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[Randos]

My comic Thabostobok, based strictly on a Dwarf Mode game session, has already completed Chapter One!!!

http://www.seqimgs.com/comic/thabostobok

If you have seen this before, you can still start from the home page, I have edited and reworked a lot since.

Enjoy and let me know what you think! Critique and Q&A also welcome.

[Fleeting Frames]

Hm. It seems like it tries to serve as an introductory story/macro guide to Fortress mode.

Things I like:
- Telling with pictures - especially for things put together from disparate views. I generally do not pay attention much to individual dwarves barring great importance, but Urist Kashezlor portrait picture tells us at once what he does, what he wears, what he looks like and his general outlook.
- Interleaving orders, research and backstory into what happens.

Things I find could be improved upon:
- Pacing feels slow at times. While us overseers do plan things a long time ahead, things generally are more striking when seen done in action rather than discussed in small-talk. Discussing something and then not having it shown is a great literary device, but I don't think you're planning to have, say, goblins killed offscreen.
- Some of the things could be shown more effectively and quickly shown as images, i.e. the wildlife talked about.


Well, I suppose only setup happens in first two chapters of books anyway, but how long do you plan to do it in fort mode and in terms of pages?

[crazyabe]

PTW

[Immortal-D]

Dude, I just... wow.  Toady should hire you to make the crayon drawings   The chattiness seemed a bit weird at first, due to the aforementioned pacing, but it grew on me.  I mean, the haulers and miners aren't going about their work without talking, I'm sure.  Also, are the 2 Miner Dwarfettes bald?  Or just hiding hair under their caps?  I am very excited to see your interpretation of the first Mood & !FUN!

[Fleeting Frames]

I mean, the haulers and miners aren't going about their work without talking, I'm sure. 

Two dwarves doing hard work side-by-side can, indeed, have no relationship or be only passing acquaintances. They must get off work to get to know each other.

Of course, when an underground shelter isn't dug out yet everyone but miners will have time off :p, so that embark wagon talk represents rather well what happens when I do lazy test embarks.

[Sanctume]

The wagon is the default meeting area. 
Relationships do start there when there's idle time and not too much micro managing early on. 
That, and the first 7 dwarfs start as friends relation, I think.

The illustrations are awesome, such a good talent. 

[Randos]

Hm. It seems like it tries to serve as an introductory story/macro guide to Fortress mode.

Things I like:
- Telling with pictures - especially for things put together from disparate views. I generally do not pay attention much to individual dwarves barring great importance, but Urist Kashezlor portrait picture tells us at once what he does, what he wears, what he looks like and his general outlook.
- Interleaving orders, research and backstory into what happens.

Things I find could be improved upon:
- Pacing feels slow at times. While us overseers do plan things a long time ahead, things generally are more striking when seen done in action rather than discussed in small-talk. Discussing something and then not having it shown is a great literary device, but I don't think you're planning to have, say, goblins killed offscreen.
- Some of the things could be shown more effectively and quickly shown as images, i.e. the wildlife talked about.


Well, I suppose only setup happens in first two chapters of books anyway, but how long do you plan to do it in fort mode and in terms of pages?

Thanks for the pros and cons!

I would like for the story to continue until it is "done", which could very well mean until "fun" happens, or, at least to the point were the full potential of DF can be expressed with a beautiful fortress. After which point I could decide between it becoming ongoing, or perhaps start another spin off. And honestly, anything can happen. I still have this game session waiting in limbo to be... continued!

I definitely feared it moving a little slow and being long winded, but if we imagine this to be just the first 30 of 200 pages then you can see how it is somewhat relevant background and setting development. I didn't want to hop right into the fun without any character build up. I'm hoping both DF players and non-DF players can read it equally, but that might be where some of the frustration is reading through.

I think more infographics like the "DWARFS" and "MINING" pages might be useful as distractions in those parts. That is still in the works.

[Randos]

Dude, I just... wow.  Toady should hire you to make the crayon drawings   The chattiness seemed a bit weird at first, due to the aforementioned pacing, but it grew on me.  I mean, the haulers and miners aren't going about their work without talking, I'm sure.  Also, are the 2 Miner Dwarfettes bald?  Or just hiding hair under their caps?  I am very excited to see your interpretation of the first Mood & !FUN!

They seem to be bald! Those are females as you can tell mostly from the lack of beards. But these two female miner dwarfs apparently don't have any hair.

I just checked their descriptions in my notes, here is the beginning of Inod's physical: "She is muscular. Her hair is clean shaven. Her nose is quite long... etc"

I guess miners don't like hair?

[PatrikLundell]

It's not unusual for female dorfs to have clean shaven heads, nor for them to be bald. Neither of the miners displaying hair is likely a fluke.

I personally envision dwarves to be broader than humans with thicker, sturdier limbs (a bit like a Neandertal body plan), and the females, in particular are quite slim. That's a rather subjective view, of course.

You also have given males and females different clothing, while DF clothing in game is unisex. If you're aiming for a faithful rendering you'd check what they are wearing and draw that, but it's an artistic choice whether to be true to the actual contents or to interpret it. Clothing color would likely be quite dull if displayed faithfully, although an artistic interpretation could be to use each character's individual color preferences as a theme for that character, as actual DF dyes are rather limited.

The wordiness and pacing looks similar to The Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html.

When it comes to faithfulness to DF game play I think you over emphasize drinking as it takes quite some time before they actually start to break for drinks, but on the other hand it matches the DF drinking spirit...

It's a similar case with the wagon: it doesn't actually work as a bed: just acts as an initial meeting place. But again, you should have some poetic license, and the wagon bed is a nice interpretation.

And, finally, the comic looks quite nice.

[Randos]

It's not unusual for female dorfs to have clean shaven heads, nor for them to be bald. Neither of the miners displaying hair is likely a fluke.

I personally envision dwarves to be broader than humans with thicker, sturdier limbs (a bit like a Neandertal body plan), and the females, in particular are quite slim. That's a rather subjective view, of course.

You also have given males and females different clothing, while DF clothing in game is unisex. If you're aiming for a faithful rendering you'd check what they are wearing and draw that, but it's an artistic choice whether to be true to the actual contents or to interpret it. Clothing color would likely be quite dull if displayed faithfully, although an artistic interpretation could be to use each character's individual color preferences as a theme for that character, as actual DF dyes are rather limited.

The wordiness and pacing looks similar to The Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html.

When it comes to faithfulness to DF game play I think you over emphasize drinking as it takes quite some time before they actually start to break for drinks, but on the other hand it matches the DF drinking spirit...

It's a similar case with the wagon: it doesn't actually work as a bed: just acts as an initial meeting place. But again, you should have some poetic license, and the wagon bed is a nice interpretation.

And, finally, the comic looks quite nice.

Thanks for the feedback!

Just to note: In fact I did try my best to follow the game's provided information. I know for a fact that the clothes they are wearing are exactly from their inventory, however, I think you are right that there was no color designation for the clothing (or I can't find that in my notes right now). I might have gone by their color preferences in their profiles, and I just had to give it some flair to make it easier to tell them apart Like you said "artistic license".

Skin color, eye color, height, weight, etc are all straight from their bios. Actually, I might have one regret regarding their "broadness" as you suggest. Maybe when it said "she is flimsy", perhaps that meant "for a dwarf" which could just as well be very broad and fat for us humans. A few people have complained that dwarfs should be fatter and more broad already.

(I currently have an excuse that they are both young and skinny from their expedition, hehe)

Oh, here it is! I just found the notes I took straight from the game. (I was diligent!) This is an example for Meng the Miner:

Code: [Select]


Meng Morulbasen (Miner, female) - sheep wool trousers, cave spider silk dress (upper body), alpaca wool vest, horse leather cloak, goose leather cap, alpaca wool hood, pig tail fiber mittens, sheep wool sock, donkey leather shoes, copper pick

    * relaxed, has fertile imagination, completely uninterested in art, candid and sincere, willing to compromise, strives for excellence, cracks her knuckles when bored, exhales slowly and deliberately when bored


Yeah I guess I went overboard on the drinking. Toady even mentioned this when I showed him an early version. I think it is funny though

The details are what make it so fun and just why I love the game so much.

Thanks again, this feedback will be useful for future pages!

[PatrikLundell]

I think you need to make a distinction between a broad build, muscular, and being fat. Some dorfs seem to become very obese over time, probably because their professions just keep them sitting in a workshop all day, and you can hang more fat on a wide frame than on a narrow one...

Dwarven clothing is odd from a normal human perspective, in the case of Meng she's wearing a dress that you've more or less converted into a shirt (a dress tucked into pants would probably result in some rather uncomfortable lumps where the stuff that would go down somewhere along the legs would be gathered, making sitting unpleasant). I've envisioned the combination of dress and pants to have the pants under the dress. You're the one with the license, however.

And I guess you have some additional flavor material just in that little snippet: Cracking knuckles (would probably have to be explained: I'm bored...), or "A: Nice engraving!, Meng: Bah, boring"), fertile imagination: "I bet we'll find...", etc. The latter could even be mixed in with some lore when appropriate, as in "Ooh, kimberlite: diamonds, here I come!".

"Feels dejected from being caught out in the rain" vs "Complains only mildly about inclement weather" could probably also be used if that happens to match any of the dorfs.

I agree the drinking is funny, but not really representative... the artist will have to judge where the limits of the license are.

[Sanctume]

Some thoughts on researching individual dwarfs.

I was wondering if you used the dfhack tools "forum-dwarves" that saves the dwarf descriptions into text files (with colored markups for forum posts). 
Those should be helpful.

I have not seen any tool script that lets you do the same for equipment. 

The stonesense visualizer renders some dwarves that seems accurate in clothing, but not so much in height and width. 

Dwarf Therapist gets the exact stats, but I do know if there is an easier way to capture the stats in text, or even copy to clipboard function. 

The wiki has the text flavor on the representation of that number of a particular trait.

I also have not found a tool to retrieve some sort of family tree for each dwarf, instead of manually going to each "relationship" screen.

Between the dwarven eugenics posts here in the forum, and the DTherapist info on how large the dwarf is, seems to indicate how much max volume and height a dwarf can be, or grow up to be.  Except for the Dwarf Day Care thread where a child can exceed that max before adulthood.

[Spriggans]

* Checks new forum posts *
* Sees this post, clicks out of curiosity *
* PTW seconds later *

Legendary drawing skills !
(I'll hire you to train Korgoth when he's done with Scholary :p )

Keep it up ! =)

[Randos]

Thanks for all of the encouraging feedback!

Some thoughts on researching individual dwarfs.

I was wondering if you used the dfhack tools "forum-dwarves" that saves the dwarf descriptions into text files (with colored markups for forum posts). 
Those should be helpful.

I have never used anything besides the raw game, or at the most I had used the Phoebus tileset. The dfhack tools you mention sound like a life saver. I hand typed all of the descriptions and start up inventory into a text editor so that I could refer to it more easily later.

I will have to check out some of these other tools and see if they are helpful. I was worried about keeping track of family and relationships if the game goes on that long too. It would be nice to have an easy way to keep track of things. Although I think this story will only focus on the main characters for the most part, or at least only focus on 5 to 10 main characters at a time if the fortress gets big.

I think you need to make a distinction between a broad build, muscular, and being fat. Some dorfs seem to become very obese over time, probably because their professions just keep them sitting in a workshop all day, and you can hang more fat on a wide frame than on a narrow one...

...

The are good points for me to consider as they get older, assuming too much "fun" doesn't happen along the way. I think aged dwarfs should look much more respectable too. I imagine they have more ornaments, longer beards, more wear-and-tear and battle scars to make them look experienced and wise. That is all really fun to think about.

At the end of the day there is way too much to consider Which is exactly where that "artistic license" comes in quite handy.

[Nasferatu]

Hello!

Since only chapter one is out ill just give a first impressions

I really like the laid-back and lighthearted atmosphere this comic gives off. At first I was a bit turned off from this because my dwarf fortress usually consists of death and mayhem galore but I gave this a chance and liked it. The copper tools were a nice touch.

My only problem with this was that it was kind of meta with the conversations. "I didn't do fishing because it wasn't designated" kind of broke me out of an immersion. It only bothered me because I feel the comic wants to be immersive and the meta threw me out of it. I did chuckle a bit at it though.

So far, a fun, lighthearted account of a DF game with meta perspective : )