Official 'dex Dwarf Fortress Thread

[RoBoBOBR]

We'll be all too busy playing Grimoire Director's Cut to wake you up by then, Zep.

 

[you know what time it is]

If you can't come back to df after Rimworld of all things, you probably wouldn't have actually been a fan of the game even if the UI was better.

I have been playing df on and off for more than 7 years and it still requires external programs (more than one actually) for its UI to become bearable, as far as actual gameplay and mechanics go - DF is miles ahead of everything else. So idk what's your point is, trying to be edgy or what?

 

[RhodokMasterRaceOfficial]

The point is that there's no game worth playing in this genre aside from DF.

 

[you know what time it is]

Good talk.

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

Streamlining the UI is the first step to popamolism. DF is great because the focus is on the mechanics & simulation and not the presentation. There's a real beauty in ascii graphics, that a lot of tilesets ruin. The menu system might seem overly complex, but once you understand it traversing them can help enhance that zen like state you get from mastering something like vi. Yes you must engage your inner sperg to appreciate it, but your playing fucking DF, let your inner sperg run wild!

 

[Zep Zepo]

I played DF for a good solid 2 or 3 months. Maybe around 2010-11 before he went berserk adding fingers and livers and toenails and shit. YES, THE ui STILL sucked back then, but it was a decent "game" for what it was. Eventually it all went to shit when he started listening to his fellow autistic screechers and started adding benign bullshit.

This could have been a great game...but Toady's gonna Toady.

Zep--

 

[Haba]

DF fortress mode has literally become worse by every update ever since it switched from 2D to 3D. And looking at how many years ago that was, it is quite an achievement.

 

[Bibbimbop]

The autist formerly known as Tarn Adams is a pathetic figure. He and his brother live together as 40 year olds. Clear-cut case of brothers sucking the cum out each other's balls every night. Gay incest!

 

[Mustawd]

You sound butthurt that they weren't sucking YOU off.

 

[you know what time it is]

That was the dumbest shit I read all day, not sure if this faggot is trying to be funny or is actually that retarded.

 

[Mustawd]

I'm pretty sure I'm just that retarded.

Fucking rude as shit tho...

 

[you know what time it is]

I'm pretty sure I'm just that retarded.

Fucking rude as shit tho...

Not talking about you man, but that goblecuck tho

 

[Mustawd]

oh ok. We're both retarded.

 

[Lagole Gon]

^^^

Wow, this REALLY IS the Official 'dex Dwarf Fortress Thread!

 

[Perkel]

last 3 updates from Toady:

• I went ahead and added the ability for player adventurers to assume identities today. You can't pretend to be specific historical figures or deities, but you can be pick a name, profession, origin civilization and object of worship. All positive and negative reputations will be associated to that identity for as long as you assume it, unless you screw up. You can have multiple identities and flip between them (or return to your true identity). I'm still patching up some weird behaviors, but we're almost out of this specific identity grind now.
• 01/10/2017
  
  Ha ha, this rabbit hole is pretty deep! There was a cascading split of various reputation data objects according to true, visual, historical and false identities, and lots of tracing up and down partial data to see where a new bit of information should be stored or what it implies. It is taking a while to sort it out. My brain broke a few days ago, but I feel more like we're coasting downhill on it now. Some problems we had of rumors revealing the identities of people they shouldn't have (especially as the rumors aged) have been patched up -- it can keep track of information about false identities indefinitely, and it can also keep track of independent reputations for the same person between several identities, even for old data where that distinction used to improperly collapse.
• 01/04/2017
  
  I'm having fun chasing down issues with agent identities and rumors and so forth. A lot of the conversation/reputation code wasn't able to cope with the change, and we've needed to differentiate more between visual identification or whether an incident just involves the real and fake historical identities of people in the abstract, especially when you ask a person their opinion about somebody but only know an alias (which you don't know is an alias). People now think more carefully about where their information came from when they decide what they think of people, and do some cross-referencing of known identities and so forth, but they also have to skip certain rumors in their heads that pertain to a person where they can't make the connection (because they don't know a given alias or true identity). So if you ask after a goblin agent using their true name or an identity used in a previous town, people in the current town the agent is infiltrating will properly say that they don't know who you are talking about, even if they have a lot of information about the agent under their current alias -- or they might have an opinion about the old identity if they heard a rumor about it. Where the game previously formed a single set of reputations for one historical figure, people can now give different answers for the true historical figure and each identity, as well as what they think on sight (which may or may not involve any names -- they keep track of which identities they associate with the physical appearance).
  
  We're also trying to keep more identity information intact as rumors fade out over time, to stop covers from being blown by the passage of time, and we also want a bit more realism in terms of linking witnesses that know the physical appearance to somebody else in town that got to know a name/alias of the people and their appearance, but didn't see the incident. For example, if the player robs somebody without saying their name, a problem with the new system was that only the people that witnessed the event thought ill of the player even after a few days, since other townspeople could no longer make the link between the player and the event. However, if the player talks to enough people in a small enough town either before or after the robbery, then whatever name/alias they used should become linked to the incident after a bit of time (the normal rumor spread time). It's difficult to get it right, and it's not going to be quite up to the level where it'll need to be for the justice/crime features later on, but we're trying to keep everything pointed in the right direction.

 

[Space Satan]

We are close to assuming genders. So close!

 

[Lazing Dirk]

I'm pretty sure at this point we're already living in Dwarf Fortress, and our version of DF in development is just a long-running joke to see how long it'll take before we figure out we're actually witnessing our own creation.

Does DF let you build your own fortress in adventure mode yet? I had quite a lot of fun in adventure mode last time (probably over 3 years ago), and I recall there being some hack or mod to let you switch seamlessly between fortress and adventure mode to enable you to build your own home base, albeit one with a single occupant.

 

[Rahdulan]

I'm waiting to see how he's going to blow the fuck out of everyone with his magic system. Interview is rather extensive so I'll only post a part of it.
http://www.pcgamer.com/dwarf-fortre...imulating-the-most-complex-magic-system-ever/

Dwarf Fortress creator Tarn Adams talks about simulating the most complex magic system ever
By Wes Fenlon 7 days ago


I want to go back to the magic system, because that's exciting to me and probably something you've been thinking about for a really long time. Do you have notebooks full of design ideas of your dream magic system that's been brewing for years and years?

That's the thing, it's never been a dream system, it's been like a dream systematization of what the little nuts and bolts of magic are, so that we can glue them together however we want and surprise ourselves. It always comes back to surprising ourselves. We'd really, really like to have a system like roots, or something, growing into different parts of the game. So integrated that it feels like you're in an exciting and new place. That when they say things like 'oh this magic spell extracts a heavy cost in the future'—which is obviously from Conan the Barbarian movie, always come back to this stupid crap—but that it would actually do that. That if you're making these deals with spirits and stuff, you have made now a social relationship with an otherworldly being. Think of Christian witch theology, deals with the devil to get power, Faust bargain type stuff.

Not just like in say an action-RPG where you're the witch character or whatever, and can curse people and it's like a leveled power you're getting that doesn't change anything about the fact that you have this relationship with some nefarious power, right? But what if you did? And what if they came down and visited sometimes and checked up on you and you could have a conversation in the conversation engine with them, and that was tied into how your magic powers worked? Or if you're one of these little forest spirits and you had to speak to the trees to do things with them? Or even those systems where a lumberjack has to apologize to certain trees that are inhabited by spirits?

If that's just an integrated part of your game, and then you have your dwarves running around, and then they chop down the wrong tree and anger a spirit, that becomes not just a monster spawn, but a character in a game, that you interact with and then that chains into other magical implications.

Magic should feel magical and mysterious, and not necessarily make perfect sense, not necessarily feel like it belongs but feel like it's a part of the setting.
It's just like, you get surprised in Dwarf Fortress the first time when you pour water and it comes up the end of the pipe because we have a pressure simulation. That's what magic should do. Magic should surprise you with how consistent and logical it actually is, but not because you're learning little rulebooks, but just because it feels like it belongs. I'm not sure pressure is immediately obvious to people, or a siphon. It's just kind of weird when you're just blowing into things and they shoot out the other end. It can make sense if you understood it, but certain things you're never going to be able to understand because they're supernatural. You can kind of get at the rules, and kind of not.

These are sort of ideal situations. It's like trying to come up with, there are all these sorts of wizard games, right, where you're doing magical research in a tower or whatever, but you're just getting points. Master of Orion type thing, or Civilization tech tree, getting research points.

But how do you actually model scientific research in a game, that makes it feel like you're experimenting, but it's not as boring as real science? [laughs] Where you have to sit there for six months and see if the two DNA gels have a different line. I worked in a genetics lab for a couple years, and hoo, shit. It's not super exciting. There's just a lot of 'run this 30 times, we're going to look at them, all right, the lines lined up, no outliers, do it again.' So if you get rid of all that stuff, what is the heart of the exciting part of the research? Can we get that and make it feel magical, so you could have some kind of wizard thing like that?

I think this is all still the question where you asked about my dream magic system. It would be one where every system I've described is possible. Some of them might exist in the world, all of them might exist in the world, in which case they might be integrated with each other in subtle ways.

Go back to the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when Aslan's talking about the deep magic. That there's some underlying thing that could unify those systems and certain other rules. I know the whole thing is a substitute for Christianity, but you know what I mean. Ways to integrate things in layers below the surface. Some of those might not even be accessible to the player, but a lot of them would be over time. And wouldn't that be cool?

 

[Perkel]

yeah dude usually doesn't fuck around.

His injury and health system is probably the best in gaming and defo most complex.

When you see someone dying in water and that water turns red for a moment before being diluted and vanish with flow of water and that isn't some fake shader graphic trick you fucking know something is fucking amazing.

Tendons, muscles, fat, bones, brain hell everything is more or less simulated. Nusea, pain and so on are just things that come from fucking nerves that are attached to limbs and so on.

 

[you know what time it is]

Streamlining the UI is the first step to popamolism. DF is great because the focus is on the mechanics & simulation and not the presentation. There's a real beauty in ascii graphics, that a lot of tilesets ruin. The menu system might seem overly complex, but once you understand it traversing them can help enhance that zen like state you get from mastering something like vi. Yes you must engage your inner sperg to appreciate it, but your playing fucking DF, let your inner sperg run wild!

There's nothing complex about the building system, it's pretty straightforward, the problem that it's so fucking poorly done. It's hard to get into the intricacies of simulation when all of it is hidden behind the horrendous UI.

To define a burrow you need like 6 hotkeys (excluding the key presses you need to select the area). When selecting something is a separate fucking function you know shit's beyond saving. Not having a mouse support by 2017 is just laughable. Especially considering that all of that shit could be easily fixed if Toady wasn't as autistic. Adding context menu (assigning job priority, removing and adding to various groups, etc.) to a selected unit and a selection frame (box) would fix 85% of complaints regarding ui.

 

[Chris Avelltwo]

Not having a mouse support by 2017 is just laughable.

It actually does have mouse support, but its easier to just use the keyboard. Nearly everything else you're complaining about is addressed by things like DFhack and other 3rd party utilities you can use if you want a more casual popamole experience.

 

[you know what time it is]

Good UI design =/= popamole, quit tryharding.

 

[Balor]

Good UI design =/= popamole, quit tryharding.

Yea, the UI is.... inconsistent. I suspect that he just refuses to touch it for obscure obsessive-compulsive reasons, you cannot be a 'normal' person and do what Toady does... and it comes with both good and bad sides, unfortunately. I can understand him well enough.

 

[Norfleet]

Maybe he just cannot into UI design. And maybe he doesn't need to, as spitting things out in text certainly makes it easy to overlay a third party UI on it.

 

[Alienman]

Thinking of starting a new session and a need some help to experience FUN. Every world, except one I have made has actually been dangerous. I think the only reason that fortress turned awesome was my necromancer neighbor. But besides attacking zombie hordes and the eventual goblin crusade, there isn't much going on. So I'm looking for help to create a fun world. What is the best settings for it? I want monsters roaming, legendary beasts and war.