Dwarf Fortress

[bhodi]

DF 31.11 released. Lots of fixes, all the showstopper bugs have been resolved and this is the first version in my opinion that's worth playing since the merge and military change.

Funds Tiger posted:

    Combat was the focus last time, and this time I moved over to equipment and training. There are a number of bugs left to fix, but a lot of the largest problems should be cleaned up and training should be somewhat usable now. I wanted to shift ammunition over to a default system where it doesn't get tied to particular squads/hunters (with the old way left as a default for people that want to control it more), since that remains one of the more annoying things, but I didn't have time to finish it up. Just make sure you have some extra bolts sitting around, and 'm'-'f' should show you how your squads are doing ammo-wise. Barracks should also probably default to a non-reserved/non-purposed system, though that's not as bad as ammunition reservation is. In any case, I'll be moving on to the month-end project and entity populations, though I'll release again sooner if something comes up.

    Crash fixes
    (*)stopped crash when individual squad members were selected in 's' and you go back to 's' after leaving
    (*)fixed crash moving from ammo assignment creation to material assignment
    (*)fixed reclaim crash
    (*)fixed text mode crash in SDL version (Baughn)

    Major bug fixes
    (*)freed up assigned items properly when uniforms are overwritten
    (*)freed up equipment properly from empty positions when squad is disbanded
    (*)made civilian jobs respect attributes properly
    (*)fixed turtle (vermin) shell crafts/helms/gauntlets/etc.
    (*)stopped squad/off-time training activities from persisting when guy goes off to eat, do squad orders, die, etc.
    (*)made inactive/ordered squads free up their old training activities more quickly
    (*)stopped off-time training from gumming up squad training barracks assignment
    (*)removed dead/crazy/etc. dwarves from squads
    (*)dropped injured dwarves out of their activities properly
    (*)stopped bleeding dwarves from thinking they need to jump on the ground and be dragged to the hospital
    (*)stopped miners/woodcutters coming out of the military from thinking they had a claim to old tools
    (*)made people doing off-time training stop if it becomes inappropriate (kicked out of squad, etc.)
    (*)made quota countdown respect reactions again

    Other bug fixes/tweaks
    (*)stopped body-component-based artifacts from defaulting out to iron figurines
    (*)made skill rust display properly on 'v' and made temporary skill loss conditions not display on military screen
    (*)changed rust display for skills
    (*)restricted shell moods to dwarves with shell prefs
    (*)stopped metal goblet/flask construction jobs from shuffling metal of product
    (*)fixed up idle strings for non-soldiers vs. lingering squad activities
    (*)decreased effect of low self-discipline on individual training
    (*)sped up training organization
    (*)WINDOWEDX/Y values respected when moving to windowed mode from full screen (Baughn)
    (*)fixed problem with skill demonstration session timer
    (*)added timers for sparring and individual combat drills
    (*)adjusted sparring pulled shots for recent combat balancing
    (*)adjusted skill rates for all practice activities
    (*)put forest start biome on humans (for proactive forest clearing)
    (*)changed hauling encumbrance speed formula and made hauling build atts slowly
    (*)stopped picks from being available to indiv choice soldiers
    (*)required subtype match for armor even under "partial match"
    (*)made off-duty archery training occur for indiv choice ranged weapons (not just crossbow)
    (*)cleaned up various raw typos (see file_changes.txt)
    (*)fixed a bunch of the "you" announcements in dwarf mode
    (*)made counter to stop excessive party attendence work properly
    (*)made it set up default ammo profiles for ranged squads

Sadly, dwarf therapist does not work with this version (yet). Mike Mayday has not updated his graphical DF yet. Hopefully soon.

[lac]

Sadly, dwarf therapist does not work with this version (yet).

Too bad, I went through the list looking for this fix. It's no gamestopper but it can get annoying.

[FatuousTwat]

Sadly, dwarf therapist does not work with this version (yet). Mike Mayday has not updated his graphical DF yet. Hopefully soon.

This is pretty much what I'm waiting for.

[Rasix]

Hmm, I think my tileset is a bit messed up.  I'm guessing guybrush hasn't been updated for DF2010.  I'm getting a lot of weird icons for ores and most of my trees are letters.

edit: I'll try the mayday one included..  the changes are interesting so far.  A bit more time consuming to get started with farming.

[Vaiti]

My wife and I made a modified Mayday tileset to better suit our likes. Last we updated it was back in 40d9.
Waiting for some of the nastier bugs in the latest release to get sorted before we get back into playing again.

[climbjtree]

I like it.

[bhodi]

Mike Mayday updated DF to 31.12!

[bhodi]

OK, I found a new love. Forget having to deal with updates, memory offsets, custom packs, all that BS.

Presenting, The Lazy Newb Pack!

This is what it contains:

This is what it looks like:

I've never used quickfort but holy crap. That's awesome. You create CSVs for digging out and it overlays them onto DF. You can even place beds, drawers and such, too! I'm gonna totally try it.

[LK]

Now it's starting to speak a language I can understand.

[Ironwood]

This is what happens when accountants take over Dungeons and Dragons.

[lamaros]

I had a look around and this seems to be the most recent Dwarf Fortress thread. So, arise!

I have decided to give the game a go. I am wondering if there are any veteran players still having a go and if so do they have tips regarding needed/recommended add-ons and tilesets for the current version of the game?

[Zaljerem]

I've a deep love for this game, though I haven't been playing it much lately.

I use Mayday's pack ... and Dwarf Therapist ... what bhodi linked looks interesting though.

[Sheepherder]

I recommend the Lazy Pack.  It will trim the neckbeard back some with minimal fuss.

[FatuousTwat]

Mike Mayday/Phoebus graphic pack(your choice), and Dwarf Therapist is all you really need.

The rest is pretty much fluff.

[Sheepherder]

Yes, but the goal is that he not be pissed by the time he designates his first tunnel, which is a forgone conclusion, because he still as worldgen and finding a suitable site.

[FatuousTwat]

Didn't see anything to help finding a site, and worldgen is easy as hell now.

[Sheepherder]

Therefore he should break his fingers to make it challenging, amirite?

Seriously, it's exquisitely suited for newbies.  Decompress -> Go (through all the bullshit you normally go through in DF to get to the fun).

[FatuousTwat]

Therefore he should break his fingers to make it challenging, amirite?

What does this even mean?

With the phoebus/mayday packs, all you do is download it, unzip it, and hit the .exe. It's not like you have to install the graphics yourself like you did a couple years ago.

And generating a world takes 4 keystrokes.

Does the newb pack also come with a fort already built and self sufficient? That is the only way I can see it being easier than what I've just described.

[Sheepherder]

All the important init options are accessible through a GUI, a batch file exists for swapping graphics sets, and a prefabricated low difficulty world exists.

[FatuousTwat]

Ah, that I didn't know. I only change like 2 things in the init (show fps and some other little thing like no autosaving).

I actually have had a problem with the difficulty being too low in the last few versions. I never get sieged, even when I provoke it.

[Ratman_tf]

Presenting, The Lazy Newb Pack!

Wow. That makes DF look almost palatable.

Oh, and I'm , I know...

[lamaros]

I am enjoying this. So far I have go some of the basics down and building farms and the like. My problems are getting a metal working industry going, having a military that works, and the detail with that stuff. I have trouble keeping up with changes and often have half or more of the population (currently about 50) idle. Just made my first artifact!

I keep wanting to abandon my current fortress and restart with better design and knowledge, but in the spirit of the game I am going to try and start some wars and so worth instead.

[Ironwood]

One thing that bugs me is that the more 3rd party utilities that come out, with nice interfaces, the less excuse for the Main App being 'Like that' there is.

Stonesense alone makes me wonder why the hell we can't see that in game.

[Ironwood]

4 dorfs died of thirst, so I built a well with a flooding room underneath, all powered by levers and stairs and shit.

They had a party when I put in the well (no, seriously, when did they start doing that ?) and 4 of them passed out during it.  At this point I flicked the switch to fill the well and, well, it overflowed a little and jetted into the room, soaking the party with level 4 water, pulling the sleeping dorfs into the room below (7 water) and drowning them.

This game is still awesome.

So, the score is 4 dead of thirst and 4 dead of, well, the opposite...

[Sheepherder]

Parties are at least as old as 40d.

[lamaros]

I thought dwarves only drank water if they were injured? Did you run out of alcohol or something?

I ha way too much food (1000 plus for 30 dwarves) so I stopped farming and put the stockpile for alcohol. Now I have more manageable food, but 900 seeds.

Military training is super slow...

If some could give this game a good user interface, with mouse, it would be truly great. Unfortunatly I feel like I'm fighting the menus to do stuff a bit often.

[Sheepherder]

It only gets worse.  Personally, I consider the late game fort management stuff to be an unplayable mess, because there is only the barest of automation.

[Muffled]

I actually took to capping my fortresses at around fifty dwarves, few enough that I could still personally manage each one wiping his ass.  More than that and I ended up having hordes of unemployed stinking up the place and drinking my beer.

[Lantyssa]

I rarely made it long enough to get 50 dwarves before starting a new game, but I always had the intentions of building secondary and tertiary fortresses to split up the population if I did.

[bhodi]

I did try to get back into this fairly recently, but I've lost the memory of all of the keystrokes and it was a struggle just to build buildings. I got bored, and then went to play minecraft.

[CharlieMopps]

I played Dwarf Fortress for a while...
Eventually I realized, I had every helper utility installed, was using every cheat, my dwarves stats were all maxed out and were practically Gods... and even then, I was barely surviving. I still would miss some tiny detail that would lead to total catastrophe. At that point I decided that while I was impressed with the game... it is obviously one of the most detailed games ever created, it was just too god damned difficult to be fun.

[Rasix]

Heh, just give me a graphics pack and I'm good to go. The matrix, as unintuitive as it is, becomes second nature by the time you've got your apartments dug out.

If anything, the builds from his latest major update were too damn easy just because you never got attacked.  It gets boring when shit doesn't go wrong because someone went crazy after their husband was murdered by goblins. 

I don't think I can play now, because I just don't have the time.  Mainly because I don't work from home anymore.  Plus, I'm not quite ready to have this new PC build playing DF yet.  Although, I bet it'd handle catsplosions much better.

Anyone know if he's addressed all of the major bugs introduced since the big update? It seems like, from his updates, that he wandered off to work on the adventure part that no one gives a shit about.

[Ironwood]

125 dwarves all starving to death.  Um.  I did something wrong somewhere...

[Rasix]

May I suggest food?

[Paelos]

May I suggest food?

Or possibly chewy rocks?