Bay 12 Games Forum

I'm no expert, but it sounds like you didn't pour enough magma on the orcs.

I just checked the save file, and yes, we have dozens of underground food crop seeds. I should have built more farms.
Grendus: Yeah, name Mebzuth after me. He's the marksdwarf.

14th Malachite, 252
Mebzuth was busy ordering some haulers around when one of the miners ran to him. "We screwed up, Boss! Adil got crushed under the rocks we knocked out for the balcony?" "The hell is Adil?" "One of our farmers, Boss." "He never cooked anything anyway. Go find one of the two peasants who aren't posessed and tell him he's the new farmer. Find the other one and tell him to inventory the whole fortress."
Having accomplished that, Mebzuth went to the new barracks, a debris-filled hole with a solitary weapon rack inside, and addressed the new recruits, ten of the most useless immigrants. "Welcome to Weakwhips. As you may or may not know, we're surrounded by skeletal creatures. That's no big deal. We're also right in the middle of goblin country." Mebzuth paused and led the recruits out fo the barracks and into the entrance corridor, still littered with goblin bodies. The haulers deemed them dry and decomposed enough for bone harvest, so they were hard at work picking out the bones and ferrying them to the stockpile. "We beat this last wave using nothing more than our fists, but this is just the beginning. You will be our extra line of defence. As we speak, the bones of these goblins and other beasts are being turned into crossbows and bolts, which you will use to become wheakwh..." Mebzuth was interrupted by a racket coming from the workshop area. He signalled to one of the wrestler squad commanders and took him downstairs. They saw the empty craftsdwarf's workshop and realized that the posessed peasant had snapped. The wrestlers spotted the berserker and went to beat him down. Mebzuth left them to conduct their business and ordered up a coffin.

24th Galena, 252
"What do you mean a whole wagon?" asked Mebzuth, dumbfounded.
"Human sized gear, cloth bins, all that stuff. I even found a rotten human body in one corner." said Diefortheswarm, the mechanic who found the mechanism that stood on top of the buried pile.
"What the hell happened to the caravan?"
"I... I don't know, Boss. Maybe they got killed in that mining accident. What should we do with all that stuff?"
"I don't know.. Claim it for now. We'll melt the oversized gear when we get the magma works running."
Diefortheswarm walked away, muttering about incompetent leadership.

14th Limestone, 252
Tekkud Arotherush, Hamlet Liaison, descended the entrance ramp. He saw the fortifications above the last stretch of the entryway and noted that down. There were still goblin bones here and there, and the one stoo small to be useful cracked under his boots. To his right, he could hear the sounds of fists hitting leather and wood as the wrestlers trained. He soon found Mebzuth, who had no patience for the formalities. "Gimme wood, meat, leath.." "What meat?" "Anyhing, I don't give a damn. Same goes for leather. Bring any booze you can find, bars of metal that's not useless, iron anvils, animals, that kind of things. You're a big boy, you'll figure it out."

11th Sandstone, 252
The miners met Mebzuth at the magma tap where the magma pipe was slated to connect to the magma forge pipeline. "Why didn't you tap the pipe?" he asked them.
"We weren't supposed to. Diefortheswarm was going to install a pump."
"Yeah, that's not going to happen. Knock out these two sections here, and the magma will flow through the fortifications you made right into the pipeline."
The miners obliged, and the magma started flowing, slowly as ever.
"Boss, did you remember to build walls to seal the parts of the shafts that intersect the pipeline?"
"No. Shit. SHIT! Find the goddamn masons and tell them to do it quickly. Shit!"
Diefortheswarm ran down to the pipeline and sealed it with plenty of time to spare, and then ran back to Mebzuth. "What the hell was that, Mebzuth?"
"Sorry I assumed you were competent enough to seal the pipeline back when you were in charge. Never mind that, it's okay now."
"But without pumps, the imps will be able to squeeze through the fortifications!"
"That's ridiculous, a stupid ghost story made up by magma engineers. If it makes you feel better, I won't tap into the pipeline from above until we make sure we don't hear any imps down there."

7th Obsidian, 252
"Skeletal goats! Skeletal goats!" voices echoed throughout the fortress. The militia quickly readied itself and got in position. The wrestlers quickly disassembled the four goats. The overwhelming feeling was disappointment, as they were really hungry and hoped for living goats that could be butchered. They went to Mebzuth to complain of their hunger. He promptly ordered all the caged animals slaughtered for meat, and then went to meet the bookkeeper. "How bad is it?" "We seem to be out of meat, and we have five edible plants remaining.  We're screwed." "I did order the animals slaughtered, that should keep us going for a while." "Our small supply of animals will only delay the inevitable. You should start looking for alternative food sources."

31st Obsidian, 252
Udil the miner, who's been laboring in the mason's workshop for days, finally came out. Mebzuth cleared his ferewell tour schedule to congratulate him, and then went right back to the task of reviewing his work. He visited the tower cap farm, where the farmers were hard at work plucking out bushes. "How are we doing?" "Every little bit helps, but the farm is too small to sustain us on foraging alone." "What can we do about it?" "We could use a bigger farm and more fields." Mebzuth thanked them and left for the workshops.
At the workshops, Mebzuth consulted the unemployed smiths. They reported that the magma was well on its way to filling the pipeline, and that they can't wait to get the industry running. A miner who was present showed Mebzuth a spot of limonite at the corner of one of the shafts leading to the magma pipe. "We could probably arm the entire militia with this limonite alone, Boss!" "Have you found any coal or lignite yet?" "Nope, sorry." "That's a shame. I guess we'll have to stock up on wood to get a steel industry going. Now, I'd love to chat, but I've still got to visit the miltia."
The militia gave Mebzuth a hero's welcome. Eleven wrestlers and ten recruits training on the crossbow. "How's the crossbow training going?" "It's tough, Boss. We just can't get enough bone bolts, and it's not like we're lacking in bone." "That's odd, I always make sure to order more." "They're just lazy, Boss, I know it!" "Are you sure? Maybe they're too busy with other things. Besides, all of you have full quivers, you could afford to hit the targets more."
With his farewell tour taken care of, Mebzuth passed his duties to Grendus and went vermin-hunting.

That's the end of year 252. Here's the save file:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PYUR26UM

Nothing much. Besides the immigrant wave that mostly got drafted, I dug out some new facilities, including a place where marksdwarves can fire on the entrance corridor. I'll cover most of that in the second part.

The files all work. After ironing out some unrelated computer problems, I managed to run the modded game with your save file you provided.
There is no dwarf named after you, would you like one?

IIRC, dwarves eat at a nearby chair, even if it's not fancy. Nearby could mean near the place they stood when they got hungry, or near the location of the food they took, I'm not sure which.
You could solve that problem and eliminate long treks (except for the food haulers) by building small buffets or even nice dining rooms near work areas.

I've recently returned to the game, and a new problem came up. Whenever I start, I get a blank window, black all over. This happens with several installations, including ones that worked on someone else's PC. I've tried to reinstall the drivers, but that didn't change much. In fact, the only way to get the game to display was to strip the video card driver and let Windows use whatever it wants, and the result was so sluggish that rendering a single frame while idling at the main menu became a gradual process that took the better part of a second.
There is a shred of hope, though. Whenever I exit the game normally by pressing up and return instead of terminating it, the window unblanks for a split second.

Any ideas?

Is the game modded?