DF devlog - I'm in HEAVAN.

[Balor]

I've written up my body outline and started in on that. Due to the compat break, I'm starting with support for basic di/polymorphism for creatures and moving on to creature/plant material lists (including all of the extracts and whatever else). I've set aside three more days for this right now (and obviously more later, since I won't finish in three), but the order after mats is roughly: tissue layering, body part relationships (encasement, relative position, etc.) and sizes (and some new parts like teeth, claws/nails, lips, ribs, hair, etc.), improve the attribute system a bit, do appearance phenotype-like stuffs, size information, and then with that backing, get into wounds properly without having a simple placeholder first, then healing/scars (and thus better pain handling), and then descriptive paragraphs (not just for wounds but the rest too, which will further individualize everybody, hopefully in a satisfying way).

When extracts come up in the separate material lists, this'll probably invite an expansion of the venom/poison system beyond the current stun/paralyze setup. Going over to explicit materials for tissues will probably also lead to a replacement of the damage blocking system (and probably thereby a sort of insane-yet-proper increase in challenge for creatures like iron men that'll have to be matched by more tactical options over time).

As a result of tissue layering, the 15 HP per BP system is being more or less dropped to make way for individual wound tracking. Unless you look at the specific descriptions, you'll still have wounded BP lists and so on displayed in pretty much the same way, though. Aside from having more accurate combat text (though I'm not sure if that's coming with this push) and the scars/improved healing/pain management that come from wound tracking, it also means that smaller creatures will be able to cause very slight wounds to large creatures in many cases where they'd do nothing before. A 1 out of 15 guaranteed BP HP drop is too large in many cases (thus the current no-damage chances), but adding a scratch to the skin tissue doesn't have to count for so much. So even if you aren't really hurting the titan, at least you can make little marks on it and bother it or something.

Well, subj. It seems like perfection in 'damage department' is getting withing reach.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Can we have a goal instead? Because right now DF is Will Wright's Folly.

 

[Disconnected]

Can we have a goal instead? Because right now DF is Will Wright's Folly.

The goal is to prosper.

Personally I'd much prefer some kind of graphics. Any kind really. Right now, the only thing DF is good for is demonstrating how a Young Earth Creationist feels when studying biology: total incomprehension.

 

[Balor]

Well, I'm TROO enough to play it w/o any graphics whatsoever and understand everything. It's easy, really.
Only thing I'm suffering from is too few characters on screen, but it's going to be fixed soon.

 

[JarlFrank]

(and some new parts like teeth, claws/nails, lips, ribs, hair, etc.)

So we're able to beat out teeth, tear out nails and rip off hair now?

Torturing Elf children will be even more awesome now.

 

[Balor]

(and some new parts like teeth, claws/nails, lips, ribs, hair, etc.)

So we're able to beat out teeth, tear out nails and rip off hair now?

Torturing Elf children will be even more awesome now.

In Dwarf Fortress, Elven children torture YOU!
And eat you afterwards.

 

[Disconnected]

Well, I'm TROO enough to play it w/o any graphics whatsoever and understand everything. It's easy, really.
Only thing I'm suffering from is too few characters on screen, but it's going to be fixed soon.

Syntax Error: bad acronym. What's it mean?

Don't take this the wrong way; the guy's giving away what increasingly seems to be his life's work, so who the fuck am I to criticise..

But I don't buy your: "It's easy, really." There's a bunch of physiological & behavioural obstacles involved when presenting people with information in the way DF does. Not implying they can't be overcome, but for most people, it's not just a simple matter of learning what the different characters mean. We have to learn to grasp it intuitively, and that takes a while.
Consider how accessible DF would be to you, if it was entirely in Morse code. It's not that you couldn't possibly play it like that, it's just that unless you're a really damn strange person, you wouldn't have any fun for a long, long time.

 

[Destroid]

There are plenty of graphics tilesets available.

 

[aleph]

But I don't buy your: "It's easy, really." There's a bunch of physiological & behavioural obstacles involved when presenting people with information in the way DF does. Not implying they can't be overcome, but for most people, it's not just a simple matter of learning what the different characters mean.

Well... people who have problems with the visual presentation of DF are too dumb to play it anyway...

 

[Gragt]

And should be taken behind a dumpter and shot.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

The goal is to prosper.

Which is easy as fuck nowodays. Where are the elephants of yesteryear?

 

[Balor]

The goal is to prosper.

Which is easy as fuck nowodays. Where are the elephants of yesteryear?

That's because old systems were more or less scrapped, and full-scale warfare is in progress. We just have to wait.

 

[Unradscorpion]

Well, I thought he learnt something from the original Slaves of Armok...
I hope it doesn't share the same fate. Maybe ASCII graphics will actually be helpful in this case.

 

[Castanova]

Well... people who have problems with the visual presentation of DF are too dumb to play it anyway...

Not true. Fortress Mode is incredibly easy. I built a self-sufficient fortress within the first day I started playing with no effort whatsoever. Yeah, you can spend time learning the ins and outs and get your dwarf to craft some Phat Loot or whatever but the base game requires little in the way of intelligence.

 

[S_Verner]

Additionally, I can make sense of DF's ASCII but am too dumb to play it correctly.

My most successful fort was entirely below ground with a hatch cover being the only entrance, unfortunately I suck at making floorplans.

 

[JarlFrank]

Well, I thought he learnt something from the original Slaves of Armok...
I hope it doesn't share the same fate. Maybe ASCII graphics will actually be helpful in this case.

So uhm, what was wrong with the original? I never played that one, so...

 

[Lightknight]

The only question i have about the current developments is : what kind of machine will i need to process all this data ?

 

[Balor]

Well, unless he'll move to CUDA, you'll only need CPU and RAM, and they are much cheaper then GPUs nowadays.
So, nothing drastic. After all, all those calculation are purely logical. So for 'storing' this data, RAM is really dirt cheap now. (DDR2, fuck DDR3).
You can afford 4 Gbs by saving up your lunch money for a week.

 

[Lightknight]

I'm sorry, but tracking each individual tooth on every one of possibly several hundred humanoids (not to mention animals) - is hardly what i'd call "nothing drastic". Especially since you can read on Bay12 forum stories about people with quad-cpu machines getting slowdowns. And i'm rather far from having a quad-cpu unit myself...

 

[Krash]

Especially since you can read on Bay12 forum stories about people with quad-cpu machines getting slowdowns. And i'm rather far from having a quad-cpu unit myself...

DF is single threaded

 

[Lightknight]

Whatever, my point stays the same. DF can almost "halt" your machine NOW, what with the temperature and stuff, what will happen when it will get several times more intricate and detailed ?

 

[Destroid]

Funny that dwarf fortress is probably the game that would see the biggest improvement from upgrading my cpu.

 

[Balor]

Whatever, my point stays the same. DF can almost "halt" your machine NOW, what with the temperature and stuff, what will happen when it will get several times more intricate and detailed ?

Well, remember, being alone in a hostile world, Tarn cannot spend too much time to optimize DF, hence right now it's, well, not.
I bet that once optimizations are there, it would be able to run at 10x complexity with 2x speed. And when it would strike his fancy to optimize it for multi-cpu systems and, especially, CUDA and the like... well, 'sky is the limit'. We are talking astronomical number of FLOPs here.

 

[Shoelip]

Hurray for Toady One the Great! :D

 

[Lightknight]

Well, remember, being alone in a hostile world, Tarn cannot spend too much time to optimize DF

That, and also i dont think he actually knows how to optimize anything. He himself said as much. So those optimizations will never come.