Bay 12 Games Forum

Buy as many ram & memory sticks as possible, so you can play DF quicker.

I doubt there's a "number of rocks" variable that has a direct influence on much of anything. Rocks aren't just a number, they have all kinds of properties - location, material, forbidden, hidden, marked for dumping, hauled by someone, melting point, weight, etc etc etc. Those properties have to be stored in some kind of structure, so rocks can't just be stored in an integer. Probably the only thing you'd screw up is the UI trying to display the number of rocks.

It could use a linked list, or a doubly linked list, or some variant, as that would allow unlimited objects and easy removal and addition of them, although searching might be a bit slow, so it probably has some sorting mechanism...

His/her post, just spoiler'd for the the sake of board space.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: The Mad Engineer on May 24, 2009, 03:55:42 pm

The graphics were part of what enticed me.

After reading Boatmurdered, I decided to give it a try.  I downloaded it, genned a world, and then tried to choose an embark site.

I had no idea what I was doing.


I managed to fumble past the embark screen, and finally started to play.


I had never played an Asci-game before, and I spent about a full hour with the k key, finding out things in fascination (The red dot is a cardinal?  I laughed in glee.)  Then the next three hours were spent trying to figure out how to dig.  Another hour to go up and down z-levels (I had to use the wiki for that one), and when my dwarves finally started building farms and things, and it started to rain (It actually looks like the rain is falling in DF, as if you are watching it from above.  It's an illusion (If there is open space you don't see the rain), but its still a nice effect), I was hooked.


I'm one of those weird people who actually like to read books and stuff, as opposed to the cell-phone-texting TV watchers around me, so that might have played a part.

You must be my other twin sibling, the one that I never had. I think we both started DF in an almost identical way. The twin brother I do have absolutely detests Dwarf Fortress. Life is, in a word, Elven for him, I do pity his lack of understanding.

Back on topic, convincing friends to play Dwarf Fortress is about as easy as killing carp by dropping kittens on them. It helps to sit down with a friend and show him the basics of DF. I've told another all the fantastic things about the game, but he whines about what I've told him of the "graphics" and is too lazy to actually ever download the game. Rrgh.

I'll probably use Boatmurdered on my recently recruited friend to reel him in once he turns astray or if he grasps the Dwarven concept well.

Seek and Destroy

Also, how do you make bread? That might be something I add in.

But one must remember. 100 trained soldiers > 1000 peasants.