Bay 12 Games Forum

The "female dwarfs have beards" thing came from Tolkien, like nearly everything else in fantasy settings nowadays. In the books and movies it was said that female dwarfs looked identical to the male dwarfs, or at least close enough that non-dwarfs couldn't tell them apart. The dwarfs themselves didn't seem to have any problem with it, and the feeling I got is that any one of the dwarfs featured could have been female, but would look male to me, and other dwarfs would probably refer to them with male pronouns and etc.

Maybe Tolkien was super sexist but the impression I got was that dwarf society treated both members equal and the dwarfs themselves didn't have any issues, except the possible confusion they caused in other races.


As far as what I'd like my dwarfs to be like, I guess that's really up to them. It would be neat if different civs had different preferences as to shaven-ness and the dwarfs would vary their appearance depending on that.

This... this is beautiful.

If your text editor makes a backup file, try deleting those.

It'd be awesome if surgeons that had a large amount of skill could sew back limbs that have been chopped or ripped off by enemies. There'd be a 50% chance of necrosis or something similar.

I'm imagining some kind of uber dwarf doctor with a hacksaw and a roll of duct tape as their only tools... If you couldn't tell, I vote yes.

Build your fort however you like. But try south-facing or north-facing entrances before moving on to the dreaded west-facing entrance.

I know kinda what you mean, I like my entrances to look a certain way, though the direction itself doesn't particularly bother me.

Quote from: Beeskee on July 17, 2010, 12:27:31 pm

It takes a little while for a dwarf with the Animal Care labor enabled to come let them out. That labor is also used to cage animals. Since it's so important I usually enable it on all my dwarfs, or at least most of them.

Actually the skill is Animal Hauling. Animal Care is somewhat not-useful.

That's what I meant, yeah, got them confused.

Would DF benefit from additional coders, bug testers (moreso than just reporting bugs on the bug tracker) and etc?  Possibly, up to a certain point. "Too many cooks spoil the soup" is one expression. DF seems to be a deeply personal thing to Toady, one that he cares enough about to put in full-time hours on. If I was in his position I would be concerned about taking on additional help too.  But chances are, some parts of the code are pretty standard, things like pathfinding could probably be shared to trusted friends and improved upon that way.  Graphics code has already been shared out, and greatly improved. So he's taking steps toward that, maybe slower than we'd like but in the end it's not our decision. The most we can do is offer encouragement or discouragement.


After trying a nanofort I'm thinking about doing a hermit nanofort. Or maybe a "starting 7" nanofort.

Now that the multiple clothing bug has been fixed, it's time to add it back. That's right, as a multiple clothing FEATURE!

It's things like this which give DF some of it's awesome personality. Someone wearing a dozen hats or carrying 5 shields just makes them rock all the more.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am very happy that the bug itself was squashed, and I'd like it to remain so.

What I would like to see is an intentional feature that makes certain dwarfs equip multiple items. Legendary dwarfs can get away with weird personality quirks like wearing a hat and boots and nothing else, or carrying 3 weapons in each hand. And who can forget Mr. Cloaks, aka the dungeon master?

Dwarfs already have the occasional preferences for weapons, clothing, etc, maybe it could tie in with this so they pick up and wear more of their favorite item.

That said, I would like it to do a bit of sanity checking, such as if I have 5 military dwarfs who need weapons, I wouldn't want to see one legendary pick up all the available weapons and leave the others SOL.