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[Lucidvizion]

I'm not trying to be snarky, but why can't you just alt-tab and leave the game paused?

[Sappho]

Not everyone can leave things running like that in the long term. Imagine a house with small children running around. The baby cries, the toddler screams, and you aren't going to have time to play again for at least a few days. You might be surprised how common a situation this is. It's not always feasible to just leave it running. And really, the idea that the only solution to the lack of basic functionality is to leave everything running until you have time to come back is just kind of ridiculous. I'm really extremely surprised and disappointed to see that a developer who put so much thought and effort into the little things somehow managed to miss such a major issue. Gamers aren't all teenagers these days. People have things to do. It is never a good idea to punish the player for having a life, unless the only players you want are the ones who have no life. And that's a much smaller demographic than most people might think.

[Frumple]

Yeeaaah, I may personally be pretty comfortable suspending the program and leaving the computer on (/only putting it into sleep or hibernate mode) for hour/days/weeks/months, but from what I understand that's fairly uncommon computer use behavior and probably not something one should expect from users, heh.

Also haven't gotten around to actually playing the game yet, so I can't say how well the game reacts to being paused (and then suspended via process explorer or whathaveyou) and alt-tabbed for a lengthy period, nor how it reacts to the computer going into sleep mode or being hibernated, etc., etc. It's very much common for programs to not handle being out of focus and inactive for lengthy periods... poorly. Plus sometimes you'd really rather it just not be eating the resources, y'know? It's very nice -- and in the case of folks like sappho a borderline requirement -- to not actually have to do that.

[Gabeux]

I'm not trying to be snarky, but why can't you just alt-tab and leave the game paused?

Hmm? You can. If you open any menus, during dialogue, the game remains paused. If you open the steam overlay, even without opening the 'pause menu' (inventory menu), the game will pause automatically too. Shameful derp.

Very random note, I remapped my keys since day one and a friend of mine liked it. Here it is:
Primary Action [Left click]:  E, Secondary Action [Right click]: Q, Inventory: Tab.
This allows you to attack easily, and holding the attack key seems to attack faster/better than left click. Same goes for holding Q to harvest, and other actions.


About saves..
The 'save scumming' excuse is a pretty weak one. The only two times "Save and Exit" would be exploited is saving at the mine's door, pushing 5 floors, saving again, pushing 5 more floors. Or when trying to catch legendary fish - you could save on the perfect condition to catch, fail horribly, and keep reloading..
But in both those cases, you can just reset the day and head straight to your goal in less than 2 minutes anyway. People who really enjoy the genre will just accept their fate (like me when I died 3 tiles from a stair), and some people will just rage and ALT+F4 (which I did two or three times).
If someone really wants to go through the hassle of having a 100% perfect run and reload at every misclick, just let them do it if it means the majority of your playerbase will thank you for not forcing them to only save at a specific point.

Anyways, IMO he should drop the save scumming argument and just stick to "there would be a lot to do, codewise", which is why I don't think Save and Exit will happen soon personally. I do think he'll consider it once most bugs are fixed, though. I've been following his twitter and he's a super nice guy. "Concerned" indeed.
I prefer saving and leaving on the start of a new day, just because I forget what I was doing. But I'd prefer to have a Save and Exit feature too. Few days ago I got a TON of great stuff from a mine dive, and had to go afk and leave my house with the PC on..pretty silly. I also think at least 5 hours of my game time on steam is when I left the game paused to do other stuff.

Edit: Derp.

[Mephisto]

And that's a much smaller demographic than most people might think.

Source? We're all on a forum devoted to a time-sucking video game discussing how much of a 13-minute chunk of time we wasted in an unrelated game.

[Frumple]

Lotta' folks down here in the lower boards don't play much DF, meph

... you'll also note DF actually has a save and quit function, heh. Imagine if you could only save DF at season change.

[variablenonsense]

Yeeaaah, I may personally be pretty comfortable suspending the program and leaving the computer on (/only putting it into sleep or hibernate mode) for hour/days/weeks/months, but from what I understand that's fairly uncommon computer use behavior and probably not something one should expect from users, heh.

Also haven't gotten around to actually playing the game yet, so I can't say how well the game reacts to being paused (and then suspended via process explorer or whathaveyou) and alt-tabbed for a lengthy period, nor how it reacts to the computer going into sleep mode or being hibernated, etc., etc. It's very much common for programs to not handle being out of focus and inactive for lengthy periods... poorly. Plus sometimes you'd really rather it just not be eating the resources, y'know? It's very nice -- and in the case of folks like sappho a borderline requirement -- to not actually have to do that.

Sleep mode, I don't know, but it reacts just fine to being alt-tabbed / out of focus for extremely long times. My Steam 'game time' is at 37 hours ... but I'm only just now at the end of Summer 1. I have a habit of leaving it open when I have to go do other things, heh.

[Sappho]

And that's a much smaller demographic than most people might think.

Source? We're all on a forum devoted to a time-sucking video game discussing how much of a 13-minute chunk of time we wasted in an unrelated game.

A lot of people on this forum (myself included) don't play DF anymore because it's such a time sink. The source is my real life. Me and all my other friends in their 30s who grew up loving games all have very limited time to play anymore. I spent a lot of hours on games when I was a teenager, but the more time goes by, the less I have for games. I nearly got myself in big trouble with my boss by failing to finish some work last weekend because I got sucked into Stardew Valley. I had to stay up half the night to finish it so I wouldn't miss my deadline. I would love to play now, but I have to go to bed in a few minutes, and I can't save midway through a day, so I don't get to play tonight. I have a life - does that preclude me from the privilege of enjoying a game which appears to be specifically targeted at people my age with fond memories of Harvest Moon?

[BigD145]

I'm in year 1 of winter and have never had more than about 40 squares of planting because I just can't water all that much and still level up other things along with gathering resources. Not having sprinklers or material for better than 4 tile sprinklers is keeping me super poor. I could sell some metals but then I'd have less materials to craft farming equipment and I still have a severe shortage of refined quartz. I can't make a recycler. I only have a handful of single heart npc's. I have no animal buildings because my money is going into better tools. I'm failing pretty badly. On the plus side I'm just one winter flower away from the greenhouse.

Strange that you are having a problem with keeping up with that many tiles. I've nearly reached the same point, and have managed to squirrel away almost 70k, thanks entirely to constant, large scale farming. It was grueling, to be sure, but I found that the key was conserving cash and concentrating on shipping as many crops as possible through Spring. Kale and potatoes were my primary exports. While I did dive straight into the dungeon crawling on rainy days, I avoided fishing and livestock,  and made a point to forage extensively until about late Summer, when agriculture, upgrades, and feeding young women berries occupied almost all of my time. At this point, I'd saved up around 15k, and invested all of it, mostly in multiple harvest crops- 36 tiles blueberry, 24 tiles corn, 24 tiles tomato, and 36 tiles melon. Of course, I made sure to gift folks in passing with the odd forgeable. At this point, I had enough disposable income that I was actually buying ice cream for villagers between harvests. >.>

Field snacks are your friend early on, and give an extra incentive for gathering wood. That said, it is a game, and all about having fun, so the PTSD-inducing grind of that play style probably isn't for everyone.

If it's a multiple season thing then you don't need to worry about losing it when the seasons change, same with corn.

Also what's the other way to get that seed. Folks seem to indicate it's a reward from the museum. I got some sort of star seed from it as my first or second reward I think, not sure if it's the same thing.

Also, how do you smelt? I have five iron ore lying around and I'd like to have a bar for the Recycling Machine, but there doesn't seem to be an option at the blacksmith. Do I just need more ore?

Smelting takes place at your own furnace. If you've somehow managed to get iron ore already, you should probably have been given the blueprints to build one. Once you have, make sure you have coal in your inventory, and interact with he furnace while carrying in the ore in hand. Voila!

I hit the bottom of the 1st mine around summer. Regular quartz drops have not been common. I have 7-8 in all skills except fishing which is 2. I will likely sell off about half my gold bar stockpile soon just to have some cash. I must have 40 bars of each of the three metals.

A lot of the things that happen next day are calculated before the save. Crop yields have been identical when I quit midday. Quests have changed when quitting midday. Fish are likely calculated on the fly.

[Salmeuk]

These days are so short, if the save mechanism is an issue just play like a responsible adult and only start a day when you have a guaranteed fifteen minutes to spare. Not to say it's not expected these days to save on the fly, but understanding it's a one-man indie-ish project should qualm your frustration a little.

I like the game but it's hardly revolutionary. A lot of cute ideas presented well, but the systems lack the depth that draws you back for a second playthrough. Too many perfect answers for what to grow, what to catch or what to give. Now that sounds cynical, but for the sort of player who can spreadsheet out the ratios these sorts of "objectively better crops" can take you out of the game. It just seems old fashioned in a lot of places that deserved a fresh concept.

It gives me fuzzy feelings to light the fireplace, however, so it's really not all that bad. . .

[Wiles]

Can your animals starve to death? I've run out of food for my critters in winter. I've been camping outside Marnie's for the last two days but she hasn't set foot behind her desk. I'm getting worried!

[Glloyd]

Wow. Gave penny her favourite gift on her birthday and our relationship shot up from 5 to 8. Protip, give people things on their birthday.

[Gabeux]

Can your animals starve to death? I've run out of food for my critters in winter. I've been camping outside Marnie's for the last two days but she hasn't set foot behind her desk. I'm getting worried!

I'm not sure, but when I first built my coop my chickens lived for almost a week without food. They kinda hated me for a while (took longer to get the first heart than it should), but the game did say that "Chickenita is looking thin"...so maybe if it goes for too long bad things can happen.
I've heard about Marnie being weird during winter before, but I bought all the hay I needed in the last day of Fall. However, I noticed Marnie sometimes takes too long to open the shop, or hangs around the house instead of tending the shop during 'business hours', and she also sometimes stops tending the shop one hour before closing time (Pierre does this too, which is annoying since 5PM is the time I get there to buy more seeds). I remember being able to talk to her around 10AM during winter, but I didn't go there much then.

[Cruxador]

(removed)

[BigD145]

Wow. Gave penny her favourite gift on her birthday and our relationship shot up from 5 to 8. Protip, give people things on their birthday.

I need to keep a paper calendar on hand with favorites for my next playthrough, which might be a Joja attempt. That should be one of the easier ways to keep track of things.