Are the ingredient and food preferences based on something the dwarf has experienced in their life and liked? Or is it just a stat populated by the type of food byproducts that come from edible plants and animals in the world?
If it's the latter, then why the hell would a dwarf know that they love to eat a Crundle's grundle if they've never licked a Crundle's grundle in their life?
I think you could fix the latter by having foods have the basic tastes of bitter, sweet, sour, salty, and savory, and have dwarves get assigned preferences based on those attributes on food, so that way no one food/ingredient is their one favorite
But that's like adding an entire new system that's just fluff to fix the "good meal" issue. Having all the body parts and cooked versions having values for all 5 basic tastes would be crazy.
But It would be pretty dwarfy, to scientifically accurately describe foods by basic taste sensations.
This is how toady balances dwarf fortress. Minor issues are ONLY fixed with entire new systems.
https://old.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/acwcau/research_do_cats_really_land_on_their_feet_when/
Dwarf Fortress players performing Science as usual
randomly generated at birth, same as all other preferences
gross. then toady needs to get on with developing even more overly complex taste systems to fix simple issues that could just have a solution where, on ingestion of a food, a dwarf rolls the die to get one of the ingredients, or the meal, as their favorite.
Devlog
Toady One
First, a Zach update: he's going in for followup surgery
tomorrow. The initial procedure went pretty deep so there needs to be
some reconstruction and moving about of bits, but we're hopeful he's
cancer-free at this point.
I'm underway on additional worldgen villain mechanics, continuing into
schemes to acquire artifacts (and then keep, sell or pass them along)
and then on to shenanigans involving positions beyond embezzlement, up
to and including coups. Then we'll need to cover at least assassinations
and hideouts, perhaps more if we feel like there's time, but that'll be
enough to make dwarf mode interesting when we get there. I'll have
another villain story when I finish this set.
Giant devlog
Zach's final surgery went great! Hopefully life here will be calm for a time.
I ran a medium world out 100 years, and it's getting a little hard to
decide which stories to write up, which is a good sign. I was just
looking at the ruler of one of the goblin sites, Nguslu, notable for
being a war buddy of the demon lord (to the extent demon lords respect
the buddy notion), who hammered out a villainous life (like many
goblins) for 68 years before being assassinated by a dwarven mercenary
Dodok Ochrevises. Dodok was hired by Erush Castlegild, a snatched dwarf
that became a goblin-style bandit and was sick of Nguslu's stymieing
authority over the fortress of Evilchant. Dodok failed to get the drop
on Nguslu, and they were evenly matched, but after two failed
assassination attempts, Nguslu's luck finally ran out.
But perhaps we should talk about the king of the dwarves, Aslot
Sinentered, a goblin, ruling for the last 55 years. Back in the year
24, 21 years before his reign began, Aslot was a bandit, like Erush or
any of dozens of others. Styled 'overlord', but ruling nothing. He
operated near the dwarven capital of Targetroad, and his first attempt
at villainy was to try to extort money from the broker Nish. He failed.
The manager Adil? Failed. The bookkeeper Dakost? Nope. The chief
medical dwarf, Erith? No again. (I'm chuckling to myself reading the
events, as I know that Aslot becomes king, but this is new to me and not
looking promising so far.)
Over the next ten years, Aslot only managed to subordinate Reg
Figuresavior, the tavern keeper of the Chestnut of Spices, and Reg went
on to do absolutely nothing of value for him. Finally, in 39, six years
before his ascension, Aslot managed to get the outpost liaison Alath
Whippedlances; Aslot was a world-class flatterer by this time and was
bound to be successful (since there's not enough cost for repeated
failure, yet, in terms of punishment.) Aslot set the liaison to work
immediately, using the new access to attempt to turn the until-then
unapproachable General Mafol. Mafol was incorruptible. Alath's
ex-wife, the diplomat Dumat, however, was another story, and Alath
managed to pull her into Aslot's web.
It was at this point that Aslot first thought about seizing the throne,
but it seemed hopeless. A few insiders had less than a fifth of the
pull necessary to orchestrate something that grand. So what happened?
(I don't know yet, he he, reading...) Using Dumat's access, Aslot
turned one of the many landholders in the year 43; Baroness Besmar
enjoyed the cloak-and-dagger games so much she took the name "Sikel the
Foggy." The coup soon followed, but it only worked because in the year
45, Besmar went from being "one of the many landholders" to being "one
of the two landholders." A war with the elves had begun. General Mafol
was killed by an elven grizzly bear in 45 leading the defence of the
fortress Shipskunk. The dwarves won the battle, but several barons were
killed. That year, the power equation having swung just barely in
Aslot's favor, he pounced, using Besmar, Alath and Dumat to seize power
from the Queen Ducim Windfang. The deposed queen was imprisoned in
Targetroad, though the gracious King Aslot later gave her a minor barony
where she lived out her days until a quiet death in 82. Besmar became a
countess, then a duchess. She married Alath, but they divorced after
thirty years. He remained outpost liaison under Aslot until his death
in 84. Dumat remains the diplomat, where she regular competes in battle
axe throwing competition with Duchess Besmar.
Over those forty years, King Aslot fiddled with his network and
attempted to control his subordinates with varying success. Several
coups were idly plotted against him, but nobody managed to turn more
than one of his now numerous landholders. The one major villainous
event Aslot pulled off during his kingship was in the year 86, when the
king hatched an assassination plot on a different Alath, Alath
Glovedbrass, his own guard captain, after tavern keeper Reg failed to
loop him in on some low-grade scheming (the rulers don't yet have other
tools in their box, like simply firing the guard captain, he he.) Aslot
used new asset Id Steelarmors to send a message to famed assassin
Nushrat Exitrulers to set up the job. Nushrat performed the job
flawlessly, her fifth kill earning her the name "Nushrat Exitrulers the
Sacrificial Gaze."
It wasn't always that easy. Nushrat was a human criminal born in the
town of Focusesteem, where she learned to skulk about well enough doing
petty crimes, though her most notable achievement by then was being
boxed in the face by a cyclops and losing some teeth. Nushrat's first
real job was in the year 55, when a bandit hired her to kill a baronness
who refused to take a bribe to ignore his operation. Unsurprisingly,
she failed, but somehow survived, and continued learning. In 61, she
was approached by Jal Mirrotboots, the master of beasts of the Curious
Realm, who wanted her to kill the Realm's justiciar. (Nushrat never
knew that Jal had been sent by Dang Strokedhorrors, the only other
goblin in history that managed to overthrow a civilization, becoming
law-giver of the Curious Realm 24 years later after turning both the
chancellor and the previous law-giver's advisor.) This time, Nushrat
was successful. Next, the harrowing job of killing a goblin lord for a
goblin bandit in a dark fortress, but Nushrat was getting good and
pulled it off. She did her fourth job for a necromancer's apprentice.
The master necromancer had it out for the Justice who had rebuffed the
apprentice's attempt to bribe him. In 80, it was the captain of the
guard of a dwarf fortress, marked for death by his own mayor for
refusing to ignore the embezzlement of the chief medical dwarf (of which
the mayor was taking a cut.) The mayor was a goofus styling himself
"Azmol the Lone", but Nushrat never met him, just his messenger, a local
mercenary who the mayor later appointed the broker.
In 81, five years before the job for Aslot, Nushrat put her stealth to
use on a side job for the bandit Snang Beardplague. The Contemptible
Straps was a famous copper short sword, made in a strange mood by
dwarven weaponsmith Onul Playedcrafted sixty years before. Onul offered
it to the Queen (not Queen Ducim, we are with other dwarves not far
away.) It was only a few years before the greedy and villainous
hammerer got his mind to working and had the corrupt bookkeeper steal it
for him (when we add hideouts, he'll hide it somewhere sensible instead
of carrying it around, he he.) When the hammerer died in 81, and the
Contemptible Straps was found and restored to the fortress, our bandit
Snang, who had been pining after the sword for years, wasted no time and
hired Nushrat to swipe it for him. She did this easily. Snang still
carries it.
Nushrat carried out three more assassinations after her work for Aslot
in 86. Then she stole three more artifacts. And assassinated two more
people. And lives happily at age 97, never married, with her seven
remaining children, waiting to take a job to come to your fort and take
your things or deal with your pesky sheriff. Or somebody like her.
Interestingly, none of the major historical events described were
precipitated by large villainous networks, just the networks that were
well-placed or lucky. Osnun Enddungeons and Atera Ivoryowl were both
running ten people and I have no idea what they were up to. Ah, Atera
was a druid! But I should stop now.
As fucked as that is, it get's worse.
If I recall correctly, you may have a stockpile full of masterwork giant kangaroo brain meals, but if there's a food stockpile with shitty food that's closer by, the dwarf will take his food from that stockpile instead, all the while lamenting the fact that he isn't eating giant kangaroo brain meals.
Small frog update
I've mainly been 'consolidating gains' this week (that is, finding horrible bugs and wondering how anything worked in the first place.) After cleaning up after myself, I started in on bandit forts as a preliminary to villain hideouts. The bandits were also horribly bugged, but now the largest groups can make forts out in the wilderness somewhat near to the civilizations they are associated with. Along with the new monasteries and the return of castles and the old tombs and necromancer towers, it's starting to look more interesting away from the cities, and we aren't quite done with new site placement yet. More next week.
Has anyone gotten far enough where a bronze colossus attacked their fortress?
Yeah. Currently it seems mountain titans (the procedural generation megabeasts) are more likely to attack than "traditional" megabeasts (dragon, hydra, roc, colossus).
But they definitely appear if your world has any left alive.
https://youtu.be/0FW23bamIZI
A horse and a dog got stuck in a tree in my current fort, did a drawing to commemorate the occasion.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/257085/72595ce1-0883-4596-876c-58bbb8bdac3b/image.png
The dumb expression of the dog is what gets me.
"Look at me, i'm in a tree"
Devlog to end the month
Worldgen mercenaries now participate in battles. If they do well, and survive for a time, they can pull together some of the other mercenaries participating, as well as some of the other non-historical people participating, and create a mercenary company. These can be quite different from each other.
The last one I looked at was founded by Oddom Weatherbrass, whose great grandmother was a bookkeeper who feel in love with a necromancer, became obsessed with her own mortality a few years later (unrelatedly, somehow), and began worshipping the skeletal death god Rakust. Kadol received Necroskull, a slab with the secrets of life and death, from the god and became a necromancer herslf. She was murdered decades later by a criminal assassin and so forth, but the important point for this log is that she had a large family and they were all death god worshippers. Not necromancers, but Kadol's non-traditional religious beliefs passed down. Oddom was devout, and after a few battles, she founded a mercenary order devoted to the worship of Rakust and dedicated to the mastery of the mace and the battle axe, the mace being her favorite weapon. Oddom's daughter was also a mercenary by that time, and being a death-worshipper, she joined the order when it was founded. Over several battles of recruitment, they came to have over sixty soldiers (non-historical converts, as it was hard for them to find co-religious historical people), created a treasurer position to manage the income (taken by daughter Inod), founded a fort which they inventively named Necrodie, and there constructed the Chapel of Oblivion for the worship of Rakust. Pilgrims, often from their extended family, but sometimes from other necromancer families, often visited the Chapel to pray, and sometimes became prophets and formed their own religions and temples in other parts of the world. (Military orders can also be founded aligned with specific organized religions, but that wasn't the case here.)
As a mercenary order dedicated to a few weapons (Oddom valued skill, like many dwarves), they had honors which they bestowed at various skill levels and other milestones (battles, kills, years of service.) Oddom was exempt from the general rank system as overlord, but Inod was made a 'Soldier' after her first battle. She didn't manage to become a Mace Adept like her mother, as she died in the goblin wars. Her mother died a few years later fighting in a battle, opposed by the Oily Spikes, a militant religious order devoted to the wolverine mountain goddess of the dwarves. The death mercenaries fared poorly overall here... they all died. This happens sometimes. The group was officially disbanded at that point (this can also happen after heavy but not total losses.)
"Soldier" and "Mace Adept" aren't creative names, and the death mercenaries only had three or four general and skill-based ranks, but even more skill-oriented groups with orderly founders can have rank systems with 15 flowerly-named levels for each type of weapon they utilize, and they refine their skills more on their off time. Other mercenary groups focus on military tactics, leadership and organization, and others rely on stealth, and can contract out their members individually for thefts and assassinations. These shadowy groups focus on scouting when they take company-level battle contracts, staying away from most of the danger and offering a tactical bonus to their side's commander. The most versatile companies can do all of the above.
Aside from forts and temples, mercenary groups can also spend money to upgrade the average quality of their equipment; this impacts their performance in battles but also increases upkeep costs. A group that runs into a long dry patch can go broke and disband, though this doesn't happen often (heavy losses/group wipes are more common.) When groups disband, the survivors can rejoin other groups, though they often take some time off (when the Oily Spikes ran into trouble and disbanded after 20 years in action, their founder went off to have a peaceful life as a butcher in a nearby city.) Individual mercenaries can also use their money to upgrade their own equipment. This typically happens before their company (if any) steps up, but a wealthy company can pay to equip joining members if they are behind.
And another one
Various consolidation and small moves to start the month. I traced accounts for embezzlement networks and smoothed out some rough edges there, and made sure the mercenary groups based on organized religions (as opposed to generic worship) functioned correctly. I also fixed some frequency issues with religions and updated the November update to temple profaning to make it compatible with upcoming religious strife. Ruining random temples no longer matters to the deity. In order to be cursed, the act must be against a god the offender worships, for some specific reason (how this manifests in post-worldgen is TBD, but at a minimum it can just check the worship of, say, a tantrumer -- curse one way, religious tension the other.) In order to avoid werebeasts and vampire curses exploding like popcorn during religious riots, something had to give, and in general, making the curse stories a little more personal seemed appropriate now. I still have to do religious tension etc. of course; something will be added for this time, even if it ends up kinda basic.
I now have punishment in terms of sentences of a number of years understood by worldgen, vaguely aligned to dwarf mode and the (wholly-inadequate-but-good-enough-for-now) ethics definitions. Before, prisoners were just prisoners, for as long as it lasted (escape/conquest/etc.) Now an embezzler might spend five years in the dungeon, not try to escape, and then go on to do something else, which is important as we move toward non-assassination problem-solving by villains. They should have the option soon to engineer false charges or otherwise corrupt imprisonment.
https://twitter.com/Bay12Games/status/1094120728637538305
Scamps, Toady's cat, turns 10 today.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/7/72/Scamps.png
Look at how much he has grown
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dy8YkttUcAAKo2u.jpg
And ANOTHER one
I decided to do the religious work I mentioned for worldgen last time, in the form of persecution and riots, religious grievances and personal grudges against abusive rulers, as well as allowing priests to reduce (or further inflame) tensions, according to their character.
Stodir Valeinked was a dwarf born deep underground in what was becoming a heavily religious community. His father had joined the Crystalline Denomination four years before Stodir was born, and would later become a priest of Limul, the dwarven goddess of metals. Stodir followed the family religion ardently, but a love of history took him to the human town of Combatfoot, on the east coast not far from the mountains. The first and greatest library of the world was there, the Bastion of Poets, and Stodir studied diligently for many years. For reasons unclear, Stodir was elevated to be the baron of the town when the former ruler died... this did not suit Stodir well, as he was greedy and somewhat cruel. It wasn't long before he began accepting bribes from a goblin criminal. (Unrelatedly, a fell mood dwarf in the town also gifted him a human bone floodgate which he made the symbol of his rule.)
Over the years, his eye was drawn several times to the Occult Coven. This religion of fate was older than the Crystalline Denomination, and in Combatfoot stood their temple, the Church of Veils. The first high priestess, Exalted God Ongu Furnacecloaks, died peacefully in 75, leaving the Heavenly Wonders, a perfect wax opal, in the Church. The next high priest was Nani Lushslops. Worship of the Tenebrous Aura continued in the Church, until, overcome by a decade's weight of greed and driven by fervency, Stodir made his move in the year 88.
The Church of Veils was the only temple destroyed in the first 125 years of history. Many minor shrines to the Coven in Combatfoot were also razed during the persecution. The possessions of followers were confiscated, and they were expelled from Combatfoot. Overall, eleven historical figures and seventy others made the journey south to the peninsula town of Northpranks, still in the same human empire, but outside of Stodir's domain. The Occult Coven had a priest there, but their one great house of worship was gone. The Heavenly Wonders was destroyed with the temple, fervency having outmatched greed in the end.
In Northpranks, tensions were high. The Crystalline Denomination didn't have a temple in town, but there was a simple dwarven shrine and a few worshippers that had trickled in from the mountains over the last fifty years. The Occult Coven's local priest, Sacred Dawn Gasem, preached on the subject of love and tolerance toward the Crystalline Denomination specifically, that tensions might abate, but a year later the wound was still remembered and a riot broke out. Including the eighty or so recent arrivals, just over 200 of the town's 300 citizens were Occult, and they rose up together and destroyed the shrine. Nobody was hurt among the eighteen followers of Limul, but that was by no means a sure thing. The shrine, the reminder of their suffering and exile, having been destroyed, the riot ended and they pondered no further violence. The local Denomination believers nursed a grievance of their own, but didn't try anything. Tensions abated over the next thirty years. When the displaced high priest Nani passed away in 127, he left a lump of clay in the new Occult Coven temple in Northpranks, constructed in 120.
I found one historical instance of the story going the other direction. The humans conquered a forest retreat and placed an administrator in charge, who was an ardent Occult Coven follower. She was greedy, but not particularly harsh, and confiscated some goods from the few Crystalline Denomination worshippers that were there, without expelling them or destroying the shrines. This created some tension, but their local priest managed to talk them out of doing anything. Oddly enough, this priest, Libash, was also a historian who had studied in Combatfoots, twenty years after the Church of Veils had been torn down. Before joining the priesthood, he had discovered the technique of comparative biography, which is more than Stodir even managed.
Incidentally, priests do not always take the high road when preaching to their flock. There were three other human religions inciting violence against each other repeatedly as they took turns abusing the power of petty lordships, leading to various riots and trouble. These were more deadly... at one point, a few people were fed to beasts to honor the nature god.
Wish my life was that interesting
Devlog
Some time frustratingly burned on another butterfly-effect style world generation bug, where the same seed would occasionally produce different results. I had to trace it through different temples being built in year 100, to different lovers being selected in year 60, to different shrines being constructed in year 35 (a RNG state alteration which caused somebody's gender to change on the other side of the world at birth, hence the lover difference), to the actual mistake in the code where leaders selected which shrines to encourage. That took a few days of diligent logging and world regeneration. But it's fixed now. I've been adding stuff to world generation for some months, so it was inevitable this sort of thing would happen from time to time.
I did make progress on hideouts. Plotters can use their organization and leadership locations, whether that's a monastery or a mercenary compound or their own castle. But we needed a few options for people without those social structures, for artifact storage among other things, so now anybody with a sufficient account can grab a house or have a tower built in a city. (Given how dwarf maps and fort mode room assignments work, I don't have options for fortresses yet.) The buildings pass on to family members currently, and buildings that don't pass to anybody can be obtained by somebody (instead of having them build a new one, sometimes.) Merchants and wealthy officials have generally been the tower-builders in my first passes, as they are very expensive. There's a cap on the amount of towers based on city size to prevent a Towers of Bologna situation from being too common, but there can still be a number of them. Towers can also be reconstructed and extended - feast halls, added fortifications and gated yards are common, but plotters can also add a dungeon, the purpose of which is shortly to arrive, heh.
The previous owners of towers and houses are referenced in the histories, so we can follow their passage reasonably easily. I found one named the Luxurious Bejeweled Executions first built by a corrupt official who had tremendous luck gambling. When he died, his wealthy merchant ex-lover purchased the tower. She died shortly thereafter, and the Executions was purchased by another official, who died and left it to his son Gal. That happened over the course of a hundred year, so we should see some wholesome layers of history develop on these structures.
For instance, if a villain, say, passes on in an unfortunate way and has no family in the area to inherit their artifacts or house, the artifacts will simply be in that house, hidden and lost. In the very likely event that the house is purchased later, the artifacts will be unknown to the homebuyer (at first), but they will nevertheless possibly have a problem on their hands, depending on who might be searching for the treasures. I haven't actually seen this yet, with random homebuyers. The world I checked had the orderly passage of eight hidden artifacts to heirs of houses and towers that contained them, but they could easily have gone on the market instead, and even in my case, the heirs weren't all told about the hidden treasures, as they weren't all family heirlooms.
In fact, Bax Doomedwane was a descendent of kidnapped dwarves who grew up in a goblin tower, but she left to become a dancer in a human city. That didn't last long, but she was out of the goblin civilization and somewhat integrated in her new home, and became the chief executioner in town after a few years. Being raised a goblin, Bax was a natural for villainy, and soon had the harvest administrator embezzling money for her. She soon corrupted the local magistrate and turned her eyes to thievery, having her gang steal two artifacts in particular, an alder figurine of an ant and a pig leather quiver, both rightfully claimed by the dwarf fortresses where they were made. These were quite coveted objects, but in the year 183, when Bax died, she had them both, squirreled away in the house she bought with her ill-gotten gains.
Bax had six children still living at the time of her passing, and the house went to Usbu Menaceflew. He had a goblin name, and grew up in a tower, but like his mother, his art took him outside its bounds, and he became a bard, a lasting career for him. For almost 120 years he'd been composing, his latest being "And He Sang 'Toasts!'" and "We See Depression." Usbu never committed a villainous act of any sort. Married three times, he moved around the world, and was living in a forest retreat named Entrancedsparkled when news came that he'd come into some property. World generation ended at the time when he moved to the human city, to his newly-inherited house, which contained the two hidden dwarven artifacts. Nobody aside from the dwarves had an outstanding claim on the quiver, but the alder figurine was also sought by Lema Furnaceteach and Ngoso Dreaddirge, two goblin bandit lords as old as the world. They'd each stolen it from Bax before, and their minds would still often turn to the treasure.
dwarf fortress generates better stories in fractions of a second than I could in an entire month
A mysterious devlog
Nothing villainous to report on the dev log this week, as the bulk of my
work time was spent preparing material for an upcoming Dwarf Fortress
announcement. That'll happen in a few weeks! GDC is also coming up in
the second half of March, so we'll be entering what will prove to be an
unusual month, but we should still make some decent progress toward the
villain release.
Speculation commence. What will the announcement be about?
We're being acquired by EA for $5 million!
We're hiring more developers, speeding DF development by several times!
Dwarf Fortress Con happening next summer!
"Dwarf fortress rewritten, entire simulation now ran in parallel across all GPU cores, approximately 370x speedup"
dwarf fortress now 3d with low poly memegraphics and a radically simplified phone style ui!
Mysterious announcement in 3 days
Hmm, matters have still been hectic, so I don't have enough for a story. I've been working on several final plots for villains in order to round things out and make use of the new dungeons and so forth, as I mentioned earlier. These include corrupt imprisonment, framing, snatching, sabotage and trying to ignite warfare involving their enemies. This work will continue until and then after GDC, which happens from the 18th to the 22nd, though we're going to have that DF announcement on the 13th to keep matters interesting! In much smaller announcement news, Threetoe now keeps four threetoes. From the left: Harry, Ramone, Sid and Bowie.
Realistically I see the announcement as being about:
Changes to the roadmap (ie we're going to focus on some different things between villains and big wait)
Changes to the dev team (ie we're bringing on Larry Adams, our long lost third brother)
or official out of game promo content (ie TF2 promo hats, dwarf fortress anime, etc)
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