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[Dirst]

GavJ, I was agreeing with you. The TL/DR of that quote is "different people like different things, and that's okay."

Maybe the humor is more obvious in the original French.

[GavJ]

Ah okay? I hate Descartes. Worst philosopher to read I've ever come across.

Not for overly dry humor for my taste, more so for a tendency to have sentences that go for like 3 pages and are impossible to parse.

[tonnot98]

I only savescum when I accidentally offer goods to a caravan instead of trading them.

Also, for !SCIENCE!

[Melting Sky]

Basically "save scumming" is just a primitive but extremely powerful form of cheating Armok out of some of his blood and the player of some of their "Fun!"

Dwarf Fortress is designed to be a "permanent death" sort of game where your actions and their repercussions are permanent, but this can be easily circumvented by using the task manager to kill the game before it has a chance to save. The player can then revert to an earlier save state for a time lord style do over. This is what has been dubbed "save scumming." As it is, there is no way within the game to leave a play session without it saving your progress for better or for worse. It is an obviously a design choice on the developer's part.

Having said all this, Dwarf Fortress is a single player game that is an extremely easy to cheat at. The way the game is designed, it is intentionally mod friendly so you can play it pretty much anyway you want to. You can do anything ranging from rewinding time over and over again "Ground Hog Day" style until you finally win that fight against the dragon with a lucky head shot from your naked, neophyte Kobold adventurer to turning that Kobold adventurer into an immortal 100 ft tall, flying, fire breathing, adamantine fleshed beast whose mere touch causes the enemy to melt into a pile of goo.

To each their own. Some people like to play the game strictly as it was original envisioned. Some people like to play as time lords or invincible adamantine titans. As others have pointed out, "save scumming" is particularly useful or even pretty much mandatory when it comes to dwarven science. It can take hours of real world time to set up an experiment properly and to do that each time you run the experiment a slightly different way is just ridiculous. There is no wrong way to play Dwarf Fortress. It should be played however you most enjoy it, baring something like lighting the computer on fire and cramming it up your ass since this may have serious health consequences and could potentially damage your computer.

The only reason I would advise against cheating in a single player game is that I have personally found it diminishes my long term enjoyment of that game, but that's just me personally. I have save scummed while playing DF. I think it's a valuable learning tool while you are trying to figure out game mechanics or running experiments but I don't like using it as a reset button whenever bad or unlucky things happen because that really defeats the point of playing for me. It removes all the danger and with it the rewards that come with overcoming those dangers. Even when I get crushed beneath the heel of a titan its a cool story and a cooler story yet when I come back as another great adventurer who avenges those the titan slay before him.

All this rambling was just a very round about way of saying everyone should play the way they enjoy the game most regardless of what others think.

[GavJ]

Well personally I'm not just advocating USING savescumming, though. I don't need or seek anybody's approval to do that.

I'm actually suggesting the game add an official option for it, because I think it's actively better for learning especially, and newbies who don't know any better than to have thought of using task manager, for instance, are being cheated of strong learning potential, IMO.

Later on, try both out and do whatever is fun for you, but it would help the game I think to at least suggest both (like two visible buttons clearly promoting a bimodal choice) in the vanilla menu.

[grisha5]

i have never savescummed in my main fort,yet it's still alive.but yes,i savescummed in my smaller fortshi

[0996395]

Basically "save scumming" is just a primitive but extremely powerful form of cheating Armok out of some of his blood and the player of some of their "Fun!"

Dwarf Fortress is designed to be a "permanent death" sort of game where your actions and their repercussions are permanent, but this can be easily circumvented by using the task manager to kill the game before it has a chance to save. The player can then revert to an earlier save state for a time lord style do over. This is what has been dubbed "save scumming." As it is, there is no way within the game to leave a play session without it saving your progress for better or for worse. It is an obviously a design choice on the developer's part.

Having said all this, Dwarf Fortress is a single player game that is an extremely easy to cheat at. The way the game is designed, it is intentionally mod friendly so you can play it pretty much anyway you want to. You can do anything ranging from rewinding time over and over again "Ground Hog Day" style until you finally win that fight against the dragon with a lucky head shot from your naked, neophyte Kobold adventurer to turning that Kobold adventurer into an immortal 100 ft tall, flying, fire breathing, adamantine fleshed beast whose mere touch causes the enemy to melt into a pile of goo.

To each their own. Some people like to play the game strictly as it was original envisioned. Some people like to play as time lords or invincible adamantine titans. As others have pointed out, "save scumming" is particularly useful or even pretty much mandatory when it comes to dwarven science. It can take hours of real world time to set up an experiment properly and to do that each time you run the experiment a slightly different way is just ridiculous. There is no wrong way to play Dwarf Fortress. It should be played however you most enjoy it, baring something like lighting the computer on fire and cramming it up your ass since this may have serious health consequences and could potentially damage your computer.

The only reason I would advise against cheating in a single player game is that I have personally found it diminishes my long term enjoyment of that game, but that's just me personally. I have save scummed while playing DF. I think it's a valuable learning tool while you are trying to figure out game mechanics or running experiments but I don't like using it as a reset button whenever bad or unlucky things happen because that really defeats the point of playing for me. It removes all the danger and with it the rewards that come with overcoming those dangers. Even when I get crushed beneath the heel of a titan its a cool story and a cooler story yet when I come back as another great adventurer who avenges those the titan slay before him.

All this rambling was just a very round about way of saying everyone should play the way they enjoy the game most regardless of what others think.

Very well reasoned and put.

When I first started playing and learning the game, savescumming WOULD have been a good tool to make that learning quicker, and make my myriad mistakes have less devastating consequences. However, since I didn't even know savescumming existed and thought there was no way around permadeath, I permadied. Many times. Looking back, this has indeed improved my long term enjoyment of the game. I reckon that you learn a lesson better if it's handed to you with a side of permanent death, and there have indeed been some pretty good and silly death stories. Every time I fail it motivates me to be a smarter player, to plan better, and places more value on each individual life, therefore making these NPCs matter more to me.

I'm obliged to say that if someone wants to do it, then yeah, to each their own, and I love that save scumming is used in the noble pursuit of dwarven science. Without it, we may not know as much about the workings of the game we all love.

[stickadtroja]

GavJ: I dont agree with what you said about everyone knows what way they should play. I sure didnt when i tried dwarf fortress the first time. it was a new experience for me, and it wouldnt have been in the same way if there was such an option, to savescumm.
since i consider gamemaking an art, i recall a quote from someone i dont remember the name of: "the audience doesnt know what it wants, if it knew it wouldnt be the audience but the artist." and it kind of make sense to me. we partly consume media, of all kinds, to get new experiences. altering the media away from the artist or creator's intended vision, to fit with your presumed idea of what is most fun for you, might rob you of those new experiences.

[GavJ]

You had honestly never played a permadeath game before? if not then okay, but that should be definitely the minority of players of DF who have not had that experience in the past already.

[BoredVirulence]

For the record GavJ has a record of starting debates, and although he's stubborn and will never admit he's wrong (if he is), he usually has a few good points. Although you can easily argue with him until the world ends... (For the record, I don't dislike GavJ, we all have our personalities, and that's just his, but when arguing with him its important to remember that particular part of his personality. Like how Quietust knows everything, and Footkerchief is the forum's search functionality gone sentient. I rant, and its best to avoid my rants.)

I would like to say that savescumming has its place. Sometimes the mistake was too small for it to be game crushing, the end too dull, or just science to be done. I definitely agree with the design philosophy of not providing a convenient way to back up your save folder.

If there was support for named and versioned saves, then most people would inevitably play DF like many other games, by creating a save whenever they're about to do something stupid and reloading until they finally succeed. That does take out much of the fun of DF, that there are actually consequences.

I also like that DF does allow a manual way to back up your saves. Its tedious, but sometimes useful, and its very much in taste with my personal philosophies (let people do whatever they want) as well as philosophy in DF (your fortress your way). People like different things, forcing something on someone so they have a "pure" experience is a lesser evil. DF doesn't force it, it just provides bias to the "pure" experience.

[GavJ]

Lol thanks for the personal introduction =)

How about as a compromise just an init.txt option turned to permadeath by default? Pure traditional whatever experience for people until they know enough later to look in the init file?

[Bloax]

The easiest way to savescum is to save the game rather often and then use something like Process Hacker's "Terminator" to crash the shit out of the game, run DF again and reload the save.

[stickadtroja]

wow gavj, im really suprised by how much you seem to underestimate the impact of permadeath has on the game. almost everyone in this thread agrees that its essential for the "pure" dwarf fortress experience, yet you keep talking about it as some small annoying bug you have to put up with. since we clearly feel differently about this i will stop arguing, but im honestly curios, why you think of it in this way. i assume you have tried to play it without savescumming, what made you change? do you enyoy other games with permadeath, ie rougelikes? if so why do you feel different about dwarf fortress?

[Decidophobia]

It doesn't matter if the experience is considered "pure" if the player isn't enjoying it. Why does anyone even care if others savescum or not? It's a single-player game; no one's ruining anybody else's experience.

[martinuzz]

wow gavj, im really suprised by how much you seem to underestimate the impact of permadeath has on the game. almost everyone in this thread agrees that its essential for the "pure" dwarf fortress experience

I think you are subject to experimenter's bias.

I find nothing conclusive in the fact that out of the handful of people that posted in this thread (out of thousands of players/forum dwellers), the majority appear to advocate a permadeath style that should never be abolished. One could even argue that the insignificant number of replies this thread got so far, is an indication that the majority of DF players 'couldn't care less' about this, which is not quite the same as considering permadeath as "essential for the pure dwarf fortress experience."