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It's a savage mountain next to a savage tropical grassland, so if we're lucky we'll see giant eagles and lions.  (This may not be bad; I've fixed the Dungeon Master issues by switching all of the [PET_EXOTIC] tags to [PET], so we could end up with some pretty neat war animals)


A letter from 'Microcline' Keskalinod, 1 Hematite 251

I am beginning to change my mind about this outpost.  The minute we arrived at the site, we were attacked by a honey badger and scattered before it was killed by a stray dog.  None of use seemed capable of maintaining an outpost.  There's Edosurist, the woodworker, melkor, a miner and a mason, wlerin the smith, ext0l, the mechanic and doctor for the outpost, Selenite, the only dwarf with any combat ability, and myself, the mid-level member of the miner's guild sent out to oversee the construction.

Despite that, it's starting to feel like a real dwarven outpost.  wlerin was able to fabricate a bronze ax and armor for Selenite (the mountainhome did not give us a budget sufficient to take one with us), we've set up a patrol route around the outpost and designed our fortifications in such that the only way in is to walk through the barracks.  We're currently upgrading our dining hall, and it will likely be legendary by the end of the summer.  It'll  help remind the party of home, and might take their mind off of the fact that the farm has been slow in replenishing supply of food and drink

Main Floor

Above Ground


Report on Exploratory Mining by The Subtle Mechanisms at Shashmomuz, 1 Limestone 251

Preliminary estimates by the miner's guild stated that the site of Shashomomuz contained deposits of surface metal and deep metals.  However, all we've found is galena.  The area is saturated with it.  While we don't have the dwarfpower necessary to sustain a full metal industry at the moment, once we get the magma forges operational we should be rolling in silver.  The mining also uncovered the underground sea and magma sea, so that point, while unlikely to occur this year, is not far off.

I think I've got an idea on how to reduce the number of unfortunate accidents that we need to stage.  We can have the fortress grow in spurts based on the number of people signing up.

Example: We start with seven dwarfs.  For six years we have the population cap set at one.  Say that by year seven five players have signed up to take a turn.  The player raises the population cap and receives a migrant wave.  They reset the population cap, choose five of these dwarfs and cause the rest to have unfortunate accidents.

Also, I'm starting the game tomorrow.

How you ensure that only one dwarf joins the fortress is up to the player.  I'm going to use the population cap during my turn.

Quote from: nenjin on May 03, 2011, 10:26:59 pm

Quote

Whether you like it or not, it's hard to deny that it took inspiration from the game.

The game has many sources of inspiration. People that aren't Minecraft goons see very little MC in it.

Blocks that you can mine and place. The most famous source of inspiration for that right now is minecraft.

It's not a bad thing.

And Minecraft got that idea directly from Infiniminer (I'd say that Minecraft has far more of an Infiniminer influence than a DF influence).  I would agree with those posting earlier that what we are seeing is the birth of a new genre or genre elements.

For the longest time, whenever I hear people talk about what game features that they want to see, destructible environments come up.  I am glad for the genre's proliferation, as I think that each of the games fills a different niche.

For example, while Minecraft may be a great mining and building game, it has some very questionable elements.  For example, rails and TNT are expensive to produce.  This means that while these are very fun ways of influencing the game environment, the player almost never uses them without inventory hacking.  Notch, when he does update, never focuses on the "survival" aspect of the game, and SMP is still too buggy to deliver a reliable co-op/PVP experience.

From what I've seen of the LP's, Terraria's minetroidvania has different goals for the destructible environment mechanics.  I would compare it to how Ace of Spades reapplied the mechanic to add fort/trench/tunnel mechanics to an FPS.

I'm downloading it now.  I'll see what I can do about the fps issues.

edit

I'm getting about 15 fps.  I'll see if this gets better after I remove some of the magma.

Journal of 'Microcline III' Besmaruz

After kicking out the squatters that had laid claim to my bedroom after the death of my predecessor and regaining my office and dining room, I prepared a report for the king about the state of the fortress.

-The magma pump stack is broken
-We have no less than seven forgotten beasts, although I have been assured that this time the underground is safely sealed.
-The upper dining room is not designated, and the food storage area is full of mason's workshops.
-Corpses
-On a positive note, the upper floor is ready for casting, although some of the magma has reached unorthodox places and will need to be pumped out.

So just another ordinary day at Skyscrapes.

I won't be available until Saturday either, so the list should probably go

Urist Mcinternetuser
tbino
Microcline

I was wondering what happened to all of the mechanics, so I looked at the save.  I found out that my dwarf died sometime during the previous turn.  The fortress seems to be losing mechanics left and right.

Won't that massacre whoever's there and below?

There are no exposed down stairs from the ground floor.  To go below, one must go up to the first floor and then down the central shaft.

It might be difficult to remove the doors with the forgotten beast on the same floor.  However, if you could put hatches over the down stairs on the first floor, it will only have two options: to remain on the ground floor, where it is vulnerable to magma, or go outside, where it is no longer a problem.

If the forgotten beast stays in place and you can remove the doors, Sizik's plan should kill it.