No, you can't download DF with Mayday already bundled - that's probably 75% of my frustration. The other 25% of my frustration is that I can't download the game bundled with Mayday AND Dwarf Therapist - Which is a must have.
Oh? Then what is
this? The link is DF, bundled with Mayday's tileset, set up to work with the graphics.
I check dffd like every two weeks - I try to find out how the game is progressing, should I try it again?
The main DF page has links to feeds for releases and the individual updates, which you can use to watch the small changes as they are made, and the complete changes for each release. It's in big letters on the main DF page, not hard to find.
Here...
1. Did the speed increase so that I can play the game with more than 100 doorfs?
2. Where can I download the game with Mayday and Dwarf Therapist?
That's what I need. Because I don't want to spend a week building shit only to discover the game slows to 10 FPS after I get 100 doorfs. And I don't want to spend an hour configuring shit and testing shit and starting the game.
Out of curiosity, no offense intended, but why can't you just download DT separately? Toady doesn't maintain DT, so it's not possible to bundle it with the new release, since DT won't have been updated to work with it yet. And personally, I'd rather he work on the game, than updating someone else's utilities, however awesome they may be. (And DT is freaking awesome)
The first time I played the game, I spent 100 hours just watching tutorials, configuring the embark options... and then the game slowed to 10 FPS after I got 100 doorfs. I bought a desktop computer - a dual core - it wouldn't run the fucking game either. It was 20 FPS. After a month of playing this game, my dwarf fortress no longer works.
So I went to check out the new release - No Mayday, No Dwarf Therapist... I been watching the downloads... finally someone included Dwarf Therapist... so I snagged it. 2 hours just to test it. No way it will run with 100 doorfs, it barely runs with 7 doorfs.
My saved games are not compatible. There is no release of the game which includes Mayday AND Dwarf Therapist. There isn't one. I don't want to spend a day trying to make this game work. I just want it to work when I download it and I don't want the game to die after I get 100 doorfs.
...It takes me about 30 seconds to generate a pocket world, maybe 10 minute to generate a medium world (haven't tried anything bigger yet). I have a 2GHz single core machine, 2GB ram. It has been said a million times over on the forums here that DF is not multi-threaded (although the graphics might be now, I forget). So in general, speed increase from an extra core is going to be nigh on non-existent (my laptop which has 2 cores is barely different at all, maybe a couple frames faster).
As far as time spent getting started, my brother, who wasn't computer savy enough to get DF set up with a tileset, managed to be playing a fortress with a decent build about 30 minutes after I set it up for him.... The wiki is a great source, any time he asked a question I just told him to use the wiki, and he managed to play just fine.
It could just be that I want to go to fast, but my wrist can feel strained after setting up an embark profile, mainly because the list of skills is so damn long. Mouse-based selection wouldn't hurt there (but maybe I'm a heretic for even thinking about using the mouse).
Also in b4 "lol learn ASCII or GTFO noob"
I don't disagree that it would be better, but it's not complicated. The complaint was about time, but even with the list as big as it is, much more than 30 minutes is pushing it. If I'm using my standard build it doesn't even take me 5 minutes to have the skills and items set up. (The names are a whole separate issue, I spend ages trying to find a perfect name
) Oh, and personally, I'd absolutely love the full mouse support, it'd save me the carpel tunnel
And by no means do I support forcing newer players to use ASCII, I prefer tilesets myself, but having Toady maintain a graphics set and tileset on top of design stuff would likely be a bigger drain on his time than most people think.