Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[change name please]

But what if the elves, in their fascination with your freakdwarf give you incredibly good deals on some diverse and useful animals?  Or, even more bizarre, offer to trade you several useful animals for your hideously deformed dwarf?  Not saying that they would, but what if?

This kind of thing never happens and never will happen so I don't see why people love to post "what-ifs" like these.

[G-Flex]

True, but if you want a more realistic scenario, the elves could sure as hell be intimidated by the gigantic, muscular dwarf covered in battle scars.

[ThreeToe]

I think the problem we are facing here is not unlike that Will Wright suffered while Spore was in the works...and we all know how that turned out.

There are some here who are literally asking for a dumbing down of the game...I have said this before, and I will repeat: DF is all about pointless details. Take this from it, and we will have a Dungeon Keeper with worst graphics and an anemic nethack.

Is this some kind of troll?  Are you trying to make me scream? 

I realize this is a contentious topic, but there is no need for pointless abuse.  Everyone try to stay on topic and discuss things calmly.

[Capntastic]

I've asked a few friends what they say, in response to the question:

A: 'The attention to strange bits of detail as opposed to other bits of detail that might be more useful or interesting.'

B:  ' Very little in-game help. DF is a super complex game, and while it doesn't need to hold my hand, I would really appreciate an in game help guide, or maybe even a tutorial mode. Secondly [I'd enjoy] A more streamlined interface. The joy of roguelikes are the fact that every key on a keyboard is used in some way, and I love that. But with a game as gosh dern complex as DF, I'm dying trying to figure out exactly what everything does. '

[Vattic]

When I first heard of DF I fell for the sales pitch but after generating my first world the whole thing overwhelmed me, mostly it was the ascii, it was my first game with it, and I didn't know about the wiki so after about half an hour I dropped the game.

What made me come back to the game was that while reading LotR I read a blog post about DF again that mentioned the wiki and I decided to give it another go, the descriptions of Moria made the whole idea of DF all the more epic.However I didn't get over the ascii barrier until recently, I was playing using maydays set but got fed up with things looking like other things and made my own character set inspired by others and play with ascii now.

I have to say the game seems quite intimidating at first.

Now though the only thing that turns me off is that its a little too easy, I hear stories about the 2D games and want the best from those versions and the z-axis. More modding control would be nice too as I've been enjoying making my own creatures but get fed up that certain things aren't possible.

[edit]
I forgot to mention that I use DwarfManager and DwarfCompanion to fill certain gaps when it comes to the interface like quickly finding problem dwarves when it comes to moods. Without these utilities things like this would drive me nuts.
[/edit]

[Keiseth]

I'd probably complain about the lack of a tutorial or some sort of easy way of learning the ropes if I hadn't already figured it out, so I'm not sure there.

Other than that I would have complained about poor performance, but the OpenGL upgrades seriously help there, so no worries.

Those two aside all that's left on my plate is "feature x that I can't wait to enjoy isn't implemented yet!" Which is a lot like saying "well, thanks for the free car, but why isn't it gold plated and run on enthusiasm instead of gasoline?"

[JohnLukeG]

Well... I've been awake for 46 hours playing Dwarf Fortress for the first time since I learned how to play.

Originally, a few months ago, I loaded it up, saw the little symbols and couldn't figure out what anything at all was, so I quit.  I couldn't even figure out how to mine.   Later, I saw the uh, Mayday tile pack, I think it's called, downloaded it, and it was like night and day.   I saw trees... and raccoons... and fish... 

Anyway, that's what got me to actually learn how to play, and I'm ecstatic that I did.  I just ordered captured goblins to be executed via lava pit for the first time, how do you think I feel? 

[Shadowgandor]

Well, at first, like everyone, I got scared away by the ASCII and the UI, but here I am, so that means I got over that.
What are my biggest complains now? Carps, oh uhm, I mean, somtimes, it takes too long for hostiles to visit your fortress. It might be fun to be able to change a few settings at the start of the game like amount of sieges and the strength of said sieges.

[Keilden]

Well most things that turns me off are things that will soon be implanted, but the biggest thing is that dwarfs seems to be like Screamapillars, that is sexualiy attracted to fire.

[ThtblovesDF]

Really there is ....

"You struck Microlines"

... nothing that would in any...

"The sun is shining"

... annoy me in Dwarf Fortress, its ---

"Dwarf McBored channels game progress, no pause for 5 secounds"

really the perfect Game.

"You struck microline"

[Neruz]

YOU STRUCK ORTHOCLASE!



I'm thinking the difficulty will come back with the next update; we'll be seeing 'respawning' monsters coming in from off-map caves and whatnot, which should replicate the chasm of old.

[dreiche2]

Documentation-wise I think Toady should rely on the wiki, maybe mention it more prominently as others have suggested. Keeping a documentation system (or a complex, scripted tutorial) up to date with development would cost already scarce development time for something that can be done fairly successful by the community.

[JimiD]

Only started this year (Early Spring) so I will try and remember:

I think it was my fourth fortress when I knew how to play.  Not well, but I could get the things done I wanted.

Graphics - I knew what I was getting myself in for, and it took a while to get you use ASCII, but now I wouldnt go back.  But Boatmurdered had convinced me this was a worthwhile effort.  I havent yet seen a tileset that really captures the feel of the game, as I see it, so I havent changed.  So wasnt an issue for me.

Digging, designating and buidling:
The game has the freedom to allow players to do a lot, but it seems to be access from different menus.  It took me a couple of restarts to be able to dig a stair between two Z levels.

Some thoughts:

1.  I dont understand why up and down stairs are needed to construct a single stair.  I thought to begin with they were 'one-way' traffic items, to control which stairs dwarfs used to change levels.  I dont know what we couldnt do, if 'up stair' created a stair up from the current level, and a stair down from the level above at the same time. ie a fully functioning stair (then 'down stair' creates a working stair down, and 'up/down' a pair of working stairs up and down to the levels above and below the current).

2. "I just want to build, there are two many questions just to get things built!"  I didnt understand that i had to keep selecting items, just to get a workshop built.  One option would be to simplify building at the begining, by automating the selection of rocks and blocks to build items.  A first time player is not going to be interested in colour co-ordinated workshop layouts forming the image of a giant carp, they just want it built.

Have a set of options:
Intially building an item automatically selects a random non-economic stone to build and workshop/wall etc.
First option, use blocks rather than raw stone.
Final option, select any stone/block/ metal as now.

3.Put all 'construction' items on one menu:
digging, channelling, building stairs and walls.  And stairs should be one action, whether digging or building.  The only option is whether you need a stone to build it or not (and see above for automating this) (I thought this was heresy the first time I read it, but now I am converted).

Then we can have 'buildings' including stockpiles (ie 'warehouse' building), roads.  Put garbage in stockpiles, not zones?  Its just stockpile for things marked 'D'. (and why are some workshops under 'e'?)

Then have a zones menu: fishing, movement/traffic

Then furniture?

4.  Consistancy through the menu:

Scrolling menus sometimes arrow keys and page up/down, and the next menu numpad.
Exiting menus:  sometimes F9, sometimes Space, sometimes Enter.

Rationalise 'q', 'k', 'r' and 'v'.  They all examine an object, person or room, and allow you to interact, passively or actively.  Perhaps have one key to select something for further study, then allow it to be viewed or interacted with (is this context dependant?)


And perhaps have ingame links to the wiki.  Saves re-writing it and packaging it up for download.

Might mean we all have to keep the wiki up to date, precise and accurate.

But I got through despite, so I hope this doesnt come acrros as too critical.

And thanks for the game, I am thoroughly hooked.

[tomato]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So a suggestion about display and challenge that I've thought over a bit.


That display idea I promised earlier
I had thought for a while that a good way to make the display easier to approach, especially with the new graphical tweaks, would be to draw not one layer at a time, but to draw the layer the player is looking at as well as every layer below it(to a certain point.  Ten to fifteen layers should be sufficient.

Things such as unmined stone and open areas would be rendered as transparent, so that the next layer is visible below them.  The exact render depth should be an Init value.

Every layer is rendered at 80-90% scale of the one above it, with the top layer rendered at 10%.  Every layer is centered on the XY cordinate of the tile the player is looking at.

This allows a clear way to show the 3D aspects of the world as well as allowing players to see into those massive pits they've dug out, and in my opinion allows multilayer monitoring better than an isometric viewpoint would allow.  I also anticipate that it would lead to more interesting fort design, such as balconies and overpasses, since such structures would now have a visual impact on what the player sees, and it has a minimal impact on the rendering pipeline, because ultimately, it's only an expansion on the viewport settings currently in place.(Render the current layer, the 10-15 layers below them, and have them stacked and scaled in the draw thread, which is almost entirely desynchronized from the game thread)

Another idea I had for this layout was the idea of making the opaque stuff on the current layer semitransparent, with a value in the Init files to let the player set how semitransparent it is.  This allows the player to monitor stuff on both the current level and the level immediately below.  I wouldn't advise more than one layer of X-ray vision of this sort, as it would get visually confusing, but in my opinion, the DFMA already shows the effect off nicely, so it's been shown that it can work.

An additional idea would be to have fluid layers --that is, magma and water-- be highly(or completely) transparent below the surface, so that a player can see to the bottom of a pool of water or magma at a glance.  Perhaps making the surface layer of a fluid normal(or perhaps 30% transparent.  It would be another Init value), while the underlying layers are all 90% transparent(another Init value) would produce a nice "haze" effect.

The idea here is to compress as much useful information into the screen as a player can make sense of, in a way that the player can make sense of it.


A couple of ideas for late-game challenge
Have Adamantine occur in nearly all tiles of the world, but restrict it to very deep underground, like under 2 or 3 layers of caverns, occasionally with a spire bubbling up like a magma pipe.  This makes it a challenge to get to, particularly owing to the new cavern system being implemented, but also reduces the desperation of players such as myself looking forward to the endgame challenges which it brings with it.

Actually, I would like to see this treatment for both Adamantine and Magma.  This would re-ignite one of the features of the 2D version, namely having Adamantine and Magma on nearly every map, while still making them challenging to get to unless you stumble upon a convenient pipe bubbling up through the strata.  I believe this would also make for a more realistic representation, as in the real world, there is a layer of magma under the ground at all times, but it's usually too deep to reach.  Digging deep is what Dwarves do best.

A special nod to semi/megabeasts
Megabeasts, to me, implies the creatures which are the world-creation legends.  Dragons the size of mountain ranges, and other things like that.  These are deities.  Deities shouldn't die but once in a thousand eons.  I propose toughening up Megabeasts to such levels, and after a certain point in worldgen, have them all look for deep caverns to go to sleep in.  If you embark on a square with a Megabeast sleeping in it, the Megabeast replaces the magma or adamantine usually found in the hidden depths, and is orders of magnitude more frightening than any horde of demons if awoken, but you would usually find it sleeping as part of the terrain itself.(This could be represented as stone which is impossible to dig out, but would be better represented once creature sizes are properly added, with the megabeast waking up if you try to mess around with it too much.)

Semimegabeasts would take the place of current Megabeasts, but they too should have lifecycles.  They should be allowed to reproduce only once every hundred or so years(with some variance, naturally), with fairly small litter sizes.  They should be fairly reclusive and highly territorial, so that if there are too many of them, they will force each other into the open and get killed until there are few enough to hide in caves for a while, mate, have offspring, and begin the cycle again.

Tomato has gained friend recently.

[Neurovore]

I've made it my mission to try and spread the joy of DF through my friends recently. Fortunately they already know I'm crazy so facing judgement about why I'm such a rabid DF fan has little consequence. Here's some of the common blocks I face to bringing people into the fold.

The ASCII graphics would have been by far the bigest stumbling block had it not been for pre-packaged sets like Mayday's. I don't even let my friends atempt to download DF, I just send them the pack like this. They get a little confused if they have to check the wiki or forum for question, but that level of confusion is much smaller.

The second biggest block is the interface, specificly 1) menu items aren't in any particular order, and 2) [/], {*}, [-], {+}, [PAGE_UP], [PAGE_DOWN], [*_ARROW] are used without any consistency.

I've had several people really complain about the job queueing as well. For example, if you have a messy stone hallway, and you tell your dwarves to "build a floor out of it", any stone queued up for being used to make a floor can't get moved out of the way to build a floor where the stone is, thus causing a flood of job cancellations. Also, that a dwarf will cart a stone for a week to try to make a door out of it, then get thirsty on the way and drop the stone to grab a beer, then grab a different stone from the ass end of the map to make a door out of it (only to take a nap before making it to the workshop), when all the while there is already a stone stockpile a few paces away from the workshop. Many many times jobs and materials should be selected by the workshop, not the dwarf. Dawrves stranding themselves on ledges and channeling themselves onto islands is simply infuriating as well. (On a personal note, "store owned item" should be a WAY WAY WAY higher priority task.)

One of my friends got extremely frustrated my the inability to train up specialized dwarves (like armorsmiths) and use the job manager as well. For example, if you try to use the manager to "make 20 iron shields", the jobs will be spread out evenly over all forges, even if some forges are reserved for specific dwarves, or others are intended as weapon shops, etc. Extreme micromanagement is the only way to achieve this goal. (I've tried explaining numerous workarounds, but all my explanations end up sounding over-engineered and convoluted. Yes, I'm a dwarf at heart.)

As far as the economy goes, once you've fended off a siege you're set for life because of all the GCS silk loincloths. GCS items should be extremely rare.

As far as fortress defense goes, there is a rather sudden tipping point between getting slaughtered without any level of understanding as to what went wrong and *snore*. Without mods, once there is a basic level of understanding about traps and militaries the threat level quickly changes from overwhelming to insignificant. Environmental threats need to have a better ramp-up in difficulty. The biggest suggestions I have for improvements:

• Small scale visible attacks early on, less dangerous than a full-scale siege. "Scouting parties" or "Raiding parties" for example.
• Full sieges should be able to bypass, albeit slowly, constructed fortifications. Tunneling units have been considered. Another option could be specialized trap-disarming units. Invaders should be able to remove construction (since this is time consuming, it would give the player plenty of time to mount an appropriate response). Catapults should destroy constructions, and siegers should bring them.

I know DF is a sandbox game at heart, but without the external threats it's really just a management of booze, food, and booze.

There really should be a screen (linked to a noble maybe) just listing the happiness of the dwarves and the fortress as a whole. It would be nice to have some indicator of how close you're running to the emo-implosion fortress death. also, the more well-developed a fortress is, the more 'needy' dwarves should be. For example a dwarf should be ecstatic just to have a bed (any bed) and any table to eat at the first year or so, but once you have a Mountainhome he/she should really be expecting grand architecture and amenities to feel like things are in order.

I would also like to see some arbitrary ranking of difficulty for starting terrain, based on availability of raw materials, fresh water, magma, flux, hostile neighbors, farmable soil, etc. An early player won't have the understanding of why some starting locations are easier than others. Also, a search based on this arbitrary difficulty might be handy. Bragging rights on forums might be handy too.