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[Footkerchief]

And worse -- and this has been on my bitchlist for years(?) now -- there's no way to exit the game during the "Start playing" phase.  Do you know how many times I've had to forcefully terminate the Dwarf Fortress.exe process just to exit this phase?  Bad UI design, IMHO.  For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, repro steps:

- Create a new world (or use an existing one)
- Choose "Start Playing", then "Dwarf Fortress"
- Try to figure out how to go back to the main menu from here; Escape does nothing.

That was new in 31.01 and it got fixed this morning.

[koitsu]

And worse -- and this has been on my bitchlist for years(?) now -- there's no way to exit the game during the "Start playing" phase.  Do you know how many times I've had to forcefully terminate the Dwarf Fortress.exe process just to exit this phase?  Bad UI design, IMHO.  For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, repro steps:

- Create a new world (or use an existing one)
- Choose "Start Playing", then "Dwarf Fortress"
- Try to figure out how to go back to the main menu from here; Escape does nothing.

That was new in 31.01 and it got fixed this morning.

Sorry, I'm not going to sign up for an account under Mantis (yes I'm familiar with the software) just to read bug reports/diffs/whatever.  Why isn't the Mantis interface read-only (and r/w for those that have accounts)?  I imagine users would be a little more adamant about looking for existing bugs if the interface was available to the public and didn't require a signup.

[Footkerchief]

Sorry, I'm not going to sign up for an account under Mantis (yes I'm familiar with the software) just to read bug reports/diffs/whatever.  Why isn't the Mantis interface read-only (and r/w for those that have accounts)?  I imagine users would be a little more adamant about looking for existing bugs if the interface was available to the public and didn't require a signup.

Dunno why it's not readable by the public -- maybe Toady was trying to make it less visible to spambots, or maybe it was just an oversight.  Anyway, the fixes are generally also reported in the dev log -- in this case, as "allowed options screen from dwarf/adv mode setup".

To everyone: if you're interested in contributing to the community or even just following the state of development, I strongly encourage you to create a Mantis account.  Everyone who uploads saves, finds new bugs, corroborates existing reports, and identifies relationships between bugs is helping to improve DF.  In particular, Toady has asked for saves demonstrating the many types of training problems and equipment problems.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Koitsu: I think you misunderstood my intent: I was only referring to the question of how to find out whether there is any dwarven civ alive in the game world at all. And this check is indeed very simple, even for newbies, I would assume.

When you gen a world, you will get that screen where the world is finished but not saved yet (I am NOT talking about the embark screen, which is bugged as you pointed out right correctly). Just move around the cursor, especially over the mountain areas, until you see the omega character. Go over the omega character, and you can get your confirmation that there are dwarves living there.

I don't see what is so difficult to grasp about that. And even on big worlds, it is just a matter of a few minutes to check for things.

As a special hint, during world gen, during each century the display will focus on a single settlement or ruin. By memorizing the surroundings, it becomes quite easy to find things again, allowing you to quickly check whether those five elven retreats in the banana shaped forest are still there, for instance.

Deathworks

[koitsu]

Koitsu: I think you misunderstood my intent: I was only referring to the question of how to find out whether there is any dwarven civ alive in the game world at all. And this check is indeed very simple, even for newbies, I would assume.

When you gen a world, you will get that screen where the world is finished but not saved yet (I am NOT talking about the embark screen, which is bugged as you pointed out right correctly). Just move around the cursor, especially over the mountain areas, until you see the omega character. Go over the omega character, and you can get your confirmation that there are dwarves living there.

I don't see what is so difficult to grasp about that. And even on big worlds, it is just a matter of a few minutes to check for things.

I did misunderstand what you were getting at, and for that I apologise.  For general population type checks, yes, what you're describing works well.  Kudos!

What I'm complaining about is the more granular portion (which is more important when it comes to folks starting out, re: needing flux/river and no aquifer.  I realise you can play without some of these, but it's harder.  Plus, capnduck's training videos basically make the viewer realise that these things are mandatory unless you have a lot of experience playing).  I suppose I shouldn't have linked that complaint with your portion of the thread; sorry.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

No harm done.

And even as a more experienced player, I know the frustration of finding the perfect site. While the current version should help a lot with the flux issue, the aquifer issue seems to have worstened, especially since the default is the medium island which allegedly has even more aquifers.

And I have to admit that I have not done much research into aquifers myself, instead relying on making big subregions (that is large mountain chains, large forests) hoping to find aquifer free versions of what I am looking for. And in 31.05, the first world I genned was a real beauty - but all the locations where I would have wanted to settle had at least one aquifer layer, something I rather would not bother with.

Well, at least the next version will allow us to abort embark, it seems, which is already a good improvement of the situation.

Deathworks

[koitsu]

Sorry, I'm not going to sign up for an account under Mantis (yes I'm familiar with the software) just to read bug reports/diffs/whatever.  Why isn't the Mantis interface read-only (and r/w for those that have accounts)?  I imagine users would be a little more adamant about looking for existing bugs if the interface was available to the public and didn't require a signup.

Dunno why it's not readable by the public -- maybe Toady was trying to make it less visible to spambots, or maybe it was just an oversight.  Anyway, the fixes are generally also reported in the dev log -- in this case, as "allowed options screen from dwarf/adv mode setup".

Spam bots would only harm things if they were posting content/updates into the bugs, etc..  The sign-up methodology doesn't solve a problem that's quite prevalent right now too -- companies consisting of people who are hired solely to create accounts on forums, bugtracking software, etc..  We run into this pretty regularly over on the nesdev forums and nesdev wiki.  Again, these are *actual humans* doing this, not robots.

I can understand the desire to make sure that search engine crawlers don't cache Mantis bugs and so on -- especially since it could impact performance on the DB -- but that's what robots.txt is for.  Nearly all search engines adhere to this (and those who don't you can block anyway).

Regardless, I'll sign up for a Mantis account.  It's really too bad the bay12 forum accounts aren't linked with the Mantis authentication DB; just another username/password I have to store in KeePass + remember...  :-)

[Footkerchief]

It's really too bad the bay12 forum accounts aren't linked with the Mantis authentication DB; just another username/password I have to store in KeePass + remember...  :-)

Yeah, we looked into it, but unfortunately there don't seem to be any (reliable) existing solutions for authenticating Mantis via SMF.

[shoowop]

This has been working fantastic for me so far, hospital and military haven't even given me any major problems buuut I recently made a leather clad "scout" squad, and I set their weapons to be short swords and spears.  I figured each individual would randomly choose either spears or swords, or maybe by preference.  Either way, I've been checking their equipment screen just to see what they do and I noticed the squad leader had the little weapon rack "equipped" icon next to both sword AND spear.

So I zoomed to him and looked at his equipment with (v)iew units and he had an iron spear in his right hand.  I scrolled down further and he had.. another iron spear.  In another right hand. And a short sword.  In a third right hand.

he's also wearing 4 gloves, 3 hoods, about 5 different type of "upper body" armors, etc.

I appear to have a supermutant dwarf.

[smjjames]

He doesn't have three right hands, he's holding/wearing multiple items on the right hand.

Toady, thanks for fixing the esc key issue! That one was so annoying.

[Footkerchief]

So I zoomed to him and looked at his equipment with (v)iew units and he had an iron spear in his right hand.  I scrolled down further and he had.. another iron spear.  In another right hand. And a short sword.  In a third right hand.

he's also wearing 4 gloves, 3 hoods, about 5 different type of "upper body" armors, etc.

I appear to have a supermutant dwarf.

It's a known bug.  It might be helpful for you to upload your save to http://dffd.wimbli.com/ and post the link at that report.

[Psieye]

And even as a more experienced player, I know the frustration of finding the perfect site. While the current version should help a lot with the flux issue, the aquifer issue seems to have worstened, especially since the default is the medium island which allegedly has even more aquifers.

And I have to admit that I have not done much research into aquifers myself, instead relying on making big subregions (that is large mountain chains, large forests) hoping to find aquifer free versions of what I am looking for. And in 31.05, the first world I genned was a real beauty - but all the locations where I would have wanted to settle had at least one aquifer layer, something I rather would not bother with.

The one time I decided "right, I'll embark on an aquifer and learn how to pierce it", it turned out the aquifer pierced the caverns... As soon as the underground was revealed, my FPS started going down as the aquifer activated and started leaking away. Since I want to hit the caverns and magma fast, I don't want to compromise with aquifers by making worlds with more layers before the caverns. So I just nuked the [aquifer] tags from the raws. Now I never have to deal with aquifers.

Flux and river I've gotten used to finding by eye. Rivers at least are seemingly everywhere and I'm quite happy to embark without them as I know I can probably rely on murky pools for turtles (as opposed to mussels in brooks). Flux was a case of memorising which stones count as flux and looking for sedimentary layers since most flux stones are sedimentary. In fact, I view finding sedimentary layers to be more important for new players than finding flux (most times they'll overlap) since flux is useless without a reliable source of iron.

I understand this is daunting on the new player though - most people won't be familiar with geology.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

I seem to always be asking this, and I hope I'm not asking in the wrong place, but has anyone managed to get Reveal working in the new version? I hate starting a new fort without "checking."

[Haspen]

I seem to always be asking this, and I hope I'm not asking in the wrong place, but has anyone managed to get Reveal working in the new version? I hate starting a new fort without "checking."

I don't know what you would like to reveal.

You have guaranteed underground water (unless you mess with world_gen), guaranteed metals and most possible flux. Soil as well. Same goes for adamantine and magma.

Reveal is unnecessary nowadays.

[Quadricwan]

I seem to always be asking this, and I hope I'm not asking in the wrong place, but has anyone managed to get Reveal working in the new version? I hate starting a new fort without "checking."

DFHack, which includes a reveal tool (and some other fun stuff), has been updated to work with the new version.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=58809.0