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Messages - Durin

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256
DF Gameplay Questions / Random Questions by Durin
« on: September 18, 2009, 10:05:36 pm »
I may link a movie to this if it begins to be too hard for people to understand, but here goes.

I have a fortification I am building that goes across the landscape, with rises and falls.  I want the top of the fortification to be all one level, however high I eventually make it.  For some reason I am not quite understanding, at not entirely random times, the fortifications I stack on top of other fortifications do not get built.  I tried to build a floor across various places attached to the fortifications so that hopefully a dwarf would come along, build the floor, and then be able to build the as yet unreachable fortification designation. 

Will this work, or is anyone following me?

Also, closing in on the end of year 5 of my first fortress, I have yet to see hide or hair of a goblin.  I'm not sure I really care, as it has been nice to be able to get the basics under my belt without having to deal with them, but sooner or later I would like to sick my blossoming military on some.  Do they eventually show up even if you were, I suppose, sort of remote from them? 

I noticed the Wiki suggests sparring with wooden weapons.  I started my dwarfs sparring with steel weapons, but just now suffered my first sparring related death.  Does this sort of thing happen more and more the better they get?  Because if it does, I suppose I will be forced to make wooden weapons and fiddle with that.  It seems somewhat of a pain, especially if you have them training and then the goblins finally show up and you can't get them to pick up steel.

I seem to have a problem when I have too much meat that it spoils.  Oddly, it does not change to something like "spoiled meat".  I can tell it's spoiled when I cannot cook it any more.  Strangely, the merchants seem to have no problem buying it.....  Am I right, or am I just missing something obvious about meat spoilage and how to tell when it goes bad?

How are people playing elves or goblins in fortress mode?

I think that's it for now.  Thanks in advance.   ;D

257
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Tower-cap growing conditions?
« on: September 18, 2009, 09:58:44 pm »
Oh wow.  So all the sand near my fortress is from the hollowed out underneath, and not me merrily chopping down every tree in sight?

Eeeeenterestink.

258
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Why is it free?
« on: September 18, 2009, 09:34:07 pm »
A lot of games of about this caliber are free.  There are, at this point, more muds and mud codebases than you can shake a stick at, mostly free.  I've seen muds with very nearly this level of complexity, including in-game construction of objects, buildings, etc.  The beauty of DF is it is solo (thus eliminating the need to tolerate a-holes while playing), and it provides a really unique twist in its combination of rts, simulation, and role play facets. 

The real question is, "why is it not open source?"  He has stated the answer to this in his faq.  He does this as a labor of love and does not want to run it professionally, having to interface with other developers in a professional and competitive environment, having to struggle to maintain his vision of the project and possibly even lose a lot of the monetary support he gets from donations as the project splinters right out from under him.

It will be interesting to see if any game development companies are interested enough in the idea to coax him into developing it for their specific company.  Somehow I think that may be what is in the back of his mind.

I am not anywhere close to the back of his mind, though.

259
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Most Epic artifact EVER
« on: September 15, 2009, 10:35:36 pm »
So this has been around a month or so, or more.  I find myself wishing Toady had chimed in.  That is AWESOME!  All I have is this silly bauxite bracelet...  :-S

Cool topic.  Found it on Wiki and read the thread.  =)

260
DF Gameplay Questions / Hyrdaulics and elevators?
« on: September 14, 2009, 11:07:14 pm »
There's enough mechanics in this game, specifically involved with traps, pumps, drive shafts and gear boxes, to make me wonder if I am missing something obvious as to why there are no man-powered or wind and wave powered elevator shafts, and whether or not hydraulics for water are ever going to work with things floating on them (which also makes an elevator feasible. feasable? 

Clearly, it was feasible.

Just curious what anyone has heard.

261
DF General Discussion / Re: Processor Grind
« on: September 14, 2009, 09:43:29 pm »
Quote from: ArkDelgato on September 14, 2009, 09:10:35 pm
I read the title of this thread as "Professor Grind"

I thought it was a good WOWGOLD spam account topic or some adventuremode trainer macro.
But it turned out to be serious :(

LOL!

As to the rest, just for the sake of settling my mind, I am going to go with polling the keyboard, although I think I will try 40d## OpenGL version just to see if it makes a difference.

Polling the keyboard is the only thing that explains why it goes berserk even when in opening menu mode.

Just for kicks I went ahead and started a fortress at the max size, and the processor churns almost at the same rate.  It's just that when I am perusing the map or occasionally just because it's busy, I get a little lag.  So there's the distinction.

Thanks for the info folks.

262
DF General Discussion / Processor Grind
« on: September 14, 2009, 08:15:09 pm »
After perusing the forum and getting into one rather involved conversation about it, I find myself curious as to what the actual, factual issue is with processor usage in DF.  People state it has to do with pathing and perhaps fluid flow, but what I notice as I watch the processor it appears that it ramps up even when I am looking at the menu, and does not appreciably increase as my fortress has grown to about 100 dwarves.  The issue is that it just sits there, leaning on the processor, forever, no matter what it is doing.

This is just a curiosity to me.  I do not say this is something "wrong", nor am I trying to get any advice about not buying HP laptops in the future due to poor heat management, or anything else.  :-)  It just seems as if something about how this sucker works pulls constantly on the processor as a matter of course rather than as a function of what it is doing.  If you run out of processor to feed it, apparently the frame rate suffers, but right now I am noting no particular problems with framerate.  I just don't get why even when it is paused, or waiting at the initial menu, it instantly starts jamming my processor, and curiosity forces me to wonder why, so I thought I would ask.


263
DF General Discussion / Re: What turns you off about DF?
« on: September 13, 2009, 04:52:01 pm »
Quote from: G-Flex on September 13, 2009, 03:41:22 pm
Simply put, a computer is poorly-designed if it can't actually sustain itself at 50% operating capacity for a few hours.

I think you are preaching to the choir.  My point is I doubt I am getting anywhere taking it back to the store at this point when the only application I can find that overheats it is this one.

Sorry, but I find these discussions tedious.  I think you know what I mean and have already acknowledged that it is an issue, and is being worked on.  Thanks.

Yeah, the $5000 comment was an exageration.

264
DF General Discussion / Re: What turns you off about DF?
« on: September 13, 2009, 03:21:42 pm »
Quote from: G-Flex on September 13, 2009, 03:03:48 pm
Quote from: Durin on September 13, 2009, 02:45:50 pm
The system requirements.   :'(

I've got a 6 month old middle of the line laptop.  It seems to do a good job with the game, but today it overheated, and just in general DF churns the processor from the moment you start it up to the moment you shut it down.

Why is this exactly?  I think ultimately it is going to have to be addressed.  My understanding so far is that a lot of stuff that you cannot even see is nevertheless being tracked, which is probably not a great idea.

Then again, if your laptop is ever actually overheating, that sounds more like a problem with its design. A computer shouldn't overheat due to normal work like that unless it's poorly-designed or subjected to bad conditions, especially when it's new.

"Poorly designed" is in the eye of the beholder.  The main thrust I am getting at is I can see from watching the processor either through Task Manager or through a little add on gadget Vista offers, even when the program is just sitting there asking whether you want to start or not, it begins churning the processor to what seems to me to be an inordinate degree.  As far as when a computer ought or ought not to overheat, gaming rigs come kitted out with liquid cooled processors for a reason.  A laptop is not designed, for better or worse, to have its processor sit at the 55-70% utilization range for hours on end. 

So yes, I think some basic design philosophy issues are going to have to be addressed soon, because few and far between are the people that are going to want to spend $5000 bucks for a computer capable of comfortably running a game without graphics to speak of.  If the goal is actually to simulate the entirety of reality on a home computer, down to the emotions of everyone within say 2-3 square miles of some arbitrary point, I think the we have set ourselves an impossible task. 

Warcraft and the like all involve pathing.  I can plop an old Warcraft III on here if you like to make my point, but I think the bottom line is that something is going to have to give on the system requirements soon, and the solution is going to be a decision to be made on the philosophy used as to how to simulate all the cool things we want simulated here.

Just for the record, I fall amongst that tiny pecentage who would buy a mega system just to be able to play this game.  Maybe that is going to end up being a defining quality of this game... people whose entertainment is found less in the graphics and more in the details.  But currently that's my beef...  I am straining the capacity of this computer with a 60-something odd dwarf colony, and that is depressing me somewhat.   :D

265
DF General Discussion / Re: What turns you off about DF?
« on: September 13, 2009, 02:45:50 pm »
The system requirements.   :'(

I've got a 6 month old middle of the line laptop.  It seems to do a good job with the game, but today it overheated, and just in general DF churns the processor from the moment you start it up to the moment you shut it down.

Why is this exactly?  I think ultimately it is going to have to be addressed.  My understanding so far is that a lot of stuff that you cannot even see is nevertheless being tracked, which is probably not a great idea. 

Game play wise, while it is all well and good not to make graphics a focus on a game that is basically about rts and social development, interface should have been at least a moderate focus from the get go.  Now you are going to need to play catch up.  Graphics comparable to the original sim city back in the 80's should not have been that hard to manage, nor should a simple windows interface of some sort.  I could not even begin to critique the flow of the menus until this step is taken. 

Well, I guess I could begin...

Menus that serve similar purposes should have some sort of cross connect.  I should not have to totally quit out of the "view" to go get a close up of the exact same dwarf to check his labors.  Also, when going to close up from units, for whatever reason DF takes you just to the top unit on the square you are on, which is infuriating in and of itself, and damn well mindblowing when you first do it and can't for the life of you figure out why when you go to mark a newborn kitten for the slaughter you end up staring at Unib Farterfurnace's labor preferences instead. 

Whine and complain, complain and whine, I know I know... but I adore the game and its general concept. 

Why is it not open source?  I think you risk having someone see it and develop something like it for mass consumption doing it the way you're doing now.  Development would be faster open sourced, you already have a massive community of support here, and I doubt seriously someone is going to come along and offer you the cash for what you have developed over 6 years that they can probably do in 1 year themselves with better graphics support, assuming any of them get the attraction of the game and decide to do something like it.  I'm not an open source junkie and in fact am playing it on Vista, but it just seems something of this sort is more or less exactly what Open Source is all about, and you can still accept donations.  Once you get to the point where you think it is marketable, sell the prepackaged version.  Most users do not have the tech saavy to use the freely available source to begin with, and would be more than happy to simply download the thing from an easy to find and use web page, assuming the objection you have to Open Source is you do not get to copyright and hence make money off of it.

Just my two cents.


266
DF General Discussion / Re: 3Dwarf Visualizer - a tool to view maps in 3D
« on: September 13, 2009, 12:29:24 pm »
Quote from: Leerok the Lacerta on December 15, 2007, 09:26:00 pm
Good god, the Dwarf Fortress community just keeps getting better.<P>Do we have a disproportionate number of Computer Science graduates here?

I'm thinking yes...

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