Bay 12 Games Forum

If I had money I'd donate. Starving college student ftl

However, the game in it's current state, even with the incredible flexibility and 'fun' factor, probably isn't marketable. The gaming community has been watered down so much that people will whine and bitch bout the ascii or the keyboard based controls(they do every few weeks in the suggestions forum). While the Bay12 community is constantly growing, it's very slow compared to more mainstream games. Before the game goes to market, if it goes to market - what Toady decides to do with it ultimately is his own choice - it will need at bare minimum a graphical update, a control overhaul, and an official get-started guide. The learning curve currently is one of the harshest of any game I've ever seen, there's no way your average gamer would put up with the game's complexity currently

Sigh, I bought a drug pill, and when I woke up all of my valuable armor was gone. Glad they left my katana though, could have been bad. I bought a Wakizashi from Sargos as just-in-case, but I can't find a safety deposit box to stash it in. Do I have to buy an apartment to have a semi-safe storage space or is there another place?

Quote from: Pilsu on September 16, 2009, 08:00:04 am

Magma should really be made hotter seeing we can use it to melt iron

Who said we were melting it? In forges, we only need to get it hot enough to make it malleable. At smelters it only needs to be hot enough to burn out impurities.

I've always assumed that magma was the dwarf's niche magic, similar to how elves can make (crappy) wooden armor and harvest wood without killing trees. Seems reasonable, seeing as a few of the metals we work (notably steel) don't melt at magma temperatures and are barely workable at a mere 1400 degrees.

DF's combat system is great, though a lot of it would have to be automated to fit into a MUD.  MUDs are realtime, so grabbing your opponents right foot and wrapping it around his head could be a bit troublesome.
I'd also make critical hits less lethal, only happen when your HP is already low.

Most heavy mudders can break 40 wpm with ease. In Hellmoo, for example, between enemy swings I can manually enter six drink commands (my character gets healed from being drunk). Typing "grab leg -enter- lock leg -enter- break leg -enter-" would take me about 4 seconds. If each grab/lock/break was done based on your swing timer (which is usually several seconds long), anyone who can touch type could play a mud with the df combat system with no problem, and those who had trouble with it could set up macros to handle all the hefty typing issues. The only excuse a mud has for having a poor combat system is that either the creator couldn't think of a better one or the creator was unable to implement a better one.

I remember reading somewhere that DF critters have a main HP bar, represented as blood.  I think this is a great system, you get your locational damage with has effects like crippling you, but you won't die by being stabbed in the toe 17 times unless you bleed to death.
Blunt damage causes internal bleeding so that counts as well.  What makes someone die, anyways?  I'd say either blood loss or suffocation, so in a way, real humans also have a semi-measurable HP bar.

Fairly accurate. You die when the flow of oxygen to your brain stops for a sufficient time. This can be caused by a number of things: not enough blood to pump (bled to death), no oxygen in the blood (suffocation), heart no longer received instructions to pump (spinal or brain damage), heart stopped working (heart attack or severe chest wound), or blood cannot reach the brain (usually a stroke, though if you put enough pressure on the jugular vein you can cut it off. There are easier ways to kill someone though).

It would be fairly simple to model these things on a computer, though it would turn out to just be two health bars with a few instant-death scenarios.

Discworld has a lot of depth modern MMO's can't have.  When you attack an NPC in Djelibeybi and some soldier NPCs walk in, they might place a bet on you.  If you or the NPC begins to lose, they might even help out to protect their bet.
Stealing a soldier's money during the betting might make his companions angry when he can't pay his debt.  I don't see NPCs in WoW doing this.
You can also do silly things like cutting food into pieces, or mixing fluids together just for fun.
I once cast a spell on a roast pig that made it say 'Oink!' every once in a while, and discovered that after cutting up said pig, every separate piece still said 'Oink!'.
Needless to say, I soon reinvented spam.
Ooh, and Discworld dwarfs are great.  They all have beards, sing about gold and love to mine.  Players are always human, but if you act like a dwarf and look like a dwarf, you're a dwarf.

Sounds interesting. I've heard of discworld but never seen it (I know, I know, you can shoot me later just answer my question now). What exactly is it?

The hard part with having the dwarves work on a capitalist system is you end up with dwarves who aren't skilled trying to do skilled labor. Urist McPotash Maker has no business trying to forge Platinum goblets, that's for Urist McMetalcrafter. If you have a capitalist economy with communist work you end up stressing an already stressed economy as either the state won't have the money to pay the dwarf, the state won't have work for the dwarf to do (the current problem), or the dwarf won't want to work because he's already made so much money.

Modern capitalism works because it relies on human intelligence. When that intelligence fails, such as with the collapse of the inflated housing market, bad things happen. Dwarves are downright stupid, they paint themselves into a corner every time. The last thing we need is a soap maker deciding he wants to be a clothier and using all the GCS silk (which you were saving for a mood) to produce base quality silk thongs.

I've thought about the economy in DF for a while, and I can see no alternative. DF may be one of those rare instances where a communist society will work - the player has vested interest in keeping (most of) his dwarves healthy, has no desire to amass personal wealth, he cannot be rebelled against... it's China's wet dream.

Quote from: Grendus on September 15, 2009, 05:43:46 pm

I would fully support desalinization of salt water. I think a magma still would be hilarious, dwarves brewing true firewater, and being able to produce barrels of water (which could then be poured into a cistern to make a well, used for washing by sissy nobles, given to wounded, etc). What would be the advantage of this? One fuel (or none with magma) would result in 25 drink at the cost of 0 food with 0 cost to the worthless haulers, and is a task that any dwarf can do regardless of brewing skill.

I like it.

That's not a realistic output though

Eh, true enough on the fuel, though I expect most players won't want to use fuel condenser for anything but saving the life of an injured champion (which is being fixed next version, so it's a moot point). I suppose the actual input and output would have to be discussed though.

I'm noticing a trend with the people in Hellmoo. They're either very friendly, or downright abusive (not even in a fun way, if you try to help someone they start hatin'). Makes me wonder how they coexist.

My sister had wired up the Grendle spawn room as a giant deathtrap. She fed about three dozen of them to the piranhas. As I recall, she just locked up the Ettins and later fused them with the Norns (which backfired when the Ettins escaped and stole her anti-Grendle logic device, but that was just "fun"). That was back in the good ol' days though, when video games were almost a cult. Now they've gone so mainstream it's kind of sickening.