Bay 12 Games Forum

N-N-N-N-NECROMANCY!

I've open-sourced the code for this, under the MIT license. It's pretty naff and poorly commented (it was written a while ago), and as I no longer even run Windows I'm not going to be maintaining it - feel free to fiddle, and compile it, and stuff. MIT license means you can do whatever you want with it, near enough.

I'm going to be rewriting it in Scala, and running it through the JVM, at some point, which means everyone should be able to run it, and it'll work with the current version of Dwarf Fortress.

Download it HERE.

-Angry Lawyer

Been a bit busy with holidays and exams and other whatnot, but I will get there eventually.

Current stymie - it's easy to display height in the preview as colours - below 0, and it's water and therefore blue, above it, it's green, and above a certain number, mountain and therefore white.

How would I represent the other parameter previews in colour?  Temperature would have colours for freezing and scalding, but drainage?  Savagery?  Does anyone know the boundary numbers before you get a clear cut change?

-Angry Lawyer

There'll be an update soon enough - I had to finish two of my university assignments over the last month.

-Angry Lawyer

P.S.: I would also be with the SimCity crowd even if the army arc was perfected. Right now, I put as many weapon traps around my fortresses as possible so that my dwarves do not get harrassed by the goblins and I don't draft a military. And even if traps were toned down, I would try to find a solution where I wouldn't need a military (if need be by genning a goblin free world.)

With the completion of some of the Diplomacy arc parts, hopefully you should be able to figure out a way to make peace, which is a more fun solution

-Angry Lawyer

Developers commonly discard player feedback as useless and I think that is the worst possible mistake. The feedback you receive from your peers will ALWAYS be tempered by their respect for you and the perspective they hold is limited by what job they perform. The feedback you give to yourself can not be trusted because you know too much and that results in a limited perspective.

We on the other hand only care that the game is enjoyable for us. The problem is that most of us do not know exactly what we want. Or if we do, we have trouble explaining what exactly should change.

In my experience (with Zombie Master), 95% of player suggestions are actually guff - the majority of it fall into a few categories:

- Wanting recognition:  A poorly-thought out idea is suggested in the hope it's implemented so that person can have bragging rights.  "Make the interface blue instead!".

- Unfeasibles: Stuff that's waaaay beyond the scope of the project, or even your skillset. "You should have it so every game is persistant with one another!"

- Unbalancers: Stuff suggested for its cool factor, without thinking how it would actually affect other components of the game.  "Dwarves should ride dragons as default!"

- Turn-it-into-a-clone-of-an-existing-game/movie/book: Suggestions made just because someone played Dungeon Keeper or watched Lord of the Rings or something.  "Elves are portrayed as this-and-this in LOTR and so should be the same in DF"

- Stuff that was already suggested, or you're already planning to do, just not yet.  The constant multithreading suggestions are an example.

- Stuff that takes a lot of effort to code for almost zero return.

The big problem with dealing with suggestions is finding the actual good ones under the sea of bad ones or repeats.

-Angry Lawyer

Based on previous ideas:

Food comes with two tags.  [Solid], and [Additive].  All foods created must contain at least one solid.  The descriptor is based upon this class, and custom ones can be defined for specifics in the raws.  Foods that can be prepared several ways (eggs) can have both tags, and get the descriptors based on how the computer decides on using them in the prepared meal.

Simple and elegant.  Additive could be divided into dry and wet additive, if required.

-Angry Lawyer

Hey! I play this regularly. There are a lot of things I would enjoy changed about it but I suppose that's what current development is for.

Also, FUCK redqueen in the ass, I don't understand in the slightest why that map is so popular. It's boring and lame and I hate it and every goddam server has it.

I can really relate to Toady when he says he doesn't want to lose control of the project - it happened to us with ZM when people started putting the same admin plugin that installed crap features like regeneration and levelling and ruined the flow of the game and made it into a generic shooter on every damn server.

-Angry Lawyer