Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Topics - Keldane

Pages: [1] 2
1
Life Advice / I would like to write.
« on: June 11, 2014, 08:20:47 pm »
I would like to write, and hopefully get published, and I'm somewhat lacking in confidence in my work. I also have no idea how to get my work out there. I don't have the advantage of any post-secondary education, either. I'm here today to post something I wrote earlier in the year, and to hopefully get some feedback on it. It's not incredibly long, and I've spoilered it for length nonetheless.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'd appreciate any and all constructive criticism, feedback, and advice that you good folks have to offer. If it makes a difference, I'm located not too far from Vancouver, BC, so going through American publishing agencies is (I'm guessing) not really an option. Thoughts?

2
General Discussion / Desert Bus approaches!
« on: May 03, 2013, 09:53:37 pm »
Well, actually, it's still six months away. The Craft Along has been announced, however, so the countdown is officially on.

If you're not familiar with Desert Bus for Hope, it's a charity event run by some folks (Loading Ready Run) here in my home town of Victoria, BC, which raises funds for Child's Play, a charity dedicated to helping children in hospital have a little less abysmal of an experience by providing games, books, and toys. Over the six years the event has been running, Desert Bus has raised over $1,000,000 for the charity by playing the most boring game ever created, which lends its name to the event, in a non-stop week long webcasted marathon full of viewer challenges, celebrity call ins, auctions, giveaways, and examples of just what sleep deprivation does to the human psyche.

The event itself is still 196 days away, according to the site's countdown, and as I mentioned above, they've started accepting ideas for their annual Craft Along, where viewers make awesome items to be auctioned off and given away during the event. If you'd like to contribute, and have some crafting skills, perhaps I could convince you to follow the link and send something along - and if you don't, check out some of the videos from previous years on Youtube, talk it up with your friends, and perhaps, tune in to watch.

And now, for the cast of this event reacting to Normal Guy, Normal Walk.

3
DF Modding / Limitations of Entity Editing
« on: July 06, 2012, 10:09:49 pm »
Some time ago I read about certain limitations existing in editing which workshops or professions were accessible to a playable race - specifically, getting unexpected, even crash-prone behavior if you attempt to remove what the game expects to be there by default. I suppose my question is fairly simple; is this accurate? I'd like to attempt a full conversion, and this would be easier if I can replace what already exists.

4
DF Adventure Mode Discussion / Zombies > Clowns (Spoilers)
« on: February 25, 2012, 05:04:39 am »
You've been warned.

So in my current world, I had a wonderfully generous demon - Lashid Spurtedlust the Fated Blister - who kindly convinced the humans he was an incarnation of their God of Death. I'm not sure if it was Lashid or the deity itself, Mothi, who created the first necromancer in this world, but it was undoubtedly Lashid who penned the book that taught my adventurer to raise the dead.

I feel confident in saying that Lashid came to regret that decision.

Lashid installed himself as a Law-Giver in the local human civilization. As a result, he hung around a fort, wrote a bunch of books, and had them lying around on the towers. I was able to wander in, read what I wanted, wander out, raise an army of the dead, then come back just to see what would happen. Suffice to say that I was amused when he immediately began to fight my zombies as they filed into his throne room, or study, or whatever you'd call that windowless place full of trinkets and statues. The battle appeared pretty one-sided; sure, he could spit frozen extract at the zombies, but what good does that do when there's twelve or more of them and the toxic aspect doesn't harm them? Ultimately, I got this message:



And the zombie dwarf became known as Truthfulearly the Auburn Dead of Obscurity, having secured his fifth kill.

Let this be a lesson to you, kiddies; towering, bloated, one-eyed chameleons twisted into humanoid form with black, overlapping, oval-shaped scales and deadly spittle are no match for swarms of the undead.

As an aside, my undead army and I stormed the world's one necromancer tower a while earlier and slaughtered everything we could find there. I took the slab with me, and out of curiosity, read it. Did you know that it's possible to learn two different methods to animate the dead? Or that, if you do so, you have two separate interactions you can use, thus circumventing the normal cooldown on the ability?

5
DF Modding / Modifier and Alignment Numbers?
« on: February 22, 2012, 03:18:13 am »
I'm currently working on a new entity and I was wondering if anyone knew whether lower or higher numbers increased the likelihood of elements appearing? What I've seen seems to imply that higher is more likely, yet I seem to remember that reducing the number in an attempt to eliminate hanging rings as a decoration item resulted in rarely, if ever, seeing anything else.

6
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Useless Immigrants?
« on: February 15, 2012, 06:12:35 pm »
Hey folks! I'm mostly posting this to see if anyone else has experienced anything similar since upgrading to the latest version.

In my latest wave of immigrants, I got a decent number of new recruits to help me out, but the first two that came to visit confused me. They're definitely useless immigrants - and no, I don't mean soapmakers or legendary milkers. They're historical figures, one used to be a ranger (now a beekeeper) and the other a scout (now a brewer), who at one point had two children (both dying in the same year they were born). They're chilling at the edge of the map, both using the @ symbol instead of the normal dwarf one.

Has anyone else had this happen?

7
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Please Suggest A Challenge
« on: February 08, 2012, 04:56:42 pm »
I'll start off by saying that I'm not the most skilled DF player. I have a habit of bailing on forts long before any sieges show up, usually because I don't like the layout or the terrain or feel that my position won't be sufficiently defensible and my dwarves are almost constantly too engaged in other tasks to dedicate themselves to building defenses.

I'd like this to change.

Therefore, I'm turning to the public to suggest for me a series of objectives to help me overcome both my own inexperience and my tendency to abandon and look for a new site. I'd like the challenge to start with World Gen parameters (please limit world size to Pocket, Smaller, or Small) and advance from there. Invaders can be on, off, or turned on after a certain landmark; starting dwarves can be 7, 56, or 200; exotic animals are currently turned off (and I'd like to keep it that way).

So, thoughts?

8
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Start Low, Build High
« on: November 06, 2011, 12:31:13 pm »
On a whim, I've started a new fort. Using the instructions in the More Dwarves at Embark thread, I've given myself 200 dwarves right from the get go. I've also genned a world with 2,500,000 embark points available (of which I believe I used less than 100,000).

I took with me a modicum of food and drink (30 times the normal amount, should run out about the same time it would otherwise), five copper picks, five copper axes, some anvils for later on - and 25,000 urists of Cobaltite. Needless to say, with roughly 19 wagons (that's 38 wagon haulers) and 200 dwarves, my FPS is pretty low to begin with.

As I slaughter the useless beasts of burden, accidents happen, and construction converts those loose bits of stone into static walls and furniture and the like, I suspect my FPS will rise. Hopefully, my other projects - completely deforesting the entire map, and stripping it bare of all plant life - will also help. You'd be surprised how fast 200 dwarves with Plant Gathering enabled can clear a map (Or maybe you wouldn't).

In the year 100, the cobaltite surface fortress of Scarredhammers was founded by the Cudgel of Loving, a large expeditionary force of the Hammers of Braiding. I wonder what tales shall arise from within its halls?

9
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / My New Embark has 13k+ Candy (Spoilers)
« on: October 27, 2011, 01:50:49 pm »
According to Prospector, my current fort has approximately 13,800 raw adamantine waiting in the depths, roughly eleven times the amount of hematite, which is the only other weapon/armor grade metal available. It also had a cave-in on embark, leading to the discovery of a masterwork adamantine scimitar in the depths. I do know what this means, in terms of what to expect when I go to collect my prize, but...

Hmm...

As a relative newbie - one who has never survived a siege, even by walling himself in (seriously, that was the moment the gates were open and the fort's populace were swarming out en masse to collect the prizes left behind by the slaughtered human caravan), I'm left feeling compelled to ask for suggestions. This embark is obviously pretty awesome. It's a 4x4 embark with a volcano, lots of cliffs, clay (not fire clay, though), sand, a brook, a demon temple, the aforementioned absurd amount of adamantine, and over 100,000 units of microcline. What, pray tell, should I do here?

Edit: It was genned using the LNP, with the default tileset and exotic animals disabled. A pre-embark save is available here.
Spoiler: Embark Location (click to show/hide)

Edit2: Cavern level 2, along the north edge, is letting water run off the map, while it flows on from four other points. You may want to hit that quick-like with a little DFLiquids action to prevent massive FPS drain.

10
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Profession Advice
« on: June 01, 2011, 02:56:24 pm »
I'm about to start a new fort, and I've discovered a dwarf among my starting seven who I feel I need some advice about. I'm not really sure what sort of professions and starting skills to give him, based on his description.

Quote from: Onul Boardgale
He is agile, quick to heal and slow to tire, but he is quite susceptible to disease.

He has a great musical sense and good intuition, but he has a shortage of patience, poor kinesthetic sense,  little linguisitc ability, and a lack of understanding of social relationships.

He is slow to anger. He occasionally overindulges. He can handle stress. He appreciates art and natural beauty. He dislikes intellectual discussions. He loves to defy convention. He will persist in the face of any difficulty until the task is complete.

Thoughts? Suggestions? What sort of job would this guy be best at?

11
DF Modding / Using Gems in Reactions
« on: March 17, 2011, 03:35:52 pm »
So, I'm working on a mod which will include some fictitious metals forged by combining gems with existing metals. I'm having a little trouble figuring out how to do this, however. Specifically, I want to use any kind of uncut diamond for this reaction. The wiki provided me with the ROUGH item token for rough gems, and I'm not sure how to specify a specific type of gem from there. Am I right in thinking that I'm going to have to have one reaction per type of diamond, and would the line below work?

Code: [Select]
REAGENT:B:1:ROUGH:NO_SUBTYPE:INORGANIC:DIAMOND_CLEAR

12
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Chronicles of Stopearth
« on: March 06, 2011, 10:31:06 pm »
I have decided, in the interest of maintaining my interest in this fort, to create this thread, and update once every couple of days with how I'm progressing towards my eventual goal of a large castle with proper ramparts, towers, and a little village within the walls. Of course, I have more motivation than that - I also need to comment on the effects of bringing 25000 granite blocks with me on embark.

Namely, I'm swimming in (36) horses.

My FPS is currently at a crawl, but the dwarves are diligently working to cull the horde of herd-beasts. I'm glad I opted to bring some 20 large gold pots with me; as it stands, I've already filled one with fat and two with organs, with a fourth currently being stuffed with prepared meals. I have five dwarves hauling bits of horse around while one brings them one by one into the butcher's shop and the last frantically tries to turn their remnants into roasts. I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm going to have to put my slaughtering efforts on hold about halfway through and turn to booze instead, as that's probably about when I'll be running out. Time to make sure I've got spare barrels on reserve.

13
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Water Level Control
« on: February 07, 2011, 04:26:45 pm »
So a couple days ago I had an idea, and after some hemming and hawing about whether anyone else would care, I've decided to share it. It's an alternative method of preventing flooding by controlling the depth of water on a given tile.

The wiki has schematics for a fluid repeater involving a (raising) 1x1 bridge, a pressure plate set to trigger on 7/7 water, and a floodgate. Simply put, if you set them in a straight tunnel in the order listed, link both the bridge and the floodgate to the pressure plate, and then apply an infinite source of water flowing from the bridge side, this setup will repeatedly trigger and reset the pressure plate (when the pressure plate triggers, it raises the bridge to form a wall and block off the water supply, while opening the floodgate to allow enough water to flow off the pressure plate to reset it). Due to the fact that the tile the floodgate is on, and any tile after it, only has an inflow of one tile's worth of water at any given time, and the water under the floodgate is effectively atom smashed when the floodgate closes, any chamber that is on the same level as the repeater and that is positioned after the floodgate cannot fill past 4/7.

While there are numerous benefits to this (creating a swimming pool, for example), the one that we're most interested in is that if a given tile can't fill past 4/7 water, then it can't flood the level above it. This means that no matter how far below the water source the repeater is, as long as the repeater is positioned one level below any wells that are fed by its outflow, there will be no flooding. With this, there is no need for pumps or an open shaft into the caverns to build a well in your dining room; all you require is an aquifer, river, or similar infinite water source and seven pieces of stone.

14
DF Modding / Civilizations and Caste-Specific Intelligence
« on: December 18, 2010, 01:23:25 am »
So here's a question for you folks - has anyone ever created a playable race that uses the Intelligent tag on a caste level (as in, not all castes of the race are intelligent)? If so, how did it handle in-game? Do the non-intelligent members of the race occasionally show up in your starting seven? Are such races even playable?

15
DF Modding / Natural Tunneling without Tools?
« on: December 13, 2010, 02:32:08 pm »
A fairly simple question here - is it possible to mod in a creature that is capable of mining without having to use a pick?

Pages: [1] 2