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[zach123b]

can't we make dwarfs just not take prisoners? or would that not stop a non native creature from becoming a king?

how do the non-native creatures become part of the native civilization? only thing i can think of is prisoners or somehow immigrate

[Meph]

It has nothing to do with that. Its because all megabeasts have all spheres, and therefore can be worshipped as a god. Remember those demonic leaders of goblins in vanilla, or the human lawgiver being a demon sometimes? I added the same thing to megabeasts, so specific nobles or leaders of civs can be megabeasts that they worship.

It can easily be toggled by making the SPHERE tags in the creature files for megabeasts optional.

[daisha]

It has nothing to do with that. Its because all megabeasts have all spheres, and therefore can be worshipped as a god. Remember those demonic leaders of goblins in vanilla, or the human lawgiver being a demon sometimes? I added the same thing to megabeasts, so specific nobles or leaders of civs can be megabeasts that they worship.

So, the megabeast is not actually present in the civ functioning as a noble, it's just the nominal leader?  That's perfect in my view.   

[Meph]

Well, if you find the capital in Adv Mode, or if you fortress attracts a king, you might see yourself face to face with a friendly megabeast, usually giants or dragons.

[greycat]

As far as magma goes, dwarves can move magma up from the magma sea to anywhere they want, even in vanilla, using at least 3 completely different methods that I know of (pump stacks, cave-in pistons, and minecarts).  So, any MDF-specific features for "spawning" or drill-rigging magma are just convenience features.

I really applaud the notion of a dwarf rewrite, for the reasons others have already stated.  I'm relatively new to MDF (didn't play until 5.x), and the first thing I did was play non-dwarf races.  I've done very little with dwarves.  They just don't have the appeal of the newer races for me.

If you want to split the dwarves into two subraces, may I suggest one magical and one priestly?  Both should of course keep the core dwarf characteristics ("dig, smelt, smith, get drunk, fight, repeat").

[sayke]

I'd say split the dwarves into Hill Dwarves, which would basically be Accelerated-Modest-Vanilla, and the Deep Dwarves, which would be Masterwork dwarves like we have now =)

From there, I'd say the most useful thing for new players (that they don't know they need) is a *really* good Quickstart Guide, in the manual. This should be a walkthrough, like a cross between the vanilla DF wiki Quickstart Guide and the Warlock-mode playthrough, with lots of screenshots illustrating fortress setup and the major features of the mode. This might even be the sort of thing that Meph could outsource to someone with good technical-writing skills, if they were reliable!

[Kartag]

Add no megabeasts to the worldgen, problem solved.

That will work indeed, but it could rob me of !!FUN!! caused by fighting them. And the slaughterhouse, colosseum and their rewards would become useless.

Well, if you find the capital in Adv Mode, or if you fortress attracts a king, you might see yourself face to face with a friendly megabeast, usually giants or dragons.

Does that mean that I can arrange an unfortunate accident for the king and make a new from one of my dorfs using make-monarch script?

[slay_mithos]

Would be fun to see if the "tweak fixmigrant" script would work on it too.

[smakemupagus]

Add no megabeasts to the worldgen, problem solved.

That will work indeed, but it could rob me of !!FUN!! caused by fighting them. And the slaughterhouse, colosseum and their rewards would become useless.

In a new world you can try using the ALLOWED_CREATURE position token to restrict the races that are allowed to become monarch.  I don't know whether this token will override the false-idol worship of demon/megabeast kings, but it's worth a try maybe?

[IndigoFenix]

Rethinking the Armok/Dwarf connection - I'd like to call attention back to Tolkein dwarves, from which the modern conception of dwarves is derived.  In Tolkein canon (the Simarilion) dwarves were created during a time that the influence of Morgoth (the evil force) was rampant and were therefore made tough warriors to fight against the forces of chaos.  So they don't like chaos, but they are born with a strong instinct to fight against it.  In Dwarf Fortress, Armok seems to be very much a deity who loves chaos (the canon is that Armok remakes the world whenever it gets too peaceful - or on a meta level, the player will create a new world when there's nothing left to fight, because no fighting is boring.)

So you'd expect Dwarves to have a very acute awareness of Armok, moreso than any other race... but perhaps worship is not the best word to use.  Maybe they have a love/hate relationship, where they are defined by their fighting, but victory would mean the destruction of the forces creating a need to fight.  Or maybe they are trying to bring about the end of the world at the hands of Armok by defeating all enemies and bringing about an age of peace.  Maybe there are different factions.  It merits thinking about, at any rate.

Of course, DF dwarves aren't quite the same as Tolkein dwarves, but it's worth mentioning anyway.

[Gatallorsith]

Hi Meph, I'm pretty fresh from playing and learning to play your MDF so here's my insight

- First of all, the actual version is just awesome and full of content so my personal opinion is to take all the time you need for the .40 conversion. No rush needed.
- Information is key, since you added so much content. You have a very good manual and the only two holes I found were the lack of an explanation of the magic system (you can copy the info on the online guide here: http://mwmanual.mapforge.net/latest/Dwarf%20Manual.html) and a better insight on the world generation profiles, that if I understood correctly, are pretty important (I modified and prepared all the profiles here if you want: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=141075.msg5601960#msg5601960).
As a bonus, if you want to make life easier even for those that aren't willing to read the manual, you could find a way to summarize to the maximum the info on the workshops by creating a list with the strictly necessary information on each one (then if someone want more he can always go to the manual)


Just my 2 cents
bye

PS: I actually find you present GUI pretty good.

[Eko]

I have been messing around with dfhack lately for my fort.  I'd like to suggest a help plugin - something that is default bound to -?- and would pop up a new help GUI.  I think the in game help system is pretty reviled for being inadequate, and with dfhack, a better might be implemented. 

Something to think about.  You might even be able to pop a reference to it on a lot of the screens, so context sensitivity would be easier.  (Under the building menu, the last line is "press ? for MW help".  Have the screen your on send the GUI you're on, and a help menu about buildings pops up with all the manual content about buildings plus some extras.

Might be a little work, and I'm focusing on the nagas, but thought I'd toss it out there if anyone else wanted to take a stab.  Otherwise, I'll work on it when the naga are in a playable state.

[LMeire]

Question: Would TwbT allow for each race to have it's own city graphics on the worldmap? That could make it a lot easier for new and/or forgetful players to see which civ they're embarking with- since dwarves and gnomes wouldn't look identical and neither would orcs and warlocks etc.

[daisha]

- First of all, the actual version is just awesome and full of content so my personal opinion is to take all the time you need for the .40 conversion. No rush needed.

Really disagree with the no rush on .40 update thing, but just because it seems like any other features added before the .40 conversion will likely need a fair amount of tweaking for the .40 update when it finally comes... would likely lead to a lot of repeated effort.  If it were me I'd probably focus on cleanup, bugfixing, planning, and, well, sleeping until the necessary dfhack stuff is .40-ready.   

[lightstar]

IMHO:

I think there are a number of different things that Meph wants / needs to accomplish:

1. Make Dwarves in MDF more accessible to new players.
Totally new players should first get their feet wet in Accelerated Mod with the new features being just "tilesets / utilities , etc".
The best way to do this is to merge / re-create the Accelerated Mod with DF, and ask new players to use those settings.
(Re-name Accelerated to New / Basic).
(I dont know difficult this is).

2. Make Dwarves a more unique race, with a distinct flavour that preserves the uniqueness of each race.
This is a much more interesting goal that will appeal to a section of the older players as well.

At the same time, I would not like to see the depth of play go away. If you can accomplish adding flavour / lore without removing depth, then you will have really improved your mod.

Summary:
There are not much specifics here, sorry for that.
1. Merge Accelerated Mod into MDF - call it Basic
2. Redo dwarves to make them more dwarfy. Keep in mind that if this involves removing features, and that hurts, then it is not a good idea.



Accomplishing either of these things is likely to lead to leaving out certain features beloved to old MDF players.