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[Omeganaut]

Ignoring the Slaves of Armok forum, which is kind of a relic since it might as well be locked, and hasn't been posted in since 2010, I went looking for the oldest posts I could find.  Note:  Posts before 2009 don't seem to properly date, making the far back threads a jumbled mess of 2006-2008.

The Original Release:

August 8th, 2006

Oldest Player thread I could find:

Post the funniest random df names from your game here!

A long time ago Toady thought he might be done with the game by 2008

[rings the little one week bell]<P>Now, you know, all that energy being spent on enthusiasm would probably be best used lowering your expectations.  It'll be fun to play test though.  Then I can finish the game in 2 years.

A look into what Toady considered "winning" 

Once you get large enough to get a noble (it doesn't take too long), you can consider satisfying the nobles a goal if you like.  That will eventually drive you into the end-game.

It's really sad that Toady can't delve into the community like he used to.  Partially because there are so many of us, partially because of the work involved, and partially because he has to be the law in these parts.  Well, I guess its most DF's fault.

Nah, I don't think that's a bad idea at all -- when I woke up this morning (1/2 hour ago, not in the morning), I saw the forum and it's like...  well...  if I try to respond to everything I'll probably keep falling further and further behind (I'm 22 hours back right now).  I'll still do my best to read everything, but it's important that I don't lose bug reports in the mix.  Those categories sound good enough.  The "move post" feature of the ubb is currently broken (like a lot of features), so for now I'll turn this into general discussion.  Since my mind has been a bit frazzled lately, I'll hold off from doing this until people get a chance to reply.<P>edit:  a clock would be fine if I knew anything about time management in windows...<p>[ August 21, 2006: Message edited by: Toady One ]

The first post about a loyalty cascade!

Let me start this post like so many other people rightfully have:  this game is brilliant!<P>I was playing my third fortress last night (first one starved to death, second one was reduced to almost nothing by a bear), and things were going ok. I had some farming going on, Erib the ex-mason turned trapper, and he was quite proficient at it, legendary wrestler and adept ambusher, he ventured out into the woods and wrestled deer! I had even built a bridge over the mountain river, and dug so far east that I reached a chasm. The only setback was that one of my marksdwarves had been badly injured by a snakeman, and was lying on his bed, throwing tantrums every now and then.<P>But then, strange things happened. At one point I scrolled over to his room to see how he was doing and... the room was covered with blood, and he was lying dead in his bed. I looked at the message buffer, and saw that I had missed a message about him going berserk, but I thought "Berserk? And attacked himself? Implausible!"<P>And yes, it probably was very implausible, because then I noticed that all my dwarves were fighting each other! To the death! It was carnage!<P>Eventually only three dwarves remained. Two of them were stuck in "Task interrupted by combat" loops every second, and the aforementioned trapper wandered around and never stopped hunting, even after I told him not to.<P>An amusing way to lose a fortress, but it leaves a lot of questions. Why did they all start killing each other all the time? Was it the wounded dwarf's Berserking From The Bed that made someone else attack him? And then it escalated from here?
Or did I unleash something horrible from the chasm?
Or is it a bug?<P>In the end, it was all fun, and I do not regret losing my fortress in this manner.
Losing is fun!<p>[ August 09, 2006: Message edited by: ghor ]

Yes, the music has always been a repetitive part of the game.

It is a very nice peice of music, but i am wondering as to how to shut it off so that i may run Windows media player in the background with my own music (Setting the music to murder rap when a dwarf goes berserk, absolutely hilarious) Also, it'd be very nice if we could play the menu music while in-game, or play the in-game music while looking at the menu.  <P>
Of course, this does <I>not</I> need to be put in right now (as the game-killing bugs are infinitely more important) but i thought i'd mention it so that someone could put it at the <I>bottom</I> of the list of things to do.

Bay Watchers however haven't changed much at all, even if the forum code has. 

(i must be bored.. but here goes..)<P>Ah, this looks like a job for Dr. Boy.<P>Let me see... After looking over and assessing your problem, i can only assume that you have posted in the wrong forum, and actually meant to request advice in the dwarf fortress forums instead, as you seem to be a lost inhabitant of a randomly generated world. Fear not however, for i have the solutions to your problems and more.<P><UL><LI>Fat:  You should not discourage your wife from this, for you could with the right encouragement teach your wife to render the fat, before procressing it in an alchemists shop to create soap. Soap may not have uses yet, but it can be traded for food for your fortress.<P><LI>Movement: I'm not sure what you mean here. Is she causing path finding spam by locking the doors and forgetting to unlock them again? Try installing levers or pressure plates to allow you to unlock the doors and alleviate the path finding issues you seem to be suffering with her.<P><LI>LINK has grown thin: Thin.. as in Narrow? are you an elf, or a goblin maybe? Is your name link? Bah, and here i thought you where trying to remain anonymous. So your issue is that your wife is hoarding all the fat, and you are upset because your starving - partly due to path finding issues and locked doors.<P><LI>Stout Wife: So you're a goblin, married to a Dwarf, who keeps locking you away from the food supplies and causing path finding issues.
</UL><P>Okay, having looked over the issues, and thought about it carefully for maybe 0.5 seconds, i have come to a professional conclusion.<P>Your wife is afraid you will take away her fat, that she no doubt wishes to render for soap, and as such is locking you out and thus keeping you away from the food stock piles. If you wish to keep a dwarven lady happy, you must do the following.<P><UL><LI>Grow a Beard
<LI>Let her work without stifling her creativity.
<LI>Learn how now to set off the pressure plates that lock the front door.
</UL><P>and last, but not least...<P><UL><LI>Spend some quality time with her. Forge some axes, help her shave her beard, tell her you're sorry for interfering with her work.
</UL><P>Link, i hope this helps you.
Remember dwarven ladies may be thick skinned, but they're ladies none the less.<P>Dr. Boy signing out.

However, you can go a bit older.

Did it say the disappearance had not been reported when you enlightened them?  If they've been reported kidnapped during the process, you can't use them in as a sleeper.  Otherwise, it should tell you that you have a sleeper, and you don't need to do anything more (you'll get the PR and other benefits automatically).

This is regarding a side game, and is one of two threads dating back to 2005 in the Other Games forum.  There are 3 more threads from 2006 in that forum, and one seems the most interesting considering how things have changed.

Just dwarves until August 8th when it comes out.  That's 75 days or something.  I have to make sure it's done somewhat properly.  After that, it'll probably be the robot game, which is nearly done and graphicsy.  That shouldn't take very long to release.  There are lots of other options, but I'm not sure which ones are ready and which ones are going to be moved or consolidated around.

But Wait!  The original Dwarf Thread!

There are 79 more tasks left until the dwarf game is complete.  Some of them are rather large.<P>While I'm working on that, I set up a Dwarf Page with a movie player on it and some movies you can download.  The movie files are fairly large, but the player itself comes with one of a river through the woods, and I've put the movie files in different bundles so you don't need to download the ones you aren't interested in.

Finally, Bonus:  Boatmurdered Foreshadowing!

Does anyone else find Elephants to be the worst and hardest enemy in the game? I have not once been able to defeat an elephant in melee in Adventure mode. If the first hit doesn't kill me, the second one will. They're also incredibly fast. I have yet to outrun one.<P>I did manage to kill one once with a crossbow, but it took about 8 bolts to do so and I only managed because his first hit missed.<P>I recently started a game of fortress mode. For some reason a few hours into it, four elephants just charged into my base and killed EVERYONE. Over 50 dwarves died, 10 of which were soldiers, to 4 elephants. Isn't there something wrong with that? Not even my entry traps could kill them and nothing seemed to scratch them, not even my 70+ animals.

I encourage you to set out on your own dwarven archaeology.  Post your buried treasures here!  Just don't go necroing any old threads,  this is NOT an excuse for necros.  I want to see what strange artifact lie in the hidden depths of this forum.

[i2amroy]

Definitely cool to see some of these.

Note:  Posts before 2009 don't seem to properly date, making the far back threads a jumbled mess of 2006-2008.

IIRC that was when the forum got updated. It broke any old links to things from back then too when it did so.

[miauw62]

I once tracked the original RTD and how it got here. It was basically a minimalist with the players as tiny people in a massive room. It came from some other forums that I was unable to access.

[Orange Wizard]

pea tea double yew

[Armok]

Man, those were the days. Btw I still have VN access if anyone wants something specific, although the script to export stuff never got done so no upload.

[Furtuka]

Man, those were the days. Btw I still have VN access if anyone wants something specific, although the script to export stuff never got done so no upload.

Ooh can you get us quotes from the original penguin thread and the Roaming Battleship?

[Omeganaut]

Also worthy of archiving:  The original Bay 12 Games Report from July, 2008.

The First Official Three-Toe Story

The oldest mod I could find:

Please see this post for details on DF2010(0.31.10+) orcs.


Just thought that I'd throw this out there as my first bit of attempted modding, since I've benefited from the mods other people have posted here.

I decided that the goblins didn't come often enough, and ran away too quickly. The goblins from the "better goblins" mod seemed more geared towards adventure mode than fortress mode, since they seemed a bit too powerful to be able to take on a siege of. Or, if they weren't, it was a siege vs. a large, mature fortress who's entrance was covered in more traps than there were dwarves inside.
Enter the orcs, a non-speaking race that will show up in large numbers. Larger and tougher than the average dwarf, they are raiders drawn by tales of wealth in dwarven (or human, or elven, or goblin) fortresses, and once they have arrived they show no fear and feel no pain until they have killed and plundered everything. Unless, of course, they get bored and leave for another fortress to loot and pillage. Assuming you can't drive them away, though, you should be prepared to spend at least 6 months out of the year sealed away underground, not an easy task at all.

There are three relic threads in the creative projects section from 2001-2002.  They all refer to an old game project called Alanor's Arena by a friend of Toady's called, you guessed it, Alanor.

Hey all...<P>I thought I would start putting up some notes on some of the projects I plan to be working on...<P>The battle game (as it sits)
will be a battle field type sim game..<P>lots of little guys will run around and slaughter each other..<P>There will of course be magic and lots of fun races to have battle each other<P>The game was actualy on its way.. having terrain started and having creatures started..
however problems with views came up.. and now that the 3D stuff is coming online wiht OPENGL.. I will be learning some GL so that I can make the terrain 3D..
once i get that done.. i will be back to making little (hobbits) run around and do aweful thigns to each other..<P>Feel free to drop me any notes on ideas that you would like included here..

The oldest thread in General Discussion:

Well recently I was thinking about this, since all of the current games what we have are all become boring after a short period. Dwarf Fortress is already more interesting than the current "high end" games.
So, basically I was thinking that what game would I like to see sometime. [I know that I wont see a game like this ever what I will post about here, since it would be very complex sadly..but ah well dreaming is good also!        <p>[ August 09, 2007: Message edited by: Tormy ]

The oldest thread in Life advice is, fittingly, about learning programming:

I already know a few things(I wrote a few DLLs for Mcell, but it was copy/paste then fill in with a custom set of ifs) and I am looking for a good place to learn about graphics. any suggestions?

The first RTD, note that a whole bunch sprung up within a month, so they were popular from the start.

Here's an awesome forum game I got from Rickvoid!

Goal - Be clothed and not dead. Then win.

Win - Be last one alive.

The rules are simple:
1. Post ONE action.
2. I will roll my six sided die and tell you what the outcome is.
3. If by some devine fate there is something hurtling toward you, you are given one free roll to dodge the object.
4. Once you obtain heavy bleeding every turn you have with that token you will get 1 roll to see if it kills you or not.

Here is how the die rolls work out:
1- Epic failure. You actually take the exact opposite action.
2- Failure.
3- Marginal success.
4- Success.
5- Perfect success.
6- Overshot. You complete your task with to much force and cause other results along with your intended.

Example:
Starting post: You wake up on an enormous bed. There are several other people here. Your mind is hazy, and you can't remember anything about the last few days. You are extremely thirsty. You notice a single glass on a table at the far end of the room. You are unable to discern it's contents.

Player1: I crawl out of bed.
Me: Roll[2]. You flop around a little, groping several other people on the bed.

Player2: UGH! Get you hands off me! I kick Player1 in the face.
Me: Roll[6]. You seem to levitate over the bed for a few seconds, then shoot straight up towards the ceiling. You execute a perfect flip, your toes just brushing the roof, and snap one leg forward in time to connect with Player1's face. The force of your kick makes the bed explode. People go flying all over the room.

Roll to Dodge[5] for Player1. You dive perfectly out of the way of the bed pieces.
Roll to Dodge[1] for Player2. You dive straight into the path of the fly bed peices, you are impaled.

Got it?

Remember you can do almost anything, Also remember you have a 50% chance of doing it wrong. Also, if you attempt to take an action without an intermediate action (example, you try to wear a shirt you are not carrying) the action auto-fails. I may bend the rules to some posts, If you try to throw a grenade it requires the pulling of a pin I may count that as one action. You can't take the same action twice in a row, and only the first action you submit before I post the results of every bodies actions will be resolved.

Here's the starting post:

You wake up in a very cold room, you look across the room. You see nine other people (there is a player limit of 10) in the room shackled to the wall, you quickly discover you too are shackled to this cement wall. The shackles are made of metal and allow you some movement. Now with your bearings you see there is a wooden ladder in the middle of the room leading up to a large net hanging from the ceiling filled with clothes. You feel hungry and very cold.

Mafia is the oldest game thread I could find, even if the game wasn't attached to that thread.  It spawned a bit of an argument over the feasibility of playing the game on a forum.

Mafia is a fun forum game! Read more here<P>We need at least half a dozen or so sign ups. The more players, the more fun the game will be.

[Bohandas]

Pretty cool.

Anyone have a clue as to the first use of the weird circus themed forum slang that some of the people here use  (ie. "clowns" for demons, "cotton candy" for adamantine, etc.)?

[Graknorke]

This belongs in a museum!

[ggamer]

Decided to find the earliest topic about girl troubles in life advice

O.K., say im going into middle school, imagine dem age girls, 7Th grade girls to be exact. Now, i'm not much of a looker, i am a guy. I know my way around sarcasm. And the girl in question has to be at least average, not morbidly obese. im a tiny bit chubbish, and have mannipples 

P.S. I do spend alot of time on my computer, but i would totally abandon that to go spend time with my GF, i'm kinda a nice guy. I don't love my computer moar then a hot girl.

wow

(The date's wrong because the thread's locked, btw)

[Mictlantecuhtli]

The oldest mod I could find:

Please see this post for details on DF2010(0.31.10+) orcs.


Just thought that I'd throw this out there as my first bit of attempted modding, since I've benefited from the mods other people have posted here.

I decided that the goblins didn't come often enough, and ran away too quickly. The goblins from the "better goblins" mod seemed more geared towards adventure mode than fortress mode, since they seemed a bit too powerful to be able to take on a siege of. Or, if they weren't, it was a siege vs. a large, mature fortress who's entrance was covered in more traps than there were dwarves inside.
Enter the orcs, a non-speaking race that will show up in large numbers. Larger and tougher than the average dwarf, they are raiders drawn by tales of wealth in dwarven (or human, or elven, or goblin) fortresses, and once they have arrived they show no fear and feel no pain until they have killed and plundered everything. Unless, of course, they get bored and leave for another fortress to loot and pillage. Assuming you can't drive them away, though, you should be prepared to spend at least 6 months out of the year sealed away underground, not an easy task at all.

This actually isn't the first. There were lots of mods for the .27 version, notably the Beast Civilizations mod that I used for my first hermit forts. I was inspired by the old Kobold quest stories.

I believe a Kobold's Quest II might be the first actual story fortress. I'm not sure, though.

[Omeganaut]

@Mictlantecuhtl, Hence why I said oldest I could find.  I think the threads with older mods disappeared.  But thanks for the info about the stories, that's neat.  Although it appears that the "story of Urist" mentioned in the original Kobold Quest has been lost.

About the clown car/circus:  Here's what I found

Today doesn't use the terms clown or circus in his dev logs.  He started out as hidden fun stuff, and later because a variation of the worst the underground has to offer.  I found this use of the term clown car, but in reference to a bug.

Makes a great storage room.


Ironhand might be right; generally when you have an empty cave pool there's 1 or 2 'blocks' of water on the level below the pool with all the critters crammed into them like a clown car. There's usually no floor between the clown cars and the cave pool though...


But then again, the sand floor is probably because the pool drained during world-gen due to that opening, rather than because it drained mysteriously at embark.

I think that concept got applied to the similar thing deeper in the mountain back when DF was 2D

I found this in the old giant Future of the Fortress Thread

Picture of a frog clown  The fact that that message also mentions his secret project, and that early clowns came in 4 varieties including frogs makes me thing it derived from there.  It became popular due to this thread:

So... I find a funhouse full of happy clowns and think oh awesome, if its tentacle clowns or frog clowns i can handle it np, I have a military of a dozen champions and a half dozen marksdwarves plus a few swordmasters. I cleared out an underground river and a magma pipe, as well as warding off a legendary tailless dragon, a flock of giant eagles, and of course the run of the mill goblin sieges, the works, so I figured this would be no problem.

Oh, then all of the charcoal in the funhouse starts bursting into flame. I'm assuming this is a fire clown infestation because frog and tentacle clowns don't start fires from what I've seen, and normal clowns only do so after revealed. I've never really had to deal with them, and from what I hear just getting near them will melt even steel armor, which is bad news because I only have copper and leather! I didn't hit the house directly, I nicked an edge of the highest level of it in a way that the demons are still isolated from the rest of the fort. Is there a practical way of killing them or should I just keep them walled off and let them chill in there?

I know that seems like the logical thing to do but it's so undwarfy to know there be fiends in that thar bottomless pit and not do anything about it.

Oh whoops, I forgot they can fly and apparently I broke the roof of the second level, I'll tell you all how the horrific massacre goes, I promise!

Of note is that funhouse was the original term before circus replaced it, and here's the first reference I found to the circus in that context.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you started digging HFSium, you would start off a timer that would mean that your game would end, arbitrarily, because apparently some giant *clown* came and murdered everyone. THe original clowns were still there, though, I think, coming from a chasm a short way into the HFS, but they weren't instacrumblers, just normal HFS.

Huh?

No, just, no.
When you dig up a circus, clowns are sent at you, but eventually ( and this is the only mention of a timer ) the main attraction will come up.
If you survive that round you are free to go on your way without damage.

Oh, I have a fort, but it'll be just a purge project, me, the 6x6 regional tiles, and everyone on it, will die, it'll just be a crater in the ground.

[i2amroy]

Today doesn't use the terms clown or circus in his dev logs.  He started out as hidden fun stuff, and later because a variation of the worst the underground has to offer.  I found this use of the term clown car, but in reference to a bug.

The first reference to the term "clowns" as it is used today was here:

This spoiler stuff is ridiculous, makes reading the thread a chore. Anyways, the clowns start off invisible, send a mangled military dwarf or an equally worthless unit into the fun house to get them visible. But be ready, because once they're visible they start creating massive amounts of fun.

It's also possible to dig in under the level of the fun and not find any of those happy clowns, the first one I uncovered was about 10z levels below the funhouse and only one clown came out, then I assaulted the fun house and had a lot of fun which created a dark age in my fort where my population was constantly declining and the migrants were afraid of having too much fun so they didn't come. Lasted a few years, until I put all of that delicious funstone to work increasing my wealth.

After that it still took a long while for the term to catch on, especially with the higher people in the community (such as Quietust and others) attempting to stamp it out because it was (rightly) confusing to new players. At that point there already was an official acronym for the demons, it was "HFS" or "hidden fun stuff" (and was the one Toady uses), and all the term "clowns" did was end up confusing new players enough that they would search the wiki for it, spoiling themselves of the surprise.

[Omeganaut]

Cool!  Thanks i2amroy! 

Also, about Kobold Quest II, I don't think it can claim to be the first dwarf-mode story fort.  I found this.  Not only is it dated earlier, but it references older stories as well.  However, Kobold Quest does seem to be an integral part in how Bay 12 storytelling evolved, especially by making people feel sorry for Kobolds.  There's also the whole Kobold Camp mod.

Greetings all,
I found this game a few months ago, and this forum shortly thereafter.  I've been lurking since then, and one of the things I've really enjoyed is reading the narratives people do about the fortresses they create.
So (in the spirit of the whole "giving back to the community" thing) I present to you the Saga of Treasurepaged.  I think of myself as a bit of a writer, so when I sat down to write the thing, it got a little long.  Too long to just post the text in a thread.  So I've broken it up into sections and hosted the .doc files on a free server. (sorry about the .doc format, it's bloated and uncouth, but .txt often doesn't display accent marks properly.  I can supply .odt files if anyone prefers, I know I do.)
So, without further ado: the Saga of Treasurepaged.<P>Introduction
Introduction .rtf format<P>Chapter 1
Chapter 1 .rtf format<P>Chapter 2
Chapter 2 .rtf format<P>Chapter 3
Chapter 3 .rtf format<P>I have more if there's interest.<P>[edited to add .rtf links]
[edited to add chapters 2 and 3]
--
Y<P>[ August 13, 2007: Message edited by: Yucca ]<p>[ August 15, 2007: Message edited by: Yucca ]

[Sheb]

PTW