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Topics - donald

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DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Reclaim Awesomeness in .40.03

« on: July 18, 2014, 08:53:29 am »

Haven't posted here in a long time but the ability to reclaim historical fortresses in the new version got me so excited I had to share!

In 125, I reclaimed a fortress from around the year 40 that had been overrun by a forgotten beast. The fortress came complete with a giant two-story roofed above-ground structure containing a trade depot, a rampway down to the fortress itself, which takes up many, many floors, a paved roadway through the Caverns and 135 forges. Curiously, the forges are constructed from raw stone and a steel throne. This must be ancient forgotten dwarven smithing lore at work. There was a giant olm wandering about the caverns, which could have been disastrous, but it wandered into the old fortress so Urist McClever just locked it in a room. After I wall off the ramps so nothing more can get in, we will be trapping it to tame as a pet.

I really like not only the flavor of reclaiming a forgotten mountainhome, but the jumpstart you get on the fun by having bedrooms and workshop areas already carved out for you.

Does anyone else have some fun stories to share of the new reclaims?

Some screenshots here:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / World gen for island embark?

« on: September 04, 2012, 11:32:30 am »

I read a thread recently about someone embarking on an island, which sounded pretty neat, so I set off myself with the idea of trying to generate a world with an island on it small enough to fit the entire embark site on (IE visible water on all 4 sides of the embark).

So far I've managed one world with an island that fits into a 15X15 embark. I'm thinking it might not be all that bad, given that I won't have invasions and goblinite bringing down my FPS, not to mention lack of migrants.

But I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas for world gens that might increase the number of small islands and give a better shot at a smaller embark. So far I'm mostly increasing the erosion cycle count, with the hopes of causing big islands to dissolve into small ones during world gen. I've also pumped up a few of the river related variables (afraid I don't remember which). I've gone back and forth with full/partial edge oceans, but it doesn't really seem to increase the total amount of water that much - I just end up with less lakes/inner oceans when I do so.

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / One stockpile to rule them all

« on: August 17, 2012, 11:39:24 pm »

I've been toying with this idea but haven't had time to give it a shot yet:

I would, instead of creating multiple 'tier 1' stockpiles (stockpiles which give but don't take), hollow out the majority of an embark tile on a central z-level to be the One Pile, a 'tier 0' stockpile which accepts ALL goods. Other stockpiles must then ultimately take from there, either directly or from another pile which takes from the One Pile. (Refuse might have to be an exception if that designation causes rot as I've read before somewhere.)

This would lend a tremendous level of organization to dwarven inventory control. Problems with clutter accumulating on the floors due to full stockpiles would go away as the One Pile would serve as buffering capacity for all the others. Workshop stockpiles could be tweaked on the fly, knowing stuff you've disabled would have a place to go (ie if you wanted to make some cool nether cap beds for those hot summers, just disable all other wood in your carpenters pile and away it goes back to the One Pile). You would have to have two wood piles normally for this, one closer to the workshop taking the desired wood from the other; now the One Pile serves as that first pile for every workshop.

It would also be needlessly complex, labor intensive and time consuming. I'm wondering if anyone has tried this before or can see any downsides?

DF Gameplay Questions / clown parts in refuse pile

« on: August 17, 2012, 09:35:01 am »

Wondering if anyone knows how certain clown parts are classified.

I currently have the following in a refuse pile set to accept all skulls, bones, shells, teeth, horns and hooves (all of which I think/thought should be craftable refuse):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The pile is next to a craftsdwarf workshop, and I've set it to decorate with ivory, horn, pearl, shell, make totems, and decorate with bone. None of those tasks take from the nearby stockpile, however. Ivory, horn, pearl and shell all return "needs unrotten body part...", so I know it's none of those.

The dwarves hauling the parts didn't get burnt, so I don't think it's just because they're too hot.

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Will falling objects hurt flyers?

« on: August 13, 2012, 11:28:52 am »

So, yeah...pretty much just that. Does anyone know?

The reason I ask is because I've recently found a cotton candy vein (praise the miners!) and was considering building an approx 50 z-level 1X1 shaft going straight up from it before I breach the fun below. My idea is to place about 5 retracting bridges on top of the shaft linked to levers, designate each for dumping, and load them up with used socks, chunks of raw marble, goblin skulls, etc. And then with the fun starts to bubble up, start clicking off the levers. In theory, it sounds quite amusing, but if falling debris won't harm flyers, the fun sadly goes up in a different way.

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Eversmoking artifacts

« on: August 01, 2012, 12:09:38 pm »

I recently had a giant fire breathing eyeless tick make its way up through a hole to the caverns that I missed plugging up in my shaft down to the magma forges. Luckily, it only toasted one mason but made its way outside, where I locked it outside my airlock until I could get my meager defense force together.

The outside of the fort is now a field of scorched earth and feather trees (which seem to survive fire quite nicely). Two puppies are permanently flashing red but don't seem to have suffered any wounds (a bug I'm assuming). I'm hoping they grow up to be flashing red helldogs, which I will train for war and leave at my gates. The tick died from one crossbow bolt but took out 3 marksdwarves with it.

The interesting part though, is that during it's initial assault, it set a good chunk of my furniture stockpile on fire, as well as my crafts. The fire seems to have gone out, but smoke continues to billow from two areas, then subside to nothing and billow out again.

I noticed a few tiles of stone were flashing as hot, so I bulldozed those down but the smoke continues to billow out. As far as I can tell, both smoke clouds are centered on artifacts that were in storage.

Currently I'm trying to confirm that this is what's happening (by assigning a stockpile to take the artifacts away and see if the smoke is centered on the new tile).

If it is, the question is: how do I weaponize/use/do science/create !fun! with my new eversmoking artifacts?

My first thought was to create a goblinite collection area, drop the artifacts in, then drop the raw goblinite in and wait for them to pass out and let my melee dwarves in for easy practice. But there must be something more interesting to do with an unlimited source of smoke...

DF Gameplay Questions / strange mood specific requests

« on: July 21, 2012, 09:45:36 pm »

I've read many times, both here and on the wiki, for as long as I've played df, that sometimes a dwarf in a strange mood will need not just a type of raw material (say, wood), but a specific type favored by the dwarf (like goblin cap wood). The thing is though, in scores of games and hundreds of strange moods, I've never seen this happen. If my mooded dwarf is stuck in the workshop requesting something, any material of the right class I free up has always satisfied him.

I took a couple year break from df a while back, so my memory of very old times is somehwat hazy, but I've played a lot in the last couple versions and can say with certainty i haven't seen this happen lately.

Have I just gotten lucky, or is this feature no longer present (or was it ever)?

DF Gameplay Questions / Walling in caverns

« on: July 08, 2012, 10:32:37 pm »

I currently am embarked on a terrifying glacier and set up my fortress on the first cavern level. The cavern is very porous to the edges of the map in both the x/y direction as well as z levels (not on it right now but IIRC many long borders of a dozen or more z levels). I've had no FBs yet my army couldnt deal with (the toughest was an noseless giant llama composed of vomit that spat webs) but Id like to seal the borders to ensure my safe survival for future fun.

Does anyone have advice on the least tedious way to do this? If i build one tall staircase at the end of each border, im afraid ill end up with masons sealing themselves or each other in constantly unless i construct it one brick at a time. The safe alternative would be to construct full staircase scaffolding for each x/y border on every z level next to the border but thats almost double the construction time. My other thought was to use burrows to only allow one mason per wall and hope they build the wall in the correct order so as not to seal themselves in.

The good (and bad) news is that at least there is no water on this cavern level, so at least there arent any ponds to seal off.

DF Modding / Change window title

« on: June 22, 2012, 07:57:06 am »

Does anyone know if it's possible to change the window title for DF (Windows version specifically)?

For example, I'd like it to show up in the taskbar as 'Important Work' instead of 'Dwarf Fortress'...just you know, for example...

I've been searching through mods and raws but haven't come across anything yet.

DF Gameplay Questions / DF linux install - gtk libs

« on: June 17, 2012, 09:16:18 am »

Wondering if anyone has a list of the GTK libs required for Dwarf Fortress.

Specifically, I'm currently installing Dwarf Fortress on a system running Debian Wheezy, 64 bit. Took care of many of the 32-bit requirements with ia32-libs, but since I'm running KDE, I'd like to minimize the amount of Gnome stuff that gets pulled in with apt-get install gtk2.0 (almost 850 megs).

DF Bug Reports / 40d13 linux keyboard weirdness

« on: August 23, 2009, 02:30:05 pm »

Hi all, been enjoying df on windows for a while and finally got it running on my 64 bit Debian stable (lenny) install after much ati driver frustration. Everything is running fine, good fps, but my keyboard, specifically the keypad isn't working as expected.

On the main menu, 8 and 2 on the keypad function as expected, also on the embark menus. But when selecting a region and in the actual game, the keypad moves me in unexpected directions. Off hand, I think 8 moved up and right, 4 moved down and left (those could be incorrect, but each "straight" direction key moved in a diagonal instead).

I'm using a standard 104 key keyboard, us layout. Tried this with/without caps lock and num lock, same result.

I've looked through init.txt but didn't find any settings that seemed applicable. Any ideas?

EDIT : I should mention that the arrow keys also do the same thing. Up arrow performs the same incorrect way as keypad 8 (also the regular number row 8 does the same).