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[change name please]

This would have been an extremely relevant and timely criticism maybe 7 years ago before Toady caught on that Armok was floundering for more or less this reason.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Slaves to Armok II is fast becoming the new Slaves to Armok I.   

Could you provide some more details about the comparative memory footprints of whatever data structures you have in mind (leaving aside the fact that DF rarely uses more than 500 MB), or how the new tissue interactions are going to affect CPU usage?

The poster above me seemed to think that the game will steadily apply rigorous calculations based on these variables to every object for every interaction.  The new tissue interactions, intuitively, are going to affect CPU usage by being more complex and numerous than the old ones or any simplified system of efficient shortcuts - they're also going to leave a broad swath of even more meticulously described & tracked lost teeth, severed hairs, and flecks of blood. 

Now, I'm no computer scientist, but alls I know is that the framerate beast seems to grow with every single stupid sock that a goblin invader drags in, every second of every flow, and every year of every fort.  It doesn't seem to me to be any kind of step forward to keep piling on more robust interactions and more mad libs to yield what are essentially the same outcomes.

[father_alexander]

First of all people calm down some are taking this a bit too serious.

Second, while the tutorials, wiki and all are great, i think some ingame tutorial or even just a simple guide, like the wiki in side the game, would make life a LOT more simple for new players.

Third, the whole challenge thing, sure it happens to all of us, but there are tons of ways to defeat that, i mean we have the succession games, the mega projects, the mods, the challenges, and hell the next update is even going to include some pretty damn good new challenges right?, i think that issue shouldnt be such a big problem at the moment, ESCPECIALLY taking in count a regular game for wich you pay a decent quantity can last a really short time.

Fourth, i think the main issue for those that have beated the learning problem is the speed thing, many of us have problems in having a really big fortress, and that gets in the progress of the game, if i could build a gigantic palace with 200 dwarves without killing my computer, i would play a lot longer, but since it starts lagging, i stop playing.

[Neonivek]

Slaves to Armok II is fast becoming the new Slaves to Armok I

Except you know... playable and with gameplay elements being put in once in a while.

Though nothing was wrong with Armok 1, it just was unplayable and thus boring for a community to track. (And Toady to make)

Lets not go overboard with the Armok 1 and 2 references.

[ToonyMan]

Having an option in the init file that limits the amount of creatures that siege you.



[SIEGE:80]


Or something similar.  That way I can get crushed hopelessly as the difficulty rises up.

[G-Flex]

The thing about the new material calculations and such is that they aren't going to be nearly as draining on CPU as what we already have.

I mean, material interactions are still probably going to boil down to relatively simple formulas as far as computers are concerned, and they're going to be calculated far, far less commonly than something like flows, which are a hell of a lot MORE complex.

[Capntastic]

Asked another long time player for their feedback:

Hmmm.

My fortresses end up being identical. I can address basic needs pretty easily. I can ignore most of the shops completely. It's hard to control a military.   Dwarves being stupid is often a problem, but I have learned to get around it.  But really, it's hard to come up with good fortress designs. It'd be nice if there were ways to reward variance in that.

Oh: and keeping an economy running. Employment is hard.

[azrael4h]

I come from a background of ADOM, Bard's Tale (the originals), Doom, and Phantasie. I've played almost every major DOS RPG, and probably a good many minor ones as well. I grew up gaming on a Commodore, and still love mine, even if the disks are bad. And I play Mega Man still.

I kept hearing about DF, and ignored it for about a year. Then I finally broke down and downloaded it, well into the 3D era. Spent more time reading Boatmurdered, Nist Akath, and the other huge stories, and that's what got me interested in it.

Even so, it took me 6 months off and on to get to playing it, because I had trouble with the interface. Something I never had a problem with even in other Rouge-likes (pretty much only had to look up the obscure commands in those, like 'w'ipe face).

I think the biggest issue is the UI for me. The ASCII is fine, and actually a bit better than most similar games (though I saw one that used highlighting in different colors as well as the stock 16 color ASCII character set, which was neat. Never could get it to work though).

Why do I need space to exit some menus, F9 for others?

Some automation would be nice as well. We already have an auto-tanning job brought up. It would be nice to set a minimum animal limit, and have auto-butchering jobs for any non-pets non-cages animals we get. Automate fish cleaning, cooking of raw, freshly butchered meat, and dumping of vermin left by cats.

It would be nice to be able to read notes via 'k' as well, or even when you use 'q' to access a given building (like levers!).

The troubles with micromanaging dwarves is another issue, one that kills most of my forts (or dwarves. I've taken to keeping maybe 20-25 dwarves civilian, and activating the rest. Most of whom die horribly, because I treat them like the US Army treats their soldiers. Actually, since my military dwarves get free coffins in a nice hallway, I treat them better (but I'm not bitter about what they did to my grandfather with 2 Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and 36 years of service, no!).

[codezero]

Well footkerchief there are always going to be languishing placeholders while toady works on the engine that will eventually replace them, I can't stand the way clothes are handled. But if it is a placeholder that's waiting for an engine to obsolete it, then I'd rather the engine gets worked on. Even if it's just 5 mins to update it, it's a wasted 5 mins.

If you were a removalist you wouldn't take small things out one at a time, you'd pack 'em in a box first. The customer might ask why waste time packing it? Why not just take it out? Because it'll save you a lot of time.

And changenameplease, explain to me how beards being wrestleable, just by giving a dwarf a beard, hasn't written itself? Not only that but they'll be cleanable, cutable and all the rest of it.

You have a point about calcs versus constants, but even normal flows, temp. and weather combined have nothing on pathfinding. A tensile calc or body organ hit calc occaisonally is insignificant.

[change name please]

And changenameplease, explain to me how beards being wrestleable, just by giving a dwarf a beard, hasn't written itself? Not only that but they'll be cleanable, cutable and all the rest of it.

THank god.  After putting in code for beard growth, beard coloration, beard tangibility & tensility & durability and printing up a few paragraphs of descriptors, finally the beard achieves sentience and can be grasped in the impossible-to-use wrestling interface.  Well, I'm packing it up folks; it only took two years, but the Universal Constructor approach has given us sentient beards - the rest from here is just gravy.

[Ampersand]

I'm going to mod in a Beard race. Eventually, in some version of Dwarf Fortress, they'll form symbiotic relationships with Dwarfs.

[ephrion]

It would be nice if the designations, construction, build, etc. menu options were arranged in alphabetical order.

[kcwong]

I'm going to mod in a Beard race. Eventually, in some version of Dwarf Fortress, they'll form symbiotic relationships with Dwarfs.

That reminds me of lichens living on cactus, surviving on dew formed in the morning. In DF's case, since dwarfs drink booze from barrels, they tend to spill a lot - and beards survive on that. In the symbiotic relationship, the beards gain locomotion and food, while dwarfs gain a helper in wrestling - "the beard entangles the bronze colossus's lower left leg!" as in Nethack's "the lichen touches you!".

[G-Flex]

And changenameplease, explain to me how beards being wrestleable, just by giving a dwarf a beard, hasn't written itself? Not only that but they'll be cleanable, cutable and all the rest of it.

THank god.  After putting in code for beard growth, beard coloration, beard tangibility & tensility & durability and printing up a few paragraphs of descriptors, finally the beard achieves sentience and can be grasped in the impossible-to-use wrestling interface.

Yes, because all of that stuff was written exclusively for beards and isn't applied elsewhere as well.

Something being used for a trivial purpose doesn't make it worthless to have created if it's being used in a hell of a lot of other, more important places. And that applies to pretty much everything you just mentioned.

Also, the wrestling interface being cludgy is not really the issue. If there weren't enough wrestling moves, you'd argue that making a better interface for it is worthless and unnecessary, and now you're arguing that more wrestling moves are worthless and unnecessary because the interface is bad. Yeah, the interface needs work, but that doesn't mean making more content for it is bad, especially when the content more or less writes itself as a side-effect of what's being done to begin with.

[AbuDhabi]

For me, the biggest turn-off is the mega-slow framerate I get. Sure, I have a pretty old computer (Sempron 2800+, 1.5 Gb RAM, GeForce 7600 GT, WinXPSP2), but the game chokes whenever there's anything interesting going on like a designation or hauling of a good quantity of stuff - this starts happening around 30+ dorfs. Now, I wouldn't mind it so much if it didn't stutter so much - slow it may be, as long as there's a constant speed going.

[Areyar]

What turns you off about DF?

non-functional parts (such as soap or milking) and irrelevant material destinctions (stone is stone),
they are minor irritants though.