The Gamer's Quarter Forum Index The Gamer's Quarter
A quarterly publication
 
 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

DWARF FORTRESS
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7  Next
 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    The Gamer's Quarter Forum Index -> Club for the Study and Appreciation of Interactive Audio Visual Media
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
bleak
.
.


Joined: 22 Oct 2007
Posts: 258

PostPosted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 5:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shapermc wrote:
34 (one is a baby though). Also, I have like 5 with brewing turned on, so that shouldn't really be a problem. Perhaps I really need to regulate/turn off hauling on more people. It seems like, if given the option, dwarfs love to haul shit.


Yeah. I generally turn off hauling on my miners, my brewers, hunters, fisherdwarves, masons, and carpenters. They're the ones who I don't want any of their jobs being interrupted bu hauling or cleaning. Everyone else basically can haul to their heart's content.
_________________
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
skonrad
.
.


Joined: 26 Jun 2007
Posts: 13
Location: no sun land

PostPosted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 1:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think she went berserk from 1) thirst and 2) an uncleared corpse producing Miasma in one of the meeting zones that I hadn't noticed (as I was away drinking beer). The thirst part was confusing -- it was Spring ( I managed to survive Winter ) and I'm next to a stream, so it should have been possible for her to walk over to it and get water. I ended up flooding one of the rooms as an emergency measure, which then cleared up everyone's thirst issue, but they all complained of the water quality.

Anyway, I'm restarting this weekend I think.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Intentionally Wrong
.
.


Joined: 09 Sep 2005
Posts: 248
Location: [Subject Hometown Here]

PostPosted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 8:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Is there any reason why I shouldn't have one or two dwarves with every available activity turned on? I mean, obviously I turn off hunting, and it's impossible to set both digging and woodcutting, but otherwise I find the only way I get all of my jobs performed is to have one or two catch-all dwarves.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 12:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's not a bad idea, especially if those two dwarves are peasants, since that way they'll eventually train themselves into one profession or another.

The drawback to this is that you might want to not have them work on jobs where skill is of some importance -- for instance, you might want only your trained weaponsmiths/armorsmiths making weapons and armor and you almost certainly only want your trained brewers making you booze, since skill is what determines how much booze you get from a stack of plants.

So it might be better to have some dwarves with all the skills that don't matter so much and then make sure that you have enough dwarves to adequately cover skill-heavy jobs.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Bulkor
.
.


Joined: 22 Dec 2006
Posts: 55

PostPosted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 3:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wait, I thought skill just determined quality of booze? I think the only reason you get large "stacks" of alcohol is because brewers sometimes brew bunches of plants at once. Generalized labor settings does seem like a good idea, though.

I have to retract a previous statement: you can in fact set a room to just include the bed, but that won't be reflected in the rent unless you turn the "for rent" setting off and then on again. Thpppt.

I had an ambush recently, and I didn't know those actually happened. Eight goblin pikemen popped up and killed a woodworker, only a short distance away from the front gates. Fortunately, another woodworker led them on a roundabout chase for the next ten minutes while the marksdwarves all got into position, and then the usual carnage ensued. Two casualties is not so bad, especially considering neither dwarf was particularly vital, although now I'm getting more worried about making dwarves herbalists and sending them off into the wild as welfare.

But here's something new: marksdwarves actually go back for ammo after they've run out now, even if still on duty! It's pretty sweet.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 3:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bulkor wrote:
Wait, I thought skill just determined quality of booze? I think the only reason you get large "stacks" of alcohol is because brewers sometimes brew bunches of plants at once. Generalized labor settings does seem like a good idea, though.


Ah, I was getting it wrong, sorry. Here's the DF Wiki explanation:

Quote:
A single stack of plants will be brewed in one go, and the resulting booze will be placed into a single barrel - a stack of Plump Helmet [5] will produce Dwarven Wine [25], and will only occupy a single barrel. Skilled growers, who tend to harvest larger stacks, can therefore reduce the number of barrels required to store alcohol, which in turn minimizes the required stockpile size.


So it's skilled growers that make the difference in terms of how many barrels you use to store the same amount of alcohol rather than skilled brewers determining how much booze is made. Since barrels are usually a pretty valuable resource, it then seems to make sense to leave harvesting to those skilled in it, i.e. turning off the "everybody harvests" option, although that means you'll need a lot of growers just to make sure that you don't lose plants to all your farmers sleeping/drinking/eating/going on break/attending parties.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Swimmy
.
.


Joined: 16 Sep 2005
Posts: 990
Location: Fairfax, VA

PostPosted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 1:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

So I decided to finally give this game a real, honest, many-hour dedicated try.

I can't even set up camp next to a mountain properly. The one time I managed to, my dwarves refused to carry any mined stone into the stone stockpile I set up. Even using this guide, everything about this game is utterly baffling.

I'll try again when I'm not so tired. Lord knows I'm way too far gone to read any of this thread.
_________________

"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 12:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's probably just a matter of getting used to the interface, which admittedly is pretty rough and can take a while. If you have any questions, please post 'em here -- I would have never been able to pick up the game if I hadn't known somebody who'd tried before and who answered a ton of questions in the first two days.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Bulkor
.
.


Joined: 22 Dec 2006
Posts: 55

PostPosted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 3:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, ask away. Everybody has a horrible time with the interface in the beginning, and it really takes practice and help to get over that.

Had my second siege. This was about fifty goblins, with three elite goblins leading squads with similar weapons. There were also a bunch of trolls in there. My biggest worry was the large squad of crossbowmen, but the elite goblin heading that squad was out at the front of his troops for some reason, so he was the first goblin to get dropped as they approached the gates. At that point his squad immediately scattered and took off, which was a huge relief since I'm pretty sure fortifications can get shot through from the other side. But with the crossbowmen gone it was pretty much a wash. A few Elven merchants (who'd been trading at the time) got killed but the majority of them were actually smart enough to leave the depot and made it out OK.

Aaaand just as the last few determined trolls were goring themselves on traps and the stragglers were fleeing for the map edge, a dragon showed up. She then proceeded to torch most of the of fleeing goblins with gigantic (like, 30x5 tiles in size) plumes of flame. I've never seen that before and it's pretty sweet to watch.

Now I want to allow the dwarves to go back outside again, to bury the dead and salvage ammo and so on, but this means meticulously 'f'orbidding every single corpse and piece of equipment that might lead them towards flaming death. I'm also not sure how aggressive dragons are, so I'm considering leaving a rotating guard at the front gates just in case she comes my way.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 6:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If it's anything like the hydra I faced, she'll hang out for a little bit and then bust a move straight towards your fort, although she spent a while chasing outside dwarves in circles for a while instead of going inside (which eventually happened and was a complete cluster-fuck).

Try and catch it and tame it.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Bulkor
.
.


Joined: 22 Dec 2006
Posts: 55

PostPosted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 1:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, speaking of clusterfucks, I slayed the dragon with a six-dwarf dogpile, although that was not my original intention.

What the dragon did was chase some poor wood burner or something back to the gate (I'd told dwarves not to go outside at some point, but if they're already outside when you give the order they'll just sort of wander around clutching their heads) and then burn about five dwarves and most of my roads. I don't know how you burn a road made of rocks, but they're not there anymore.

So I lumped all my able soldiers into one squad and marched them at the dragon. The plan had been to shoot bolts at it, but they decided to just bumrush the thing en masse instead. Maybe they were out of ammo; I coulda swore they were better about reloading now. Meanwhile, the fort was rapidly going mad with grief over all the deaths, guys starting tantrums and breaking shit and getting jailed; some of my soldiers threw tantrums mid-fight, and one champion went into deep melancholy (he continued to wrassle, as far as I can tell). Eventually somebody got a hold on the dragon's neck and, no joke, took her head clean off bare-handed. Only one actual casualty to that battle, surprisingly enough--the other champion got chomped. The melancholy guy will probably kill himself in the next month or so, though.

So now I have a dragon corpse I'm butchering, but the fort is in shambles--everybody's really depressed and keeps throwing tantrums. Some of these guys are probably going to do some combination of going nuts and dying, kicking off another wave of mourning. I'm not sure how this is going to pan out.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 2:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, when I finally took out the hydra, the aftermath was just too much to deal with, since about half the fort was getting depressed/smashing things apart and I eventually had to abandon it. I do wonder whether the dwarves are more unbalanced than they used to be. How many dwarves did you lose to the siege/dragon?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Bulkor
.
.


Joined: 22 Dec 2006
Posts: 55

PostPosted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 8:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think I lost 10 dwarves in the siege and dragon attack. That was still plenty enough to freak everybody out, though. It got to where something like 30 of them were in jail, surrounded by puddles of water and empty buckets because they kept throwing tantrums when people brought them water. I did make it to a new wave of immigrants, and food production was still going pretty smoothly, but there continued to be another dwarf going berserk (and getting killed, and their severed limbs stinking up the fort because nobody would take throw them out, etc.) every week or so.

New fort is going to be on an eeevil volcano.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Redeye
.
.


Joined: 02 Oct 2006
Posts: 986
Location: filth

PostPosted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 8:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bulkor wrote:
I think I lost 10 dwarves in the siege and dragon attack. That was still plenty enough to freak everybody out, though. It got to where something like 30 of them were in jail, surrounded by puddles of water and empty buckets because they kept throwing tantrums when people brought them water. I did make it to a new wave of immigrants, and food production was still going pretty smoothly, but there continued to be another dwarf going berserk (and getting killed, and their severed limbs stinking up the fort because nobody would take throw them out, etc.) every week or so.

New fort is going to be on an eeevil volcano.


Is it possible for various Dwarf Fortresses to be in the same world so the burnt out shells of old ones are scattered around?

Does starting a new fort necessarily mean generating a new world?

It would be cool if survivors could form an adventuring party and seek their fortune in the RPG mode, then maybe pick up followers and try for another community.
_________________
I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Redeye wrote:
Is it possible for various Dwarf Fortresses to be in the same world so the burnt out shells of old ones are scattered around?


Yep! In fact, there's a mechanic called Reclaim Fortress where your new set of dwarfs show up at the same site and attempt to take over the (now empty of dwarfs except perhaps inhabited by other things, especially if your fort ended by having everybody die) husk of the old fort, which will have some of the old equipment there as well (although usually in a dismantled state).

Quote:
Does starting a new fort necessarily mean generating a new world?


As noted above, no!

Quote:
It would be cool if survivors could form an adventuring party and seek their fortune in the RPG mode, then maybe pick up followers and try for another community.


While there isn't a way to put Adventure Mode characters in Fort Mode, that I know of, you can explore old Fort Mode fortresses with your character in Adventure Mode (if you can find them on the map) and fight whatever nasties might now be living in them and loot whatever stuff there might be left -- plenty of people build incredibly good armor and weapons not just for their dwarfs, it's because they know they can then find it in Adventure Mode.

In the future, there's plans for even more crossover between Modes and allow for more player impact on the game world. He's busy coding in Armies, Trade, Diplomacy and Religion right now.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Redeye
.
.


Joined: 02 Oct 2006
Posts: 986
Location: filth

PostPosted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 11:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So you could stockpile shit, kill everybody, recolonize, stockpile more shit, etc. etc.

Then have an uber-rich colony.

Armies, trade, diplomacy, and religion?

How about ideology.

Can I have a commie dwarf fortress?

Anarcho-syndicalist dwarrow?
_________________
I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 11:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Redeye wrote:
So you could stockpile shit, kill everybody, recolonize, stockpile more shit, etc. etc.

Then have an uber-rich colony.


Yes, you could, in theory, although dealing with the mess of restarting is more trouble than it's worth -- it's far easier to try and just make your current colony get to the uber-rich status itself.

Quote:
Armies, trade, diplomacy, and religion?

How about ideology.

Can I have a commie dwarf fortress?

Anarcho-syndicalist dwarrow?


That's pretty much up to the player, actually. Since you're in control of assigning jobs to people and there's always the option of offing your nobles, you have a fairly free hand in terms of dictating the social nature of your fort. A couple times I've thought about having a fort where everybody is cyclically drafted through the military for example.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Shapermc
Hot Sake!
Hot Sake!


Joined: 14 Oct 2004
Posts: 6279

PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 3:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Swimmy wrote:
I'll try again when I'm not so tired. Lord knows I'm way too far gone to read any of this thread.
Hey, I'm with you. I gave this game a lot of tries before I "got it" enough to start messing around without a tutorial. I eventually learned it by using THIS tutorial, then after I had accomplished almost everything on that I just kept the wiki open for help when I ran across something I didn't know or understand. Sometimes just entering a common thing into the wiki will garnish information you wouldn't have known otherwise (basically I use the wiki like a dictionary for the game).

EDIT: I don't know if this will make a difference for you, but I found that adding some minimal graphics to the game (which the game is easily equip to do, or I could just email you a rar with the graphics all ready to go if you want) made things much easier for me to monitor and know what's going on at a very quick glance w/o having to learn the interface, menus and what all the letters/colors stood for.
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail AIM Address
Swimmy
.
.


Joined: 16 Sep 2005
Posts: 990
Location: Fairfax, VA

PostPosted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, can you send that to me? I think it would help.

My #1 problem is that my dwarves simply won't stockpile stone. I thought I might need to dick up the gray blocks in the mountain, but that didn't do anything. I have no idea why not, but I figure I'm doing something horribly wrong. I'll figure it out when I get back in. It's really tiring to spend an hour messing around and have nothing to show for it except a little better knowledge of the hotkeys.
_________________

"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 12:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Have you designated a stone stockpile for them to put the stone in? I'm assuming that you haven't changed any of their labor settings, if you had turned off Stone Hauling for everybody, that would explain it.

I'm also assuming you've done some digging which will generate stone for hauling. Sorry if this is totally condescending; I just remember how frustrating it is to gain the base level of literacy in terms of how the game functions (related: the game is unpaused, right?).
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Swimmy
.
.


Joined: 16 Sep 2005
Posts: 990
Location: Fairfax, VA

PostPosted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 2:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

By the time I had to increase my wood stockpile for the third time while my stone stockpile was still empty, I figured something was wrong. I even figured out how to make sure everyone had "haul stone" turned on. I mined a room out of the mountain that was maybe 8x8 before I figured something was wrong. My miner dug into several gray apostrophes and percentage signs, which turned into question marks, but they soon disappeared and my stockpile stayed the same. Is it that you have to dig on the Z axis?
_________________

"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 4:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nope, digging on one slice of the Z axis should get you stone, are you getting the leftover stones when you dig out an area? That's the stone that gets put into the stockpile and with the default graphics, they're little ovals that vary in color, although they're usually gray (Microcline is blue, for example).

For example, in this shot:



Those ovals outside the cliff, with the yellow dwarf in the middle of them, those are stones in a stone stockpile.

Any screenshots that you can give would probably be helpful.

(Eventually, I think you'll find that stone stockpiles are more trouble than they're worth anyway, just because they generate so many hauling jobs. I've gotten in the habit of just leaving them lying around my forts.)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 12:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fantastic image of a cliff-based fort just starting off.

Of particular note is the giant web to the north of the fort. The dead batman makes me think that this is a giant cave spider web, that is, one made by a giant cave spider, which are perhaps the most notorious creatures in the game.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Redeye
.
.


Joined: 02 Oct 2006
Posts: 986
Location: filth

PostPosted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 12:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Perhaps it can be contained and integrated into your defenses.
_________________
I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 1:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's far more likely to spit webbing at you from halfway across the map, then run over, inject you with poison and start ripping your limbs off for fun.

That said, having a tame one would be great for your economy -- giant cave spider silk items sell for a ridiculous amount of money.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Shapermc
Hot Sake!
Hot Sake!


Joined: 14 Oct 2004
Posts: 6279

PostPosted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 1:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Swimmy, This should be the file. It doesn't have graphics for EVERYTHING, but it has enough so that you can understand most things at a glance.
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail AIM Address
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 1:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Two attempts to get drinking water for the fort over winter = two fort-destroying floods. Channeling large amounts of water is kind of tricky, even when you've got multiple floodgates. Nothing like seeing clouds of mist rushing up staircases as you realize that the water's not going to stop rising.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 11:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quick explanation of how to do some good stuff with magma, with screenshots:

Upper floor of Magma Workshop Area:



Lower floor of Magma Workshop area:



Note, the pictures don't line up, sorry about that, still learning how to work with The Gimp.

Alright, so how this worked is that both areas were mined out ahead of time, you can use the pillars to see how they line up with each other, basically I dug out a large rectangular room with a corridor going north and then built another one beneath it. I then built a vertical steel grate in the lower corridor (that's the darker bit of magma that you can see in the second picture). I chose this location because as it worked out, the last square of the upper corridor was situated such that if I channeled it out, it broke the last bit of rock between the lower corridor and the magma (and hence this is why the last square of the upper corridor is a plus sign, that's for the floor that I put in after I was done).

Once I did this, the magma flowed into the lower corridor (and not the upper because magma doesn't use the same fluid rules as water) and into the lower room, which I'd completely closed off, putting a floor over the stairs that I needed for the miners to work down there.

Then, all I needed to do when I needed a square to put a magma forge or smelter in was to channel out the floor in one spot, then plop the workshop over it.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Bulkor
.
.


Joined: 22 Dec 2006
Posts: 55

PostPosted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 10:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's pretty hot (hyuck hyuck) and I look forward to copying something like it whenever I get to the magma on this new site. Right now I'm just hoping these damn dwarves can stop eating, drinking or sleeping long enough to get the bare necessities built and wall off the fort entrance. There's skeletal forest animals in them thar hills. There's also a long, long list of deceased creatures on my creatures list already, which makes me wonder if a) some bug spawned them inside a hill or what have you or b) some horrible cave beasties (like one of the spiders above) killed them all.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
D-A-I-S
.
.


Joined: 26 Nov 2006
Posts: 123

PostPosted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 12:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey, if I have a laptop that gets overexcited just running a few firefox tabs and starts breathing really heavily and painfully when I ask it to render 3D for more than four minutes, would it basically give up the ghost if I asked it to run Dwarf Fortress? I've heard the game takes a lot of horsepower, but is that just for generation, or is that all through the game?

I want - no, need an RPG-style sandbox. And all the ones I think I could run on this convenient laptop are either ASCII roguelikes or games I would have to frequent RPGCodex to know about.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bulkor wrote:
There's also a long, long list of deceased creatures on my creatures list already, which makes me wonder if a) some bug spawned them inside a hill or what have you or b) some horrible cave beasties (like one of the spiders above) killed them all.


My guess with this is that you have an underground river that drains into a chasm or something along those lines, because currently if one of these gets generated, it takes roughly five seconds for all the creatures that are placed there to get swept into the vortex/smashed into the rocks/burned up in magma/taken off-screen (which I think is handled as death)/etc. It should select for mainly underground aquatic monsters; I've heard stories of regular beasts having this happen to them as well though.

D-A-I-S wrote:
Hey, if I have a laptop that gets overexcited just running a few firefox tabs and starts breathing really heavily and painfully when I ask it to render 3D for more than four minutes, would it basically give up the ghost if I asked it to run Dwarf Fortress? I've heard the game takes a lot of horsepower, but is that just for generation, or is that all through the game?


Through the game. There's a lot of calculations and stuff going on every turn, so if you have a slow machine, it will eat up a lot of CPU and drop the framerate of the game to pretty low. I would install and see how horrific it is and whether you can handle it or not (in terms of frustration). Just be ready to think that your computer's crashed when it's handling world generation and such, because it hangs for a reasonably long time on my machine and it's kinda (sorta) close to top-of-the-line.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Bulkor
.
.


Joined: 22 Dec 2006
Posts: 55

PostPosted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 11:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

As the owner of a chunky laptop myself, jacking down the framerate is really the way to go. You don't lose out on much visual information and things run at a decent speed.

I'm guessing it is a cave river that's killing all these monsters, because upon closer inspection they are all either old version river critters or what the wiki identifies as new river critters. As of one season the death toll is 14 snakemen, 8 lizardmen, 5 frogmen, 4 mudmen, 3 giant olms and 2 cave crocodiles.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, I'm guessing that they all got instantly swept to their doom shortly after the dwarfs arrived (most likely you have a cave river that drains into a chasm). Tarn is at least aware of the problem, so it should be fixed (eventually).

On the bright side, this means that you have a cave river.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 9:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Discussion of starting clothing for nobles on the Dwarf Fortress forums.

Notable because Tarn shows up to explain why it's so.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Redeye
.
.


Joined: 02 Oct 2006
Posts: 986
Location: filth

PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 11:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

" You can't blame a dwarf for liking the feel of giant mole leather."
_________________
I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 5:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dwarf Fortress now available for the Mac. Intel only, Tarn says he's working on PPC.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Harveyjames
the meteor kid
the meteor kid


Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 3636

PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 5:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm not going to play this game because it's not 3D.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 6:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Technically, it is! It runs in OpenGL.

It appears to be 2D though, it's true.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

D-A-I-S wrote:
Hey, if I have a laptop that gets overexcited just running a few firefox tabs and starts breathing really heavily and painfully when I ask it to render 3D for more than four minutes, would it basically give up the ghost if I asked it to run Dwarf Fortress? I've heard the game takes a lot of horsepower, but is that just for generation, or is that all through the game?


I just thought about this -- the game does allow you to decide how much physical area is allocated in-game per fort, so it's possible that if you start a mini-fort (plus the new version allows you to create mini-worlds so that world creation is even faster), you might be able to run this without having it chug too much.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Bulkor
.
.


Joined: 22 Dec 2006
Posts: 55

PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Toady posted a link to a really great interview on Gamasutra yesterday. They spend a lot of time discussing the nuts and bolts, but my personal favorite is Toady's explanation of where they get "generic fantasy" from:

"Tolkien, D&D, myths, and of course, the movie Beastmaster. (We like the part where the evil priest is like, "You'll be sacrificed to 'The God of AAaa,'" like they didn't even bother thinking of a name, just powering through on the power of their badassedness.)"
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 4:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've gotten three ambushes so far -- the first one was a group of kobolds who showed up next to the trade depot while the human caravan was in town. I didn't have to anything as the caravan guards happily chased them down and killed them.

The next two came at the same time and it was a Goblin Swordsmen group and Goblin Axemen group. To make things more difficult, they came at the same time that I was trading with the elves and when a new group of immigrants showed up while they were chasing around the few dwarves that got stuck outside.

So after forbidding the dwarves from going outside (and dealing with hideous spam on the announcements from all the jobs this canceled), I sat and watched the dwarves and animals that were stuck outside run around in circles with the goblins chasing them. Eventually they came running to my fort entrance, where, after slaughtering the elves (seriously, they went down way easier than I had expected) they tried to bumrush the fort, which led to the first few getting mowed down by my line of iron spear weapon traps, then turning tail and fleeing.

All told, I actually wound up being +2 for dwarves on the deal, since they didn't quite get all the immigrants. I'm having to mass-build coffins and I'll have to concentrate more on getting my military ready -- right now I have precisely one military dwarf, although he's Unbelievably Tough and wearing a full suit of Steel Plate Mail, which should make him pretty nasty. Once I get a few more tanks built and allow them to wrestle to get their armor-using skills up, I should be able to have a military capable of going toe-to-toe with at least the smaller groups of goblins.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Bulkor
.
.


Joined: 22 Dec 2006
Posts: 55

PostPosted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 8:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm surprised to hear the elves got taken out so easy. Maybe I should worry less about pissing them off by clear-cutting the forests. Also, I'm kind of impressed that you build coffins for non-nobles. I honestly just leave the bodies out to rot and make stuff from their bones.

Recently I've been trying to find a way to get through an aquifer with lava. I wouldn't bother, except the only volcano maps with freshwater of any kind seem to be the aquifer ones. I've even been doing a lot of reloading on these attempts, which is pretty much cheating, but considering that when you botch magma channeling or whatever you close off entire portions of the fort and/or kill dwarves, and there's a limited number of magma+aquifer sites to begin with, and limited water supplies on those, screw it.

The way it's supposed to work is that you dig a big channel into the aquifer from one layer above, creating an empty space that immediately floods with water. Then you dig a tunnel to some magma and let it hit that water, where it'll become obsidian. Then you dump some water on the incoming magma flow to cut it off, wait for the obsidian in the aquifer to cool, and the carve staircases through it. It all SOUNDS relatively easy but you'd be surprised how many ways you can botch that.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 10:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I seem to have good luck with finding non-aquifer sites with magma and a stream by searching the edges of all the major mountain ranges in a default-size world. That's the kind of site I'm working with now and it's really nice -- all I did was cut a channel from the stream into the cliff that my fort is on top of and have stairs going down to a large pool area so that my dwarves can drink/collect water there. I've thought about utilizing pumps run off of waterwheels or windmills to get the water up higher and maybe make wells; that's a lot of work though.

And yeah, the elves got completely smashed by the goblins, I remember thinking "oh boy, here comes some carnage" when the first elf and his mule ran into the goblins and all that happened was one of the swordsgoblins hacking off the elf's left arm with such violence that it flew 20 squares and then hit a cliff face in a splatter of blood.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 10:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tarn's got the civilizations building roads between settlements (the roads are the while lines between the dots (settlements).

This is in preparation for what he's calling the Army Arc, which will mean that the civilizations in the world will grow and fight with each other, including during world generation. When playing in fort mode, you will be able to send out forces against other settlements and when you're attacked, it will actually be the forces associated with neighboring civilizations.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Thu Jul 10, 2008 1:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

We're sneaking up on another release, roughly scheduled for the 23rd. The additions are going to be pretty crazy.

From Tarn's Development Notes:

Quote:
I was testing some adventure mode conversation responses in a human town. The high priest of the god of revenge came down the stairs, and he was an elf with a human name. I talked to him and learned that both of his parents had goblin names, and his grandparents had elven names. So I guessed that his grandparents had been abducted and that the humans had then liberated the tower, placing the goblin-named parents under human control before they had their child. This was more or less correct, but a bit more happened.

So, way back when, the demon was causing all sorts of trouble, fighting both the humans and the elves and destroying their cities. This went on for 40 years -- an elf managed to tear off the demon's nose about halfway through this rampage, but he couldn't finish the job because he had lost a limb in the fight before the nose-removal and lost the rest of his limbs afterward, prior to being burned to death. Eventually the demon was shot in the year 45 and the humans took over the goblin tower. Many of the goblins fled into the mountains, and others were enslaved, including some of their abductees.

Ngoso and Bax were a couple of elven children born to abducted parents that were left alone to live in the goblin tower under their new human rulers. When they grew up, they both started shops -- The Enjoyable Paddle and the Lessened Healer -- in the year 45, and in the year 54 they both moved to the human town of Beersreined. The next year they were married and they both decided to wander the wilds looking for monsters to kill (they never found any, as the giants were off on the other side of the world and the dragon was dead). Ngoso had ten children in Beersreined, the third of which became the high priest of the god of revenge after both he and his father were converted by the new temple in 146. Ngoso never converted as she had become a dragon worshipper during one of the attacks prior to its death.

As a sidenote, the elves and the humans didn't get along very well, and in the year 60 the elves actually drove the humans out of the goblin tower they had conquered. The elves had no desire to live in a goblin tower so they left it abandoned. At this point, the goblin refugees that had been wandering through the mountains for fifteen years reclaimed the tower. They held it for a total of two years before being defeated by the humans again, who were then able to maintain control of the site until play began. I didn't check if any of the goblins managed to escape again.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Scratchmonkey
.
.


Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 1:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

A new Dwarf Fortress release approaches!

Just starting up a new game myself, world gen is ridiculously fast compared to previous versions and when you export the picture of your world, you also get a very basic history and list of important sites in your world.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Bulkor
.
.


Joined: 22 Dec 2006
Posts: 55

PostPosted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 3:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm tooling around with this as well but so far the nuts and bolts of fortress mode seem pretty much the same. Also, I didn't get a history file after world gen, which is sort of odd. I'm waiting to see what kind of antics ensue once I encounter some civilizations.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Inconnu
.
.


Joined: 21 Sep 2008
Posts: 1

PostPosted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 11:22 pm    Post subject: DW Tileset Reply with quote

Great Tile set for Dwarf Fortress
Updated to 40d

http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/df.htm
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Redeye
.
.


Joined: 02 Oct 2006
Posts: 986
Location: filth

PostPosted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 2:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm thinking of making DF my New Year's Resolution.

Anybody still playing?


edit:

Made me feel all fuzzy:

"I've just been reading through the monthly report from Bay 12 Games -- the sick Things behind Dwarf Fortress -- and apparently the game pulled in more than US$25,000 over the past eleven months."
_________________
I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.


Last edited by Redeye on Mon Dec 22, 2008 3:21 am; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
getter77
.
.


Joined: 22 Oct 2007
Posts: 24

PostPosted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 5:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Awesome that the donations have done so much good thus far.

Here's an awesome dealie I found that might reinvigorate folk and draw some new blood....good vids.

http://www.youtube.com/user/captnduck
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    The Gamer's Quarter Forum Index -> Club for the Study and Appreciation of Interactive Audio Visual Media All times are GMT - 6 Hours
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7  Next
Page 6 of 7

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group