Print

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

[Rex_Nex]

Alright, so in a faraway board nicknamed BCB, I want to do a Community Fortress/Let's Play type game. However, I'm stumped on just how to do this, so I thought I'd ask you guys. I have several questions, so please bear with me...

1. What style of writing seems would you deem most pleasing to the general outsider? I want this to interest players who have never seen the likes of Dwarf Fortress before. Should it be informal commentary on what I'm doing in-game? An formal roleplay of my society? Mayhaps I should go the comedic route or a combination of the above?

2. Would you deem 0.34.04 a stable version to base a fortress around? The last few community fortresses I have started were shot down by bugs and crashes.

3. Should I go full-out ASCII or set up a Tileset? Are there any tilesets you would suggest for showing outside players what is going on clearly?

4. Should I go with short but frequent updates of the fortress or longer, less frequent updates? I don't want to lose my crowd because of a lack of updates, but at the same time I don't want to bore them with small and relatively boring updates.

5. Are there any tools you would consider useful for a community fortress? By tools I mean outside programs like Dwarf Therapist or perhaps something to easily take screenshots with. Maybe DT and Fraps? Anything I am missing?

Feel free to add anything else I might not have covered. I'm really hoping to make this as nice of an introduction of Dwarf Fortress as possible, but I need your help.

Also, I'm sorry if this is the wrong section!

[nwr1_cronus]

First: Have you checked out LParchive and gone over its DF collection? That would be a great starting point.

To address your other questions, notably stability: it is common practice to start new successions only when a fully patched, stable version is released.  This serves two purposes for internet communities: it prevents official succession forts from overlapping, and ensures that no unexpected bugs will end the game prematurely.  Quirks and oddities are expected in a game like DF, but game-ending bugs are never good (as a current LP being played on SomethingAwful stands testament to).

My advice? Build your team and wait about a month.  In that time you'll be able to go over a number of other LP's, figure out what style you should present to the audience, and ensure that everyone involved really appreciates the work you and others will be putting into the project.

[Matoro]

1. Boatmurdered-style. Comedic style is good for Dwarf Fortress.
2. I'd use 0.31. 0.34 hasn't yet gotten all bugfixes and has crashes and other unexcepted things. If your fort crashes, you probably lose your followers.
3. Tileset. If your target group is people, who haven't ever played DF, tileset is must-have.
4. I don't know about this. It depends pretty much about what happens in your fort.
5. Dwarf Therapist is must-have. For screenshots, I use ScreenHunter 6.0. Dropbox is awesome program in mass-downloading of pics, very handy when you need upload lots of pics. ScreenHunter can even save screenshots direclty on Dropbox, which uploads pics automatically to internet.

[Intrinsic]

DF 31.25, as mentioned above for stability. Plus a bucket load of resources to refer to like the wiki or capnduck's excellent LPs on YT.

Therapist for sure, any other tools are just fluff(ie optional extras) DT is a major headache remover in large forts and it's the one tool they'll end up finding and using eventually anyways)

Tileset yes also.

[Flying Dice]

1. Comedic.
2. I haven't run into any notable bugs in .34.04. This will also let you have fun with CSI: Mountainhome.
3. ASCII, but give the people following it the chance to vote. (IMO, tilesets all look like ass compared to ASCII, and are often less clear)
4. It depends. Longer ones for low-excitement content, short ones for exciting stuff.
5. Dwarf Therapist isn't optional. DFhack wouldn't be bad, either, even if only to help FPS with the clean function.

[Replica]

A tileset is a must for players who are blind as bats (like me) and who have no clue what the random ASCII symbols mean.

"&" doesn't really look that threatening or imposing to people who have never played DF before.

[Kogut]

Note that Boatmurdered worked without tileset.

[ullrich]

1. Comedic route, but not going out of your way to find comedy where there is none to be had, forced humor is the worst.
2. I would just wait a few more weeks unless you are desperate to do it now for everything to be stabilized, if not I would still use 0.34 because vampires+etc is awesome.
3. Phoebus Tile Set (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=57557.0), its the best imo, and I have straight up turned off LPs just cause they are in ascii.
4. Depends on the format of the LP I think, at minimum yearly updates, seasonal is probably the best, even if the update says something along the lines of nothing happens/"it has been a quite summer in the year xxx", additionally if something big and rapid is happening increase the update speed as needed.
5. Dwarf Therapist is a must, alt+print screen works for screen shots really.

Give of enthusiasm/passion for whats going on, if the LPer is bored the audience will be bored.
Let people be "dwarfed" (as in give a dwarf a nickname associated to that audience member), that allows you to add personal stories [and of course the death's of] various audicance members to make them feel more invested in the LP.
Getting an interesting embark location is a must (for this dfhack is very useful for scouting out locations prior to embark).

[TinyPirate]

Wait for the .04 LNP and the. Start your game with the tileset of choice and ini settings you need. Play, zip the whole bundle, pass to the next person.

[Sutremaine]

1. Whatever you're comfortable with. Be as amusing as you can, but don't force it. If your best writing style is not one that lends itself to casual reading, consider dwarfing yourself and having a few journal entries you'll enjoy writing. Don't look to other LPs for inspiration, they didn't need another LP to work from and they turned out fine.

2. Yes, 34.04 works well enough, and you don't have to update when the game does. Husks are crazy though, so stay out of the evil areas unless they're easy ones that rain blood and don't reanimate anything.

3. I'm kind of biased here. I find tilesets harder to read than the symbolic ASCII because I have difficulty telling the tiles apart (to the point of ignoring the pictures sometimes), but I'd pick a tileset and colour scheme that keeps the feel of the ASCII but isn't so physically hard on the eyes. At least tone the red down a bit.

4. Depends what's going on. A battle might call for a couple of long updates close together, and a winter without anything exciting might call for a little exposition and filling out stuff you didn't manage to write during the good bits. Filler, basically, and a breather.

5. No DFHack. Not only is it a temptation, it removes all those horrible little problems that make DF interesting to the observer. You might not enjoy trying to find that one area of the map that you haven't turned into a green goo generator, but the reader will!

[bombzero]

meh, i personally only use DFhack as a last restort to stall fps death, and to dump stones, why to dump stones you ask? dwarfs suck at it.

anyways, use Phoebus for the tileset, its easy on the eyes, barring that go with the suggestion of using a toned down ASCII one.

as for literary style, use yours. not anyone else's. they like it or they don't.

DT is a must, don't introduce new people to DFhack (takes something away if you used even a little bit prior to having experienced the game well).


other than that, glhf.

[Salmonpunch]

As long as you convey that losing is fun and that nobles suck, you have my blessing.

in terms of writing style, try to be at least partially comedic.

also dont savescum unless you die year 1.