Current changelog for the next release in a nutshell:
Villains:
>People can become villainous or corrupt based on how much they value things like cunning, power and greed
>Villains form networks of subordinate agents and compromised position holders through intimidation, asserting rank, blackmail, flattery, exploiting
religious sympathies, promising to take revenge on an enemy, and direct bribery
>Success depends on various factors, for example bribery works better on greedy or indebted people, flattery
on people who trust you, intimidation on people who fear you
>Which of these strategies they go for depends on their skill (intrigue, judge of intent) and their information on the target
>Villainous plots include: embezzling funds, sabotage (destroying funds of people or entities), stealing artifacts, framing, corrupt imprisonment,
kidnapping, assassination, instigating wars between civs and coups to obtain positions of power
>Kidnappings can lead to ransoms, long time imprisonment and, depending on cruelty and civ ethics of the villain, even murder, torture
or the sale of the prisoner
>Personal prisoners may escape, but the chance for success depends on the location where they are kept
(it's harder to escape from the dungeon of a tower)
>Basic crime/ corruption (embezzling funds) and punishment (prison sentence, exile, execution) in world gen
General:
>World gen hist figs and entities now have "accounts", storing their wealth and leverage, which they can use to buy or upgrade equipment and real
estate or pay for upkeep costs.
>More generated civ noble positions (keeper of the seals, cup bearer, etc)
>New non-civ entities with their own positions, assets and infrastructure: organised religions, corporations, guilds, mercenary companies
>Mercenary companies can be religious, can be dedicated to certain weapons, can be soldiers, assassins or jack of all trades,
can give tactical bonus to battles via scouts
>Religion rework: Belief of site populations is now tracked. Prophets can arise in sites that are associated with a deity and
found organised religions, applying their personal moral values to them. Prophets/ priests and religious infrastructure
can spread the religion, often along trade routes. A religion can have multiple temple cities and one holy city.
>Religious tension: persecution, riots, religious grievances, grudges, acts of revenge.
Persecuted followers suffer from expropriation, banishment and murder (possibly as human sacrifise to the gods).
Preachers can preach for tensions to abate or to incite violence.
>New city buildings like shrines, warehouses, towers
>New sites: monasteries, bandit forts, return of castles
>Profaning a temple will now only result in a curse if it belongs to a deity that is worshipped by the profaner
>More depth added to relationships with values like love/hate, loyalty, trust, respect, fear
>Added infidelity, love-triangles, unrequited love, divorce, etc. Children can now be born outside of marriage.
>Friendships and rivalries are now generated during worldgen (through childhood, war, competitions)
>New ways for population, rulers and infrastructure to influence each other during world gen
(portion of dwarves in a city causing the construction of dwarven shrines, dwarven shrines having
the ability to convert humans to dwarven religions, etc)
Adventure mode:
>Ridable mounts in adventure mode
>Adventure mode starting party customization
>Adventure mode starting equipment and pet customization
>Press "tab" to control other characters of your starting party
>Turn based mode that automatically swaps you between your adventure mode party's characters,
giving you full control over all their actions (this is not 100% done yet, but he said it wasn't missing much)
Legends mode:
>Changes to legends mode and the structure of historical events
>(upcoming in a bit) expose most of the decision-making factors of historical figures to legends mode
All the backstabbing and conniving and villainy is cool and all but being able to play the randomly generated dragon rider adventure roguelike of my dreams is what's really bringing the hype for me.
whens it coming
When it's done.
Some drawings of forts over the past few months:
Spos was a forgotten beast. It was the only one of its kind. An enormous blob composed of ash. It has a broad shell and it squirms and fidgets. Beware its poisonous sting! In a time before time, Spos began wandering the depths of the world.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/247464582661144578/541044299299815425/IMG_20190201_1554544772.jpg
This is an engraving of the militia commander Deduk Okilshem and a yeti. The yeti is striking down Deduk Okilshem.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/247464582661144578/541493846832316426/IMG_20190202_2118377302.jpg
This comes from a savage glacier fort, where we were accosted by yetis for a couple years, they just kept coming and attacking people. Eventually we extirpated them from the region, but not before one stomped my militia commander's head into gore. I ended up trying to breed the ones I had captured in an icy cave I dug out in the glaciers, but they didn't seem interested in reproduction. That same tunnel in the ice is where I locked up an entire siege of humans and watched them all go insane and start throwing arrows and rocks and severed body parts at each other, while I periodically sent forgotten beasts up to try to kill them. One fellow that I sent their way was...
Aztong was a forgotten beast. It was the only one of its kind. A great quadruped composed of calcite. It has a pair of knobby antennae and it has a bloated body. Beware its webs!
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/247464582661144578/542924925665804304/IMG_20190206_202546226.jpg
For a stone forgotten beast with webs, they somehow managed to dispatch it relatively easily.
From another fort, this one a mountain fort where I was experimenting with necromancy:
The Mountain Titan Ecen Zinrujit has come! a gigantic blob composed of coral. It has an enormous shell and it has a regal bearing. Beware its webs!
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/247464582661144578/545842425868976128/IMG_20190214_2141270542.jpg
In this fort a had a huge pile of corpses I made to try and resurrect to fight the circus (to mediocre effect). The pile had two roc skeletons, the coral titan above, countless elf and goblin skeletons, and this behemoth:
The forest titan Mot Sagusstuzang Abusp Zomus has come! An enormous quadruped composed of nickel silver. It has wings and it has an austere look about it. Beware its webs!
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/247464582661144578/562810887845576724/IMG_20190402_182327159_HDR2.jpg
Far and away the most horrifying procedural beasts I've seen, being made of one of the denser metals in the game for extreme blunt attacks, with wings and webs. Luckily it seemed to be too heavy to get off the ground with those wings, and while it struck down a number of militia dwarves, an axedwarf managed to get a lucky flank in and avoid the webs to strike it down with a candy axe.
And finally, my current fort, Flamebrush.
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/247464582661144578/570127611477360650/IMG_20190422_230214849.jpg
A volcano on the western side of the mountain supplies the lava that powers our forges and fills the moat. An open pit of magma forms the center of the fort, with many levels of the fort having open access to the pit. Refuse can be incinerated within the fort, and the magma in that pit can be redirected for various other uses. The open magma has its perils though, as our former militia captain learned when they fell in during a fight with one of our other citizens many years ago. The survivor of that exchange was given the name "Usurper", and I'll occasionally find dwarves making statues or carvings of her killing the militia captain and cackling. It seems some dwarves don't think the fall was an accident...
Our ever-vigilant beak dogs watch the entrance to the fort, along with a gem-encrusted dragon skull totem. That dragon tore apart many of our best fighters many years hence, but was eventually taken down by a mercenary speardwarf. "Dragonslayer", as he was eventually known, had had the good sense to never clean his weapon after it was used in a fight with a forgotten beast, leaving the spear coated with extract. The toxins caused massive hemorrhaging across the dragon's body, winning the day. Sadly he was killed by goblins in a rather bloody siege some years ago.
And of course the fort's crowning jewel is The Colossus of Flamebrush, a twelve-block-high steel statue of a dwarf, with beard and hair of silver, a spear of gold and steel, and a gigantic crystal glass goblet filled with magma. At its feet our legendary militia-dwarves spar in between their pillagings and razings of the goblins to the northwest. Funny enough, a goblin siege once arrived on the edge of the map, then immediately left without fighting, soon after the Colossus was completed. Perhaps the tucked their tails when faced with such an imposing guard.
Let me know if you guys want more posts like this, I have more drawings and stories to share. I was worried I was kind of spamming the thread a while back.
dev lung
The civilizations in world generation now have some basic counter-intelligence abilities, and though it's abstract like the rest of world generation, the spy masters and law enforcement position holders, like the villains, have to work in a more-or-less fair fashion to earn their victories. The game keeps track of the evidence they've collected from witnesses, interrogation and surveillance, and this gives them leads on further steps to take, in terms of who to surveil and who to interrogate. They don't take any complicated steps, forming plots against villains etc., as there simply wasn't time. But they can defend themselves adequately and stop the world from falling into compromised ruin. Hopefully that'll be enough for now. We'll come back and adjust after we see how fort mode plays if necessary.
But first, we need to finish world generation, and that means it's time for the supernatural critters and persons to have their shot at earning proper villainous credentials. We spent some time this week narrowing down a very long list of possibilities. Most matter to do with the supernatural is best saved for the magic release, but since there will be a Big Wait for that, adding as well the work on the graphical release, we've been planning to add a certain amount of Fun elements to help tide everybody over. I previewed one of these at my talk at the last Roguelike Celebration, which was a plot for a necromancer to take over the world with an army of undead soldiers raised from the chaos of plot-caused wars. Conveniently, we have almost all of the tools necessary to do that now. This'll also very likely lead to a non-villainous addition - alliances. At least, our suspicion is that in some worlds, those will be very necessary for survival. But it's not all undead armies in the notes. We'll see what we get to in the time we've set aside for this.
ded log
Necromancers are having fun. I've added a bit more information to the necromancer towers, allowing the zombies to build them up a bit to increase a site zombie cap. If the necromancer is at their zombie cap, they can still raise more zombies, but they are added to a wilderness population instead. The wilderness population can still be used for invasions, but they are also able to roam on to player forts in the region and also encounter adventurers. Such regions become evil slowly, emanating outward visibly from the tower tile by tile. Necromancers can infiltrate site graves and catacombs to sneak out some zombies, before they are ready to attack (in the currently released version, they only raid old battlefields.) Necromancers captured during such risky infiltrations are generally executed.
Once the necromancer is feeling powerful enough, they attack the outlying villages of a market town and if the snowball gets big enough, the market town as well, all in the same invasion during a given year. So far, this has caused some minor pain, but hasn't ever turned into a world-ending cascade, as history is usually too messy for that (sudden dragon attacks, opportunistic goblin attacks, etc.) But I'm still planning on adding alliances, as the necromancers will only get better at seeing through their new ambitions as I do a few tweaks to make them more effective.
For instance, in order to handle some of the logistics of taking over the world, necromancers can now raise a new type of intelligent undead from historical graves and battlefields. These currently have silly names like hollow haunt and doomed zombie and so forth. They are under the control of the necromancer, but can retain much of their old identity. (There are bugs to wrangle - sometimes they take off and join performance troupes.) I'm also currently letting the necromancer use them as assets during villainous schemes, though I should grapple a bit with what that means in terms of, like, their intimidation rolls and how they get reported to the authorities.
New log out
In preparation for alliances, I searched for a world with a formidable necromancer. I didn't find one initially, as it took quite a bit of tweaking to get them to take off properly. During this process, I found a random intelligent undead, a gorlak night shade, that was taken captive during a human counterattack, enslaved, and made to milk cows for some years. The citizens eventually became bothered that the creature did not age, then suspicious, then hostile... I suppose that's fair, as the curse doesn't currently change their appearance from the one they had in life, but still, it was leading a zombie army. In any case, the night shade escaped their wrath, and returned to its tower, where it died (again) defending against another necromancer's attack.
Eventually, as I made changes, the necromancers started conquering larger swaths of land more often, as intended (pre-alliance.) The elves had to conquer an entire mountain range filled with zombies that used to be a dwarven civilization of thirty or so sites. Their first attack on a zombie fort failed, but most of the zombies were put down then, and the elves eventually cleared out the halls. In other cases, the initial counter-attack started trouble for the world. The dwarves took a necromancer tower that had attacked their hillocks, and they took the necromancer's forbidden death-god slab as a prize to one of their fortresses, where the local historians started reading it and corrupting themselves. I also gave necromancers and vampires the ability to use their secrets and their blood respectively to entice people to join their villainous schemes. Grateful and dutiful villains actually carry through and share their power when an asset proves themselves useful, but others never fulfill their promise.
At last, I found a great world for testing alliances. A necromancer took over an entire elf civilization, choosing their battles well enough that the elves never mounted an effective counter-attack (though there was a bit of luck involved there too, I'm sure), after which they were pretty much unstoppable. The whole time, the neighboring humans and dwarves stood by, because there are no alliances yet, but they could have easily stopped the undead. This, of course, was the perfect time for another world gen non-reproducibility bug, which I've been working on for two full days. I've traced it from the main necromancer being assassinated (or not) in the year 205, to a migration happening (or not) in year 183 week 40, to a debt being to one city or another in week 38, to whether or not a site wanted stone cabinets, to the size of their meat stockpile in 183 week 2, to ten particular stacks of meat which have random amounts even when the world seed is the same. I'll get it eventually, but I have to generate the medium island world out to year 183 at least twice every time I want to log, usually more, so that's fun, ha ha ha. I was planning to wrap up the supernatural changes this week, and now may end up just doing alliances, but we'll see how the bug chasing concludes.
An explanation was already posted, but there was a spritesheet for concept steam clowns posted to reddit a few months ago that I'm gonna post to give you a reference of what they'll prob look like in the steam version.
https://i.imgur.com/i1aEBcY.png
Wow. That is quite a lot.
Is it just me or are missions a bit of a mess?
Apparently you cant recover artifacts held by a person? I tried and nothing happened when my dwarves came back
Nobles sent on missions get their rooms and holdings unassigned...
I had dwarves randomly become unassigned from squads
Apparently missions dont get started until all dwarves leave the map? Doesnt seem like the case for me since i had a wounded dwarf not go on a mission and everyone else came back fine?
Does it matter how many dwarves get sent on a mission? Does their gear matter?
Also on an unrelated note, how do i make my military dwarves permanently wear their weapons and uniforms even when off duty (inactive, doing normal civilian stuff and tasks)
Im really not into micromanaging my military with schedules and other over complicated garbage, id rather just order them around on the go but them picking up equipments every time i order them to do stuff becomes a pain.
Zombie log
Fortunately, the bug from last week lasted only one more work day. The divergent butchered meats were tied to different livestock populations, which came back to differently initialized labor pools due to the game being confused about zombie work forces. It was particularly bad since the seeds of the two worlds diverged but then realigned before things got too bad (and then diverged again for keeps ~38 weeks later). This happens sometimes, since the number of dice rolls can resync, with just a slight change that doesn't become apparent until it blows things up later. So, in any case, I was able to get back on top of things.
First, alliances. When civilizations are feeling set upon by the more evil threats (any group that requires the killing of neutrals, like gobs and the undead), they can join up now, for as long as feels necessary, and beyond, if they get along. This has had the desired effect of keeping the necromancers in line. A typical scenario is that the necromancer will bide their time, raise many zombies, and attack a small market to attempt to get a snowball going. This sets an alliance to be formed, and the necromancer is subsequently be defeated. In one such case, the necromancer Morul Searedgorge did exactly that to a coastal town of humans, and the next year found himself captured by an alliance of humans, elves and dwarves in roughly equal numbers. He was imprisoned in a dwarf fortress for 20 years. He might have escaped, but a hydra came and ate him and everybody else. I did have to fix a bug where the human and dwarven allies also ate the dead if the elves led the attack.
There are all sorts of variations on the general pattern. In one world, a militia commander obsessed with their own mortality defected to the necromancers, was killed, raised, and imprisoned for decades (and still in prison at game start.) In the same world, the main necromancer was also killed, but was brought back by an apprentice who had assumed control, who was later killed, and the now truly undead main necromancer became the leader again, until the alliance was finally fully successful. I only had one small world where the wind just blew the wrong way for everybody and the necromancer completely won, after 700 years of tracking down the last villages. In the end, heroic animal people were the last resistance, settling in the final holdout locations, slaying multiple forlorn butcher lieutenants as they inevitable fell to the army of 10000+ zombies and became forlorn butcher animal people themselves. By the year 834, every settlement was destroyed, and history effectively stopped, aside from chronic book writing and some animal heroes that still arose and wandered the regions (they found nowhere to settle and died of old age peacefully.) The necromancers don't yet attack the wilderness.
I was able to finish a few more supernatural events as well. World gen dwarves can break into the underworld now. It gives them a chance to fight off the demons, but this generally goes poorly, as they aren't as clever as you all, making theme parks down there, heh. Some goblins are thrown into the mix, and this becomes a new civilization in the mountains. Artifacts can now be stored in tombs, and if thieves go for them, this can cause disturbances, as in adventure mode currently. The resulting mummies form a grudge against the thieves, but also generally take up necromantic and villainous ways. Here is one coast that went sour after the mummy decided to attack the nearby city that had built the tomb. They executed and raised everybody there as zombies. The mummy never managed to recover the iron ring that was stolen from the tomb, and the thief died in an unrelated combat a few years after the theft (before the tomb eruption even happened.) The mummy also raised his own mother from the tomb as an 'interred ghoul', along with every other notable personage buried there. I've given the intelligent undead raised by mummied more 'crypty' adjectives to distinguish them. We'll probably have to wait for the magic stuff before a more natural system can be used.
I also finished the villainous/merc/etc. XML exporting I needed to do, and have started on the remaining historical event writeups.
Frog log
A dry but productive week of historical data structures and text. They don't read as well as the stories from the dev logs, but the information is there now, and in the XML export. And that marks the end of the world generation work! Finally, we'll be moving on to everything else. Since it has been a while, a reminder of what that looks like in recent years, roughly speaking. First, we bring over the core of the world generation mechanics that'll be needed in both modes of the game, with finer detail since the map is more detailed and time is more granular. This time, that mostly means getting the villainous agents to actually move on the map, continuing the plots from world gen. Then, we work on adventure mode, since it's easier to see things up close there and do necessary tweaks and patch up flaws. Here, we'll be doing adventure mode investigations and adventurers-as-villains, as well as finishing some items we left for parties and realizing some maps and things from world generation. Finally, with all the core mechanics and tweaks in place, we hit the fortress mode changes: relationship improvements sparked by the villain upgrade, villains against the fort, any plotting that you yourself can do as a fort (either as counter-espionage or more actively), and any other bits from religions, mercenaries, etc. that make it over, though these last are undecided.
Here are some items I forgot to link from earlier in the month:
Discussing Steam/itch release and more on Kake Bytes, with Scamps. This doesn't have the video, but the very good cat was crawling all over me intermittently.
And here's a 27 minute video interview with IndieHangover, during which Scamps is almost always on screen.
And finally, my list of stuffs on Uses This.
Sorry to grave-dig this thread, but I wanted to share an interesting embarking location.
https://i.imgur.com/0xjoJpf.png
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