Bay 12 Games Forum

Having the dwarves pick up a bin and bring it to the item being collected is awesome -when there are multiple items to collect, and when nobody else wants any of the items already in the bin.

If a dwarf picks up a nearly full (and therefore heavy) bin to pick up a single item, this is likely slower than picking up the item and bringing it to the bin.

The more annoying scenario is when what's being collected is an intermediary product in a longer production chain -I learned this in my clothing industry. I'd collected pig tails in a stockpile close to a farmer's workshop next to the looms. Binned, of course, since I was mass-producing clothing for both domestic use and export. As soon as pig tails got to the stockpile I'd set up a plant processing job on repeat at the farmer's workshop. Then more pig tails mature over at the farms, leading to some Urist mcHelpful running over to the pig tail stockpile and picking up the bin with the existing pig tails (which is nice and efficient -much fewer stockpiles full of half empty bins), bringing it over to the farms to snatch up the fresh ones... Only, this means that my thresher, hard at work, finishes his current job and looks around for additional idle pig tails to process and, finding none, cancels the job.

So. Ideal scenario: There's somewhere in-game where you could have stockpiles switch between the new and the old collection method, and I'm just stupid and blind for having missed it?

My usual modus operandi involves chaining a couple war dogs at the entrance to my fort to spot kobolds and ranged ambushers before they get to my dwarves.

It just hit me, though, that with the new pasture mechanics, I don't even have to chain them anymore, right? Just set up a small pasture at the same place and assign the guard animal! Which means, they are free to give chase or flee!

The latest issue (8/2010) of MikroBitti (MB) has an article on indie games, with a very prominent part taken up by Dwarf Fortress. The article calls DF 'one of the most ambitious gaming projects in the world' (translation = me) , and recommends the game 'to all who are prepared to take on a challenge you can't win' (ditto)! The article also mentions Dwarf Therapist, even including a picture of it.

Large serrated discs right now work as a kind of ferris-wheel, tossing creatures around but otherwise leaving them unharmed. I think this has to do with their ridiculously large attack size.

I don't know if this has been suggested -I tried to find relevant topics but couldn't- so here goes:

I'm suggesting one-way pathing designations to help sort out dwarven traffic, and thus help the fps. I'm imagining this as being tied to the existing traffic zone designations, really; we'd need four different zones (n->s, s->n, e->w, w->e) and any dwarf trying to path along one of these in the proper direction would see a high-traffic zone, whereas a dwarf trying to path from the improper direction would see a restricted traffic zone.

Over their iterations, my fortresses have evolved to utilize a common , specific floor plan. Reason for this is the designate tool; this design evolved to be as easy as is practical to create using the current keyboard commands (direction keys, shift + direction keys). I do use the mouse for the fiddly bits, but it's a great timesaver and a really simple layout. I thought I'd post it here for general commenting if you are so inclined.

The basic block is a square 41 tiles (starting tile + 4 * [shift + direction key]) wide; I outline it by designating the area around it to be dug out, with stairs at the corners (I usually dig roads that are 3 tiles wide, but that is mere laziness / preference). The resulting square of rock I divide into nine smaller squares by digging out four intersecting tunnels, like so:


That gives me exactly 11 x 11 squares, or exactly the starting tile plus one shift + diagonal direction key, of floor space in nine rooms to designate for digging. I use either the mouse or the keyboard again (there is an easy layout for those too) to designate doorways. If I want stairs inside the rooms I designate them with the mouse.

This 11 tiles of floor space in a room can be all one single room, or further divided into four 5x5-tile or nine 3x3-tile rooms (if you want them all the same size) simply by undesignating with the keyboard commands and then using the mouse to place doorways.

This used to be the basic design for everything, but the residential area has slightly deviated from this basic floor plan. I used to lay out the residential area with the same basic design, making the central 11x11 -tile square a market or a barracks and have the four adjoining squares be hollowed out as living cubicles by having a 3-tile wide road in the center, from the edge of the block to the central square, accessed by small 3-tile rooms (coffer, bed, cabinet) branching off it (this gave me 12 rooms per 11x11 square) This gave too cramped access to some of the hallways, so I flipped the design of the cubicle areas, positioning them in the center and making them access the much widened side hallways instead, also adding two additional cubicles per square like so:


The central room is a dining room / meeting hall with a prepared food stockpile. The lower corner rooms are part of the baroness' and the baron consort's apartments, and the upper corner rooms are being prepared for the royals. Only counting the commoners' rooms there's 56 apartments in this block, so 4 of these blocks would house a fort that has reached its immigration cap -indeed, there are three additional floors like this one, all stacked on top of each other.

Aboveground, I do this:


The 41 tiles long walls are great here too, since walls can be designated in rows of up to 10 tiles wide currently, meaning that ideally (if it weren't for the intruding water that I don't want to wall over right now) I'd get by with 16 total 10-tile wall designations to wall in the entire yard, leaving a quite safe area of the surface for my dwarves to utilize as they like.

So. Pros are the minimal effort needed to designate for excavation, the accessibility (pathing lag only becomes noticeable when I designate a couple hundred rocks for dumping) and the total disregard for any and all natural features you can display by extending this design to the surface or through a chasm.

Cons are that it's, well, unimaginative. It also takes some extra digging compared to a typical branching fortress -but "dwarves" and "complain about all the digging" do not ever meet in a sane sentence.

The largest Finnish general magazine about computers and everything related, Mikrobitti (translated microbyte), releases a DVD every year containing a collections of programs of great help to computer users. Image editors, text editors, office packages, linux distros, web browsers.. the list goes on. They also include a selection of freeware games in various categories.

This years, DVD has just been released, as a free bonus to subscribers and buyers of the latest issue of the magazine. On it, under the section RPG:s, you will find, among Nethack and Adom; Dwarf Fortress!

The first sentence in the accompanying review says (my translation): "It's probably best not to beat about the bush and state, that Dwarf Fortress is a merciless game for beginners."  The review provides a link to the wiki to help with that.

So, perhaps a fresh influx of Finnish DF-players might be expected!