenaries after a battle.  It looks like people that have a very low value of commerce, or people that have a very low gregarious number, will not join a group.  People that have just low values here (rather than very low), or who don't value martial prowess, will not become founders.  So if you just make everybody loners, or set the parent civilization commerce value low, you can probably control the percentages.  Setting the commerce value low will probably shut down independent merchant companies as well, though those don't do much yet so it's probably fine.

I couldn't find any similar restrictions on performance troupes, though they'd make sense of course.  That's further complicated by master/apprentice stuff I didn't have time to check, but I expect all the same that they are harder to control.

1. Will the medical update implement simple prosthetics like peg legs or something like Götz von Berlichingen's iron hand?
2. What are the variables needed to implement demons taking over a civ besides MINING_UNDERWORLD_DISASTERS? That is, if one wanted to make a custom civilization be taken over by custom demons and their custom minions, what tags would be required for all of that stuff to work?
3. Are there any plans to make vault dwelling angels moddable like demons are?

Is the ability for the underworld disaster civs to spawn tied at all to MAX_STARTING_CIV_NUMBER? For example, if one wanted to prevent the initial placement of goblin/custom evil civs but allow them to spawn after civ placement.

There probably is an obvious answer lurking around here somewhere, but I already looked and searched a bit and might have missed it.

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8292586#msg8292586
EternalCaveDragon (op2): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8292589#msg8292589

1. We don't really have a notion of grasp strength to make it interesting, so I'm not sure we'll be doing so much.  Ultimately though, slapping items on to creatures in new ways can end up interesting.  We'll probably need to be held back from making experiments more frightful, since we tend to get sucked into that kind of thing.

2. For the underworld disaster, you need an underworld layer and an entitydef where a creature in the def has EVIL (goblins for example.)  I don't see any other requirements for the base event.  If you additionally want a demon to come up with them, you need a creature in the raws or generated with UNIQUE_DEMON that has CAN_LEARN or INTELLIGENT.  For EternalCaveDragon's question, it doesn't look like it is tied to the max starting number, though you'd have to stop your EVIL creature entity from spawning at start through other means.

3. Certainly not before the whole thing gets blown up by mythgen.

Are there any plans to add more depth to offscreen battles in the near future? Maybe take powers besides necromancy into account?

I don't anticipate it'll focus on powers so much, but we're going to do a lot of army stuff during the pre-magic work, after the graphics release, and offscreen battles figure into that.  When we were thinking about doing this way back when, it involved formation on that mid-level maps and otherwise smearing battles out over time and space, rather than just working on the report/actions of a single localized battle.  But we'll see where it goes.

I've been trying to work out what may be causing the migrants profession weirdness; specifically animal caretakers and herbalists being overrepresented in migrant waves, which is an issue I've been running into a lot since the last update. I have some questions regarding that:

1. In v.47.05, there were changes to the balance of migrants professions according to the changelog. Can you give an outline of what exactly was changed?

2. More generally, what determines the kind of migrants you get? I know it's supposed to be based on the availability of professions/skills at the player's fort and histfigs would be prioritised if possible. But can other factors have an indirect influence, like the age of the world or what little economy is simulated currently?

3. Under what circumstances do histfigs switch to another civilisation? I've noticed that nearly all of these animal caretakers and herbalists are former citizens of elven sites. I presume the reason there are so many of them is because they run over to the player's civ and then show up in migrant waves, but I am not really sure what causes them to do so.

clinodev: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8295160#msg8295160
FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8295184#msg8295184

1. I mainly removed most of the stuff based on job number completed.  Now it just goes for a more even mix.  Since people aren't doing tons of caretaking and herbalist jobs, this ultimate doesn't impact this issue I think.  I couldn't get it to reproduce.

2. Anything that changes the composition of histfigs would have an impact, since it draws from that pool.  Are these worlds dominated by elves?  I haven't been able to reproduce these caretaker/herbalist migrant waves.  I suppose there could be some weird situation like the children of artists creating a bias, if there are more elven artists and thus a draw from the performance troupes?

3. They can migrate or be conquered.  But they don't have a particular bias toward going to elf civs.

When are weather systems, basic ones, coming?

Rose: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8296035#msg8296035
FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8296049#msg8296049
ArrowheadArcher (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8296259#msg8296259
FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8296327#msg8296327

There's no timeline for addition stuff here.  We've had things in the notes of course, and more interesting effects would be fun.  At this point, some of them are on the vast magic table, but most things on that table won't be done the first pass through.  After that I have no idea when I'd next look at it.  Boats maybe.

So about the Myth & Magic arc and what I understand about the cutoff between mundane and magical worlds...

Will there be a niche for relatively "mundane", human-only worlds which still have a certain amount of magic and unusual creatures here and there (something like Song of Ice and Fire/GoT), or does the presence of magic automatically imply nonhuman civs by extension?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8296665#msg8296665

Yeah, PatrikLundell's covered it more or less.  There'll be a variety of options, and low magic human settings are pretty popular.

I think I found the cause of the floating down-ramps after shroom trees are cut down bug.

The algorithm for removing trees always puts a down-ramp over an up-ramp, even if that up-ramp is part of the tree to be removed. It should either ignore the type of up-ramp used by shroom trees, or ignore one that's part of the same tree (if it's possible for trees to overlap in such a way.)

If I recollect, I think I caught this when I was doing underground mushroom graphics, but I'll note it down for another check.  Thanks!

This is something discovered by WindComeCalling and submitted as a bug:

DF includes two weird factor of 10 discrepancies that cancel out. Everything is ten times as small as it should be (except weapons and a few others), but everything is ten times as dense as it should be (again except weapons), so upon first inspection it's all fine. But this makes cloth denser than real-world lead, and seeds deadlier than real-world bullets (known bug). To fix this, you would reverse the changes: multiply the size of almost everything by 10 and remove the hidden factor of 10 multiplier on density when calculating weight.

TL;DR: Will everything be made bigger and less dense, and why is it like this in the first place?

Volumes are not in 1 cm^3 units in memory, only in the raw files.  A creature that is 70000 for instance, like a human, in the raws, is 7000 in memory.  This is intentional, since it avoided some multiplication blowouts.  It divides them down when it loads them.  The memory volume unit is 10cm^3.  Now, there are almost certainly a ton of weird values, especially for items, and bugs, but finding them has to start from there.  The densities are stored in mg/cm^3, and masses are stored in (kg,mg) pairs, so it uses a factor of 10 to get the volumes back to 1cm^3 when doing that calc.  There may be various bugs/problems here too, but the 10 factors up and down are intended in principle, to avoid rollover in some older equations where I didn't use any 64 bit variables.

Toady, with the new screens discerning animals & civilians much clearer will a gremlin's UI as a intelligent-feature-creature finally be cleaned to a usable standard to try and fit in with the rest of the dwarves?)

I doubt any improvement with the steam df graphical would be mega-amazing drastic in a rework on release in this area, but anything that is a bit clearer helps, as well as seeing the said gremlins happyness passively in civilian counts if that can be correlated to how likely they are to go and petition for full labors.

Hmm, I doubt this'll be a high priority sadly.  I kind of painted myself into a corner since gremlins are supposed to be able to be pets, so that they can pull levers and cause trouble even more maliciously, rather than being proper civ members, even though they are intelligent.  And the game just doesn't support that very well.

How is the hit rating (not sure what you call it) calculated for logs that fall after a tree is cut? (Edit: It's a value in the projectile struct.)

The value is typically around 1 for the created logs, but I'm not sure what the equation or random number range used is. Falling webs get a value of 0, whereas fired bolts can have a value in the 100's.

Putnam: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8299585#msg8299585
FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8299606#msg8299606
Bumber (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8299887#msg8299887

It's just a roll from 0 to 10 it looks like.

1. If the siege improvements include some kind of digging ability for invaders, could we expect material properties to play a role in ability to dig a tile? For example could iron blocks block the digging or make it very slow (like several fort mode days per block)?
2. Will the Tactician trait provide benefits to on-map dwarves after the siege improvements?
3. Will we see any basic formations for on-map dwarves in the siege improvements?

1. It'll probably start mattering yeah.  I vaguely recollect it taking it into account with door breakage.  I'm not sure the same stuff will apply though.
2/3. Dunno!  We had passed this up several years ago when I was working on army stuff, and I'm not sure if it will be revisited with the army stuff, or if everything else is going to end up being higher priority still.  Formations are certainly up for consideration again.

How accurate is this page: https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html, as far as planned features goes? Presumably plenty of what's planned isn't listed there, and it isn't accurate about which things are already completed, or what order you're prioritizing what remains; but would some/many of the plans there be scrapped? (even if you don't know the specifics because it's too long to actually check).

What sort of changes if any do you have planned for combat logs for the Premium release?

2. Yeah, I only implemented ARG1 through ARG5 because I was being lazy or rushed way back whenever, but the loader of arguments can keep pulling them in.

5. There's a lot going on there and some examples would help me check more quickly.

2. So to clarify (I may be failing in reading comprehension here), would it be possible for us users to define ARG6 and !ARG7 and beyond in our arguments (and pass in those arguments into the body detail plans and creature variations)?

I'm not sure whether by "only implemented ARG1 through ARG5" you're just referring to your own use of them in the files, or if it's that putting in the !ARG7 (in creature variations) and ARG6 (in body detail plans) just won't work (and that the creature can pass in more args, but they get ignored).

5. So this is what I was talking about:

Code: [Select]

[BP_RELATION:BY_CATEGORY:RIB_FALSE:AROUND:BY_CATEGORY:LIVER:15]
[BP_RELATION:BY_CATEGORY:RIB_FLOATING:AROUND:BY_CATEGORY:LIVER:15]
[BP_RELATION:BY_TOKEN:RHB:BELOW:BY_CATEGORY:BODY_LOWER:33]
[BP_RELATION:BY_TOKEN:LHB:BELOW:BY_CATEGORY:BODY_LOWER:33]
[BP_RELATION:BY_CATEGORY:EYE:ABOVE:BY_CATEGORY:NOSE]
[BP_RELATION:BY_CATEGORY:THROAT:IN_FRONT:BY_CATEGORY:NECK]
[BP_RELATION:BY_TOKEN:RCB:ABOVE:BY_CATEGORY:BODY_UPPER:33]
In some cases there is a number given on the end, representing the coverage (according to the wiki), and in other cases there isn't, so I was wondering what difference this would make; like, do some relations require a coverage while others do not accept one, or is it mandatory for some but optional for others, or is the coverage optional in all cases (with some fallback "default" when no coverage is given)?

2. I don't think the others work after you load them.

5. Are there any without the number in BP_RELATION?  It should log an error if you leave it off.  I didn't find any in b_detail_plan_default.txt.  It looks like the number is used by SURROUNDED_BY/AROUND to build the organ pathway for wounds.

hi toady. i know you've already said that there will be keyboard support, but i'm worried. one of the best things about df classic is that - with very few exceptions - all of the relevant controls are always displayed on screen. i don't have to remember what exact key to press to be able to designate dig tiles, for example, because it's all shown right there in the side panel. it might be clunky in places, and i still have to remember which submenu things are in, but i never have to be confused about which key to press.

none of the new screens you've shown so far have had keyboard controls displayed. in fact, they look completely unusable with a keyboard to me. they're pretty, to be sure, but if there's no way for me to tell what keyboard keys to press, i'm not going to be able to play anymore. i don't have anywhere near the kind of memory needed to remember so many controls.

are you planing on making a second pass to add keyboard hints, or am i shit out of luck?

DwarfStar: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8300404#msg8300404

We've been working on getting the minimum mouse-centered version ready up to this point, so there isn't any keyboard stuff to show at all.  There's definitely going to be a second pass on keyboard stuff which'll also be the pass I imagine where we make all those DF Classic decisions about what glyphs to display for buttons and that kind of thing, since classic is also going to have the same level of mouse support.  We can't have a large pane that shows all the commands by default, but commands have to be somewhere.  I'm not sure if it'll be a popout the way DwarfStar suggests, or something else.  There's plenty of room around the edges though, as things currently stand -- I'm sure some of that'll end up being taken up by some new options as we progress, but those spaces will likely end up customizable anyway.

So yeah, I understand why there's concern, since we have nothing to show and some of the screens are pretty busy with mouse stuff, but it should be okay in the end.

How is Scamps going ?

I heard him meow on the last youtube video, I was wondering how our beloved cat goes

He is doing well!  He's entirely adjusted to the new place.  Some of the moving material included a cardboard square, which you can see him sitting in I think in the last steam news video.

We still see crayon art trickling out!

How many crayon rewards are left, and how long do you estimate before you're finished?

I know it's been answered that the text colors will be user settable. As the colors do not appear to have subsequently changed in Steam Community Updates, the following questions have arisen:

Are you in fact trolling us with the continued dark blue text on dark background?

Is that dark blue your favorite color?

We've drawn all but five, and we've sent all but 50 or so.  We should be mailing those out within a week a too.  There were around 450-500 of them, and lockdown arrived right when we started, so it has been a journey, but it's almost done!

The text colors are settable in colors.txt in the currently released version.  I'm not sure if we'll deviate from that much, though it probably makes sense to have at the minimum one set of colors used for the graphical version and one used for classic.  I have a full RGB color setter now, which I use in active tabs to get a nicer brown color, but a lot of the regular text may still be in 16 colors - for the graphical version, the long-term goal would be to move away from this, while it does still seem to fit the aesthetic of Classic.  Though we'd of course been talking about expanded the color palette even in Classic because we've been out of combinations for a long while.  I'm not sure what course we'll ultimately take there, since Classic could now very easily expand to e.g. a second tile sheet as we'd sometimes talked about in here and elsewhere.  The work is all done now to do whatever we want there, though there are other considerations as well, such as print modes and terminal displays and what not that the original ASCII glyphs/colors work with.  I dunno.  Ultimately it'll be good to have all these options now though.

Presumably an artist should be selecting the colors.  I could certainly make the blue brighter myself, but I'd probably pick a blue that isn't very good - it also has to play nice with the existing light blue and the cyans and magentas.  But there are lots of hues to go around.

How do dwarves currently decide which meeting area they go to when they're idling? Do they just go to the nearest one they can find or are there some other factors at play?

They check their needs first, and go with a match there.  After that, they should respect their burrows and the citizens-allowed flag if applicable, but otherwise they choose randomly.  There's some other stuff for guests.

Why don't Outsiders have access to any clothing or Leather armor on the starting page? They can get chain mail and what not but why no clothing or leather?

Are there any plans to have a technology slider or anything? Like on one hand you have stone age, then on the other side you have machine guns and modern clothing

PlumpHelmetMan: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8300807#msg8300807

Those materials are tied to plants and animals, so they need to be drawn from specific regions.  As things got more complicated, the outsider fell behind.

The tech thing ties into the scholar stuff, where the main issue is that the knowledge there covers stuff that's generally not in the game.  Once the knowledge forest covers stuff that happens in the game, and gets linked to it, there will be different techs/ages/etc. naturally, though it'll also open up a whole nest of problems.

[PatrikLundell]

:

How do dwarves currently decide which meeting area they go to when they're idling? Do they just go to the nearest one they can find or are there some other factors at play?

They check their needs first, and go with a match there.  After that, they should respect their burrows and the citizens-allowed flag if applicable, but otherwise they choose randomly.  There's some other stuff for guests.
:

They don't respect burrows properly. If you burrow someone in their nuptial encouragement suite while they happen to be passing through the tavern (or temple, etc.) they'll most likely start socializing in the tavern rather than going to the suite to socialize (in a zone set up there). Presumably the burrow check is performed only of there's a need to make a path to the destination checked.

[FantasticDorf]

Thanks for the replies Toady!

:

How do dwarves currently decide which meeting area they go to when they're idling? Do they just go to the nearest one they can find or are there some other factors at play?

They check their needs first, and go with a match there.  After that, they should respect their burrows and the citizens-allowed flag if applicable, but otherwise they choose randomly.  There's some other stuff for guests.
:

They don't respect burrows properly. If you burrow someone in their nuptial encouragement suite while they happen to be passing through the tavern (or temple, etc.) they'll most likely start socializing in the tavern rather than going to the suite to socialize (in a zone set up there). Presumably the burrow check is performed only of there's a need to make a path to the destination checked.

Had a extreme case here in this mantis report, where summoning to burrows made them drag their activity way out of the zone without any pause to what they were doing.

Starting with zero goblin civs (set in max starting civs) works. A new gobbo civ will be formed when someone opens up the circus.

Also when there are 0  demons in the w.g configuration and just 'goblins' the entire site-type for dark fortress can become inactive in this way without changing starts, and you can play roulette in choosing a demon-leaderless custom circus-event civ for your full mines of moria experience.

It may be the case that [UNIQUE_DEMON] needs a SOURCE_HFID input to actually connect them to the civ, or other means as random w.g demons (the ones we've always had) always 100% step over player defined ones with hardcoded master positions linking them to the spire raising behaviour at the start, so Toady's advice doesnt actually work in practice and no custom Balrog just yet.

[Mobbstar]

Anything that changes the composition of histfigs would have an impact, since it draws from that pool.  Are these worlds dominated by elves?  I haven't been able to reproduce these caretaker/herbalist migrant waves.  I suppose there could be some weird situation like the children of artists creating a bias, if there are more elven artists and thus a draw from the performance troupes?

I have a world (47.4) which had this, so out of curiosity i went back to check for elven meddling. No relation to performance troupes or artists, but sure enough, there are two forest retreats with many dwarves in it (each >200 dwarves, out of each ~1000 residents) and all the herbalist and animal caretaker migrants lived there at some point. The elven civilisation is big and had an alliance with the dwarven civ throughout worldgen, but for some reason war broke out during Fort mode.

So, the migrant skill problems are seemingly caused by dwarves living in elven civs in general.

Are dwarves from other civs meant to join player fortresses? They just show up there and quietly declare themselves members of a different nation? Are they alliance visa, or war refugees?

[FantasticDorf]

Anything that changes the composition of histfigs would have an impact, since it draws from that pool.  Are these worlds dominated by elves?  I haven't been able to reproduce these caretaker/herbalist migrant waves.  I suppose there could be some weird situation like the children of artists creating a bias, if there are more elven artists and thus a draw from the performance troupes?

I have a world (47.4) which had this, so out of curiosity i went back to check for elven meddling. No relation to performance troupes or artists, but sure enough, there are two forest retreats with many dwarves in it (each >200 dwarves, out of each ~1000 residents) and all the herbalist and animal caretaker migrants lived there at some point. The elven civilisation is big and had an alliance with the dwarven civ throughout worldgen, but for some reason war broke out during Fort mode.

So, the migrant skill problems are seemingly caused by dwarves living in elven civs in general.

Are dwarves from other civs meant to join player fortresses? They just show up there and quietly declare themselves members of a different nation? Are they alliance visa, or war refugees?

Apprenticeships let them skip over the borders, perhaps its a back and forth link that elves dominate the guild by being more naturally inclined to do it with unlimited lifespans, and so dwarves with any sort of inclination due to loving craft-guilds for upholding their tradition & craftmanship seek them out, do their time working under their tuition and return with the heads full of elf nonsense.

[Nilsolm]

I have a world (47.4) which had this, so out of curiosity i went back to check for elven meddling. No relation to performance troupes or artists, but sure enough, there are two forest retreats with many dwarves in it (each >200 dwarves, out of each ~1000 residents) and all the herbalist and animal caretaker migrants lived there at some point. The elven civilisation is big and had an alliance with the dwarven civ throughout worldgen, but for some reason war broke out during Fort mode.

So, the migrant skill problems are seemingly caused by dwarves living in elven civs in general.

Are dwarves from other civs meant to join player fortresses? They just show up there and quietly declare themselves members of a different nation? Are they alliance visa, or war refugees?

Now that you mention it, I recall at least two instances where the flood of herbalists and caretakers started after war broke out with the elves.

One other thing I'm wondering about is why we always get those two professions. Unless I'm misunderstanding the raws, there are more than just two career paths in an elven village, but I've never seen clothiers or woodcrafters arriving from the elves. Maybe it has something to do with guilds as FantasticDorf says, since I don't recall this issue happening before 47.01.

[Eric Blank]

Toady, with the new screens discerning animals & civilians much clearer will a gremlin's UI as a intelligent-feature-creature finally be cleaned to a usable standard to try and fit in with the rest of the dwarves?)

I doubt any improvement with the steam df graphical would be mega-amazing drastic in a rework on release in this area, but anything that is a bit clearer helps, as well as seeing the said gremlins happyness passively in civilian counts if that can be correlated to how likely they are to go and petition for full labors.

Hmm, I doubt this'll be a high priority sadly.  I kind of painted myself into a corner since gremlins are supposed to be able to be pets, so that they can pull levers and cause trouble even more maliciously, rather than being proper civ members, even though they are intelligent.  And the game just doesn't support that very well.

The game does however allow children of pets, if they were born intelligent, to be assigned labors, rooms, squads, noble positions etc, and includes them under the cirizens tab. I know because I've used unintelligent pets in a rare caste to give birth to a frequent caste of intelligent children to pump up my citizen count artificially. Is it possible to enable these things on all pets that are intelligent? The game seems to already recognize them if they're born into your fort, but not tamed on site or bought from a caravan. Gremlins and trolls brought on embark (by civs that allow them) and pets that gain intelligence through a syndrome automatically self-assign labors they're skilled in and hauling/cleaning/construction labors, but the UI elements to assign labors yourself never appear unless they're born into the fort and intelligent from birth, making them a citizen that carries the (TAME) flag around their whole life. So from personal experience it looks like a UI element not getting turned on/off rather than additional issues.

Also, I've never seen gremlins do their mischievous thing once tamed. Whether brought on embark, bought from a caravan, or caught and tamed on-site, they either do their default labors, or hang out in meeting halls. I suspect that something is broken there.

[FantasticDorf]

Toady, with the new screens discerning animals & civilians much clearer will a gremlin's UI as a intelligent-feature-creature finally be cleaned to a usable standard to try and fit in with the rest of the dwarves?)

I doubt any improvement with the steam df graphical would be mega-amazing drastic in a rework on release in this area, but anything that is a bit clearer helps, as well as seeing the said gremlins happyness passively in civilian counts if that can be correlated to how likely they are to go and petition for full labors.

Hmm, I doubt this'll be a high priority sadly.  I kind of painted myself into a corner since gremlins are supposed to be able to be pets, so that they can pull levers and cause trouble even more maliciously, rather than being proper civ members, even though they are intelligent.  And the game just doesn't support that very well.

The game does however allow children of pets, if they were born intelligent, to be assigned labors, rooms, squads, noble positions etc, and includes them under the cirizens tab. I know because I've used unintelligent pets in a rare caste to give birth to a frequent caste of intelligent children to pump up my citizen count artificially. Is it possible to enable these things on all pets that are intelligent? The game seems to already recognize them if they're born into your fort, but not tamed on site or bought from a caravan. Gremlins and trolls brought on embark (by civs that allow them) and pets that gain intelligence through a syndrome automatically self-assign labors they're skilled in and hauling/cleaning/construction labors, but the UI elements to assign labors yourself never appear unless they're born into the fort and intelligent from birth, making them a citizen that carries the (TAME) flag around their whole life. So from personal experience it looks like a UI element not getting turned on/off rather than additional issues.

Thats a lot of green. If you dont mind ill take this apart piece by piece.

I know because I've used unintelligent pets in a rare caste to give birth to a frequent caste of intelligent children to pump up my citizen count artificially.
Is it possible to enable these things on all pets that are intelligent? The game seems to already recognize them if they're born into your fort, but not tamed on site or bought from a caravan.

Its convenient for sure if you try to make a multi-creature civilization by using a not full intelligent caste which can be imported (or even the genesis of the entire race for being no_gender asexuals to step around the historical culling rules), like "immigrants" of humans or other races.

On a side note, there are DFhack scripts like earthling mod's script which can offer something to both of your replies via the smartpets.lua (releases labor controls) and *cough*[enlavement_earthling.lua]*cough* that tries to draw in long-requested mechanics on breaking in creatures by measuring the amount of time they resist on a restraint to their level of willpower attribute, although Id say what you want to use it for would probably be best exercised in editing your script until the parameters feel comfortable for you.

(The scripts are meant to be used together, as when the conversion occurs, it fills in a histfig file for that unit, which is identical to being born on site matrilineally by historical parents, but smartpets.lua refreshes often enough to pick up on creatures from other sources.)

Also, I've never seen gremlins do their mischievous thing once tamed. Whether brought on embark, bought from a caravan, or caught and tamed on-site, they either do their default labors, or hang out in meeting halls. I suspect that something is broken there.

Dwarves are well behaved (most of the time, Quietust recently debunked beserk dwarves pulling levers), i don't think there is a need to create mischeif that could stipulate that behaviour if its set entirely at the animal-level. Though that would be a very interesting and rare personality need to see!

[Eric Blank]

Well, Toady did say he wanted gremlins to be mischievous even if they are pets. It's just not working, because, I think, intelligent behavior is overriding it somehow.

Intelligent pets are a weird subject. I've used a few variations of it for Spellcrafts as workarounds for not employing dfhack (I don't want the mod to have additional dependencies) like unintelligent pets giving birth to intelligent ones in lieu of summoning mechanics (which we now have!), and familiars, which are born unintelligent and use an interaction on themselves granting themselves intelligence. I did that to make them a companion for wizards, but they also as a bonus haul and collect eggs and build walls, which I didn't expect. Gremlins will on embark bring a crossbow and start hunting, sometimes they arrive with other labors, like the ones brought by caravans often have professions which they'll perform.

I haven't used dfhack much recently, I've been focused on the expanded interaction mechanics, which have become very powerful indeed.

But like I said, labors and such appear to be fully functional for intelligent pets, except the UI element allowing you to assign them never shows up, unless they were born on-site, which appears to make them full fledged citizens.

Do those scripts grant them citizenship in the faction or tick that is_dward flag or what? I know there's another script that switches visitors and invaders faction membership so they join your fort too.

[Doorkeeper]

I've been catching up with FotF, and there's a question from April that I want to comment on:

Regarding kobolds and certain of their currently bizarre impulses - bizarre for a "context-based sublanguage",that is, to give a summary:

According to legends mode, kobolds may construct a market and a dungeon in their cave. As there is no evidence of any structures resembling such in kobold caves, they are probably either an error or serve an unknown purpose during world generation.

...which do you think it is? Thanks, anyway.

Urlance Woolsbane: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8258379#msg8258379

Yeah, Urlance is correct there - we just haven't supported everything on the monster maps.  I think the code cuts them off from libraries?  I hope so...  there's a further complication that the 'market' flag is overloaded now to signify important sites.  I'm not sure what motivated them to build a dungeon though, ha ha.

The summary is from the wiki, on the article about kobold caves. I added this information back when I first noticed them in legends (see screenshots) and was confused by it...initially believed them to be a hidden feature. I think I understand why they occur now: certain site types don't support certain structures. Certain entity flags generate them anyway (or rather, in this case, no flags that prohibit kobolds from making trade links exist?). These structures technically exist, but don't physically appear on map. (Though associated occupations still spawn; I recall long ago encountering a goblin tavern keeper running amok in a dark fortress. As mentioned by Urlance, goblin taverns are another "legends-only" structure.)

However, the dungeon bit was added in later by another editor. I personally have never seen kobolds construct dungeons, and I have experimented this for quite a bit.. so I will chalk it up as player error or misinterpretation. Kobold dungeons do not exist.

Spoiler: legends screenshots (click to show/hide)

0.47.05 – modded out every entity except SKULKING; no other modifs. Custom adv world gen settings (pocket region, 15 civs, 15 caves).







Trade map, same world. Five kobold caves attained market status. The satellite villages are other kobold caves (each inhabited by a seperate civ).

I've since removed that bit from the wiki—removed the whole segment. It's an unintended glitch with no noticeable effect on gameplay, and really easy to miss. Not worth mentioning on the article. Belongs on the tracker, maybe.

[FantasticDorf]

Do those scripts grant them citizenship in the faction or tick that is_dward flag or what? I know there's another script that switches visitors and invaders faction membership so they join your fort too.

It incorporates bits of that when dealing with prisoners on a chain but when dealing with creatures caught from the wilderness it runs some checks and ultimately determines whether they have a false value under trying to retrieve a 'Nemesis' (and other stuff to rule out improper creatures) and edit the field using DFhacks -createunit scripts. I assume visitors who apply for citizenship already have nemesis histfig files other than the odd "Tame Goblin" you sometimes see reported.

Which you might remember being part of a bug Toady tried fixing a long time ago (0.31.03 to 44.07) which improper allocation and loss of Nemesis data fields on full-citizens caused crashes but apparently regenerates in 44.06'ish. Presumably all animals besides civ intelligents are shut off or else this kind of crash would be more open to happening and puts them to the side as non historical until they use tags like local pops becoming adventurers.

• And indeed reportedly on that mod-script, when you put a semi-intelligent in charge of a squad it will crash, because it contradicts that semi-intelligents can't lead squads in fortress mode, which must be a hard-code defined thing

On the topic, if animals as mounts and companions  were to expect more scope for fortress mode and w.g as a whole (ei army arc dedicated cavalry), would the current distinction of non-histfig animals logic end up being changed eventually to create historical and non-historical populations?

EI - The named horses and animals are found in the stables but all the strays still linger around with a more even distribution on w.g of how animals are represented / dwarves bonding with their mounts or giant ridable housecats choose who can ride on their backs.