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[Atomisk]

Hey guize. I have a problem.

I can't get back into DF. I have never been too active a player of the game, but when I did play it was the best. I would have fun slaughtering things and, doing fortmode stuff too. But honestly, my problem starts BEFORE I open the game, and ends, pretty much never.

First I want to figure out what mod I want to play, before I even begin. I come here, look at released mods, and hop into the game and play. But all too easy, it crashes. The game stops working. Every mod I find interesting, is virtually unplayable right now. I suppose only if I want all the new stuff. But everything recent for me has been unstable to hell. And Vanilla... I don 't play any game Vanilla... gotta have MY fun...

Next, generating a world. I'm never happy. I fiddle with every setting but there's always too many of this and not enough of that no matter how I make the world I am always dissatisfied with the outcome. I tried perfectworld and I am not sure I can get it to work the way I want.

I get into the game and creating a character now is hell. I love being able to pick pretty much any race but sometimes if there's no civs you can't even start as an outsider now? When I get past the stats which used to take forever for me to set up making choices but now i just blast myself with full stats, there's all this new customization to set up and get involved in and I gotta do it because I don't want my character to be 'unfocused' but I also want them to be varied, so I get sucked into doing it every time...

and one time I had everything set up, made a 'perfectworld', loaded up a mod, went through the setup, and then in the middle of me naming my character, the game crashed. After setting everything up.



Originally I wanted to play DF because of all the cool stories I heard, then I felt like I was starting to make cool stories of my own. Now I can't even start the game, and have no fun with it. I had the idea in my head to play one world, play with adventurers and forts alike. I never managed to get a world past playing an adventurer. It always crashes or I get bored or something. So I guess I want to ask everyone here, how do you play the game? What mods do you use? Do you play fort mode? Adventure mode? What makes this game !!FUN!! anymore? Also; How the hell do I fix my love for fortmode?

[NJW2000]

Stop overthinking is my advice. Be a bit more irreverent.

Great DF stories come from random, impulsively started forts and adventurers. Look at Silentthunders: originally a forgehome for steel weapons for adventurers. My best fort: started on a computer I thought I wouldn't use to play DF on really.

Try to embrace mod unplayability, I guess, never been really into mods.

I feel your pain. I get this too.

[Shonai_Dweller]

You can't have it both ways, you either play vanilla (plus graphics and utils or whatever) and focus on setting up just right without fear of crashing, or you play complete conversion mods which will crash at some point and just accept that.

Why not mod the game yourself, just the way you like it? It's pretty straightforward unless you're into dfhackery (in which case you're just as likely to end up crashing a lot).

edit -- would also point out that pretty much every 'cool df story' was from a game without mods (probably because crashes during succession games spoil everyone's fun).

edit edit -- And to answer your question, personally I play both (fortress and adventurer). There's a big active world going on out there, it seems a shame to stick in one place for too long. And anyhow, most fantasy epics are about both people and places so it makes sense to me to build my story from both.

I mod in minor tweaks to things I want to change based on vanilla play.

[ZM5]

Why not mod the game yourself, just the way you like it?

This.

I myself play a mostly-vanilla game just with additional stuff I added on top of it - from time to time I add more stuff whenever I get inspiration or an idea of something I could conceivably add.

Only somewhat annoying thing about it is having to do a lot of testing to make sure things work properly, and especially "live tests" where you generate a world, not just arena testing - having to generate worlds over and over and getting a cool world but finding out something you modded in isn't working right and having to regen can be disappointing.

[Diamond]

Make your own mods (full conversions are full of things you don't need), take someone else's pregenerated worlds (there is a section for these of DFFD).
This way you get exactly what you want.

[Grimlocke]

Well, my mod doesn't crash 

In all seriousness though, perfect setups are overrated. There is a lot to be said for only getting some of the things you want, and making do with whatever else you end up with.

Also if you do start modding and still want to ever play a fortress past its first few years, make a policy of keeping a separate set of raws for playing, and separate ones for 'beta' versions of the mod. If you drop the old save every time you change something save-breaking about the mod, you'll have a very hard time making it past year one...

[Purdurabo]

You should give this mod a go, it adds a number of interesting things to the game, comes bundled with LNP and a graphics pack nd amazingly enough crashes less than the vanilla game, for me atleast.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=143540.0

[Untrustedlife]

You can play as an outsider still.
just saying.


also

I get into the game and creating a character now is hell. I love being able to pick pretty much any race but sometimes if there's no civs you can't even start as an outsider now? When I get past the stats which used to take forever for me to set up making choices but now i just blast myself with full stats, there's all this new customization to set up and get involved in and I gotta do it because I don't want my character to be 'unfocused' but I also want them to be varied, so I get sucked into doing it every time...

Just blast yourself with full stats?
What do you mean, theres a shit tonne more to do in adventure mode now, do I want a bard?, a fighter? A thief?  A bard fighter?  An assassiny kind of person? A merchantish character? there are so many choices!!!! And they effect the game! How is more customization a bad thing when it all has an effect on the game?


I love it!

And you can join bandits and do quests for them or join as a guard in a village and do quests for your lord... or you could say screw this I want to to write books, and you can do it.... its so so good.

edit:


AND THE WORLD IS ALIVE! How can you get bored of a LIVE fantasy world???
I play fort and adventure mode, I play alot of adventure mode though and I LOVEEEEE IT DUUDE!

Dwarf fortress adventure mode is shaping up to be one of the best RPG's ever made!

[Untrustedlife]

You can't have it both ways, you either play vanilla (plus graphics and utils or whatever) and focus on setting up just right without fear of crashing, or you play complete conversion mods which will crash at some point and just accept that.

Why not mod the game yourself, just the way you like it? It's pretty straightforward unless you're into dfhackery (in which case you're just as likely to end up crashing a lot).

edit -- would also point out that pretty much every 'cool df story' was from a game without mods (probably because crashes during succession games spoil everyone's fun).

edit edit -- And to answer your question, personally I play both (fortress and adventurer). There's a big active world going on out there, it seems a shame to stick in one place for too long. And anyhow, most fantasy epics are about both people and places so it makes sense to me to build my story from both.

I mod in minor tweaks to things I want to change based on vanilla play.

EXACTLY!!!!

[Chief10]

Well OP, you seem to be quite focused on adventure mode. While it is certainly a great part of the game, it is not exactly the focus of DF, and imo is less interesting than fortmode. If you are set on playing adventure mode, I don't know why you would complain about the plethora of choices; it's what makes DF so great, especially since every choice actually affects the game. You can also just randomized, and take what you get.

If you don't want the game to crash, just play vanilla. This one is pretty straightforward. Although I know for a fact that there are very stable mods out there, you just need to dig a little.

If you're willing to take a stab at fortmode, and want a polished, stable (and combat-packed) game, might I recommend version 34.11? It's basically DF-war-simulator, and you can download it with LNP, pre-packaged. The Lazy Newb Pack lets you customize graphics, use Dwarf Therapist, and DF Hack with no crashes, guaranteed.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Well OP, you seem to be quite focused on adventure mode. While it is certainly a great part of the game, it is not exactly the focus of DF, and imo is less interesting than fortmode.

You know, with all the added extra goodies adventurer has now, and the site building stuff using blueprints which a not-too-difficult stretch of the imagination could easily be seen as the first step towards the planned human site management part of the game, it seems like Dwarf Mode is slowly turning into the 'obscure side-project for die-hards' as adventurer may once have been.

A good two year update is surely needed to drag it back into the modern era and catch up with the rest of the game.

[Chief10]

-snip-
the planned human site management part of the game

I am not aware of what this is, could you enlighten me?

[Putnam]

Well OP, you seem to be quite focused on adventure mode. While it is certainly a great part of the game, it is not exactly the focus of DF, and imo is less interesting than fortmode.

no

If you're willing to take a stab at fortmode, and want a polished, stable (and combat-packed) game, might I recommend version 34.11?

the fact that you say this means that you have absolutely no right, privilege or anything of the sort to say what the "focus of DF" is

EDIT: okay that was a bit brutal, seriously though, 0.40.01 added the focus of the game to the game. The activated world is the whole point.

[Shonai_Dweller]

-snip-
the planned human site management part of the game

I am not aware of what this is, could you enlighten me?

Development notes. Link at top of suggestions forum.

To paraphrase:
Control a human town with appropriate changes for the setting.
Control the bad guys. Send out goblin patrols from the pits.
Even control elves! But, lets think bigger - perfectly customizable sites of any kind should be feasible. Rivers, cliffs, requires awesome framework.

Big plans doth have the Toad.

[Atomisk]

and imo is less interesting than fortmode.

no

Finally someone agrees with me.

You should give this mod a go, it adds a number of interesting things to the game, comes bundled with LNP and a graphics pack nd amazingly enough crashes less than the vanilla game, for me atleast.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=143540.0

Yeah I'll try that thanks.