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On May 25 2011 21:31 kuresuti wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2011 09:49 Skithiryx wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On May 24 2011 05:08 Avarice wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2011 04:17 GP wrote:
Yeah, but again, why waste time when you could just look at it and say "that's a log! I know it is because it's a picture of a log, and I can instantly recognize that" rather than say "what's that brown dash that kind of looks like a turd? let me use the look command to hover over it and see what it is." Dwarf Fortress is such a fun and rewarding game, but it frustrates me that the control scheme and default graphics are intentionally archaic (because hey, it's not about the bells and whistles, it's about the simulation, right?) Sim City is the only game I can think of that even approaches the complexity of Dwarf Fortress, and how successful do you think it would be if a every building was represented by an abstract ASCII symbol and you could only use the keyboard to control the game (and every time you switch to a different selection your cursor annoyingly snaps back to the center of the screen).and you had to navigate through all of the features with unintuitive hotkeys through barely organized menus with a control scheme that's not even consistent (sometimes you navigate menus with the plus/minus keys, sometimes you can use arrow keys, sometimes you can select areas with the enter key drawing the boarders, sometimes you use the ukhm keys, sometimes you use the plus/minus keys. This. I'm completely addicted to this game, there's very little that compares and I love the creative implications of such complex mechanics- but oh how I wish I could actually recommend this to any of my less masochistic friends. After what, 5+ years of development, why can't you use the mouse for anything but designations? The learning curve wouldn't be such a sheer face with even a few 'concessions' toward accessibility. Rclick menus, building placement by mouse, (walls being the silliest example of where this is needed) and restructuring of some of the more bloated menus (hello, military screen) would go a long way toward making the game see more lasting players and fewer abandoned desktop icons. This game and most ASCII roguelikes aren't built for the general public, sure you can get tilesets but the whole idea is it's keeping true to the original and arguably best format where time spent learning the game is very much well rewarded, If this game had mouse support what's the point, it's never been marketed as a noob friendly game, hell the catch phrase is "Remember, losing is fun" let people abandon it, i'll still be happily building death forts for many years to come. The point is to enjoy the amazing game. I for one welcome anything which makes it easier to enjoy the actual game, instead of trying to enjoy it while fighting the interface.
Once you've played the game a bit you get accustomed to the interface, and you don't notice problems with it for the most part.
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K im just starting up now. Are there any settings in lazy newb package i should change ? I loaded the ironhand graphix package and pressed install graphics. What does the true type fonts do ? ATM I have it on yes since it was the default. In the options menu theres also things like economy, temp ect. pop cap stands at 200. Isnt this bit low ? or will I not need to worry about that till I actually know what im doing ?
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For the most part, just leave the settings on default.
Turning aquifers off makes things easier to deal with, opening up more regions and such, that is probably the only thing to edit for newer players. If aquifers are on, just hunt around for an area without them in your world.
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200 pop cap will be way more than you can handle starting out lol. The LNP default settings are fine for starting out though.
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DF kind of kills most computers when you get anywhere near the 200 pop cap anyways - a healthy recycling of dwarves through various nefarious situations keeps everyone happy (except the dwarves).
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On May 26 2011 02:19 Dfgj wrote:
DF kind of kills most computers when you get anywhere near the 200 pop cap anyways - a healthy recycling of dwarves through various nefarious situations keeps everyone happy (except the dwarves).
Todays unhappy dwarves are tomorrows charred remains.
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On May 26 2011 02:23 HeIios wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2011 02:19 Dfgj wrote:
DF kind of kills most computers when you get anywhere near the 200 pop cap anyways - a healthy recycling of dwarves through various nefarious situations keeps everyone happy (except the dwarves). Todays unhappy dwarves are tomorrows charred remains.
And todays charred remains are tomorrow's crossbow bolts, filling Goblins.
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Heh, I'm so glad this game didn't exist when I was in school.
Novice DF'er here, with a few tales of failure and some words of advice:
I. Died of thirst & goblin sieges. Population 30 or so...
II. Rag-tag army suffered many losses, tantrum spiral rendered the fortress uninhabitable. Also peaked around 40.
III. Over 80 happy dwarves, woefully ill-equipped to deal with the invaders their glittering fortress invited. Also, I didn't yet have "building traps" as part of my DF skillset.
IV. Now a barony with over 130 dwarves and a well! We just breached the first cavern area, which very well may be my downfall. As an amusing sidenote, I initially told one squad to move to an area of open space, roughly 8 z-levels above the cavern floor, in order to explore the cavern system and defend any miners. Later, I realized that the cavern goes way down, and that the dots weren't cave floor. Luckily, the army knew when their commander in chief had no clue what he was talking about.
Make an army before you amass too much wealth. Check the df wiki for military quickstart guides, the interface is really confusing and you need to step through very carefully. A barracks is handy as well. I've found myself using the 's'quad interface for military commands. You can pretty quickly assign your military tasks like killing things (use the "select from list" option and highlight all the baddies / annoying critters) or giving all the dwarves some well-deserved R&R (select squad, hit 't' and check their inactive/active status). Also, hunters make good marksdwarves, since they basically end up training when they're off-duty.
Stockpiles, stockpiles, stockpiles... Where to begin? I'm still a newbie when it comes to design, but it's looking like an efficient system of stockpiles is one of the marks of a well-designed fortress. The custom stockpiles are handy, but you can also make a rough first guess, say, throwing down a food stockpile, then go back with 'q', 's' to alter the settings and narrow it down further by individually selecting the things you actually want stored there, like seeds. Also, make lots and lots of bins.
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Oke, so far so good. I made it a few pages down the tutorial. Got a trade center, large stockpiles, some small farm, a lot of stairwells to 7 levels down. 4 workshops. and starting my bedchambers / office. Gonna stop for tonight and might play a bit more tomorow. Current headcount is 11 dwarfs.
Btw can I mine out everything a level below without it colapsing ? or is mining a level below where you have other rooms dangerous ?
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I've never seen an invading beast get killed so fast. An ettin made the egregious error of taking my hammer lord's kitten and hurling it about 50 feet, the poor little thing never had a chance. He was soon set upon by said hammer lord, who opened the combat by crushing the bones the ettin's left foot to dust. Of course, the only option at that point was for the hammer lord to latch onto the ettin's leg with his teeth (obvious course of action after disabling your opponent -- they are open for biting), tearing the muscle. The fight was concluded shortly after by the arrival of the rest of my military forces.
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On May 26 2011 05:33 Marradron wrote:
Oke, so far so good. I made it a few pages down the tutorial. Got a trade center, large stockpiles, some small farm, a lot of stairwells to 7 levels down. 4 workshops. and starting my bedchambers / office. Gonna stop for tonight and might play a bit more tomorow. Current headcount is 11 dwarfs.
Btw can I mine out everything a level below without it colapsing ? or is mining a level below where you have other rooms dangerous ?
I was at that point too. Then i ran into a food shortage, FUN FUN FUN
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On May 26 2011 05:33 Marradron wrote:
Btw can I mine out everything a level below without it colapsing ? or is mining a level below where you have other rooms dangerous ?
Only one way to find out.
FUN ^.^
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Will probaply be what I do after I finish the tutorial. All dwarfs must die sometime right  ?
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I opened the page and my eyes started bleeding. T_T I'm not huge into graphics but jaysus, the bright colors just wrecked my face.
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On May 26 2011 03:45 nanoscorp wrote:
Also, I didn't yet have "building traps" as part of my DF skillset. '
I actually prefer to go with limited/no traps. If anything I just set up a room with a spear trap in it to impale a dwarf or two so that my doctors can get some experience eheheh
For me, nothing beats dwarfs going head to head with colossus/alligator/unicorn/goblin...ect. Oh, I do like cage traps though. Arena anyone?
On May 25 2011 23:59 Dfgj wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2011 21:31 kuresuti wrote:On May 24 2011 09:49 Skithiryx wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On May 24 2011 05:08 Avarice wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2011 04:17 GP wrote:
Yeah, but again, why waste time when you could just look at it and say "that's a log! I know it is because it's a picture of a log, and I can instantly recognize that" rather than say "what's that brown dash that kind of looks like a turd? let me use the look command to hover over it and see what it is." Dwarf Fortress is such a fun and rewarding game, but it frustrates me that the control scheme and default graphics are intentionally archaic (because hey, it's not about the bells and whistles, it's about the simulation, right?) Sim City is the only game I can think of that even approaches the complexity of Dwarf Fortress, and how successful do you think it would be if a every building was represented by an abstract ASCII symbol and you could only use the keyboard to control the game (and every time you switch to a different selection your cursor annoyingly snaps back to the center of the screen).and you had to navigate through all of the features with unintuitive hotkeys through barely organized menus with a control scheme that's not even consistent (sometimes you navigate menus with the plus/minus keys, sometimes you can use arrow keys, sometimes you can select areas with the enter key drawing the boarders, sometimes you use the ukhm keys, sometimes you use the plus/minus keys. This. I'm completely addicted to this game, there's very little that compares and I love the creative implications of such complex mechanics- but oh how I wish I could actually recommend this to any of my less masochistic friends. After what, 5+ years of development, why can't you use the mouse for anything but designations? The learning curve wouldn't be such a sheer face with even a few 'concessions' toward accessibility. Rclick menus, building placement by mouse, (walls being the silliest example of where this is needed) and restructuring of some of the more bloated menus (hello, military screen) would go a long way toward making the game see more lasting players and fewer abandoned desktop icons. This game and most ASCII roguelikes aren't built for the general public, sure you can get tilesets but the whole idea is it's keeping true to the original and arguably best format where time spent learning the game is very much well rewarded, If this game had mouse support what's the point, it's never been marketed as a noob friendly game, hell the catch phrase is "Remember, losing is fun" let people abandon it, i'll still be happily building death forts for many years to come. The point is to enjoy the amazing game. I for one welcome anything which makes it easier to enjoy the actual game, instead of trying to enjoy it while fighting the interface. Once you've played the game a bit you get accustomed to the interface, and you don't notice problems with it for the most part.
Yeah, it's like starcraft, but instead of doing 1a to attack you have to do skl-enter. You definitely can become proficient in the commonly used keys. dbD, yeah.
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my god, I have done that well over a couple hundred times.
and d, d is another heavily used key.
I found out a wonderful new use of my tiny shitty military of 4 dudes, make them kill whole groups of pandapeople. I almost lost a dwarf in combat though, due to the pandaman shoving my dwarf into a valley river. Had to get my main miner to come out and rescue him. It was honestly pretty amazing to watch happen.
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d and q are my most used keys, generally speaking.
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On May 26 2011 13:04 Fontong wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2011 03:45 nanoscorp wrote:
Also, I didn't yet have "building traps" as part of my DF skillset. ' I actually prefer to go with limited/no traps. If anything I just set up a room with a spear trap in it to impale a dwarf or two so that my doctors can get some experience eheheh For me, nothing beats dwarfs going head to head with colossus/alligator/unicorn/goblin...ect. Oh, I do like cage traps though. Arena anyone?
Yeah, I'm the same - I use weapon traps/pressureplates to drop ceilings and the like as interior defenses, if at all, but prefer lever-operated death rooms for outer defense.
Still, I feel a constant urge to capture particularly dangerous creatures to either be caged in dungeon rooms beneath my dwarf jail, or create arenas.
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On May 26 2011 08:07 Tyrr wrote:
I opened the page and my eyes started bleeding. T_T I'm not huge into graphics but jaysus, the bright colors just wrecked my face.
Lol yeah I hope you didn't embark on a glacier because the default snow on black background is brutal on the eyes. I haven't used a tileset in years and even though I'm used to it, I still dislike snow in the default. However I prefer default over tilesets because of some foolish nerd pride.
Also in my new fort, I encountered skeletal hippos for the first time.
I assumed they would go down without scratching a copper armoured embark dwarf, like most skeletal monsters do. So I sent my military dwarf to level up on them. Boy was I wrong. Those things are vicious, They killed my militarydwarf in all his shiny copper armour in less than a second, and then proceeded to kill 5 of my 6 remaining dwarves. I tried to keep going with my last dwarf but he fell victim to a skeletal alligator about a month later  .
never will I underestimate skeletal hippos again.
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EPT
