Bay 12 Games Forum

so ive just started my first fortress of 0.44.02 and right off the bat ive noticed something strange.
there is an elf bard standing next to my wagon.

on the units screen they are listed as guest/no activity.

they are just slowly meandering around the wagon not doing anything.

i had barely begun to even dig into the ground and chop trees when i noticed them, so theres no reason i can think of for them to be here already.

im guessing that this is due to the new features introduced in the update, and that this person is actually some sort of thief trying to pose as a bard.

is there any other explanation for this? is it a common occurrence?

im building my first gaming rig and a guy that i know recommended that i use the ASUS radeon 480 graphics card since im planning on using an ASUS motherboard, and when you use both you can mess with your overclocking settings without rebooting, as well as the fact that it has 8gb of ram as opposed to 6gb.

One thing that i noticed about that GPU is that its memory speed is only 1330 MHz, as opposed to the MSI GTX 1080 that has a memory speed of 8100 MHz.

Thats a significant difference, so what kind of impact does the memory speed of a GPU have on performance? Does a lower memory speed mean lower FPS? slower loading times?

I'm interested in both gaming and rendering so information regarding both would be useful.

in df>data>init>d_init there is a config option called [ZERO_RENT]
below is an excerpt of the file
Use these options to remove features from the game.  Permitted values are YES and NO.  Removal might speed the game up in the case of temperature and weather.

[TEMPERATURE:YES]
[WEATHER:YES]
[ECONOMY:YES]
[INVADERS:YES]
[CAVEINS:YES]
[ARTIFACTS:NO]
[ZERO_RENT:NO]
[TESTING_ARENA:YES]
[WALKING_SPREADS_SPATTER_DWF:NO]
[WALKING_SPREADS_SPATTER_ADV:YES]
what does it do? is it related to the unimplemented economy? if so why is the default setting "no"? wouldent setting it to "no" mean that the economy is on?

so ive been generating worlds trying to get the perfect embark, and im having an issue where i get 1, sometimes not even any, necro towers in a large world

how do i get more necro towers to spawn?

i gen the world to 300 years and i have set the secretes to max.

i find it rather difficult to read the names of dwarves whos names are written in dark blue, how can i change the color to something lighter?
im using 0.43.05 so i cant use LNP to do it, and ive never done this before.

so i broke into the 1st cavern and there was a GCS, it wandered into my fort and its not causing any !!FUN!!
right now its sitting in a busy hallway with dwarves walking right past it without getting scared or attacked.
now this is actually the first time ive ever seen a GCS but the wiki lead me to believe that it would attack anything on sight with webs and biting, yet it seems completely peaceful.

im absolutely baffled with this and think it might be a bug. well duh of course it is, its a spider after all XD

so where do i upload a save to so others can take a look at it?

so first fort in ages, caravan arrives and they bring fire with them
http://imgur.com/YWDcPxe
i hadent noticed that there was a fire until they had all gotten to the trading depot

i have heard of traders bringing magma, but i checked every tile and there was no magma to be found

in the process of getting all my dwarves underground cause the fire is spreading and will reach my fort in about 5 mins of game time (probably a lot longer irl time cause the trees are collapsing and pausing the game)

so anyone have ideas what could have caused this? latest version btw

UPDATE #1: some migrants have arrived just as the entrance to the underground is engulfed in fire
UPDATE #2: fire is over, all of my dwarves are safe but a few of the merchents and their guards didnt make it. when i look at the depot it says "there are no merchants trading right now" so i cant check what they were hauling to see if they brought magma and it either A: caught something on fire but didnt spill. B: some spilled but evaporated moments after starting the fire. or C: they somehow had a caged fire creature (fire man, magma crab, ect) that started it. it probably says that because the merchant died. i might wall off the depot and let them all go insane for later investigation.

do decorative improvements to weapons (such as studding with diamonds) improve the combat capabilities of a weapon?

heres an example
say i have a silver warhammer that menaces with spikes of adamantine
logic tells me that a single spike of adamantine-- an extremely hard material -- on the head of a hammer would reduce the contact area to a VERY small point as well as making the head a lot harder

the weight of the silver behind the spike of adamantine would make the oh so light but hard and sharp adamantine break through just about any kind of armor and hit the flesh underdead it directly

another example would be with a sword, if it has spikes on it could that work like being serrated like a saw, increasing the chance for a body part to be lopped off?

if it isnt a feature already i think it would be pretty cool to have weapon improvements added