Bay 12 Games Forum

So has anybody gone into that at all?

Any active practitioners?

For those who are unfamiliar with this strange thing... It's a phenomenon you can intentionally experience with practice and knowledge which is said to involve the ejection of the "astral body" or spirit body out of the physical body and into the astral plane of existence. More or less... People claim to explore the universe this way, including realms not of ordinary existence.

An alternative explanation held by rationalists is that it's a special kind of dream called a wake-induced lucid dream (WILD), where instead of realizing you're dreaming mid-dream (as in a typical lucid dream), you go into the dream state from the waking state directly without losing conscious awareness, going straight into REM aware that you're dreaming.

Some say the two are different things and both occur legitimately. I don't intend to pick a camp 'cause I really can't be sure, true to my agnostic mentality.

Whether it's astral projection or a WILD, it most often occurs after waking up with sleep paralysis, the sensation where you can't move and can't feel your body (as opposed to just laying back in the middle of the day to shoot off into space, as you don't tend to start your sleep cycle in REM... though I've heard it's possible somehow). Personally, I wouldn't bother checking to see if I can move, incase I ruin that sensation of sensory deprivation. It's popular to experience a powerful vibration, a loud increasing humming sound, or a hallucination from some other sense. For me it was a loud humming that increased in pitch and volume till I could hardly bear it..

Suddenly it stopped and I could hear TV like voices in my room, where I never had my TV turned on. I knew I wasn't in ordinary reality. I was either in my head or outside of normal reality.

I went to get off my bed and found myself almost as light as a feather, yet due to the awkward weight I smacked face first into the floor and involuntarily rolled into a sleeping position and woke up again in bed.

Miraculously I went right back in almost immediately, eager to try again. So I got off my bed in this dream world, or astral plane or whatever, and proceeded to try to turn on my lamp. Click... nothing... click... nothing. It's plugged in yes. Click-click-clickity-click-click-click. So my lamp doesn't work in this realm of existence. I was told to expect such things to happen.

I saw a strange purple slab which seemed to have some sort of congratulatory phrase (like "congratulations" for example) carved/pressed into it, on my desk, apparently there to congratulate me for achieving this state. Whatever it was.

Then I go try to fly out the ceiling and explore the neighbourhood and I wake up after thinking "gee, I'm not sure what I should be seeing between the ceiling and the roof, or where I'll come out..." Worrying about silly details. Sheesh. Should have gone out the window, or better yet, the bloody DOOR. Just because you've got the supernatural ability to go through walls, doesn't mean it's the best thing to do as soon as you get a chance...

So yeah, astral projection anybody?

Another thread really made me want to express this..

And I can't be the only one who feels this way.

Between awesome games like DF and LCS and the absurdities that have been spawned in the name of DF, there's no other forum I've ever been able to frequent without dropping off the face of the earth shortly after joining.

DF in particular has spawned a community of creative mad geniuses... It's hard not to be proud to be a part of the madness.

And as far as I've noticed generally a very civil community! The patience it takes to figure out dwarf fortress probably filters out most extremely narrow minded hateful individuals.

All with military weapons stolen from the CCS before destroying them once and for all.

All with either heavy body armor or army body armor.

Most with roughly 8 rifle skill.

After shuffling them all around for a while every time I heard a warning for a seige, I got annoyed with the process... And decided, screw you, I'll take the army on instead of practicing the alphabet every few turns.

And what do you know, my guys get first strike and all 30 of them get a turn, and they only send something like 9 soldiers. Their soldiers don't fire a round, they just wait till I'm done my turn and they're dead. Not really fair...

It's not the same challenge as running around in an enemy base... Or your own base for that matter. A squad of six alone running into a bunch of agents is certain death if you're not armed like a soldier yet, and they put more than one squad of agents in your base too... Without a good disguise you're toast, and I've never happened to have black suits (on or around) at the time.

So here's what I do anyways:

1) Juice up and recruit.
2) Send recruits to "elementary school" where they're taught Infiltration skills.
3) Use those infiltration skills to repeatedly sneak into cosmetics labs and juice up to, say, 100 juice each.
4) Once you figure they're ready to graduate elementary, give them "high school" till they hit new maxes.
5) Now use improved infiltration skills to free prisoners until they've all got really decent juice, say 500 each. Now they've graduated high school.
6) Send them to college... Get them up to level with your super juicy boss in skill if possible, including more than just the Infiltration skills.

Repeat the process for more trainees, and put them into service making clothing or raiding or writing or whatever. Let your bosses teach.

My biggest problem has been getting enough fighting skills built up to be worth teaching. I intend to cover that by training those skills with a less important squad and then getting them to teach the skills to my leader, who can then teach those skills to everybody who doesn't have them.

My leader has 17 teaching. Don't want to get him into trouble.

Also thinking of putting a programmer, a priest, a lawyer/judge, a lab tech, etc into education courses to teach to my leader. Anyone who's got significantly more skill than my leader in something ought to get teaching skill to add said skill to the pool. That will be one incredible teacher in the end... If all my mad schemes come  true...

EDIT: May I also add that liberals can learn from a teacher while they're busy churning out expensive suits... Probably also while taking education (for example) courses in school.

As I start mowing down on yummy fortune cookie, my joy is lessened by the dreadful accuracy of the assumption implied in its message:

"Stop procrastinating - starting tomorrow."

Oh s*** how did they know???

Ahhhhh screw it, I'll stop procrastinating tomorrow.

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-11270

This fortress is my most streamlined, efficient, fastest developed fort yet. After 4 or 5 years of operation, I've got spoiler metal up the wazoo, no need for masonry, a huge tree farm, a simple isolationist entrance...

20 military dwarves who are just backup incase I need to un-isolate myself a bit.

The original intent was to create lots of awesome stuff for a dwarven adventurer, and I still intend to add to it (like cavern access and training possibilities).

It ended up being pretty much my best fortress even though I didn't intend to focus on the fortress mode part.

It's not fancy and OCD to the degree I've seen in some long time pro's maps.

I'm interested to hear what some of you other DF folks would do differently in your style of fortress design. Not like there's anything explicitly wrong with my style. I just want to hear some different ideas from the wild imaginations of the dwarfiest people on the internet.

Edit: Adding one image... my unit screen.


Excuse the funny profession names. (D) stands for healthy non-vampiric booze drinking dwarf. D for Dwarf or Drinking.

"Broker Mugger" means he was making mugs between opportunities to be a broker... I think he's a legendary stonecrafter.

Only 3 or 4 dwarves aren't blinking...

So...

I was digging for... fun stuff...

And popped open a hole, and heard all sorts of fun noises. So I blocked said hole with the miner who opened it (since he was right there...)

And so I was like, okay, all is good, I shall proceed to attack my pancreas with the sweet sweet candy...

And all of a sudden something gets through where it shouldn't...

Directly beneath an up/down staircase, there was solid stone. Adjacent to that solid stone was a mined-open area.


Side view:
!!FUN!!
######X######
#######*!!FUN!!
#############
Where X is the up-down staircase, # is walls, and the * is the adjacent space below. The moved from above to below at a diagonal, ruining what seemed to be a triumphant aversion of disaster and an exciting trip to the candy store. The exact diagram was simplified to specifically show the kind of acrobatics the circus was doing to ruin me. I knew you could move diagonally through corners horizontally, but the vertical thing I just wasn't prepared for...

Currently trying to avert disaster with a much closer-to-home blockage, but it's almost pointless at one frame per minute or so. If they stop moving when they get to the hopefully plugged hole, I suppose the framerate should drop and I can construct a massive cage trap hallway with GCS lined up along a fortification wall.

My question is, has anybody else noticed this vertical diagonal movement? (possibly a quirk of flying creatures?) I couldn't find anything, but it's not the easiest concept to think of search terms for...

Update: Framerate has picked up. Hole has been clogged. Fun is waiting under the floor...
Edit: I mean I really want that candy... I want to draw the fun stuff out and neutralize it in a controlled manner. Any recommended methods of shutting down (or quarantining) the circus AND getting the candy back?
Edit again: It seems they've packed themselves up in the top of my mineshaft... I could easily dig past them and block them in, with some careful burrowing and stockpiling to ensure quick blockage. Then I just go grab the candy and replug the entry to heck a little better. No fuss no muss... Can release them later when the fort gets too boring (but not before training my entire population).