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Topics - Protactinium

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1
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / ...how valuable does food get?
« on: November 03, 2011, 10:25:40 am »
This is vanilla, unmodded dwarf fortress.



It's royal jelly, roc meat (a Forgotten Beast megabeast), prickle berry wine, and royal jelly.

I know food is very ridiculous in terms of how high the value gets... but 987 food items in a stack?

2
DF Modding / More name variety
« on: October 22, 2011, 11:05:51 pm »
Basically, I want my dwarves to have a greater variety of names. I'm quite tired of having five Zons in a 100-person fortress. In what ways and in which files should I edit in order to make this happen?

Do I add more words into the LANGUAGE_DWARF text file? Do I add more Spheres or something to the entity file? Etc.

3
DF Gameplay Questions / Dwarf Combat Woes
« on: October 15, 2011, 09:49:17 pm »
It's been a long time since I've played Dwarf Fortress. I just started two days ago, after a long break starting from as soon as 31.x came out. I was an avid player of 40d, but when the DF2010 came out, I decided to give it time so that the most major bugs could get worked out and people smarter than me could penetrate how to use the military and teach me. It ended up being a huge stretch of time, but hey, I'm back now and that's what matters, eh?

So the wiki taught me the most basic way to Attack something that just needs killing. That article is great. The wiki also had a very helpful article on how to get my army running, how to use the schedule system, how to manipulate the Uniforms and Equip tabs (the latter more in-depth than the former), so I felt like I had things down pretty well. I was already aware of a lot of the combat rebalances between 40d and DF2010, that wrestling is no longer overpowered, that marksman training is bugged, that war hammers and maces depend on heavier metals rather than arbitrarily "higher quality" materials, etc.

But still, I had a major boo boo. :(

My first goblin ambush happened 4 years into the fort. An entire 4 years! And it was ONLY an ambush of 6 goblins. But, lacking any naturally-found metal on this map, the leather-equipped axe- and hammer-wielding army I had (20 dwarves in all) suffered 11 casualties, and only managed the kills by catching individuals and surrounding them 4 to 1. Most of my dwarves had at least 2.5 years of military training, but they're largely all between Novice and Proficient in their weapon skills as well as armor-using, shield-using, dodging, etc. I don't see what I'm doing wrong and why my dwarves got shredded by goblins. Does anyone have suggestions or advice on how to make sure they actually become good enough to even take a goblin on in a 1v1? (Again, metal is strictly limited on this map--I have enough to make good weapons, but not enough for armor yet.)

Also, a Forgotten Beast just spawned in the caves on the z-level that has access to my fort. I'll want some help with that.

But my real, real question is this: what's the best way for me to keep my civilians OUT OF HARM'S WAY during a combat situation? I don't use burrows yet and this fort is actually designed to be very integrated, it's not decentralized at all (it's built around a vertical up/down staircase shaft). I did find the option to make sure that whenever something dies, its junk is auto-forbidden so I control when they will rush to grab them. But I don't see the "All Dwarves Remain Indoors" option that existed in 40d.

4
General Discussion / World Community Grid
« on: May 23, 2010, 04:54:43 pm »
Alrighty. So, just like how Wii Fit finally made me start consistently exercising, a computer game has made me start giving humanitarian charity.

Fine, that's not entirely fair, I used to run Folding@Home, but my mother told me to stop running it because the computer fan was very loud and it seemed to slow my computer's responsiveness down.

Hold on, I ruined my lead into it. Let me start again:


World Community Grid is in its most basic explanation a method of providing scientists access to a supercomputer to do their work. The way it works is that in order to model something accurately, like for instance a protein, the calculations involved in making that are huge and would take an ordinary computer a very long time. If you can split up the equation into a lot of small tiny calculations, you can send those to a bunch of normal computers, they'll all independently do different parts of the equation simultaneously, and return the results to the scientist's end.

If you download the BOINC client for World Community Grid, you can have your computer securely donate unused and otherwise-wasted computing cycles to working on projects like curing AIDS, muscular dystrophy, cancer, etcetera. WCG requires that you set up an account, so that your account can then join a team. These teams earn points for total run time and amount of results returned, and then they rank against each other to encourage competition. People set up challenges and so teams try to amp up donation in order to win by running their computers on longer and so on.

I got into participating a little over a month ago by a browser-based text RPG I play, called Improbable Island. In it, if we set up a WCG account and link it to our in-game account and join our WCG account to the Improbable Island WCG Team, we receive an in-game reward currency (which currently does nothing yet, but the anticipation is enough for us :P ). So, while I'm not strong enough to get around to contributing to science without getting some sort of game reward, perhaps you guys have a stronger willpower, and can make your own Dwarf Fortress Distributing Computing team for the grid.

If you're not totally clear on what's going on with it, the short FAQ from Improbable Island might help:

Quote
What? I can cure AIDS and cancer?

That's right! By donating your unused CPU cycles to boffins who need serious computing power, you can actually help make the world a better place. Come on, you're playing a text-based game, it's not like you're using much of your computer's resources anyway.

...what?

Let me explain. When a scientist wants to do something that involves an awful lot of computing power, he can go and book time on the sort of supercomputer that has to be cooled by liquid nitrogen and costs a couple of grand per hour to rent, or he can try to do the computation on his own computer and wait ten years. OR. Or. He can use a grid. Grid computing is where you've got a bunch of normal, everyday computers all connected together, working on the same problem and sending their answers back.

...what?

Scientists and researches want to use YOUR computer to fight AIDS, cancer, and world hunger! You download a little widget, and any unused CPU cycles go towards doing Wonderful Things!

...oh. Won't that slow down my machine? And it feels... icky, you know? I don't want strangers fiddling with my computer.

No, it won't slow down your machine. Not appreciably, anyway - the program only runs when you're not using your computer, kinda like a screensaver. I certainly didn't see any difference in the day-to-day performance of my computer. And there are no actual people involved with what your computer's doing - just a list of calculations to perform and send back to the scientists.

Okay, so what are they doing with my processor and memory?

Well, there's a bunch of things - the master list is here, and that shows you all the research that your computer can do while you're not using it. You can pick and choose between projects if you want.

So what's in it for me?

You get to contribute to humanitarian projects without having to open your wallet, get off your arse, or inconvenience yourself for more than about ten minutes. Every time a charity mugger tries to sign you up for a direct debit, you can say "Sorry, I'm already contributing to humanitarian research," and stroll on. You get to cure AIDS while in the pub, and address world hunger while puking in the toilet later on. You get to do something useful with your computer while you're not using it (and don't give me that "Oh, I always turn mine off to reduce my carbon footprint" bollocks, I know you've left your computer turned on and wasting electricity for ten minutes while you nip out for a ciggy or make a cup of tea, like I do every single day), instead of having it just sit there being useless.

If anyone else on these forums already contributes to it without being on a team, or if anyone gets it right away and understands what's going on, I highly encourage you to make the Dwarf Fortress team so that everyone here can do good and feel good about it!  :D

PS: I did a normal forum search for "World Community Grid" and didn't seem to get any relevant results about this project, so sorry if you guys already know about it and started it and stuff. I'll blame the forum search if that's the case.

5
DF General Discussion / Dwarves Need This Tool
« on: May 22, 2010, 07:38:57 pm »
http://pogpog.com/v/chinese-multifunction-shovel-puts-your-swiss-army-knife-to-shame/

Seriously. Channeling, mining, chopping, and then as a shield and bottle opener?

6
DF Modding / Blank, valueless extract
« on: November 23, 2009, 07:37:35 pm »
There is a blank, valueless extract in my modded game. In my stocks menu, it lies between dwarven grape jam and pear jam. I cannot pinpoint which plant's extract raws are causing that problem. My game's current status is wholly chaotic and I can't acquire gnomeblight or such to pinpoint it further.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Please help.  :'(

7
DF Modding / The Saboteur
« on: October 29, 2009, 09:02:45 am »
I modded in a new military troop.

It involves these changes:

[MATGLOSS_STONE:DWARF_STONE]
[NAME:earthen dwarf][COLOR:7:7:1][TILE:220]
[SOLID_DENSITY:30000]
[MELTING_POINT:100]
[BOILING_POINT:150]
[VALUE:1]

[ITEMCORPSE:STATUE:NO_SUBTYPE:STONE:DWARF_STONE]


On my new, heavily modded game, I included the above changes to make the dwarves more thematic--they're made from the earth itself, blah blah, so their stone form dissolves away back into the ground when they die.

So, anyway, in the second year, the orcs came to play and I hadn't built any defenses. In a last-ditch effort to take out the 16 orcs, I recruited all 48 of my dwarves and threw the recruits at the orc squad.

I had forgotten about the above modding.
The was a chain of Urist McDwarf, Dwarf has frozen to death.

Boiling points, being the highest temperature a material can reach (in-game), will lower the tile temperature to the boiling point, freezing anything if it's cold enough. When a dwarf of mine would be killed by the orcs, the next one behind him would also die--but so would the orcs.

SO WOULD THE ORCS.

I savescummed, made 8 peasants and soap makers into recruits, grouped pairs into 4 squads, and spread their squad stations around the entrance of my fort courtyard.

When the orcs came in this time, the recruits, running in a staggered formation due to their spread stations, suicide-bombed the infidels.


4 of my saboteurs exploded 15 orcs to death. The last orc retreated off of the map, chased by the remaining 4 saboteurs.

Bwahahah.
Bwahahahaha.

8
DF Modding / Another "Look at my raws"
« on: October 28, 2009, 11:51:26 am »
Blah blah modding my game blah blah editing other people's mods blah blah ran into problems.

When I Prepare for the Journey Carefully, the item menus include 2 blank entries in the extracts section, and my only silk cloths are " silk" (meaning that it's a blank name before it), which go for 0 points on the embark menu.

Also, when I embark, the dwarves are wearing those silk clothes and immediately freeze to death from the boiling of that silk.

I have four types of spiders in the game:

Giant Cave Spider
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Cave Spider, Phantom Spider
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

and the Giant Wood Spider
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I know that people would like for me to upload the entire raws so that they can search everything and find out the exact problem, but I'm not quite sure how I can attach my DF files to this post, unless I just can't find the button.

If I need to supply more info or more raws, ask away. And if you can tell me how to upload my raws, that'd be cool too. ;)

Thanks in advance.

Edit: I have searched the raws myself, and I can confirm that these four are the only creatures I have with the [WEBBER] tag. Which I assume is necessary for a creature to create webs to create silk.

9
DF Modding / Understanding Armor Levels
« on: September 08, 2009, 02:11:47 pm »
I'm trying to mod in padded jacks (under-armor gambesons).

I want them made out of cloth, but only worn by dwarves told to wear the leather level of armor.

As I understand it, the [ARMORLEVEL:#] tag makes the specific piece of equipment worn when leather, chain, or plate (1, 2, and 3 respectively) are told to be equipped by a dwarf. The omission of said tag makes it by default at even the cloth level.

I also know that the [LEATHER] tag makes a cloak able to be made out of leather.
The wiki does not mention a [CLOTH] tag, however.

Is there any way that I can get cloth padded jacks that are put on when a soldier is told to wear leather or greater?

Or must I simply make cloth padded jacks and everyone in the fort will end up wearing them?

Or might I make padded jacks out of leather?

10
DF Modding / Understanding Weapon Skills
« on: September 03, 2009, 11:31:24 am »
When a weapon has [SKILL:HAMMER], a dwarf will only use this weapon if selected to use a hammer when in the military.

I've modded a lot, so I can't remember if my mining picks are default picks. But I assume they use [SKILL:MINING]. With a high mining skill, if you turn a miner into a recruit to attack the nearby kobold, they will effectively kill it, using the pick.

Does that mean that the following harpoon:

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_HARPOON]
[NAME:harpoon:harpoons]
[DAMAGE:70:PIERCE]
[WEIGHT:30]
[SKILL:FISH]
[CRIT_BOOST:1]
[TWO_HANDED:5]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:4]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:3]

will not be USED by a fisherdwarf (not necessary to fish with) but still grabbed if available by a fisherdwarf, and then used when turned into a recruit to fight a carp?

Or will it be necessary to have to fish?

Or will nothing at all happen, and this weapon never be used?

11
DF Modding / 7th Lower Tooth: Essential
« on: May 09, 2009, 12:37:11 pm »
[CREATURE:DWARF]
[BODY:HUMANOID:2EYES:2EARS:NOSE:BEARD:2LUNGS:HEART2:GUTS:ORGANS:HUMANOID_JOINTS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE_RIBS:BRAIN:SKULL:5FINGERS:5TOES:MOUTH_TEETH]

[BODY:MOUTH_TEETH]
[BP:MOUTH:mouth][CONTYPE:HEAD][MOUTH][SMALL][EMBEDDED][APERTURE]
[BP:1UT:1st upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:2UT:2nd upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:3UT:3rd upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:4UT:4th upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:5UT:5th upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:6UT:6th upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:7UT:7th upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:8UT:8th upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:9UT:9th upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:10UT:10th upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:11UT:11th upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:12UT:12th upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:13UT:13th upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:14UT:14th upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:15UT:15th upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:16UT:16th upper tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:1LT:1st lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:2LT:2nd lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:3LT:3rd lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:4LT:4th lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:5LT:5th lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:6LT:6th lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:7LT:7th lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:8LT:8th lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:9LT:9th lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:10LT:10th lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:11LT:11th lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:12LT:12th lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:13LT:13th lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:14LT:14th lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:15LT:15th lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]
[BP:16LT:16th lower tooth][CONTYPE:HEAD][SMALL][EMBEDDED][SKELETON]




My herbalist has lost his 7th lower tooth in a fight with a skeletal cave bat. He randomly falls unconscious while doing work. I've had dwarves do that when they had pierced lungs, but after modding in teeth, why does it happen to them for teeth? Does it happen if a dwarf loses a hand?

12
DF Gameplay Questions / Back to Wood
« on: April 25, 2009, 09:14:45 am »
I unfortunately made my first 7 bedroom doors out of wood instead of stone, by accident. I should have kept my carpenter's workshop and my mason's workshop farther apart. I know that dropping constructions can lead to them breaking apart into the stone or wood components that they once were. Is it at all possible to turn my wooden doors back into wooden logs without using a smelter reaction?

13
DF Gameplay Questions / That sieger stuck in the air bug, 40d9
« on: March 12, 2009, 07:17:03 pm »
So. Orc siege.
Four squads. Roughly 47, give or take 2, orcs total. Two local leaders included.

Military killed off most. I had a support holding up a mined-out mini-mountain from a mineral excavation and one of the squads happened to walk directly under it. I pulled the lever connected to the support.

Boom!

Took out the legendary axe lord and about 6 others.
However, one Orc Slasher (swordsman) is caught with a blue background on that same level, "thrown" into the air on the same Z-level, stuck there. He shows up in my 'u'nits screen and when I loo'k' at him, but as he's stuck in a falling mode, he doesn't come up when I try to 'v'iew the unit. The SIEGE tags at the top of my interface are still there as he is the last sieger (still marked Invader in the right-side column in the 'u'nits menu).

I saw several threads about this Stuck In Air bug and reluctantly downloaded Dwarf Companion.

I downloaded it from http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=624

When I try to run it, however, a dos-looking script box briefly shows up and displays a line that mentions Dwarf Fortress and disappears too fast for me to read it, and then nothing happens. Regardless of whether I'm running DF or not.

I feel as though it's probably saying "Dwarf Fortress is not detected to be running" or something, because I have the OpenGL/SDL 40d9 version. I don't know if Dwarf Companion will work for that.

14
DF Gameplay Questions / Your Epic Dining Rooms
« on: February 22, 2009, 03:37:01 pm »
I apologize in advance if the title lured you here with prospects of showing off your dining rooms. If you were eager to show them off, go for it anyway--I'm interested.

Anyway.

Many players talk about how their dining rooms make their dwarves happy enough to ignore how their baby killed their spouse in a murder-suicide. I used to have a table and chair in every dwarf's bedroom, and all the dwarves used their own bedrooms as their place to dine. In this fortress, though, I've decided to do one of those giant dining rooms.

My question is merely this: Am I to actually designate the dining room as an unowned room from the table? Or do must I leave the room definitions alone in order to make it communal? (I don't want to make it a meeting hall because I don't want them to party and I don't want my 60 cows in there.)

15
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Naming the locals.
« on: February 15, 2009, 11:52:16 pm »
I know that your dwarves will name vicious creatures after a murder or two or three.
Once I faced a Giant Bat named "[something] the Genius of Carnages", a bat that killed 16 dwarves of mine. (The mechanic who finally killed the bat was given that same title by me).
I have seen, when embarking on human settlements, children killed by carp and sturgeon and seeing those nasty fishy buggers named for their killing of sentients.

However, there were 6 Batmen hanging around my current site, having never gotten into a scuffle since I first moved in about a year and a half ago. Yet all of a sudden, my dwarves decided to name all 6 of them one after another.

Why? They didn't kill anything. Those wild creatures deserve no names!

Is there a certain time limit (1.5 years?) that if a creature survives to on a map, they get a name?

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