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Author Topic: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?  (Read 24433 times)

NW_Kohaku

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Re: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?
« Reply #15 on: April 19, 2016, 08:49:15 pm »

No other roguelike lets you interact with fort mode, they don't have the same depth of procedural craziness, and I always point out how interesting the procedural history winds up being to interact with. Some of the more fascinating stories developed from it too, the little kidnapped girl who wound up leading a goblin civ in siege after siege against her home. The elf king of dwarves.

I don't consider that Adventure Mode, though.  I consider that Legends Mode.  Because it's something you really only get to explore in any way made complete to the viewer through something like Legends Viewer.

Playing in Legends Mode is terribly interesting, yes, but there's little Adventure Mode does with that, especially since, while in Adeventure Mode, you have little way of grasping that those events are actually transpiring, and most of the time, the key characters are long since dead.

The creepy ass town I found with 10,000 dwarves and an entirely abandoned city, where everyone lived on the fortifications around the walls and keep, and everyone migrated in to the keep itself when I arrived. Then upon checking legends I learned that every single year they held a festival and retold the same story of one guy getting killed by a dragon or something years and years ago, and they did this for centuries.

I believe that's one of the bugs I just linked in the last post I made, about how cities become taken over by abandoned houses filled with tables while the survivors live on the parapets...
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Re: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?
« Reply #16 on: April 19, 2016, 09:34:49 pm »

No other roguelike lets you interact with fort mode, they don't have the same depth of procedural craziness, and I always point out how interesting the procedural history winds up being to interact with. Some of the more fascinating stories developed from it too, the little kidnapped girl who wound up leading a goblin civ in siege after siege against her home. The elf king of dwarves.

I don't consider that Adventure Mode, though.  I consider that Legends Mode.  Because it's something you really only get to explore in any way made complete to the viewer through something like Legends Viewer.

Playing in Legends Mode is terribly interesting, yes, but there's little Adventure Mode does with that, especially since, while in Adeventure Mode, you have little way of grasping that those events are actually transpiring, and most of the time, the key characters are long since dead.
Begin a performance.
Tell a story.
Filter by site or region to find tons of stuff not available through the person/creature or civ/group options.
You can access like 90% of the top level entries of legends mode via storytelling, with occasional spots that give full access to the information. I regularly use it for things like tracking down criminals, monsters moving sites, figuring out who the naked goblin in this lair is, and whatnot.
Quote
The creepy ass town I found with 10,000 dwarves and an entirely abandoned city, where everyone lived on the fortifications around the walls and keep, and everyone migrated in to the keep itself when I arrived. Then upon checking legends I learned that every single year they held a festival and retold the same story of one guy getting killed by a dragon or something years and years ago, and they did this for centuries.

I believe that's one of the bugs I just linked in the last post I made, about how cities become taken over by abandoned houses filled with tables while the survivors live on the parapets...
The tables was interesting, but no, this was something caused by my having the mountain entity make towns instead of forts since world-gen forts are crap, as noted elsewhere. Since I've also got dragons posing as deities there are lots of crazy sorts of interactions that take place (vampire purge killed a vampire dragon god in the world I was just poking around at) but apparently a dragon taking over a dorf civ screws it up and you end up with everyone living on the walls or in the keep. Though I think I fixed that by adding in a few positions when trying to get workable fort mode with working hearthperson quests. Haven't seen a town just abandoned with thousands of folks living there, just the more reasonable ones where it was occupied or sacked or whatnot.

The part I was really talking about though was the feeling you had of walking into this massive cult where everyone huddles together and waits for the yearly retelling of the story of that time that one guy got killed by a monster, which had been going on for twice as long as most of the storytellers had been alive at that point.
« Last Edit: April 19, 2016, 09:37:34 pm by Max™ »
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Untrustedlife

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Re: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?
« Reply #17 on: April 19, 2016, 09:52:47 pm »

snip


You havent played 42 yet? You should definitely do that, your fame is much better and more expressed now, and it has a tangible effect now, it is much better then it was in version 40. MUCH MUCH better. In fact, it feels completely different then version 40 at this point.

And there are alot more reputations you can get now too, including defending the helpless, a legendary (and below) hunter, slayer of monsters, hero , brigand etc. (and the npcs actually call you out on it all the time now) this includes bard reputations aswell and being a great famous bard means you get free rooms and drinks at taverns and the ability to become  a jester for  a local lord. The effects from being a hero, are somewhat different.

The songs you tell and stuff get picked p by other bards and eventually spread across the world so you can get bards in your fort playing the song your adventurer created 10 years ago, and its awesome. (or in the local tavern, you can rent rooms and such at taverns now in adventurer mode aswell),

About elona I remember you mentioning that, I need to download that at some point from the pictures and lps I saw I didnt realize it was so in depth!


I can see what you mean about a "tangible" effect though, and I feel that toady is working towards that and it is much closer in 42 then 40, in the next version you will be able to build your own towns/camps in adventurer mode, and they should really up the ante.
« Last Edit: April 19, 2016, 10:06:57 pm by Untrustedlife »
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Untrustedlife

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Re: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?
« Reply #18 on: April 19, 2016, 10:08:13 pm »

snip

Nw stated in the last post that he/she hasn't played 42,  which means he hasn't seen all the new stuff and interactions in adventure mode from that(which IMO improved it very significantly)  (such as the storytelling you mentioned)

edited to make things gender neutral, (I referred to nW as 'he' when I didn't know the gender)
« Last Edit: April 19, 2016, 10:21:28 pm by Untrustedlife »
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Max™

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Re: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?
« Reply #19 on: April 19, 2016, 10:10:33 pm »

^Missed that.

HOLY CRAPBASKETS! You haven't played .42.06 yet?

Look, I loved 40.24 adventuring, but it was a heap of crap compared to 42.06, I didn't care about the "missing quests", I didn't care that butchering bandits just got me known as a killer, I still had a blast just exploring.

Now? People react to your presence, being a famous bard or storyteller or dancer will get you free booze and a room to sleep in, being known for breaking up robberies and purging bandits/criminals will have random people coming up to "thank you for all you do", as in literally strangers calling out to say how nice it is to finally meet you.

Tracking down and removing the "last few interesting monsters" was kinda bland in 40.24, but people actually care and tell others about it and then a couple weeks later in game you're in another town and someone walks by and is flabbergasted that it's actually you standing there, wanting to know if there is anything they can do for you.

Conversely, you punch the wrong kid in the brain and people spit at you and talk about how, despite your great deeds, the fact remains that you're a murderer, tavern keepers say they would just as soon have you go somewhere else and jack up their prices to encourage it.

Become a hearthperson and get quests and head back to tell stories for the folks in the keep, then later you'll freak out when you see an asterisk chasing you around the map in town, so you drop out and go back to see what the hell is trying to pick a fight with you... well, don't kill them! It's recruits and such, possibly with a veteran leading them, and they're just kinda following you. You can think of it as them wanting to see how you do these great things, or wanting to be there to help, or just as adoring fans, but they'll sometimes follow you surprising distances and if you set it up you can have them take part in your missions even.

Taverns... my god, they're fun! They're useful! Get booze, get a room to crash in, pick up gossip, learn dances, and tavern keepers are almost always the best person to ask for info about troubles, and if they aren't you can check the room to find a soldier who will be full of info.

Temples have people heading out to pray, people are always traveling around town doing stuff instead of standing around inside of buildings waiting for nothing.
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Untrustedlife

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Re: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?
« Reply #20 on: April 19, 2016, 10:13:40 pm »

^Missed that.

HOLY CRAPBASKETS! You haven't played .42.06 yet?
snip.

That was my reaction aswell. hehe
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Droggarth

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Re: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?
« Reply #21 on: April 20, 2016, 12:37:43 am »

^Missed that.

HOLY CRAPBASKETS! You haven't played .42.06 yet?
snip.

That was my reaction aswell. hehe

And mine. Almost posted a rage-fueled post here explaining why DF is the only game now-a-days I play because in no other game can I play as something beast like or at least a muscular warrior woman but nooo, mainstream gaming likes their warrior females to look like thin super models with barely a muscle on them and I'm beyond sick of it!

Only in DF I can create and play as a muscular (custom modded-in race) female and NPCs would actually react to my character's name, race, title and profession and what she has done. Can I do an in-depth DF combat in any of the RPG games ever? Can I do all of that in Skyrim, (insert many other RPGs here)? Can I play as a Minotaur or a Gnoll character in Neverwinter Nights' story? Can I play as an Orc in Gothic 2's story? Can I play as that tall warrior Goblin or a Rat Man in Arx Fatalis' story? Can I play as a Lizard Man in Divine Divinity's story? No of course not, it's ALWAYS human this or human that and I am beyond sick of it.

That's why I finally broke a nerve after one disappointing new release after another and finally turned to playing DF instead, to get something I need from a game. Good thing I happen to have a naturally strong imagination ability as it allows me to better play DF and imagine its creatures. Plus I don't have to put up with my room heating up due to my Gigabyte's GTX 980 working at full power producing a whopping 70+ degrees celsius when trying to run ARK Survival Evolved for example, plus the damn loud noise of the fans making me eye-twitch and paranoid about running my computer to the ground, like it's gonna catch fire at any moment or get a blue screen of death I used to get on the older machines.
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Re: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?
« Reply #22 on: April 20, 2016, 05:23:40 am »

like adventure mode was kinda weird in development as it was mostly complete in the early 3d days but with out pregen content way before but once toady started project pre-gen overhaul adventure mode kinda started to look a lil sideshowy 42 is possibly the moment when it getting close to where 40.d was in missing content.
don't know if you could ruin a town that isn't murdering the populace like cause them to mass migrate out to another place.
also side projects that uses both fort mode and adventure mode or possibly now with the ease of having any creature race to become a fort citizen figure out what stuff you can get on your adventurer that you can only access in fort mode.
that said dwarf fortress currently is killing my pc too much to even draw and play at the moment but nothing says joy than building a simple tavern so you can run it near a road for your adventurer then turn that adventurer into the mayor of the dwarf tavern site and get access to recruit anyone to your civ.
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Robsoie

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Re: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?
« Reply #23 on: April 20, 2016, 06:36:20 am »

While there's still a lot of works, tweakings and bugfixing left to do, i agree that 42.x adventure mode is way, way better than 40.x adventure mode was.

I had ceased long time ago to play 40.x and even went back to 34.11 for my adventure mode needs, it was simply insanely much better and glorious, even with the lack of "world activation" or those laggy special sites, 34.11 was a much better adventure and experience within a generated world.

But 42.x is definitively on the right tracks to bring back glory of the past while adding much more to do, something 40.x was nowhere close, mostly due to so many AI bugs and overall passivity nosense that made everything, world activation or sites just pointless, out of just lagging.

Can't wait to see what's next if future versions make the same difference in adventure mode interest there is between 40.x and 42.x
Definitively recommended to give 42.x adventure mode a try if you were left utterly disapointed with the 40.x version of it, i have enjoyed it while 40.x disapointed me so much that i even went back to old version to find fun again.
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Findulidas

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Re: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?
« Reply #24 on: April 20, 2016, 07:29:07 am »

Im sure its a question of both what people and toady thought is the most fun to do. Fort mode probably overtook adventure mode cos of that and not anything else. That said I get the feeling like so many others have said that adventure mode has gotten its fair deal updates lately so its not as bland and buggy as it once was.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?
« Reply #25 on: April 20, 2016, 09:44:45 am »

And mine. Almost posted a rage-fueled post here explaining why DF is the only game now-a-days I play because in no other game can I play as something beast like or at least a muscular warrior woman but nooo, mainstream gaming likes their warrior females to look like thin super models with barely a muscle on them and I'm beyond sick of it!

You realize that most roguelikes either don't have detailed adventurer graphics, or let you drawn your own, right?

Anyway, yes, I'm aware of what's in 42.x, but it doesn't change the giant, gaping hole in the experience I'm pointing to:

There's no sense of long-term goal-setting or achievement.  It's just a place to do some dinking around or experimenting, but there's nothing (outside of maybe legendary every skill you can train for no good reason) you can really set yourself to the way that a game like Elona or, for that matter, X3: Albion Prelude lets me build a giant networked set of industries over the course of hundreds of play hours. 

Yes, I can commit murder, and have people spit in my face... in five minutes, and then it's a permanent state that can never be undone.  I can also get heroified in five minutes, and then that state basically exists until I commit a murder. There is nothing after that.

When I start to set up minecart-based computers or any other megaproject, I can devote myself to accomplishing these tasks for many days.  It sets a real goal and generates a real sense of accomplishment, as well as challenges me to think and plan in a way that Adventurer Mode's systems never do.

I've never had an adventurer who wasn't so disposable, interchangable, and lacking in a unique identity built through procedural storytelling that I didn't mind letting them die just because spawning as a new character was an easier way to get to another city.
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Robsoie

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Re: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?
« Reply #26 on: April 20, 2016, 11:03:19 am »

I guess when the whole ruling/ruled system will not be so basic and barebone, there may then be more ways to setup your character importance in the world.

I mean, things like making yourself an empire instead of randomly self declaring yourself as lord of a single backward location with a pseudo "insurrection" with a couple of drunk agreeing with you, and another couple of drunk not caring a way or another...

Or playing an important/instrumental part in having your local lord/lady/boss gaining actual power through several regions and cities and becoming a king instead of having hearth orders that do not mean much currently.

Or being part of actual wars instead of just killing a few guys that are supposed to be "army in march", that could lead into kingdom crumbling, being conquered instead of a few house in a miserable hamlet turning into broken houses ...

Really influencing politics and having governing entities doing things, issueing laws and etc... depending on what happens in their area of influence, and making sure there are troops to try to enforce such laws, like putting a price on your head if you're not merry enough :D

There's tons of stuff that aren't yet implemented or only half done for Adventure mode according to the dev page anyways so we'll have to wait and see if that get to its potential.
« Last Edit: April 20, 2016, 11:04:59 am by Robsoie »
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Droggarth

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Re: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?
« Reply #27 on: April 20, 2016, 12:46:10 pm »

You realize that most roguelikes either don't have detailed adventurer graphics, or let you drawn your own, right?

I was thinking of majority of mainstream games. Also the roguelikes I've tried previously aren't my cup of tea either as majority of them tend to lack many things to keep my interest.

There's tons of stuff that aren't yet implemented or only half done for Adventure mode according to the dev page anyways so we'll have to wait and see if that get to its potential.

Aye, hopefully it does.
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Re: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?
« Reply #28 on: April 20, 2016, 02:33:40 pm »

I guess when the whole ruling/ruled system will not be so basic and barebone, there may then be more ways to setup your character importance in the world.

I mean, things like making yourself an empire instead of randomly self declaring yourself as lord of a single backward location with a pseudo "insurrection" with a couple of drunk agreeing with you, and another couple of drunk not caring a way or another...

Or playing an important/instrumental part in having your local lord/lady/boss gaining actual power through several regions and cities and becoming a king instead of having hearth orders that do not mean much currently.

Or being part of actual wars instead of just killing a few guys that are supposed to be "army in march", that could lead into kingdom crumbling, being conquered instead of a few house in a miserable hamlet turning into broken houses ...

Really influencing politics and having governing entities doing things, issueing laws and etc... depending on what happens in their area of influence, and making sure there are troops to try to enforce such laws, like putting a price on your head if you're not merry enough :D

There's tons of stuff that aren't yet implemented or only half done for Adventure mode according to the dev page anyways so we'll have to wait and see if that get to its potential.
like it's possible to mod in a president role in a player's fort and assign your adventurer(in that fort) that role maybe make it so kings and queens are selected.
haven't tested what would happen if I did that and what new dialog trees gets open up if you become a high selected royalty leader.
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Untrustedlife

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Re: Why isn't Adventurer Mode the "main" Dwarf Fortress mode?
« Reply #29 on: April 20, 2016, 02:58:32 pm »

Adventurers can have a unique identity now due to the customization of personalities and the needs you get based off of those now, I love that, it really encourages role playing and that to me is dwarf fortress adventure mode's draw is the role playing opportunities.

But it is still very early regardless.
I agree.
 The player merchant update sounds like exactly what you want nw, too bad that is probably years out, like you said, with the mansions and such.
« Last Edit: April 20, 2016, 03:01:17 pm by Untrustedlife »
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