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[mifki]

Wow, I want this is a book/pdf/something other than a forum post!

[sal880612m]

12- Crops that aren't year round have a downside currently. If you plant too close to the end of the last season a crop can grow in you can lose your seeds and if you don't have any grown crops it can be problematic to get more seeds.

Dwarves don't usually plant them towards the end of the season, I've never seen it causing troubles.

I have only had it happen to me once and that was because I had only two of the particular type of seed. I suspect it happens all the time, but seed supplies are high enough that it just goes unnoticed. Also it is currently only an issue with 4 crops in vanilla DF, but since plants are receiving an overhaul it may become important. I asked about it in FotF, will post again with whatever I hear back about it.

[Nice Save]

2- I don't think animal/creature descriptions are entirely cosmetic.

Spoiler: Mostly Untested theory (click to show/hide)

Specifically they can be informative. I am relatively certain the describe certain things about the animals. ie, quite fat means high fat produced on slaughter. Incredibly muscular means higher physical attributes and higher meat returns on slaughter. Further and I need to look at this some more but I think sheep's description actually changes depending on how long it has been since the last shearing. The fat and sheep comments are untested at this point but I noticed a sheep's wool descriptor change from long to extremely long, and there is a thread about getting greater butchering returns from your smaller pigs through inventive use of a drowning chamber and necromancy and how it changes in particular descriptors involving muscles.

I forgot about the sheep wool thing. Honestly, while that and the rest might be something other than cosmetic, I wouldn't be getting into the details of it anyway during this guide. I might just throw in a "mainly" before that cosmetic, if anything.

3- The Ascii is fine, but you might consider using and Ascii tileset so that width and height look the same. Or presenting an alternate version of the initial file that does. For a tutorial Ascii makes considerably more sense than a graphics tileset especially since there are some graphical issues with text and tilesets but the uneven width/height can be gamebreaking. This is more of an OCD-type issue on my part, my brain can no longer stop screaming that the tile width and height are different. Also consider making special note of the fact that x and y do not appear the same length.

I don't use tilesets and never have. I'm assuming there would be a way for you or any others with your preference to add a square-ascii set, but I wouldn't know how to go about it. If you want to write a guide on how to do that, or you have a link to one which is written already, I'll be happy to include it in the introduction.

Hell, if you want to add square-ascii to the initial file and re-upload it for others, that's fine by me (the screenshots will always be the default though). If you really want, you could play through the tutorial in square-ascii, take screenshots where I did, and copy the guide into a separate square-ascii thread. You would need to keep it up to date with the main thread though, and that permission doesn't extent to actual rewriting of the guide, only to converting .

4- I get telling them what to dig out when you did in Chapter 1 but you really should show them as well. If you plan on revisiting them and doing so in later chapters link to what it should look like.

More images for Zaneg's busy list. Good plan, I'll get it done.

5- I would consider putting a rectangle around the carpenter's workshop. I know the image is small but their screen won't necessarily be, so the quicker they can see how much or little difference they should expect to see the quicker they can get back to it.

I'm not sure I follow what you're saying there. Do you mean to point out the building on the full size screenshots?

Spoiler: Like this? (click to show/hide)

As a play along you should note when the game is paused and when it isn't and expect readers to flip between playing and reading the guide. If possible add point form summaries and order lists in spoilers at the end of each chapter so instead of having to flip between this guide, the game, and notepad they can only need to go from this game to this guide. May not be possible with dig orders so try and consolidate them as much as possible. I saw parts of this already implemented as I read past interlude 1.

So far, I've only been telling people to unpause while waiting for specific things to happen, then immediately pause again. I could maybe put the instructions to unpause/wait for something/pause again in a consistent format to make it clearer what we need to wait for. I've noted that in my possible improvements for my first pass of edits.

The suggestion to put the busy-lists in notepad was mainly so that players could cross them off as they went - you wouldn't be able to do that with the forum. All the lists are also in one of the later reserved posts for reference, but I've not actually mentioned that in the chapters (I'll get that fixed when I go back and make improvements - I'm making a list).

Maybe I've become spoiled by my dual-screen setup.

6- I don't know if it works on the starting seven but I am pretty certain you can alter what labours are activated when a dwarf appears in the init file. By default this is set to SKILLS but there are other options.

Yeah, that's possible and it works on the starting 7. The tutorial file has it set to [SKILLS] though.

7- Maybe it doesn't matter and you are fine to do so but I would stay away from negatively emphasizing the usefullness of any skill in an objective sense. "A skill I rarely/never use" and "A rarely useful skill" are okay but "another useless skill" isn't. Main reason here is to stop people from thinking they can't or shouldn't use those skills.

I've reworded that to "of limited use". I really wanted to emphasise that the skills aren't a bunch of perfectly balanced all-as-good-as-each-other options.

8- When primarily dealing with the menu get rid of the rest of the screen shot unless it is in some way vital.

Not vital as such, but I thought it might help people get used to the ASCII. This is aimed at complete newcomers. In the chapters I've yet to write, I'll probably do that.

9-

Spoiler: Random Thought (click to show/hide)

 You seem to be going out of your way to make sure things go well for the new player, but maybe consider letting them have a little FUN. The frozen ponds present a good opportunity for this. By building your forge on one you can create a situation wherein it deconstructs and drops the anvil in the water. Besides giving them a WTF moment it is something that can be resolved through the use of a screw pump which allows you to introduce that device in a simple use.

I might put something like that into chapter 9, which is going to be a massive second phase expansion chapter (I might rename it to "Interlude 2: Meet the working fortress" to match "Interlude 1: Meet the functioning hole in the ground"). We'll be building a well as part of that, and it might be worth emphasising just how badly that could go wrong.

10- When you talk about resizing farm plots or zones for that matter consider mentioning the maximum size or that there is one.

Good point, but I'll leave that for a future lesson when we do overground farming and a hospital zone. No need to overwhelm people too much.

11- Fertilizer is considerably effective when you have small farms and unskilled planters. Not worth noting during chapter four but worthwhile noting somewhere else.

f: Fertilize, FT 0/4, s: Seas Fert (N) – this has to do with spreading potash on the field to make it grow faster.

Potash doesn't actually make plants grow faster.  They take the same amount of time to mature.  It just means you get more of them.

I've corrected the effects of potash, but I'm still advising not to bother using it. On this map, there's 3 full soil layers, so we're probably better off just expanding the farms when we need to.

As the remains decay, the symbols will turn white then disappear. If the remains are inside, they will generate miasma as they rot, which is clouds of stench that upset your dwarves.

Vermin remains do not generate miasma in vanilla 0.34.11.  They did back in 40d, and maybe some versions after that, but the miasma was actually removed a while ago.

Vermin remains may generate miasma in some mods (e.g. Masterwork).  That one took me by surprise.

If they're too close to an in-use workshop they might sleep uneasily or be woken, making them unhappy.

I believe that noise is only made by mining, woodcutting, and a few other activities (deconstruction of buildings maybe?).  Workshops are normally silent.

Gah, I looked both of those up in the wiki after I'd written them, and I must have forgotten to go back and change them. Fixed now.

12- Crops that aren't year round have a downside currently. If you plant too close to the end of the last season a crop can grow in you can lose your seeds and if you don't have any grown crops it can be problematic to get more seeds.

Dwarves don't usually plant them towards the end of the season, I've never seen it causing troubles.

I have only had it happen to me once and that was because I had only two of the particular type of seed. I suspect it happens all the time, but seed supplies are high enough that it just goes unnoticed. Also it is currently only an issue with 4 crops in vanilla DF, but since plants are receiving an overhaul it may become important. I asked about it in FotF, will post again with whatever I hear back about it.

I've also never run into problems in this, but I was aware it could happen. There's not much to do about it really, and I'll be recommending buying a few bags of seeds from each of the first few caravans anyway. In the game I played to write the tutorial all the seeds were planted in plenty time, so there's always the chapter endsaves.

13- While grazers are added to the pasture of their mother anything hatched in a nest box is not.

Good to know. I'll be teaching about nest boxes in chapter 8, so I'll mention it there.

14- Consider stylizing commands and keystrokes. s doesn't stand out nearly as much as s or 's' especially in text walls.

Yeah, I need to do something along those lines. I was hoping it would be possible to add them as little key pictures like in the wiki, but I'm pretty sure the forum code doesn't support it. I'll think of something once I've got chapters 6 and 7 posted.

1- Spoiler your images. I am using an old out of the box non-widescreen monitor at the moment and without spoilers the only scrollbar is at the bottom of the post and I need to scroll the entire post or open the image in another tab if I want to see the full things.

Wow, I want this is a book/pdf/something other than a forum post!

I originally wrote it in Libre Office Writer, so I can upload the chapters in .odf format if you like. That might help with the issue sal880612m is having with the images being too big for a older model screen, since your choice of word processor will scale them to fit the zoom level. Note that there would be minor differences in the way things are written, since I edited it a bit when converting it to bbcode.

EDIT: here's the ODF version: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=8670

I'm a bit reluctant to spoiler the images to be honest, because I like the way it looks just now. I'll see how many other people are having problems that way. In the meantime, if you click on some of the text of the post, you can then use the right and left arrow keys on your keyboard to scroll left and right, without needing to go all the way down to the bottom of the post.

Spelling/Grammar/Typo errors:
-Near the start of Chapter One you say "their own time and an an order of their choosing" when I believe you mean "their         own time and in an order of their choosing".
-While Designating areas for digging you say "one 2x2 and the other 3x3" but the image implies that one of the rooms is 2x3.

Well caught, I've corrected those. Keep the corrections coming, there's bound to be a few more in there somewhere.

[Nice Save]

Oh, by the way, that ODF version I uploaded also has chapters 6 and 7 in it, which aren't in the thread itself yet. Here's the link to it once more:

http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=8670

I'm also thinking that, if this tutorial takes off and people actually use it, I might start a separate thread for corrections, feedback, and the like, and save the main thread for helping people who run into problems progressing through the tutorial.

That's all academic at this point though, since the download counter for the main file is still sitting at 1, and I know for a fact that that download was several days before the thread was even posted.

[sal880612m]

I'm not sure I follow what you're saying there. Do you mean to point out the building on the full size screenshots?

Spoiler: Like this? (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Like this (click to show/hide)

Using a small image helps and you did but there is no doubt what the above image is referencing on the screen. If you aren't building in pause it doesn't matter so much but you don't want them to wonder if it actually got built or is slated to be built.

So far, I've only been telling people to unpause while waiting for specific things to happen, then immediately pause again. I could maybe put the instructions to unpause/wait for something/pause again in a consistent format to make it clearer what we need to wait for. I've noted that in my possible improvements for my first pass of edits.

The suggestion to put the busy-lists in notepad was mainly so that players could cross them off as they went - you wouldn't be able to do that with the forum. All the lists are also in one of the later reserved posts for reference, but I've not actually mentioned that in the chapters (I'll get that fixed when I go back and make improvements - I'm making a list).

Maybe I've become spoiled by my dual-screen setup.

Being able to cross it off was something I hadn't considered. Most of these comments were just what struck me at the moment during the reading. I tried to go back and edit them and make note of when you had already done things.

Not vital as such, but I thought it might help people get used to the ASCII. This is aimed at complete newcomers. In the chapters I've yet to write, I'll probably do that.

It is definitely possible that it could help accustom them to it. Mainly I was thinking it would cut down on the size of images to need loading for those with poor internet connections.

I've corrected the effects of potash, but I'm still advising not to bother using it. On this map, there's 3 full soil layers, so we're probably better off just expanding the farms when we need to.

If you don't want to you certainly don't have to, it is one of those things that has limited usefulness but I find extremely useful when it comes up. I would suggest going through how to set up a farm in a rock layer though as I consider it a basic skill. This is more of in the nature of not being a completely embark specific guide and preparing newcomers for things that can happen outside of this particular play-through.

I've also never run into problems in this, but I was aware it could happen. There's not much to do about it really, and I'll be recommending buying a few bags of seeds from each of the first few caravans anyway. In the game I played to write the tutorial all the seeds were planted in plenty time, so there's always the chapter endsaves.

Simple solution is to forbid some seeds at the start of the game. It also protects against cooking all your seeds away in the case you ever turn the cooking of seeds on. Probably outside the purview of this guide but there it is.

I'm a bit reluctant to spoiler the images to be honest, because I like the way it looks just now. I'll see how many other people are having problems that way. In the meantime, if you click on some of the text of the post, you can then use the right and left arrow keys on your keyboard to scroll left and right, without needing to go all the way down to the bottom of the post.

I was less than clear. I meant I could click and slide to see the rest of the image but that scrolled the entire screen to the right so I would need to click and slide it back. I thought spoilers created their own scrollbar but I am not sure they do. If they don't, it obviously doesn't make much of a difference.

Not much to say about the rest, mainly threw them out there for you to consider and you have and made decisions on them. I don't know if anyone else is having this issue but when I look at the carpenter's chapter almost all of those images aren't showing up at this point.

Oh, by the way, that ODF version I uploaded also has chapters 6 and 7 in it, which aren't in the thread itself yet. Here's the link to it once more:

http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=8670

I'm also thinking that, if this tutorial takes off and people actually use it, I might start a separate thread for corrections, feedback, and the like, and save the main thread for helping people who run into problems progressing through the tutorial.

That's all academic at this point though, since the download counter for the main file is still sitting at 1, and I know for a fact that that download was several days before the thread was even posted.

I grabbed the file and will browse chapters six and seven a bit later. I was going to suggest putting all the chapters in a single file, which works fine in something like a pdf but the way it currently is seems more ideal for an odt.
How are odt files in terms of accessibility without installing a new program? Honestly not sure here?
I would put this in the OP or bundle it together with the save, this could be used in place of starting another thread and provides the added benefit of not having image links break quite so easily.

[Nice Save]

Oh, by the way, that ODF version I uploaded also has chapters 6 and 7 in it, which aren't in the thread itself yet. Here's the link to it once more:

http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=8670

I grabbed the file and will browse chapters six and seven a bit later. I was going to suggest putting all the chapters in a single file, which works fine in something like a pdf but the way it currently is seems more ideal for an odt.
How are odt files in terms of accessibility without installing a new program? Honestly not sure here?
I would put this in the OP or bundle it together with the save, this could be used in place of starting another thread and provides the added benefit of not having image links break quite so easily.

Yeah, I was originally writing it in a single file, but it's just too big, and I had to split it up.

.odt files are the open equivalent to .doc. Any word processor should be able to open them. I can convert them easily enough if needed.

I meant to link the file in the OP actually, must have forgotten. Thanks for the reminder. I'm not going to bundle them with the save though, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, to save on the download size, and secondly, the odt files are a rough draft. I'm intending the forum version to be the definitive one, and it would be too much effort to keep them both up to date. Maybe I'll do so once the whole guide is finished and in a polished state.

[sal880612m]

Are the images in chapter two showing up on the forum for you? Because I just get a message saying "the image you are requesting does not exist or is no longer available."

[Nice Save]

Are the images in chapter two showing up on the forum for you? Because I just get a message saying "the image you are requesting does not exist or is no longer available."

Fixed. Somehow I managed to overwrite the images with the ones from interlude 1.

[sal880612m]

Disable Mechanisms from our main stockpile, so they'll be left in the workshop and we can keep track of how many he's made by looking at the workshop in q-look.

Pretty sure this should be t-look if you want to view what is inside the mechanincs workshop.

[arbarbonif]

a, t, and g: lets you set up rules and destinations for this stockpile's stuff. Say you wanted your mason to only make furniture out of orthoclase boulders, because you like the yellow colour. Set a stockpile to hold only that, and tell it to give to the mason's workshop, and that'll happen. You could make that one small, but have another, bigger one as a reserve, and set it to give to the smaller one. Or you could have multiple smaller single-type piles taking from a larger mixed one. The possibilities enabled by just these three options are endless and incredibly useful.

You might want to have a bit later on where you do this and show the side effects (i.e. workshops only taking from links).  I know the first time I tried it and my forge stopped forging things (because my metal stockpile didn't have coal) I was confused.  You may want to put together a bug-a-boo sidebar idea for things like this and specific known bugs.

I really like the tone and pacing of this.  Well done.

[Nice Save]

Disable Mechanisms from our main stockpile, so they'll be left in the workshop and we can keep track of how many he's made by looking at the workshop in q-look.

Pretty sure this should be t-look if you want to view what is inside the mechanincs workshop.

Fixed for the forum version.

a, t, and g: lets you set up rules and destinations for this stockpile's stuff. Say you wanted your mason to only make furniture out of orthoclase boulders, because you like the yellow colour. Set a stockpile to hold only that, and tell it to give to the mason's workshop, and that'll happen. You could make that one small, but have another, bigger one as a reserve, and set it to give to the smaller one. Or you could have multiple smaller single-type piles taking from a larger mixed one. The possibilities enabled by just these three options are endless and incredibly useful.

You might want to have a bit later on where you do this and show the side effects (i.e. workshops only taking from links).  I know the first time I tried it and my forge stopped forging things (because my metal stockpile didn't have coal) I was confused.  You may want to put together a bug-a-boo sidebar idea for things like this and specific known bugs.

I really like the tone and pacing of this.  Well done.

Thanks for the feedback! I'm definitely planning to do a fairly complex example of that in a future chapter, although I haven't figured out which specific chapter yet. What workshop/industry would you say benefits the most from that? I'm thinking the Jeweller's Shop, to give you more control over what you encrust.

I've also put a simple take-rule in chapter 6. In contrived segue news, I'd like to announce that Chapters 6 and 7 are posted!

EDIT - I've also put some info on planned future chapters in one of my many reserved posts. Behold my fragmented thought processes!

[arbarbonif]

Gemcutting is a good place to talk about the downside to bins and how moving the bin prevents anyone else from grabbing stuff from it, how anyone can learn to do anything and how you judge if a beard is good for a job.  I'd talk about the stockpile issues in forging, since that is likely to be the first place a newbie player will run into it (not having coal in the pile used to get the ore close to the smelter).

It might also be a good idea to discuss the "take only from links" option for stockpiles, since that might also cause problems for a new player.  I know I've fat-fingered that more than once.

Other notes: I'm pretty sure that the reason you aren't getting exact amounts for valuation isn't the appraiser skill of the broker, but because the bookkeeping isn't complete.  And r from the manager screen removes the job from the dwarf, without removing/suspending the job, making them re-look for work.

[ancistrus]

Given the nature of your guide, maybe mention the breaks sufficiently early.

[Nice Save]

Gemcutting is a good place to talk about the downside to bins and how moving the bin prevents anyone else from grabbing stuff from it, how anyone can learn to do anything and how you judge if a beard is good for a job.  I'd talk about the stockpile issues in forging, since that is likely to be the first place a newbie player will run into it (not having coal in the pile used to get the ore close to the smelter).

It might also be a good idea to discuss the "take only from links" option for stockpiles, since that might also cause problems for a new player.  I know I've fat-fingered that more than once.

Yeah, I'm thinking I might include most of the remaining stockpile control in the forging lesson, but leave "take only from links" for gem setting. That means we can make something like statues in the forging section, then in the gem section we can cut some gems and encrust the statues which will require a take-only workshop to be specific to the statues.

Other notes: I'm pretty sure that the reason you aren't getting exact amounts for valuation isn't the appraiser skill of the broker, but because the bookkeeping isn't complete.  And r from the manager screen removes the job from the dwarf, without removing/suspending the job, making them re-look for work.

The wiki agrees with you on that one. You learn something new every day. I can easily double check when I get home from work, since the current savegame (halfway through chapter 8) has the bookkeeping level at high.

Given the nature of your guide, maybe mention the breaks sufficiently early.

You mean dwarves going on break? Or something else? I do need to get the former in there somewhere. I'll add it to my to-do list.

EDIT - Chapter 8 will take a little longer than I thought, since my first migrant wave turned up during the process of writing it. I'll be doing Conditional Chapter 1: Migrants Have Arrived before finishing chapter 8.

[Nice Save]

The next page is just the guide repeated with images unspoilered.