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[bucket]

The best model for online play has been to have a sync up every season or year.

I was going to say the same thing. The fortresses already exist in bubbles of symbolic time. I can't see why a bit of semi-turn-based gameplay would be a problem for anyone.

Huh? Why simplify? We're already generating huge worlds and tracking populations of thousands on our desktops. A server-client model is adequate, if not ideal. Activity outside your fort would be offloaded to the server, which can go on controlling world events. It could ping your client for unit updates every second, even. The MMO model isn't anything new.

[Cotes]

The best model for online play has been to have a sync up every season or year.

I was going to say the same thing. The fortresses already exist in bubbles of symbolic time. I can't see why a bit of semi-turn-based gameplay would be a problem for anyone.

Huh? Why simplify? We're already generating huge worlds and tracking populations of thousands on our desktops. A server-client model is adequate, if not ideal. Activity outside your fort would be offloaded to the server, which can go on controlling world events. It could ping your client for unit updates every second, even. The MMO model isn't anything new.

Pausing.

[khearn]

I think the problem is that world history also goes on while you play. Say you start two forts on year 250, and while you play fort#1 from year 250-255 and Civ-A declares war on Civ-B on year 252. Now you play fort#2, which is still back in year 250 and play forward, those civs may or may not end up declaring war with each other. The game doesn't expect to have an existing timeline, it makes up events as you play. So playing fort#2 during the same time period will rewrite history as it goes.

Now, Toady One could make the game check to see if there is existing history for the time period that is being played out and use that history. But that would mean that a fort would never be allowed to do anything that might change history outside itself. Like maybe having the king/queen move to the fort and have it become the civilization's captial. Or, in future development, sending out armies and wiping out other towns/forts/cities.

Given the choice, I'd rather have my fort able to effect world history, rather than be able to play two forts in overlapping timelines.

   Keith

[Girlinhat]

There's also the issue of play time vs play development.  Two people could log in, one runs his fort for an hour, and gets a stable farming setup.  The other is an unemployed teenager who plays for 8 hours and has a thriving military, several FB kills, and masterwork adamantine tables just for lulz.  Even if Player 1's fort is running without him, then he's getting hit by attacks without him there to ring the alarm bell, and he's not actually progressing at all.  He'll stay at the same point without any leadership until he logs back in, and then his civilization suddenly goes from idling to pushing forward.  MMO games that DO have constant time, have a limiter to it somehow, usually the hourly tick that gives a burst of resources.  The hardcore player can sit there and assign resources each hour, while the casual player logs in, mass assigns his stockpile, and then leaves it running.  DF has no such system that paces you.  You can progress through resources as fast or slow as you desire.  This makes realtime multiplayer virtually impossible, and unbalanced even when possible.  The most you'll ever see is small scale 2-4 player worlds that run off the yearly update system, and even if that gets added, it'll be years away, once the game is more polished and much of the existing and new bugs are fixed.

[Langdon]

What is this tame tag?

Using Runesmith, you can turn off the flag that makes an animal tame, effectively converting it to a wild animal. To have your pets survive an abandoning/retiring, you would:

1) put your pets in a built cage, linked to a lever
2) Run Runesmith, uncheck the "Tame" tag for all your pets
3) Abandon (or use my instructions here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=69682.msg2103316#msg2103316 to "retire") your fort

I believe unnamed pets would still eventually disperse and leave the site, though.
I also noticed merchant pets don't die on "retire", so an alternative would be to turn on the "Merchant" tag for all pets that you want to hang around (must test if this works without the built cage trick).

[Girlinhat]

Huh, fancy.  That does help with another issue I had, neat!

[dirty foot]

Yes, you can, but it's headache inducing.

Open Dwarf Fortress. Start fort. Save game. Move Save file out of save directory. (To a directory named something not dwarf related within the save folder is sufficient.) Start Dwarf Fortress, make new start. Now you can start a second instance of DF, and play the other fort, after moving it back and naming the folder region 2.

Viola, two forts at once. Of course you don't have to do it with two separate game windows, but then you can only play one fort at a time, but still play two forts.

I'm surprised no one else has figured it out yet.

But that doubles the save files, and the OP said that was not desired.

I'm okay with this. I just didn't want to double the memory, as I suspected all that meant was building two separate, but exactly identical, worlds. I wanted them both to exist in the same world. I assume by that person's confidence, that this is possible. Though reading below, I wonder what will happen when historical moments start disagreeing with each other.

Basically, one of the reasons why I was wanting to do this was to make a more "adventure mode friendly" world. I wanted to make some inhabited forts for the adv to visit. The same empty forts were starting to drive me crazy, and was eventually the reason why I started playing DF mode in the first place. I want to explore my forts now with my adv, but eventually without abandoning them, which I assume will be quite an undertaking.

[Girlinhat]

To put it most simply, you cannot leave a fort intact while you do something else.

To put it detailed, you can, if you use DFHack to swap game modes.  This can will have unexpected results, as this is a HUGE change to game working and is pretty much guaranteed to break something.  But in theory, if you start a fort, then hack yourself into an adventurer, then quit as that adventurer, the fort may or may not remain intact.  This is uncharted terrain though, no one has seriously attempted this.  Or at least, if they did, they didn't brag about it on the forums.

[Langdon]

Basically, one of the reasons why I was wanting to do this was to make a more "adventure mode friendly" world. I wanted to make some inhabited forts for the adv to visit. The same empty forts were starting to drive me crazy, and was eventually the reason why I started playing DF mode in the first place. I want to explore my forts now with my adv, but eventually without abandoning them, which I assume will be quite an undertaking.

Did you try out my instructions at the link above (using DFusion and dfhack)? I started out the same as you - I wanted to "retire" a fort without having the people leave. I was somewhat successful - I ended up with a fortress with all its people still living in it, and responding properly to conversations with an adventurer (i.e. they properly give directions when you ask them about "Surroundings" which means they consider the fort their home). The fortress behaves as a normal Mountain Hall - I was able to retire adventurers in it.

Plus as a bonus, if I reclaim, I still get all my old dwarves and retired adventurers as "Friendly" units on the map.

I'll repeat the instructions here:

1) use DFusion->Tools->"Prevent items from scattering" on your paused fort.
2) use DFHack's dfmode.exe to switch to "Adventure" and "Direct Control" - this will switch you to Adventure mode
3) use DFusion->Tools->Change Adventurer - it will put up a list of units on your map. Pick a dead goblin, or whatever, as long as it's dead.
4) without unpausing, save the game (this means don't go back to the dfusion window before saving)
5) quit DF, restart, and load the game. You will be in Adventurer mode, and the screen will say "You are deceased"
6) press ESC, Finish Game

You will now be at the main menu, and if you check Legends mode you will see your fort is still in the game world, with all its inhabitants alive (but pets will die unless you do some other stuff). You are now free to start another fort, or play an adventurer.

I'd be interested in your results if you try this out - I only figured this method out for the first time last night, and I don't know what other bugs this can introduce to your game world. Still from adventure mode it looks ok.

To put it most simply, you cannot leave a fort intact while you do something else.

To put it detailed, you can, if you use DFHack to swap game modes.  This can will have unexpected results, as this is a HUGE change to game working and is pretty much guaranteed to break something.  But in theory, if you start a fort, then hack yourself into an adventurer, then quit as that adventurer, the fort may or may not remain intact.  This is uncharted terrain though, no one has seriously attempted this.  Or at least, if they did, they didn't brag about it on the forums.

Yeah dfmode came out two weeks ago I think, and there are only a few of us playing around with it. The new thing I found was to swap yourself into a DEAD entity, so it goes immediately to Finish Game, and no extraneous buggy adventurer data is saved back to the game world. I'll be playing in this world now, try to see if I broke anything else.

I've been trying to swap into a live dwarf now, with not much success - using a fortress dwarf as an adventurer looks like it's missing some data (can't retire anywhere) but I may just need to play around with some flags in Runesmith. I'm also going to play around with adventurer->fort mode in the next few days.

[Girlinhat]

If you do this, what happens to the adventurer's carried goods?  You may or may not remember my question about moving materials between embarks, and this looks like a makeshift way.  Can you reclaim the intact fort in fortress mode?

[Langdon]

If you do this, what happens to the adventurer's carried goods?  You may or may not remember my question about moving materials between embarks, and this looks like a makeshift way.  Can you reclaim the intact fort in fortress mode?

Yeah I reclaimed the fort properly, with seven new dwarves. The adventurer was still on site, marked as Friendly in the units list (and he had all his junk in inventory). Rumrusher told me how to set the flags to get the adventurer marked as part of my fortress (basically, turn off "is Resident" flag, and make sure Civ Number is the same civ as my embark group). Note that on a reclaim, you are embarking with a new group, with a different civ number from your old fort (which is why they are all Friendly, same civ, different entity).

As for moving mats between embarks, from what I read from Askot, Darius and Rumrusher is:
1) send an adventurer to your future embark area
2) use DFusion to "Protect items from scattering" in a marked area (maybe next to the magma pipe, anywhere it's easy to remember)
3) Haul materials using your adventurer, dump them in the "protected area" which should behave like a lair
4) Embark on the site - all the mats/food/etc should be there. "protect items" also prevents food rotting from what I understand.

I believe Rumrusher has successfully done this (embark on a protected area) and I personally have embarked on a night creature lair and gotten access to all the items my previous adventurer had dumped there.

[Girlinhat]

I'm more likely to use a cave.  I've grown fond of caves, and will gen ~50 on a pocket world.  They're fun!  They also appear on the map if you allow them, so they're easy to find.  I'll need to snag me some DFusion...

[Langdon]

I'm more likely to use a cave.  I've grown fond of caves, and will gen ~50 on a pocket world.  They're fun!  They also appear on the map if you allow them, so they're easy to find.  I'll need to snag me some DFusion...

Just a warning - if you embark on top of an existing named cave or lair, and then use the "retire" method above, the game will treat the site as the old lair or cave, and you won't be able to retire adventurers on it.

[Girlinhat]

Adventurers are replaceable, the resources they carry to a specific site are not.

[Naryar]

The problem with caves are dragons, hydras and bronze colossuses.