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Dwarf Fortress 0.31.25: probably got flying cars powered by plump helmets and beards
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It's not just the UI. I mean, the UI is god awful, but it is possible to get around in it and, other than certain areas like the military screen, you get the hang of it pretty quickly.
DF is a hard game to get into because of the graphics, and the UI, and the zero in-game tutoring, and the enormous hill of learning necessary even to make it as far as an embark that you won't die in during the first year, and the complexity.
Consider: If DF had a perfect, Apple-QA-Tested UI and a friendly graphics set that made it obvious exactly what you were looking at, during your first game you would still have to figure out the world-gen options screen, guess what attributes of a region are desirable, guess what skills your dwarves should have, guess what supplies you'll need. Then, after your initial embark... what? You need to make your dwarves somewhere to live, but to do that you need to mine, and to do that you need miners, who need picks. You need to make beds, but first you need a carpentry shop, but first you need construction material, which means either mining or wood-cutting, and then you need a carpenter. Your dwarves are hungry, so you need food. But that means a farm, which means irrigating or knowing to dig in loam, and then you'll need seeds, which either means processing food (for which you'll need a still or a farmer's shop, which need architecture and brewing), or gathering food (you'll need an herbalist), or having known to bring them in the first place. And then there's planting. Which plants can be eaten? Do you need to use the fertilizing option? You had to irrigate once, possibly; do you need to do it again?
Dwarf Fortress is an incredibly deep, complicated game, with absolutely no self-contained learning system. Getting a fort to the point where you can die from something fun instead of just having your dwarves all die of thirst is, itself, difficult when you first start playing. Minecraft had the same problem, initially, with the utter lack of a "what the hell do I do now?" tutorial, but reading one page of crafting recipes was enough to get you going. Getting up to speed on Dwarf Fortress involves hours of video tutorials and/or reading Magma-Wiki.
So much potential hidden under a mountain of tedium and obscurity. I think another large part of why I haven't played in so long is because of the huge disappointment I feel when I realize this. When I reach that tipping point of tedium that causes me to close the game and do my best to not think about it for a couple months.
Raptr profile
Perhaps he's...
not trying to be a commercial success?
I think it makes much more sense when you stop thinking about it from the perspective of a product that is meant to be financially successful and instead see it as Toady's journey through life. just read that NYTimes article. He fully intends, at least now, to spend his entire life working on this game. I'm sure it's going to turn into something that's very difficult to actually play, even more so than now, but watching someone work on something so important to them is really inspiring. This whole process is like a piece of art to me.
Raptr profile
I'm just dissapointed that he isn't a commercial success, he might not want to be he damn well deserves it after putting in years of effort on this game and it is just out of his reach. A years work on the UI and it could easily function well enough that anybody could pick up and play the game, combined with the tutorials videos and an updated wiki tutorial means that it would reach a much larger audience.
If he was commercially successful he wouldn't have to worry about bills at all and he could work on the game at his own pace with no stress as all.
Saying that I know nothing I have to say is of any importance to him and it wont change anything, I'm really looking forward to the next update; vampire dwarves are going to be so awesome.
For example: in some menus you make a square by starting at one corner and dragging the cursor to the opposite corner.
But in other menus you make squares my increasing the dimensions with IJKLM or some other random letters.
WHY? There is literally no reason to have those two actions be different, because they are the same action. It doesn't make any sense. And that's just one example.
What is even more frustrating than that is when his fanboys praise DF for having such 'great' bugs.
Raptr profile
His new development schedule seems to be more geared towards dealing with the annoying bugs though. After each content release he does a few big-fix releases.
Was just about to say this. Comparing this games bugs to any other game is great, there are so many which is a shame but damn do we get some of the funniest ones.
Giving birth to an iron chair must be painful. :winky:
Well it's not like somebody is going to break your door down and kidnap you for having an opinion but I just don't see the point of taking that perspective.
I think it's like listening to an alternate world Hendrix who, for some reason, never bothers to tune his guitar. So much potential that's being limited by something relatively minor and easy to fix*.
* Yeah, a new UI/tileset/API for modders isn't that easy, but then again, he is a hyper-genius.
linked for hugeness: http://www-images.theonering.org/torwp/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/DwarvesFinal.jpg
I wonder if Toady's feature algorithm was used?
I ran in to my first ever Cavern. Don't think they were in when I last played. The amount of wealth that was just waiting to be tapped down there was orgasmic. I had my newly minted squad of Hammerdwarfs go down there are start killing anything that didn't have a beard. Wasn't too long and I had a nice little outpost down there. Now it is pretty much my Fort away from Fort. The outpost has it's own squad, workshops, population, farms, everything dorfs need. I basically export ores, gems, wood, spider-webs, and the like from my outpost to my main Fort. The main Fort then exports finished goods to my outpost. It is weird.
My squads have three Forgotten Beasts to their kill tally. I don't know if they start off easy and get harder, seems that way. The one that breathed fire was a bit of a problem, lost a good number of dorfs that day.
I fucking love war dogs. Most of my outpost population has one assigned to them. Those brave and loyal hounds have saved numerous lives.
On ground level I have this river that runs from left to right at the top of the map. A Goblin siege appeared on the other side of the river. Since the river forms a natural moat the goblins were stuck there while I prepared a large Marksdwarf squad to pick them off from my side of the river. . . then winter came. I forgot rivers freeze over. Still broke the siege without too much fuss though so all was well.
I am sure it won't be long and it will all come tumbling down in a glorious blaze.
If you get a chance can you post your maps? I'm sure people would be interested in what you've done. You can do it here.
In recent news, I completed a long ass road from my outpost to my main fort. I have now begun a massive constuction project to build walls alongside the parts of the road that are in the open since I don't want the dorfs who haul the goods from the outpost to the fort to be attacked (or interrupted grr). I will then carve fortifications in the wall (I think I can do that). My end goal is to have my squad of Marksdwarves I've been training patrol the Trade Road and unleash hell (from behind the safety of the wall) on any beardless monstrosity that gets near.
Oh and I have a Baron now.
Oh 2x, I am seriously thinking about walling up the entrance to the outside world. The cavern has provided me with pretty much everything I really use the outside world for (farms, trees, water). Plus my population is at a pretty healthy 120-some so I don't really need migrants. My livestock population is fairly strong too I think. Hell, I am damn near experiencing a "pig-splosion".
Trade would be the biggest thing I'd be missing out on, but I really don't feel like I need anything. Certainly not from the elves and humans.
I might try it, maybe it will all end in Fun.
That's what I usually do when/if I make it to the cavern-discovering stage of things.
One of the orangutans died via a bath of boiling chimpanzee blood. It doesn't get more epic.
Image by Sharpwriter on deviantart.com
This time I'm planning on leaving at least 1z level above and below each 'floor' so I can make easy plumbing connections. And maybe a small closed walkway around the central staircase to pass power/water vertically between floors.
hhuumm...and finding a site with a stream for easy hydro-power...
I must plot!
Turns out alot of immigrants are unskilled and it doesn't take much farm power to keep a whole fort alive. 1 stonecrafter (a profession I consider cheating) is creating enough wealth that I can trade everything I want from caravans using only crowns and toys. Once you have the basics down the beginning seasons can be downright boring and I have a bunch of dudes sitting around because I've only given them a couple tasks, the skilled guys have all the required ones taken care of!
Had my first real experience with injury. That is to day the kind that forced me to use the hospital system rather than the dwarf dying outright. Me trying to mine out the cone part of a rocky hill peak caused a small cave in. A celebrated stonecrafter was obliterated and my best miner had her left arm and leg more or less destroyed. I was frantically looking from the wiki to the game as I set up an impromptu hospital zone and got all the right materials together. Fortress efficiency took a hit as I turned jobs off so a couple splints and traction bench could get done faster. The miner was cleaned, sutured, bones set, and only had Pale under the wounds screen. Things were looking pretty bright right before she gave in to infection.
LoL: Nerf Love
Steam: TIFunk
I won't even have to specify their function as I'm confident that as soon as he starts adding them he'll go "Ok, so what to Leeches need to do..." and launch off on an obscure tangent allowing them to be added to a hospital as medical supplies for removing poison and dealing with necrotic flesh.
Bonus points if your medical dorf can get the same project obsession thing that crafting dorfs do.
Oh yeah, Purring maggots. I was trying to think of the vermin you could milk but came up blank. Maggots would do just fine. Leeches for limb reattachment would be great, if only because that could lead to medic-dogs who fetch lost appendages.
I suspect the bugs that would result from medic dogs would be quite entertaining. Medic dog fetches a limb, gets it back to the hospital but then his hunger level makes him eat it, the doctor attempts to take the limb from the dog and it all ends in tears.
Alt: Medic dog fetches goblin limb, Dwarf throws tantrum when the doctor removes the bandages for the first time.
queue making godlike silver hammer and placing it in a treasure room for an adventurer to find.
If only there were a way to rig it so that, when they found it, it came down on their head and made sure they were dead.
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I want nothing more than to build up an army and actually send them somewhere
LoL: Nerf Love
Steam: TIFunk
Now I have a nice little ambusher marksdwarf who has collected a nice belt of goblin scalps. Adventure mode is so much Fun.
Although, I think it would be nice to play as a Goblin, I know there are mods out there, but at this point I can't play DF without May-Green's tile pack.