Wait. Is this why my FPS is so garbage in my current fort?
Yep. I think recently discovered. In the new release, it will be impossible to mark doors pet-impassable, at least temporarily until it can be fixed. Cats would stand on one side of the door and try to walk through it and fail over and over forever.
Tarn has also moved to a more modern compiler, which has found new optimizations to apply at a low level and speeds the game up a bit.
Someone else recently discovered that 20% of every frame is spent in checking line of sight/proximity for the sake of getting scared and running away etc., and much of that is going through the list of all creatures to find out which ones are dead or in a cage so that they aren't considered in this check. If these creatures were moved to a separate list, it would skip all of that and save so much time.
Okay. New plan. Starting from inside the fort, dig a winding maze of single-tile hallways working their way to the surface. Use what fuel I have remaining to craft like 50 iron spiked balls and some iron spikes for good measure. Make like 20 dwarves into mechanics and lining the passageway with weapon traps. Set up a few different points where drawbridges can seal off the passageways if the zombies get too far so they'll have to turn back. This can work.
The good news: it did, mostly, work. The vast majority the zombies have been destroyed.
The bad news: half my fort decided that what would be a really excellent idea is to run out and clean all the zombie blood off of the trap hallway. I disabled a bunch of labors, I forbade all the bodies and equipment, I fixed my burrows, I tried everything. They could not be dissuaded. At least a dozen dwarves died to this, including most of my original seven. My badly beaten starting carpenter was miraculously rescued by a very heroic engraver, who then immediately turned around and hurled himself back into the zombie horde and died.
The other bad news: are nine zombies left. Some of them have their legs so thoroughly mangled that I'm not sure they could get back into the trap hallway if they wanted to, but there are also a couple of fliers and a mostly-intact human with some steel equipment. I'm not sure how best to entice them into the hallway or othewise finish them off. I think they might be getting distracted by all these juicy poets that keep showing up.
EDIT: Okay, one of the poets made it into the death hallway and lured all but one of the non-flying zombies to their doom, including the steel-clad human I was worried about. There's now one thoroughly mangled human, a raven man, a crow man, and two a bushtit man and woman. At this point I'm probably going to just have to make ten untrained hammerdwarves and hope for the best.
I rebuilt my militia under the leadership of Iton Spiderbane. Unfortunately, before I really had time to recover, an undead siege showed up.
Like an idiot, I went over two and a half years without installing a floodgate or drawbridge, and I made the brilliant choice to hold off until winter to finally do it since the dwarven caravan was about to arrive. I tried to wall off the depot before the zombies limped their way over, but a slightly speedier-than-average elf zombie scared off the workers before they could finish.
In a panic, I ordered my new, barely-trained militia to clog the passageway while I ordered another wall built a little further in. The gambit succeeded, but the entire militia died to their faces getting kicked off in the process. At least there's no necromancer, so I have a chance of living long enough to bury them.
Lessons learned:
- Build a proper gate in the first winter.
- Doors do not block wild animals unless you mark them pet-impassible, which is an FPS killer and not really an option.
- Doors marked "Forbidden" DO block wildlife and hostiles from getting through unless they're building destroyers. This would have saved my second military if I had known.
- Be more aggressive about cage-trapping chokepoints in the caverns. Maybe terraform them a bit to create more chokepoints. I did a little bit of this but I should have done it sooner and on a bigger scale.
- It's probably worthwhile to add some mazelike defenses between your fortress and the surface/caverns. There aren't really THAT many important labors that send your dwarves outside. Building destroyers can't destroy constructed floors or walls, so temporary shortcuts in the first year or two that get plugged up later are fine.
Wait. Is this why my FPS is so garbage in my current fort?
There's actually a post about this from this week over on the DF forums - it does happen, but usually more in edge cases with dozens of restricted doors. What the guy doing actual performance profiling found was that basically each tick every unit on the map tries to check to see if every other unit on the map can see it or it can see them, and that's accounting for ~%20 of CPU performance per cycle. Pathfinding (which is what the doors start messing up), by comparison, was at worst ~6%.
It'll be interesting to see if there is some performance improvement to be had from tweaking that now that it's been brought to light.
I rebuilt my militia under the leadership of Iton Spiderbane. Unfortunately, before I really had time to recover, an undead siege showed up.
Like an idiot, I went over two and a half years without installing a floodgate or drawbridge, and I made the brilliant choice to hold off until winter to finally do it since the dwarven caravan was about to arrive. I tried to wall off the depot before the zombies limped their way over, but a slightly speedier-than-average elf zombie scared off the workers before they could finish.
In a panic, I ordered my new, barely-trained militia to clog the passageway while I ordered another wall built a little further in. The gambit succeeded, but the entire militia died to their faces getting kicked off in the process. At least there's no necromancer, so I have a chance of living long enough to bury them.
Lessons learned:
- Build a proper gate in the first winter.
- Doors do not block wild animals unless you mark them pet-impassible, which is an FPS killer and not really an option.
- Doors marked "Forbidden" DO block wildlife and hostiles from getting through unless they're building destroyers. This would have saved my second military if I had known.
- Be more aggressive about cage-trapping chokepoints in the caverns. Maybe terraform them a bit to create more chokepoints. I did a little bit of this but I should have done it sooner and on a bigger scale.
- It's probably worthwhile to add some mazelike defenses between your fortress and the surface/caverns. There aren't really THAT many important labors that send your dwarves outside. Building destroyers can't destroy constructed floors or walls, so temporary shortcuts in the first year or two that get plugged up later are fine.
Wait. Is this why my FPS is so garbage in my current fort?
There's actually a post about this from this week over on the DF forums - it does happen, but usually more in edge cases with dozens of restricted doors. What the guy doing actual performance profiling found was that basically each tick every unit on the map tries to check to see if every other unit on the map can see it or it can see them, and that's accounting for ~%20 of CPU performance per cycle. Pathfinding (which is what the doors start messing up), by comparison, was at worst ~6%.
It'll be interesting to see if there is some performance improvement to be had from tweaking that now that it's been brought to light.
I've noticed a number of animals getting stuck on doors, I'll try turning it off and see how much it helps.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
my last fort also featured a waterfall, I decided to build the entrance 1 z level below the top of the waterfall so it would mist the bridge when guests entered our sacred halls. All went well, until the elves showed up. I designed a system to push the elves and over the edge of the waterfall, but pulling back the bridge usually yeeted a dwarf or two. No matter. Things were going pretty well, with a few dwarves clinging for dear life for seasons above the water with giant hippos taking a swim.
That was until the werebear showed up. I had been out of the DF loop for a year or two, so I had forgotten that werebeasts pass their curse on to others. It had managed to maul 2 dwarves fairly badly who then got brought into the hospital.... and then well... then the fun began.
It was a really good warmup game considering how rusty I was, my current fort I embarked in the first cavern and that has been interesting. I wish migrants would come in via the caves though.
It is done. The undead siege is broken and the dead are buried. I even managed it in time for some summer migrants (who were all completely useless, of course).
I'm undecided if I want to press on or restart after having lost so many skilled dwarves. This run has definitely been a good refresher on game mechanics in either case.
Okay. New plan. Starting from inside the fort, dig a winding maze of single-tile hallways working their way to the surface. Use what fuel I have remaining to craft like 50 iron spiked balls and some iron spikes for good measure. Make like 20 dwarves into mechanics and lining the passageway with weapon traps. Set up a few different points where drawbridges can seal off the passageways if the zombies get too far so they'll have to turn back. This can work.
The good news: it did, mostly, work. The vast majority the zombies have been destroyed.
The bad news: half my fort decided that what would be a really excellent idea is to run out and clean all the zombie blood off of the trap hallway. I disabled a bunch of labors, I forbade all the bodies and equipment, I fixed my burrows, I tried everything. They could not be dissuaded. At least a dozen dwarves died to this, including most of my original seven. My badly beaten starting carpenter was miraculously rescued by a very heroic engraver, who then immediately turned around and hurled himself back into the zombie horde and died.
The other bad news: are nine zombies left. Some of them have their legs so thoroughly mangled that I'm not sure they could get back into the trap hallway if they wanted to, but there are also a couple of fliers and a mostly-intact human with some steel equipment. I'm not sure how best to entice them into the hallway or othewise finish them off. I think they might be getting distracted by all these juicy poets that keep showing up.
EDIT: Okay, one of the poets made it into the death hallway and lured all but one of the non-flying zombies to their doom, including the steel-clad human I was worried about. There's now one thoroughly mangled human, a raven man, a crow man, and two a bushtit man and woman. At this point I'm probably going to just have to make ten untrained hammerdwarves and hope for the best.
Make sure you check the Orders menu for things like auto-forbid enemy equipment on death and no clearing up corpses outside. Best to wait until there's no danger then claim the stuff you want.
Make sure you check the Orders menu for things like auto-forbid enemy equipment on death and no clearing up corpses outside. Best to wait until there's no danger then claim the stuff you want.
Or just assign a burrow that doesn't include the trap hallway.
I tried both of these, but it seemed like once the dwarves were en route to the task, they refused to give up even if I changed the order, removed the destination from their assigned burrow, manually forbade the target item, or disabled the labor for the individual. In retrospect I think a lot of them wanted to claim dropped clothing items for personal use, rather than haul them to stockpiles, which may be harder to control.
If I had ordered dropped items forbidden before mining out the last tile, and deleted the dangerous portion of the burrow immediately after, I'm sure I could have prevented the catastrophe, but once the dwarves committed themselves to doing the stupid task I couldn't dissuade them.
The outpost delivered the good news that we were to be elevated to a barony. I recommended my blacksmith Id Lushomakrul for promotion, one of the few survivors of my original seven. Things were finally looking up after all the tragedy we'd faced.
I spent some time trapping the first cavern layer, for safety and in hopes of securing a breeding pair of something interesting, but the expedition was cut short when a Forgotten Beast with poison gas showed up. Almost everyone made it inside, but one unlucky weaver was one tile away when I was forced to seal the doors. Amusingly enough, the Forgotten Beast slammed him into the door and he fell on a cage trap. He might still be alive in there, but I can't afford the risk in getting his cage inside.
During all that commotion, a wereass was spotted, but by the time I looked, he was already fleeing in human form. Maybe nobody was bitten?
No such luck. One month later, somebody turned right in the middle of the tavern. It could have been a lot worse than it was; only a couple were killed and three bitten before the beast was skewered by the militia captain.
The potentially-infected had to be dealt with quickly. I dug out a prison for them only to realize that dwarves can't be arbitrarily assigned to constraints. So I built three levers, turned off lever operating for everyone but those three, and ordered the levers pulled repeatedly. Once they were all inside, I locked all the doors. Problem solved. A bunch of dogs and a peahen got stuck in there with them, plus one of them had a baby, but what can you do?
I felt bad for the poor things, so I channeled a hole in the roof and threw a barrel of food and alcohol down for them. I went about my business for a bit, and a day before the full moon I went back to observe.
The room was empty.
The doors are still locked. The food chute isn't even adjacent to any walls. How the heck did they get out?! Did they jump a Z-level straight up? I have no idea. I ordered them back to the levers immediately, but it was too late. Only one was re-imprisoned; the other two were loose in the fortress.
I was much less lucky this time. A dozen dwarves were killed, including four hammerdwarves and all but one of my remaining starting group (a humble miner/engraver). Id Lushomakrul's baron appointment wasn't even official yet.
Of the four injured dwarves I was able to identify, two were bitten, including my chief medical dwarf. The other two are hammerdwarves, one of whom was only punched and the other of whom was "lucky" enough to have their left arm ripped off at the elbow without the fangs breaking the skin.
Clearly the afflicted need to be buried much deeper. Perhaps I can assign them picks and give them new lives for themselves in the deeper caverns...
Switch: SW-2431-2728-9604 || 3DS: 0817-4948-1650
+6
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
The outpost delivered the good news that we were to be elevated to a barony. I recommended my blacksmith Id Lushomakrul for promotion, one of the few survivors of my original seven. Things were finally looking up after all the tragedy we'd faced.
I spent some time trapping the first cavern layer, for safety and in hopes of securing a breeding pair of something interesting, but the expedition was cut short when a Forgotten Beast with poison gas showed up. Almost everyone made it inside, but one unlucky weaver was one tile away when I was forced to seal the doors. Amusingly enough, the Forgotten Beast slammed him into the door and he fell on a cage trap. He might still be alive in there, but I can't afford the risk in getting his cage inside.
During all that commotion, a wereass was spotted, but by the time I looked, he was already fleeing in human form. Maybe nobody was bitten?
No such luck. One month later, somebody turned right in the middle of the tavern. It could have been a lot worse than it was; only a couple were killed and three bitten before the beast was skewered by the militia captain.
The potentially-infected had to be dealt with quickly. I dug out a prison for them only to realize that dwarves can't be arbitrarily assigned to constraints. So I built three levers, turned off lever operating for everyone but those three, and ordered the levers pulled repeatedly. Once they were all inside, I locked all the doors. Problem solved. A bunch of dogs and a peahen got stuck in there with them, plus one of them had a baby, but what can you do?
I felt bad for the poor things, so I channeled a hole in the roof and threw a barrel of food and alcohol down for them. I went about my business for a bit, and a day before the full moon I went back to observe.
The room was empty.
The doors are still locked. The food chute isn't even adjacent to any walls. How the heck did they get out?! Did they jump a Z-level straight up? I have no idea. I ordered them back to the levers immediately, but it was too late. Only one was re-imprisoned; the other two were loose in the fortress.
I was much less lucky this time. A dozen dwarves were killed, including four hammerdwarves and all but one of my remaining starting group (a humble miner/engraver). Id Lushomakrul's baron appointment wasn't even official yet.
Of the four injured dwarves I was able to identify, two were bitten, including my chief medical dwarf. The other two are hammerdwarves, one of whom was only punched and the other of whom was "lucky" enough to have their left arm ripped off at the elbow without the fangs breaking the skin.
Clearly the afflicted need to be buried much deeper. Perhaps I can assign them picks and give them new lives for themselves in the deeper caverns...
The infected don't need food or drink, they will heal completely every new moon. Also, they are building destroyers, so you need to wall/bridge them in. Best bet is probably to try and challenge the forgotten beast with them. Or flood them.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
The outpost delivered the good news that we were to be elevated to a barony. I recommended my blacksmith Id Lushomakrul for promotion, one of the few survivors of my original seven. Things were finally looking up after all the tragedy we'd faced.
I spent some time trapping the first cavern layer, for safety and in hopes of securing a breeding pair of something interesting, but the expedition was cut short when a Forgotten Beast with poison gas showed up. Almost everyone made it inside, but one unlucky weaver was one tile away when I was forced to seal the doors. Amusingly enough, the Forgotten Beast slammed him into the door and he fell on a cage trap. He might still be alive in there, but I can't afford the risk in getting his cage inside.
During all that commotion, a wereass was spotted, but by the time I looked, he was already fleeing in human form. Maybe nobody was bitten?
No such luck. One month later, somebody turned right in the middle of the tavern. It could have been a lot worse than it was; only a couple were killed and three bitten before the beast was skewered by the militia captain.
The potentially-infected had to be dealt with quickly. I dug out a prison for them only to realize that dwarves can't be arbitrarily assigned to constraints. So I built three levers, turned off lever operating for everyone but those three, and ordered the levers pulled repeatedly. Once they were all inside, I locked all the doors. Problem solved. A bunch of dogs and a peahen got stuck in there with them, plus one of them had a baby, but what can you do?
I felt bad for the poor things, so I channeled a hole in the roof and threw a barrel of food and alcohol down for them. I went about my business for a bit, and a day before the full moon I went back to observe.
The room was empty.
The doors are still locked. The food chute isn't even adjacent to any walls. How the heck did they get out?! Did they jump a Z-level straight up? I have no idea. I ordered them back to the levers immediately, but it was too late. Only one was re-imprisoned; the other two were loose in the fortress.
I was much less lucky this time. A dozen dwarves were killed, including four hammerdwarves and all but one of my remaining starting group (a humble miner/engraver). Id Lushomakrul's baron appointment wasn't even official yet.
Of the four injured dwarves I was able to identify, two were bitten, including my chief medical dwarf. The other two are hammerdwarves, one of whom was only punched and the other of whom was "lucky" enough to have their left arm ripped off at the elbow without the fangs breaking the skin.
Clearly the afflicted need to be buried much deeper. Perhaps I can assign them picks and give them new lives for themselves in the deeper caverns...
The infected don't need food or drink, they will heal completely every new moon. Also, they are building destroyers, so you need to wall/bridge them in. Best bet is probably to try and challenge the forgotten beast with them. Or flood them.
So the wiki claimed when I checked it in retrospect, but neither the one sealed werebeast nor the Forgotten Beast showed any interest in knocking down locked stone doors. I'm not really sure why.
The outpost delivered the good news that we were to be elevated to a barony. I recommended my blacksmith Id Lushomakrul for promotion, one of the few survivors of my original seven. Things were finally looking up after all the tragedy we'd faced.
I spent some time trapping the first cavern layer, for safety and in hopes of securing a breeding pair of something interesting, but the expedition was cut short when a Forgotten Beast with poison gas showed up. Almost everyone made it inside, but one unlucky weaver was one tile away when I was forced to seal the doors. Amusingly enough, the Forgotten Beast slammed him into the door and he fell on a cage trap. He might still be alive in there, but I can't afford the risk in getting his cage inside.
During all that commotion, a wereass was spotted, but by the time I looked, he was already fleeing in human form. Maybe nobody was bitten?
No such luck. One month later, somebody turned right in the middle of the tavern. It could have been a lot worse than it was; only a couple were killed and three bitten before the beast was skewered by the militia captain.
The potentially-infected had to be dealt with quickly. I dug out a prison for them only to realize that dwarves can't be arbitrarily assigned to constraints. So I built three levers, turned off lever operating for everyone but those three, and ordered the levers pulled repeatedly. Once they were all inside, I locked all the doors. Problem solved. A bunch of dogs and a peahen got stuck in there with them, plus one of them had a baby, but what can you do?
I felt bad for the poor things, so I channeled a hole in the roof and threw a barrel of food and alcohol down for them. I went about my business for a bit, and a day before the full moon I went back to observe.
The room was empty.
The doors are still locked. The food chute isn't even adjacent to any walls. How the heck did they get out?! Did they jump a Z-level straight up? I have no idea. I ordered them back to the levers immediately, but it was too late. Only one was re-imprisoned; the other two were loose in the fortress.
I was much less lucky this time. A dozen dwarves were killed, including four hammerdwarves and all but one of my remaining starting group (a humble miner/engraver). Id Lushomakrul's baron appointment wasn't even official yet.
Of the four injured dwarves I was able to identify, two were bitten, including my chief medical dwarf. The other two are hammerdwarves, one of whom was only punched and the other of whom was "lucky" enough to have their left arm ripped off at the elbow without the fangs breaking the skin.
Clearly the afflicted need to be buried much deeper. Perhaps I can assign them picks and give them new lives for themselves in the deeper caverns...
The infected don't need food or drink, they will heal completely every new moon. Also, they are building destroyers, so you need to wall/bridge them in. Best bet is probably to try and challenge the forgotten beast with them. Or flood them.
I ran a couple of experiments with a giant vs two werelizards. The giant carried a legendary crossbow but still died to the werelizards in three different experiments.
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
0
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
The outpost delivered the good news that we were to be elevated to a barony. I recommended my blacksmith Id Lushomakrul for promotion, one of the few survivors of my original seven. Things were finally looking up after all the tragedy we'd faced.
I spent some time trapping the first cavern layer, for safety and in hopes of securing a breeding pair of something interesting, but the expedition was cut short when a Forgotten Beast with poison gas showed up. Almost everyone made it inside, but one unlucky weaver was one tile away when I was forced to seal the doors. Amusingly enough, the Forgotten Beast slammed him into the door and he fell on a cage trap. He might still be alive in there, but I can't afford the risk in getting his cage inside.
During all that commotion, a wereass was spotted, but by the time I looked, he was already fleeing in human form. Maybe nobody was bitten?
No such luck. One month later, somebody turned right in the middle of the tavern. It could have been a lot worse than it was; only a couple were killed and three bitten before the beast was skewered by the militia captain.
The potentially-infected had to be dealt with quickly. I dug out a prison for them only to realize that dwarves can't be arbitrarily assigned to constraints. So I built three levers, turned off lever operating for everyone but those three, and ordered the levers pulled repeatedly. Once they were all inside, I locked all the doors. Problem solved. A bunch of dogs and a peahen got stuck in there with them, plus one of them had a baby, but what can you do?
I felt bad for the poor things, so I channeled a hole in the roof and threw a barrel of food and alcohol down for them. I went about my business for a bit, and a day before the full moon I went back to observe.
The room was empty.
The doors are still locked. The food chute isn't even adjacent to any walls. How the heck did they get out?! Did they jump a Z-level straight up? I have no idea. I ordered them back to the levers immediately, but it was too late. Only one was re-imprisoned; the other two were loose in the fortress.
I was much less lucky this time. A dozen dwarves were killed, including four hammerdwarves and all but one of my remaining starting group (a humble miner/engraver). Id Lushomakrul's baron appointment wasn't even official yet.
Of the four injured dwarves I was able to identify, two were bitten, including my chief medical dwarf. The other two are hammerdwarves, one of whom was only punched and the other of whom was "lucky" enough to have their left arm ripped off at the elbow without the fangs breaking the skin.
Clearly the afflicted need to be buried much deeper. Perhaps I can assign them picks and give them new lives for themselves in the deeper caverns...
The infected don't need food or drink, they will heal completely every new moon. Also, they are building destroyers, so you need to wall/bridge them in. Best bet is probably to try and challenge the forgotten beast with them. Or flood them.
I ran a couple of experiments with a giant vs two werelizards. The giant carried a legendary crossbow but still died to the werelizards in three different experiments.
Hmmm. External chamber closed by a bridge, move everyone inside, open the bridges...
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
My current fort is sort of generally grinding along slowly, without much of note. We're at 125 dwarves or so, and aren't getting much for migrants. I was considering starting another fort, but with platinum so close, and what seems to be a lot of design improvements, I'm hesitant to start again.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
I've been playing and streaming basically every night, and honestly I'm so excited for the release it's not funny. Mostly I'm super excited to see what madness exposing this game to the Steam Workshop brings.
Also had something kinda new - had a vampire come in on a migrant wave (that part's not new), but she had zero trade skills, and very few social skills. Usually if someone interesting shows up, I at least give their relationships a cursory glance, but this lady didn't have any of the obvious signs besides a huge family. She was also only 70ish, so not even super old.
Missed the first person that got sucked dry, but caught the message on the 2nd one. Eventually went through the painstaking process of going through the thoughts of all 75ish dwarves to find her being horrified of watching people die.
Not to put too much of a damper on things, but just to temper expectations.
People with early access to the Steam release have confirmed that it is not fully playable without the mouse. Hotkeys have changed quite a bit so you'll have to relearn muscle memory, but beyond that it seems that any menu without hotkeyed options (such as when choosing which bed to place etc.) must be scroll-wheeled and clicked-on. Hopefully someday there will be support for arrow keys and enter, but not right now. Mouse is required.
Also, the military screen is mostly gone, replaced with a smaller squad menu. This means that a lot of the former functionality of the military screen is also gone, including setting up training bolts to use and the ability to set a civilian alert. Instead for now you will have to manually add all dwarves and animals to burrows in the case of an emergency, and remove them when the danger passes.
And as stated earlier it will lack adventure mode for possibly 6 months, as well as third party tools like Dwarf Therapist and DFHack which will have their biggest start-from-square-one adjustment in a long time.
Major streamers and Youtubers have been sort of implying they'll be trying it out but might not be jumping into it enthusiastically. BlindIRL has an easier time seeing the high contrast ASCII and is 400 years deep into a 1000-year fort challenge. Kruggsmash is a bit of a Dwarf Fortress luddite (bless him) and likes to stick with what he knows, keybinds he's used to etc., and also has his own ongoing fort stories. So from a visibility standpoint, the new release might not get a lot of streamer exposure right off the bat either.
Given the numerous things to work on, I hope a high priority is getting full keyboard support, but I don't expect that to be first on their list unless lots of people give feedback about it.
I'll still play it; the thing I'm probably looking forward to the most is the new/remastered Simon Swerer music. But it's going to be rough for a bit.
The reason I'm posting here is that the story of this game is as much your stories as it is there's. And while we will be focused on the design and development of the game over the past 20 years I think the community for a game that's been out this long always has something to add to the story.
Basically (as the blog also outlines) I want to know if there are parts of this game's history that I should know about. Eras in the community that have come and gone. Stories or memes that have persistent like legends themselves. As much as I have tried to learn the game over the covid years, I feel like there is a lot about the community I don't have eyes on and so any help you can give me and the team would be greatly appreciated.
So if you have the time I'd really appreciate you replying in this post with some stuff you think we should know about. Be it stories, memes, community moments, stuff you'd like to know more about, or just things you like about the game.
I tried a half evil biome once before and you'll be surprised, (not really) at how much undead stuff comes from the evil side. Undead Ravens attacking my chickens? No prob. Undead camels OTOH can destroy an entire squad in full armor.
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
0
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
I tried a half evil biome once before and you'll be surprised, (not really) at how much undead stuff comes from the evil side. Undead Ravens attacking my chickens? No prob. Undead camels OTOH can destroy an entire squad in full armor.
Yeah, it's been a while. We'll see long I last.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Not to put too much of a damper on things, but just to temper expectations.
People with early access to the Steam release have confirmed that it is not fully playable without the mouse. Hotkeys have changed quite a bit so you'll have to relearn muscle memory, but beyond that it seems that any menu without hotkeyed options (such as when choosing which bed to place etc.) must be scroll-wheeled and clicked-on. Hopefully someday there will be support for arrow keys and enter, but not right now. Mouse is required.
Also, the military screen is mostly gone, replaced with a smaller squad menu. This means that a lot of the former functionality of the military screen is also gone, including setting up training bolts to use and the ability to set a civilian alert. Instead for now you will have to manually add all dwarves and animals to burrows in the case of an emergency, and remove them when the danger passes.
And as stated earlier it will lack adventure mode for possibly 6 months, as well as third party tools like Dwarf Therapist and DFHack which will have their biggest start-from-square-one adjustment in a long time.
Major streamers and Youtubers have been sort of implying they'll be trying it out but might not be jumping into it enthusiastically. BlindIRL has an easier time seeing the high contrast ASCII and is 400 years deep into a 1000-year fort challenge. Kruggsmash is a bit of a Dwarf Fortress luddite (bless him) and likes to stick with what he knows, keybinds he's used to etc., and also has his own ongoing fort stories. So from a visibility standpoint, the new release might not get a lot of streamer exposure right off the bat either.
Given the numerous things to work on, I hope a high priority is getting full keyboard support, but I don't expect that to be first on their list unless lots of people give feedback about it.
I'll still play it; the thing I'm probably looking forward to the most is the new/remastered Simon Swerer music. But it's going to be rough for a bit.
I mean, I'm definitely a little disappointed to hear about some of the changes, but I learned all the old hotkeys and idiosyncrasies the first time because the game was worth it in the end, and it doesn't appear like they've changed that core value. Thank you for the heads up on things that might need to be relearned, but A) I'm buying it because I feel like everyone who has worked on this deserves the money, and B ) because I feel like they've made some useful and interesting changes that I want to interact with. I'll figure out the new bits as I go, I'm sure.
I also realize that my willingness to relearn has no bearing on how the existing community will interact with it, and I can only hope it turns out well for everyone involved.
Brody on
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Just wanted to say that in my own experience as someone who learned and used all the hotkeys, you can do almost everything quicker with the mouse. It's only going to be a problem for people who use mousless devices, like Sporky.
Setting up bedrooms works extremely quickly for example.
Well, very specifically as someone looking forward to playing it on the Steam Deck.
I bet a lot of things will be easier, like if on the trade screen I don't have to hit enter-enter-down to ask for plump helmets, and then specify 5 of them, and then go to the next one in the list...if I can drag select, oh my god.
But even in other games I often like keeping both hands on the keyboard to get things done quickly if I can get away with it.
Just wanted to say that in my own experience as someone who learned and used all the hotkeys, you can do almost everything quicker with the mouse. It's only going to be a problem for people who use mousless devices, like Sporky.
Setting up bedrooms works extremely quickly for example.
Bedrooms is literally the thing I was most excited to learn. And then I also found out the bin bug has been fixed, so it might have fallen to #2.
Just wanted to say that in my own experience as someone who learned and used all the hotkeys, you can do almost everything quicker with the mouse. It's only going to be a problem for people who use mousless devices, like Sporky.
Setting up bedrooms works extremely quickly for example.
Bedrooms is literally the thing I was most excited to learn. And then I also found out the bin bug has been fixed, so it might have fallen to #2.
But don't you want to designate the 40 bedrooms you just set up by hand, including all the furniture and getting over your own need for order so that every bedroom is laid out the same?
Just wanted to say that in my own experience as someone who learned and used all the hotkeys, you can do almost everything quicker with the mouse. It's only going to be a problem for people who use mousless devices, like Sporky.
Setting up bedrooms works extremely quickly for example.
Bedrooms is literally the thing I was most excited to learn. And then I also found out the bin bug has been fixed, so it might have fallen to #2.
But don't you want to designate the 40 bedrooms you just set up by hand, including all the furniture and getting over your own need for order so that every bedroom is laid out the same?
...have you been watching my streams? Was literally complaining about my brain not letting me do more organic forts last night.
Let me tell you guys, playing with this soundtrack is awesome. It's incredible how well it fits the feel of the game.
It's definitely improving my work day. The song "Drink & Industry" especially is fun
+3
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
So... My latest fort failed. Apparently my bridge broke? When the lever pulled, it disappeared, although when I check that spot, it says the bridge is still there? And when I pull it again it comes back down. But it didn't stop anything from shooting all my animals, or from climbing out of the 1 deep moat that hadn't finished filling... I guess I'll try and wait till Tuesday before I start again.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
That's screwed me up several times. And I swear I thought I made a raising bridge. Does the new version give any indication what bridge you built? Iirc only dfhack can currently tell you if you screwed up the construction. (Or just testing the lever out ahead of time before the zombie hordes are stomping over the bridge.)
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
0
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
Sounds like you've built a retracting bridge instead of a raising one.
FML... I don't know that I've ever intentionally built a retracting bridge. I thought for sure it broke, because there has been people/animals standing on the bridge when it went, and they didn't get hurt at all.
I was also confused because it ended up leaving some blocks on the ground next to the bridge.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Posts
Yep. I think recently discovered. In the new release, it will be impossible to mark doors pet-impassable, at least temporarily until it can be fixed. Cats would stand on one side of the door and try to walk through it and fail over and over forever.
Tarn has also moved to a more modern compiler, which has found new optimizations to apply at a low level and speeds the game up a bit.
Someone else recently discovered that 20% of every frame is spent in checking line of sight/proximity for the sake of getting scared and running away etc., and much of that is going through the list of all creatures to find out which ones are dead or in a cage so that they aren't considered in this check. If these creatures were moved to a separate list, it would skip all of that and save so much time.
The good news: it did, mostly, work. The vast majority the zombies have been destroyed.
The bad news: half my fort decided that what would be a really excellent idea is to run out and clean all the zombie blood off of the trap hallway. I disabled a bunch of labors, I forbade all the bodies and equipment, I fixed my burrows, I tried everything. They could not be dissuaded. At least a dozen dwarves died to this, including most of my original seven. My badly beaten starting carpenter was miraculously rescued by a very heroic engraver, who then immediately turned around and hurled himself back into the zombie horde and died.
The other bad news: are nine zombies left. Some of them have their legs so thoroughly mangled that I'm not sure they could get back into the trap hallway if they wanted to, but there are also a couple of fliers and a mostly-intact human with some steel equipment. I'm not sure how best to entice them into the hallway or othewise finish them off. I think they might be getting distracted by all these juicy poets that keep showing up.
EDIT: Okay, one of the poets made it into the death hallway and lured all but one of the non-flying zombies to their doom, including the steel-clad human I was worried about. There's now one thoroughly mangled human, a raven man, a crow man, and two a bushtit man and woman. At this point I'm probably going to just have to make ten untrained hammerdwarves and hope for the best.
There's actually a post about this from this week over on the DF forums - it does happen, but usually more in edge cases with dozens of restricted doors. What the guy doing actual performance profiling found was that basically each tick every unit on the map tries to check to see if every other unit on the map can see it or it can see them, and that's accounting for ~%20 of CPU performance per cycle. Pathfinding (which is what the doors start messing up), by comparison, was at worst ~6%.
It'll be interesting to see if there is some performance improvement to be had from tweaking that now that it's been brought to light.
I've noticed a number of animals getting stuck on doors, I'll try turning it off and see how much it helps.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
That was until the werebear showed up. I had been out of the DF loop for a year or two, so I had forgotten that werebeasts pass their curse on to others. It had managed to maul 2 dwarves fairly badly who then got brought into the hospital.... and then well... then the fun began.
It was a really good warmup game considering how rusty I was, my current fort I embarked in the first cavern and that has been interesting. I wish migrants would come in via the caves though.
I'm undecided if I want to press on or restart after having lost so many skilled dwarves. This run has definitely been a good refresher on game mechanics in either case.
Make sure you check the Orders menu for things like auto-forbid enemy equipment on death and no clearing up corpses outside. Best to wait until there's no danger then claim the stuff you want.
I tried both of these, but it seemed like once the dwarves were en route to the task, they refused to give up even if I changed the order, removed the destination from their assigned burrow, manually forbade the target item, or disabled the labor for the individual. In retrospect I think a lot of them wanted to claim dropped clothing items for personal use, rather than haul them to stockpiles, which may be harder to control.
If I had ordered dropped items forbidden before mining out the last tile, and deleted the dangerous portion of the burrow immediately after, I'm sure I could have prevented the catastrophe, but once the dwarves committed themselves to doing the stupid task I couldn't dissuade them.
The outpost delivered the good news that we were to be elevated to a barony. I recommended my blacksmith Id Lushomakrul for promotion, one of the few survivors of my original seven. Things were finally looking up after all the tragedy we'd faced.
I spent some time trapping the first cavern layer, for safety and in hopes of securing a breeding pair of something interesting, but the expedition was cut short when a Forgotten Beast with poison gas showed up. Almost everyone made it inside, but one unlucky weaver was one tile away when I was forced to seal the doors. Amusingly enough, the Forgotten Beast slammed him into the door and he fell on a cage trap. He might still be alive in there, but I can't afford the risk in getting his cage inside.
During all that commotion, a wereass was spotted, but by the time I looked, he was already fleeing in human form. Maybe nobody was bitten?
No such luck. One month later, somebody turned right in the middle of the tavern. It could have been a lot worse than it was; only a couple were killed and three bitten before the beast was skewered by the militia captain.
The potentially-infected had to be dealt with quickly. I dug out a prison for them only to realize that dwarves can't be arbitrarily assigned to constraints. So I built three levers, turned off lever operating for everyone but those three, and ordered the levers pulled repeatedly. Once they were all inside, I locked all the doors. Problem solved. A bunch of dogs and a peahen got stuck in there with them, plus one of them had a baby, but what can you do?
I felt bad for the poor things, so I channeled a hole in the roof and threw a barrel of food and alcohol down for them. I went about my business for a bit, and a day before the full moon I went back to observe.
The room was empty.
The doors are still locked. The food chute isn't even adjacent to any walls. How the heck did they get out?! Did they jump a Z-level straight up? I have no idea. I ordered them back to the levers immediately, but it was too late. Only one was re-imprisoned; the other two were loose in the fortress.
I was much less lucky this time. A dozen dwarves were killed, including four hammerdwarves and all but one of my remaining starting group (a humble miner/engraver). Id Lushomakrul's baron appointment wasn't even official yet.
Of the four injured dwarves I was able to identify, two were bitten, including my chief medical dwarf. The other two are hammerdwarves, one of whom was only punched and the other of whom was "lucky" enough to have their left arm ripped off at the elbow without the fangs breaking the skin.
Clearly the afflicted need to be buried much deeper. Perhaps I can assign them picks and give them new lives for themselves in the deeper caverns...
The infected don't need food or drink, they will heal completely every new moon. Also, they are building destroyers, so you need to wall/bridge them in. Best bet is probably to try and challenge the forgotten beast with them. Or flood them.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
I ran a couple of experiments with a giant vs two werelizards. The giant carried a legendary crossbow but still died to the werelizards in three different experiments.
Hmmm. External chamber closed by a bridge, move everyone inside, open the bridges...
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Also had something kinda new - had a vampire come in on a migrant wave (that part's not new), but she had zero trade skills, and very few social skills. Usually if someone interesting shows up, I at least give their relationships a cursory glance, but this lady didn't have any of the obvious signs besides a huge family. She was also only 70ish, so not even super old.
Missed the first person that got sucked dry, but caught the message on the 2nd one. Eventually went through the painstaking process of going through the thoughts of all 75ish dwarves to find her being horrified of watching people die.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
People with early access to the Steam release have confirmed that it is not fully playable without the mouse. Hotkeys have changed quite a bit so you'll have to relearn muscle memory, but beyond that it seems that any menu without hotkeyed options (such as when choosing which bed to place etc.) must be scroll-wheeled and clicked-on. Hopefully someday there will be support for arrow keys and enter, but not right now. Mouse is required.
Also, the military screen is mostly gone, replaced with a smaller squad menu. This means that a lot of the former functionality of the military screen is also gone, including setting up training bolts to use and the ability to set a civilian alert. Instead for now you will have to manually add all dwarves and animals to burrows in the case of an emergency, and remove them when the danger passes.
And as stated earlier it will lack adventure mode for possibly 6 months, as well as third party tools like Dwarf Therapist and DFHack which will have their biggest start-from-square-one adjustment in a long time.
Major streamers and Youtubers have been sort of implying they'll be trying it out but might not be jumping into it enthusiastically. BlindIRL has an easier time seeing the high contrast ASCII and is 400 years deep into a 1000-year fort challenge. Kruggsmash is a bit of a Dwarf Fortress luddite (bless him) and likes to stick with what he knows, keybinds he's used to etc., and also has his own ongoing fort stories. So from a visibility standpoint, the new release might not get a lot of streamer exposure right off the bat either.
Given the numerous things to work on, I hope a high priority is getting full keyboard support, but I don't expect that to be first on their list unless lots of people give feedback about it.
I'll still play it; the thing I'm probably looking forward to the most is the new/remastered Simon Swerer music. But it's going to be rough for a bit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/z76lrh/were_making_a_dwarf_fortress_documentary_noclip/
It is raining dwarf blood.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Yeah, it's been a while. We'll see long I last.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
I mean, I'm definitely a little disappointed to hear about some of the changes, but I learned all the old hotkeys and idiosyncrasies the first time because the game was worth it in the end, and it doesn't appear like they've changed that core value. Thank you for the heads up on things that might need to be relearned, but A) I'm buying it because I feel like everyone who has worked on this deserves the money, and B ) because I feel like they've made some useful and interesting changes that I want to interact with. I'll figure out the new bits as I go, I'm sure.
I also realize that my willingness to relearn has no bearing on how the existing community will interact with it, and I can only hope it turns out well for everyone involved.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Setting up bedrooms works extremely quickly for example.
I bet a lot of things will be easier, like if on the trade screen I don't have to hit enter-enter-down to ask for plump helmets, and then specify 5 of them, and then go to the next one in the list...if I can drag select, oh my god.
But even in other games I often like keeping both hands on the keyboard to get things done quickly if I can get away with it.
Bedrooms is literally the thing I was most excited to learn. And then I also found out the bin bug has been fixed, so it might have fallen to #2.
But don't you want to designate the 40 bedrooms you just set up by hand, including all the furniture and getting over your own need for order so that every bedroom is laid out the same?
Want to play co-op games? Feel free to hit me up!
...have you been watching my streams?
Will still buy it on Steam.
Just bought it on Bandcamp, myself
It's definitely improving my work day. The song "Drink & Industry" especially is fun
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
FML... I don't know that I've ever intentionally built a retracting bridge. I thought for sure it broke, because there has been people/animals standing on the bridge when it went, and they didn't get hurt at all.
I was also confused because it ended up leaving some blocks on the ground next to the bridge.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Want to play co-op games? Feel free to hit me up!