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[PatrikLundell]

Toady has mentioned a desire to overhaul farming in the past, and I assume that's still on the table. However, I don't think it's ever been in the realm of scheduled changes (i.e. it's in the realm of stuff they'd want to do at some time in the future).

[Urist McSadist]

Do you plan attempting an in fort market economy again in the foreseeable future?

[Pillbo]

I was looking into why buoyancy isn't a thing in the game and I haven't been able to find a post from you on the subject since August 2007 (nothing on the dev roadmap either):

The new fluids invalidated most of the old code.  Have water stop you when you jump into it so you don't go all the way down into the bottom is linked to density sink/float stuff, which I haven't done yet.  I'm not sure what I'll get to.  It'll either be done or get Req'd.

Other than that I saw lots of people make various comments about buoyancy being too hard, or implying you didn't want to implement it for some reason, but it's kinda hard to tell what is assumption, speculation, or accurate. 

So what is the deal with buoyancy and why hasn't it been included yet? If it is a technical issue what are the major problems?  Is it going to wait for boats?

It seems like it would open up a lot of fun water based shenanigans, and with everything having a density it's a little surprising this isn't part of the game yet.

[Pillbo]

Hello, Toady, have you come up with any new monsters or creatures randomly as you've been working on the adventure mode stuff? Also thanks for making such an amazing game

By "randomly" do you mean more procedurally-generated creatures? Because randomizing more creatures has definitely been one of the things Toady's talked a lot about in regards to Myth & Magic, but I personally doubt such elements will make it into the first adventure mode release on top of everything else that needs to be done (not for me to say, of course).

I think by "randomly" they mean something like an unexpected inspiration. Something more like "oh an ancient djinn would be a good addition since I'm touching up vaults".

[Caldfir]

So what is the deal with buoyancy and why hasn't it been included yet? If it is a technical issue what are the major problems?  Is it going to wait for boats?

Generally, DF development follows feature-sets related to some kind of player interactivity. Since there haven't been any features relating to buoyancy, it hasn't been touched. Boats are definitely going to require it, so expect a (possibly excessively) detailed buoyancy simulation at that time. Doing things this way means that every system gets created purposefully, reducing the chances that something needs to be repeatedly replaced. This does have the unfortunate effect of the simulation being perpetually somewhat lopsided, with seemingly obvious features absent.

Looking at the development-outline, I am like 95% sure "boats" is going to be the thing that triggers some kind of huge fluid-rewrite. Oceans of beer and hot-air balloons and whatever other semi-related features would then be on the table.

[Digganob]

Will caste requirements for different jobs/positions be introduced to civilizations at some point? This could have a lot of potential for modding, specifically. For instance, an insectoid civilization which has worker miners and soldier soldiers, or an amazonian kingdom which only allows females into the military and positions of power. I know this wouldn't be top priority, but is it on the easier side of things, or is it relegated to the "far future," if at all planned?

[PatrikLundell]

It'll probably be beyond the initial Myth & Magic release, but these are things that would fit in with generated intelligent species. However, I wouldn't have these details in the first iteration of those. But who knows, there might be a reason to add qualifiers for positions (blood lines, magic abilities, ...) and this might be things that would fit into that set of work.

My guess is that the current status is something along the lines of "looks reasonable and something we'd like to do at some point, but no ETA".

[DPh Kraken]

Will caste requirements for different jobs/positions be introduced to civilizations at some point? This could have a lot of potential for modding, specifically. For instance, an insectoid civilization which has worker miners and soldier soldiers, or an amazonian kingdom which only allows females into the military and positions of power. I know this wouldn't be top priority, but is it on the easier side of things, or is it relegated to the "far future," if at all planned?

For positions of leadership, there's [GENDER], [ALLOWED_CLASS] and [ALLOWED_CREATURE], which should be effective for purposes of caste restriction. Restricting professions can be essentially hacked in on the creature level (by nerfing those skill gains to the ground), but there's no similar tokens to divide labor on a societal level. Could be very interesting to see where modding tools and generated cultures go.

[Digganob]

Will caste requirements for different jobs/positions be introduced to civilizations at some point? This could have a lot of potential for modding, specifically. For instance, an insectoid civilization which has worker miners and soldier soldiers, or an amazonian kingdom which only allows females into the military and positions of power. I know this wouldn't be top priority, but is it on the easier side of things, or is it relegated to the "far future," if at all planned?

For positions of leadership, there's [GENDER], [ALLOWED_CLASS] and [ALLOWED_CREATURE], which should be effective for purposes of caste restriction. Restricting professions can be essentially hacked in on the creature level (by nerfing those skill gains to the ground), but there's no similar tokens to divide labor on a societal level. Could be very interesting to see where modding tools and generated cultures go.

Yes, leadership restrictions are pretty useful, it's true. I used the caste restriction in a mod I made so that only the biggest goblins got to be leaders. But profession restrictions would really be next level.

[FrankVill]

This question might seem like a hidden suggestion, but I promise that's not my intention, it's just curiosity.
A few days ago I began to imagine what would happen if Dwarf Fortress included the concept of evolution (ancient bones prove that the dwarf descended from the orangutan and things like that). It doesn't seem crazy given that DF aspires to be a very complete world simulator. But I see it as logical that you have not considered it because it is not something that is usually dealt with in the fantasy genre (books, movies...).
Have you ever thought about the possibility of treating evolution? If so, what reasons led you to rule it out?
Are there other similar things that you have considered and definitively ruled out for compelling reasons, such as technical, complexity or time limitations?

[A_Curious_Cat]

I was watching the interview with BlindIRL, and Tarn was talking about “weaponizing the Dew”.

Does that mean that there’s going to be a product placement partnership with PepsiCo?

[stoyang]

Asking more technical rather than game content related questions:

1. Given the recent tooling changes around how you build DF (eg version control, multiple branches) what do you think has changed in the way you think about development thanks to this new tooling? What has it enabled in your mind that you previously thought might be too difficult to tackle?

2. Follow up on the tooling, what other interesting tools or patterns have you considered or looked into? what about unit tests? fuzz testing? c++20 concepts?

[bratok]

Hello.

1. When map export function from Legends Mode will be aviable?

2. Will there be updates regarding the NPCs and their social component? For example, I noticed such a thing that characters can serve in the same unit for many years, and still remain strangers to each other. Or, after a battle, the wounded are simply abandoned, and first of all everyone goes to get drunk in a bar. In general, the behavior of the characters in some places is not entirely logical, and I would like to know if you are planning any updates in this regard.

Thanks!

[eerr]

Historically, you've played roguelike games, where your score was tallied at the end of the game.
Would a numeric representation of score fit in adventure mode?

[Inarius]

@eerr : I think not. Because in most roguelike game, there is a "goal", and numeric representation are here to tell you how much of this you've done.
Here, there is no goal. So how to measure anything ?
The only thing you can measure is your skill evolution.