Dwarf Fortress

Scythe · February 2012

<div class="IPBDescription">It's that time again</div>New DF patch!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Changelog!)</div><div class='quotemain'>New stuff

cities in adventure mode that have various buildings, dungeons, items, livestock, etc.
protect your community from secret vampire dwarves or hunt them as an adventurer
defend your fort during the full moon or risk a werewolf infestion -- hunt/be hunted as an adventurer
face armies of the dead in dwarf mode or visit their necromancers' towers and learn their secrets as an adventurer
evil regions where the dead and pieces of the dead can come alive, with evil mists and rain
tombs built in world gen which can be visited in adv mode, either beneath towns or out in the wilds -- beware the dead!
revamped justice/witness/death notification system in dwarf mode
immigrants to your fortress will now be historical figures whenever possible, which means more family relationships and history for each one
dropped items/bodies tracked between plays in the wilderness anywhere in the world
more battlefield information tracked/war dead raisable in world gen
all sponsorship animals and their giant/man versions are in the game now
various new abilities for creatures (see file_changes.txt for list and syntax)
adventurers can use creature abilities/learned powers and they can be tested from the arena
new site travel map to make navigating towns easier
reading/swimming/observer (for traps) relevant in adv mode now
established historical figures can lead bandits
rivers block movement in adv mode travel
eating/drinking required in adv mode
ingested syndromes are now possible
ability to make campfire (from 'g') and warm items at campfire/fire/magma (from 'I') in adv mode
traps work in adv mode, once spotted they can be ignored
gems now have different cuts
necromancers can write books about various topics (all books are in their towers as it stands)
moon phase indicator in fort
alphanumeric world gen seeds and some more world gen params (see file_changes.txt)
the legends xml has a lot of new info for historical figures

Major bug fixes

buffer overload from aborted world gen fixed
fixed cave-in-on-embark issue with hidden underground structure, and a few others

Other bug fixes/tweaks

designations over z levels all at once now possible
unit screen divided into four sections
rivers/pools have ramps now
able to trade portions of stacks in both modes
messed with adv mode currency trading and made items teleport to you
tweaked how fire damage works
made vision work through floor grates and bars properly
fixed some road/bridge problems
crystal glass items possible again
tweaked adventure mode swimming and alt-movement readout (use alt-movement to get into a river you want to cross)
skeletons/zombies replaced by animation effect
demons masquerading as gods will try a little harder
restricted mandates so they'll be more reasonable
stopped blank map from being exported when you back out of detailed map export</div>

<a href="http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html" target="_blank">Download!</a>

I'm starting an adventurer for the first time, right now, in my freshly-generated world. Expect to hear of how s/he dies shortly.

--Scythe--

P.S. No Chris allowed.

Monkfish · February 2012

Oh god...It's finally here.

The big day.

Scythe · February 2012

Hm, so everyone I've talked to thusfar has crashed the game. I'll try not doing that.

--Scythe--

Edit: Generated a new world, problem went away.

Svenpa · February 2012

Do share your stories, for I will probably not play this until there is isometric views or somesuch. I know of stonesense tilesets and similar stuff but it still isn't appealing enough for me to pour my time into.

That_Annoying_Kid · February 2012

how is your fortress progressing Scythe?

Scythe · February 2012

Having been at work or sleeping for the last 16 hours, not far. I've started an adventurer. I talked to a farmer and he said there was a Dingo attacking people at night to the east. I wandered off that way and found a tower with a human maceman at the top. He said something sinister when I spoke to him, so I accused him of being a waredingo. He said he wasn't so I suppose I can trust him. I invited him into my party and he accepted.

We encountered a gang of about four goblins. We were slaughtered.

Man, adventure mode is an entirely different game.

--Scythe--

Instead of detailing everything, I'll just say how I died:

#1: Pack of goblins.
Whipped to death.

#2: Bogeymen.
So they weren't joking when they said you shouldn't travel at night.

#3: Gang of humans.
I recruited two humans from the town in which I started, a crossbowman and a hammer human. The crossbowman was felled instantly by a bronze bolt to the head, the hammerer outlived me.

#4: Humans again.
I managed to find the bandit encampment I'd set out to assail, with two human bowmen in tail. We'd dispatched a few cougars en route so I was feeling good about things. We managed to take down three or so of the six bandits at the camp before we were overcome. I'm starting to get the hang of this.

#5: NOT DEAD!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (irc)</div><div class='quotemain'><Scythe-> lions
<Scythe-> goddamnit
<Scythe-> three of them
<Scythe-> phew
<Scythe-> killed them
<Scythe-> lost a hamerer though :(
<zaggynl> stop
<zaggynl> little less hammertime
<Scythe-> it's butcherin' time
<Scythe-> lion sweetbread!
<Scythe-> lion middle spine nervous tissue!
<Scythe-> prepared lion brain!
<Scythe-> lion left ear cartilage!
<Scythe-> so... the hamerer was a bit weird. I'm going through his ######
<Scythe-> he has crowns made of the bones of half a dozen different animals
<Scythe-> giant snail shell, wild boar bone, weasel... nail
<Scythe-> monitor lizard man bone
<Scythe-> rest in peace, San Freewhirl. You weird fu##er.</div>

Retales · February 2012

I decided to go straight for the Fun. So to a freezing, terrifying, treeless location next door to a necromancers tower I embarked! I was greeted by a rain of loathsome filth, causing all my dwarves and animals to get nauseous and vomit everywhere. Reading stories on the DF forum it seems that a rain of loathsome filth might be somewhat lucky, since the alternatives could be blistering and paralysing rain.

After the initial shock of being covered in nastiness, I managed to get a farm going in the soil and some shelter set up. Some migrants arrived later and things seemed pretty calm for now. My dwarven instincts drew me deeper into the Earth for metals and magma. As my miners were digging down, my other dwarves met the first risen undead they'd meet. An <i>animated yak bull hair</i> terrorised some dwarves before being caught in a cage trap. The first dwarven casualty was a fishery worker, who unfortunately died as I was setting up a farm about 160 z-levels below ground. Things did get a whole lot more mysterious soon after that...

As I was making the final preparations to move all the functionality into the depths, intruders came. Four necromancers, propably inhabitants of the nearby Tower, tried to enter the fort. Luckily my cage traps served well and the necromancers were stopped in their tracks. However, mysterious deaths started occuring. Dead dwarves were being discovered, all of them drained of their blood. Several corpses were discovered before I figured out I needed to do something in the Justice-screen. I had set up CSI: Sculptedwheel in hopes of them catching the mysterious murderer. I convicted a migrant mason into jail for the murder of one of my original miners (2 witnesses). The murders ceased.

Upon closer examination of the convicted, apparently vampiric mason, I did notice something weird. In a normal dwarfs description, there's usually like 4 sentences (3 lines) of text describing their citizenship, previous associations with factions and when they arrived at the fort. The mason had somewhere around 30 sentences (20 lines), mostly listing what factions/places he used to belong to. He's also 98 years old (not too much for a dwarf, 150-170 is the life span according to the <a href="http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Dwarf" target="_blank">wiki</a>) so that might also explain it. The most condeming fact is that after noticing he was never hungry or thirsty (even during big hauling-marathons when noone was there to bring him food/drink), I blocked his cell off. He's been without food or drink for propably a year, yet shows know signs of dehydration or starvation.

Scythe · February 2012

#5: Dead, human bandits.

Things went much better this time. I discovered the best tactic is to recruit as many people as you're able (an extra point in social awareness will get you three) and then let them open combat for you. Only move into the fight until victory is somewhat certain. Run away if not. I killed the leader of a bandit group and ran off. A little while later his marksmen cronies tracked me down and put a bolt through my chest. :(

--Scythe--

Chris0132 · February 2012

Huh, I only checked the wiki the other day.

I recently installed the masterwork edition which adds a bunch of cool stuff and fixes a bunch of bugs, so I'll wait until that gets sorted out, then I can make rifles for all my dorfs and have them shoot the zombie armies.

Undead armies is a cool addition though, wonder if the type of zombie creatures is fully random, and if the necromancers will ride them.

I want to see a necromancer riding a zombie whale.

Retales · February 2012

Things have been going (relatively) well. I had an undead siege, which was different from a regular one. I got a warning window pop up, saying "The dead walk. Hide while you can!" or something to the effect. Over a hundred zombies, goblins and humans, approached from all directions, led by a few necromancers. The lack of aggressive nearby civilizations (Read: goblins) had left my defences woefully inadequate; just a few rows of cage traps. I had become a Mountainhome by now (completely skipping the County- part) and I was somewhat hopeful that my military would beat the ridiculously slow army of undead in a chokepoint, with the help of the Royal Guard that accompanied the Queen as she arrived.

My army was utterly devastated.

I still claim my defence plan would've been sound if my dwarves had stood their ground and not gone Leroy Jenkins on me. The soldiers (with the most experienced ones leading the charge) <b>literally</b> ran down the 3-tiles-wide corridor, sidestepping past dozens of zombies before finally stopping in the middle of the biggest horde and getting swarmed. Even then they killed around 20-30, but still a terrible, terrible performance. And it turned out that the only surviving Royal Guard, a Hammer Lord, is a vampire. He, and the two other vampires I've discovered, are walled in and separated from the rest of the fort. They seem to stay content in there. I think I'll recruit and use them for defence in the future.

This reduction of population by ~20, coupled with the high birth rate and the fact that a large percentage of immigrants are children, over half of my total population are children/babies. Those stupid kids should at least haul items goddamnit. It took ages to clean up after the undead invasion.

lolfighter · February 2012

I don't get it. Over a hundred zombies attacked. Your soldiers killed 30 of them. That leaves 70 who are now free to snack on delicious dwarf bwain. What happened to all the zombies?

Chris0132 · February 2012

I'm guessing the suicidal dorfs killed 20-30 and the rest sort of managed to take out the rest of the zombies but were kinda undertrained for it.

Undead in general are really annoying to fight as far as I know because the only way to kill them is to cut bits off until they either can't do anything, or until you cut them in half/their head off.

Blunt does bugger all unless you cave their head in, and piercing is about the same, so the troops you use to take care of armored goblins don't do anything to the undead. It's basically axedwarves or nothing. Or lots of serrated disc traps.

Although given how generally hard they are to kill and the fact that they tend to be a constant, endless tide of enemies, engineering might be the best approach.

Maybe a ballista could work with the kind of numbers you're dealing with, at the least it might weaken them/slow them down a bit. Could also try a hail of bolts and hope you get headshots. Could also try a dragon, but that might just result in lots of !!zombie goblins!! attacking you.

Does dragonfire actually work on zombies by the way? Or do you literally have to wait for them to burn to ash? How about lava?

Retales · February 2012

Traps, wardogs and scattered fighting. Those zombies were in so bad shape that really the ONLY way to get killed by them would be to get swarmed by dozens of them. It was hard to keep track of where exactly the fighting happened, but the number of undead kept going down, likely due to all the wardogs I had running around. Some reached my last line of defences (traps) and a few retreated. I should maybe explain that my main fort is about 160 z-levels below ground, so it takes quite a while for a shambling corpse to get there. It also takes a while for my dorves to haul all the millions pieces of clothing.

Monkfish · February 2012

Why would you dig that far down?

lolfighter · February 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Monkfish @ Feb 17 2012, 01:29 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1903950"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Why would you dig that far down?</div>
That is the most un-dwarfish thing you have ever said. You should be ashamed of yourself.

NeonSpyder · February 2012

Thank you so much for reminding me about this. I didn't need those hundreds of hours anyway.

Retales · February 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Monkfish @ Feb 17 2012, 03:29 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1903950"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Why would you dig that far down?</div>
For the magma, silly surface dweller.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Feb 17 2012, 02:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1903928"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Does dragonfire actually work on zombies by the way? Or do you literally have to wait for them to burn to ash? How about lava?</div>
I don't know about dragonfire, but the zombies I caught in cage traps seem alarmingly resistant to lava. I dumped them in lava, where they caught fire, but they've remained alive for several seasons already.

Chris0132 · February 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Monkfish @ Feb 17 2012, 12:29 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1903950"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Why would you dig that far down?</div>

Magma.

Also why not? Gets you further away from the elves.

Chris0132 · February 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Retales @ Feb 17 2012, 09:05 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1904175"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>I don't know about dragonfire, but the zombies I caught in cage traps seem alarmingly resistant to lava. I dumped them in lava, where they caught fire, but they've remained alive for several seasons already.</div>

Yeaaaahh I had a feeling that might be the case. Generally lava kills by bleeding, because it makes all your blood evaporate/opens masses of bleeding wounds when your fat melts off. As zombies can't bleed to death though it would presumably just make them go on fire, which means you have to deal with on fire zombies rather than regular ones.

And fire takes forever to actually wear things down, so you might have them on fire for quite a long time.

Good thing it wasn't skeletons though, they're faster than zombies.

sherpa · February 2012

Heh the stories make this game sound awesome. A shame it makes Pong look impressive on a technical level.

Scythe · February 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (sherpa @ Feb 17 2012, 11:15 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1904219"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Heh the stories make this game sound awesome. A shame it makes Pong look impressive on a technical level.</div>

*Graphical* level, sure. On a technical level it's far beyond any sim ever. This makes Civ look like a fischer-price sim'n'learn.

--Scythe--

Chris0132 · February 2012

Although most of it is entirely useless detail which only serves to kill the framerate.

If you're looking to get into it, <a href="http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=98196.0" target="_blank">this mod</a> removes a whole bunch of the useless stuff, adds in a bunch more functional stuff, fixes some bugs, comes with a readable tileset.

lolfighter · February 2012

Oh geez, here we go...

Monkfish · February 2012

>im a huge baby who doesn't know how to play dwarf fortress

Chris0132 · February 2012

Know how and enjoy are two different things. Personally I like playing DF with a good framerate, and as many meaningful options as possible, the mod takes out things like a different named type of otherwise identical meat for every animal, a bunch of the useless duplicate rock types, a bunch of trees, and just sort of clumps them all together under broader labels/replaces them with interesting stuff. There's more ores you can use, more weapon types, you can make more things out of more things (gold hammers) and they also added in some interesting workshops that let you do things like make rock anvils and ammunition for training, disassemble objects into component materials, automate loose rubble disposal, all kinds of useful stuff. They also added caravans back in which is nice, as well as things like really expensive golems you can buy to replace guard dogs, things to make trading with the caravans actually useful as well. You can order specific stuff from elves and humans now, so you have to keep the enemy away from the fort if you want to buy dragons from the elves.

That and the FPS stays higher for longer, which is a godsend considering how DF tends to proceed at a glacial pace after a few years by default.

sherpa · February 2012

I <i>demand</i> that one of you guys starts a dwarf-mode game using the OT lurkers for the dwarves names!

locallyunscene · February 2012

Maybe we could redo the <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=104233" target="_blank">story thread</a>.

sherpa · February 2012

Start from scratch, I just checked the link and there's already a tonne of posts in it!

Align · February 2012

Well, we should probably wait for the next update before starting anything big considering bugs and such.

Retales · February 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (sherpa @ Feb 20 2012, 06:36 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1905161"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>I <i>demand</i> that one of you guys starts a dwarf-mode game using the OT lurkers for the dwarves names!</div>
I'm not very heavily invested in my current fort, but I feel like I'm up for a new one. Instead of only using the names of lurkers, I'll use the first seven <i>dwarven profiles</i> provided here. Pick a maximum of 10 points (with 5 being the highest one in any one skill) in <a href="http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Skills#Skills" target="_blank">skills</a>, and I'll assign them to one of my starting dwarves. Hopefully at least someone will pick mining skill, or it might be a pretty boring fort.

Edit: Also, if we're going for a succession community fort, I'm up for that, too.

sherpa · February 2012

Not interested in joining in if I can't read about lolf defending against a legion of the undead with his <i>bare hands</i> but if anyone does make some profiles I'll look forwards to seeing how things go.

Dwarf Fortress

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