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[Toady One]

Development page

The purpose of the thread is to discuss current developments.  Specific bugs should be reported on the bug tracker, and specific suggestions belong for the most part in the suggestion forum.  Questions and comments about the development page or DF development somewhat more broadly work here, though any contentious topics that lead to derails are discouraged -- there are threads for those too.

If you have specific questions, I'll try to answer them all, although it is difficult to respond to everything when it is busy.  I'll lean toward questions that involve current developments to avoid pulling the entire suggestion forum in here.  In the past, we've all found the practice of making questions limegreen works pretty well.  You do that like this:

Code: [Select]

[color=limegreen]making questions limegreen[/color]

At the time this thread was posted, we had just put up the first patch following the release of the new Adventure mode out of beta.  We're now going to do some more patches before getting into siege improvements and related fixes, adv site building and related, and the first wave of map updates.  experimental lua is also coming very soon.

I'll carry over questions from the previous thread when I make my first reply in early March.

[amade]

On the topic of siege improvements, any chance war animals will get an improvement/rework as well? Currently, they tend to wander off randomly at the wrong moments so I find that they're mostly useful as extra muscle to be sent along with raiding/pillaging parties on off-site missions. Or I throw a bunch of them into cages and release them when invaders pass by. It would be great if they could follow squad orders, or at least not leave their masters' sides when the squad is being given orders during a siege.

Allow siegers to plan and learn, tracking where deaths occur and using alternate routes

Would introducing multiple vectors of attack be possible? Or have the army split up into multiple groups after spawning? I noticed that sieges tend to always spawn around the same general location, which I believe you are trying to address by getting them to use alternate routes. Having armies march in from multiple directions (perhaps even staggered as a method of employing diversions) could potentially force the player to spread their forces thin or leave their flanks open.

[Deno]

Hello! I just saw the new update on Steam and have a few questions regarding the dev log:

1. Building sites in Adventure mode was mentioned. Will that just be about implementing the existing feature from the free version or can we expect new features and additions? Also are there any plans to expand on site management for both existing and self built sites? Taking over a site is already possible in both modes and with army stuff coming in the not so far future controlling one or more sites to get resources and manpower seems interesting.

2. Will building/owning stuff be possible within existing sites? Like buying a building in a village, building one yourself on a plot of land you bought inside said village or expanding/upgrading a house you bought and stuff like that.

3. Will the improved sieges only apply to defending your fort or will we be able to besiege others once the army stuff is done? I am imagining something like the Total War games but that probably isn't what Dwarf Fortress is aiming for.

[DPh Kraken]

Hello! I just saw the new update on Steam and have a few questions regarding the dev log:

1. Building sites in Adventure mode was mentioned. Will that just be about implementing the existing feature from the free version or can we expect new features and additions?

3. Will the improved sieges only apply to defending your fort or will we be able to besiege others once the army stuff is done? I am imagining something like the Total War games but that probably isn't what Dwarf Fortress is aiming for.

Don't forget your green, friend!

1. Well, we can't have new features if the old stuff doesn't work first. Dwarf Fortress is a hungry beast, and no doubt Tarn has gathered countless ideas on where to take camps and cabins.
EDIT: After the interview with Blind, it seems like the trajectory is to broaden the Adventure crafting system to better match the things you can do in Fortress Mode. It's an underutilized system, and it's good to hear some motion on filling in the cracks.

3. Right now you can send out siege missions, they're simulated as worldgen battles right now. Multiple viewports is more within the domain of the map stuff, and the idea has come up a lot before. Very popular idea to see your squads moving through sites, but more complicated than it sounds.
I've got some questions, myself.

1. What lead you to call that class of night creatures (lime green Ñ is still accurate here) "night trolls"? They're quite unlike the pre-defined troll creature, and their cryptic mannerisms read more along the lines of "witch" behaviors to me.
EDIT: This was addressed in the BlindIRL interview, with Scandinavian myths of trolls doing those things. Feel free to elaborate or not as you see fit.

2. How far do you plan to take the strategy game aspects of missions and diplomacy, will we be able to transition our games from Sims (or Rogue, dealer's choice) to Crusader Kings?

3. I'm interested in plans for more efficient layer graphics. The palettes we got last year were a huge step up for reducing redundant sprites and representing arbitrary materials, but for tissue colors there still needs to be the same amount of graphics definitions. Why were tissues converted in this way? Could we see more hair and skin colors represented with the next graphical update?

[TheFlame52]

What lead you to call that class of night creatures (lime green Ñ is still accurate here) "night trolls"? They're quite unlike the pre-defined troll creature, and their cryptic mannerisms read more along the lines of "witch" behaviors to me.

"Night troll" is one of the names for the creatures that the generator can spit out, and I think it was just adopted by the community. I don't think Toady coined it himself.

[DPh Kraken]

[NIGHT_TROLL_NUMBER] is official terminology, it's a world generation token.

[TheFlame52]

i am stupid

[Digganob]

Are there any plans to tweak combat weirdness as far as armor goes? Like facial features not being protected by helmets, caps being a random 50/50 to block hits instead of being based on a skill, and large creatures like elephant men having much stronger armor due to their size. While the system is impressive (your use of momentum especially), seems like there's still a lot of nuance that can be put in to armored combat. Are these systems something that may be changeable soon by modding?

Oh, and a quick one: Will we be able to refill siegers' tunnels with dirt after a siege?

[Doorkeeper]

I'm pretty sure they were inspired in part by witches/hags. Originally they were just called "night creatures" then later when vamps, weres and others were added they got redefined as a class and were renamed to night trolls.

Are there any soonish plans to rebalance/tweak combat and combat physics? Especially as concerns how armor works, like caps being a random 50/50 to block, instead of being based on armor user skill, piercing hits not being impeded much, facial features not being protected by helmets, etc. While it's impressive (your use of momentum especially), seems like there's still a lot of nuance that can be added to the combat system. Are these systems something that may be changeable soon by modding?

Use lime green next time, for visibility.


New thread, new chapter. Lua modding sounds very interesting, can't wait.

[voliol]

There's at least one norse myth about trolls by that name kidnapping spouses, for what it's worth. Though terminology for fairy tale creachers often is inexact and overlapping; a giant and an ogre may be the same, an ogre and a troll may be the same, and a troll and a sorcerer (or witch/hag, of the Baba Yaga kind) may be the same. Putting clear distinctions between these is more of a modern fantasy thing.

[Riukus]

I'm a bit worried about the upcoming demolish and dig features for enemies. One of the main reasons I haven't played Rimworld since 2020 is the unsafe feeling that enemies can fall from the roof, dig through the floor and bash through the walls anytime with no way to completely stop it. It is interesting for a few times but soon becomes annoying.

Unlike Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress has much bigger potential in mega project building and social (tavern, library, temple) forts. As well as a much richer storytelling aspect so it doesn't need to fill the time with meat grinding events all the time.

So my question is will we be able to prevent demolishing and digging without turning off the whole feature? I'm mainly thinking about covering the fortress in steel walls and floors or something similar. It shouldn't be as easy to dig steel compared to soil or soft stone.

Also, if map have heavy aquifer will enemies suicidal dig through it? Or will there be something to let them do it without drowning?

[Inarius]

Heil to the new FotF page !

You have talked about enemy avoiding death traps when they know there is one, can you give us more details ? I'm quite interested, it has a lot of implications i suppose in the change of enemy behaviour and AI of hostiles in general

[SamBucher]

I recall you talking in the past about multi-tile entities. While that was in the context of boats, I assume that such tech would be applicable to living creatures as well. My first thought on this is that the megabeasts that are drawn in the Steam version as way bigger than the tile they are located in would be the perfect candidates to become dimensionally larger. I have several questions about this:

1) Regarding navigation, how would a 2x2 creature act if it wanted to chase a dwarf/adventurer through a 1 tile wide corridor? Would is just not be able to do that (a common trope in media)?
2) Would different tiles contain different parts of the creature? I think that would mean that its facing direction mattered.
3) How would a multi-tile creature be displayed in classic's ASCII graphics? Just as a bunch of its associated symbols?

I was also going to ask about non-rectangular creatures, like a giant snake/worm that could actually snake through a fortress, or an giant octopus with physical tentacles, but that sounds like a completely different can of worms and unimaginable implementation nightmares.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Do you have plans in the near (pre-map rewrite) future to more organically incorporate dungeon denizens and magic materials/items into worldgen history? I get that their short-term implementation was intended more as a proof-of-concept than anything else, but (to me at least) they can currently feel distractingly disjointed from the lore of the world they exist in. Any small steps towards making them more active participants in a world's history would be welcome IMO.

[SamBucher]

Why can't Dwarf Fortress be closed with the game window's X button or from taskbar? You can only exit the game from the main menu or by stopping the process through the Task Manager.