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[GavJ]

I don't need a goal. Just additional non-imaginary challenges to not losing is all I'm asking for.

All your dwarves being dead is pretty clearly losing, even if there's no winning. So, more stuff that kills your dwarves or makes it harder to keep them alive makes the game harder, even without a wincon. Such as longer crop growing or burrowing invaders. (I also turned off underground crops, speaking of crops. Which certainly helps discourage turtling, and they don't make sense anyway. Combined with making outdoor tiles actually be outdoors, which is simple and straightforward enough to just roleplay)

If there aren't any other well known mods in existence that haven't been mentioned that do that cleanly, then okay. I'll just go try out these so far. And maybe consider learning how to use the API to write my own.

[wierd]

From what I can tell, a whole world of crazy can be done with DFHack's scripting system.  It does not need to be explicitly limited to manipulating the creature's or item's basic compositional data, or toggling flags.  LUA is a fully conditional language with a full set of logical operators and loop structures, so whole new methods of AI decision making can be created inside a lua script, that then overrides the default creature's behaviors, etc.

It requires becoming MUCH more intimate with the hows and whys of DF's internal mechanisms, (which is itself a megagaming challenge, all by itself--- Folks like Quietust and UristDaVinci seem quite happy pursuing that direction of enjoyment. The simulation is fundamentally broken in many respects-- how can it be fixed? "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!", etc.) which goes well outside the bounds of understanding the interface and how things are presented on the surface.

The mere existence of something like DFHack's plugin system suggests that the creation of exceedingly radical alterations to gameplay are possible with just some clever scripting work, and that doing so can be enjoyable. (arguably, DFHack itself comes from somebody taking on that metagaming challenge!)

There is a wide assortment of radical gameplay changing mods available in the mod forum. The only downside I see is that they arent particularly organized in any particular fashion.....

[sal880612m]

Asking why dwarves do anything is kinda ...

I mean if they run away from safety at the first sign of danger why is it somehow more ridiculous to send a caravan with supplies and risking the lives of the guards and merchants?

I really don't understand how not using cage traps is all that different to not using a pick in terms of making sense not challenge level. You are using the logic why wouldn't they buy one to say a single pick challenge makes no sense, but you can still apply that cage traps. So why wouldn't they use cage traps? Not why wouldn't you, why wouldn't they? DF is somewhere between a fantasy game and a fantasy simulator but what doesn't change is the word fantasy. Fantasy generally carries with it a need for suspension of disbelief, and when it is presented in less visual mediums more information or more imagination is required.

If you wanted less RP and more mod maybe posting this in the mods section would have been a better idea. Also consider checking out DF from scratch. It is basically the result of removing everything from DF and adding new things in a succession style. It may be totally unplayable, and if it is actually playable pretty much everything is new so if you don't read tons of the thread you have to figure out what everything does on your own which could lead to plenty of !FUN!. If that sounds too frustrating/boring reading the thread may give you some ideas as to the kind of things to mod into the game to make it more challenging. Of course if you have an issue with fantastical elements I imagine you would reject the idea of a flying gazelle among other things.

[GavJ]

So why wouldn't they use cage traps? Not why wouldn't you, why wouldn't they?

It's pretending cage traps don't EXIST, not that they choose not to use them.

By contrast, pretending digging tools don't exist is a bit impossible

It requires becoming MUCH more intimate with the hows and whys of DF's internal mechanisms, (which is itself a megagaming challenge, all by itself

Exactly. I have high hopes for this route if nothing else works out. That's what kept me entertained with minecraft for the latter 95% of the time I played it. Not playing the game, but modding the crap out of it to become essentially a 3D photoshop first person art program.  Was pretty heavily involved in makign this for instance: http://www.voxelwiki.com/minecraft/VoxelSniper Flying around pointing at stuff and smoothing it in realtime 3d, placing boolean shapes, material manipulation and layering, etc.  Which lets you make landscapes like:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(my personal city, clearly impossible / would take years in vanilla), or the continent I "curated" mostly revolving around voxelsniper made biomes:
http://www.planetminecraft.com/project/zah---a-region-of-breathtaking-vistas/

I'd really love to figure out some way to craft custom maps similar to these in DF to then go in and build fortresses in, somehow. Possibly even importing from minecraft (for basic elevation type stuff, then DF figures out stone layers and blah)

[wierd]

Doesnt Perfect World allow creation of worlds with a premade height map, biome map, and other tidbits?

that would let you do what you want, more or less.

[GavJ]

No, it only goes down to the resolution of an entire world tile (because the map editor Toady programmed, which perfectworld is just a wrapper for, only goes down to world tiles).

So the entire screen full of embark tiles you have to choose from, for example, all starts out at the beginning of world gen as basically ONE elevation, that then gets a bit of local variation per embark tile that you can't directly control, then just gets eroded down. This leads to either (depending on erosion):
*A boringly gently rolling landscape, OR
*A crazy jagged, obviously glitchy computer generated mess where there are perfect rectangles everywhere, etc.

There isn't really an in between. By the time it stops looking computer generated, it's already very gently rolling.

Also, nothing about those tools allows you to encourage cliffs (other than un-eroded dumb looking square tile cliffs) and nothing makes overhangs possible (even though the existence of caverns tells us the engine is capable of understanding overhangs and storing them in memory), etc.

In other words: Perfectworld gives you a pretty world map, but accomplishes almost nothing in giving you actual embark sites you want. Aside from minorly upping your chances of finding something randomly you like. No real control.






Either it needs a method of specifying a much finer grained resolution of elevation data at the start of worldgen (embark tiles at the very least, ideally finer), or modding a site after embarking could work too, though probably more effort to make the grass and stuff all work out. Also, soil and rock layers are weirdly hard to change at that point.

Both are potentially scriptable AFAIK.

[wierd]

I think you have a goal for your "meta gaming" itch, right there.

DFHack script that catches worldgen, and forcibly overwrites the randomly generated cloud elevation map it produces with a user supplied one, or one generated through parsing a voxel model.

Once it has passed the "checking phase", you should be able to pause the process, then overwrite the map data in memory with your own, then resume after some cleanup.

[Sadrice]

I know there have been df to minecraft converters, at least for previous versions.  Wasn't there a minecraft to df converter at some point, or am I misremembering?  Brief googling is only turning up df to mc, but I'm stuck on an ipad, so in depth searching is cumbersome.

[sal880612m]

So why wouldn't they use cage traps? Not why wouldn't you, why wouldn't they?

It's pretending cage traps don't EXIST, not that they choose not to use them.

By contrast, pretending digging tools don't exist is a bit impossible

You don't have to pretend they don't exist just that dwarves don't know what they are used for. I'm pretty sure not all civilizations or tribes did mine but it isn't hard to imagine a more advanced civ taking advantage of a less advanced one for cheap labor. So really it is only your ability to believe dwarfs wouldn't ask what picks do/are for that make it impossible, and since other traders sometimes have caged animals it comes back around to what really makes it all that different. A dwarf is going to ask what a pick does but not how they caged a bear?

[GavJ]

What I'm thinking is more along the lines of:

1) Make up a simple voxel data binary file format that has exactly the minimum information DF needs to accomplish the topography goal at whatever point works best, intuitively laid out. Since elevation data is the only major concern here (it does a great job of biomes already), it can be super simple. Just like, 0s and 1s air, not air in 3D.
2) Make a script that reads from that and applies to DF in world gen.
3) Document the hell out of the file format, so that anybody can write programs in almost any language to populate the voxel data from whatever they feel like, and have it work. Minecraft? Make your own plugin for minecraft --> voxel file format from step #1. Want to make DF topography = your brain from an MRI scan? Write a FORTRAN program to convert MRI voxels to the standard input file format from step #1. Etc. etc., whatever you want.

[gritstone]

All your dwarves being dead is pretty clearly losing, even if there's no winning.

I don't wish to seem pedantic but, in my dictionary at least, losing is defined as failure to win.  All your dwarves being dead is just the end of this session, with no conditions there's nothing against which to judge your success.  OK I failed at not seeming pedantic but hey ho. 

This thread has taken a rather strange but interesting turn btw.

[Arcvasti]

All your dwarves being dead is pretty clearly losing, even if there's no winning.

The only losing move is not to play.

[FrankMcFuzz]

All your dwarves being dead is pretty clearly losing, even if there's no winning.

The only losing move is not to play.

I guess 99.69% of the world lose at Dwarf Fortress