Oh hello.
I have played Dwarf Fortress off-and-on for a while now and I'm not very good at it. Oh, sure, I can get a fortress up and running, but it's always very boring. Rectangular rooms are the order of the day, and I build for efficiency through proximity with regard to workshop and stockpile placement. I've never had a dwarven economy, never had a military dwarf with a skill higher than dabbling, and my fortresses always lacks the flair that so many people here seem capable of. All those fancy arrangements people have for slotting together rooms and prisons, the shapely pond designs, the enormous tree farms, the gauntlets of traps, and so on. I never really manage to pull off any of that cool stuff very effectively. As I said, I'm very rectangular and efficient and boring.
So, all that said, I've decided I want to see other people build their fortress. Not just look at the the maps at the Map Archive or see stunted developmental stages as per the succession game threads, but I want to see people go about building their fortress from the ground up in real time.
I've noticed that DF comes complete with a recording function, and after trying it out this seems to be exactly what I'm looking for - recordings of people playing! Not just the average joe making a mundane fortress, though, but videos of those really talented designers building a fortress out of the most difficult starting circumstances, making use of everything from military and economy, to siege weapons and extravagant noble housing.
Is anybody willing to record such a video, the first year or first few years of a fortress, to show off how they play? Or is there a site up somewhere that has such videos ready to download?
I'd really love to see!