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[dok]

My dwarves die.  All the time.  Their icons start to flash, alternating between humanoid @ signs and the ! of doom.  No doubt you'll want to tell me that this means they have entered a strange mood.  But as far as I can tell, they haven't.  There's nothing in the announcements about it, the screen doesn't centre on them.  They just start to flash, wander aimlessly (or sometimes congregate in a meeting hall), refuse to eat, drink or sleep, and eventually die of thirst.  I've even gone so far as turning off ARTIFACTS in init.txt, but still they do it.  Flash and die, flash and die.  I'd love to get into DF, as it seems exactly my sort of game.  But when this happens to 2 or 3 dwarves per season, and often within the first few minutes of claiming a new fortress, it seems beyond hope.

Am I missing something stupendously obvious?

[Yag Alone]

this sound... weird... can you upload one of your save game somewhere?

[dok]

Sure.  Here you go: notastrangemood.zip

It's a reclaimed fortress, and my squadron leader/miner fell foul of the exclamation disease within 5 minutes of play.

[Yag Alone]

There is no obvious explanation of those strange behaviors, I am quite puzzled... do you have the same exclamation marks disease when starting a brand new fortress? perhaps it's a bug linked to reclaiming...

[gloogorshkin]

You might have a bad install.  Maybe try downloading and installing again?

[dok]

The error occurs with both new and reclaimed fortress, and has carried across the two previous builds of the game (which are the only ones I've seen).  I've installed the game several times, on different drives, and built multiple worlds.  Am I right in assuming that you saw the same behaviour, Yag?  Because that would rule out the game code not liking my hardware.

[Skanky]

Does the game announce entering a mood and centre on dwarves if the appropriate workshop is not yet available? That is all I can think of at the moment.

[Karlito]

yes it does.  This sounds like a bug.

EDIT: Are you using a clean install, because there are several other problems that I noticed that could be related to a overwrite or a CTRL-ALT-DEL quit.  For example, neither the "strange" mood dwarf or the axedwarf show up in the military screen.  Try a fresh install and see what happens.

[ November 23, 2007: Message edited by: Karlito ]

[Yag Alone]

quote:Originally posted by Skanky:
<STRONG>Does the game announce entering a mood and centre on dwarves if the appropriate workshop is not yet available? That is all I can think of at the moment.</STRONG>

There is no mood announcement on the log, the units just shows up with a "No job" status instead of the usual strange mood strings, the units are not enraged, entranced, crazy or melancholics...
No obvious reason for being "exclamationmarked".

[martinuzz]

That's very strange. Hope that Toady reads this and can shed some light on the issue. Post this to the bug report section as well. Must be a bug but I don't understand why nobody else encountered it. What are your system specs and what OS are you running?

If the issue is as stated in my next post, ignore this one.

[ November 23, 2007: Message edited by: martinuzz ]

[martinuzz]

Wait.. I have one idea.. Are the dwarves in question wounded? If they are and there are no free beds for them to rest on, they will not drink and eat. Read in the development page today that Toady fixed that so that they WILL drink and eat. Beware of the wildlife, especially fish. They're absolutely murderous.

[RPB]

quote:Originally posted by dok:
<STRONG>My dwarves die.  All the time.  Their icons start to flash, alternating between humanoid @ signs and the ! of doom.  No doubt you'll want to tell me that this means they have entered a strange mood.  But as far as I can tell, they haven't.  There's nothing in the announcements about it, the screen doesn't centre on them.  They just start to flash, wander aimlessly (or sometimes congregate in a meeting hall), refuse to eat, drink or sleep, and eventually die of thirst.  I've even gone so far as turning off ARTIFACTS in init.txt, but still they do it.  Flash and die, flash and die.  I'd love to get into DF, as it seems exactly my sort of game.  But when this happens to 2 or 3 dwarves per season, and often within the first few minutes of claiming a new fortress, it seems beyond hope.

Am I missing something stupendously obvious?</STRONG>

This doesn't sound like a strange mood. This sounds like melancholy/insanity, which is a possible outcome of failed strange moods but also occurs on its own if a dwarf is unhappy for large periods of time. What color is the flashing ! mark? If it's blue or cyan, that's melancholy. If you also have lots of non-insane dwarves walking around with the flashing red down arrow of unhappiness, then that's your problem right there.

[dok]

I've noticed no pattern at all to how this strikes.  The dwarves aren't wounded, and aren't melancholic.  Exclamation mark colours vary: on my current games, one is green, one white.  One extra thing: it happens to soldiers too, but in a slightly different way.  Even if they are the only member of a squad, that squad can still be put on patrol.  Once turned back into civilians, however, the buggy behaviour starts as described earlier.  If these dwarves are then returned to military duty, pressing x from the main menu fails to register the single-member squad's presence.  It's as if the game just can't see them.

The PC has XP SP1, running on an Athlon XP 2400+ with a VIA motherboard, which is probably unusual-ish.

Could a mod move this thread into the bugs board, or should I crosspost?

[Frugal]

The status icons can be found here:
http://archive.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Status_Icons

[Eagle of Fire]

If it's not a strange mood, then it's something else. And it pretty much mean that your not getting your dwarves happy enough, so they go tantruming/melancholy/rage, etc.

This is not a bug at all.