( You might be surprised, but I've been persevering with my problematic Adventure Mode game. The following wa written during the course of time in-between my last post and now. Paragraphs are sometimes finished many hours after they are started and so the narrative flow probably does not stay consistent. But I thought I'd at least let you know how things are going, etc.)
Having found out that the moon really wasn't going across the sky much, after much putting down and picking up (to rationalise my inventory), I decided to have a couple of quick cheaty turns involving flying, as suggested. Being utterly stuck within protective fires that refused to extinguish, the raws were edited and a quick diagonal upward and diagonal downward flight set me outside the confines of my self-imposed containment.
Warily, I start to move (still in extreme slo-mo), unsure what threats are awaiting me... No sounds of cackling, and by now the werebeast should definitely be an the non-were form, but I'm close (
WSW-close) to the bandit camp (apparently now leaderless), and there were peregrines and elephants and armadillos around (and those armadillos have a score to settle, as the contents of my backpack attest).
What's that? "The Dingo stands up."? Dingo? What dingo... Oooh...
The next couple of minutes (game time... about two hours in real time) are hectic. (Relatively so.) I think that my Talented shield skills and, moreover, my Novice armour skills (with still wearing my original peasant garb) are not up to the task of dealing with the pack of dingoes that hove into view in a fair fight. Their idea of a fair fight, that is, which means approaching the poor schmuck (your truly, in this minor drama) from all sides at once.
What to do? Well, I have a cave to the south. A 'mere' four steps. And I step, thusly, in as much haste as I can muster. It's almost unaccomplished, I am
just surrounded by the pack (I have counted ten of them) as I drop into the entrance, with various dingoes having struck at me, but the shots being fortuitously blocked.
At my back, I have the inner cave, and within I really know not what, but that is not my concern at this precise moment. The more immediate battle starts with earnest with a slash of my iron scimitar at the first of
six dingoes stood, or sat upon the ramp I have just vacated. Snicker-snack, I go. Oh, there are misses, but luckily I have accumulated a degree of swordsmanship. By the end of this encounter I may even be deemed adequate! Arteries are opened, a sight gladder to me than mere muscles being torn, but where a head shot is possible I strive for a shattering of the skull and gloat as there is a tearing apart of the brain.
Staying on the offensive, I care not for the occasional bite, luckily merely bruising the fat in various parts of my body, before the grip of the one or other dingo's teeth is broken. I choose my targets wisely, refraining from putting those of my foes that are merely unconscious out of their (or my) misery until I have dealt some similar form of injury to the rest of their compatriots.
The scimitar lodges firmly in wounds, on occasion, and when this prevents me from continuing with that weapon I resort to my large copper dagger (trophy of a previous engagement), and when by the end I find even the dagger lodged in the flesh of my main opponent, my bronze shield is brought to the fore. (I had
also used a pommel attack to an eye for fun, at one point, and was even tempted to take a cursory bite of a hind-leg when attractively presented to me, but really I should be concentrating on getting the enemies bested as best I can.)
At last, with but three bruises on my body, for my part, six of the canines lie dead at the entrance, and with no more immediately visible I have the luxury to do something to rectify a particular regrettable vulnerability... I can re-sneak again! Clasping this psychological security blanket, there is one particular task that needs doing. Deeper into the cave! Perhaps fate now brings me back to my original task! That of killing Onust Reignedtouches, the enemy who in his beastly form is said to be vulnerable only to items made of bronze! And so, my trusty bronze shield in hand, I advance, and prepare to do what needs to be done...
"The spinning sharp chert strikes The Peasant in the head, bruising the muscle, shattering the skull and bruising the brain!" What a let-down. Still better dead than
red ripping me limb-from-limb. I spend a few moments (in-game, it's still a drag on real-life time) checking for valuables. There is a stack of coins and the ex-possessions of a now skeletonised dwarf, one of the local outlaw's men, I believe. This includes unusable armour that I cannot wear on my human frame, but perhaps I can trade it later. For the sake of ceremony, I place all the irrelevant remains in one spot and set a funereal pyre ablaze upon that spot. (Whoops, I'd forgot about the dwarven skeleton. I quickly pick it up and throw it on there as well. It might not have been quite what he wanted (the previous owner of the skeleton), but it'll be somewhat
similar to magma, to be in an eternally burning campfire, and it'll give the future pharmacologists something a laugh, or ascribe to some weird cult...)
Task done, I go back to the entrance itself and onto the exit ramp. Another dingo, lurking at te edge, spots me, and strikes me thrice, but ineffectively. A slash of the dagger, and she jumps away, and runs, but with a damaged lng she may not get too far. (I see another couple of dingoes sitting a couple of tiles away, but they don't appear to be so eager to attack. And here I am, sat atop six corpses that were once the emodiments of their more forward pack-members. What else should I do but butcher the corpses? (Dingo meat... yum yum. So much of it, though, perhaps I'm not doing myself any favours.)
At this point, just beyond the lip of the cave entrance, two tiles distant, I spy a couple more dingoes. One recumbent and the other standing in anticipation. Thinking that I might test my throwing skills, I sneak up onto the opposite side of the cave entrance only for... goshdarnit! a peregrine is flying by and, doubtless startled, proceeds to mob me. (If one bird can truly 'mob', on its own.) Quickly rendering it unconscious, I waste a turn on a token throw of animal fat, but miss the prone fowl (pron. 'foul', although it should be 'fool').
In that moment, and the next as events unfold, I once again find myself beset by dingoes. Five in total (and no sign of the injured one that ran), hinting that my initial count may have been on the low side. Business-like, I set to these new threats. They are attacking from tiles either side of the cave entrance, from where I now stand (out in the open), and one is facing me down (or rather up) from the depression in front of me, but with my stance being to stay firm and by now Adept at using my shield, I find all but one attack from all quarters is blocked, and that sole exception does nothing more than bruise me for a fourth time, while I methodically ensure that each and every attacker has a significant wound to their heads or upper torso. In the process, my sword is once again lodged firmly in a foe, and the copper dagger is revived as my main tool.
Round two starts off with one more bruise (although it appears to be a repeat of a prior injury, leaving me feeling no worse off), and the lodging of the dagger in the head of an uncomfortable, though still conscious, plains-hound. Ne'er fear, for I have my shield to bash with, except... oh wait, I appear to be able to scimitar the enemy once more, so let's stick to the weapon that I know best, at least until I can afford to tease my rapidly diminishing foes.
One two, one two, and through and through... And snicker-snack I go, indeed. And I forget to keep count. It's only when all the dingoes are din
gone that I remember to try something else. Peregrine tongue anyone? (Well, it
was that blabberbeak that forced me to fight.) Bitten into, shaken around, and, oh dear (from
its POV), it tears off and the bird bleeds out.
All current threats now dealt with, and the moon directly above, I could perhaps go to sleep, but the display of "half remembered" landscape beyond the 9-tile radius night-time vision limits indicates that I may be near the corner of an embark-tile, and there are also goods to pick up. I risk wandering over to this corner (sneakily), along the way bringing an armadillo into view. I throw some spare animal fat at it, and (ironically) "The spinning
armadillo fat strikes
The Dingo in the left front leg, bruising the muscle!" More dingoes out there? Well, let's find out. The previous extended encounter as trained me up enough to make me confident to take on any
more packs that are out there (also, I've a feeling something like this pack is contributing to my continued slow game-time progress). (Also, there is a promise of goods there on the ground, ready to pick up, although when I move to bring one location into view, some leather that was there before has moved.)
Skirting around the armadillo, (lighting a marker fire at the corner, for reference and then moving around the back) I bring a dingo into view. It's
not the herald of another pack, however. The dingo sits on the same tile as some armadillo fat (proving that it's the one that was hit, but also showing that my aim was off, given it's not on the line from where I threw to where the original target still stands), with injuries. Her upper body cut open, left front leg bruised and the right lung broken, the injuries (discounting the recent leg bruise) show her to be the sole(?) survivor of the recently defeated ambush.
Naturally, I'm keen to show clematis with peace and reconciliation... No, I shall very likely attack her, once I get closer. But that will take some time yet, and is subject to the other whims of fate.
<turns pass>
She's dead. It was not down to my choice after all. A set of running armadillos scurried across the area, and one 'tripped over me'.
Again having nominally uncombative wildlife bring me into conflict, I made short shrift of the offending party as well as the more aggressive (if injured) dingo.
Further wildlife (more armadillos and peregrines) are seen as I conduct a search-pattern for other interesting goods (picking up a number of coins whose origin I don't recognise but may be able to spend at some point, and a cave blob skin) and to check out various remains (some skeletons of ex-bandit dwarves). Another pack of dingoes are spotted at the edge of my vision (still limited by the night) and while I'm now fairly confident of handling even a pack-attack, I hope that I can avoid this if I'm lucky.
Ok, so a small diversion... after trekking round half the embark tile in the dark (easily identified by the cut-off in 'remembered' landscape) I got properly Drowsy. With the moon now high in the western sky, I idly wondered if a few hours sleep would do me good. Transferring the save-game to a different machine (just in case the old one is the cause of my woes), I go back to the cave entrance, set five hours on my game-alarmclock and snooze. The snooze-screen progresses quite quickly, but then I get back to the world to come back out of supine unconsciousness ... forty-five minutes later (having watched a complete episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to keep me in the mood), it announces "
You've spotted a Giant Cave Spider!" What where when how?
I look around (cursor-look, quite immune to the FPS issue), and it's not in sight either in the visible parts of the cave or on the surface. I can stand, I can sneak... Well, it can't see me either, apparently. Into the back of the cave... Oh, but way too slow... I crudely measured it. Starting the first move at half-past the hour, it's still at "0 (0)" at five past the next hour, but back to full responsiveness by quarter-past. So let's say 40 minutes?
This is a 3Ghz
dual-core P4 with 1Gb RAM, XP (Pro, 32-bit) and nothing of any significance running in the background, hardly a sluggard and Kerbal Space Program 0.13 runs nicely on it, and yet move two into the cave, which leaves all but five tiles of cave-flooring unobserved by me (and still no GCS), is started at 20-past and... well the phone rings and I get distracted by the call, but at some point between five-to and the next hour exactly, so 40-ish minutes again.
During this latest move, processor activity appears to be consistently around 50% for most of the waiting time (both cores apparently taking the load roughly equally, contrary to expectations, at a wildly varying 30%-70% on each) and memory usage is about 460Mb while checking (peak usage is indicated as 708Mb, but that may have been at any time in the three hours since DF was started), with only Explorer (3h13m+, 37Mb RAM, 206Mb peak RAM) even approaching the same limits. Even the anti-virus TSRs (almost the same run-time, but far less memory-intensive) could not be at fault.
At exactly five-past, I diagonally move one more spot into the cave, leaving just one single tile still unobserved, this time round, but still no sign of any GCS (and there was definitely no GCS in here when I
originally surveyed it... could it actually be on the surface?) and the wait lasts until... well, you can guess
roughly what figure I got, having missed the precise moment once more. I shall probably totally ignore this brief sojourn, revert to the original machine and the version of save I left on that (just before my in-game snooze) and continue in mere 5-minute increments to the edge of the observed embark area, and beyond, and see if I can leave behind whatever performance-spoiling phenomena are causing me this pain. I wonder, though, if there's anything in the fact that things slowed after one sleep (not my first in this immediate locale) and
vastly slowed after a yet another doze..?
...Ok, before I abandon, I wander outside the cave, in daylight. Because of trees spoiling the view I can't see
everywhere within my daytime sight-range, but how much wildlife is there?
Two separate herds of elephants (at least ten individuals, some sharing tiles) two separate groups of lions (some also sharing tiles, at least six but probably more), peregrines numbering perhaps twenty-four or so (might have missed one or two), at least three cheetahs, a handful of mongeee, three 'w's (warthogs, I think, but I forgot to look-cursor before writing this
[edit: it's weasels!]). More immobile but scattered around (
definitely moved during the last sleep, BTW) are assorted remains left after butchering those dingoes, and a number of cave-blob 'skins'. The original camp-fires set my first night in this spot are (as they were by the dawn that followed) ashes, but the camp-fires that I cheatily flew out of are still burning, more than 24 game-hours later (as well as the ones I put down a little over five game-hours ago, before I had that last snooze). Oh, and not one sign of a GCS.
I opportunistically throw some handy armadillo fat at an armadillo. I miss, and hit a cheetah. During the next five turns (so far, as far as I have gone, albeit now far down the path of Adventuring from where I said I'd decided to revert) throw more fat at the armadillo and hit the cheetah
three more times. It is being ill. I move one space closer to the armadillo and that was earlier this evening. I probably
could run both this and the original (prior to the 40-minute turn save). Or just quicker test on the 'quicker' version whether moving off-site would be advantageous to FPS.
Oh, I don't know. I'm all indecisive now, as I append this last little comment and record just prior to posting my little disorganised account. What a let down, eh? Not even a particularly good cliff-hanger, but thank you for reading anyway.
You
may hear more of this, but it might well be next month, and involve how I managed to merely wander over to the nearest town, at this rate!
Author
Topic: Mission on a slowdown. (Read 1690 times)