Dwarf Fortress video tutorials

[sidereal]

For all of those intrigued by Dwarf Fortress but turned off by the ridiculously inscrutable interface and near total lack of documentation, some limey has put together a series of video tutorials on Youtube which make it slightly less inscrutable.

http://uk.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5A3D7682BDD48FC2

Also, even if you don't play, I highly recommend watching the development notes via RSS.  Toady is brilliant-slash-crazy.  He's currently working on the tissue layers of all entities, so the game models hair growth, depth of scarring, and the amount of retrievable goo left over after something dies, depending on how it's killed.  And a short-lived bug caused all dwarves to instantly explode on startup because the boiling temperature of their blood was set wrong.  Awesome.

[ashrik]

She called my vanity license plate “inscrutable.”
ICU81MI - hilarious!

[tazelbain]

Man I'd love to see Toady's code.

[Fabricated]

That guy's accent is infuriating.

[sidereal]

It goes smoother if you imagine he's trying to sell you furniture that you assemble yourself.

[Moaner]

I'm going to watch these tonight and try to play again.  I've been lost ever since the 3d update.  Thanks for the link!

[FatuousTwat]

Edit: He is Dutch, I thought he was from Spain for some reason.

[Murgos]

These tutorials are great.  I've tried to start a fortress several times and have always given up in frustration.  These make it seem like I could at least get to a basic level with the fortress without much stress.

DF has come a long way, the 3-d terrain and nature of the fort is actually really well done.

[bhodi]

Ahhhhh now I'm going to get dragged back into this game! :(

Maybe I should make my own tutorials, I got pretty good at fortress building... Maybe advanced tutorials with building techniques for efficiency and defense and such. I was pretty good at making engineering marvels as well.

[nurtsi]

After watching the videos, I tried the game. It feels like the bastard child of Settlers and Dungeon Keeper. Oddly addicting, but the 3D map is a bit difficult grasp especially in outdoors. My dwarves are still alive 

[sidereal]

The biggest issue with the 3d map is 'open space', which is where the ground is below your current z-level, so you just see dots.  Obviously in a real 3d interface you'd be able to see down into valleys, but in DF you have to spastically go up and down to track people moving up and down hills.  The best defense is to pick a starting area that's fairly flat outside.  Stay away from cliffs and mountains and just start up in some flat forest next to a stream.  Once you get underground, the z-levels are pretty  easy to deal with. . you're just moving up and down levels and the dwarves can only move between at stairways and ramps, so they're easy to follow.

[FatuousTwat]

After watching these videos yesterday, I played for 12 hours. Holy shit.

And I only reset 4 times!

[Ironwood]

some limey

Nice find, but this doesn't mean what you think it means.

[FatuousTwat]

Anyone want to post pics of their fortress? I would, but I don't know how.

[Merusk]

Tissue layers? Hair growth?  Blood temperature? What's next gene patterns so you can breed your dwarves and set them into castes most optimal for each job? Hell, you'd think that'd be in before blood temp.

This guy's gone wayyyyyy beyond where I'd have any interest in the game anymore, and it was great fun.  How about focusing on shit that doesn't involve adding more micromanagement.

[Sophismata]

Huh?

The tissue and hair stuff doesn't add micromanagement at all; it's flavour stuff. As I recall, it's being added now because the combat and wounds change requires it in there, first.

Regarding Dwarf Fortress development, I've been fairly impressed with how he's handling it - all the notes are on the site, there's a solid plan laid down and he's not just coding stuff for the heck of it. It's being handled a lot more professionally than many games these days.

[bhodi]

Anyone want to post pics of their fortress? I would, but I don't know how.

I just use printscreen and make a screenshot or use fraps. I'll post a few examples of my next fortress, maybe I'll do a little blog thing if there's any interest.

I'm always playing around trying to find the most efficient way of building and organizing my fort. I turn off caveins and I generally build around a central 3x3 up/down staircase with a hole in the middle. This is to prevent light sensitivity since it's open to the outside. My first engineering 'marvel' is always to drop a waterfall down through the hole in the central staircase; since it's the central way dwarves get down to their apartments and around, dwarves get hit by the mist which emenates from the waterfall and it makes them happy.

I use living pods for my bedrooms (these are seriously kick-ass), farms+barracks and such on the first level, manufacturing on the 2nd level, storage on the third, manufacturing on the 4th, 6th and below are bedrooms (to keep away from noise). I tend to have more of an open floorplan on the manufacturing and storage levels, and just have periodic staircases between them for easy access to materials.

For defense, I tend to favor the three bridge design shown here. To be honest, I'm not all that good at defense yet; I tend to overdesign the early game, trying to make the most efficient fortress I can. I end up restarting after I get to about 100 dwarves or so.

I play around with dwarves skills, but this is generally what I bring:

Carpenter/Leader (leader = appraiser/negotiator/novice judge of intent) He's also my records keeper which skills up fast so I don't give him it.
Farmer/Brewer (part 1 of my 2-man food team, these two are really all you need to survive until you get about 150 dwarves)
Farmer/Cook (part 2 of my 2-man food team)
Woodcutter/Gatherer (This is the only guy who ever goes outside. Outside is dangerous. That's why I don't hunt, and that's why agriculture was invented.)
Miner/Mechanic/Building Designer (5 pts into miner, 3 into mechanic 2 into building designer)
Mason/Stonecrafter (when he's not carving doors/tables/thrones, he's making rock instruments for sale on the first year. This is REALLY needed for buying that anvil)

My final dwarf varies depending on what I want to do. He can be a metalbasher (armorsmith/weaponsmith/metalsmith) or if I want to try glassmaking he'll be a glassmaker, or he can be a fisherdwarf or sometimes I like him to be a ranger (ambusher/axedwarf/leatherworker) if I need a lot of bags, or I even tried making him a clothier/bowyer once and that worked out OK.

For items, that's a tricky. I favor going without an anvil, since I always get one either during the first or second time the caravans arrive. The key is to have enough crafts built that you can afford to purchase one! :)  Sometimes I lose a dwarf to a strange mood; it happens but I still really like the extra point values of going w/o the anvil.

This is from memory, so things may be a bit off.
4 picks So you can carve a base out early - I enable mining on 4 characters until I get enough carved out for the basics.
50 each of Plump helmet spawn, cave wheat, rock nuts, and 25 each pigtail and sweet pods - This is because I make my farm plots 5x5, so 50 seeds will fill 2 full plots.
2 dogs (untrained) - Which I then train into war dogs and give them to my Gather/woodcutter for defense while he wonders the great wilderness. You bring 2 so they make puppies.
21 turtles - These things are great. They are great eating and also make bones which you need for strange moods if you don't hunt.
11 of each kind of booze just to last you until your first harvest and for variety - this is ale, beer, rum, and wine.
6 leather of some sort for bags, which you'll need for quarry bush leaves (rock nuts turn into these). Make this the cheapest leather you can find, I think it's 5 point.
1 Battle axe This is for your woodcutter. You don't need the default 2, just keep one.
ONE plump helmet - This is for the barrel only. These are way too expensive to bring - at 4 each, there are many other, better choices.
6 bauxite - This ore is only needed if you're building on magma. You have to use special stone for magma floodgates and it's just easier and cheaper to bring your own.
Lots of Tower cap logs - You will run out of wood. This is a given. Even in a forest, the trees don't regenerate fast enough. Wood's needed for barrels which you use a lot of and beds which you can only build from wood. Put all your spare points into wood.
One each of the different meats that are less than 4 cost each - This is because meat is stored individually in it's own barrel. The barrels are valuable and free! Yes this is kind of cheating; you don't have to do this.

If you have extra points, put them all into tower cap logs. You'll thank me later. Optionally, you can pair down that list and bring an anvil, but I really don't get into metalworking until at least 2 years have past and it really is so expensive to bring.

I never have but you can try the "bootstrapping" build in which you actually bring the ore, anvil, and smelt your own battle axe and mining picks. This brings the cost down and I may try it someday. Details on that are here.

[bhodi]

Oh, something I forgot to mention - this game ROCKS with the new grid option. (Grid lets you see more squares, makes the viewing area zoomed out rather than just resized). This was my major complaint with DF and pretty much why I stopped playing before - I hated having a tiny viewing window into the world. The bad news is you have to muck around with the init file to change it all.

I use Guybrush for my tileset and Dystopian Rhetoric for graphics. This is exactly what the guy in the video is running. I run at 1920x1200 fullscreen and here are the options that I changed.

[GRAPHICS:YES]
[GRAPHICS_FULLSCREENX:1920]
[GRAPHICS_FULLSCREENY:1200]
[GRAPHICS_FULLFONT:Guybrush_square_16x16.bmp]
[GRAPHICS_BLACK_SPACE:NO]

[FULLGRID:120:75]

You may want to poke around and modify things to suit your own needs, but I definitely recommend at least increasing the grid size so you remain sane. Also, make it a square aspect ratio or you'll build left/right more than up/down because things LOOK closer than they are due to squashing.

[sidereal]

some limey

Nice find, but this doesn't mean what you think it means.

It does, but I didn't catch the guy's accent in a brief listen and I found the link through Rock, Paper, Shotgun, who are a bunch of limeys themselves.  So I assumed.

Mmm.  Limes.

[FatuousTwat]

Oh, something I forgot to mention - this game ROCKS with the new grid option. (Grid lets you see more squares, makes the viewing area zoomed out rather than just resized). This was my major complaint with DF and pretty much why I stopped playing before - I hated having a tiny viewing window into the world. The bad news is you have to muck around with the init file to change it all.

I use Guybrush for my tileset and Dystopian Rhetoric for graphics. This is exactly what the guy in the video is running. I run at 1920x1200 fullscreen and here are the options that I changed.

[GRAPHICS:YES]
[GRAPHICS_FULLSCREENX:1920]
[GRAPHICS_FULLSCREENY:1200]
[GRAPHICS_FULLFONT:Guybrush_square_16x16.bmp]
[GRAPHICS_BLACK_SPACE:NO]

[FULLGRID:120:75]

You may want to poke around and modify things to suit your own needs, but I definitely recommend at least increasing the grid size so you remain sane. Also, make it a square aspect ratio or you'll build left/right more than up/down because things LOOK closer than they are due to squashing.

So if I went through the links on youtube and downloaded the prepackaged thing he said to download, I would be using the same thing you are? I can't seem to find the fullgrid line, even using search. 

Also, thanks for the info!

[bhodi]

The prepackaged version is, I believe, an older version of dwarf fortress. You want to download the do-it-yourself and install it into the latest dwarf fortress, which simply consists of a directory and file you overwrite in DF\raw\graphics.

I've created my new fortress. Here's my *actual* item list that I'm using. This adds up exactly:

1 Iron Anvil
2 serpentine (stone, to make metalforge and wood furnace)
1 Iron bar (axe for woodcutter)
4 copper bars (4 copper picks for masons)
51 plump helmet spawn
50 rock nuts
50 cave wheat seeds
25 pig tail seeds
25 sweet pod seeds
11 dwarven ale
11 dwarven rum
11 dwarven wine
11 dwarven beer
6 horse leather
21 turtle
1 plump helmet
23 tower cap logs
1 of each of every meat that costs 2 each

I'll start a new thread with screenshots that walks through my fortress creation.

[FatuousTwat]

Cool.

Any info on this game is much appreciated.

[Ard]

I've created my new fortress. Here's my *actual* item list that I'm using. This adds up exactly:

1 Iron Anvil

I almost always remove the anvil from my starting kit, and replace it with skills and other things instead.  It's a buttload of points to start with, and it honestly takes quite a bit to get a metalworks going anyhow.  If you get a dedicated stonecrafter going, you can usually afford to buy one in the first dwarven shipment, which usually comes with one, and if not, you can request one in the next one.   I've never had too many problems starting without it myself.

[Sophismata]

I used to ditch the anvil, but I find early metalcrafting too valuable to lose when you embark into hostile areas. Now, I'll bring the anvil and 3 bars of steel.

- Use one of the bars and the anvil to make a forge.
- Forge two steel picks.
- Mine some rock.
- Dismantle the forge, and rebuild it with mined rock.
- Use the remaining steel bar to make an axe.

Two of the benefits to doing this: if you make your metalsmith sufficiently skilled, you'll get decent-quality items, and they won't count as imported wealth.

[Ironwood]

I'm having real grid trouble at 1280 x 1024.

 

[nurtsi]

Can you post step-by-step instructions on how to enable the graphics and use custom tilesets? I just downloaded the files, put them in under raw/graphics, edited init.txt and all I get is a black screen. Also there's an errorlog.txt in the game dir with something about unrecognized creature and texture tokens...

Edit: Nevermind, I think I got it. The graphics have to be BMP and not PNG and some go under art/

[stray]

There is not only one, but two threads explaining how to even get a basic grasp of this game.

And it looks like Vic-20 ass.

What's the deal.

[WindupAtheist]

I really want to like this game, but it's like this towering monstrosity crafted by an insane genius and I can't even begin to digest it. Less toenail growth physics modeling, more comprehensible presentation plz.

[FatuousTwat]

Can you post step-by-step instructions on how to enable the graphics and use custom tilesets? I just downloaded the files, put them in under raw/graphics, edited init.txt and all I get is a black screen. Also there's an errorlog.txt in the game dir with something about unrecognized creature and texture tokens...

Edit: Nevermind, I think I got it. The graphics have to be BMP and not PNG and some go under art/

That would be nice. I tried installing the new version and adding the new tilesets following the instructions on the wiki, and it is still showing a black screen.

Edit: or just post your init.txt and I can go from there.

Edit2: Bah, I hadn't saved it as a 24 bit .bmp... I was using Paint.NET.

[bhodi]

OK Configuring the game: Noob edition. I'll use "DF" as my main dwarf fortress directory for clarity.

The main configuration file is init.txt and is located in DF\data\init\init.txt.

There are two types of mods - Charsets and Graphics. Charsets just change your standard extended ascii into other fonts, and graphics override extended ascii with pictures of little dwarves and trees.

Character sets come in a variety of pixel widths, though the most common are 16x16. You can check them all out, here. If you want to use the one I use, save the image below to DF\data\art and rename it Guybrush_square_16x16.bmp. I've already converted it into a usable format. If you want to use another on the page, you'll need to convert it using mspaint (or other program) to a 24bit BMP file. This is because the file is quite large in this format, larger than the wiki wants to offer, so they use a smaller format.


Graphics sets also come in a variety of pixel widths and are listed here. They are installed into DF\raw\graphics. You'll want to use the same size character and graphics sets. I chose 16x16. If you want to use the one I use, Dystopian Rhetoric, download this and overwrite the file in your DF\raw directory and the examples directory. Most of the graphics sets come bundled and you can just drag and drop them into your graphics directory and it will be smart and overwrite files.

Once you've done this, you'll need to edit your init file to incorporate the changes. Also, if you're wanting to mess with the grid and resolution you can do that here as well. All the init file options are detailed here but for graphics all we really care about are these lines:

WINDOWED:PROMPT]

This is the size and font for windowed mode. Changing to 800x600 and the 800x600 font might make you happier.

[WINDOWEDX:640]
[WINDOWEDY:300]
[FONT:curses_640x300.bmp]

Full screen info.

[FULLSCREENX:800]
[FULLSCREENY:600]
[FULLFONT:curses_800x600.bmp]

If this is set to YES, the tiles will not be stretched, but rather the game view will be centralized, surrounded by black space. Tiles that are too large will always be compressed rather than running off the screen.

[BLACK_SPACE:NO]

Graphics info, most of it as above. Set GRAPHICS to YES to turn it all on. This will use the "raw/graphics" folder for tile information. Currently this is limited to whatever creature graphics you have downloaded. The game comes with a few pictures to demonstrate. As of February 2008, the Dwarf Fortress Wiki has graphical tilesets available at http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Graphics_sets.

[GRAPHICS:NO]
[GRAPHICS_WINDOWEDX:1280]
[GRAPHICS_WINDOWEDY:400]
[GRAPHICS_FONT:curses_square_16x16.bmp]
[GRAPHICS_FULLSCREENX:1280]
[GRAPHICS_FULLSCREENY:800]
[GRAPHICS_FULLFONT:curses_square_16x16.bmp]
[GRAPHICS_BLACK_SPACE:YES]

This is the dimensions in tiles of the display grid. Minimum x is 80. Minimum y is 25. Maximums are 200. Make sure the window size or full screen resolution matches the grid/tile size if you don't want the display to be squashed or stretched. The default windowed font has tiles that are 8x12 pixels, for instance, so for a 80x25 grid, you use a 640x300 window, and for a 125x50 grid, you'd use a 1000x600 window. FULLGRID is used in full screen mode, whether graphics is on or not.

[GRID:80:25]
[FULLGRID:80:25]

So basically, the first thing you have to do is decide what resolution you want to play in and whether you want to play in windowed or fullscreen mode. If if's windowed, edit the WINDOWEDX and WINDOWEDY values to match, or the FULLSCREENX and FULLSCREENY values respectively.

If you've got a charset you downloaded, like Guybrush, you'll want to replace curses and put the bmp name under FULLFONT.

If you've got a graphics set you downloaded, like Dystopian Rhetoric, you'll need to edit the GRAPHICS_XXXX as well. Like above, put the right values in windowed or fullscreen and change the font to your charset file.

Now, onto the grid. It's fairly simple, but the key is that you want to make things square - the same size up/down as left/right. The way to do this is a little math. Find what tile size your character/graphics set is (it's probably 16x16) and divide your chosen resolution but that number. Stick it in GRID for windowed or FULLGRID for fullscreen mode. Yes, it's a different naming convention.

You'll also want to urn black space off in both [GRAPHICS_BLACK_SPACE] and [BLACK_SPACE].

So, for me, I run at fullscreen 1920x1200, with the 16x16 tileset, so for me, it would be 1920/16x1200/16 = 120:75. I like this fine and don't squint, but if you're finding things are too small and you want to zoom it in, just reduce those numbers.

Also, my thread is really more about advanced gameplay - it assumes you can already read the matrix and have gotten the basics down.

[FatuousTwat]

Found a utility that might help some people out, Dwarf Manager.

I have no idea if it works yet, because I'm still dling .NET 3.5.

Update: Seems to work well.

[Yegolev]

I suppose it works great but I think it would be totally awesome if I could figure out how to make people burn wood without using a memory hack.

EDIT: I finally figured it out, thanks Dwarf Manager! First v to view units, pick an asshole, p for "prefs" then press various navigation keys until one of them moves the highlight to BURN WOOD and press ENTER.

I want to punch Toady in the neck.

[bhodi]

Playing DF is sometimes like hide and seek UI. It's a minigame.

[Ironwood]

I just use Dwarf Manager.

It's a whole lot fucking easier.

[Yegolev]

I never said I made sense.