Bay 12 Games Forum

So, a friend of mine tried to get me into Rimworld. And...my main reaction was 'dwarf fortress does all this so much better', which uh, dissapointed him, but inspired me to start playing DF again.

So I'm currently on a glacial fortress, and have some Stupid Newbie Questions I've forgotten the answer to.

1. How do I force my dwarves to carve blocks out of ice so I can make my Ice Palace aboveground? Ice isn't on the rocks list. I looked under 'status' (z) then STONE, as well under the mason's workshop and DETAILS. I need my ice blocks!

2. I see the old 'certain ice stuff melts in summer underground regardless of the temperature or ice layer' bug/feature/I have no idea anymore is still there. 90% of my large start is frozen over (even in summer) glacier, and about 10% is another biome with trees and a frozen-even-in-summer stream. AFAIK, even if I choose another start, that stuff will still melt, right? I seem to recall the trick was placing stuff aboveground, and making sure you had a roof over it.

3. I'm using the 'Caveat Empor' pack with Phoebus graphics. I'm not sure why - I'm 100% sure I've used these graphics for years and possibly a decade or more...but .... the white highlight of the font on menus is...super white-grey and dim, and barely visible. There's barely any way to tell which item in a menu I'm highlighting. Is there a way to tweak that? Its annoying.

Dumb question but: I'm trying to use the changelayer script, but dfhack doesn't recognize it. The error message suggests I try loading the script (though dfhack doesn't recognize load...) - but its irrelevent as I don't see any script file with that name in the appropriate directory. Anyone know where I could get a copy of the appropriate file, and what the alternative to LOAD is?

DFhack is not something I've messed with in a long, long time. Sorry for the dumb question.

Edit: This is going to sound even crazier, but though I made *100% sure* I wasn't typing changelayer wrong....its now recognizing the command, but claiming there's no such material. "changelayer marble" is all I'm trying to do.

Is there a database of 'interesting' Perfect World-generated mapsets somewhere?

Question - I can't seem to remember how to pull up the temperature of a tile in dwarf mode.

I started on a temperate ocean bordering shrublands and a glacier. Supposedly it had some nice, jagged cliffs conjoining the glacier and the ocean. The 'temperate ocean' is completely frozen over. Wonderful, I thought - time to play with ice. (which I remember from DF2012 was buggy as hell, but supposedly is less buggy now?)

Well, I remember that ice constructions used to melt sometimes (or be lava-proof) and ice furniture would instantly melt. I may be remembering wrong? I did some reading and some testing; ice constructions definitely don't melt anymore, and ice-furniture via mod workshops is...uh, interesting.

Anyways, I set up a number of ice doors (some of which are good a year later) an ice-bedroom (which entirely melted) - and an ice-tavern. The thing is, the order and the fashion in which these things melted is....random and odd. Like, half of a room would melt but not the other-half. Even when all on the same biome.

Now, knowing dwarf fortress, I'm guessing one of two things is going on.

1. Temperature doesn't work at all.

or

2. Toady has some intense mathematical modeling going on involving the temperature of the earth, which posits the atmospheric temperature inside caves as some sort of fixed point, and he has detailed enough modeling that there are hidden temperature winds/breezes going on causing some things to melt and some to not.

Again, knowing DF, its probably both.

But I'm curious to see whats actually going on. I don't think there's any way I can get ice beds to 'not melt'; the only experimentation I have yet to do is 'ice furniture inside but outdoors on the glacier', but I think my dwarfs would freeze to death, so I'm reluctant to try that.

-- Its been a few years since I've really dived into dwarf fortress (I foolishly thought Toady One's mythology worldgen features were really 'coming soon' and stopped playing until they came out; which was uh, awhile ago).

In that time the number of mods has dramatically increased, but a lot of stuff seems out of date/hard to sort through.

1. Is there anything I should know 'basic essential improvement/bugfixing-wise' before starting a new game after a few years away?

2. Is there a resource which just like - gives mod reviews, or like a 'this is stuff you should know about the bajillion utilities while you've been away' or anything like that?

I almost installed a fix mod from the mod threads and then realized it was hideously out of date, so it might be better if I just ask.


 

Maybe a few months back I picked up Cata again, tried to shoot something, and had the bullet go like 90 degrees to the left of what I was pointing it at.  While aiming.  I heard guns were buffed, is this sort of nonsense still in?

Somewhat relatedly I was just sorta reminiscing about one of my favorite runs of Cataclysm, eons ago, before static spawn, when vehicles were still a mod.  A Hulk got jammed in the windshield of my mostly-totalled car and had beat me basically to the edge of death, when I remembered I had an MP5, which, even while untrained, I managed to magdump it into it, somehow getting off every shot until it died, without any gun skill, because it kept the thing stunned or something.  They were deadly panic buttons that were super constrained because of ammo, and because they were loud, they would call more trouble eventually, which was neat.

So like, y'know, that 90 degrees thing was super annoying, because I'd aimed the thing by just pointing a fingergun at the zombie while the gun dangled on the extended finger or something.  It was super weird and immersion breaking.  I think I still had the issue of 'literally cannot shoot zombie dogs and other small stuff' too, which was also aggravating?  I guess what I'm asking is 'are those particular things gone yet'.

I don't really use guns much, but throwing is basically impossible. I'm not even sure why throwing is a skill (instead of a function of dexterity) - but throwing things untrained basically means you can't throw even to 'average human norms'. For instance, I do a LOT LOT LOT of lab starts, and throwing matchbombs at the turret is basically impossible; I remember last year I never had a problem with it, but they pretty much move some random difference. I had a grenade once and it took me like five tries to get it farther then two squares.

The bigger issue was - I don't remember for sure how aiming USED to work, but as of the experimentals I'm currently on, you can't 'aim' outside of your field of view, so if you aim farther then a few squares, you have to 'zoom out' and then reaim. I don't know why they did that, I swear I don't think it used to be that way.

The game is still pretty fun though, IMO.

I mean, I'm hardly an expert, but thats my two cents.

That butchery change is so tedious I can't even -manage to read the whole thing without getting bored-. And, again, Dwarf Fortress player, who still enjoys 80's era rpgs, roguelikes, and does mathematics and economics for fun.

One of the things that I think is becoming apparent is that (and this won't make me friends on either side of the debate, but whatever):

1. Fixing bugs is less boring, on statistical average, then making new features. (not that they don't - they very, very clearly, do fix bugs on a daily basis ...but... they make slightly more new features 'on average' then they fix bugs 'on average'. Again, this is just human nature.)

and

2. The main developer and many of the active coders simply don't have an interest in a game from a gameplay perspective. They don't want something like dwarf fortress, nethack, or even a roguelike version of Project Zomboid or <any survival first person game ever>. They want a zombie roguelike version of UnReal World. And you can't say UnReal World doesn't have its fans.

And I don't think you can deny that UnReal World and, say, Dwarf Fortress are in different genres. Both are different, both are complex. Both have intricate simulations. But..... Well, perhaps a comparison to Project Zomboid and UnReal World would be better. Its not a roguelike Project Zomboid. Its more akin to UnReal World with zombies, set in the future. The gameplay used to be more akin to Project Zomboid, but is less so over time; and this causes tension. Different sub-genres. There's a difference between roguelike-simulation and roguelike-survival. Or something - I think the idea is clear even if I am not.

Still; I think eventually someone will fork it. I doubt it'll happen soon, but they don't even have a website with a dedicated forum anymore. They have tons of active contributors, and I think it has a healthy span left to it, but eventually someone will manage to fork it. The main reason it hasn't happened yet is that, for all of the 'controversial' changes, when you look at the actual gameplay, they've been fairly open and conservative about making their configuration options tweak able to everyone who wants a dramatically different experience. And that has resulted in a lot of mainlined mods and options that border on mini-forks. Most of the controversial changes can be turned off.

Bright Nights was never intended as a fork, from what I gather (as an example) it seemed to mostly be a proof of concept, to show that someone COULD make a different game experience without having to fork it, and I think thats probably a good effort. And, as someone who plays the experimental, I noticed that once it was implemented, the number of mod options really just skyrocketed.

I mean, its been 15 years since I've done any coding, but I really doubt it would be that hard for even one person with actual coding experience and say; remove the butchery changes. Hell, they'll probably do that -themselves-.

So while I may be a naysayer myself at times, you can't really say there arn't reasons a fork hasn't happened, or that there hasn't been response to the criticism. And I think on any sort of project of this scale you'd see similar problems eventually.