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[zwei]

Test driven development ... you can actually code anything right where it will belong. No sidetracking issues, no complexity. As long as you can isolate clases enough to be testable, it is okay...

And if you can not write something to be testable, you have huge problems in design.

[Supercharazad]

Well, I got really frustrated at the start because I couldn't figure out that + meant the plus beside the number pad, I was using the plus on the top of the keyboard, the bit that goes like

!"£$%^&*()_+
1234567890-=

[Malrin]

My biggest problem is that I have to find a site with everything. It must be 4x4 (to avoid lags) and must have/be HFS, Magma Pipe, Underground river, Aboveground river, Cold climate, Terrifying, flux, and a chasm.

If I get a fortress going without one of those features, I'm stuck without it unless I want to restart with a measly 7 dwarves and a wagon. This means that either I suck it up and don't use Adamantine/magma, or I spend hours genning worlds and failing to find anything using the site finder.

If Dwarf Fortress could be adapted so that a Fortress mode game could overcome lack of resources, lag due to large sites, aquifer frustration, lack of good neighbors, or other problems from having a fixed site, that would be great.

I made a thread in Suggestions about Mass fortress migrations. Mass migrations, though somewhat unrealistic and un-fortresslike, would solve every problem I've ever had with this game. Check it out:

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=47674.msg963178#msg963178

[MrWiggles]

My biggest problem is that I have to find a site with everything. It must be 4x4 (to avoid lags) and must have/be HFS, Magma Pipe, Underground river, Aboveground river, Cold climate, Terrifying, flux, and a chasm.

If I get a fortress going without one of those features, I'm stuck without it unless I want to restart with a measly 7 dwarves and a wagon. This means that either I suck it up and don't use Adamantine/magma, or I spend hours genning worlds and failing to find anything using the site finder.

If Dwarf Fortress could be adapted so that a Fortress mode game could overcome lack of resources, lag due to large sites, aquifer frustration, lack of good neighbors, or other problems from having a fixed site, that would be great.

I made a thread in Suggestions about Mass fortress migrations. Mass migrations, though somewhat unrealistic and un-fortresslike, would solve every problem I've ever had with this game. Check it out:

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=47674.msg963178#msg963178

What turns you off are the sites you choose to play on and choose not to play on? oO

[Cheddarius]

Malrin, you could try ignoring flux and just building in a reaction for any rare stone to become flux.

For example, if you want dolomite veins, you could just get any old site, find some random stone that is in veins (say, microcline), and pretend that microcline is dolomite. Then replace an existing reaction (something dumb like fine pewter) with 100 microcline > 100 dolomite.

[nenjin]

I suppose there's a point where the amount of decisions and repercussions you have to deal with starts becoming a turn off for me. I know that's the core of "fun," but as a new player who still has dreams of things just the way they want them...at times I find myself staring at the game on pause going "ugh, I know where I need to start, I just don't want to."

For example, the last three caravans to my map have gotten ambushed the second they've reached the map, and I'm need of some supplies. The magnitude of what it will take to ensure the caravan's survival from now on is....daunting. Maybe I'll just do it the lazy way, and stake 20 war dogs out in the middle of no where as goblin bait, and buy myself at least one caravan trade.

It's still enjoyable, but DF definitely appeals to people with a masochistic sense of gaming sometimes.

I'd say graphics, but Mayday helps a lot with that. Sometimes the tinyness of the tiles wears my eyes out too.

[darkflagrance]

Malrin, you could try ignoring flux and just building in a reaction for any rare stone to become flux.

For example, if you want dolomite veins, you could just get any old site, find some random stone that is in veins (say, microcline), and pretend that microcline is dolomite. Then replace an existing reaction (something dumb like fine pewter) with 100 microcline > 100 dolomite.

Or just give microcline the [FLUX] tag.

I suppose there's a point where the amount of decisions and repercussions you have to deal with starts becoming a turn off for me. I know that's the core of "fun," but as a new player who still has dreams of things just the way they want them...at times I find myself staring at the game on pause going "ugh, I know where I need to start, I just don't want to."

For example, the last three caravans to my map have gotten ambushed the second they've reached the map, and I'm need of some supplies. The magnitude of what it will take to ensure the caravan's survival from now on is....daunting. Maybe I'll just do it the lazy way, and stake 20 war dogs out in the middle of no where as goblin bait, and buy myself at least one caravan trade.

It's still enjoyable, but DF definitely appeals to people with a masochistic sense of gaming sometimes.

Luckily, a lot of the "Fun" can be avoided by strategic turning-off of things in the init file such as temperature, invasions, artifacts/moods, the economy, cave-ins, and so on. Furthermore, changing a few easy things in the creature raws can make it so that you never need to farm, brew, or even make beds, and that your dwarves give birth to 10 children at once who grow up in a year and regularly replace lost workforce.

If you know how to go about it, Dwarf Fortress can be an infinitely open sandbox. My current project is recreating an above-ground city out of stone made by custom reactions in my smelter in groups of 10,000 (to see if built blocks cause lag). My dwarves haven't built any farms or beds yet, nor do they need them while they zip around at twice the speed of elves.

[nenjin]

Well, I always like to try a vanilla game before fooling with stuff, and a vanilla game of DF, where you sort of play the whole field...I dunno. It's both good and bad, because it's one of the few games I've found that offers more play time than I could possible sink in. And I'm playing a lot right now. That's pretty rare outside of MMOs...but it sort of comes with the same problems.

Still, pretty ambiguous turn off at worst. I guess I've just gotten soft after a steady diet of softcore games. Did anyone here play Ragnarok, the DOS game? DF reminds a lot of that in so many ways. Great fun to play, but draining sometimes.

[Percival]

I want to say that I feel that DF is the greatest computer game ever, and one of the greatest things ever.

My current gripes with the game, that often make me tired of playing it and put it aside for a while (ignoring graphics, difficulty level, obvious bugs, and other eternal issues):

1. Except for fps rate (an eternal issue). The game is just too unwieldy, and it really sucks that there is very little I can do about it. It makes playing later-stage fortresses really painful.

2. It can often be a drag assigning certain workshop jobs. The one that comes to mind is the jeweler's workshop. There should be a generic "cut a rough gem" job and a generic "encrust x with a cut gem" job. I find it to be a major chore to have to go to my stocks screen, write down how much of each gem I have, and then translate it into work assignments. I am equally frustrated with other jobs, but for different reasons, of course. The main reason being that I don't initially know how much of a resource a certain product requires. Some sort of Stocks - Work Manager coordination would be primo. This could be considered nitpicking, but it does take up a lot of my time.

3. Fluids. I find that water behaves more like a gel or goop than a liquid. This is an issue where the loss of immersion in the experience due to dealing with weird game mechanics is frustrating enough to overbalance the notion that I need to just adapt and move on.

4. Pathfinding / Dwarven stupidity. I'd like the guys to be a little smarter, a little snappier when I make decisions. It seems like a drain to have to build and then suspend building walls behind the walls I actually want to build so my masons don't trap themselves.

Of course, none of these problems have been bad enough to actually turn me off, but they stand out as major points of criticism.

Keep up the good work!

[Deneidez]

- 2x2 start with underground river and magma pipe yields 20fps. Add some dorfs and you get 1fps.
- Clutter & ambushes. If you don't care about stuff outside your fortress, your fps will drop. If you care, your dorfs will be killed in ambush for sure and clutter even more.
- Game is getting way too easy.

[Malrin]

Making custom reactions or editing microcline to be a flux material solves the flux problem, but I still want a map with everything on it. Even if my other fortress needs, such as magma and unicorns, could be produced at a smelter, I wouldn't want to go that route because solving all my problems with magical reactions makes the game unrealistic, which ruins it for me.

I want to be able to access all features of Dwarf Fortress with one fortress game. Am I cursed with an aquifer? Do I want to destroy a chasm but there are none in my site? Is the lag unbearable because my map is too large for 300+ creatures? Did I just use up the last of my Adamantine? No problem! Just move to a different site and I don't lose my population, history, artifacts, 999999+ barrels of Dwarven Wine, etc. No more restarting with 7 (relatively) unskilled dwarves and a wagon. No more waiting for migrant waves, building up wealth, or designing infrastructure to build a base in which to do more crazy shit in a different location. (well, i'd have to make another fort, but it'll be much faster with my army of 30 miners from my old fort.)

Nomadic dwarves for the win.

[Garth]

Easily the default graphics.
When I first discovered the game from /v/ I was determined to learn it from just knowing how incredible it was.

I go to the game, and only thing I could say was, "WHAT THE FUCK".
I had no idea what ANYTHING was, all of those curls and lines made no sense.


So perhaps an option at the embark/worldgen/first-time startup screen do this:
Simply display a few options such as
"Which graphics pack would you prefer to use?"
And below list popular ones, such as MayDay or others. Then allow a brief preview pic to pop up at selection.
I honestly don't think this would be to hard to code in.

Also the fact that some menus allow the arrow keys for scrolling, like trading or custom stockpiles, while everything else requires + and -.
And for laptops users like myself who lack a numpad, the [shift] + [=] combination can get a bit annoying.

Just a few things being pointed out from a new player :^D

[Qloos]

The amount of micro management.  Specifically regarding how constructions are made.

[zwei]

Also the fact that some menus allow the arrow keys for scrolling, like trading or custom stockpiles, while everything else requires + and -.

Or the joy that is direction keys.

arrows or uhkm or wasd. In some constructions you end up using all three at same time (position bridge by arrows, resize by uhkm, set raise direction by wasd).

[random51]

Initial turn off was the inconsistency in UI. Really needs to be reworked so that the same keys do the same thing in every submenu. Scrolling a list should always be the same, going into and out of submenus, etc.

I think having a built-in tileset that isn't just ASCII would help new people as well. I got by without a tileset for months but when I finally got around to trying one I switched immediately and never even thought of going back.  I can tell what is going on with a tileset, without one I might as well be staring at The Matrix.

Add a link to the main menu the fires up the default system browser and takes them to the main page of the Dwarf Fortress Wiki, or at least mention it prominently somewhere first time players will see it.

Nowadays there are only two things that turn me off:
1.  Slowdown. Even on a good computer I had problems with maps larger than 3x3. On the POS I'm using now Nano Fortress is saving the day by allowing me to go smaller than 2x2.
2.  Finding a good embark. While one way to have fun is to make do with whatever fate hands you there is also fun to be had by trying to make a fortress with everything. It would be nice if world generation could be modded in such a way that part of the worldgen was a requirement for a specific site type.  Perhaps something like Finder with a bit more granularity that is used before worldgen, not after, to set site parameters.