Dwarf Fortress

[Metronome]

I think that's true depending on how you define it. You've got a potentially limitless open-world, its just all procedurally generated. That's great for outside, but not so great for interiors, quests and anything else that involves sentients. As a result, the last time I played there was a feeling that nothing really mattered in that mode. Plus there were the boogeymen, which put a damper on the whole wandering around bit. I do think its cool that the game recognizes if all the sentients are dead.

The trick with the boogeymen is to sleep in the mountains or deserts. You could also get a party member but I don't like to manage them. Adventure mode always starts off seeming like something very exciting but it ends up as cheesing the mechanics by molesting sand-crabs to legendary status or being one-shotted, or at least crippled, in the first combat you run into. You also barely gain any experience from actual fights. Would be more fun with save/load functionality than "traditional" permadeath considering how unpredictable combat is, how much time it takes to train a character legitimately, and how much detail is put into creating a character. A lot of that stuff just doesn't work well with the existing mechanics of the game. Dungeons are also very lame and sparse.

 

[Hag]

Always thought adventure mod was there mostly for its comedic values, with idiosyncratic vomit fights and nonsensical quests. Some kind of lighthearted roguelike parody.

That, or maybe there is a value in exploring previous forts, reclaimed by the AI, and re-discover them by yourself. Never tried. After some forts and adventure games in the same world, you may somehow get intimate with it, remember gods, creatures, places or hearsay from one game to another, really appropriate yourself this small piece of universe. Maybe or maybe not, since most major game update needed a new world to be generated I never kept one long enough to go further than fortress building.

But I've always thought this big open-world with history and legends as a common background for all your games was a good idea pretty well executed. The procedural generation in DF is among the best I've met.

 

[Cael]

Welp, DF just crashed on me irrecoverably after 12 years on a fort (years 150-162). I load a save, it runs for 2 min and crashes. Tried it several times, always same time. The last copy of the save was back in 153. Looks like a rage quit of DF for me for a while.

Anyone got suggestions for a game other than DF?

 

[Correct_Carlo]

Welp, DF just crashed on me irrecoverably after 12 years on a fort (years 150-162). I load a save, it runs for 2 min and crashes. Tried it several times, always same time. The last copy of the save was back in 153. Looks like a rage quit of DF for me for a while.

Anyone got suggestions for a game other than DF?

You can use Windows recovery to revert a folder back to various dates. You could potentially recover your save that way.

 

[Hag]

Welp, DF just crashed on me irrecoverably after 12 years on a fort (years 150-162). I load a save, it runs for 2 min and crashes. Tried it several times, always same time. The last copy of the save was back in 153. Looks like a rage quit of DF for me for a while.

Maybe ask about it on the official forums. Dev should be able to clean your save, or at least should be interested in inspecting it to prevent future bugs.

 

[dehimos]

https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html#2021-10-21

Spoiler

 

[Cael]

It is better to extend the hallway and put in nothing but cage traps. That was, you get all of them trapped, so you can strip them for their equipment and drop them into an arena later for archer practice. Have a bridge ready to close off the trap hallway at the far end from your fortress to force them to try to get to your fortress to get out. That is how you get all of them instead of about half of them only.

And the stupid idiot didn't warren up his civilians and forbid the traps to prevent his civilians from running into the goblin horde... And his trap hallway wouldn't stop a full fledged attack, which is capped at 120 soldiers and 40 creatures. At best, he'd stop a third of them, which means he'd still have 80+ bad guys to rape his soldiers and then his civilians.

 

[RoBoBOBR]

cage traps are for pussies

 

[Cael]

cage traps are for pussies

If he is going to use traps anyway, might as well do it right.

 

[Alienman]

https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html#2021-10-21

Spoiler

Interesting to see the devs play the game using broken boring mechanics.

 

[Perkel]

Interesting to see the devs play the game using broken boring mechanics.

DFhack has option feature where goblins can dig into your fortress. Unfortunutelly there is no way in DF to fill up such holes with whatever was dug out thus making such holes pain in ass to fill and then looks like shit.

 

[Cael]

DF also has a bug where if you dig just under a tree and you harvest the tree later, you leave a big gaping hole in the floor. This can bone a lot of forts if the gobbos dug under the trees of your tree farm.

Also, I believe the digging doesn't extend to built walls, so it really just means you have to build walls and floors everywhere to stop them digging in.

 

[Cael]

So, I finally downloaded the latest DF version (.47) and gave it a whirl.

What the hell? I have thieves zooming for my artifacts the second they are made. What the hell did Toady do? That never happened in my old .44.

Anyway, I built a vault to store artifacts in, with a door on it. I have a squad posted just outside whenever I open it (to put in new artifacts). Sure enough, literally 3 of the bastards made beelines for artifacts the second I unlocked the door. Two of them have been in my fort for years! But with the squad standing there, they dare not pick stuff up. They just stand over the items they want and try to look innocent.

The result? All three of them are locked up in the vault with the new artifact. Fuckers can starve. I am already building their memorial slabs, which I am going to build in the river when the winter freezes it (which is also where I buried the stupid elves that don't know how to swim but insist on trying to swim my moat).

 

[RoBoBOBR]

Some visitor corrupted them to steal those artifacts for them. You gotta use justice system and interrogate your dwarves and visitors to determine the culprits, then deal with them accordingly. I like that — keeping spies and thieves out of your fortress fleshes out justice system and also generates a lot of cases, that you can then use to not only prosecute the criminals themselves, but also any undesirables you want (spying usually warrants a long prison stay, several hundred days, and one spy can generate 2-3 cases with diligent interrogation, those can then be used to make bards, nobles or necromancers go insane in the cell, even though they have nothing to do with the actual spy). There's an easy way to determine which visitors are villains BTW, pay attention to their purpose of visiting.

 

[Cael]

Some visitor corrupted them to steal those artifacts for them. You gotta use justice system and interrogate your dwarves and visitors to determine the culprits, then deal with them accordingly. I like that — keeping spies and thieves out of your fortress fleshes out justice system and also generates a lot of cases, that you can then use to not only prosecute the criminals themselves, but also any undesirables you want (spying usually warrants a long prison stay, several hundred days, and one spy can generate 2-3 cases with diligent interrogation, those can then be used to make bards, nobles or necromancers go insane in the cell, even though they have nothing to do with the actual spy). There's an easy way to determine which visitors are villains BTW, pay attention to their purpose of visiting.

The stupid part is that I actually saw the one of them doing it. I had a squad training near the exit, and that citizen waltz straight pass them and there was nothing I could do to get them to attack the guy. Even when the guy's inventory showed that he was carrying the bloody thing. One of my citizens waiting three years to grab an artifact, and ran away with it. As in he ran all the way off the map. He didn't pass it to anyone. And three of them at the same time. What is this? Fucking Harlem? This is ridiculous.

DF hides enough information from you as it is, and now it doesn't even tell you artifacts are missing. I just discovered that one of my artifacts disappeared years ago and only now did I get the notification that it is missing. The stupidest part was that the dwarves dropped another artifact on the SAME SPOT as the missing one. How could they have not known?

I don't mind if the game gives me to opportunity to stop the thief from getting off the map with the item. But no. Artifacts just disappears and that's it. Gone for good.

The easy way out would be to forbid visitors in my tavern. To hell with this stupid shit.

 

[thesheeep]

DF hides enough information from you as it is, and now it doesn't even tell you artifacts are missing. I just discovered that one of my artifacts disappeared years ago and only now did I get the notification that it is missing. The stupidest part was that the dwarves dropped another artifact on the SAME SPOT as the missing one. How could they have not known?

That's my biggest gripe with the game, really. Well, that and the mouse support, but at least the latter is on its way.

But the game hides so much information from you in submenus within submenus within submenus.
Yes, the information is there, theoretically, but it's such a PITA to get to it and you also have to do it constantly because notifications don't do shit.

In much the same way that you can build a well, theoretically, but you have to manually dig a hole first.
And build a mechanism.
Why is that not part of the "place well" process? Dig hole, queue mechanism production (unless already one in store) and finally place the well.
Don't get me wrong, I don't claim it is hard to do, but it is all so... needlessly manual and obfuscated.

I truly hope the new release with proper controls & UI support deals with a vast amount of these issues, but I don't dare being too optimistic about it.

 

[Cael]

When Dwarf Fortress tries to emulate the lamestream media:

 

[Humbaba]

tfw no mauve feathered deer gf that emanates an aura of giving and kindess

 

[Cael]

tfw no mauve feathered deer gf that emanates an aura of giving and kindess

The "aura of giving and kindness" murdered three giant elephant calves before wandering into the trade depot area and was promptly mobbed by the 30 or so elf merchants there and their mounts. That gave me time to mobilise my miner militia and it died under a barrage of mining picks in the hands of legendary miners to the face. Astoundingly, none of the elf merchants died in the time it took me to get my squad suited up and ready to go. My dwarves got off without a scratch as it was busy trying to squash elves.

 

[HeyCheckOutHowHardICanPee]

"giving" elves an asswhooping is an act of "kindness" in itself.

 

[Cael]

"giving" elves an asswhooping is an act of "kindness" in itself.

Only 1 of the 7 elf civilisations declared war on me so far. The other 6 is still trading giant animals and unicorns to me. It would be a "kindness" if the idiot had spawned on the other side of the river as there was a massive "ambush" from that 1 elf civ there. I had them trapped on the other side with a retracted bridge.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

It's been 10 years and haven't kept up with updates, does the game still die after 200 dwarves? Does it still use a single core CPU?

 

[Cael]

It's been 10 years and haven't kept up with updates, does the game still die after 200 dwarves? Does it still use a single core CPU?

Pretty much. FPS death is still a thing, and they have been adding more and more features.

 

[Cael]

Gentlemen! I present to you, the elf Black Knight!