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Author Topic: Going back to DF after ~5 years: what should I expect?  (Read 1696 times)

Noir

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Going back to DF after ~5 years: what should I expect?
« on: August 07, 2017, 06:22:02 am »

Hello everyone! Some ~5 years ago I was playing DF and enjoyed a "vanilla" Fortress until its eventual FPS semi-death. I intend to have another stab at it and I have a couple questions.
Here goes:

-is the game still single-core CPU bound? Is architecture relevant, or is CPU clock still king when it comes to have good performance?
-back then Vampires were being added as a prominent new feature; what other additions should I be aware of?

That's it. Thank you for your time!
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Naked dwarves remove the need to produce more clothing, which means more of your pig tails can be brewed into booze.
I think this is less a problem and more an expression of dwarven priorities.

KittyTac

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Re: Going back to DF after ~5 years: what should I expect?
« Reply #1 on: August 07, 2017, 06:42:15 am »

You can retire forts now. Also multi-tile trees, and many other things.
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Fleeting Frames

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Re: Going back to DF after ~5 years: what should I expect?
« Reply #2 on: August 07, 2017, 07:27:09 am »

The game is still single-core bound, though dfhack-based visual display plugins are (theoretically) capable of offloading some of the load to other cores or graphics card. Cache and RAM are more important than CPU these days.

As for the second question, I've taken a stab at it last year: DF2014 Question and Answer Thread

This small update infographic from vg may also be helpful.

bluephoenix

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Re: Going back to DF after ~5 years: what should I expect?
« Reply #3 on: August 07, 2017, 07:32:57 am »

It still runs on one core yes however it is now a 64bit program.
A lot of small additions on top of what KittyTac said, you can build actual temples, libraries and taverns that can attract friendly visitors.
In roughly a month or two the artifact release will come out which allows you to send armed dwarves out into the world to cause trouble and retrieve artifacts.
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neblime

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Re: Going back to DF after ~5 years: what should I expect?
« Reply #4 on: August 07, 2017, 10:47:28 am »

In adventure mode you can have meaningful* conversations about your values.
Night creatures are much stronger (in adv mode)
vein mining is a thing!
Sieges now actually have to come from places and populations in the world as opposed to the old system of "you are in range of this hostile entity, better spawn some siege dudes"
The world will change (somewhat) after worldgen now, entities can war each other, troupes of performers can gallavant around etc

* Meaningfulness not gauranteed
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http://i.imgur.com/Gv6I6JO.png
I am quite looking forward to the next 20 or 30 years or so of developmental madness

Dorsidwarf

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Re: Going back to DF after ~5 years: what should I expect?
« Reply #5 on: August 07, 2017, 01:12:54 pm »

There are locations such as libraries, temples and taverns which can serve your dwarfs and attract visitors. I especially advise temples because dwarves, especially with religious values, get stress from going too long (years) without being able to pray to their god.
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Pancakes

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Re: Going back to DF after ~5 years: what should I expect?
« Reply #6 on: August 07, 2017, 10:02:53 pm »

In adventure mode you can have meaningful* conversations about your values.

Human 1 to Human 2: In a time before time, I attacked me.
Human 2: It was inevitable.
Human 1: It is terrifying.

Dwarf 1: I suffered a major injury recently. It's annoying.
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Foxite

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Re: Going back to DF after ~5 years: what should I expect?
« Reply #7 on: August 08, 2017, 03:19:30 am »

Dwarves now have more complex personalities. They have needs, such as being with family, which causes work to slow down if the needs are not met. The happiness system has been replaced with a more realistic stress system, and you can no longer cure an unhappy dwarf by letting him sleep in a king's bedroom for a few days. Conversely, dwarves don't get stressed as easily as they got unhappy by seeing a bunch of dead bodies.

Also world activation, which means that the world outside your fort will stay alive. If you run a fort for a few years, things will have changed. This also means, as has been said, that sieging forces actually have to move from one place to another to reach your fort.
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The best way to demonstrate it to him is take a save of 40 year old fortress with 150 dwarves in it on a good sized embark with a volcano that just breached the circus and install it on his gaming rig and watch it bring his rig to its knees.

Nolimit

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Re: Going back to DF after ~5 years: what should I expect?
« Reply #8 on: August 08, 2017, 03:36:53 am »

Dwarf Fortress itself is not the only thing that changed. If you use dfhack, you will be pleasantly surprised how much changed with it. One of my favourite improvement is ui overhaul. Ability to use search in almost every ingame list is so helpful. I remember setting up stockpiles in older version to accept only goblin corpses, and it was nightmare. So much faster and easier now.
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