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Messages - Langdon

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1
DF General Discussion / Re: "You got to try this game, Its JUST like Dwarf Fortress!" >_<
« on: March 26, 2014, 09:04:12 pm »
Quote from: zwei on March 25, 2014, 02:48:24 am
Quote from: Matoro on March 25, 2014, 02:04:25 am
Quote from: zwei on March 24, 2014, 10:48:43 am


Also, depth and complexity is something that is very arguable:

There is a lot of redundant content (rock types, animal types) that people mistake for depth. It is not - game would loose very little if it got simplified to two dozen types of minerals and animals. And you do not need to be brilliant to add more of them.

I disagree. Even though the depth means much more than just hundreds of different stones and trees, they are important elements to make game feel so deep, since other games don't usually do that. All materials without distinct differences add the feeling of the depth, they add more flavor. A bit like dwarven beard shapings or many mental attributes - they aren't really needed for gameplay, but if they weren't there, DF would be much shallower in terms of details. It's one way how DF feels somehow more unique than most other games - there is so much irrelevant details just for sake of details. They add more information to the gaming experience which makes the game feel deeper.

Problem is that that they are just there, by themselves, not really influencing anything. They also currently do more harm to gameplay than good (mostly by incredibly clutterted item lists)

It also comes to ... what are details?

To me addtional type of tree - which is just name, color and density does not seem much of an detail, but more as a elaboration of existing stuff. Sort of "more content" rather than "deeper content".

Ah but you miss the charm of DF. How seemingly minor and irrelevant details can combine their seemingly innocent side effects and come up with hilarious and memorable bugs... err features.

For example, melting all the fat off a dwarf without killing him will make him later immune to the effects of fire. Do you think emergent "features" such as this (or catsplosions!) would appear if Toady hadn't modeled the melting point/boiling point of fat, or modeled a separate fat layer underneath skin and decided to just treat dwarves as homogenous bags of meat?

Right now he's modeling multi-tile trees and elf habitats. Don't you think there'll be dozens of wonderful, wonderful "issues" that would come out, unforeseen, out of all that detail?

2
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: What's going on in your fort?
« on: March 03, 2014, 01:46:53 am »
It started with a were-rat bite - a visiting lycanthrope managed to maul a crafter before it was taken down by my hunters.

Then the crafter turns, bites two more before returning to dwarf form. Now there are two injured dwarves in the hospital, and one uninjured crafter.

Next cycle, the two injured dwarves turn, biting still more. One of them is killed by the militia I've hastily cobbled together, but there's an unexpected result - the were-crafter turns back into dwarf form before my militia commander lands the final few blows, and he is now marked as an enemy of the fort - he mortally wounds one of his underlings before succumbing to multiple bolts. In the confusion I lose track of how many other dwarves are bitten by the were-rats.

I frantically set up a barracks and try to get the militia trained enough that they can take out the remaining were-rats before the disease spreads further through the fort.

Next cycle, we have five were-rats, including the expedition leader/broker.  Half the militia dies, including my pet black bear. This time the loyalty cascade caused by attacks on were-rats that have just returned to dwarf form is unchecked, and most of the civilians start pounding on each other.

So here we are. An injured hunter is holed up on top of my unfinished defense tower, taking potshots at any dwarf that wanders into the courtyard. The expedition leader is meeting with the dwarven liasion in the forest outside the gates - the moment he turns, he'll probably kill the liaison. The rest of the fort is a bloody, brawling mess in the middle of a full-out civil war. We are down to ten dwarves from the original fifty-seven, three of which are were-rats (militia commander, expedition leader and a weaver). Every time they turn they regenerate all their injuries including lost limbs, then start hunting down the other dwarves (who are busy fighting each other).

I wonder if I'll end up with a stable were-rat fort, or if the loyalty cascade never ends.

3
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Cancels Plant Seeds: Needs plump helmet spawn.
« on: June 12, 2012, 05:38:26 pm »
Quote from: Hateweaver on June 12, 2012, 05:21:00 pm
Quote from: weenog on June 12, 2012, 04:53:42 pm
For your seed stockpiles, barrels allowed == 0.
Doing that - you'll have to have some huge stockpiles or you'll have seeds laying around everywhere.

What I used to have is a bunch of two-tile seed stockpiles, each stockpile set up to only accept one type of seed. Eventually each stockpile tile will contain one bag, with each bag containing 100 seeds.

4
DF General Discussion / Re: Poe's Law
« on: June 04, 2012, 05:39:25 pm »
Quote from: Uristocrat on June 04, 2012, 05:17:19 pm
Quote from: eataTREE on June 04, 2012, 05:07:15 pm
For me it was like a space-time portal had opened from Slashdot.org in 1998 and free-software fundamentalists were slipping through. (Sort of like in Half-Life.) I don't think there really are any more of those guys, not when the biggest contributors to the big free/open source software projects are the very same big tech companies the free-software hippies were trying to lead a revolt against.

I think Poe's law is in effect here.

I know, but I'm responding for nostalgia's sake. Sometimes I miss 1998.

5
DF General Discussion / Re: WHY TOADY WON'T RESPECT OUR FREEDOM?
« on: June 04, 2012, 04:50:05 pm »
This sadly looks like a student or other similar young person who has recently discovered the ideals of open source.

Disclaimer: I work for an open source startup, and our core software has been freely available since 2002. I have also been active in several other open-source projects like Squid and Samba for the past fifteen or so years.

Open source is "free as in free speech, not free as in free beer".

Open source is not the be-all-end-all solution to software development. It does not work in all situations.

Toady's development model (and most games in general) are not well-suited to the open source development model. There are very few opensource games that have even reached medium-levels of success.

I watch other opensource gaming projects (like Jagged Alliance 1.13). They have always, always invariably been hampered by the lack of common vision and the creeping featuritis that have been the hallmark of opensource projects. Without a good manager that is respected enough to lay down the law in terms of features, requirements and deadlines, most such games languish and at best, get themselves to a playable beta state before the good developers give up in exhaustion.

I would tell the OP to get some more experience in software development, volunteer for a project or two. And then come back and if he still feels this way, make his own damn game.

Quote from: nogibator on June 04, 2012, 02:32:51 pm
And i mean, if he was a genius-level autistic programmer it could be reasonable to code hundreds of features in his own style and keep lesser men from interrupting, but he is not.

Oh but he is. He is.

6
DF General Discussion / Re: Future of the Fortress
« on: April 05, 2012, 06:08:51 pm »
Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 04:47:08 pm
Having wooden axles that transfer power from waterwheels somehow driving minecarts on the move would be basically impossible as a direct means of power transfer, as Cruxador said.

Powered gears used to push objects would also be unusual for the time period, but waterwheel-powered gears are at least possible with that level of technology, and automatically pushed carts would have a coolness factor that would tickle my personal fancy, at the very least.

I'm thinking something like how San Francisco cable cars work - cars hook to a cable that runs underneath the rail, being pulled by a large spool/drum situated on one end of the track (driven by the powered axle). In DF terms, we might have "powered" tracks that we can assume have a combination of gears/cables to pull carts in this fashion.

Or even how modern rollercoasters work - a section of track is geared to pull/propel carts up to the top of a ramp, then gravity does the rest.

7
DF General Discussion / Re: Hurray for bugfixes!
« on: March 14, 2012, 10:56:19 am »
Quote from: Telgin on March 13, 2012, 11:40:31 am
I could have sworn that Toady said he already fixed the bug with soap, lye and buckets, but I've read others are still having the problem.  If it still exists, I'm pretty confident it will get fixed since it's been around forever too.

I can confirm this - in my latest fort (genned in 34.02, currently running under 34.05) my dwarves make soap by taking lye directly from the buckets, no more waiting for someone to dump the lye into a barrel. All I need to do is have enough free buckets (it seems they dump water-filled buckets properly as well, as I haven't needed to use DFHack's drybuckets command for a long time now).

8
DF Modding / Re: [0.34.02v03] Phoebus' Graphic Set (Updated to DF 0.34.03)
« on: March 01, 2012, 12:55:42 pm »
Quote from: Kamamura on March 01, 2012, 12:06:14 pm
No usable version
for 34.04
so sad, my eyes bleed
from the ASCII madness
my head spins in confusion
with a glimmer of hope
we wait
for
an
update...

I tried copying the df 0.34.04 release over the 0.34.03 Phoebus directory (everything except the raws dir) and it seemed to work for me (i.e. using .03 raws on a .04 binary). Just copied my old inits over and it loaded my save game fine. Marksdwarves started practicing at archery targets after a season or so, which made me happy.

DF Therapist also auto-updated to 0.34.04 ok, and dfhack does have a compatible version out, so my gameplay was mostly uninterrupted.

9
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: The DF2010 Little Questions Thread
« on: July 19, 2011, 11:36:03 am »
Quote from: Tiruin on July 19, 2011, 09:19:34 am
1 Tiny question, I'm trying to make a sort of ramparts for my marksdwarves. So they won't go run off into a place to not get interrupted or run a long way for ammo could I make my design as shown below?

I put my ammo bins on the upper level, they can fight while standing on the ammo stockpile. I put booze stockpiles on the lower level to reduce the time it takes to get a drink.

I'll steal your idea for a row of stairs instead of just stairs on the ends of the walkway (which is what I've been using). Should make it easier to recover wounded, and keep civilians from getting trapped on the upper rampart. Putting the ammo stockpile on top of stair tiles will make it blink like hell though. :-P

10
DF Adventure Mode Discussion / Re: Pick and Axe : building and living in a home
« on: June 17, 2011, 01:03:37 am »
About 16x16 blocks:

Each block is one square on the world map at embark.

Disregarding the z-axis for the moment, 0,0 is the uppermost, leftmost block, 0,1 is the block to the right of that, and so forth.

On a 2x2 embark, we have four blocks:
|-----------|
| 0,0 | 1,0 |
|-----------|
| 0,1 | 1,1 |
|-----------|

on a 3x3 embark we have nine blocks:
|-----------------|
| 0,0 | 1,0 | 2,0 |
|-----------------|
| 0,1 | 1,1 | 2,1 |
|-----------------|
| 0,2 | 1,2 | 2,2 |
|-----------------|

and so forth for bigger embarks.

By "block around cursor" DFusion means a particular block in this grid your cursor happens to fall in (it's not a 16x16 block centered on the cursor, as you might think). If your cursor was 14x14 tiles from the upper left corner, it will still select the 0,0 16x16 block, because it falls within the boundaries of the 0,0 block.

For the z-axis, topmost sky z-layer is 0, increasing as you go lower.

11
DF Adventure Mode Discussion / Re: Pick and Axe : building and living in a home
« on: June 12, 2011, 02:24:40 am »
Quote from: Fredd on June 12, 2011, 01:13:26 am
But would building a danger room surrounding a lever work, if you took your companions there, and have a macro that had your adventurer to repeatedly pulling the lever, so that your companions could gain skills? If it did, using change character to outfit your companions also turn them into better soldiers?

This would be interesting, if it works. One gotcha would be to make sure your companions are fully armored up before pulling the lever, as you won't have access to healthcare to take care of injuries. On the other hand, you can just watch them and fast-travel if they get too bruised up.

12
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Decorating a weapon
« on: May 28, 2011, 07:43:48 am »
Quote from: celem on May 27, 2011, 10:26:19 am
I have unholy piles of reclaimed goblinite yet my bone decorators cancel with 'no decoratable object'.  I took a quick look and while some is decorated already and some is melt-designated...if weapons were bone decoratable they should have done so but wont.

Then I guess any bone-decorated weapons you see were probably brought by merchants and invaders, and were decorated outside the fort (much like stone-decorated items in previous versions).

Edit: In my .25 fort I can indeed confirm that my crossbows and warhammers were taken to the craftsdwarf's workshop and decorated with bone (as in this fort I put my workshop one floor below the barracks).

13
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Decorating a weapon
« on: May 27, 2011, 09:57:32 am »
Quote from: darkflagrance on May 27, 2011, 06:22:47 am
A lot of my weapons are ringed with bone. I'm even wondering if the encrust with finished goods command includes weapons.

"Encrust finished goods" at the jewelers doesn't include weapons (tested with burrows and custom stockpiles next to the jeweler's shop). I believe (but have not tested) that the craftsdwarf's "decorate with xxx" jobs includes weapons and armor - it definitely includes ammo, as I get a lot of horn-decorated bone bolts if I don't micromanage my craftsdwarves.

14
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Butchery
« on: May 27, 2011, 09:52:51 am »
Quote from: Drecker on May 27, 2011, 09:46:34 am
Hello,
I don't know what's wrong with my butcher's shop (or butchers). My huteres hunt animals and when they are succesful, they pick up the kill and bring it to butcher's shop. But the butcher's shops don't get "Butcher an animal" automaticly (I have set "Auto Butcher") - I have two shops and no one have that task, and when I add "Butcher an Animal" manually, it say me "Needs butcherable unrotten nearby item". (And I have three butchers, and one of them had "No job".)
My first kills were butchered normaly - I don't know exactly when it stop work.
Do you know what I'm doing wrong?

Butcher shops take corpses from refuse stockpiles. It's possible that your refuse stockpile is full now (it wasn't full before, so your first kills were butchered properly), so the hunter just dumps the corpse on the floor, and it rots before the butcher can get to it.

Designate a stockpile next to the butcher to only accept corpses, or build another butcher shop closer to your main refuse stockpile.

15
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Fascinating new way to fail.
« on: May 06, 2011, 10:07:14 pm »
Quote from: zwei on May 02, 2011, 12:56:39 pm
Quote from: slink on May 02, 2011, 12:15:23 pm
Quote from: zwei on May 02, 2011, 05:29:28 am

And?

You can survive till first caravan by drinking water, gathering plants and farming. Bonus points for smoothing boulders to increase wealth.

Then all you need is to zerg first caravan with unarmed dwarves and hope you score axe/pick or buildmat. Bonus points for being lucky with woodcutter/miner/hunter immigrant.

Never give up, Never surrender!

Unless you embark onto an area of land across unwalkable water from where the caravans and migrants enter the map.  Yes, this does happen.  Then you would have needed the wood from the wagon to help get across the water.

Two waves of migrants that can zerg first caravan?

Nothing is hopeless.

I "zerg" dwarven caravans by going to the pack animals at the edge of the map, pressing 'v', viewing the animal's inventory, then marking items I want for dumping. Dwarves will gleefully rush out and steal stuff off the merchants as they make their way to the depot.

They will stop stealing once the merchants unload at the depot however, but you'll have another chance to steal as the they re-load their animals and walk off the map.

It does make next year's caravans bring less items (we wuz robbed!) but it can save a fort if needed.

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