Dwarf Fortress: General Discussion

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Uts has been progressing quite well with his current fortress, but he's experiencing a bout of bafflement concerning building a bridge across the underground river.

He knows how to build a bridge, but he has no clue how he's supposed to reach the other side in order to excavate it so he can then build the bridge across the span.

So I'm asking on his behalf: what gives?

[Duckie]

Uts has been progressing quite well with his current fortress, but he's experiencing a bout of bafflement concerning building a bridge across the underground river.

He knows how to build a bridge, but he has no clue how he's supposed to reach the other side in order to excavate it so he can then build the bridge across the span.

So I'm asking on his behalf: what gives?

build the bridge with one column of squares attached to the end you already have, make the length long enough to reach the rocks on the other side. Walk over. If you then want to change the orientation of the bridge, destroy it and rebuild.

Let me illustrate.

OOXXXXXX##

X is the river, # is rock, O is the tunnel you've dug to the river.

Build a bridge like so
O=======##

Now walk over and dig up the ##s, and if you want to change how the bridge raises and which side it overlaps, destroy the bridge and rebuild.

Also, as to metal goods, SPOILER WARNING Magma-based smelting, once constructed at the Magma River, consumes no Coke nor Charcoal. To do it, you need a certain amount of steel which needs a certain amount of coke, and to start coke production you need bituminous coal and charcoal, but in the end you can forge without utilizing wood furnaces

Also, until your supply of coal runs out, Coke is more economical to create than strict Charcoal usage. Also, growing your own tower-cap mushrooms by irrigating a chamber and not touching it as far as planting will let you harvest those mushrooms after they mature. Tower Caps are, as I keep stressing, fungi trees. Their skin is wood.

[Cincinnatus]

After one or two failures, I just survived my first winter. The major thing I had to figure out was how to get irrigation to work. After that, I had plenty of food.

One thing I'm having trouble with is building a road. My mason is taking forever to make it. He just keeps dragging rocks out to the different build sites I've set up. Should I lay down one section, wait for him to finish it, then lay down the next?

[GuppyShark]

I've now exanded quite deep into the mountain, only casualties so far are a few dwarves who drowned, a few who've gone mad, and a headache caused by staring at flashing letters on a black background.

Militarily, I can't recommend marksdwarves enough. I convert all the trappers I get into Marksdwarves - they suffer zero casualties in training, and there's little that can withstand the hail of death they unleash.

With all the lessons I've learned, I've got a few things I want to try now:

A) RP Fort. I want every dwarf to have his own house and workplace.
B) Ironforge. I want to see if it would actually work. :p
C) Superfort in a death zone. Entrance area for military personnel only. Designed from the beginning to be nigh impenetrable without using 'sploits.

I haven't had much more than kobolds trying to nick my trade goods, so I think I'll start a new fort. Are goblin invasions rare or something? I'm actually not that keen on the 'undead elephant' concept, I'd rather fight against the goblin king!

Hrmm, rocks blocking doors could be dangerous. I'm using doors to prevent floodwaters reaching into areas I don't want them, but if some idiot goes on break while he's hauling a rock through a door...

[ColonialAdmiral]

well, I'm going to have to start again...

Freaking cave just colapsed on my carpenter, and it was a furnuture storage, so there goes all my wood...

[Starglider]

I had a go at this today, fortunately it doesn't need too much attention, I just let it run on one PC and glanced at/fiddled with it every so often. Here's where I was after one year (when the first set of immigrants turned up);



Kinda hard to make out, but I dug out a big corridor with five rooms branching off, with plenty of space inbetween them (four rooms with two workshops each plus a barracks/dining room that also has the trading post). I then wrapped completely separate sections round the sides and covered the walls in arrow slits, firing out the front and in on the initial rooms, with six bedrooms and some training areas each for a small dedicated marksdwarf garrison. If and when I do a main base on the other side of the river (probably straddling the chasm, the industrial stuff on the magma side, the agricultural stuff on the river side, with lots of bridges) I'll tear down all the old starting workshops, fill the place to the brim with traps and use it as a goblin sponge. I made a modest sized LotR-cliche pointless hall full of columns - turned out somewhat misty due to the unexpected waterful - but just wait until I add a series of larger ones and run lava through them all.

Haven't done any agriculture or butchering yet; I found that gathering, brewing and cooking the outside plants was more than sufficient (plus a little fishing and buying all the meat the caravan had, didn't really need it though) for the first year. However I did get lucky with the elephants staying on the far side of the river and not managing to kill the caravan.

[Utsanomiko]

Well, the bridge indeed worked, but I won't be excavating past it for a while. The fortress of Alathenkos, 'Bolttaker' is almost two years old now (I abandoned my first site after a year and a half after a lack of food supplies and an axe, starting over in a nearby location in the same world).

As best as I can tell, there have no animals bigger than a mouse or a bird outside my new fortress. I guess it's quiet enough for me to learn on but I liked being able to hunt groundhogs in the first region, even though it also included monkeys, cougars, and wolves.

One of my craftdwarves went into a secretive mood and tried to make something out of crystal glass (which damn it is not an easy material to provide for, why couldn't she just make a marble mug or an onyx ring something?). Eventually she just went berzerk and killed one of my engravers before being taken down.

But otherwise things have been fine. I converted the old 7x21 open sleeping room into a second dining hall and created new 2x2 bedrooms in an intricate catacomb of a housing area. I've also been carving new crafting rooms so I can reduce the number of workshops in the same area. It seems like 6x7 will give me enough space for 1-2 workshops, two or more piles for materials and finished goods, plus a clear path to walk from one door to the other. I'll need to keep such modularity in mind for my next fortress, and expand past the river quicker.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Anyway to get the horses out of the fucking fortress? Uts has a well in his dining hall, and all the horses and foals (dogs, too) keep hanging around in there. He isn't sure if it has anything to do with the well, but he also has one outside.

[Duckie]

Anyway to get the horses out of the fucking fortress? Uts has a well in his dining hall, and all the horses and foals (dogs, too) keep hanging around in there. He isn't sure if it has anything to do with the well, but he also has one outside.

Cages. Keep every animal in cages except pets and War Dogs.

[Utsanomiko]

Godfucking dammit, I made a save in the middle of my third summer, and not five seconds later a kobold shows up, which then causes a bug within fifteen seconds that makes the game crash. Every single time.

My save is botched and my only backup is from the previous fall.

Of course it's just an alpha but it's frustrating, especially after my nobles arrived, I'd discovered iron ore and the magma river, and two of my Dwarves had crafted artifacts, one of whom became a legendary engraver.

EDIT: Well no, I guess I didn't have that save made, either. I decided keeping Alathenkos itself was more important than the current 55-Dwarf populace, so I uploaded the save file, abandoned the fortress, and restarted the game using Reclaim mode.

I was given 21 Dwarves, all being military with secondary jobs pre-chosen, I then added a variety of meat and wine to my list and set off for the mysteriously-abandoned fortress in Spring 1056. They had to make their way through room by room, fighting antmen and giant rats and spiders. I lost two Dwarves during the assault, but Alanthenkos is mine once again (had to [d]esignate and [c]laim all the stuff inside afterwards).

It's summer now and I've restarted crafting & farming and think I've cleared away all the bodies, which asides from the monsters only included stray animals.

[Walsh]

Is there any way to move individual objects? Someone blocked my irrigation chamber doors with stones. I can't just create a stockpile for those particular stones since there are so many of them all over my fortress, it would take forever just to move that one stone.

Thanks.

[Ar-Adunakhor]

No, there is not. Kind of sucks, eh?

[GuppyShark]

Set up a custom stockpile (I recommend outside) for just that material. It shouldn't take that long.

I'm always tempted to dig enormous storage rooms for rock, to tidy the place up... but that's kind of counterproductive.

I've also set up double doors on any area I want to use doors to block water flow. Just in case.

[Starglider]

Set up a custom stockpile (I recommend outside) for just that material. It shouldn't take that long.

And set everyone's labour preferences to move stones and nothing else. I think the lesson here is 'keep your fortress tidy', this is why I was using the vast pointless hall-full-of-columns as a boulder storage facility.

I've also set up double doors on any area I want to use doors to block water flow. Just in case.

Also sound advice. Luckily river floods don't penetrate much past waterfalls, otherwise my big hall would've been completely flooded by the integral waterfall.

[GuppyShark]

Also, it's probably limestone, since that's what the river is lined with. You need limestone in the late game, so don't do something silly like chasm it all.

[Covenant]

I've got a problem. One of my farmers seems to be hoarding Plump Helmets in his room, even though I've disabled his food gather routine. He's a cook now, but he grabs them when they're fresh and sticks them in his room and then... just sits there for a bit. He'll have a few in there, and never eat them. They wilt on his floor. Seriously, what's this guy's problem?

[GuppyShark]

Fuck yes! Graphical tiles!



Anyone who's been holding off on giving this awesome game a go because it looks like ass, here's the URL!

http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/inde ... t_Tilesets

[Duckie]

Mayhap it's my opinion but to me graphical tilesets look like more ass than the roguelike charm of the default graphics.

[Resinence]

Fuck yes! Graphical tiles!



Anyone who's been holding off on giving this awesome game a go because it looks like ass, here's the URL!

http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/inde ... t_Tilesets

Unfortunately the terrain tiles share the same fontset as the menu's. So probably better off waiting for the next release or the one after that adds support for seperate terrain tile fonts (since we can't get the sourcecode to do it ourselves ). It's looks marginally better than just text with the creatures replaced though, though it doesn't take much to improve on the ascii ass it has right now.

[GuppyShark]

An idea I've had - to move a rock that is keeping a door open, try setting a stone fall trap right next to it. Your engineer should grab the closest available rock to load it - which would be the one you want.

[Alan Bolte]

The graphics aren't stopping me, I just find the tutorial to be a little too vague. I end up sitting there with not much going on other than one guy mining, 7 bedrooms, and a well.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Man, the Roguelike text graphics are what's part of the appeal. If some people can't handle that, then I guess the game isn't really for them.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

Man, the Roguelike text graphics are what's part of the appeal. If some people can't handle that, then I guess the game isn't really for them.

Hah, I'd be glad to denounce graphical whores with ya, but minimalist > abstracted.

Although, I'd guess once you've learned to tell them apart it's basically the same. Still, half's pushing it. I'd put most of the rest of the concept at a solid 5/6ths at the least. I mean, commanding your own army of swarthy, axe-weilding, strong-drinking, stout-folk against hordes of the like of Skeletal elephants and zombie warthogs, not to mention more standard fantasy enemies...

well, it kinda blows whatever charm ascii graphics had out the shitter, now don't it. ;P

[Starglider]

Man, the Roguelike text graphics are what's part of the appeal. If some people can't handle that, then I guess the game isn't really for them.

Agree. But IMHO the menu structure is excessively obfuscated. Plus the inability to tell specific dwarves to do specific things (or failing that individually prioritise the preferences->labours list) is really annoying.

[Covenant]

Man, the Roguelike text graphics are what's part of the appeal. If some people can't handle that, then I guess the game isn't really for them.

Agree. But IMHO the menu structure is excessively obfuscated. Plus the inability to tell specific dwarves to do specific things (or failing that individually prioritise the preferences->labours list) is really annoying.

That's a failure of even high-production basebuilder games like Evil Genius, where you set 'tags' on things and hoped to god that someone competant would come up and complete whatever that tag was. What was worse was the research and combat--your soldiers would only shoot guys if they saw them, or saw them on camera. You had such problems trying to get soldiers to do specific things.

I think the entire basebuilding genre could use a little more direction. It may not be realistic for me to micro-manage a nation, as you really want this to be about trying to structure things properly, but then you add in combat and a few other idiocy tests to make my guys look exceedingly stupid. My Dwarves are scared off by a raccoon? By a fox? A deer? They shoot at Zombie Fucking Elephants? What the hell for? For zombie steaks?

And traps piss me off. I dislike needing to rely on traps. Traps are a way of letting me do specific things in specific places, but require that the enemy satisfy the requirements for me. What would be so wrong about removing exploitive traps (which encourage passivity) and giving me the ability to direct my Dwarves? I think this game is super fun, but this is just a failing I see in most of these games. Allowing me to give specific orders to specific Dwarves shouldn't be impossible. Why not let me have a Dwarf Lord who can summon Dwarves to his throneroom and tell them things? Or why can't I tell them not to sleep on the bridge? I don't mind that my Dwarves aren't under my direct control, and that I need to understand their desires and behaviors, but the whole genre (and not just a roguelike-graphics game like this) needs to realize that a little bit of micromanagement is fine and that it is completely unrealistic for me to be this omnipresent force that can assign them build orders, command them to commit suicide, lock them in their rooms via magic, but can't even explain to them that when it floods, they'll get washed off the bridge.