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Author Topic: Opinions on DFhack?  (Read 9804 times)

bombzero

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Re: Opinions on DFhack?
« Reply #15 on: February 13, 2012, 06:46:17 pm »

I don't use it.

I think it is cheating. One could say there is no cheating in a single-player video game, but I think there can be; you are evading the true challenge and pure experience the developer set out for you. And, being a bit of a programmer myself, I don't like tampering with something using third-party utensils.

And honestly, what could you possibly need it for? It can only reduce the !!FUN!!!

notice the things i said i used. are the ones that are a quick fix for currently horribly broken parts of the game.
autodump as dwarfs dump items in a slow inefficient way that takes a season to clear a room of stone.
vdig as i hate checking back every 5 seconds to designate 4 more tiles for mining.
deramp i use only on rare occasions. such as when i made the tunnel for the water channel and the ramps in it are gonna bother my OCD side forever.

the rest i consider cheating for the most part, and dont use them.

well except 'clean' i have used that on excessively rare occasions where i was nearing fps death and needed a way out.
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darkflagrance

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Re: Opinions on DFhack?
« Reply #16 on: February 13, 2012, 06:49:35 pm »

Considering that Dwarf Fortress is an alpha (meaning that many, many balancing elements have yet to be implemented), and is a rather buggy and imbalanced alpha at that, it's hard to say that there really is a developer-intended challenge for players to respect.
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The Merchant Of Menace

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Re: Opinions on DFhack?
« Reply #17 on: February 13, 2012, 06:49:58 pm »

I love DFHack. People who don't are just stubborn. And in denial.

Different people have different PREFSTRINGS bro
The PREFSTRING tag is what's used to define "Likes x for their [PREFSTRING]" personality quirk, not to base preferences.

>.>
<.<
*Ahem*

I don't actually use DFHack, but you can't deny some of the features are very useful, without being too exploity.
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krisslanza

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Re: Opinions on DFhack?
« Reply #18 on: February 13, 2012, 06:53:53 pm »

I used to use reveal/prospect on every site. I didn't look down, but I just wanted to know what kind of stuff I'd have to work with.

The vdig is pretty handy too, as it just designates the whole vein to be dug, and saves me having to redesignate it everytime if I don't want to just mine out a huge chunk. I think I used grow once, but that was before I modded in a sawmill.

bombzero

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Re: Opinions on DFhack?
« Reply #19 on: February 13, 2012, 06:55:03 pm »

I love DFHack. People who don't are just stubborn. And in denial.

Different people have different PREFSTRINGS bro
The PREFSTRING tag is what's used to define "Likes x for their [PREFSTRING]" personality quirk, not to base preferences.

>.>
<.<
*Ahem*

I don't actually use DFHack, but you can't deny some of the features are very useful, without being too exploity.

yeah those are the ones i use, the useful non exploity ones.
i don't particularly like it but the alternatives are fps death, boredom, and frustration.
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CaptainBadwheel

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Re: Opinions on DFhack?
« Reply #20 on: February 13, 2012, 07:00:01 pm »

Wait...there's an auto-dump function?  :o

I use reveal for two three  things, checking for a magma pipe, checking for iron ore, and putting in pump-stacks.
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bombzero

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Re: Opinions on DFhack?
« Reply #21 on: February 13, 2012, 07:02:17 pm »

As i said i find it useful if im looking for something important from an embark.

also bah, who needs magma pipes? i have a 120 Z-level pump stack in one of my old forts. just so i can have magma smelters on the surface.
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nukularpower

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Re: Opinions on DFhack?
« Reply #22 on: February 13, 2012, 07:20:35 pm »

I use DFHack a lot.  I don't think I could play without it anymore.  Some reasons -

Autodump/Autodump destroy - no more piles of shit from invasions ruining FPS.  I also use it to clear stone from piles - takes WAY too long the manual way.

Prospect all - Saves me from wasting time on an embark that doesn't have anything interesting.

Reveal - I try not to use this as exploring and finding stuff is fun, but it is very handy if I want to build a cavern fort to check out if the caverns suck or not (by suck I mean being spread across 150 z levels of tiny hills)

Extirpate - When a tree grows and blocks off your single water channel..

And of course I once had to plug a leak of the magma sea into HFS, which fixed a very fun map for me.

So yeah, DFhack all the way!
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King DZA

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Re: Opinions on DFhack?
« Reply #23 on: February 13, 2012, 09:20:55 pm »

I've never used it. Not that I have anything against it, it just never seemed to interest me.

Though to be honest, reading this thread is strengthening my resistance to try it out for once. I can see how some of the tools can be used to fix bothersome bugs in the game, but most of it just sounds like an excuse for being lazy, or even flat out cheating(Yes, cheating. Just because it's not effecting anyone else, doesn't mean it's not blatantly game-breaking).

Not that I really give a damn about how others choose to play the game, of course.

wierd

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Re: Opinions on DFhack?
« Reply #24 on: February 13, 2012, 09:34:18 pm »

I miss some of the options in dfcompanion from the 40d era. Yes. It was the swissarmy knife of cheating.  It also had "single tile" memory poke/edit capabilities, which were ever so useful for "undigging" an accidentally dug square, and for checking the temperature of a tile, among other things.  It wasn't so useful for undigging metals or gems, because it was a single tile editor. (You would spend hours undigging and redigging a vein or cluster to get any value from it.)

(It was also amusing to change an irritating noble into an animal so they couldn't issue mandates, or to turn female dwarves into animals so that their husbands would have animals listed as children. I am still surprised the game didn't crash when I was goofing around with that. The same-sex marriages were funny too. My sister and I had lots of fun with dfcompanion.)

Never tried dfhack, but from what I read it lacks those two functions.

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Girlinhat

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Re: Opinions on DFhack?
« Reply #25 on: February 13, 2012, 11:07:05 pm »

In the newest release of Hack, I'll use it on embark to prospect, as it reveals the layer stones.  For those unaware, you used to get a list of layer stones on the embark screen, like dolomite or granite or whatever.  I enjoyed this, and I think that the short men borne of the mountains would know how to prospect what layer stones are there...

Reveal, rarely.  Mostly to find where the layer stones are so I can work on my marble fortress.  But now prospector will show where the layers are, so I've got no need.

Autodump - never.  Hauling is a part of fortress life and a viable life skill for fresh migrants.  If it's not needed then I rig it to be stockpiled into areas that are then doused in magma.  Rarely "claim owned" or whatever that one is, mostly just to get that one claimed troll fur thong off the one wall tile so I can defend myself, y'know?

It's the newest tools that fascinate me the most.  Workflow in particular is an amazing tool.  I use it for specific tasks, like keeping booze in stock - something that dwarves should do without supervision, I imagine.  I'll also use it for construction purposes, like keeping X number of marble blocks in stock, so that construction may continue smoothly without having to creatively forbid and fiddle with stockpiles.  I already have a full-time manager, so I can reasonably hand-wave that, imagining that the manager is just checking on the work orders.

Liquids rarely.  Sometimes if things get stuck, like a tile is registered as "warm" when there's no magma, I'll place 1/7 magma and let it evaporate to fix that little issue.

Cleaning, depends.  I don't meddle with FB these days, I'm focusing on surface exploitation, so I'm not making things easier by removing syndromes.  I'll speed up my FPS a bit by cleaning things, but that's only because dwarves don't do it themselves.  If I could designate a zone to be cleaned, I wouldn't need hack for that.

So for me?  I use hack to make specific workshop orders easier - something that should be in vanilla.  Toady has acknowledged that we need to be able to specify what kind of stone for the mason workshop to use, so this is just the third-party tool that makes it possible early.  I don't use it to make things easier or to reduce the labor load.  Dwarves need to have jobs, and hauling is a valuable skill.  Let them scour the field retrieving goblin junk!

Although on that note, I often mod goblins to wear less clothing, so my issues are less in that regard.  Less socks and thongs to clean up, though they generally wear more armor than vanilla so I imagine it balances.

krisslanza

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Re: Opinions on DFhack?
« Reply #26 on: February 13, 2012, 11:11:31 pm »

Reading this thread has made me realize my DFHack is far out of date. I was using an old version, so I had to embark > reveal > prospect to see what was on the map, then Task Manager close the game. Time to update!

EDIT:
Except now I don't know how to make LNP's little menu... list... thing update with all the new DFhacks I put in...
« Last Edit: February 13, 2012, 11:18:50 pm by krisslanza »
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Ross Vernal

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Re: Opinions on DFhack?
« Reply #27 on: February 14, 2012, 12:38:30 am »

I use dfreveal because, for some asinine reason, dfvdig is incompatible with my particular mod-blend.

I only dig out the vein in question, though, and after about five minutes of doing literally anything else, I totally forget where the deuce everything is.
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htabdoolb

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Re: Opinions on DFhack?
« Reply #28 on: February 14, 2012, 12:40:12 am »

I play Dwarf Fortress to have fun.

Waiting for hours real time for my dwarves to clear out mined rooms and storage areas is not fun.

Watching my fps on my clunky old computer dwindle down to single digits because of excess stone and goblinite and goblin/dwarf splatter is not fun.

Starting an embark with a grand plan for a military fortress in mind only to discover several hours later that "shallow metals" means garnierite and bithmuthinite is not fun.

DFHack helps me avoid these things. DFHack is a fun enabler. It doesn't matter to me whether it is cheating or not, whether I'm playing the game the developer intended or not, or if much of the "challenge" is removed. All I care about is having fun in a dwarfy sandbox, and DFHack lets me do that.
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Eric Blank

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Re: Opinions on DFhack?
« Reply #29 on: February 14, 2012, 12:45:13 am »

I use DFhack for modding and !!SCIENCE!! purposes. Because sometimes dorfs just aren't fast/clean enough.
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