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[Bromor Neckbeard]

Well, since I got introduced to the awesomeness that is Dwarf Fortress roughly a month ago, I've been keeping a list of all the problems I'd like to see fixed and the features I'd like to see added.  Fellow Bay 12 forumgoers (and of course the estimable Toady One), I present these here for your comments.

Save Games:  Yes, I know that you can "save scum" if you want to save or reload your game.  In my opinion, it shouldn't be necessary to exit Dwarf Fortress in order to do this.  Those who want hardcore realism should just be able to check a "disallow save games" box when creating a new fortress.

Multiple Fortresses in the Same World:  IMO, I shouldn't have to abandon my current fortress or create a new world if I want to try a different area.  I might like my current fortress just fine, but I just want to try embarking on a Terrifying Glacier just to see if I'm dwarf enough to handle it.

Renaming Your Fortress:  I'd like to have the option of renaming my fortress.  Maybe it could require a change of leadership due to an election before allowing this option, but we need it.  Maybe I didn't know exactly what I wanted my fortress named when I embarked, but I am NOT living in "Burninganus the Muscular Tunnel".  Or maybe "The Blue Canyon" turned out to have lots of Bauxite but no Cobaltite or Microcline.

The party selection screen:  Show the Terrain/Biome Data in the party selection screen.  Right now, if I forget whether I embarked in tundra or rainforest, there's no easy way to look.  Also, give us the option to Save and Load Starting Party Templates.  I never use the quick start option, I always carefully choose my party.  However, 90% of the time, I start with nearly the same skillset and inventory.  It would be nice to have an option to save my selection of gear and skills and be able to easily set that same selection on a new group of dwarves with seven new names and psych profiles, rather than spending another half an hour if I don't like the terrain I embarked on the first time.  This is in.  Much thanks.

Impossible Locations:  Many locations that I'd like to play on the world map (especially most prime real estate high in the mountains) won't let me embark there.  I can't see seven determined dwarves not getting to a good site just because of a little thing like two hundred miles of mountain range in the way.  Maybe short-bearded humans and pantywaist elves can be stopped by the lack of an overland route, but dwarves shouldn't.

On the "choose fortress location" screen, we should be given the option to Mark Possible Sites To Come Back To.  When I'm looking for the perfect site that has everything I need, sometimes I'll find one that is almost perfect, however, if I look for an optimum site then I risk forgetting where the acceptable (but not ideal) site was.  Not only do we have this option, it also comes with notes.  Thumbs way up!

Options Menu Additions:  Mineral Announcements on/off.  Okay, dammit, you've struck Gypsum for the tenth time, I don't need to be taken away from my castle wall that I'm painstakingly constructing a square at a time for you to show me precisely where you found it AGAIN.  Detailed Combat Reports should be an entry in the options menu, not a mod that I had to download off this forum.  I see a pile of complaints about this, so clearly I'm not the only one that thinks Dwarves Pick Up Items From Outside should be an entry in the options menu.  Alternatively, maybe "Looting" should be its own job that's turned off by default, and you have to enable it before Urist will charge outside into a hail of goblin crossbow bolts to pick up that Cave Spider Silk Sock that is apparently LITERALLY "to die for".  This issue is probably my number one pet peeve with Dwarf Fortress.  Excellent, another suggestion of mine (although I don't flatter myself that I'm the first to ever think of it) makes it into DF!

Dwarves Carry Babies Outside
needs its own entry as well.  Urist, I know you're really attached to your infant.  However, just because you're Superdwarvenly Tough and can ignore packs of wolves trying to sharpen their teeth on your neck, doesn't mean that your child is the same way.  Isn't leaving your child inside with a babysitter really a better way of expressing your love for her than carrying her into a hail of goblin arrows?

Job Manager:  We need some kind of Job Management Screen so that we can turn off, say, Item Hauling for 60 dwarves at once, rather than laboriously going to each dwarf's preferences-labor screen and individually turning it off for each dwarf.  Likewise, we need a

Status Viewing Screen so that we can easily see which of our sixty dwarves are hungry, sad, exhausted, or sprouting crossbow bolts from that latest goblin raid, without checking each dwarf's Wounds screen individually.

Military:  The "On Duty" option Should Be Added to the Squads Screen.  Also, since we have the option to make dwarves carry waterskins and food rations, they really should consider their station more of an "order" and less of a "polite suggestion".  "You know, I could really go for a quick nap about now" should not be the dwarven military equivalent of being relieved at one's post.

Choosing Materials:  Off the top of my head, Masonry, Mechanics, Crafting, and Carpentry ALL need the option to choose which type of material to use.  Yes, it's possible to force masons to build doors out of a particular material by various hacky workarounds such as dumping stone next to their workshops and not doing any new mining while the masonry is going on, but I find it appalling that there's not an official function in the game that allows you choose what to use to build stuff, except in construction.  I'd also like to see various different ways of organizing the material lists for construction such as by value, alphabetical order, and the like.  The "most recently created" way it's ordered now is useless to me.

Room Resizing:  Let us use the umkh interface to resize rooms, not just bigger/smaller.

Let the Hotkey Menu Stretch the way so many other menus do, so we can use longer names for our hotkeys.  As it is, the limit is what, eight characters?  Let me use names like "Living Area" and "Main Barracks" for my hotkeys.

Parties:  I keep my Meeting Areas turned off the majority of the time, just because it's such a pain in the ass to have my Legendary Masons not making any stone doors for three months at a time.  Maybe this should go in the Options menu.  "Dwarves only party if they have No Job".  Yeah.

Cave Adaptation:  I'm fine with HAVING Cave Adaptation, but it seems to happen too often.  After four or five years, most of my dwarves seem to puke when they go outdoors, even when they're lumberjacks or construction workers who spend 75% of their lives outside and have never been more than 2 z-levels below ground.  It's especially irritating when the dwarf's psych profile says that they "love working outdoors and grumbles only mildly at inclement weather" but it doesn't mention "spews like a seasick sailor at the first sight of blue sky".  Cave Adaptation needs to show up in the personality profile.

Miscellaneous Fluff That's Not Needed But Would Make the Game Better: 

I'd like to see an option for More Information on Gems, Minerals, and Ores from the Look screen.  A little bit of background information on the elemental composition, what formation it typically runs in, what uses dwarves have for it, stuff like that.  Games such as Civilization and Rome are learning experiences as well as video games, Dwarf Fortress should be the same way.  Quite frankly, in real life I can't tell Cassiterite from Sphalerite, but Dwarf Fortress ought to teach me the difference.

More Sounds.  As far as I can tell, the only time you hear any sounds in Dwarf Fortress is during the introduction, yet the option menu has an entry for sounds.    Now, there IS noise that our dwarves can hear, we just can't hear it ourselves for some reason.  I think that any noises audible at our cursor's location should be actually audible.  You could hear the clink of picks for the sound of mining, hammering or sawing for carpentry, etc.  This would not only make the game more immersive, but also help us determine what exactly is disturbing our dwarves' sleep.

Finally, I'd like the option to Add "Notes" that are visible...   This feature has since been added.  Toady One is like a genie, except instead of going "POOF" he just releases another version the next day.  My thanks.

[Jude]

For Cave Adaptation, maybe each dwarf should have a counter, "how many days since they've been outside." Once it reaches a predetermined point (which could vary based on some variable in their personality) then they should start puking.

And of course, once they puked a few times they should get used to the sun again and reset the counter.

[Calessa Lynn Orphiel]

Save Games:  No.  And definately not as a default.  The whole motto of the game (it seems) is "Losing is fun!"  Additionally, this breaks the continuity of the game world, and Toady's goal seems to be creating a simulated world.  A real world doesn't have a "oops, let's rewind 3 months" button, and I don't think DF should either.


Multiple Fortresses in the Same World:  Although right now this seems like it should be doable, in the very near future it would become impractical, due to the passage of time, and the impact on the rest of the game world.  When it gets to the point where everything you do can have an impact on the entire game world, having one fortress in year 1120 and one at year 1070 is going to break things.

Renaming Your Fortress:  I don't really care if the names make sense, because none of the randomly generated names make sense anyway, but I certainly don't see why this cannot be done.

The party selection screen:  I would like the option to simply go back to the embark screen, myself.

Save and Load Starting Party Templates:  This is already planned, I believe

Impossible Locations:  Particularly with the new tunnel system, trade could still be viable in these places, but I'd like to see other work done before this is implemented.

Mark Possible Sites To Come Back To:  One thousand times over, seconded.

Mineral Announcements On/Off:  I'd like to see a third option, On/Off/First.  That way I'll know when a NEW mineral type is struck.

Detailed Combat Reports:  I'd like it built into the game to fix some of the grammar issues.  Should also have much more detailed options than a simple on/off.  Ideally, I'd like to see it done in two menus:

An entity option -- All, Most, Some, Few, None

All -- Report all combat
Most -- Report all combat except sparring and
Some -- Report all combat except for sparring and merchants
Few -- Report only combat between allied units and hostile units
None -- Report no combat

And a combat roll option -- All, Most, Some, Few, None

All -- Report all attacks
Most -- Report only attacks that deal damage
Some -- Report only attacks that cause injuries
Few -- Report only attacks that cause fatalities
None -- Report no attacks


Dwarves Pick Up Items From Outside/Looting:  I'm fairly certain something is already in the works for this, but if it's not, it should be.

Dwarves Carry Babies Outside:  I would accept a "Dwarves Carry Babies When Hunting/Active Duty (Y/N)", but restricting one's ability to be with a baby simply because you're outdoors?  No.

Job Manager:  I believe something is in the works to manage labor 'groups', and if not, it should be.

Status Viewing Screen:  Not a bad idea, though it probably needs some thought toward formatting.

Military:  I think everyone knows by now that military behavior is badly broken.  Just need to get Toady to work on it.

Choosing Materials:  I believe this is being addressed to some degree in the next version with the option to disable certain materials for use in crafting. 

Organizing Material List:  Sure, why not?

Room Resizing:  I never considered that, but most definately, yes.  Why does a room have to be centered on a piece of furniture anyway?

Hotkey Menu:  This really ought to be a very low priority, but I don't see any harm in it.

Parties:  I'm not sure WHAT should be done about parties, but something needs to be done.

Cave Adaptation:  Since my last three fortresses have all been outdoor construction experiments, I can't really recall what Cave Adaptation was like anymore ... but I do remember it seemed broken.  Your suggestion sounds like an improvement.

Notes:  For the love of God, why would you call this fluff?

[Ascii Kid]

Well, since I got introduced to the awesomeness that is Dwarf Fortress roughly a month ago, I've been keeping a list of all the problems I'd like to see fixed and the features I'd like to see added.  Fellow Bay 12 forumgoers (and of course the estimable Toady One), I present these here for your comments.

Save Games:  Yes, I know that you can "save scum" if you want to save or reload your game.  In my opinion, it shouldn't be necessary to exit Dwarf Fortress in order to do this.  Those who want hardcore realism should just be able to check a "disallow save games" box when creating a new fortress.

--- The thing of that is, it would take away from those few, rare, awesome victories that you get, because those only occured under these rare, prime conditions.  If you just tweaked away until you got the outcome yuo hoped for, you're not going to savor those victories as much

Multiple Fortresses in the Same World: 

--- Yeah, that'd be cool, or to be able to leave your fortress and adventure into it as it runs.

Renaming Your Fortress: 

--- This is already an option, both for your Group and your Fortress; when you're picking your gear to get ready to embark, check the screen carefully.  I'm sure to rename the group it's "G" and to rename the fortress might be "F", but I might be wrong about that one.

Save and Load Starting Party Templates. 

--- Good one, you're right, my starting bunch is alost always the same.

Mark Possible Sites To Come Back To. 

--- Agreed. =->

 Job Management Screen

--- That might be something that's taken care of by the "Cancel some/most/all" command under the options menu.

Choosing Materials:  but I find it appalling that there's not an official function in the

--- Appalling?  =->  This game IS free.

Parties: 

--- But that's how they get to know each other; check it out, after a party they'll start to know all the people there a little bit more  and, after enough parties, like in life, you'll have two dwarves who hate each other because they where both eyeing the same chick and she just gave birth to a baby.  HIL-arious.

Add "Notes"

--- I'd like to just have an in-game notepad to write on, even, something that's linked to a fort or adventurer, so I didn't need a wordprocessor open at the same time.  Nothing face, and maybe that writes itself to a text file or something.

[Idiom]

Multiple Fortresses in the Same World:  Although right now this seems like it should be doable, in the very near future it would become impractical, due to the passage of time, and the impact on the rest of the game world.  When it gets to the point where everything you do can have an impact on the entire game world, having one fortress in year 1120 and one at year 1070 is going to break things.

He means leaving the fortress stable and running under the AI while you do another fort at the same time. Not across time.

Save Games:  No.  And definately not as a default.  ...A real world doesn't have a "oops, let's rewind 3 months" button, and I don't think DF should either.

It already does have a rewind though with save scumming. Having to reload the game after saving to continue is just a pain. If you don't like it, remove saving entirely. Or just take his addon to the suggestion with a 'hardcore' option to prevent saving.

Room Resizing:

Why not a "i"-> "r" and then tweak what kinds of rooms the dwarves consider that area as? "This is a (b]edroom, and (o]ffice belonging to ([a]-> Urist McUrist).

[Calessa Lynn Orphiel]

He means leaving the fortress stable and running under the AI while you do another fort at the same time. Not across time.

I find it amusing how you can pull new words out of thin air magically.  He said nothing of the sort.  Nothing about AI control, and nothing about giving up the original fortress in any way shape or form.  He DOES however explicitly state the desire to leave his fortress intact.

It already does have a rewind though with save scumming. Having to reload the game after saving to continue is just a pain. If you don't like it, remove saving entirely. Or just take his addon to the suggestion with a 'hardcore' option to prevent saving.

Save scumming is not a game feature any more than No-CD cracks are part of commerical games -- it's done entirely outside of the game.  Just because something is possible to do outside of the game, and have it affect the game, doesn't make it a part of the game.

Room Resizing:

Why not a "i"-> "r" and then tweak what kinds of rooms the dwarves consider that area as? "This is a (b]edroom, and (o]ffice belonging to ([a]-> Urist McUrist).

Not a bad idea.

[korora]

Save scumming is not a game feature any more than No-CD cracks are part of commerical games -- it's done entirely outside of the game.  Just because something is possible to do outside of the game, and have it affect the game, doesn't make it a part of the game.

Toady currently endorses save scumming (and tells you how to do it in the in-game help, under "Technical") because it's annoying for an error in an alpha release to destroy your fortress.

[Bromor Neckbeard]

Save Games:  The whole motto of the game (it seems) is "Losing is fun!"  Additionally, this breaks the continuity of the game world, and Toady's goal seems to be creating a simulated world.  A real world doesn't have a "oops, let's rewind 3 months" button, and I don't think DF should either. 

I agree.  And when DF gets into a more finished state, when it better approximates the real world, I'll be fine with not having a save feature.  Right now, when sixty dwarves will happily rush to their deaths in order to pick up a sock off a dead goblin, when I have my population cap set at SEVEN and yet I have fifty dwarves in my current fortress (just now got my Dungeon Master), we need an official save feature.  If the real world could disappear and the universe reboot because God clicked on a pop-up ad which tried to pull up a video, I'd say real life needed a save function too.

(Apparently trying to display a .wmv file while DF is running is REALLY bad, but I haven't filed a bug report because it's not strictly to do with DF, it involves too many other factors.)

I don't necessarily agree that "losing is fun".  It's fun if I lose because I made an idiotic design decision like not giving the water anywhere to drain to after it makes a waterfall in my dining room.  Hey, I learned from my mistake and my next fortress will be better.  It's not fun if I lose because I assumed that a feature would work correctly and it didn't.

Impossible Locations:  Particularly with the new tunnel system, trade could still be viable in these places, but I'd like to see other work done before this is implemented.

I'm not even talking about allowing trade.  In my admittedly limited experience, trade is much less essential to a proper fortress than stone, yet the game will let you embark on a triple-aquifer area with sparse vegetation and only one z-level of dirt.  I just want the option to build a fortress ten miles into the mountains whether the merchants can get there or not.  Let it give you a warning stating that, "Although your dwarves may be mighty or stupid enough to try to live in this location, sensible dwarves, beardless humans, and pantywaist elves will not be able to trade with you because there's no roads to the godsforsaken boondock area you are trying to live in.  Are you sure you want to embark here?"

Mineral Announcements On/Off:  I'd like to see a third option, On/Off/First.  That way I'll know when a NEW mineral type is struck.

You are absolutely correct.  This is what I should have posted originally, if I had put more thought into it.  I may edit my original post to reflect this superior suggestion.

(thoughts on) Detailed Combat Reports

Everything CLO said about this, seconded.

Dwarves Carry Babies Outside:  Another little thought on this.  As Icycloisters enters its seventh year, I'm seeing dwarven parents with Cave Sickness carrying their babies outside and barfing.  It didn't occur to me to see if the poor infants have "vomit splatter" on them, but I'm going to check.  The dwarven concept of "motherly love" is as horrifying as it is hilarious.

Cave Adaptation:  Since my last three fortresses have all been outdoor construction experiments, I can't really recall what Cave Adaptation was like anymore ... but I do remember it seemed broken.  Your suggestion sounds like an improvement.

See, my current fortress is almost entirely outdoors.  Every workshop is above ground.  Every storage area and all the living quarters except the military barracks (six out of fifty dwarves at the moment) are either on z-levels -1 or -2.  Most if not all of my dwarves have spent at least half of their lives above the ground, working on my magnificent (at least in my eyes) walls, towers, and moat, the only reason I go underground is to get more rock salt to build my walls out of.  And yet, my dwarves are barfing all the time.

Notes:  For the love of God, why would you call this fluff?

There's a guy on this forum who has the greatest sci-fi villainess of all time as his avatar.  He knows where I got this idea.  I call this "fluff" because (unlike most of my other suggestions) it's something I can handle with Notepad or with a real-life pencil and paper (as I do now), but it would be mighty convenient to have it in the game.  I got introduced to this game in the first place by reading a succession game on a different game's forum, and they had to restart from a save because one guy left the irrigation floodgates open when he forwarded his save to another guy, and the second guy didn't know which lever closed the floodgates, so all he could do was watch helplessly as his dwarves drowned.

This is already an option, both for your Group and your Fortress; when you're picking your gear to get ready to embark, check the screen carefully.  I'm sure to rename the group it's "G" and to rename the fortress might be "F", but I might be wrong about that one.

No, you're right, but I'm talking about renaming the fortress after you get there and decide that either you don't like the randomly-generated name it gave you, or the name that you picked is inappropriate because it describes a feature that doesn't actually exist.  Constantinople becomes Istanbul, Saint Petersburg becomes Stalingrad, and Bloodyanus the Festering Tunnel becomes, well, Riverhome or something.

Appalling?  =->  This game IS free.

I didn't have to pay for my eyes, but that doesn't stop me from wanting glasses so that I can see more than ten feet.   I'm just sayin', in Construction, we can choose whether to use larch logs or granite blocks to build our fortress walls, but when it comes to having your mason build a door, our choices are "whatever I damn well feel like using" or "whichever material you seal me in a locked room with", and it shouldn't be that way.

But that's how they get to know each other; check it out, after a party they'll start to know all the people there a little bit more...

Oh, I know, and I think it's genius that parties are a "job" that levels up dwarves' social skills.  I just don't like the fact that dwarves will neglect VITAL labors to attend parties for three months at a time.  "If you will just please finish linking that lever to that drawbridge so the goblins won't get in and slaughter us all in our hungover stupors, then for all I care you can party until you go blind, but can we just get these doors installed first?"

Regarding the multiple fortress discussion, I meant that I want more than one fortress running in the same world at the same time.  I'm curious to see if I've got the sack to handle a fortress in the lovely two-aquifer Haunted Scorching Desert halfway across the world, but I'm not curious enough to abandon my current fortress.  And if my hypothetical new experimental fortress turned out to actually be worth saving, then I couldn't have it coexist in the same world with my current fortress.

I understand that eventually everything will be affected by your actions in Fortress Mode, and therefore it won't be feasible to have multiple fortresses going at once.  But for right now, there's no reason why we shouldn't.  I mean, at one point, people used to play Dwarf Fortress with no z-levels and Hidden Fun Stuff was guaranteed in every fortress, right?  But later versions made those fortress designs obsolete, and certain features were removed.

Obviously you shouldn't be able to have two fortresses on the same world map square, or right next to each other, but my Frozen Tundra fortress shouldn't preclude me building a Scorching Desert fortress literally thousands of miles away, even if they are technically existing at the same time.

[Idiom]

He said nothing of the sort...He DOES however explicitly state the desire to leave his fortress intact.

How else would this be done? It's been suggested many times before, leaving the fort running by itself like all the other pre-generated forts.

I find it amusing how you pulled time travel out of your arse, which as you said doesn't work anyway.

Would impossible locations include ocean? I'd love to embark on a wagon sized island in the middle of an ocean, or in a tunnel under the sea.

I would accept a "Dwarves Carry Babies When Hunting/Active Duty (Y/N)", but restricting one's ability to be with a baby simply because you're outdoors?  No.

Agreed, as you'd end up with cave-adaption generations of dwarves otherwise.

[Align]

On the note of exiting without saving (or just loading the last save), at least allow saving without exiting. Forcing me to go through a long load time twice just because I wanted to make a backup against crashes after doing something complicated isn't very nice.

[Tiler]

The whole thing with saving strikes me as kind of 'idealism vs reality' in a twisted form.

While yes, it would be nice and challenging for everyone to not have a 'exit without saving' feature or whatnot, and no matter how lowly savescummers are, it doesn't change the fact that people rather like it when their entire work for the past five hours isn't irreversibly rendered moot because your military dwarves decided to take the night off when the goblin army broke through the gate, slaying all the entrance-dancing dwarves dead. If people want to save, then I don't see the point in stopping them. If you don't want to save, then just. don't. save.

I understand that DF takes is a Rougelike game in that regards, but I don't see the point in clinging to bad ideas because of 'tradition'.

[Granite26]

My personal take on it is that it should *feel* like cheating when you save-scum.  (Not that I don't, mind you).

[Joseph Miles]

I like all except for "More Information on Gems, Minerals, and Ores". Thats a bit much to expect Toady to do, and wouldn't serve much of an in game purpose.

Especially for saves, I had to save scum when working on draining the ocean because some dwarves thought it was a GREAT idea to go after a bucket that got destroyed/buried in a cave in to fill a pond I removed the designation for even though they already tried 50,000 times before. That would've REALLY pissed me off if I needed to restart at that point. And, if Toady endorses save scumming, it's not cheating because the guy who made the game is saying to go ahead and save scum.

[Erk]

I've never understood the virulent hatred "purists" have for people who use savegames.

Yes, I have on occasion loaded an old game when one got totally destroyed by a glitch, or even an accident on my part.

Yes, I have loaded old autosaves to play a fortress through a totally different development cycle.

Both of these are considered save"scumming", both have made my fortress time a lot more fun.

Guys, this is not bloody NetHack. Let go... it's an entirely different game. Save-loading is possible now, but the interface makes it a pain for no real reason. I'd wager more people playing DF would rather have a simple load system than would find it tainted their play experience somehow by making it feel less "cheaty" to load an old game.

[KrataLightblade]

While yes, it would be nice and challenging for everyone to not have a 'exit without saving' feature or whatnot, and no matter how lowly savescummers are, it doesn't change the fact that people rather like it when their entire work for the past five hours isn't irreversibly rendered moot because your computer's Windows Updates rebooted your computer while you were in the bathroom.

Fixed.


I like the "if you lose it's over" mindset behind DF, it's fun to me to have that challenge.  I do not like losing a full day to a computer error completely unrelated to my game, or because I walked away and left the game paused for six minutes at the wrong time, or because my power went out, or because a butterfly flapped its wings two continents and an ocean away and suddenly my computer dies for no apparent reason.

All of which have happened to me in the last year.

Now, I've heard rumors that there may or may not be a seasonal autosave either currently working or in the works.  That'd be sufficient for me, really, so if it already exists, I'm happy with it.

Most of the other suggestions, I love, though.  Choosing building materials and multiple fortresses in the same world especially, though I'm not sure how well the AI would deal with the sorts of fortresses we players love.  Imagine crafting a beloved fortress in just the right shape, only to play another fort for awhile and come back and find that the damn AI has torn down half your awesome mountain.