Bay 12 Games Forum

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Thanks.

I think a fundamental problem that needs to be addressed before we can have a decent GUI is the scattershot way that Dwarf Fortress handles jobs and construction.

Digging a stairway is an entirely different interface or project than building one out of stone. Ordering a dwarf to build a chair is an entirely different interface than ordering a dwarf to stand guard in a hall. Telling Dwarves to chop down trees in an area is an entirely different process from telling them to plant crops in an area, and both are entirely different from telling them to collect sand from an area or harvest crops from an area. Defining a region to be a hospital is an entirely different system from defining an area to be a bedroom, is an entirely different system from defining an area to be a carpenter's workshop. Removing a flight of stairs is entirely different depending on whether I dug those stairs out of stone or built them using stone.

Dwarf Fortress desperately needs to consolidate these various actions into a smaller number of consistent interfaces to the user. For example, I should just be able to designate an area as needing stairs. If that area is in solid stone, the dwarves should know that they need to dig it out and a miner should do it. If it's in the open, they should know that it's s job for a carpenter or a mason.

Once the problem of having 5 different ways to do everything gets sorted out, the requirements for a GUI will become a lot simpler and making a decent one should be fairly easy.

Quote from: Toady One on July 01, 2010, 03:08:11 am

The new development page is up.

Yep. As your quote indicates, that was about 9 months ago. It was a little longer ago than that that I stopped playing DF regularly - in no small part because the new military stuff was (and still is, from what I hear?) so buggy as to make the combat part of the game full of landmines of people not training, training forever, refusing to put down training weapons and using them in combat, etc.

And certainly, most of the big ticket items I mentioned in the OP are on that 9 month old list.

The problem is that they're all still in white. "Future goal." While there's been some stuff added to DF in that time, there's been very little that improves the playability of the core game. You have to expect some level of... odd priorities... in small, indie projects like this one. But going for a year or more pretty much messing about behind the scenes (i.e. world generation which is only accessible in legends mode) and not making improvements to the player-facing stuff (fixing broken systems - military. And god, how long has the economy been broken to the point that it's better to just turn it off? - new features, and improvements) is asking for trouble, I think.

I just look at Minecraft ($30 million + in sales so far) and think "damn it, Dwarf Fortress is better than that game, it deserves at least a fraction of that much," and I've got to say, I think bees are part of the problem. I wish the donation drive had have been for long-requested features, instead of more animals. I would have paid serious money for that!

Yes. I click the donate button, log into Paypal, and it gives me an error message saying that I can't use my credit card for this donation, and would I like to link a bank account directly to my Paypal instead?

The credit card works on Paypal for other things. It just doesn't work for donating to Bay12. And as I have no intention of giving Paypal (or anyone else, for that matter) direct access to my bank account, I'm unable to donate to Bay12 at all, without resorting to ancient, barbaric practices like writing symbols indicating value manually on crushed plant fiber with a chemical pigment, and then hiring a meat-puppet that rides around in a metal box which burns dead sea-life to physically deliver the crushed plant fiber to Toady, who then has to physically take the crushed plant fiber to a big building with more meat puppets in order to re-convert its imaginary value into something he can use to barter for produce, or things that come out of chickens, or some sort of dead animal which he can use in a chemical reaction to produce enough energy to make his brain work in such a manner which is conducive to his improving hauling in Dwarf Fortress.

Edit: I just tried it again, and it worked. I'm assuming it failed the first time for security reasons, as I was attempting to donate while I was out of the country and there's some sort of check to prevent that, or something.

In my current game, I've replaced [babysnatcher] with [item_thief] in the goblin raw, and have reduced their activity to 2 months of the year instead of all 4. Makes it much more reasonable - my current fort is several years old, and I avoided traps for most of that. (I have 1 layer of weapon traps in the cavern entrance now, because I got tired of single Trogs sneaking into my fort.)

Marksdwarves aren't a good solution for defense on their own. They aren't deadly or reliable enough to stop attackers. I find they're most useful for forcing the goblins to retreat during a siege, but you need to wall yourself in to give them time to work. Also, wooden bolts are utterly useless, so they're not a good solution for early defense, either.

I find the bigger issue isn't that long world gens take a long time to generate, but that they can significantly increase save, load, and quit times. I find if I go much longer than 500 years, the agony of the long autosaves far outweighs having a younger, slightly more boring world.

Unplayable? A bit of hyperbole, don't you think? Don't equip training weapons, there is absolutely no need whatsoever*. Define some new armor profiles before assigning any military and leave it as that, there is really no need to have to swap equipment all the time.

*Why on earth were they included if training now can't lead to killing sparring partners?

No, I meant unplayable. I had to disable invasions because the military was working so badly - crossbowdwarves not firing, dwarves collecting 3 axes and then using a training axe in combat, which would get them slaughtered. The game was, unsurprisingly, very boring as a result.

It is not only possible, but extremely likely that dwarves will kill each other when sparring. Fortunately, group training (the only time they'll spar) is also horribly broken, as the squad leader will go to training and wait for people to train despite their having to intention of ever showing up for it. But on those occasions that they do show up to train, they will happily hack each others' limbs off with great enthusiasm, as my military commander found out. That's why I tried equipping my recruit/training squad with training axes, which they then proceeded to never, ever put down, even when a forgotten beast showed up.

And apparently striking adamantium is "no need whatsoever" to upgrade the copper axes your dwarves were using...?

I've found the military bugs have made all the 2010 releases so far unplayable, the worst being Dwarves never putting down equipment they've been assigned, and just gathering more and more arms and armor, but then refusing to use any of it because they still have a wooden training axe. I haven't seen any mention of this in the dev notes, and the bug tracker is... inconclusive. Can anyone confirm whether the military works, yet?