Dwarf Fortress 2014 (and other dwarfish games)

Tzeentch has been happy lately. He has played a fine videogame recently. He has recently slept well. He has a moderate source of income. He has complained about the lack of booze. He has read some good new recently.

A short and sturdy creature fond of drink and industry. Prone to happy thoughts.


SOON

So yeah. DF 2014 is around the corner, and ToadyOne is just wiping a up a few bugs before it gets released. I thought I'd do a new let's play of the build when it releases so that we may once more laugh and enjoy the antics of alcoholic midget sociopaths as they live and die. But first I'd like to gather some information from those of us interested. Namely things like where to try and colonize my first fort of the new build (desert, frozen wasteland, jungle, hell, etc.) and what tileset to use to make the game easier to understand for new players ( http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Graphics_set_repository ).

Also, before I forget. While I was looking up information and getting ready for DF 2014 I found this little gem.

http://www.dwarfcorp.com/site/

It's pretty much a lighter version of Dwarf fortress thats in development. It plays like dwarf fortres, but has graphics somewhere between minecraft and harvest moon. The prototype for the game is free so I'm going to be playing a short game of it over the weekend and updating this thread later with how I feel about it.

 

Have you looked at Gnomoria? It's another DF-like with graphics (not as advanced as what Dwarf Corp has, though). It's currently only $3.99 on Steam.

 

I'm not impressed with it. It doesn't have the smack you in the face with difficulty level of depth that dwarf fortress had, and the graphics seem ..... hmmm, well how do I put this. It's like only half of the sprites are appealing to me. I mean REALLY appealing. The character sprites especially remind me of this game I had when I was really young for the sega genisis but god damn I can't remember the title of it. It was... well I'm going to say JRPG, but not in the sense that final fantasy is or dragon quest. It was this isometric sort of view over a battlefield and you'd move units around on square grids to fufill missions over the course of a story line. It had hero characters, and hardier knights alongside footmen and lancers on horseback and all that good shit, so it's really stroking my nostalgia there. The other half however....eugh look uninspired at best, and simcity like at worst. It's like it smacks me in the worst way with this "coulda been" line of thought. Also gnomes aren't dwarfs, and you can't wrestle mega beasts to death, or create a high-pressure blood hose trap to blast invaders off of your drawbridge with enough force to probably kill them before the fall does, or create and broadsword version of "Planepacked".

Don't get me wrong, the game's got a lot of potential and I'd like to see where it goes. It's just... bland as it is right now. Not near enough to dwarf fortress to feel like a challenge and not near enough to the bright colorful graphics or light heartedness it's trying to blend in there either. ALTHOUGH DAMN IT FOR BRINGING BACK MY MEMORIES OF THAT SEGA GENESIS GAME. God Dammit, I gotta know what it was now! .....dammit I was planning on sleeping tonight.

 

I think you should build a tower above ground in a frozen wasteland.

 

I'll build it of DIRT and heat the bitch with MAGMA.

 

Figured I'd play a quick game of Dwarf Corps before I head out to enjoy the "Brew at the Zoo" and make an ass of myself in front of the leopard exhibit. Set the 1st Huscarls shield as my dwarf company's logo because it works. OMG THE MUSIC. I LOVE THE MUSIC. FUCK ME THIS MUSIC TAKES ME BACK TO GOOD TIMES. It's like playing a god damn 90's videogame console. I LOOOOOOOOVE IT. EVERYTHING IS AMAZING. I also figured out why they made the dwarfs sprites despite being a 3d environment. They got sprite sheets, and an option under the graphics setting to select which image to load from. So you can make your own if you don't like the default and load them into the game easily. I'm falling in love with this game far too quickly.

I think it has a memory leak though. It slows down significantly after a while and the dwarves start piddling about like they've been given lobotomies. Such is a game prototype though.

 

Sounds like Fire Emblem, but I don't think that was on Sega Genesis.

 

I think you're thinking of Shining Force

 

All close and good games, but no. I did some research. Turns out it was called 'Warsong', or as the series is better known "Langrisser". Langrisser I and II specifically. From 3 onwards, the series takes a sharp left turn into weeaboo knights. And it's chief artist is the guy who draws all that pornography nowadays because it's more lucrative than being an artist in the games and anime industry. If you see his style you'll know who I'm talking about. He goes by Tony Taka.

Spoiler

The image is SFW. It's just not relevant to Dwarf Fortress by any measurement.

 

"I'm going to do some overdue optimizations tomorrow, and then we'll be titrating in some final bug fixes until the release suddenly appears."
6/28/14

Dwarfs approach.

 

YES!

 

I'm going to finish upsome work today, and then get started on figuring out Masterwork Dwarf Fortress so I can do a few games in preperation for the next DF release. I'll post any memorable events or games here. Here's the rundown on what Masterwork DF is.



☼Masterwork☼ Dwarf Fortress (MDF) is a mod package that makes Dwarf Fortress four times as big, but still keeps true to the original atmosphere of the game. It adds over 330 buildings, over 6000 reactions, over 1000 creatures and up to 35 races. It includes a selection of utilities and two playable race plugins (Orc Fortress and Kobold Camp). Since v4h, it's also possible to play as Gnomes or as Warlocks.

The Masterwork mod uses a system of generic materials. For example, leather is only called leather (as opposed to "creature-name" leather). This also applies to silk, hair, milk, meat and blood, bones and wood. You won't have to scroll through 50 building materials in your list, but only 10. This is one of the few features of MDF that can't be turned on and off. Together with some other performance improving tweaks, Masterwork DF could increase your frame rate by about 25% from vanilla DF.

There are a wide range of tough enemies to up the challenge level, exotic materials, new industries; even threats from within the fortress like diseases and hostile cults. Religion, guns, mages and slaves. Runes, mithril, automatons and raptors. There are libraries, garrisons and guildhalls to skill up your dwarves. In version 3f, a magic system was added. Add only the parts that appeal to you; most settings can be customized by the player with the included Settings.exe user interface. You can enable and disable parts of the mod just by pressing a button and generating a new world.

There are lots of new materials — iron, silver and steel weapons are just the beginning.




Includes stonesense, dfhack, dfFusion, stonesense and (patched) dwarf therapist.

- MORE FPS, NO CLUTTER.
- Fixes bugs and rebalances features. Weaker traps, harder farming, mining and smithing...
- Human and Elf diplomats. You can now order from caravans again...
- Trading is very important and a lot harder...
- More invaders will come. Forst Giants, Automatons, Warlocks, Orcs, Zombies...
- Adds unique stuff like guardian turrets, golems, decoys and landmines...
- Adds new weapons and armor. Guns, 2handed melee, dual wielding, throwing weapons...
- A lot of non-ingame stuff, like pre-genned worlds and embark profiles...

- A massive amount of new buildings and reactions.

- Religion, Castes, Spies and Mages.
- Gem warfare, use gems for weapons.
- 45 magic arrow types, 3 metal upgrades.
- Adds +75 buildings, +850 creatures, +150 plants, +120 trees,
+25 intruments, +85 toys, +85 food types, +75 weapons and armor,
+75 engravings, +250 pref-strings, +35 civs. All of these are optional.
- Reward system for people who explore the caverns, fight megabeasts and the HFS.

 

i tried playing DF original, I got confused, if there was a short tutorial I'd probally end up loving this game.

 

Masterwork pretty much streamlines all of the shit. There's a tutorial here for the base version of the game you can follow to set up an initial fort.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Quickstart_guide

And this is the aptly named Lazy Newb Pack.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/?topic=59026.0

It's your one stop hop for everything Dorf Fort if you just feel like playing the base game but want a little help setting up. It includes some tilesets to replace the base ACII with actual purty pictures to make things a bit easier to understand, and the coveted program Dwarf Therapist that runs alongside Dwarf Fortress. Dwarf Therapists allows you to see all your dwarves listed on a spreadsheet with jobs that you can assign to each dwarf, and then save LIVE to the game you're playing. As opposed to, in game, hunting down and sorting out the job of each individual dwarf via the menus. It also really helps sorting out waves of immigrants from the homeland so you can actually get them to work quickly doing jobs you actually need done, and not fucking soap, or lye making, or beekeeping for some damn reason without the proper facilities built yet to do so or even give a damn about trying to.

 

Started a short game yesterday. My civilization had access to GIANT WAR/HUNTING LIONS/JAGUARS/CHEETAHS. Of course I got my ass one. Then as evidence of how much I'd forgotten, winter came and everyone died of thirst because no well for water. Oh, and a kobold stole my booze. I'm gonna place a small stockpile outside guarded by a few dogs and have ballistae aimed at it next time. When the dogs expose the thief we'll impale his ass. Impractical yes, but fuck it because dwarf.

 

"The game is coming out next week! Soon you will get to join us in the living hell of debugging this monster. I'm only sort of playing! Almost everything about dwarf behavior had to be changed for this release, so literally every aspect of the game is crawling with bugs. We didn't wait this long because we hate you! We just wanted to get rid of the most soul-crushing bugs so you could join us in perfecting this creation without pulling out all of your hair! Thank you for sticking around. We could not do this without your help."


"Fun with Numbers

Yeah, I was hoping to release it on the 1st, but it'll be a good thing to hang on to it for a few more days. I just crashed after walking 10 steps with an adventurer, and there were a few justice crashes fixed yesterday. Soon... soon..."

 

I think I found the most perfect hunter to ever be enlisted into my Militia. Ever. Here's the description of his behavior.

"He is in a constant state of internal rage. He occasionally overindulges. He doesn't handle stress well. He is very active. He is incredibly creative. He appreciates art and natural beauty. He is uncomfortable with change. He is an ardent believer in convention and traditional society. He is trusting. He finds helping others rewarding. He is not affected by the suffering of others, He strives for excellence. He has very little self discipline. He likes working outdoors and grumbles only mildly at inclement weather."

 

I have founded Despairmire the Hungry Dank Crimson-Bodice of Lamentation. Time to see how long I can keep these poor bastards alive for...

 

Spoiler

Here is the world activation release! Lots of processes from world generation -- birth, invasions, succession, site foundation, and so on -- now operate in the world after play has begun. Getting all of that to work led to a meandering route through various pieces of the game, some of which are described below. Aside from any bugginess, a lot of it will still feel rough and unfinished as things bump around.

New stuff

• World activation! There are a few things that aren't active, like megabeast invasions, but lots of world gen actions made it into the game. Birth, death (to the extent it wasn't handled before), marriages, site foundation as well as reclaims, basic succession and appointments/etc., invasions, as well as some more detail beyond world gen, like patrols, banditry and animal population handling. We still don't have army battles -- the invasions are all successful right now, unless they are locally interfered with by you.
• The game advances two weeks before each play -- the calendar there still moves slowly when there's a lot of action, as there is in larger worlds, but there are quite a few things I can do soon to speed that up. Due to the speed of the calendar, new forts in particular also get just two weeks. This'll probably cause some shenanigans with the caravan (or you'll just have to wait a year in an autumn fort for your first one) until we sort it out.
• Fortresses can be retired and unretired. Losing is still fun but if it doesn't happen when you want, you can put it off for a while. Retired forts can be conquered (much more easily than they would be if you still controlled them), so don't be surprised if you have to reclaim instead of being able to unretire sometimes. You can reclaim forts that didn't make it through world generation.
• Site maps for dwarves, elves and goblins. These are very basic, but they are there, anyway.
• Multi-tile trees and lots of new plants. Fruit and flowers. Leaves that fall in little clouds. I had to put off dwarf mode tree harvesting, but we should get to that before long.
• Megabeasts/forgotten beasts can attack, destroy and then reside within world gen sites like dwarf fortresses. FUN
  
• Various movement changes. Climbing/jumping/sprinting in both modes, though invaders still require a line of site to use them. Adventure mode has a stealth rewrite, and some elements of that are present in dwarf mode (it is generally easier to spot thieves and ambushers, and I'll probably need to make them smarter about finding cover). Movement and combat are separate now. Startled people climb up the walls of their homes a little too often. (Sounds like dwarves are cats now)
• Tracking information in adventure mode. You can pull up a little window and see tracks (capital K), and you can also have it describe the freshest track that isn't yours to more easily stay on a trail (alt K). Tracks are also part of the regular look command.
• Different levels of conflict -- your opponents in adventure mode will be listed with the current status (non-lethal, lethal, no quarter, etc.).
• Combat moves take place over a period of time now, and you can do things like catching an opponent's attack -- you have to do that by targeting a grab at the offending part now (More stupid dwarf tricks) (reactions used to have a menu, but that was before combat got more smeared out). You can get information about what attacks your opponent is doing in the attack menu -- the quality of the information depends on your situational awareness skill. You can add adjective modifiers to your attacks (quick/heavy/etc.) and you can perform more than one attack at a time for a significant penalty to its force. It might make sense with two adamantine swords or something, twirling them about.
• Rumors of incidents can be spread, and the rumors need to be spread before you gain reputation (good or bad). Killing all of the witnesses to an event will effectively remove it from play if you don't let them get off the screen. People are a little psychic as it regards ongoing conflicts, so that they can make decisions non-stupidly. Your liaison can share rumors with your fort, but I still need to set up the screen for reviewing them after you've seen them the first time... not that you can do much with the information.
• You can travel through tunnels. (Well no shit, really?)
  
• You can get a guide to travel with you to a faraway place -- it still ended up being too cumbersome, so locals continue to be able to tell you the location of sites, but only within a certain distance of their home town.
• In general, conversations have been redone. They no longer have their own screen, but run along with other actions, and there are many more options.
• The mind has been rewritten quite a bit -- people now experience emotions according to different circumstances (lots of awkward monologues there), and they consider actions differently. (The devs think of everything(double entendre))The main outstanding issue is that I didn't get around to converting existing dwarf mode thoughts, so they sort of exist concurrently with the new emotions and that needs to be changed. I'll get to that before job priorities (which was one of the main shorter-term reasons for the rewrite). Some dwarves have life-long dreams and it is possible for them to recognize that they've accomplished the ones relating to skills and family. They cannot yet realize their dreams of taking over the world.
• The paragraph at the beginning of adventure mode was marginally more useful, but that slipped a bit at the end as things were tweaked. I think it'll still describe certain invasions and abductions, but it needs to be redone.
• Lots of new arena options -- not just the conflict state, but you can set the temperature etc. to all sorts of extremes.
• Some experiments with procedural items, though the new demon-type sites are still quite un-fun now. The knowledge on the slab at the bottom can be used, but it is probably not worth the trouble.
• The stuff I forgot

Bug fixes

• I'm sure several old bugs were "fixed" as large portions of the code was rewritten/removed, but I haven't tried to track exactly which ones. Bug fixes will commence in earnest now, and everything will be handled over at the bug tracker.