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[Nagidal]

I'd like to hear your ideas about speedrunning Dwarf Fortress. We have a big player community, but I haven't seen any DF speedruns yet. I'm not a speedrunner myself, but I like to watch speedruns. Maybe there are more of you who would gravitate towards the speedrunning kind of playing DF. My idea of speedrunning DF would be speedrunning it measured by the in-game time, since it is fundementally a turn-based game.

Here is some speedrun goals I could come up with for the start, I'm sure you'll have some more to add.

Spoiler: Fortress Mode runs (click to show/hide)

• First Tantrum
• First Million Bucks Created Wealth
• First Legendary Fighter/Axedwarf/Marksdwarf, etc.
• First Adamantine Armor (full set)
• First Kill of a HFS member

Spoiler: Adventure Mode runs (click to show/hide)

• First Vampire Kill
• First Bogeyman Kill
• First Necromancer Kill
• Become a Vampire
• Become a Necromancer

Any other ideas? How would we best standardize measuring the run time? Is it possible to count the number of ticks (or steps) in a DFHack spript or somthing like that?

[NJW2000]

I can't speak from experience, but I'm sure such a script exists. 2 and 5 might be fairly interesting, though subject to a great deal of luck: candy artifacts, lucky crits and such. The rest would be a bit trivial or involve stupid exploits such as danger rooms.
Speedrun to mountain home would be possible, but I suspect would be a circus of candy artifact savescumming mixed with luck and relentless maximisation.

The adventure mode ones would be highly luck based.

[OluapPlayer]

A tantrum spiral run would last forever given tantrum spirals haven't been a thing for years now.

For adventurer mode, beating a vault and taking the slab there would be a logical idea. That's probably the closest thing DF has to a final challenge.

[Nagidal]

A tantrum spiral run would last forever given tantrum spirals haven't been a thing for years now.

I haven't got a tantrum spiral yet, but I have had a dwarf throwing a tantrum. If I had the task to make any dwarf throw a tantrum asap, I don't really know how I would achieve it. I am correcting the line to just "First Tantrum".

[Aranador]

While not a tantrum spiral, I did have one game where, immediately on starting, one dwarf had an argument with another, both got a very positive thought about getting into a good argument, but one went berserk, and ran off to flip a wagon.  He calmed down after.

[Nagidal]

Wow, I didn't think that it could happen so quickly. Tantrum is so very random then, not good for speedrunning.

[Fleeting Frames]

Regarding the wealth idea, bit similar: there was 2 year wealth contest some years ago.

Though yeah, maybe wealth challenge should have a subcategory of "no metalsmithing". Otherwise, if given a choice of embark and embark preps I'd be surprised if quicker runs would reach spring migration to bring them above 20 before hitting 1 mil - just single exceptional candy mechanism attached to one masterwork building is already two thirds the way there.

First Legendary X skill dwarf is interesting, however, being the sort of thing that may be more widely useful. Simpler options go for just nonstop quick jobs, i.e. mining soil - with a burrow so that other dwarves will feed/water them and so that they'll not sleep, with spot of prefocusing to increase speed.

However, I'd be more interested in cases where one can't just feed jobs, like in first Legendary Animal Trainer. Embark with doggos, train them, and then trap and slaughter?

Of course, might want to prohibit or disallow migrants, at least as a subcategory, otherwise may be case of "embark with doggos, get Great Trainer in first wave, have trainer train them". Not that save-scumming a migrant wave for Great X isn't a valid option to obtain one, doing it kinda amputates the challenge for training part.

Another more interesting case would be "first Legendary Shield User+Armor User+Dodger" in 43.05, as all training of the first raises latter two, while latter two have exploits to amputate their training time. First Legendary Teacher is similarly interesting due needing multiple skills to work.

[EPM]

For a longer-term in-game "speedrun" goal, one idea that comes to mind is to reach the Age of Death or Emptiness. DF is a fantasy world generator, so an "end" that comes to mind is the point at which no living things (beyond the "innumerables" that can't be driven extinct) inhabit the world. There is no further potential for storytelling. Under the banner of "losing is fun", the point at which "the entire world loses" strikes me as a point of conclusion.

That would, granted, take a long time by speedrun standards, but would provide an interesting idea for routing and development, since in-game time is the timer.

I guess you can approach the idea of DF speedrunning from two directions at least: Fixed-Generation or Not-Fixed-Generation. That is, either to generate a world most-conducive to the goal, or to decide upon an arbitrary worldgen and work within its confines. After all, the starting conditions are arguably the most important part, and a Pocket World will almost always be "finished" much faster than a Large Region regardless of the goal.

Either way, the HFS or Vault are more or less the "final bosses" of DF in its current state, so for Fortress/Adventurer modes, as people have mentioned, those are the most obvious candidates for speedrunning.

[mikekchar]

Because the RNG is pretty influential in DF (and making a challenge that doesn't involve the RNG makes the challenge pretty boring), what about *not* timing the "speed run"?  Instead, try to break the first reasonable siege (greater than 50 goblins) at various FPSes *without ever pausing*.  So at 100 FPS it's going to be pretty darn difficult to build a decent fortress and defend it.  For extra challenges you can play with the siege trigger to bring the goblins faster.

[KittyTac]

Because the RNG is pretty influential in DF (and making a challenge that doesn't involve the RNG makes the challenge pretty boring), what about *not* timing the "speed run"?  Instead, try to break the first reasonable siege (greater than 50 goblins) at various FPSes *without ever pausing*.  So at 100 FPS it's going to be pretty darn difficult to build a decent fortress and defend it.  For extra challenges you can play with the siege trigger to bring the goblins faster.

Not everyone has a good computer. It's like 14 FPS for me with 80 dorfs.

[Bumber]

Because the RNG is pretty influential in DF (and making a challenge that doesn't involve the RNG makes the challenge pretty boring), what about *not* timing the "speed run"?  Instead, try to break the first reasonable siege (greater than 50 goblins) at various FPSes *without ever pausing*.  So at 100 FPS it's going to be pretty darn difficult to build a decent fortress and defend it.  For extra challenges you can play with the siege trigger to bring the goblins faster.

How do you arm your dwarves or build without pausing?

[Nagidal]

I just want to add that RNG does not necessarily break the game for speedrunning. Many randomised games are speedrun. Just search youtube for speedruns of Spelunky, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Tetris or Minecraft. Sure, Randomness plays a role, yet it does not prevent people from having fun speedrunning such games. In Angband speedruns, which are turn-based and RNG rules everything, players compete to kill Morgoth in the least amount of turns.

[Fleeting Frames]

Problem with mountainhome is that without additional challenges (i.e. vjek's custom challenge embark for Pseudo), the caravan upgrading the settlement through the tiers is the most limiting factor, rather than population, cash or crafts done.

[ManicSin]

A core idea to make speed running fun is consistency over luck, so for example using a pre-set world at a specific world age.

Second would be how to handle the highly random events like migration values, I would suggest to make all migrants have 0 skills in everything and always arrive in groups of 5 in the first ones, after the obligatory waves there is no cap, that would mean you get more bodies to throw at the fort and less rng.

Anyone can put their for anywhere on the map, but its limited to specific size embark, say a 3X3 or 4X4.

Further fps speed should be caped to a specific speed so faster computer don't always win, so say a cap of 60 or 100.

A core idea then is high speed menu handling and minimising the amount of paused time.

if you want to go extreme low rng then all artefacts are turned of, no stange mood, only normal items so the entire speed run dont boil down to the perfect dice roll.

In total a ''become mountain home'' goal could work. 

[Fleeting Frames]

No idea. Could embark with 150 dwarves and find out perhaps?