Bay 12 Games Forum

For instance:

The Hammerdwarf <optional>"Meat Shield" Voboknol</optional> attacks with a downward stroke of his Hammer, aiming for the waist!
The goblin blocks with his <descriptor>wooden</descriptor> shield! (note: position isn't necessary in the descriptor except if the creature is holding more than one of said item class, such as shields. so if a multiarmed monstrosity has four shields, it would be helpful to have "defends/blocks with their upper right shield", etc...)
The goblin counterattacks with his dagger!
It is deflected off of the Hammerdwarf's armor!
<next turn>
The Hammerdwarf attacks with an upward stroke of his hammer, aiming for the arm! (the hammerdwarf just completed a downward stroke, so his hammer is below his waist. hence his next stroke will be upward)
The goblin is unable to adequately defend!
The Hammerdwarf's blow connects!
The goblin's left arm is smashed out of its socket, dangling uselessly! (red wound)
The goblin is thrown off balance!
The goblin attacks with his dagger!
The attack misses completely!
<next turn>
The hammerdwarf rears his hammer back for a strong strike! (since hammer is up, he can delay a strike either until after enemy this turn or until next turn. Even though the dwarf is faster speed and hence goes first, by doing this he can spend half a turn or a turn and rear back his hammer above his head for a more powerful strike. This is probably the bread and butter of hammerers and macemen since the hammer and mace do not make good weapons for quick jabs, but rather single, powerful strikes.)
The goblin turns to flee! (now facing away from dwarf, still on adjacent square)
The hammerdwarf attacks with a strong downward stroke of his hammer, aiming for the back!
The goblin is facing the wrong direction to adequately defend!
The Hammerdwarf's blow connects!
The blow goes completely through the goblin! (critical hit)
The goblin's spine is shattered!
The goblin's entire lower body is torn off from the force of the blow!
The goblin's entrails spill out!
The goblin collapses in a heap!
The goblin has been struck down.
(note that there were 5 reactions from that last blow, spine shattered is a critical detail, as is entrails, as are fallen-state messages, and finally the death message.)

other possibilities:
The hammerdwarf's blow hits the goblin in the pelvis!
It is shattered!
The goblin collapses, unable to use <his/her> legs!

The goblin snatcher attacks the macedwarf with her sack!
It connects!
The macedwarf's right arm has been broken!
The macedwarf drops her mace!
The goblin snatcher's sack ceases moving!

(ok, too many exclamation points for tonight)

LN

We should be able to make ramps in a specific direction, displayable with one of the 4 filled arrow-head characters. Also dwarves should not be able to walk off the 'in air' or 'solid <material>' sides of the top and bottom respectively. Also, if one dodges onto a ramp, they should fall down it. This can be used to make large goblin-collecting funnels at the target end of a goblin-flinging bridge.

1. Someone will ask "Then how can we tell if a ramp is up or down if we use all 4 symbols?" Or relatedly "How can we tell if we're looking at the top or the bottom of a ramp?"
Simple. A ramp which is <stonecolor> on a <dark grey, except if stonecolor is dark grey, in which case light grey> background is the bottom. a ramp with a black background is the top. Also the top ramp 'points' toward the bottom one, and the bottom one 'points' toward the top.

2. what about ramps facing a non-cardinal direction?
Um... No. There's just no good symbol for it, and a dwarf should be able to walk sideways off a ramp anyway, i'd think (though a dwarf cannot walk through the solid side of the bottom or the air side of the top part) Or you could use something grotesque with slashes/backslashes and the 1/4 and 1/2 symbols.

LN

df suggestion #1243: deconstructing wooden constructions should return one less piece of wood than the construction took to build, but return one piece of 'wood scrap' which can be burned for charcoal but not built with.

LN

(n/t) means 'no text'

LN

[ December 19, 2007: Message edited by: Lord Nightmare ]

EDIT: This is not true. I went ahead and tested it (which I really should have done in the first place. Silly me, trusting other people's words...), win2k and winXP generate identical worlds, even for 'problem' worlds like paul's world, seed 4265985437.
A report posted in the DF general forums claimed that paul's world seed produced similar but non-identical worlds. This seems to have been caused by anonymousphrase modding his raws somehow and is not a problem with DF at all.
Paul's screenshot, which is what XP and 2K both match: http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/7413/location2in8.png
anonymousphrase's screenshot, ostensibly created with raws which were modified somehow: http://i21.tinypic.com/2mgjjft.png

So all in all, this 'bug' seems to not exist, at least between windows 2k IA32 and windows XP IA32. It MIGHT still exist with 64 bit versions of either, but someone else has to test that.

LN

Old, disproved report follows, ignore it.

The random number generation system used on windows XP and Vista is not exactly the same as the one used on windows 2000, and since df uses the random generation calls directly, fortress seeds produce different results on different operating systems. DF should have an internal random number generator which is identical to the one XP and Vista use.
Edit: actually, the difference is between the implementations of MSVCRT rand()
the windows XP implementation is, I BELIEVE (someone with msvc please test this):
#define RAND_MAX MSVC_rand_max
/* globals */
int32 oldseed = 0; /* 32 bit value, signed */
uint32 MSVC_rand_max = 0x7fff; /*<- usually defined using RAND_MAX somewhere in code, defaults to 0x7fff otherwise */

int32 MSVC_rand(void) /* returns a random number between 0 and RAND_MAX */
{
   int32 newseed;
   newseed = ((oldseed * 214013) + 2531011) % 2147483648;
   oldseed = newseed;
   return (newseed >> 16) & MSVC_rand_max;
}

void MSVC_srand(int newseed)
{
   oldseed = newseed;
}

(Somewhat unrelated, the Windows 2000 'CryptGenRandom' random number generator meant for cryptography, (which i do NOT think is the one DF uses) was reverse engineered by some Israeli researchers, and the code is described here: http://eprint.iacr.org/2007/419.pdf
)

LN

P.S. One more important thing: every program thread has its own copy of the 'oldseed' variable, so if multiple threads call rand() it will behave as expected WITHIN EACH THREAD but not globally.

[ December 06, 2007: Message edited by: Lord Nightmare ]

[ December 06, 2007: Message edited by: Lord Nightmare ]

[ December 09, 2007: Message edited by: Lord Nightmare ]

As it stands, hibernating the computer while DF is running usually causes the graphics drivers to bluescreen the system due to it having an open opengl rendering pipe or whatever its called (I'm really not sure of the terminology  and what precisely else is going on here, to be honest). I know that windows issues some sort of 'signal' to all running processes when the system is about to hibernate, so they can clean up stuff like that. When that signal is recieved, the game should pause itself, shut down/clean up the opengl stream, and just wait until it recieves a redraw signal when the system starts up again. or until someone clicks on the window or presses a key, since thats a lot easier to detect. at that point, it would reinitialize opengl to start rendering again.
This SHOULD prevent the crash when hibernating.

(The crash mostly affects people with laptops which hibernate when shut, like me.)

LN

The Dyer's workshop 'built' tiles appear the wrong color (black on grey, same as unbuilt) when constructed on snow. They may also appear this way when snowed upon. It makes it impossible to tell whether the dyer shop is finshed/built or not unless you Q on it, if it is built outside in the snow.

LN

In adventure mode, when you are near a lake deeper than one tile, a window pops up in the right hand corner showing a small area around your character 1 tile below your current 'view plane' (marked -1). Once we get trees more than a tile tall, can we have an option for it to show a (+1) plane which shows the tops of the trees (and any bridges between them, for elf cities and other places with bridges between trees), since climbing the trees could be useful escapes against a brown (not black) bear or cougar or something.

LN

P.S.
Also, I know creatures are not allowed to be more than one tile wide/long YET, but can a bronze colossus or a titan be more than one tile TALL? I expect a titan or colossus would have no problem knocking an adventurer out of the top of a tree or just flattening the whole tree, adventurer included.

Hmm.. can dwarves build rope bridges between trees, i.e. on opposite sides of a river?