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Total Members Voted: 69

[StLeibowitz]

I was considering giving the military professionals of the Formics names in their own language - mainly for spearmen and swordsmen, as those are their primary weapons - to maybe reflect greater cultural importance placed on them as a result of the castes, but I also think along the lines of Hugo. Sentient ants are not going to call themselves sentient ants, they are going to call themselves something along the lines of "people", or "peoplekind", or similar. Honestly, Dwarves having separate profession names in vanilla struck me as slightly odd in the first place, so I'm in no hurry to change Formics to match that scheme

[Putnam]

snip

Try decoding the invasion announcements and the caravan ones, see which variable refers to race names.

I actually know this one.

Code: [Select]

GLOBAL
CHAR
IKEY
CHOICE
LOCX
LINK
TREESREMOVED
DIPLOMACYFLAG_SUCCESS
DIPLOMACYFLAG_FAILURE
YOURCIV
YOURFORT
NULL
LOCAL_LARGE_PREDATOR
RANGE
DIPLOMAT
ASSOCIATE
ACTOR
NOBLE
ADD_FLAG
REMOVE_FLAG
NATIVENAME
TRANSLATEDNAME
TITLENAME
HISTNAME

These should all be valid in the weird text files. Not sure what a few of them do.

News: Got a pm from sackhead - removing CAN_LEARN from mamaphints instead to fix these issues is okay by him. Should add natural skills to make them skilled instead.

Wouldn't CAN_SPEAK being removed fix the problem without making them able to become mayor?

[kero42]

Something (mildly) weird happened, so I figure I should report it.
Some formic merchants have been sitting on the border of my map for a while, as my little insect men are too busy to finish the depot. Apparently I left them waiting so long that the merchant fell into melancholy. The weird thing is that his pack beetle did too. Is that normal? I'll admit to having little experience with these things, even in vanilla, but I was pretty sure pack beetles weren't meant to sucumb to melancholy.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

While I'm posting:

Are Formics meant to arrive with the regent noble? Edit: (nevermind, read the guide)

Also, can any one think of a reason that my formics can't butcher the other dead pack beetles (that belong to me and starved due to neglect). The're in a refuse stockpile, my ants have butchering enabled, and the butchers workshop is slaughtering live animals (namely hounds and water grubs, did not anticipate how much they could breed when I decided to bring ten grubs ) quite fine. Apart from that, everything seems to be working fine, but its annoying not being able to see what caste a formic is when creating a squad, (as while I would like to use workers as an emergency "defend the queen at all costs" squad, I would prefer to leave the soldiering to the soldier caste).
Overall, I'm quite enjoying myself here.

[WillowLuman]

Try making a corpse stockpile indoors near the butchers shop, and make sure in (o)rders, under refuse, your people can recover bodies from outside.

I think, without the stockpile, bodies are just treated like refuse.

[Halfling]

Considering multiple races are playable and do everything, now that I think of it, replacing fort mode dialog screens with something more neutral would be desirable.

Yeah, the screenshot above was really just a test to see if it worked at all. We really should come up with something that works for any playable race. (It would also be nice to know what substitution strings work; with luck, we might be able to get, say, the name of the race inserted into the text.)

Incidentally, how did you edit that file?

I made a pair of Perl scripts to convert them to plain text files and back:

Spoiler: Perl scripts (click to show/hide)

Code: (df_announce_decode.pl) [Select]

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Compress::Zlib qw'uncompress $gzerrno';

undef $/; # slurp whole files
FILE: while (<>) {
    my @chunks = unpack "(V/a)*", $_;
    warn "*** found ".@chunks." compressed chunks in $ARGV\n";
    CHUNK: for my $i (1 .. @chunks) {
my $data = uncompress $chunks[$i-1];
if (not defined $data) {
    warn "*** uncompressing chunk $i failed: $gzerrno\n";
    next CHUNK;
}
(my $n, $data) = unpack "Va*", $data;
warn "*** found $n strings in chunk $i\n";
my $j = 1;
while (length $data) {
    (my $m1, my $m2, $data) = unpack "Vva*", $data;
    if ($m1 != $m2) {
warn "*** length mismatch for string $j: $m1 != $m2\n";
next CHUNK;
    }
    elsif ($m1 > length $data) {
warn "*** string $j should have $m1 bytes, but only ".length($data)." remain in chunk!\n";
    }
    (my $str, $data) = unpack "a[$m1]a*", $data;
    s/\\/\\\\/g, s/\r/\\r/g, s/\n/\\n/g, s/\t/\\t/g for $str;
    s/([^ -~])/sprintf "\\x%02X", ord $1/eg for $str;
    print "$str\n";
    $j++;
}
    }
    print "\n";
}


Code: (df_announce_encode.pl) [Select]

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use warnings;
use Compress::Zlib 'compress';

# read input: 1 line -> 1 packed string, skip blank lines
my $n = my @lines = grep /\S/, <>;
chomp @lines;

# decode \t, \r, \n, \\ and \xNN escapes in input
my %map = (t => "\t", r => "\r", n => "\n", "\\" => "\\");
s/\\([trn\\]|x([^0-9A-F]{2}))/$map{$1} || chr hex $2/egi for @lines;

# prepend length to strings (twice, for some strange reason)
$_ = pack "Vva*", length, length, $_ for @lines;

# concatenate strings and prepend count, then compress
my $packed = pack "V(a*)*", $n, @lines;
my $zip = compress $packed;

# prepend length of compressed data and print
print pack("V", length $zip), $zip;
Usage example:

Code: [Select]

perl df_announce_decode.pl df_linux/data/save/fortressintro > /tmp/fortressintro.txt
gedit /tmp/fortressintro.txt
perl df_announce_encode.pl /tmp/fortressintro.txt > df_linux/data/save/fortressintro
The decode script can read multiple files (and will separate them in the output by a blank line). The encoding script just does one file, although it wouldn't be hard to change that.  Note that the decoding script, in particular, is quite a bit more complex than it really needs to be, because I wasn't sure about the format and wanted to make sure it could handle any surprises.

That's why I'm a little miffed at the creators of the original so far to be unnamed utilities. They could have just told us how to do it instead of distributing a stupid chunk of useless binary.

Agreed. So here's the meat of it:

• Each file contains a 4-byte little-endian length tag, followed by a zlib (RFC 1950) DEFLATE stream.
• The decompressed stream starts with a 4-byte count, followed by the indicated number of text records.
• Each text record starts with two little-endian length tags, first a 4-byte one and then a 2-byte one. Both contain the same value. Don't ask me why. These length tags are followed by the indicated number of bytes of text.
• Each file seems to contain at least three text records, sometimes more. The first record just repeats the name of the file, the second contains the title, and the remaining records contain the body of the announcement. There doesn't seem to be any obvious logic in how the body is split into records; I suspect the splitting points may simply correspond to manual line breaks in whatever text file these were originally generated from, and my scripts behave accordingly (i.e. they map each record to one line, and vice versa).

For example, here's the decoded version of data/announcement/fortressintro from vanilla DF, with one line per record:

Code: [Select]

fortressintro
[TITLE]A Dwarven Outpost[/TITLE]
[P]You have arrived.  After a journey from the Mountainhomes into the
forbidding wilderness beyond, your harsh trek has finally
ended.  Your party of seven is to make an
outpost for the glory of all of [VAR:NATIVENAME:GLOBAL:YOURCIV].
[P]There are almost no supplies left, but with stout labor
comes sustenance.  Whether by bolt, plow or hook, provide
for your dwarves.  You are expecting a supply caravan just before
winter entombs you, but it is Spring now.
Enough time to delve secure lodgings, ere the [VAR:NAME_PLURAL:GLOBAL:LOCAL_LARGE_PREDATOR] get hungry.
A new chapter of dwarven history begins here at this place, [VAR:NATIVENAME:GLOBAL:YOURFORT],
"[VAR:TRANSLATEDNAME:GLOBAL:YOURFORT]".  Strike the earth!

Things to test:

• Can there be more than one DEFLATE stream per file? The presence of the length tag would allow it, but I suspect it may just be there to simplify the input code.
• What happens if the first record doesn't match the file name?
• Does the title need to be a separate record, or can it share a record with the body? What happens if you have more than one title? No title?
• What tags can we use in the body? The decoded text above shows a few, but are there more?

Ps. I just tested, and it seems the Perl scripts above can decode all the files under data/announcement, data/dipscript and data/help folders. The data/index file is also in the same format, but the strings in it have been further obfuscated somehow, and I haven't fully figured out the method yet.  (Subtracting the first byte of each string from 255, the second from 254, etc. seems to be enough for the first few bytes, but then it breaks down.)

Edit: The subtraction trick works, except that after the fifth byte, you loop back to 255 again.  In Perl code:

Code: [Select]

my @str = unpack "C*", $str;
for my $k (0 .. $#str) {
    $str[$k] = 255 - ($k % 5) - $str[$k];
}
$str = pack "C*", @str;

And here's the decoded index file:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

index
1~data\help\icons
2~data\announcement\diplomatrebuffed
3~data\announcement\merchantintro
4~data\announcement\semiend
5~data\announcement\invasion_elves
6~data\announcement\hastyking
7~data\announcement\kingarrival
8~data\announcement\invasion_goblin
9~data\announcement\invasion_human
10~data\announcement\merchantexit
11~data\announcement\fortressintro
12~data\help\main
13~ELVES_FIRSTCONTACT
14~HUMAN_STANDARD
15~DWARF_LIAISON
16~HUMAN_TRADE
17~ELVES_STANDARD
18~v0.34.11
19~
20~Programmed by Tarn Adams
21~Designed by Tarn and Zach Adams
22~Visit Bay 12 Games
23~www.bay12games.com
24~Dwarf Fortress
25~Adventurer
26~data\announcement\end2
27~data\announcement\end3
28~data\announcement\end4
29~data\save\permits
30~data\help\a_main
31~Legends
32~Reclaim Fortress
33~data\help\r_main
34~data\initial_movies\bay12games.cmv
35~data\initial_movies\toadyone.cmv
36~data\initial_movies\dwarf_fortress.cmv
37~data\movies\last_record.cmv
38~Really?  You're playing like a peasant.
39~Really?  I thought you should quit.
40~Slaves to Armok:  God of Blood
41~Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress
42~Dwarf Fortress
43~Copyright (C) 2002-2012 by Tarn Adams
44~Welcome to the alpha of Dwarf Fortress.
45~As there has been some time between releases, instability is to be expected.
46~Report crashes, hangs, lags, bugs and general disappointment at the forums.
47~They are at our website, bay12games.com.  Check there for updates.
48~You can also find an older yet more stable version of the game there.
49~As of June 2012, you can get help at the fan-created dwarffortresswiki.org.
50~Please make use of and contribute to this valuable resource.
51~If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting Bay 12 Games.
52~There is more information at our web site and in the readme file.


I'm not sure how all those lines relate to each other, but I do see some modding potential here.

Wonderful, wonderful. Now this is something I'll be happy to endorse. Thanks for your contribution. I'll also put it in the first post.

So with that, would you like to write the "neutral" intro yourself or is there another volunteer? I think he should get to do it if he wants to because he brought it up and made it easy.

Oh, how did you figure this one out?

[Halfling]

Wouldn't CAN_SPEAK being removed fix the problem without making them able to become mayor?

They don't have CAN_SPEAK, only CAN_LEARN and that is enough to cause all the issues.

[Putnam]

Really? [CAN_SPEAK] is what causes the mayoral issues, AFAIK, but this checks out...

[Halfling]

That would appear to not be the case, as they never had CAN_SPEAK and the issues are earlier exemplified and not theoretical

[Putnam]

Uploaded.

If the game comes up with a corrupt compressed file error, replace kingarrival with a vanilla one. I had no opportunity to test it, since it's not exactly the easiest thing to test.

[Aseaheru]

Well, we got some problems down in brewed swamps...
Vids shall be up shortly.

[WillowLuman]

Hmm, with Putnam and my recent, somewhat similar interactions, I think we need to iron out cosmology a bit.

We've got monks that learn to unravel and reshape the universe through sheer thought, and also the possibility of people doing the same by learning metaphysical truths. Both are knowledge/philosophy based, and both currently do similar things within the game.

There must be a link between the practices, I think, and if not we may have to change them to differentiate them a bit. But they are thematically similar, so I would prefer to find the connection rather than rewriting them.

[Putnam]

Uh.

So, uh.

Uh.

Holy fucking shit. I just ran a batch file to decode every single one of the weird text files in the game and... the help files are arranged by hyperlinks:

Code: (Adventurer's manual code) [Select]

a_first
[TITLE]The Manual: Your First Adventurer[/TITLE]
Before you begin, you need to create your adventurer.
[B]
First, you choose from among the available human, dwarf and elf civilizations or choose a retired adventurer once you have one.  All characters are currently associated to a human hamlet or town when they begin as those are the only ones that have fleshed-out sites.  New adventurers also pick a status from among peasant, hero and demigod.  The only effect of this status is to determine how powerful your character is at the beginning of the game.  The status will be indicated in your introduction in legends mode.
[B]
Second, you need to select attributes and skills to improve.  Among skills, most of the mental ones have no use in adventure mode currently, but kinesthetic sense and spatial sense can be used in combat.  Fighter and Observer are useful skills for combat.  Fighter influences your aiming chances greatly, relatively to your opponent's skill.  Your weapon skill will determine your starting equipment.  In the final screen you can select a name and gender for yourself.
[B]
Unless your world was somehow catastrophically depopulated, you should start in a hamlet or town with many cottages.  Feel free to explore, but in order to give yourself some direction, you can talk ([IKEY:A_TALK]) to people to get information and recruit followers.  The number and quality of the people that will join you depends on your overall skill and reputation.  You can ask people in town for numerous tasks at a time, though you might want to avoid this to reduce clutter in your log.  If somebody refers you elsewhere for a task, you can still ask for tasks again to obtain any additional tasks that person is interested in mentioning.
[B]
Once you are ready to go, you can press [IKEY:A_TRAVEL] (in friendly locations).  This takes you to the travel map, where you can move more quickly to your destination.  View your adventurer log ([IKEY:A_LOG]) to help you locate sites you know about or to remind you of your tasks.  You cannot enter certain sites from the travel map.  Stop travel ([IKEY:A_END_TRAVEL]) from the outskirts to approach these places carefully.
[B]
You'll need to eat and drink.  You start with some water, and you can refill your waterskin at a river or well.  Food is sold in town and you can also butcher animals that you kill in the wilderness.  It is important to stay well-rested, but it is dangerous to sleep outside, especially at night.  Travel with others or obtain permission to sleep in cottages or castles for the night.
[B]
If you cannot make use of the objects you find, remember that you can still sell them at towns and obtain more useful ones there.  There are many currencies in use in the world, and you may find that you have to trade in some types of coins as regular objects.  This devalues them significantly at this time.
[B]
Remember to check the key bindings to see a list of your options.  There are many commands that were not described here.
[B]
[LINK:data/help/a_keys]Key Bindings[/LINK]

What this means is that help files can be included in-game. For any mod.

Wowee zowee.

[WillowLuman]

*spit take*

Holy fuck! Well, we'll need to be careful. Wouldn't want to provide confusion, but also wouldn't want to give people a whole wiki from within the game. And wouldn't want to remove quick help reminders from those who haven't entirely figured out the UI (most people). Still, getting the play guides in there would be awesome.

[Putnam]

The fact that they're arranged by folder, with the DF folder being implied, means that we could just make an entire subfolder for the DFFS stuff and replace only, say, 3 files: reclaim help, adventurer help and dwarf mode help.

[WillowLuman]

Couldn't we just add more links to an existing file? Adventurer is probably where people have the most trouble with the controls.