Hello!
The work on investigations is now underway. We're starting with the interrogation or interview of suspected villains and criminals, because no matter how the rest of our work on evidence shakes out, you'll eventually be confronting your targets, and we want that core fact to guide the rest of what we implement here.
The first pass was just plopping my debugging character, the Manifestation, into the center of the most mobbed-up tavern in town and having friendly chats with the denizens, who are all to happy to tell me everything they know, responding even to vague desperate questions like "Who do you work for?!" and "What are you scheming?!". The plan as we go now is to make them more resistant to these queries. We've had skills like "intimidation", "persuasion", "lying" etc. in the game for years, but they've only mattered in other contexts, most of which were not that important. Now they'll get a chance to shine. Bribes, reputation, presented evidence and the new relationship variables 'loyalty', 'trust/distrust', 'fear', 'love/hate', and 'respect' are all in the mix. Given how the game world is, a fighter-style character will be able to resort to fisticuffs and ask questions afterward (the non-lethal combat and yielding systems will be used here), but this will be much more likely to make the villains higher up in the network eager to retaliate. If you use softer interrogation techniques, a villain's lieutenant might not even know they've given you the information you are seeking, or might not think anything of it.
Once we're done in adventure mode, this interrogation process will also make its way over to fort mode, though you won't control the process line by line. The evidence obtained by your sheriff, captain of the guard, or other interrogator or investigator will be placed in the Justice screen, where you'll be able to make decisions about what to do next about whatever trouble is brewing.
Reminder: we're working on villains and investigations to finish off the material we were working on for the last DF Classic release before we transition fully over to work on Steam (the artists are already way ahead of me.) This is the third of four stages of that release. We completed villains in history generation, and moved those elements into the world during play. Now we're focusing on adventure mode before we tackle fortress mode in the final stage.
- Tarn