Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Extreme Boyheat]

Yes they certainly do, unless you've embarked on a glacier.

[Lielac]

Yes they certainly do, unless you've embarked on a glacier.

Balls.

[Vagabond.]

Minor question, then a major one:
Is there any way to spawn creatures? Any method at all?
And then:
I assigned my dwarves to mine a staircase, but NONE OF THEM ARE MINING IT! may I ask why?

[Telgin]

Some of the people working on DFHack have figured out some unreliable ways to spawn creatures, but I don't know anything past that.  I'm also not sure what unreliable means in this case.  It could be crashes or just buggy behavior.

Regarding the staircase: you've got a dwarf with mining enabled, a pick that's not being used for anything else and the dwarf can reach the spot, correct?  Is he or she on break, eating, drinking, sleeping or anything like that?

[Vagabond.]

Some of the people working on DFHack have figured out some unreliable ways to spawn creatures, but I don't know anything past that.  I'm also not sure what unreliable means in this case.  It could be crashes or just buggy behavior.

Regarding the staircase: you've got a dwarf with mining enabled, a pick that's not being used for anything else and the dwarf can reach the spot, correct?  Is he or she on break, eating, drinking, sleeping or anything like that?

Indeed, though It's been mined somehow... Even though before, I set my miners to do nothing BUT  mine, set up a burrow, and still NOTHING.

Also: New question: Murdering random animals: Is that better than sparing and/or demonstrations?

[Garath]

better than demonstrations, not always as good at sparring. Attacking an animal tends to give little defensive practise. Watch out for anything with horns and hooves (can anyone say Battle Yak?)

your stairs may not be designated right, you may have disrupted access to it.

[greycat]

I've seen cases where a ramp is designated for digging (with access from above), but the miners take literally weeks to get around to it, despite having nothing else to do.  In some of these cases, I have designated a stairwell nearby, which they dug up immediately.

I haven't seen a case where a staircase was delayed, but maybe I've just been lucky.

If I had to guess, I'd say digging a ramp from above is one of those jobs dwarves just hate doing, like medicine.

[Telgin]

I haven't had problems with moods in a very long time, but this one stumps me.  I have a possession that needs rough gems.  I'm on a map that has an aquifer, so I'm unable to dig down to get any yet.  I bought some raw glass from a caravan (they had no rough gems) and she isn't taking it.  I then tried buying some sand and making raw green glass, and she isn't taking that either.

I'm almost positive I've used raw glass as rough gems in moods before, but that was back in .31.25 I think.  I can't figure out why she won't take the raw glass I have.  She isn't in a burrow and has clear access to the glass.  Furthermore, as far as I'm aware only metalworker type moods will require specific items, so the raw glass should work.

I tried using showmood in DFHack and it confirms she only needs 1 rough gem.

Any ideas?  Does this not work in .34.11?

Edit: I'm still interested in answers, but for fun I poked around with DFHack some more in the job structure and managed to get her to grab the glass by changing the job item's material type to -1, which apparently allowed it to be any material.  It was previously 0.

Material type 0 is apparently stone, which I discovered by making her want logs instead.  By changing the item type while leaving the material at 0, she was asking for rock logs.  I can only speculate that material 0 on top of a rough gem restricts it to being a gem that was actually dug up.

Have I completely forgotten how raw glass works for this sort of thing?

[Trif]

Maybe that behavior got changed when Toady made it possible to cut rock into gems. Stones are clearly not used for this mood, so glass could have been added as an exception too.

[Telgin]

That's my guess too, but it's interesting that stone material that was set on the job item wouldn't allow boulders.  I'm guessing it's a code change somewhere that somehow restricts it specifically to gems now.

Maybe I should have changed it to something hilarious while I was at it, since she made a perfect green glass gem.  A perfect oak log would have been funny.  Or a perfect steel bar.

[VerdantSF]

I recently noticed a "Training Session" with one of my melee squads.  Prior to this, I've only noticed sparring and demonstrations that specified what was taught, like "Shield Demonstration."  What do training sessions actually train?

[Sutremaine]

I've seen cases where a ramp is designated for digging (with access from above), but the miners take literally weeks to get around to it, despite having nothing else to do.  In some of these cases, I have designated a stairwell nearby, which they dug up immediately.

I use a channel designation above the ramp. They channel as part of their normal dig order instead of doing some of the ramps and then wandering off. The worst you get from double-designating is semi-frequent spam.

Sometimes I find that deleting and redesignating the ramp triggers a job for it, but then you have to watch out for them stopping at some further point.

[WhimsyWink]

on a couple of occasions I have had wall construction suspended by creature in the way ... as near as I can tell it has been pets ... designating them to pen zones has not helped .... UNsuspending sends the masons back only to be suspended again.  The last time, I removed the construction and then re-ordered it ... which either worked or it was a coincidence. 

[Telgin]

Either I get lucky or animals are moved out of the way when building constructions.  In the event that a construction is suspended by a stupid dwarf standing on the tile he's supposed to be working on the only solution I've ever found is to flat remove and redesignate it.  Unsuspending it almost never works.

Interestingly, flying creatures seem to be much more prone to the bug.  Not sure why that is.

[nickbii]

on a couple of occasions I have had wall construction suspended by creature in the way ... as near as I can tell it has been pets ... designating them to pen zones has not helped .... UNsuspending sends the masons back only to be suspended again.  The last time, I removed the construction and then re-ordered it ... which either worked or it was a coincidence.

The creature's probably the dwarf doing the work. If he stands on the tile where the wall's supposed to be built he can't finish building the wall. Generally if it's a pet you can just un-suspend and the next guy who gets the job has no pets to get in the way.

I've only encountered this twice, but both times any dwarf assigned the job insisted on standing in the exact wrong place. To get the job done I had to cancel the wall completely, and re-build it. Both times I moved the wall a square, and everything worked out fine.

On the bright side most of of the actual work was already done in both cases, because both wars were like 200 squares from the stone blocks I was using to build them. On the not-bright-side if I hadn't been paying attention invaders would have had easy access to my fort.