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[Janne Joensuu]

This game is awesome. I have never felt as immersed in anything (Dungeon Keeper, Sim City, a wolfpack simulator, Fallout, or even Planescape: Torment) - despite hating the graphics, and finding the interface awkward!

Some things I wished I could do, or find information for:
1) to select a raw material and choose what should be done from it: e.g. to select Fox Skin and make Fox Skin items for trade. Or decorate with Fox Skin, if that's possible.
2) Items' and raw materials' descriptions should mention what they are needed for. This way, I don't have to know names for different kinds of stone or wood to play the game. Also, it would keep a new player from building useless stuff. Buildings should also mention other things they need to operate, e.g. that a forge needs coal or charcoal, and that the ores must be smelted first.
3) I wanted to build above-ground settlement. Or rather, I didn't realize I could dig in to the stone next to me. Any way, if there was a way of making either an empty room (for roof) or floor (from groud, or wood, or stone), letting e.g. beds and chairs to be set on them shouldn't be too hard. This would allow for building of elf and human fortresses.
4) It should be possible to designate some jobs more important than others. Spesifically, I'd like for food processing to be more important than getting more food.
5) I have no idea how and when the dwarves can sleep well. Should they have their own little rooms for sleeping? Can I have one big sleeping room for all of them? Etc.  

Some things I would have wanted to change if I knew how:
1) My two hunting dogs died. My hunter often goes to the wild, travels in there, fights something, starts coming back, is interrupted (drinks, fights, eats, sleeps), then goes farther again. I want to let them rest.
2) I couldn't farm. I'll have to try if I can use the floodgates and channels with out-of-mountain river.
3) I want to be able to reward someone. That is, to give someone an order to do something that he likes. Like getting beer. My Jeweler-who-Hunts lost both her dogs, and she's depressed.

Many of these would also work as Quick-Start Guide and/or Strategy Guide instead of in-game changes. Does anything like that exist?

[Toady One]

Thanks!

So...
1)  yeah, I'd like to do that when I can.  It's really inconvenient on a number of jobs.  Item improvements are really irritating, since they seem to like to decorate bins.

2)  I'd just need to find a place to fit it.  If the manual's fine, it can go there, and this would be better once there's a manual offline.

3)  Human and elf modes are in the Future Plans.  It's a long way off though -- once human and elf sites in adventure mode are fleshed out more, a reverse conversion will be much easier.

4)  Job priorities are one of those things we've been discussing on the forum, and it's important.

5)  Ah, there should be more info on that...  your initial dwarves don't mind sleeping in a single large room at first, though better rooms make them happier (and thus more resistant to tantrums etc).  Once the economy starts up, they'll like their own rooms with coffers and cabinets.  Nobles have various demands that can be accessed from the [n] screen, once you get one.

1) If you go into [v][p][l], you can turn hunting off for as long as you need to, although current hunting jobs can't be cancelled right now I think.

2) Yeah, farming only works inside.

3) This is a cool idea.

There were a few people that are working on guides or FAQs of some kind, but aside from the many posts here (some are short start guides), nothing I known of has been written besides the in-game manual, which is missing some information.

[ August 13, 2006: Message edited by: Toady One ]

[Captain Mayday]

I'll endeavour to answer what I can.
1. This would be nice. Might be a bloat. Currently not possible yet, though.
2. This is probably a FAQ issue. I'm sure somebody will eventually get around to writing one of those.
3. Well, I suppose re-walling might allow this to be possible. Toad is planning on allowing rewalling in the future.
4. Also planned. Remember, this is Alpha.
5. Here's how it goes. Dwarfs will sleep in an available unassigned bed if there is one. This means you can create a single room full of beds, and they'll use them. However, they prefer their own rooms, as do we all.

About the hunter... turn off his hunting?
As for farming, you can do it underground. There are different setups for this, but the most basic one is as follows:
######R
#.....##R
X.....XXR
#.....##R
######R

R is the river. # are cave walls, and X is the floodgates. You need to set up levers to these. I would have the two right hooked up to one lever, and the left floodgate hooked up seperately. Never have all 3 open at once.
Having the right two open allows for the river to flood. Two are required because apparently at the moment one will allow for water entry, and the other for water exit.
You will require a mechanists and to build 8 mechanisms. Each gate requires 2 mechanisms to be hooked up to a lever, and levers each cost 1 mechanism to build.
I suggest building the furthest right floodgate first, and hooking that up before placing the second.

As for rewarding your hunter, if you remove all their duties, I suppose they'll do as they please.

[ August 13, 2006: Message edited by: Mayday ]

[Captain Mayday]

That reminds me Toady, if you flood an area, and it manages to reach the normal part of the river, it will never stop flooding, even if the gate is closed again.

[Toady One]

Yeah, it doesn't remember where its source is, so if it finds a new one, then that's that.  Not really sure how to get around this, since you could have several floodgate systems going etc etc.  Perhaps best would be allowing floodgates to be built over flooded areas if a dwarf can stand next to them, so that you can attempt to wall things in and salvage the area.

[Beowulf]

Just wanted to second the "Awesome!"  
Seeing how much the author of UrW must have made with his shareware game (overpriced considering how much superior yours is in places and can become) and how seldom ppl donate when you give games away for free..
I wonder why you don't charge for it.
Spending less time jobbing leaves more for improving the game.
Well I've registered UrW back when I had the surplus money now I'm regretting not having it donated to your project.

[Janne Joensuu]

I agree with Beowulf - UnReal World tried to do something similar, but the fact that you only controlled one man slowed it down. You might want to contact the author of that,
Sami Maaranen, at: urw@iki.fi . There are many similarities in these games, and he might be able to give you hints about what to do, or what not to do.

I followed my huntress around while she hunted. After seeing what she did, it seems the hunter AI is somewhat lacking. It's beta, I know, but that also means I'm a tester and not just a player, and I have to report things like these.

First, I'd just like to say that this game continues to be awesome. For instance, this same huntress became sad because I let her dead hunting dogs rot. I don't know what I could've done, if anything, but it's still very cool. Almost as cool as the fact that the cats have adopted my fisherdwarves.

The hunter goes north, sees nothing but keeps going, then starts going south, goes south, passes a fox, passes some deer, passes another fox, then starts going north, and finally decides to kill a deer. Then she leaves the carcass there, and continues hunting. Then she starts sleeping in the ground.
Her mule follows her tracks, not her, and because it's slower than her it goes past her many times, and continues until it reaches the point where the hunter turned back.

It seems hunter AI should check for prey just as normal AI checks for predators, and start following the prey in sight instead of looking for whatever they are looking for. Similarly, pets that follow their owner's trail should start following the owner if he's in sight.

Also, the fact that a hunter leaves the carcass behind seems a bit wrong. He's FAR from the settlement - why would he hunt if he won't bring the meat home? This is probably hard to program in, but some kind of "comfort zone" would help - dwarves won't leave the comfort zone to store items outside of it, but if they are outside of the comfort zone, they carry as much as possible back to the zone. The effect I'd like to see would have the hunter collect the tools he used and the animals he killed, and return back if he can't carry much more, but if he had to leave something behind, no one would go get them unless they happened to be around there for some other reason.

In the beta, just having the hunters' first priority be bringing meat to the food storage, and killing animals for meat being just the second. That'd also stop the hunters' going after new animals if they had to stop for some reason, e.g. to drink, or sleep.

[Toady One]

Of course, yeah, report all the bugs and other annoying behavior!  Then I can make it go away over time.

It's possible to have coffins place that the pets would then be buried in, but for hunting dogs out in the woods it might be hard to get the bodies in promptly.

I agree that the hunters are stupid.  They use line of sight and should attack the first thing they notice, but if it goes behind a tree it can go out of their minds and that's that.  It's also easy for them to be distracted from kills.  The grab-multiple-items stuff is reasonable annoying to program, but, yeah, the hunter could keep track of items they brought into the woods, and try not to leave without them -- since they don't have to scan open ground for these that's easier.

Regarding the donations, it's true, less time for jobbing means more for improving the game.  I'm going to give little updates on the first of the month so people can see what's going on with my job etc.  In any case, it does seem that allowing people access to the game instead of restricting it, and allowing them to set the price, often results in a price of zero  I don't anticipate ever charging a fee for the game, but I do need food and rent and all that sort of thing.  For now, I'm relying on your kindness!  Thanks to the people that have play-tested, and those that have donated so far.

[bbb]

what other furnitures are useful to have in a bedroom?

chairs don't seem to do anything, nor tables. (well, at least they don't appear in the possession screen anyway)

[Toady One]

If they get to own things (they mainly start buying after the economy starts, but they can get a few things before then), they'll want a coffer/chest/box in their room.  Cabinets are good for old clothes when they start wearing down.  All furniture placed in the room increases the value of the room, but other than what I've mentioned, bedroom furniture doesn't have particular uses.

[Solara]

I play URW a lot, and as it's not evne trying to be anything like Dwarf Fortress, a fairer comparison would be Adventurer mode.

Though there I'm afraid I still find URW to be preferable, at least while DF's still in the alpha stage.

The Adventure mode has the potential to be something truly great, and quite possibly the last game I'll ever need to play, but at the moment it seems to be mostly about killing monsters. I'm eagerly awaiting the addition of some kind of craft system, magic system, and just more ways to intereact and influence your environment in general. (or at the very least a manual that points out how to access these things, if they already exist and I'm just too dense to find them...)

[Toady One]

Yeah, adventure mode is very simple right now.  Once I get through this stabilization procedure, one of the Version 1 Goals is the Adventurer Skills arc (note these aren't in order, and some of this will be done before armies for example), which will carry over most/all of the dwarf behaviors to the adventurer.  Hence, you could hunt something, and then go through all of the regular dwarf jobs as you are able to get your Play Now! adventurer some clothing, etc., (even if the skins wouldn't be tanned necessary).  For now, all you can do is like...  drink out of swamps and pick up rocks...

[ August 13, 2006: Message edited by: Toady One ]

[DungeonHunter]

Also want to second the AWESOME (without even having tried the game)... too bad I missed the start of the whole thing (you might remember me from the "original" thread (back to the dwarf game...). The adventure mode is a big surprise for me and I'm glad there is such an amount of feedback.

I'm going DL it, try around a little and see if the game is as great as I thought it would be.

Congrats for such a great start!

[Aquillion]

quote:Originally posted by Toady One:
<STRONG>For now, all you can do is like...  drink out of swamps and pick up rocks...</STRONG>

Don't forget eating worms.  You can also eat worms.  And beetles, too.

[Aquillion]

quote:Originally posted by Toady One:
<STRONG>If they get to own things (they mainly start buying after the economy starts, but they can get a few things before then), they'll want a coffer/chest/box in their room.  Cabinets are good for old clothes when they start wearing down.  All furniture placed in the room increases the value of the room, but other than what I've mentioned, bedroom furniture doesn't have particular uses.</STRONG>

Are you sure?  I'm pretty sure I've seen a dwarf eating on a chair in his own room...  even though there wasn't a table in front of it...

He'd been complaining about a lack of chairs and was throwing tantrums (also over miasmas, starvation, etc), so I threw a chair in his room since the other problems were harder to deal with.

It also said he liked 'bin', but I couldn't figure out how to place a bin in his room.