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Difference between revisions of "Consolidated development"

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(Created page with 'This is a transcript of the old "Consolidated Development Page" as it was before the design of the Dwarf Fortress The next few years Near-Term Arcs * BUSTLING TOWN ARC: Th…')
 
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Near-Term Arcs
 
Near-Term Arcs
  
    * BUSTLING TOWN ARC: The towns should be more structured. The peasants need to do less aimless wandering and more standard activities. There need to be various items in town outside of what's in the stores. There need to be guards, and the keep/mead hall should be more interesting. Related to Core41, Core42, Core43, Req148, Req162, Req249, Req261, Req344, Req348, Req369, Req379, Req408, Req415, Req471, Req477, Req588, Bloat165, Bloat188, Bloat203, Bloat204, Bloat210, Bloat233, Bloat242, Bloat243, Bloat266, Bloat267, Bloat373, Bloat378, Bloat381, Bloat382, PowerGoal34, PowerGoal36, PowerGoal41, PowerGoal48, PowerGoal55, PowerGoal67, PowerGoal73, PowerGoal74, PowerGoal82, PowerGoal91, PowerGoal131, PowerGoal137 and PowerGoal148.
 
    * FIRE AND LIGHTING ARC: The lighting in caves is artificial right now. It should be pitch black. This is also true of moonless cloudy nights. Once that's in, your adventurer will want fire. Fire can also come up in dwarf mode in various ways. Related to Core14, Core55, Req96 and PowerGoal150.
 
    * BURROWS, TRANSPORTION AND AUTOMATION ARC: Make dwarves live and restrict their movements to sections ("burrows") of the cave to reduce the amount of hauling. This includes many of the haul/pile reqs. Other workshops could be automated, while the work order system could be made more robust to decrease the amount of interface fiddling required to produce glass and soap, for example. Related to Core36, Core56, Core57, Req1, Req2, Req18, Req22, Req24, Req27, Req28, Req38, Req41, Req46, Req47, Req67, Req74, Req82, Req83, Req86, Req90, Req112, Req128, Req129, Req140, Req146, Req162, Req197, Req273, Req287, Req349, Req384, Req385, Req392, Req393, Req400, Req404, Req409, Req410, Req413, Req422, Req424, Req428, Req429, Req435, Req436, Req437, Req439, Req450, Req482, Req528, Req533, Req534, Req544, Req558, Req560, Req572, Req584, Bloat6, Bloat10, Bloat19, Bloat28, Bloat30, Bloat32, Bloat54, Bloat59, Bloat60, Bloat83, Bloat218, Bloat253, Bloat281, Bloat308 and Bloat313.
 
    * ADVANCED HELP ARC: Yeah, dwarves has a steep learning curve. Tutorials and advisors could help this, as well as decent in-game help. Related to Core19, Core22 and Core58.
 
    * CARAVAN ARC: As a prelude to armies, we'll have caravans actually move around the world map rather than just appear at your outpost. They'll move between each city on the map, though we'll try to stay away from supporting a real economy for the time being. You should be able to find items you traded in your fortress in adventure mode, and a caravan could come to your fortress with an adventure mode item. Related to Core3, Core38, Core81, Req21, Req132, Req133, Req175, Req204, Req218, Req220, Req260, Req279, Req364, Req463, Req516, Req555, Bloat155, Bloat263, Bloat267, PowerGoal24, PowerGoal33, PowerGoal56 and PowerGoal148.
 
    * COUNTY ARC: You should be able to develop a larger settlement outside the confines of the immediate play area. Related to Core28, Core29 and PowerGoal53.
 
    * ARMY ARC: You should be able to control patrols and then armies in dwarf mode. The adventurer should be able to both go with and command armies. In dwarf mode, you should have the option to control your individual patrol members as you would in adventure mode. Entities should war with each other from bandit and monster raids to full fledged wars. Upset entities could patrol near their sites, leading to new wilderness encounters etc. Related to Core26, Core27, Core35, Core45, Core46, Req18, Req29, Req61, Req71, Req81, Req125, Req126, Req221, Req273, Req301, Req371, Req398, Req414, Req417, Req427, Req444, Req449, Req475, Req478, Req496, Req503, Req545, Req571, Bloat44, Bloat117, Bloat130, Bloat131, Bloat175, Bloat289, PowerGoal1, PowerGoal2, PowerGoal3, PowerGoal4, PowerGoal5, PowerGoal6, PowerGoal7, PowerGoal8, PowerGoal11, PowerGoal17, PowerGoal40, PowerGoal59, PowerGoal70, PowerGoal71, PowerGoal76, PowerGoal92, PowerGoal98, PowerGoal119, PowerGoal127, PowerGoal130, PowerGoal138, PowerGoal140, PowerGoal141, PowerGoal142, PowerGoal143, PowerGoal144 and PowerGoal147.
 
    * NEMESIS ARC: The civilization leaders should be fleshed out in many ways. Related to Core11, Core15, Core40, Req161, Req277, Bloat48, Bloat68, Bloat176, PowerGoal98, PowerGoal101, PowerGoal102 and PowerGoal122.
 
    * RELATIONSHIPS ARC: You should be able to take a spouse, make a household, and create playable heirs as an adventurer. The dwarven relationships and personalities can also be expanded upon. Related to Core59, Core60, Bloat51, Bloat93, Bloat95, Bloat105, Bloat123, Bloat374, Bloat375, Bloat380, PowerGoal20, PowerGoal21, PowerGoal109 and PowerGoal119.
 
    * DIPLOMACY ARC: There should be a lot more diplomacy between your outpost and the outside world, especially as you get more nobles. Right now there's hardly anything. Related to Core33, Core62, Core63, Req174, Req177, Req291, Req451, Req527, Req542, Req543, Bloat31, Bloat72, Bloat73, PowerGoal10, PowerGoal98 and PowerGoal101.
 
    * GHOSTS ARC: When you take an adventurer back to a fortress, it could afford to be a lot more interesting. Since it keeps track of all the dwarves that ever lived or died in each outpost, it might as well utilize them. When the civs fight in world gen, it could also create ruins from earlier times, and you could go to these places (old castles, temples, etc.). Related to Core67, Core68, Core69, Core70, Bloat21, PowerGoal11, PowerGoal92 and PowerGoal107.
 
    * AFFILIATION ARC: You should be able to rise to the top of an entity (civilization, town, etc.) in adventure mode. While the full set of responsibilities that would entail will have to wait, it should at least be possible to attain this status for the first version. You should be able to do things for individuals. This could earn you favors from sleeping in their home and food gifts all the way to a marriage offer. There can be smaller entities like bandits and cults which could offer more unsavory tasks for similar privileges (steal, kill, kidnap, etc.). Can earn right to sleep in the large hall in town if you've become affiliated with them, but vagrancy needs to be punished and the camping must be harsher before this is meaningful. Related to Core64, Core65, Core71, Req586, Req587, Bloat163, PowerGoal12, PowerGoal19, PowerGoal27, PowerGoal37, PowerGoal41, PowerGoal42, PowerGoal44, PowerGoal48 and PowerGoal54.
 
    * COMBAT ARC: Many more combat skills and more attributes, etc. Related to Core72, Core73, Core74, Req45, Req54, Req85, Req92, Req104, Req149, Req164, Req171, Req183, Req188, Req192, Req198, Req199, Req200, Req206, Req224, Req230, Req233, Req234, Req290, Req315, Req330, Req331, Req340, Req352, Req403, Req466, Req532, Req568, Req575, Bloat15, Bloat55, Bloat76, Bloat102, Bloat127, Bloat135, Bloat136, Bloat137, Bloat138, Bloat139, Bloat141, Bloat142, Bloat162, Bloat222, Bloat254, Bloat271, PowerGoal28, PowerGoal29, PowerGoal61, PowerGoal63, PowerGoal77, PowerGoal79, PowerGoal89, PowerGoal90, PowerGoal93, PowerGoal94, PowerGoal96, PowerGoal103 and PowerGoal150.
 
    * SCENARIOS ARC: Character generation is due for a major change. The current plan is to have an interactive history generator that takes your character from birth to a playable age, incorporating them into the fabric of the world. Pressing "Play Now!" would answer the questions automatically, perhaps with a strong tendency to place you in dire/interesting situations. Related to Core75, Core76, Req214, Req317, Bloat26 and Bloat143.
 
    * LIFE CYCLE ARC: Right now, there are no births and no aging in the towns and other populations. From the founding of a town, it should instead simulate and track these things during world creation. This makes the world much more interesting and also more resilient to changes inflicted by the player. At the same time, it creates instability unrelated to the actions of the player, so it has to be done carefully. Related to Core77, Core78, Req317, Req441, Req489, Bloat115, Bloat193, Bloat194 and PowerGoal31.
 
    * ARTIFACT ARC: Special items made by the dwarves aren't very interesting right now, and there's not much for an adventurer to do with them. These objects should have magical powers and they should have a huge influence on the actions of entities that come into contact with them. Even if your adventurer can't make use of a particular artifact, you could arrange for buyers in the nobility, and use those opportunitites to get a home or good entity standing, for instance. Related to Core79, Core80, Req395, Bloat49, Bloat173, PowerGoal13, PowerGoal60, PowerGoal68 and PowerGoal134.
 
    * CRIME AND PUNISHMENT ARC: There should be mild punishments for mild crimes, for instance. This could include making the drunks in the town more interesting and adding bar fights, as well as proper thievery, arrest, imprisonment, execution... Related to Core82, Core83, Req303, Req327, Req366, Bloat53, Bloat75, Bloat143, PowerGoal14, PowerGoal22, PowerGoal23, PowerGoal25, PowerGoal26, PowerGoal38, PowerGoal47, PowerGoal66, PowerGoal80, PowerGoal91, PowerGoal99, PowerGoal124, PowerGoal126, PowerGoal136 and PowerGoal146.
 
    * ADVENTURER SKILLS ARC: It's nice to have all those jobs and professions sitting around in the dwarf mode. The adventurer should be able to do these things, especially those skills related to survival in the wilderness. Eventually you'll be able to place constructions, create a home and have your own site on the map. Related to Core84, Core85, Core86, Req32, Req34, Req99, Req107, Req168, Req236, Req302, Req327, Req491, Bloat160, Bloat317, Bloat380, PowerGoal9, PowerGoal15 and PowerGoal103.
 
    * ADVENTURER PARTIES AND ENTITY: As an adventurer with followers, you should can your own entity definition. If you have enough people, you might be able to delegate orders and control them more strategically. You should also be able to control each member in a party of adventurers you make yourself. You could lead one and the others follow (as it is currently) or control them all, particularly during tense situations where you don't want to count on the AI. Related to Core24, Core61, PowerGoal20 and PowerGoal135.
 
    * DUNGEON ARC: Improve kobold and goblin areas and civilizations with eyes on expanding entity definitions and future random generation. Includes adding entity definitions and tags for more primitive humanoids like lizardmen. Make mega-beasts fit in with better with the world. Related to Core89, Core90, Core91, Req8, Req80, Req107, Req148, Req232, Req284, Req324, Req375, Req426, Req476, Req479, Req504, Req576, Bloat17, Bloat23, Bloat169, Bloat172, Bloat189, Bloat190, Bloat241, Bloat383, PowerGoal13, PowerGoal27, PowerGoal32, PowerGoal49, PowerGoal50, PowerGoal51, PowerGoal52, PowerGoal62, PowerGoal100, PowerGoal111 and PowerGoal145.
 
    * HUMANOID ARC: Make non-player dwarf fortresses look more like player made fortresses and act like them to the extent that it's reasonable. Improve elves as in the Dungeon Arc, with multi-tile tree dwellings. Related to Core87, Core88, Req148, Bloat206 and PowerGoal129.
 
    * PRESENTATION ARC: A cleaner interface and more interface and display options will make the game more accessible. Better support for translations. Related to Core21, Core50, Core51, Core52, Core54, Req37, Req43, Req79, Req142, Req152, Req179, Req180, Req207, Req218, Req258, Req306, Req314, Req320, Req328, Req332, Req338, Req381, Req382, Req383, Req386, Req387, Req388, Req390, Req401, Req402, Req411, Req421, Req430, Req432, Req434, Req443, Req460, Req483, Req513, Req520, Req531, Req546, Req547, Req548, Req550, Req556, Req558, Req559, Req560, Req564, Req566, Req570, Req585, Bloat52, Bloat106, Bloat107, Bloat108, Bloat118, Bloat153, Bloat199, Bloat268, Bloat303, Bloat307, Bloat311, Bloat354, Bloat355, Bloat358, Bloat361, Bloat364, Bloat368 and Bloat379.
 
    * LANGUAGE ARC: The in-game languages need a better framework, as many simple name formulations are impossible in the current system, and it wouldn't hurt to add a basic grammar and phonetics at this time as well. In addition, paper, engraved writing, books, poems, songs, etc. could all be explored in the different game modes in various ways. Related to Core97, Core98, Core99 and Core100.
 
    * RANDOMIZATION AND RAWS ARC: More things need to make it out to the raws, and when they arrive, there should be some ability to randomize what you get in play. Current raw objects such as creatures, entities, plants, metals or even stone should also be randomizable. This doesn't just include randomizing an existing entry, but, more importantly, the creation of entirely new objects. This behavior should be controlled by the world parameters so that you can run anything from a stock universe to a complete replacement of all existing raw objects. In worlds with random objects, the random objects need to be introduced to the player in such a way that familiarity can be gained (involving descriptions, back stories, etc.) so that it isn't just a mess of static with garbage names. Related to Core53, Core92, Core93, Core94, Core95 and Core96.
 
  
 +
{| class="wikitable"
 +
{| border = 1 cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" -valign="top"
 +
|-
 +
! style="background:#efefef;width:20%;"|Arc
 +
! style="background:#efefef;width:40%;"|Description
 +
! style="background:#efefef;width:40%;"|Requirements
 +
|-valign="top"
 +
 +
|-
 +
| BUSTLING TOWN ARC
 +
| The towns should be more structured. The peasants need to do less aimless wandering and more standard activities. There need to be various items in town outside of what's in the stores. There need to be guards, and the keep/mead hall should be more interesting.
 +
| Core41, Core42, Core43, Req148, Req162, Req249, Req261, Req344, Req348, Req369, Req379, Req408, Req415, Req471, Req477, Req588, Bloat165, Bloat188, Bloat203, Bloat204, Bloat210, Bloat233, Bloat242, Bloat243, Bloat266, Bloat267, Bloat373, Bloat378, Bloat381, Bloat382, PowerGoal34, PowerGoal36, PowerGoal41, PowerGoal48, PowerGoal55, PowerGoal67, PowerGoal73, PowerGoal74, PowerGoal82, PowerGoal91, PowerGoal131, PowerGoal137 and PowerGoal148.
 +
|-
 +
| FIRE AND LIGHTING ARC
 +
|  The lighting in caves is artificial right now. It should be pitch black. This is also true of moonless cloudy nights. Once that's in, your adventurer will want fire. Fire can also come up in dwarf mode in various ways.
 +
| Core14, Core55, Req96 and PowerGoal150.
 +
|-
 +
|  BURROWS, TRANSPORTION AND AUTOMATION ARC
 +
|  Make dwarves live and restrict their movements to sections ("burrows") of the cave to reduce the amount of hauling. This includes many of the haul/pile reqs. Other workshops could be automated, while the work order system could be made more robust to decrease the amount of interface fiddling required to produce glass and soap, for example.
 +
| Core36, Core56, Core57, Req1, Req2, Req18, Req22, Req24, Req27, Req28, Req38, Req41, Req46, Req47, Req67, Req74, Req82, Req83, Req86, Req90, Req112, Req128, Req129, Req140, Req146, Req162, Req197, Req273, Req287, Req349, Req384, Req385, Req392, Req393, Req400, Req404, Req409, Req410, Req413, Req422, Req424, Req428, Req429, Req435, Req436, Req437, Req439, Req450, Req482, Req528, Req533, Req534, Req544, Req558, Req560, Req572, Req584, Bloat6, Bloat10, Bloat19, Bloat28, Bloat30, Bloat32, Bloat54, Bloat59, Bloat60, Bloat83, Bloat218, Bloat253, Bloat281, Bloat308 and Bloat313.
 +
|-
 +
|  ADVANCED HELP ARC 
 +
|  Yeah, dwarves has a steep learning curve. Tutorials and advisors could help this, as well as decent in-game help.
 +
|  Core19, Core22 and Core58.
 +
|-
 +
|  CARAVAN ARC 
 +
|  As a prelude to armies, we'll have caravans actually move around the world map rather than just appear at your outpost. They'll move between each city on the map, though we'll try to stay away from supporting a real economy for the time being. You should be able to find items you traded in your fortress in adventure mode, and a caravan could come to your fortress with an adventure mode item.
 +
|  Core3, Core38, Core81, Req21, Req132, Req133, Req175, Req204, Req218, Req220, Req260, Req279, Req364, Req463, Req516, Req555, Bloat155, Bloat263, Bloat267, PowerGoal24, PowerGoal33, PowerGoal56 and PowerGoal148.
 +
|-
 +
|  COUNTY ARC
 +
| You should be able to develop a larger settlement outside the confines of the immediate play area.
 +
| Core28, Core29 and PowerGoal53.
 +
|-
 +
|    ARMY ARC
 +
| You should be able to control patrols and then armies in dwarf mode. The adventurer should be able to both go with and command armies. In dwarf mode, you should have the option to control your individual patrol members as you would in adventure mode. Entities should war with each other from bandit and monster raids to full fledged wars. Upset entities could patrol near their sites, leading to new wilderness encounters etc.
 +
| Core26, Core27, Core35, Core45, Core46, Req18, Req29, Req61, Req71, Req81, Req125, Req126, Req221, Req273, Req301, Req371, Req398, Req414, Req417, Req427, Req444, Req449, Req475, Req478, Req496, Req503, Req545, Req571, Bloat44, Bloat117, Bloat130, Bloat131, Bloat175, Bloat289, PowerGoal1, PowerGoal2, PowerGoal3, PowerGoal4, PowerGoal5, PowerGoal6, PowerGoal7, PowerGoal8, PowerGoal11, PowerGoal17, PowerGoal40, PowerGoal59, PowerGoal70, PowerGoal71, PowerGoal76, PowerGoal92, PowerGoal98, PowerGoal119, PowerGoal127, PowerGoal130, PowerGoal138, PowerGoal140, PowerGoal141, PowerGoal142, PowerGoal143, PowerGoal144 and PowerGoal147.
 +
|-
 +
|  NEMESIS ARC
 +
| The civilization leaders should be fleshed out in many ways.
 +
| Core11, Core15, Core40, Req161, Req277, Bloat48, Bloat68, Bloat176, PowerGoal98, PowerGoal101, PowerGoal102 and PowerGoal122.
 +
|-
 +
|  RELATIONSHIPS ARC
 +
| You should be able to take a spouse, make a household, and create playable heirs as an adventurer. The dwarven relationships and personalities can also be expanded upon.
 +
| Core59, Core60, Bloat51, Bloat93, Bloat95, Bloat105, Bloat123, Bloat374, Bloat375, Bloat380, PowerGoal20, PowerGoal21, PowerGoal109 and PowerGoal119.
 +
|-
 +
|  DIPLOMACY ARC
 +
|  There should be a lot more diplomacy between your outpost and the outside world, especially as you get more nobles. Right now there's hardly anything.
 +
| Core33, Core62, Core63, Req174, Req177, Req291, Req451, Req527, Req542, Req543, Bloat31, Bloat72, Bloat73, PowerGoal10, PowerGoal98 and PowerGoal101.
 +
|-
 +
|  GHOSTS ARC 
 +
| When you take an adventurer back to a fortress, it could afford to be a lot more interesting. Since it keeps track of all the dwarves that ever lived or died in each outpost, it might as well utilize them. When the civs fight in world gen, it could also create ruins from earlier times, and you could go to these places (old castles, temples, etc.).
 +
| Core67, Core68, Core69, Core70, Bloat21, PowerGoal11, PowerGoal92 and PowerGoal107.
 +
|-
 +
|  AFFILIATION ARC
 +
|  You should be able to rise to the top of an entity (civilization, town, etc.) in adventure mode. While the full set of responsibilities that would entail will have to wait, it should at least be possible to attain this status for the first version. You should be able to do things for individuals. This could earn you favors from sleeping in their home and food gifts all the way to a marriage offer. There can be smaller entities like bandits and cults which could offer more unsavory tasks for similar privileges (steal, kill, kidnap, etc.). Can earn right to sleep in the large hall in town if you've become affiliated with them, but vagrancy needs to be punished and the camping must be harsher before this is meaningful.
 +
| Core64, Core65, Core71, Req586, Req587, Bloat163, PowerGoal12, PowerGoal19, PowerGoal27, PowerGoal37, PowerGoal41, PowerGoal42, PowerGoal44, PowerGoal48 and PowerGoal54.
 +
|-
 +
|  COMBAT ARC
 +
| Many more combat skills and more attributes, etc.
 +
| Core72, Core73, Core74, Req45, Req54, Req85, Req92, Req104, Req149, Req164, Req171, Req183, Req188, Req192, Req198, Req199, Req200, Req206, Req224, Req230, Req233, Req234, Req290, Req315, Req330, Req331, Req340, Req352, Req403, Req466, Req532, Req568, Req575, Bloat15, Bloat55, Bloat76, Bloat102, Bloat127, Bloat135, Bloat136, Bloat137, Bloat138, Bloat139, Bloat141, Bloat142, Bloat162, Bloat222, Bloat254, Bloat271, PowerGoal28, PowerGoal29, PowerGoal61, PowerGoal63, PowerGoal77, PowerGoal79, PowerGoal89, PowerGoal90, PowerGoal93, PowerGoal94, PowerGoal96, PowerGoal103 and PowerGoal150.
 +
|-
 +
|      SCENARIOS ARC
 +
| Character generation is due for a major change. The current plan is to have an interactive history generator that takes your character from birth to a playable age, incorporating them into the fabric of the world. Pressing "Play Now!" would answer the questions automatically, perhaps with a strong tendency to place you in dire/interesting situations.
 +
| Core75, Core76, Req214, Req317, Bloat26 and Bloat143.
 +
|-
 +
|  LIFE CYCLE ARC
 +
|  Right now, there are no births and no aging in the towns and other populations. From the founding of a town, it should instead simulate and track these things during world creation. This makes the world much more interesting and also more resilient to changes inflicted by the player. At the same time, it creates instability un |the actions of the player, so it has to be done carefully.
 +
| Core77, Core78, Req317, Req441, Req489, Bloat115, Bloat193, Bloat194 and PowerGoal31.
 +
|-
 +
|  ARTIFACT ARC 
 +
| Special items made by the dwarves aren't very interesting right now, and there's not much for an adventurer to do with them. These objects should have magical powers and they should have a huge influence on the actions of entities that come into contact with them. Even if your adventurer can't make use of a particular artifact, you could arrange for buyers in the nobility, and use those opportunitites to get a home or good entity standing, for instance.
 +
| Core79, Core80, Req395, Bloat49, Bloat173, PowerGoal13, PowerGoal60, PowerGoal68 and PowerGoal134.
 +
|-
 +
|  CRIME AND PUNISHMENT ARC
 +
| There should be mild punishments for mild crimes, for instance. This could include making the drunks in the town more interesting and adding bar fights, as well as proper thievery, arrest, imprisonment, execution...
 +
| Core82, Core83, Req303, Req327, Req366, Bloat53, Bloat75, Bloat143, PowerGoal14, PowerGoal22, PowerGoal23, PowerGoal25, PowerGoal26, PowerGoal38, PowerGoal47, PowerGoal66, PowerGoal80, PowerGoal91, PowerGoal99, PowerGoal124, PowerGoal126, PowerGoal136 and PowerGoal146.
 +
|-
 +
|  ADVENTURER SKILLS ARC 
 +
| It's nice to have all those jobs and professions sitting around in the dwarf mode. The adventurer should be able to do these things, especially those skills  |survival in the wilderness. Eventually you'll be able to place constructions, create a home and have your own site on the map.
 +
| Core84, Core85, Core86, Req32, Req34, Req99, Req107, Req168, Req236, Req302, Req327, Req491, Bloat160, Bloat317, Bloat380, PowerGoal9, PowerGoal15 and PowerGoal103.
 +
|-
 +
|  ADVENTURER PARTIES AND ENTITY 
 +
| As an adventurer with followers, you should can your own entity definition. If you have enough people, you might be able to delegate orders and control them more strategically. You should also be able to control each member in a party of adventurers you make yourself. You could lead one and the others follow (as it is currently) or control them all, particularly during tense situations where you don't want to count on the AI.
 +
| Core24, Core61, PowerGoal20 and PowerGoal135.
 +
|-
 +
| DUNGEON ARC 
 +
| Improve kobold and goblin areas and civilizations with eyes on expanding entity definitions and future random generation. Includes adding entity definitions and tags for more primitive humanoids like lizardmen. Make mega-beasts fit in with better with the world.
 +
|  Core89, Core90, Core91, Req8, Req80, Req107, Req148, Req232, Req284, Req324, Req375, Req426, Req476, Req479, Req504, Req576, Bloat17, Bloat23, Bloat169, Bloat172, Bloat189, Bloat190, Bloat241, Bloat383, PowerGoal13, PowerGoal27, PowerGoal32, PowerGoal49, PowerGoal50, PowerGoal51, PowerGoal52, PowerGoal62, PowerGoal100, PowerGoal111 and PowerGoal145.
 +
|-
 +
|  HUMANOID ARC
 +
|  Make non-player dwarf fortresses look more like player made fortresses and act like them to the extent that it's reasonable. Improve elves as in the Dungeon Arc, with multi-tile tree dwellings.
 +
| Core87, Core88, Req148, Bloat206 and PowerGoal129.
 +
|-
 +
|  PRESENTATION ARC
 +
|  A cleaner interface and more interface and display options will make the game more accessible. Better support for translations.
 +
|  Core21, Core50, Core51, Core52, Core54, Req37, Req43, Req79, Req142, Req152, Req179, Req180, Req207, Req218, Req258, Req306, Req314, Req320, Req328, Req332, Req338, Req381, Req382, Req383, Req386, Req387, Req388, Req390, Req401, Req402, Req411, Req421, Req430, Req432, Req434, Req443, Req460, Req483, Req513, Req520, Req531, Req546, Req547, Req548, Req550, Req556, Req558, Req559, Req560, Req564, Req566, Req570, Req585, Bloat52, Bloat106, Bloat107, Bloat108, Bloat118, Bloat153, Bloat199, Bloat268, Bloat303, Bloat307, Bloat311, Bloat354, Bloat355, Bloat358, Bloat361, Bloat364, Bloat368 and Bloat379.
 +
|-
 +
|  LANGUAGE ARC 
 +
|  The in-game languages need a better framework, as many simple name formulations are impossible in the current system, and it wouldn't hurt to add a basic grammar and phonetics at this time as well. In addition, paper, engraved writing, books, poems, songs, etc. could all be explored in the different game modes in various ways.
 +
| Core97, Core98, Core99 and Core100.
 +
|-
 +
| RANDOMIZATION AND RAWS ARC |
 +
| More things need to make it out to the raws, and when they arrive, there should be some ability to randomize what you get in play. Current raw objects such as creatures, entities, plants, metals or even stone should also be randomizable. This doesn't just include randomizing an existing entry, but, more importantly, the creation of entirely new objects. This behavior should be controlled by the world parameters so that you can run anything from a stock universe to a complete replacement of all existing raw objects. In worlds with random objects, the random objects need to be introduced to the player in such a way that familiarity can be gained (involving descriptions, back stories, etc.) so that it isn't just a mess of static with garbage names.
 +
| Core53, Core92, Core93, Core94, Core95 and Core96.
 +
|}
 +
   
 
Much later on
 
Much later on
 
Long-Term Arcs
 
Long-Term Arcs
 +
       
 +
   
 +
{| class="wikitable"
 +
{| border = 1 cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" -valign="top"
 +
|-
 +
! style="background:#efefef;width:20%;"|Arc
 +
! style="background:#efefef;width:40%;"|Description
 +
! style="background:#efefef;width:40%;"|Requirements
 +
|-
 +
| HIGH LEVEL PLOTS AND DIPLOMACY
 +
| Various intrigue and interesting not-necessarily-violent conflict between entities and individuals. Once you place the actors in place, they should act according to their wants and the wants of their associated entities based on the strength of those ties. Both adventurers and dwarf fortresses can become immersed in the push and pull which arises from the AI. This is already true to some extent (the current quests are all created from the surroundings and entity ties), but these effects can be made pervasive. Since armies and invasions will be done before we get here, there will already be some of this AI in place to work with.
 +
| Core30, Core33, Req131, PowerGoal18, PowerGoal47, PowerGoal57, PowerGoal65, PowerGoal95 and PowerGoal124.
 +
|-   
 +
| LATE GAME
 +
| As you kill the large creatures, the world becomes more... boring. The game can be prepared for this kind of change and move over into a sort of fairy-tale/Beowulf/Robert E Howard type of hybrid with human civs and occasional monsters so that things continue to be interesting. This already happens naturally in a way, but the dialogue and reactions of people to these changes should be there to fully adjust to the new setting. 
 +
| Bloat149.
 +
|-
 +
| EARLY GAME
 +
| The Age of Myth in world generation should be playable. 
 +
| Bloat148.
 +
|-
 +
| HUMAN TOWN
 +
| You should be able to control a human town, as you control a dwarf fortress, but with changes appropriate to the new setting. 
 +
|Req469 and Bloat146.
 +
|-
 +
| GOBLIN/KOBOLD/CAVER
 +
| Controlling the bad guys is an obvious extension, and you've got the whole friendly happy world waiting for your raiding parties.
 +
|
 +
|-
 +
| ELF FOREST RETREAT
 +
| Yes, elves for the elf people -- but thinking more general, as we list all these racial civilizations, we should think in broad terms and use the civilization definitions to allow any type of civilization to be played. Elves will provide some necessary extra elements for this process. Mixing the cliff dwelling, wilderness dwelling, town building, ethics/sphere-aligned/religious tendencies into a robust interface for civilization building is a long-term goal. 
 +
|Bloat25.
 +
|-
 +
| MONSTER
 +
| Playing the dragons and other large beasts seems like another good (and fairly easy) extension. You'd have to be careful, since there aren't very many large beasts in the world and you don't want to just possess them and have them all burn out in a blaze of glory. Or maybe you do... or it could just give you new ones. You could also just occasionally have fun going out on an excursion and retiring, then play an adventurer and take a quest from a town to go and dispatch your old self. 
 +
|PowerGoal60.
 +
|-
 +
| MERCHANT
 +
| With the Caravan Arc, we have traders moving around the world, but I said over there that I didn't want to mess around too much with having a real economy, or it would surely fall apart and all the towns would starve. Once I get up the nerve to tackle these problems, it would be a lot of fun to play a merchant or guild yourself. You could even retire and be visited by yourself in a subsequent dwarf game. 
 +
|PowerGoal62.
 +
|-
 +
| MAGIC
 +
| There are no specific decisions nailed down yet, although we've thought about it a lot. It's probably best to go for a very general system here, as in the first Armok attempt. Then the world generator and entities can decide what they want to use from what's available. Early efforts might be to make dwarven artifacts more interesting and to increase the power and variability of enemy leaders, rather than focusing on traditional spell-casting adventurers. 
 +
| Bloat134, PowerGoal58, PowerGoal68, PowerGoal84, PowerGoal92, PowerGoal97, PowerGoal108, PowerGoal122 and PowerGoal128.
 +
|-
 +
| CONTROL A WIZARD ENTITY
 +
| Not just one of those guys that backs up the team and shoots fireballs, but run something more like a dwarven outpost and construct your own multilevel tower or other such dwelling. This could include adventure style elements where your wizard is engaged in various activities, as well as larger scale army battles and so on. Randomized creatures could also be introduced as you create your minions, and they should be able to breed and expand outward, perhaps becoming a playable race in either adventure or civilization modes. 
 +
| Bloat134, Bloat147, PowerGoal58 and PowerGoal60.
 +
|-
 +
| DEITY
 +
| Have religions in the game correspond to forces or deities and let you play one and do whatever you like, possibly restricted by your defining characteristics and geography. 
 +
|Bloat344, Bloat376, Bloat377, Bloat382, PowerGoal64, PowerGoal75, PowerGoal82, PowerGoal86, PowerGoal90, PowerGoal105, PowerGoal109, PowerGoal113, PowerGoal118, PowerGoal122, PowerGoal125, PowerGoal135, PowerGoal139, PowerGoal141 and PowerGoal146.
 +
|-
 +
| WORLD GENERATION PARAMETERS
 +
| Allow some degree of control over the world and the more sweeping aspects of play. Possibilities include control over terrain, magic, religions, random vs. stock creatures, fantasy vs. a more 'historical' (ie human) feeling. Ideally, the variability would allow you to move between standard fantasy, fairy tales, mythic fantasy and gothic fantasy, for example. If there are concepts like planes or dimensions implemented, you'd have control over that as well. You could also set the mood -- there's no reason the game needs to be violent at all, for example, assuming the rest of the game can carry it at that point. The world could be generated completely underwater or with no water at all. You could be the first or last sentient creature. There are lots of ways this could go. 
 +
| Bloat150, Bloat217 and PowerGoal125.
 +
|-
 +
| TERRAIN/WEATHER/SWIMMING/FLYING/BOATS
 +
| Boats of some kind might go in early to make different regions more accessible, but you won't be able to be a pirate or an undersea civ for quite a while. Rivers freeze with daily temperatures instead of seasonal temperatures. Realize river and ocean squares when you visit them (forcing town layouts to adapt). Realize interesting canyons and so on in such areas. Track hurricanes and other major storm/disasters, in-game and during world gen. Thunderstorms with lightning strikes (with corresponding lighting effects) and hail. Levels of rainfall. Eating snow, making snowballs and picking up hail during and after hail storms. Tornados with wind flows that push items, projectiles and creatures. Proper eclipse modeling. Tides, deep oceans and pearl-diving, etc. More intricate interplay between cliff faces, inner rivers and outer rivers, using Z coord and waterfalls.
 +
|
 +
|-
 +
| PLANES
 +
| Once it's all established, you can make regions arbitrarily strange, and you make a lot of them. The real chore here is allowing multiple world maps to be active in one way or another and to allow game elements to move between them. It would be a headache to program, but it would add a lot to the game. 
 +
|PowerGoal81.
 +
|-
 +
| EDITORS
 +
| Draw your own region maps, create your own towns, creatures, items, start situations, etc. For example, you could create Earth at various time periods (or an amalgamation of various time periods).
 +
|
 +
|-
 +
| AND MORE, AND WORSE
 +
| I'm still too embarrassed to share every idea we had... The Keep and Event Horizon came up. You don't want to know.
 +
|
 +
|}   
 +
   
  
    * HIGH LEVEL PLOTS AND DIPLOMACY: Various intrigue and interesting not-necessarily-violent conflict between entities and individuals. Once you place the actors in place, they should act according to their wants and the wants of their associated entities based on the strength of those ties. Both adventurers and dwarf fortresses can become immersed in the push and pull which arises from the AI. This is already true to some extent (the current quests are all created from the surroundings and entity ties), but these effects can be made pervasive. Since armies and invasions will be done before we get here, there will already be some of this AI in place to work with. Related to Core30, Core33, Req131, PowerGoal18, PowerGoal47, PowerGoal57, PowerGoal65, PowerGoal95 and PowerGoal124.
 
    * LATE GAME: As you kill the large creatures, the world becomes more... boring. The game can be prepared for this kind of change and move over into a sort of fairy-tale/Beowulf/Robert E Howard type of hybrid with human civs and occasional monsters so that things continue to be interesting. This already happens naturally in a way, but the dialogue and reactions of people to these changes should be there to fully adjust to the new setting. Related to Bloat149.
 
    * EARLY GAME: The Age of Myth in world generation should be playable. Related to Bloat148.
 
    * HUMAN TOWN: You should be able to control a human town, as you control a dwarf fortress, but with changes appropriate to the new setting. Related to Req469 and Bloat146.
 
    * GOBLIN/KOBOLD/CAVER: Controlling the bad guys is an obvious extension, and you've got the whole friendly happy world waiting for your raiding parties.
 
    * ELF FOREST RETREAT: Yes, elves for the elf people -- but thinking more general, as we list all these racial civilizations, we should think in broad terms and use the civilization definitions to allow any type of civilization to be played. Elves will provide some necessary extra elements for this process. Mixing the cliff dwelling, wilderness dwelling, town building, ethics/sphere-aligned/religious tendencies into a robust interface for civilization building is a long-term goal. Related to Bloat25.
 
    * MONSTER: Playing the dragons and other large beasts seems like another good (and fairly easy) extension. You'd have to be careful, since there aren't very many large beasts in the world and you don't want to just possess them and have them all burn out in a blaze of glory. Or maybe you do... or it could just give you new ones. You could also just occasionally have fun going out on an excursion and retiring, then play an adventurer and take a quest from a town to go and dispatch your old self. Related to PowerGoal60.
 
    * MERCHANT: With the Caravan Arc, we have traders moving around the world, but I said over there that I didn't want to mess around too much with having a real economy, or it would surely fall apart and all the towns would starve. Once I get up the nerve to tackle these problems, it would be a lot of fun to play a merchant or guild yourself. You could even retire and be visited by yourself in a subsequent dwarf game. Related to PowerGoal62.
 
    * MAGIC: There are no specific decisions nailed down yet, although we've thought about it a lot. It's probably best to go for a very general system here, as in the first Armok attempt. Then the world generator and entities can decide what they want to use from what's available. Early efforts might be to make dwarven artifacts more interesting and to increase the power and variability of enemy leaders, rather than focusing on traditional spell-casting adventurers. Related to Bloat134, PowerGoal58, PowerGoal68, PowerGoal84, PowerGoal92, PowerGoal97, PowerGoal108, PowerGoal122 and PowerGoal128.
 
    * CONTROL A WIZARD ENTITY: Not just one of those guys that backs up the team and shoots fireballs, but run something more like a dwarven outpost and construct your own multilevel tower or other such dwelling. This could include adventure style elements where your wizard is engaged in various activities, as well as larger scale army battles and so on. Randomized creatures could also be introduced as you create your minions, and they should be able to breed and expand outward, perhaps becoming a playable race in either adventure or civilization modes. Related to Bloat134, Bloat147, PowerGoal58 and PowerGoal60.
 
    * DEITY: Have religions in the game correspond to forces or deities and let you play one and do whatever you like, possibly restricted by your defining characteristics and geography. Related to Bloat344, Bloat376, Bloat377, Bloat382, PowerGoal64, PowerGoal75, PowerGoal82, PowerGoal86, PowerGoal90, PowerGoal105, PowerGoal109, PowerGoal113, PowerGoal118, PowerGoal122, PowerGoal125, PowerGoal135, PowerGoal139, PowerGoal141 and PowerGoal146.
 
    * WORLD GENERATION PARAMETERS: Allow some degree of control over the world and the more sweeping aspects of play. Possibilities include control over terrain, magic, religions, random vs. stock creatures, fantasy vs. a more 'historical' (ie human) feeling. Ideally, the variability would allow you to move between standard fantasy, fairy tales, mythic fantasy and gothic fantasy, for example. If there are concepts like planes or dimensions implemented, you'd have control over that as well. You could also set the mood -- there's no reason the game needs to be violent at all, for example, assuming the rest of the game can carry it at that point. The world could be generated completely underwater or with no water at all. You could be the first or last sentient creature. There are lots of ways this could go. Related to Bloat150, Bloat217 and PowerGoal125.
 
    * TERRAIN/WEATHER/SWIMMING/FLYING/BOATS: Boats of some kind might go in early to make different regions more accessible, but you won't be able to be a pirate or an undersea civ for quite a while. Rivers freeze with daily temperatures instead of seasonal temperatures. Realize river and ocean squares when you visit them (forcing town layouts to adapt). Realize interesting canyons and so on in such areas. Track hurricanes and other major storm/disasters, in-game and during world gen. Thunderstorms with lightning strikes (with corresponding lighting effects) and hail. Levels of rainfall. Eating snow, making snowballs and picking up hail during and after hail storms. Tornados with wind flows that push items, projectiles and creatures. Proper eclipse modeling. Tides, deep oceans and pearl-diving, etc. More intricate interplay between cliff faces, inner rivers and outer rivers, using Z coord and waterfalls.
 
    * PLANES: Once it's all established, you can make regions arbitrarily strange, and you make a lot of them. The real chore here is allowing multiple world maps to be active in one way or another and to allow game elements to move between them. It would be a headache to program, but it would add a lot to the game. Related to PowerGoal81.
 
    * EDITORS: Draw your own region maps, create your own towns, creatures, items, start situations, etc. For example, you could create Earth at various time periods (or an amalgamation of various time periods).
 
    * AND MORE, AND WORSE: I'm still too embarrassed to share every idea we had... The Keep and Event Horizon came up. You don't want to know.
 
 
 
Building blocks for some of the arcs
 
Building blocks for some of the arcs
 
Core
 
Core
 
+
Building blocks for some of the arcs
    * Core1, WRESTLING, Completed: Introduce close combat with various manuevers.
+
Core
    * Core2, ADVENTURER EATING AND DRINKING, Completed: Start the adventurer with food and allow them to eat and drink.
+
{| class="wikitable"
    * Core3, CARAVANS, (Future): Use resource tracking and the adventurer travel infrastructure to set up groups of traders that go between sites. Make sure to respect the current flow of the dwarf game, though caravans will no longer be 'generated' when needed. Related to entity knowledge transfer if we are there by this time. The trading done by caravans would interface with the resource tracking system and thus be immediately available to adventurers. This includes items traded away by your dwarf fortress, although it's possible they could be abstracted a bit if they are too numerous. Requires Core38.
+
{| border = 1 cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" -valign="top"
    * Core4, GROUND INTERACTIONS, Completed: Introduce adventurer interacting with the environment.
+
|-
    * Core5, ADVENTURER TRAVEL, Completed: Allow the adventurer and companions to travel between sites on the world map.
+
! style="background:#efefef;width:10%;"|Core-item
    * Core6, BASIC ADVENTURER ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS, Completed: Things like rain, snow, temperature, sunlight. No temperature or local lighting effects yet.
+
! style="background:#efefef;width:15%;"|Name
    * Core7, CONVERSATIONS, Completed: Add the ability to talk to other creatures in adventure mode.
+
! style="background:#efefef;width:15%;"|Status
    * Core8, ADVENTURER SHOPS, Completed: Basic buying and selling of objects in adventure mode.
+
! style="background:#efefef;width:40%;"|Description
    * Core9, TOWNS, Completed: Add basic town maps to adventure mode, making use of the Z coordinate to do basements and second stories.
+
! style="background:#efefef;width:40%;"|Requirements
    * Core10, OO CODE UPDATE, Completed: Update all of the major code objects to C++.
+
|-valign="top"
    * Core11, ENEMY PETS, (Future): Can give the leaders creatures depending on their personal likes, race, the entity definition and the local available wilderness populations. These pets can have names and profiles like regular creatures. Can co-opt some of the behavior from dwarven pet owners.
+
|-
    * Core12, END GAME, Completed: Handled dwarf mode end game.
+
| Core1
    * Core13, BEAST ATTACKS, Completed: Have the larger beasts that live in the caves attack your fortress during dwarf mode.
+
| WRESTLING
    * Core14, FIRE, Completed: Have items catch on fire. Fire spreads. Trees outside can catch fire. Creatures catch on fire when appropriate. Items become damaged. Very hot metal objects can melt, and they can melt over characters carrying them, using the same "contaminant" system that currently handles poison injections.
+
| Completed
    * Core15, PRESENTATION OF ENEMY LEADERS AND OTHER IMPORTANT FIGURES, (Future): Enemy leader play an important part in creating a story around otherwise by-the-numbers conflicts that can occur, so the leaders can afford to be presented in such a way that you as the player can learn something about their background, motivations and appearance without digging around in the legends screen. There can be a variety of mechanisms for this. Diplomats and others that visit your fortress could afford the same treatment, as well as the people you talk to and about in adventure mode conversations, etc.
+
| Introduce close combat with various manuevers.
    * Core16, END GAME 2, Completed: Additional dwarf mode end game.
+
|
    * Core17, LEGENDS, Completed: Introduce the legends screen, historical events and historical figures.
+
|-
    * Core18, INTERFACE KEYS, Completed: Put the interface keys in editable files.
+
| Core2
    * Core19, TUTORIALS, (Future): Set up small tutorial files that you can load up. These would have text instructions and little activities for you to do so you can learn how to play more easily.
+
| ADVENTURER EATING AND DRINKING
    * Core20, TITLE MOVIES, Completed: Do the intro movies with sound.
+
| Completed
    * Core21, SOUND, (Future): Make all music/sounds optional, in groups. More songs (possibly seasonal), incidental music (like spotting the first kobold in a cave, etc.), various combat type sounds and ambient sounds, pleasing interface clicks.
+
| Start the adventurer with food and allow them to eat and drink.
    * Core22, ADVISORS, (Future): Either some kind of abstract advisors, or the actual dwarves that are living there. They can look over the state of the fortress and come up with some suggestions to help you survive and advance up the noble chain.
+
|
    * Core23, THE MANUAL, Completed: Do all of the sections of a basic manual to be viewed in-game.
+
|-
    * Core24, ADVENTURER PARTIES, (Future): Create up to, say, 6 characters at once. These are controlled as with the dwarven raiding parties. If the scenarios are in, it can generate historical connections that explain why they are together. Could give your group a name, like the dwarf squads, and non-players could be admitted, as in the standard adventure mode 'join' option. Related to Core61.
+
| Core3
    * Core25, PLOT CLEANUP, Completed: The dwarf mode used to have some fixed plot events, like an attack by an undead army and so on. These were excised, but there's a lot of associated cleanup needed. Once this is established, the game will be ready for armies.
+
| CARAVANS
    * Core26, OVERLAND ARMIES ATTACKS, (Future): The invasions by various creatures should no longer generate soldiers, but should use overland armies instead. There should be some AI limits in place to stop early dwarven outposts from being overwhelmed (at least as a default). Requires Core25 and Core45.
+
| (Future)
    * Core27, ARMIES OF DWARVES, (Future): You should be able to send patrols (and, as you get more dwarves, armies) out over the world map. They could attack smaller nearby threats, such as a kobold cave, or let you know about incoming invasions. Requires Core26.
+
| Use resource tracking and the adventurer travel infrastructure to set up groups of traders that go between sites. Make sure to respect the current flow of the dwarf game| though caravans will no longer be 'generated' when needed.,entity knowledge transfer if we are there by this time. The trading done by caravans would interface with the resource tracking system and thus be immediately available to adventurers. This includes items traded away by your dwarf fortress| although it's possible they could be abstracted a bit if they are too numerous.
    * Core28, CONTROL OF TERRITORY AND EXTERNAL LOCATIONS, (Future): As your fortress expands into a barony, county and duchy, these words should attain some meaning with regards to the surrounding lands. Additional outposts/villages/work camps might be founded under your control, but out of the playable view, providing local trade and a further population pool for warfare and other endeavors. The scope is undecided, but this might include typical mountainside outposts, dwarf/human/mixed villages nearby in other biomes, or deeper sites that you found in tunnels that you carve via the next core item. Related to Core29 and Bloat172.
+
|Core38.
    * Core29, EXTERNAL CONSTRUCTIONS, (Future): World map roads, bridges, walls and tunnels shouldn't
+
|-
 +
| Core4
 +
| GROUND INTERACTIONS
 +
| Completed
 +
| Introduce adventurer interacting with the environment.
 +
|
 +
|-
 +
| Core5
 +
| ADVENTURER TRAVEL
 +
| Completed
 +
| Allow the adventurer and companions to travel between sites on the world map.
 +
|
 +
|-
 +
| Core6
 +
| BASIC ADVENTURER ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
 +
| Completed
 +
| Things like rain, snow, temperature, sunlight. No temperature or local lighting effects yet.
 +
|
 +
|-
 +
| Core7
 +
| CONVERSATIONS
 +
| Completed
 +
| Add the ability to talk to other creatures in adventure mode.
 +
|
 +
|-
 +
| Core8
 +
| ADVENTURER SHOPS
 +
| Completed
 +
| Basic buying and selling of objects in adventure mode.
 +
|
 +
|-
 +
| Core9
 +
| TOWNS
 +
| Completed
 +
| Add basic town maps to adventure mode, making use of the Z coordinate to do basements and second stories.
 +
|
 +
|-
 +
| Core10
 +
| OO CODE UPDATE
 +
| Completed
 +
| Update all of the major code objects to C++.
 +
|
 +
|-
 +
| Core11
 +
| ENEMY PETS
 +
| (Future)
 +
| Can give the leaders creatures depending on their personal likes, race, the entity definition and the local available wilderness populations. These pets can have names and profiles like regular creatures. Can co-opt some of the behavior from dwarven pet owners.
 +
|
 +
|-
 +
| Core12
 +
| END GAME
 +
| Completed
 +
 

Revision as of 01:26, 6 June 2010

This is a transcript of the old "Consolidated Development Page" as it was before the design of the Dwarf Fortress

The next few years

Near-Term Arcs


Arc Description Requirements
BUSTLING TOWN ARC The towns should be more structured. The peasants need to do less aimless wandering and more standard activities. There need to be various items in town outside of what's in the stores. There need to be guards, and the keep/mead hall should be more interesting. Core41, Core42, Core43, Req148, Req162, Req249, Req261, Req344, Req348, Req369, Req379, Req408, Req415, Req471, Req477, Req588, Bloat165, Bloat188, Bloat203, Bloat204, Bloat210, Bloat233, Bloat242, Bloat243, Bloat266, Bloat267, Bloat373, Bloat378, Bloat381, Bloat382, PowerGoal34, PowerGoal36, PowerGoal41, PowerGoal48, PowerGoal55, PowerGoal67, PowerGoal73, PowerGoal74, PowerGoal82, PowerGoal91, PowerGoal131, PowerGoal137 and PowerGoal148.
FIRE AND LIGHTING ARC The lighting in caves is artificial right now. It should be pitch black. This is also true of moonless cloudy nights. Once that's in, your adventurer will want fire. Fire can also come up in dwarf mode in various ways. Core14, Core55, Req96 and PowerGoal150.
BURROWS, TRANSPORTION AND AUTOMATION ARC Make dwarves live and restrict their movements to sections ("burrows") of the cave to reduce the amount of hauling. This includes many of the haul/pile reqs. Other workshops could be automated, while the work order system could be made more robust to decrease the amount of interface fiddling required to produce glass and soap, for example. Core36, Core56, Core57, Req1, Req2, Req18, Req22, Req24, Req27, Req28, Req38, Req41, Req46, Req47, Req67, Req74, Req82, Req83, Req86, Req90, Req112, Req128, Req129, Req140, Req146, Req162, Req197, Req273, Req287, Req349, Req384, Req385, Req392, Req393, Req400, Req404, Req409, Req410, Req413, Req422, Req424, Req428, Req429, Req435, Req436, Req437, Req439, Req450, Req482, Req528, Req533, Req534, Req544, Req558, Req560, Req572, Req584, Bloat6, Bloat10, Bloat19, Bloat28, Bloat30, Bloat32, Bloat54, Bloat59, Bloat60, Bloat83, Bloat218, Bloat253, Bloat281, Bloat308 and Bloat313.
ADVANCED HELP ARC Yeah, dwarves has a steep learning curve. Tutorials and advisors could help this, as well as decent in-game help. Core19, Core22 and Core58.
CARAVAN ARC As a prelude to armies, we'll have caravans actually move around the world map rather than just appear at your outpost. They'll move between each city on the map, though we'll try to stay away from supporting a real economy for the time being. You should be able to find items you traded in your fortress in adventure mode, and a caravan could come to your fortress with an adventure mode item. Core3, Core38, Core81, Req21, Req132, Req133, Req175, Req204, Req218, Req220, Req260, Req279, Req364, Req463, Req516, Req555, Bloat155, Bloat263, Bloat267, PowerGoal24, PowerGoal33, PowerGoal56 and PowerGoal148.
COUNTY ARC You should be able to develop a larger settlement outside the confines of the immediate play area. Core28, Core29 and PowerGoal53.
ARMY ARC You should be able to control patrols and then armies in dwarf mode. The adventurer should be able to both go with and command armies. In dwarf mode, you should have the option to control your individual patrol members as you would in adventure mode. Entities should war with each other from bandit and monster raids to full fledged wars. Upset entities could patrol near their sites, leading to new wilderness encounters etc. Core26, Core27, Core35, Core45, Core46, Req18, Req29, Req61, Req71, Req81, Req125, Req126, Req221, Req273, Req301, Req371, Req398, Req414, Req417, Req427, Req444, Req449, Req475, Req478, Req496, Req503, Req545, Req571, Bloat44, Bloat117, Bloat130, Bloat131, Bloat175, Bloat289, PowerGoal1, PowerGoal2, PowerGoal3, PowerGoal4, PowerGoal5, PowerGoal6, PowerGoal7, PowerGoal8, PowerGoal11, PowerGoal17, PowerGoal40, PowerGoal59, PowerGoal70, PowerGoal71, PowerGoal76, PowerGoal92, PowerGoal98, PowerGoal119, PowerGoal127, PowerGoal130, PowerGoal138, PowerGoal140, PowerGoal141, PowerGoal142, PowerGoal143, PowerGoal144 and PowerGoal147.
NEMESIS ARC The civilization leaders should be fleshed out in many ways. Core11, Core15, Core40, Req161, Req277, Bloat48, Bloat68, Bloat176, PowerGoal98, PowerGoal101, PowerGoal102 and PowerGoal122.
RELATIONSHIPS ARC You should be able to take a spouse, make a household, and create playable heirs as an adventurer. The dwarven relationships and personalities can also be expanded upon. Core59, Core60, Bloat51, Bloat93, Bloat95, Bloat105, Bloat123, Bloat374, Bloat375, Bloat380, PowerGoal20, PowerGoal21, PowerGoal109 and PowerGoal119.
DIPLOMACY ARC There should be a lot more diplomacy between your outpost and the outside world, especially as you get more nobles. Right now there's hardly anything. Core33, Core62, Core63, Req174, Req177, Req291, Req451, Req527, Req542, Req543, Bloat31, Bloat72, Bloat73, PowerGoal10, PowerGoal98 and PowerGoal101.
GHOSTS ARC When you take an adventurer back to a fortress, it could afford to be a lot more interesting. Since it keeps track of all the dwarves that ever lived or died in each outpost, it might as well utilize them. When the civs fight in world gen, it could also create ruins from earlier times, and you could go to these places (old castles, temples, etc.). Core67, Core68, Core69, Core70, Bloat21, PowerGoal11, PowerGoal92 and PowerGoal107.
AFFILIATION ARC You should be able to rise to the top of an entity (civilization, town, etc.) in adventure mode. While the full set of responsibilities that would entail will have to wait, it should at least be possible to attain this status for the first version. You should be able to do things for individuals. This could earn you favors from sleeping in their home and food gifts all the way to a marriage offer. There can be smaller entities like bandits and cults which could offer more unsavory tasks for similar privileges (steal, kill, kidnap, etc.). Can earn right to sleep in the large hall in town if you've become affiliated with them, but vagrancy needs to be punished and the camping must be harsher before this is meaningful. Core64, Core65, Core71, Req586, Req587, Bloat163, PowerGoal12, PowerGoal19, PowerGoal27, PowerGoal37, PowerGoal41, PowerGoal42, PowerGoal44, PowerGoal48 and PowerGoal54.
COMBAT ARC Many more combat skills and more attributes, etc. Core72, Core73, Core74, Req45, Req54, Req85, Req92, Req104, Req149, Req164, Req171, Req183, Req188, Req192, Req198, Req199, Req200, Req206, Req224, Req230, Req233, Req234, Req290, Req315, Req330, Req331, Req340, Req352, Req403, Req466, Req532, Req568, Req575, Bloat15, Bloat55, Bloat76, Bloat102, Bloat127, Bloat135, Bloat136, Bloat137, Bloat138, Bloat139, Bloat141, Bloat142, Bloat162, Bloat222, Bloat254, Bloat271, PowerGoal28, PowerGoal29, PowerGoal61, PowerGoal63, PowerGoal77, PowerGoal79, PowerGoal89, PowerGoal90, PowerGoal93, PowerGoal94, PowerGoal96, PowerGoal103 and PowerGoal150.
SCENARIOS ARC Character generation is due for a major change. The current plan is to have an interactive history generator that takes your character from birth to a playable age, incorporating them into the fabric of the world. Pressing "Play Now!" would answer the questions automatically, perhaps with a strong tendency to place you in dire/interesting situations. Core75, Core76, Req214, Req317, Bloat26 and Bloat143.
LIFE CYCLE ARC the actions of the player, so it has to be done carefully. Core77, Core78, Req317, Req441, Req489, Bloat115, Bloat193, Bloat194 and PowerGoal31.
ARTIFACT ARC Special items made by the dwarves aren't very interesting right now, and there's not much for an adventurer to do with them. These objects should have magical powers and they should have a huge influence on the actions of entities that come into contact with them. Even if your adventurer can't make use of a particular artifact, you could arrange for buyers in the nobility, and use those opportunitites to get a home or good entity standing, for instance. Core79, Core80, Req395, Bloat49, Bloat173, PowerGoal13, PowerGoal60, PowerGoal68 and PowerGoal134.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT ARC There should be mild punishments for mild crimes, for instance. This could include making the drunks in the town more interesting and adding bar fights, as well as proper thievery, arrest, imprisonment, execution... Core82, Core83, Req303, Req327, Req366, Bloat53, Bloat75, Bloat143, PowerGoal14, PowerGoal22, PowerGoal23, PowerGoal25, PowerGoal26, PowerGoal38, PowerGoal47, PowerGoal66, PowerGoal80, PowerGoal91, PowerGoal99, PowerGoal124, PowerGoal126, PowerGoal136 and PowerGoal146.
ADVENTURER SKILLS ARC survival in the wilderness. Eventually you'll be able to place constructions, create a home and have your own site on the map. Core84, Core85, Core86, Req32, Req34, Req99, Req107, Req168, Req236, Req302, Req327, Req491, Bloat160, Bloat317, Bloat380, PowerGoal9, PowerGoal15 and PowerGoal103.
ADVENTURER PARTIES AND ENTITY As an adventurer with followers, you should can your own entity definition. If you have enough people, you might be able to delegate orders and control them more strategically. You should also be able to control each member in a party of adventurers you make yourself. You could lead one and the others follow (as it is currently) or control them all, particularly during tense situations where you don't want to count on the AI. Core24, Core61, PowerGoal20 and PowerGoal135.
DUNGEON ARC Improve kobold and goblin areas and civilizations with eyes on expanding entity definitions and future random generation. Includes adding entity definitions and tags for more primitive humanoids like lizardmen. Make mega-beasts fit in with better with the world. Core89, Core90, Core91, Req8, Req80, Req107, Req148, Req232, Req284, Req324, Req375, Req426, Req476, Req479, Req504, Req576, Bloat17, Bloat23, Bloat169, Bloat172, Bloat189, Bloat190, Bloat241, Bloat383, PowerGoal13, PowerGoal27, PowerGoal32, PowerGoal49, PowerGoal50, PowerGoal51, PowerGoal52, PowerGoal62, PowerGoal100, PowerGoal111 and PowerGoal145.
HUMANOID ARC Make non-player dwarf fortresses look more like player made fortresses and act like them to the extent that it's reasonable. Improve elves as in the Dungeon Arc, with multi-tile tree dwellings. Core87, Core88, Req148, Bloat206 and PowerGoal129.
PRESENTATION ARC A cleaner interface and more interface and display options will make the game more accessible. Better support for translations. Core21, Core50, Core51, Core52, Core54, Req37, Req43, Req79, Req142, Req152, Req179, Req180, Req207, Req218, Req258, Req306, Req314, Req320, Req328, Req332, Req338, Req381, Req382, Req383, Req386, Req387, Req388, Req390, Req401, Req402, Req411, Req421, Req430, Req432, Req434, Req443, Req460, Req483, Req513, Req520, Req531, Req546, Req547, Req548, Req550, Req556, Req558, Req559, Req560, Req564, Req566, Req570, Req585, Bloat52, Bloat106, Bloat107, Bloat108, Bloat118, Bloat153, Bloat199, Bloat268, Bloat303, Bloat307, Bloat311, Bloat354, Bloat355, Bloat358, Bloat361, Bloat364, Bloat368 and Bloat379.
LANGUAGE ARC The in-game languages need a better framework, as many simple name formulations are impossible in the current system, and it wouldn't hurt to add a basic grammar and phonetics at this time as well. In addition, paper, engraved writing, books, poems, songs, etc. could all be explored in the different game modes in various ways. Core97, Core98, Core99 and Core100.
More things need to make it out to the raws, and when they arrive, there should be some ability to randomize what you get in play. Current raw objects such as creatures, entities, plants, metals or even stone should also be randomizable. This doesn't just include randomizing an existing entry, but, more importantly, the creation of entirely new objects. This behavior should be controlled by the world parameters so that you can run anything from a stock universe to a complete replacement of all existing raw objects. In worlds with random objects, the random objects need to be introduced to the player in such a way that familiarity can be gained (involving descriptions, back stories, etc.) so that it isn't just a mess of static with garbage names. Core53, Core92, Core93, Core94, Core95 and Core96.

Much later on Long-Term Arcs


Arc Description Requirements
HIGH LEVEL PLOTS AND DIPLOMACY Various intrigue and interesting not-necessarily-violent conflict between entities and individuals. Once you place the actors in place, they should act according to their wants and the wants of their associated entities based on the strength of those ties. Both adventurers and dwarf fortresses can become immersed in the push and pull which arises from the AI. This is already true to some extent (the current quests are all created from the surroundings and entity ties), but these effects can be made pervasive. Since armies and invasions will be done before we get here, there will already be some of this AI in place to work with. Core30, Core33, Req131, PowerGoal18, PowerGoal47, PowerGoal57, PowerGoal65, PowerGoal95 and PowerGoal124.
LATE GAME As you kill the large creatures, the world becomes more... boring. The game can be prepared for this kind of change and move over into a sort of fairy-tale/Beowulf/Robert E Howard type of hybrid with human civs and occasional monsters so that things continue to be interesting. This already happens naturally in a way, but the dialogue and reactions of people to these changes should be there to fully adjust to the new setting. Bloat149.
EARLY GAME The Age of Myth in world generation should be playable. Bloat148.
HUMAN TOWN You should be able to control a human town, as you control a dwarf fortress, but with changes appropriate to the new setting. Req469 and Bloat146.
GOBLIN/KOBOLD/CAVER Controlling the bad guys is an obvious extension, and you've got the whole friendly happy world waiting for your raiding parties.
ELF FOREST RETREAT Yes, elves for the elf people -- but thinking more general, as we list all these racial civilizations, we should think in broad terms and use the civilization definitions to allow any type of civilization to be played. Elves will provide some necessary extra elements for this process. Mixing the cliff dwelling, wilderness dwelling, town building, ethics/sphere-aligned/religious tendencies into a robust interface for civilization building is a long-term goal. Bloat25.
MONSTER Playing the dragons and other large beasts seems like another good (and fairly easy) extension. You'd have to be careful, since there aren't very many large beasts in the world and you don't want to just possess them and have them all burn out in a blaze of glory. Or maybe you do... or it could just give you new ones. You could also just occasionally have fun going out on an excursion and retiring, then play an adventurer and take a quest from a town to go and dispatch your old self. PowerGoal60.
MERCHANT With the Caravan Arc, we have traders moving around the world, but I said over there that I didn't want to mess around too much with having a real economy, or it would surely fall apart and all the towns would starve. Once I get up the nerve to tackle these problems, it would be a lot of fun to play a merchant or guild yourself. You could even retire and be visited by yourself in a subsequent dwarf game. PowerGoal62.
MAGIC There are no specific decisions nailed down yet, although we've thought about it a lot. It's probably best to go for a very general system here, as in the first Armok attempt. Then the world generator and entities can decide what they want to use from what's available. Early efforts might be to make dwarven artifacts more interesting and to increase the power and variability of enemy leaders, rather than focusing on traditional spell-casting adventurers. Bloat134, PowerGoal58, PowerGoal68, PowerGoal84, PowerGoal92, PowerGoal97, PowerGoal108, PowerGoal122 and PowerGoal128.
CONTROL A WIZARD ENTITY Not just one of those guys that backs up the team and shoots fireballs, but run something more like a dwarven outpost and construct your own multilevel tower or other such dwelling. This could include adventure style elements where your wizard is engaged in various activities, as well as larger scale army battles and so on. Randomized creatures could also be introduced as you create your minions, and they should be able to breed and expand outward, perhaps becoming a playable race in either adventure or civilization modes. Bloat134, Bloat147, PowerGoal58 and PowerGoal60.
DEITY Have religions in the game correspond to forces or deities and let you play one and do whatever you like, possibly restricted by your defining characteristics and geography. Bloat344, Bloat376, Bloat377, Bloat382, PowerGoal64, PowerGoal75, PowerGoal82, PowerGoal86, PowerGoal90, PowerGoal105, PowerGoal109, PowerGoal113, PowerGoal118, PowerGoal122, PowerGoal125, PowerGoal135, PowerGoal139, PowerGoal141 and PowerGoal146.
WORLD GENERATION PARAMETERS Allow some degree of control over the world and the more sweeping aspects of play. Possibilities include control over terrain, magic, religions, random vs. stock creatures, fantasy vs. a more 'historical' (ie human) feeling. Ideally, the variability would allow you to move between standard fantasy, fairy tales, mythic fantasy and gothic fantasy, for example. If there are concepts like planes or dimensions implemented, you'd have control over that as well. You could also set the mood -- there's no reason the game needs to be violent at all, for example, assuming the rest of the game can carry it at that point. The world could be generated completely underwater or with no water at all. You could be the first or last sentient creature. There are lots of ways this could go. Bloat150, Bloat217 and PowerGoal125.
TERRAIN/WEATHER/SWIMMING/FLYING/BOATS Boats of some kind might go in early to make different regions more accessible, but you won't be able to be a pirate or an undersea civ for quite a while. Rivers freeze with daily temperatures instead of seasonal temperatures. Realize river and ocean squares when you visit them (forcing town layouts to adapt). Realize interesting canyons and so on in such areas. Track hurricanes and other major storm/disasters, in-game and during world gen. Thunderstorms with lightning strikes (with corresponding lighting effects) and hail. Levels of rainfall. Eating snow, making snowballs and picking up hail during and after hail storms. Tornados with wind flows that push items, projectiles and creatures. Proper eclipse modeling. Tides, deep oceans and pearl-diving, etc. More intricate interplay between cliff faces, inner rivers and outer rivers, using Z coord and waterfalls.
PLANES Once it's all established, you can make regions arbitrarily strange, and you make a lot of them. The real chore here is allowing multiple world maps to be active in one way or another and to allow game elements to move between them. It would be a headache to program, but it would add a lot to the game. PowerGoal81.
EDITORS Draw your own region maps, create your own towns, creatures, items, start situations, etc. For example, you could create Earth at various time periods (or an amalgamation of various time periods).
AND MORE, AND WORSE I'm still too embarrassed to share every idea we had... The Keep and Event Horizon came up. You don't want to know.


Building blocks for some of the arcs Core Building blocks for some of the arcs Core

Core-item Name Status Description Requirements
Core1 WRESTLING Completed Introduce close combat with various manuevers.
Core2 ADVENTURER EATING AND DRINKING Completed Start the adventurer with food and allow them to eat and drink.
Core3 CARAVANS (Future) though caravans will no longer be 'generated' when needed.,entity knowledge transfer if we are there by this time. The trading done by caravans would interface with the resource tracking system and thus be immediately available to adventurers. This includes items traded away by your dwarf fortress| although it's possible they could be abstracted a bit if they are too numerous. Core38.
Core4 GROUND INTERACTIONS Completed Introduce adventurer interacting with the environment.
Core5 ADVENTURER TRAVEL Completed Allow the adventurer and companions to travel between sites on the world map.
Core6 BASIC ADVENTURER ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS Completed Things like rain, snow, temperature, sunlight. No temperature or local lighting effects yet.
Core7 CONVERSATIONS Completed Add the ability to talk to other creatures in adventure mode.
Core8 ADVENTURER SHOPS Completed Basic buying and selling of objects in adventure mode.
Core9 TOWNS Completed Add basic town maps to adventure mode, making use of the Z coordinate to do basements and second stories.
Core10 OO CODE UPDATE Completed Update all of the major code objects to C++.
Core11 ENEMY PETS (Future) Can give the leaders creatures depending on their personal likes, race, the entity definition and the local available wilderness populations. These pets can have names and profiles like regular creatures. Can co-opt some of the behavior from dwarven pet owners.
Core12 END GAME Completed Handled dwarf mode end game.
Core13 BEAST ATTACKS Completed Have the larger beasts that live in the caves attack your fortress during dwarf mode.
Core14 FIRE Completed Have items catch on fire. Fire spreads. Trees outside can catch fire. Creatures catch on fire when appropriate. Items become damaged. Very hot metal objects can melt, and they can melt over characters carrying them, using the same "contaminant" system that currently handles poison injections.
Core15 PRESENTATION OF ENEMY LEADERS AND OTHER IMPORTANT FIGURES (Future) so the leaders can afford to be presented in such a way that you as the player can learn something about their background, motivations and appearance without digging around in the legends screen. There can be a variety of mechanisms for this. Diplomats and others that visit your fortress could afford the same treatment, as well as the people you talk to and about in adventure mode conversations, etc.
Core16 END GAME 2 Completed Additional dwarf mode end game.
Core17 LEGENDS Completed historical events and historical figures.
Core18 INTERFACE KEYS Completed Put the interface keys in editable files.
Core19 TUTORIALS (Future) Set up small tutorial files that you can load up. These would have text instructions and little activities for you to do so you can learn how to play more easily.
Core20 TITLE MOVIES Completed Do the intro movies with sound.
Core21 SOUND (Future) Make all music/sounds optional, in groups. More songs (possibly seasonal), incidental music (like spotting the first kobold in a cave, etc.), various combat type sounds and ambient sounds, pleasing interface clicks.
Core22 ADVISORS (Future) Either some kind of abstract advisors, or the actual dwarves that are living there. They can look over the state of the fortress and come up with some suggestions to help you survive and advance up the noble chain.
Core23 THE MANUAL Completed Do all of the sections of a basic manual to be viewed in-game.
Core24 ADVENTURER PARTIES (Future) Create up to, say, 6 characters at once. These are controlled as with the dwarven raiding parties. If the scenarios are in, it can generate historical connections that explain why they are together. Could give your group a name, like the dwarf squads, and non-players could be admitted, as in the standard adventure mode 'join' option. Core61.
Core25 PLOT CLEANUP Completed like an attack by an undead army and so on. These were excised| but there's a lot of associated cleanup needed. Once this is established| the game will be ready for armies.
Core26 OVERLAND ARMIES ATTACKS (Future) The invasions by various creatures should no longer generate soldiers, but should use overland armies instead. There should be some AI limits in place to stop early dwarven outposts from being overwhelmed (at least as a default). Core25 and Core45.
Core27 ARMIES OF DWARVES (Future) You should be able to send patrols (and, as you get more dwarves, armies) out over the world map. They could attack smaller nearby threats, such as a kobold cave, or let you know about incoming invasions. Core26.
Core28 CONTROL OF TERRITORY AND EXTERNAL LOCATIONS (Future) As your fortress expands into a barony, county and duchy, these words should attain some meaning with regards to the surrounding lands. Additional outposts/villages/work camps might be founded under your control, but out of the playable view, providing local trade and a further population pool for warfare and other endeavors. The scope is undecided, but this might include typical mountainside outposts, dwarf/human/mixed villages nearby in other biomes, or deeper sites that you found in tunnels that you carve via the next core item. Core29 and Bloat172.
Core29 EXTERNAL CONSTRUCTIONS (Future) World map roads, bridges, walls and tunnels shouldn't just be products of world generation. You should be able to dispatch dwarves and materials to accomplish these tasks (though the amount of material used in a typical world generation road would virtually prohibit doing this as it currently stands, so something has to change). Core28.
Core30 KINGDOM (Future) If you manage to get the monarch of the dwarves to arrive, you should obtain at least indirect control over the entire corresponding dwarven civilization. This includes the movement of all dwarven armies on the map and the ability to make the most important diplomatic decisions. Core28.
Core31 MAPS FOR SITES Completed Caves and goblin fortress maps.
Core32 STARTING QUESTS Completed basic quests and town defense.
Core33 SERVING YOUR MONARCH (Future) you could control them in any future army fights later in that game, or you might control an entire squad if more of your soldiers were drafted.
Core34 ABANDONMENT Completed Preserved dwarves when you abandon a game in an 'army' for later use.
Core35 DWARF RAIDS (Future) If you send one of your patrols to attack a site, and it is small enough, you should be able to control the units individually, as in adventure mode. If your group is large, then you could either control one squad as a party, and have the others on AI, or you could let the whole thing run real-time as in dwarf mode. Core27.
Core36 BURROWS (Future) large fortresses should become easier to manage.
Core37 RETIREMENT Completed Add the ability to retire (or rest) your adventurer in any town.
Core38 SITE RESOURCES (Future) The objects at a site need to be tracked in an abstract form so that the world can use them without loading up the site files. The different profession holders working at a town in world-gen and then during play should be able to produce and use resources based on these stockpiles and local map propertioes. Any changes could be applied to existing site files retroactively when they are loaded. Stores should restock their inventories. The objects need to be separated based on the entity that owns them, since several entities can potentially operate at one site.
Core39 END GAME 3 Completed Additional handling of dwarf mode end game.
Core40 MONSTERS (Future) due to a plot event. That might have to wait for magic.
Core41 TOWN, HOME AND SCHEDULES Completed but for now they'll be well provided for. Many of the armed people in the town should be guards that won't join you.
Core42 TOWN, ITEMS (Future) Basic items all around the town, including differentiations between the homes of various people. Keys. Clothes, outfits, uniforms and symbols. Workshops/etc. in towns,professions, trade and resources.
Core43 TOWN, IMPORTANT LOCATIONS (Future) Make the important people stay in relevant locations. Make the keep in the capital more interesting. Interesting adornments. Add a bit more culture to the mead hall where the mayor and drunks stay. Requires Core42.
Core44 OVERLAND TOWN MIGRANTS Completed migrants can appear on map edges or seashores from seas adjacent to map edges. These groups can enter towns and join with existing towns (possibly at a low allegiance level). You can meet these groups in adventure mode.
Core45 CIVILIZATIONS AT WAR (Future) goblins or expansionist humans) should be able to declare war on each other and raise armies. They can send messengers to outlying towns or gather soldiers as they march from town to town toward their destinations. Core44.
Core46 ARMY BATTLES (Future) tactics or strategy -- just the basics. An adventurer at the site of an army battle can observe it. Core45.
Core47 CLEANING HISTORY Completed Unimportant dead historical figures should be abstracted away to save space.
Core48 SEAMLESS MAP Completed The adventurer should be able to move between areas of the map from the local view without having to leave from an edge. Current sites should respect this.
Core49 FULL Z AXIS Completed The Z-axis should be supported in dwarf mode and elevations should be respected in adventure mode.
Core50 TILESET SUPPORT (Future) Allow graphical tiles to be used for all game objects.
Core51 SIZEABLE GAME WINDOW (Future) and possibly the support of variable width fonts to allow more text to be displayed.
Core52 INTERFACE OVERHAUL (Future) A coherent interface, additional options and mouse support.
Core53 MORE RAW FILES (Future) but workshop and furnace types are certainly good candidates.
Core54 TRANSLATION SUPPORT (Future) though current font implementations restrict this process at the moment if non-ASCII characters are to be involved.
Core55 LIGHTING (Future) This is essentially the old lighting dev item, upgraded, since it's important that proper lighting, vision, torches, etc. are recognized. The most necessary parts are making vision depending on the lighting of the location in question rather than where you are standing and adding some means of producing light (torches, candles, etc). Req96.
Core56 IMPROVED FORTRESS TRANSPORTATION (Future) some basics are needed the first version. Work animals, carts or wheelbarrows, perhaps some more mechanical options| and the ability to organize stockpiles, workshops and other elements of the fortress so that transport of items can be done with less pain.
Core57 IMPROVED FORTRESS AUTOMATION AND WORKSHOP HANDLING (Future) As with transportation, the goal itself is pretty open-ended, but certain basics goals need to be reached for v1. Ability to use specific materials more easily, job priorities, better automatic job creation via manager triggers etc., and whatever else is deemed essential.
Core58 DOCUMENTATION (Future) The in-game documentation is dire -- not quite like the Dire Wolf of the Pleistocene, but more like a "dire economic forecast". Any of manual improvements, context-based help with the mouse, or an in-game encyclopedia might make the game more accessible, along with tutorials and more graphical options.
Core59 LOVE AND ROMANCE (Future) Though some of the dialog is likely to be an entertaining trainwreck, especially if coupled with a random poem generator (yes, that's a threat), love of all sorts is very important for driving stories and situations and needs to come in all over the place -- world generation, the world during play, dwarf mode and adventure mode.
Core60 HEIRS (Future) and the notion of the family in general could afford to have more impact on the game.
Core61 ADVENTURER ENTITIES (Future) Your adventuring group deserves entity status, as it's quite possibly one of the most important groups in all of history. This will activate all of the entity vs. entity and individual vs. entity mechanics in the game and allow you to establish your place in the world as army/entity changes allow you to delegate orders to subordinates and so on. It would be possible for the group to persist between games and adventurers, perhaps even harassing a new fortress when bandits are put in. Core24.
Core62 FURTHER DIPLOMACY (Future) fun to uphold and,the state of the world| all sorts of relationships could be established with both neighboring civilizations and the parent civilization. Though we'll leave quite a bit of work for later versions| the system should be satisfying for version 1 as it merges with the caravan arc| wars| tribute and succession conflicts described in other v1 dev items.
Core63 SUCCESSION, ASSOCIATED CONFLICTS AND SCHISMS (Future) as well as dead monarchs. Then the process needs to be made messier all around. Wars over succession, schisms over religious disagreements, etc., starting from world gen and coming into regular play. In dwarf mode, you might be involved on one side or the other, directly or indirectly, relying on more involved diplomacy and army code than we currently have, and adventure mode can also gain a lot from such conflicts.
Core64 INDIVIDUAL AFFILIATIONS (Future) and almost all of them should have goals that the player can help them out with. These might be based on likes and dislikes, relationships with other people in town or farther away, etc., and though they'll start in world gen it's imperative that new goals, etc. be formed as well| especially as the Life Cycles Arc comes in. Individual goals are vital to break up the AI brain-death caused by homogeneous entity affiliations and to create tension within entities that can serve to spontaneously create complicated situations. These provide useful material for adventure mode (possibly the bulk of it)| and any changes beyond what already exists in dwarf mode can be adopted for your dwarves as well.
Core65 ADVENTURER SITE AFFILIATIONS (Future) When you perform a task for an entity,you currently can an affiliation with it, but that's all. This needs to be expanded greatly. Not only should you be given various positions of responsibility, but you should also become accepted by the group in question and given some way of obtaining living space, equipment, pay, etc. as appropriate. It would also be good for tasks to be appropriate for the goals of the entity, and where possible, to soften the notion of a task -- if you do something that benefits a group, even if the group didn't explicitly ask for it, this should raise your standing with them in general (to the extent that the action/benefit is detectable from a technical standpoint), and a person at an appropriate position within a group should in some circumstances be able to act under their own power with entity subordinates. The primary target entities/positions here for version 1 are soldiers (either proper ones or loosely defined mead hall groups), caravan guards, bandits and religious groups.
Core66 HIDDEN FUN STUFF (Future) No game is complete without it!
Core67 RUINS (Future) mainly the civilization in question and what happened to ruin it in the first place. Core68.
Core68 GRAVEYARDS AND TOMBS (Future) Right now the dead are so dead they don't exist outside of the fantastic memories of the people that have heard of them. There should be various methods of disposal, some adventure-full ones being graveyards and tombs, including large and elaborate tombs with all sorts of treasure and traps appropriate for the civilization that created them. Core67.
Core69 OLD BATTLEFIELDS (Future) especially after a long time has passed, others would, and since this is a fantasy game, it's important to take this in various directions. The first target would be world gen battlefields| but battlefields that occur once armies are fighting need to be handled as well, whether you are present as an adventurer or dwarven army or not.
Core70 FORTRESS RUINS,PRODUCTION TRACKING AND HISTORY TRIGGERS (Future) Right now, an abandoned fortress is basically a scattered mass of crap. If any item is moved, there should at least be a plausible reason for it to happen. Additionally, since tracking too many items in fortress mode can lead to problems, one early idea was to add additional items after abandonment that would flesh out the fortress, such as production logs and diaries. These would have to be squared with reclaim, however. Depending on how that works out, the items themselves might occur during standard play instead or not at all. In any case, various facts about production and prominent (and other) artisans need to be tracked and available after sufficient poking around (or earlier should the parameters call for it, as with historical events).
Core71 BANDITS AND CULTS (Future) It's important to have groups acting on their own or generally causing trouble without necessarily belonging to an entirely different civilization. Bandits and cults are good choices to start. Bandits could harass or make demands of an early fortress, cults could spring up in a later one, and the adventurer could end up a member or an adversary.
Core72 ROBUST ATTRIBUTE SYSTEM (Future) Attributes are a sad, sad placeholder right now. There should be more attributes, say those from Armok 1, and their development, to the extent that they change, should depend on use rather than random assignment. They should degrade slowly over time if left completely unused.
Core73 COMBAT OVERHAUL (Future) This one is a bit vague, mostly because the Combat Arc consists of so many small changes rather than a few sweeping additions. Aside from obvious changes to projectiles and the wrestling interface, skills could afford to overlap, attributes need to be associated to skills properly, skills could become rusty and ultimately degrade as in Armok 1, new general combat related skills can be added, styles/techniques for weapon/weaponless fighting roughly along the path Armok 1 had started, etc. As a dev item, this'll be done when combat more or less makes sense.
Core74 WOUND HANDLING (Future) Wounds are dull right now and lead to at least one major problem (extreme and long-lasting phantom limb pain). Proper descriptions, scarring, infections and so on are in order here.
Core75 ADVENTURER GENERATION AND SCENARIOS (Future) from weaving the adventurer fulling into their starting location's history, actually playing an existing creature in the world| creating starting scenarios that at least make sense of the adventurer's existence and/or mysterious arrival, etc.
Core76 EMBARK SCENARIOS (Future) Embarking in dwarf mode is one of the more sterile, gameish parts of the... game, and it can afford to be spruced up. Though a full take-your-wagons-from-here-to-there style embark is probably beyond the scope of version 1, at least giving the backstory for the journey and adding various game effects and alterations to starting conditions based on it would help with immersion.
Core77 AGE AND POPULATION TRACKING FOR ENTITIES (Future) Once world gen terminates, age-related deaths only occur locally and people never have children again. This needs to be corrected, especially as armies and migrants start being pulled from actual populations rather than being generated on the spot.
Core78 WILDERNESS POPULATION TRACKING (Future) and worse in a few ways than it was back before the Z coordinate. This should be fixed in world gen and in regular play in all modes for all categories of wilderness or subterranean creature.
Core79 COLLECTORS AND FINDING BUYERS (Future) if you want to get more than a local merchant would be able to provide, and news of your acquisition should keep your life interesting.
Core80 ARTIFACT MAGIC (Future) An early angle on magic that should find its way into the game. Although ultimately influenced by world parameters, stock DF will likely focus on rare, unique, somewhat mysterious effects without tables, to the extent that that's possible. Some cliches are probably unavoidable, he he he. The artifact process is likely to be changed somewhat to align with this, and artifacts should be created in world-generation and elsewhere during play, though a good player artifact should still have high importance.
Core81 TRIBUTE (Future) The tribute relationships established during world generation should be fleshed out there and then brought into regular play with tribute being transported across the map. These could also occur as part of dwarf mode diplomacy and dwarf mode world map play.
Core82 THIEF AND SUPPORTING CAST (Future) beyond what's there now, is an open question.
Core83 ARREST AND PUNISHMENT (Future) The guards shouldn't just kill you. You have rights, sort of. It's important that there are jails and dungeons and executions, anyway. The guards will need to arrest you to put you into the system, and once you've been arrested there are various delicate steps that need to be performed properly for everything work out. Whatever happens in adventure mode should be tied back in to dwarf mode. If this includes beard-shaving, well, you'd better just obey the law.
Core84 HUNTING AND GATHERING (Future) You need to be able to obtain food from the wilderness and perform other tasks,processing a hunted creature's body, trading with the a town perhaps but able to survive in the wilds. More abstract hunting on the travel view needs to be roughly equivalent to hunting only on the local view. You should be able to find signs of animals to help you out, and you should be able to gather any plants you find.
Core85 CHOP, DIG, BUILD! (Future) As an adventurer, chop down trees, dig channels, mine into a cliff face, build whatever structure you have the patience for. Your efforts should be saved as a proper site or at least some similar notion (whatever inns and so on along roads end up using), and the contents should remain relatively undisturbed with proper precautions.
Core86 ADVANCED ADVENTURER SKILLS (Future) Virtually every job available in dwarf mode should be available to you as an adventurer, though it might rely on town infrastructure, especially at first.
Core87 PROPER DWARVES (Future) Dwarves are, of course, proper when they are played in dwarf mode, but their sites in adventure mode are completely lacking and their society isn't really realized anywhere outside of dwarf mode play. They need to be brought up to standards throughout the world and in adventure mode. Also note, for this and the following three core items, there will be some emphasis not on just building up the stock universe, but extending modding/random possibilities for all civilizations by providing these as fleshed-out and somewhat diverse examples.
Core88 PROPER ELVES (Future) As with the dwarves, the current elves, especially their sites, suffer from a lack of almost everything. Multi-tile trees, how the druids and the regional forces interact, their relationship with animals and the animal peoples, their dining habits in-game rather than just in world generation...
Core89 PROPER GOBLINS (Future) At the very least, the role of baby-snatching needs to be further sorted, and their demonic leaders should have proper world-spanning aspirations. Many of the elements of their might-makes-right ethical framework need to be fleshed out and used in actual play.
Core90 PROPER KOBOLDS (Future) Of course, this means different things to different people. To us, a proper kobold is neither a chihuahua man nor a mini-draconian, but instead sort of a small mammaloreptilian humanoid with pointy ears and yellow eyes with a penchant for trickery and mischief, context-based sublanguage, poisonous critter collection, traps and kleptomaniacal hoarding.
Core91 PROPER UNDERGROUND/MAP FEATURES (Future) Underground is currently where the stone and boring stuff and occasionally something else is. There needs to be more something else and less boring and stone, though stone might be bored. This project includes areas outside the mountains, as well as some interesting natural features in the mostly featureless above ground areas.
Core92 APPEARANCE VARIABLES/DESCRIPTIONS (Future) This is especially relevant for individualizing civilized critters you meet, but important elsewhere as well, and will be the springboard for randomly-generated beasties and other stuffs.
Core93 RANDOMIZED MEGABEASTS AND POWERS (Future) (Semi)megabeasts and powers can be randomly generated, in accordance with existing local belief structures or regional sphere alignments when that goes in. The degree of randomization should depend on world parameters so that stock creatures can still be used. Requires Core92.
Core94 RANDOMIZED REGIONS AND THEIR FLORA/FAUNA (Future) The current good/evil regions should be scrapped and replaced by a system that aligns a region to varying degrees with a set of spheres. In this way you could end up with a desert where the stones sing or a forest where the trees bleed, with all sorts of randomly generated creatures and plants that are appropriate to the sphere settings. It's important that randomly generated objects be introduced to the player carefully during play rather than just being thrown one after another to allow for immersion, though there's also something to be said for cold dumping the player in a world with completely random settings, provided they can access enough information by looking/listening and having conversations, etc. Requires Core92.
Core95 RANDOMIZED ENTITIES AND CIVILIZED CREATURES (Future) As a further project of random generation, an entire entity definition complete with creature definitions, items, etc. could be generated and introduced into the world. As with other random settings, the degree to which this process is used would depend on world generation parameters, and the generation procedures would be accessible through raw objects. Core93 and Core94.
Core96 GENERALIZED CURSES AND OTHER ALTERATIONS (Future) "Zombie" and "Skeleton" modified creatures aren't really satisfying right now, since zombies, ghosts, and so on gain some of their interest from the details surrounding the transformation and the particulars of the creature so transformed. Generalized curses and sphere-based alterations could vary from world to world and involve all sorts of changes to creatures (and other objects). Core92.
Core97 IMPROVED PHRASE STORAGE (Future) The current system of storing names is not very extendable, so it needs to be altered to support later changes.
Core98 BASIC GRAMMAR (Future) The abstract phrases can be realized by each of the in-game languages in vastly different ways, and a framework for this needs to be realized in the raw files. Core97.
Core99 WRITING (Future) Existing objects (such as wall engravings and blades) need to be able to support writing in any of the in-game languages, and there can be associated skills/professions for this. Core98.
Core100 NEW LANGUAGE ITEMS (Future) Parchment, vellum and their buddies then books, songs, poems... all for your entertainment (and horror, if there are random poems). Core99.