Bay 12 Games Forum

Official Website: http://nomnomgalaxy.com/
Good Overview Video: www.polygon.com/2014/3/17/5518468/nom-nom-galaxy-overview-video
Early Access on Steam for $20

Terraria with souuuupppppp. Has anyone played this game yet? It's a base building game where you mine for resources, explore caverns for ingredients, hunt monsters for food, and use it to make soup! I just bought it off Steam and it's still very much a work in progress (i.e. there's no saving), but it's pretty fun to make huge soup bases (no pun intended) and ship them off in soup rockets. Soup-making gets a bit tedious at times but it's a cute concept and there's 2 player split-screen coop which is pretty fun.

The world is just awesome. Perlin noise heightmaps just don't cut it justice. Everything from plate tectonics to climate to bedrock composition affects topography.

Originally I was going to make my own generator, but time constraints have forced me otherwise. However, you can still contribute! Post interesting terrain generation projects that you are undertaking here, for us to admire and comment on.

Old OP:

Download Normandy's Buildings Mod for DF2010
Last updated June 26, 2010

What started as a small mod to add a few buildings without changing much more has evolved into... a small mod to add a few buildings while changing a few things.

The goal is to structure Dwarf Fortress and have it 'build' more; choosing depth over choice. Certain holes (such as the inability to set fires and the lack of display cases) were filled with buildings (bonfires and display cases, respectively), some things were moved (smelting of platinum, aluminum, steel, 100% smelting of silver/gold nuggets) to higher tiered buildings which require more advanced materials to construct (crucible requires block, anvil, metal bar) in order to facilitate a greater feeling of progress.

Basic installation requires Uristmod (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=53028.0). Simply extract the buildings folder into your dwarf fortress folder (so you'll have folder_with_df\buildings), run Uristmod.exe, choose "Install New Mod", and type in "buildings". This makes it easy to install over other most other mods (such as mineral rebalances and mods that only affect creatures).

For a more detailed installation guide and some mod compatibility issues, read the included readme. A manual of all new features and credits are also included in the readme.


=== Notes ===
-Do not smelt cinnabar or mercury slag. You'll only end up with molten quicksilver and sadness. Currently, you perform amalgamations directly from mercury ore. I am aiming to change this, but for now, the quicksilver metal is just a placeholder.

=== Changelog ===

version 1.1
-Alchemist's laboratory expanded (acids, gunpowder)
-Bonfires temporarily removed, pending more testing and fixes
-Smelting of aluminum now requires borax
-Wood is now worth 2 to better reflect material balances in a fortress
-Smelting iron in the crucible now creates smoke for flavor
-Salt caps, rock salt, now processed into dwarven salt

version 1
-Alchemist's laboratory, bonfires, display cases, libraries, crucibles added
-Lay Pewter is now the only pewter, and Billon was removed
-Bronze is now 2 copper : 1 tin
-Reactions for bismuth + black bronze, lay pewter, nickel silver changed, and values where needed
-Iron ores are now not 100% to encourage use of other metals
-Steel production has been reworked and simplified, and is now exclusively done in the crucible
-Native gold and silver are now not at 100%
-Amalgamations at alchemist's laboratory for nuggets, tetrahedrite, galena
-Cinnibar is now an ore of mercury

=== Future Goals ===
-Altars
-Add in alternate metalworking paths for "lower" metals as well
-Start moving into plant territory, with extracts and more buildings
-Add more fun stuff for alchemists to do
-Mercury poisoning, and more deadly things from inanimate objects in general

Miners, woodcutters, soldiers etc... all try and pick up equipment, unsuccessfully pick them up, walk away, then try and pick them up again. Nothing I have tried has fixed it (including restarting DF, drafting/undrafting, removing labor then adding it back in, etc...). Strangely enough, when doing specific jobs (e.g. woodcutting, mining), the equipment is picked up. I have not tried armor.

Ignore the orcish siege and dead bodies lying around. That was my bad (e.g. forgetting to set 'duergars (the race I'm playing) stay indoors' when an orcish siege arrived).

I'm not sure whether or not the mod has caused it; I wouldn't think so, given that it hasn't completely barred duergar miners and woodcutters from picking up their equipment; only when they have no job afterwards do they fail to successfully pick up the piece of equipment. I'm using modified version of this mod: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=36547.0 (Dwarf Fortress Rebalance, changes mostly superficial to names, with the removal of the new metals and a few weapons), combined with http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=35584.0 (Molten Rocks), a plant mod (forgot which one it was), and a few of my own tweaks (a few new reactions).

As a side note, the armorer with the fey mood also refuses to pick up the fox bones near the butcher's workshop for some reason.

A save game (with all of the mods I'm using) is here:
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=1112

Alt (Essentially the Meta key in Windows) plus an arrow key should have some sort of function bound to it.

For designations menu:
 move the cursor to the end of the 'type' of square you are over (either wall, floor/designated for mining, or open space/designated for channeling) in that direction, such that using it in a room brings you to the edge of the room, using it between two rooms would essentially make it easier to highlight a hallway, when in mining designation mode. In traffic designation mode, it should do the same, except with traffic designations. In the other designation modes it should do the same thing as mining designation mode, except it does not pay attention to designated squares.

It makes it a lot easier to navigate/designate large floor plans, e.g. designate a room here, there, there using standard shift-arrow and arrow. Using alt-arrow, quickly zoom around boundaries of rooms and construct hallways between them with far fewer keystrokes.

For other menu modes:
In view unit mode, it should go to the nearest unit in that direction. Same goes for view building mode, except for buildings. Same for look mode, except to the nearest non-hidden/non-forbidden (set by options menu) item.

Inspiration from emacs and other programs designed for text-only terminals.

Though I have made this suggestion before, seeing flow values vs. not seeing them should be able to be set from the in-game options menu.

That is all, I believe.

Well, rather than come up with my own bright ideas, I had the somewhat dim idea to rather take six similar ideas posted around the forum and rather than build on them together, link them in novel ways to create a super-suggestion that may even fill out the entire contents of an arc. This is only the first of many of such 'six degrees' I plan to make.

Six Degrees of Crafting:

1st Degree; Skill Synergy
Similar to the recently created thread (find it yourself, I'm too lazy to), but with a slight change. Instead of skills working as they do now, they should be a generalization of a specific group of skills. For example, mining; experience in mining would reflect the total experience gained in say, 'pick swinging' 'mineral identification' and strength [the attribute], which would all be individual, but invisible skills. However, the experience shown in mining would be capped by the so called 'main attribute', which in this case might be 'pick swinging'. So a legendary stonecrafter would have high skill in mineral identification, but since they had no pick swinging skill, the mining skill wouldn't be displayed. However, since they have this skill in mineral identification, they'd still have an advantage over any other dwarf off the block (not counting attribute gains). This would make skill bleed effectively invisible (and therefore you don't have all your legendary stonecrafters skilled in mining), but still have a noticeable effect.

This makes fighting much more interesting. Say the axedwarf skill has under it the subskills 'strong attack', 'medium attack', and 'light attack' (not necessarily all of the skills under it). An axedwarf could have great skill in making heavy strong attacks, but would be unable to maneuver quickly and make light attacks. Or perhaps a dwarf has a specific skill in armor using that counters a specific type of attack (e.g. one dwarf with armor using has a high skill in blocking strong attacks). This would facilitate 'fighting styles' that have been suggested. But more on that later.

The second part of this suggestion is to group materials into subgroups, with which skills are automatically associated. For example, we might put 'marble' and 'gneiss' together under 'banded stone'. Anyone working with banded stone, whether it be a miner or a stonecrafter, would gain experience in 'banded stone', thus creating a more in-depth skill bleed without going into specific materials. This ties into the next suggestion...

2nd degree; Material Identification
There was a thread sometime ago suggesting that dwarves should only see 'wood', with an acute knowledge of stone and metals, should be able to easily identify them, while elves and humans would be able to identify wood very easily, but only see 'light stone/dark stone', 'so and so color metal', etc... Tying this in with the first degree, any entity would require skill in working with the specific group the material was in order to identify it. For example, take a fresh new peasant, with no skill in the previously mentioned group 'banded stone'. Initially, they'd only be able to identify the super-group that marble and gneiss are in, in this case 'white/light stone'. So all marble and gneiss, when zoomed to would say 'white stone'. But as they gained experience in working with marble and gneiss, they'd slowly come to the realization that this 'banded stone' was different from other 'white stone'. So now you'd be able to identify banded stone, as compared to lumping all white stone together as 'white stone'. But as you became more experienced in banded stone, you'd come to realize the differences between marble and gneiss. Thus, you make the final distinction and you can identify 'marble' and 'gneiss'. This becomes important in the case of similar minerals that are of different color; for example, felsite is somewhat similar to rhyolite, but they'd initially be classed in different groups, 'light stone' and 'dark stone' respectively. But a somewhat skilled craftdwarf would be able to recognize that even though they are different colors, they have some similarity. An even more skilled craftdwarf would be able to see their exact stone names. This makes the next degree far more important...

3rd Degree; Schools/Apprenticeship
In dwarven schools/apprenticeships, the knowledge of rock could be passed on, e.g. be able to pass on at least familiarity of all materials/creatures/etc... to new dwarves. This leads to things such as martial schools, where knowledge of how to fight specific enemies can form (e.g. Urist McChampion is a master at a heavy fighting style, and can teach recruits the finer points of bashing their enemies to bits), or perhaps a mining apprenticeship (e.g. Urist McMiner is teaching young Bormek McMiner how to identify banded stone, and how to best wield a pick). This would be especially useful for the next degree...

4th Degree; Bring back the Guildmasters!
The 3rd degree and 2nd degrees have specific implications in this. It was suggested that guildmasters come back, but with functions. Now, in addition to their suggested attributes (which I won't reiterate), they become invaluable teaching tools. My guess is that guildmasters would have at least 'skilled', or any analog to 'skilled', in every subskill under their sphere, and therefore be able to identify every material and teach every material their guild controls. They'd prove invaluable in giving your crafters/fighters a head-start (e.g. The Head of the Stonecrafters Guild teaches all your fledgling new stonecrafters 'familiar' (or analogous) skill in every stone group, giving them at least a small headstart as compared to if they had simply dove into stonecrafting, or the Head of the Fighters Guild teaches all your new recruits the finer points of dodging arrows).

As later suggested, guilds could house specific 'houses of thought'. E.g. one stonecrafter guild could be especially skilled in working with banded stone, but perhaps not so great at working with any other type of stone, while another stonecrafter guild is incredibly skilled at working stonecrafter tools (whatever the 'main' skill of stonecrafting would be), but is not too familiar with any particular type of stone. This could create inter-fortress tensions similar to how Toady wants religions to eventually do. This also lends to 'fighting styles'. The House of Flying Axes could teach their axedwarf recruits legendary light attack moves, but the House of Decapitation would teach their axedwarf recruits how to swiftly take off heads with heavy attack moves.

Another function of guildmasters would forever prevent trade injustices. Remember that traders aren't always necessarily masters at their craft; a human trader might not know the difference between gneiss (value 1) and marble (value 2), e.g. they'd be lukewarm to trust your dwarves telling them that their white stone crafts are in fact more valuable marble (a cool note with this, you could trick traders into thinking that your pyrite goods were actually gold!). However, they would be completely trusting of the guildmaster. You could order guildmasters to the trading depot as you do your trader, and they would mediate trade. (In order to balance this though, perhaps guildmasters are under some great oath to always tell the truth about what material they are trading, thus why you could not order the guildmaster to the depot). This goes into our 5th degree...

5th Degree; Fluctuating Prices
You know when your trader sets the prices for certain types of goods? Basically like that, except it happens in real-time. Toady has stated he wants to shy away from a real supply-demand system, and I think such a system wouldn't really fit into DF (although, naturally capping the price of mass-produced cheap stone goods actually does have some merit to it, but I digress). Rather, nobles should instate price mandates, depending on their own personal likes (e.g. Urist McNoble likes marble, has mandated all marble objects be sold with at 200% price), and give us something to like about noble mandates. Another thing, such as the banning of trade of a specific type of item could increase the price in outlying entities, given that the object is now in demand. This ties into the 4th degree in that traders could only be told that a specific material which was mandated to be sold at 50% value was 'alunite' and at 200% 'marble', but they only know both as white stones. Your dwarves may have some luck in convincing the traders that your expensive crafts are in fact marble, but a guildmaster would have the greatest sway in convincing the traders that your crafts are marble. A special note though, that you should be able to specifically choose whether or not a guildmaster is present at the trade depot to oversee trading. It should be that 'guildmasters never lie', so by having the guildmaster 'missing' while you are trading would let you trick unsuspecting merchants. Merchants which have been tricked (they should find out as soon as they return to their parent civilization), however, should get relatively angry, and even siege your fort if you do it too often. This ties into out sixth and final degree...

6th Degree; Better Crafting Control
All of these steps lead up to a demand for better crafting control. If we want to make 6 ashen beds specifically, by god give us the tools to make six ashen bed specifically. However, the way these specific options appear should be like the way reactions occur at the furnace. Only if you can identify the material, and have the material present, should you be presented the option. This would significantly cut down on unnecessary screen clutter, and possibly make a brute-force system viable.

I find it rather annoying that all the fish in a river will die if your river freezes in the winter. It's not really what happens in real life. My suggestion:

If the temperature of a water tile is below freezing, but not that much below freezing, only the surface of the water will freeze. The water below will still be in it's fluid form, but the surface above will now have an ice floor. It's much like how only the surface of ponds will freeze in the winter, due to ice being lighter than water.

I just had an idea for a fortress challenge. I read a lot about melancholy dwarves comitting suicide and beserk legendary dwarves killing off entire fortress populations before being subdued by kittens or something.

Here's the challenge:
-Make your fortress as impervious to melancholy and/or beserk dwarves as possible, while facilitating the means to get melancholy and/or beserk dwarves. Try and hold as many melancholy dwarves at once in your fortress.

You'd probably have to do things like have no loose items anywhere in the fortress, keep stored items in lockable rooms, have no sharp drops, replacing them all with ramps, etc...