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[Azure]

Thanks for writing this TinyPirate! I loved your previous tutorial. Especially the part of medical experiments. This will be a nice addition to Bronzemurdered and Oilfurnace for whenever someone asks me what DF is like. Could the Oil furnace Illustrations be included or at least mentioned in relation to the hard copy? If the hard copy is pretty cool it'll make a nice gift.

As to what will be in the book:

• how soon can we expect a preview?
• I'd like to see if you went with the fortress progression overview flowchart from the wiki and how well illustrations were used to get the point across.
• Is the classic "3 bridge" defense included as well as throwing down a ditch/removing ramps for establishing a quick perim.
• Is using raised (Not retracting!) bridges for controlling where units enter the map be included?
• Are the industry flowcharts included? They helped tons whenever i had to show people how things worked.
• Is the full 100% coverage uniform included as well as a disclaimer on cloaks/hoods?

Will you be working on a complete guide to DF as soon as this guide is "Finished"? Having a book for "Oh god what are all those g's???. and Why little mans starve!" is pretty cool, It'll be nice to see a monstrous 800 page bible dedicated to all things dwarfy. Perhaps bit of a historical text as well as a guide to mayhem? I'd love a book that has a section breaking down goblin grinder traps and another on crimes against nature like the merpeople genocide, Training children gladiators with 10.5 years of being crammed in a room with poultry, and Hunting Walruses Or: How I Drained the Ocean to Catch That Smug Bastard.
[Yeah it would pretty much be a wiki copy but that's where organizing it into a easily understood logical flow with lots of illustrations, stories, flow charts, and humorous journal entries proving a point will pull it together into an experience and not a stroll through the wiki.]
Is it really all that great to get only 25% on an e-book sale? I mean jesus... Once its cooked up bandwidth and payment processing is the only cost after author/editor/pub cuts. whereas with the book its materials, producing, distro, and a bit for all the middlemen as well as the pubs & author. Also, have you considered making the hard copy more of a "Collectors" work of art at as cheap of a price as possible? If we're honest, e-book is the way to go for content but the hard copy is the experience so there could be a snazzy hard cover with gorgeous art through & through. Lots of illustrations, auxiliary info, foldouts, stories. Kind of like the infantrymans uplifting primer from 40k.

[TinyPirate]

Thanks for the kind words, Azure! Some points in reply:

- Tim will do some unique art for the book, no need to repeat already published stuff.
- Preview and whatnot will be out... sometime? Do O'Reilly do previews?
- I do provide flow tables on industry, but I am trying to avoid just repeating wiki content so I'm doing things a couple of different ways with industry explained from the view of the movement of goods through industry chains along with the role of various workshops in the industry.
- I try to spend a good chunk of time on digging and constructing as you can't build a fortress without mastering these menus and how the pieces interact can be confusing to new players. Bridges and whatnot are included along with some introduction to engineering in general.
- Uniforms are covered as part of the military chapter, but mostly just a "try and equip one of each of X".

As for more books - well, I don't think there's much point in a complete guide. If you've got to the point where you've wrestled the fun out of DF's beating heart then you are going to be intimately familiar with the wiki and it is a far superior "mother of all documents" than any book could ever hope to be.

That being said, having read books like "Cult of Lego" (http://nostarch.com/cultoflego) I would really love to see a book which either talked about the fans and their interactions with the games, displayed more gamer art, or talked about megaprojects and whatnot. I think there's a lot of neat stuff in DF that would suit a coffee table book of some kind!

As for the 25% - that's a great deal in publishing land, and O'Reilly do a lot of work in putting the book together and promoting it. I have no problem with the deal. As for a collectors edition that menaces with spikes of paper - I dunno - I guess if it sold a bajillion copies then a full color version etc might be possible - although that might suit the imaginary "Cult of Dwarf Fortress" book  more.

Hope that answers your questions

[TinyPirate]

Hey, so we've got an early concept for the book cover. Needs transparency fiddled with in a couple of places, that sort of stuff, but it will do to show off now. It's not carp, but I like how striking it is

Feedback welcome.

[nenjin]

Toady's involvement is limited to, very kindly, writing a forward for the book.

That's pretty much all I wanted to hear. I'm not sure how successful it'll be given the nature of the DF playerbase (since the game requires a ton of self-directed learning) but good luck!

[cephalo]

Toady's involvement is limited to, very kindly, writing a forward for the book.

That's pretty much all I wanted to hear. I'm not sure how successful it'll be given the nature of the DF playerbase (since the game requires a ton of self-directed learning) but good luck!

I think its going to be pretty big. Some of the utility files on DFFD get hundreds of downloads per day. Toady's not making a huge amount of money, but I suspect DF is one of the more played games. People are stingy with the donations that's all.

[hermes]

Hey, so we've got an early concept for the book cover. Needs transparency fiddled with in a couple of places, that sort of stuff, but it will do to show off now. It's not carp, but I like how striking it is

Looks great!  Red seems to be a fitting and eyecatching choice for the coloured beard and edge.  Dark background looks serious, which is good.  The summary at the top seemed a bit out of place (like, too many lines of white text at the top?), but I guess it's hard for us to appreciate approaching the game with fresh eyes and there needs to be something to explain what on earth it is about.  Scratch that, on a second look it seems good.  Giving feedback is so stressful! 

[Kogut]

Looks great but I am not sure that black inside D/F/A/R/O is a good idea.

[zwei]

Hey, so we've got an early concept for the book cover. Needs transparency fiddled with in a couple of places, that sort of stuff, but it will do to show off now. It's not carp, but I like how striking it is

I would have prefered "traditional" O'Reilly look with engraving to fit into bookcase.

[TinyPirate]

Letters do need a transparency fix - and animal would also be cool.

Thanks for the feedback (and any more to come). It is all going straight back to O'Reilly!

[Farmerbob]

So do you have a plan for how to modify the book over time as it becomes obsolete?

Remember that dwarven economy is returning soon, and that's going to have the potential to change a LOT of things in industry and balances of supply and demand.

I'd just be simple and put a reference to the version of DF that was active at the time of writing on the forward page?

Might incorporate the version number into the title though?

[Kogut]

Remember that dwarven economy is returning soon, and that's going to have the potential to change a LOT of things in industry and balances of supply and demand.

For now it will change only trading (maybe it will be less useless and ridiculous).

[Yonasu]

The back needs a recursive drawing of itself. It _really_ does.

Or a recursive chapter about you writing the chapter about writing the chapter aso

[Johuotar]

I don't really like the red beard, it doesn't look right. How about gray like it's in the DF mainpage.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The back needs a recursive drawing of itself. It _really_ does.

I love that idea, though I'm not sure there would really be other point in that other than being an inside joke, which probably wont happen.

[TinyPirate]

Recursive back cover would be awesome. I imagine O'Reilly fill the back with Useful Stuff, but maybe in a corner somewhere....

As for updates - whenever the print version is ordered the fairly-latest version should be mailed. The eBook version will get updated at major patches with chapter or other changes as required. It is relatively easy for me to do using ASCIIDOC and the O'Reilly "real time" publishing pipeline. O'Reilly can probably turn around and publish any major edits by me in a month - which for publishing - is very quick!

[Kogut]

Random question - is there anything about bugs in the DF, especially about efficient reporting?