Bay 12 Games Forum

I know this is entirely off-topic, but why didn't you just upload the image to tinypic and use some IMG tags?


I'm sorry but that image was posted in such an obtuse way that I had to comment.

I'm pretty sure Toady wants this to be a story generator as much as a game. Right now, the fun of Dwarf Fortress is mostly through playing, but you see the early elements of the end goal already. Everything notable is written down. Important actors have histories. One of the upcoming releases is all about personalities and motivations. He wants every generated world to be a living, breathing place full of interesting people with their own backgrounds and goals in life. What the player does is contribute to the world, playing a small ( or even big ) part in the grand scheme of things.

As the game gets more and more advanced, we'll start seeing these elements come together. To quote Toady, "we don't want a cheap fantasy universe, we want a cheap fantasy universe generator". And what would be a cheap fantasy without a story?

All the great Dwarf Fortress epics like Boatmurdered and Headshoots are just the beginning. Imagine all the depth and complexity every fort will have later on. Dwarves will have family ties, religious and political factions, goals and fears, needs and wants. Civil war! Peasant uprisings! Holy wars! Murder! Treachery! We already have some of these things. It only gets better from here, folks.

I'm all for giving him a nice tomb and a ceremonial 'put to rest', so to speak. Let him return to Armok so he may live free of earthly needs, like working hands.

Really, he's just above 'permanently paralyzed' in terms of usefulness.

That gives me an idea for a suggestion.. if you managed to keep a dwarf alive long enough that they die of old age, they could come back as a 'peaceful' ghost, having lived a long life free of painful or violent death. Their 'hauntings' would give happy thoughts as they would comfort relatives or troubled dwarves. Though it wouldn't make much sense if they came back because of improper burial. They oughta still get mad about that.

Still, dwarves very rarely live long enough to die of old age, so a benevolent ghost would still be special enough. There are enough stories out there with mystical but helpful spirits lending a hand to the living from beyond the grave that it would be a reasonable addition to DF.

To stay slightly on-topic though, ghosts shouldn't really be able to age at all once they shed their mortal coil. So it's a good thing that it's on the bug tracker.

I'm currently trying to mitigate damage from around 6 goblin ambushes ( just a sneaky siege, really ) that killed half my population and are now sealed out. A hauler had about two dozen bandages and stitches in him before succumbing to infection.

Immediatly, a wave of other haulers ran to his dead body, ripped out all of his stitches and wrappings, then put it all back in the stockpile.

That can't be sanitary.

Do you guys mind if I download the save and post the fortress layout on the DFMA? It'd be fun to see the glorious acidic lake in all of it's glorious glory.

When you think biting a forgotten beast that bleeds deadly poison is a good idea.

The process, as I understand it, goes like this

Dwarf gets injured, goes to the hospital and is designated for diagnosis.
The diagnoser looks at all the tissue layers on the dwarf and sees which ones are torn, broken and such, as well as any other general conditions (syndromes, infections etc)
Every injury needs cleaning. A single 'clean patient' job will take care of all wounds at once.
Torn 'soft' tissues generally need sutures and bandages. They won't affect a dwarf's work otherwise though, unless nerves or ligaments were severed.
Broken bones need to be set. Simple fractures only require a 'set bones' job, but shattered bones and compound fractures require some surgery and a traction bench. (Not entirely sure about that part. Correct me if I'm work)
Limbs with broken bones will require a splint or a cast if they want to remain functional while they heal. (This is the best part of the new health care IMO)
Necrosis (rotting tissue) is usually cured by surgery cutting away the affected tissue.
Severed limbs, strangely enough, don't seem to require ANY treatment, since the game doesn't 'see' an injury.

The one part I'm not sure about is damage to the central nervous system. I don't think I've ever seen a brain injury that wasn't fatal, but I'd imagine my dwarves aren't very good brain surgeons. I think I've seen them operate on the spine, but I don't think it helped much.

Syndromes and associated conditions currently don't have any treatment. So your dwarves are stuck being nauseous, feverish or in pain until they get over it.

Just now I kinda realized I went a bit off-topic from the OP's question. I know that in 40d, every season, the game did a check on every injured dwarf to determine if they healed up a step or not. In the new version, it works just as Girlinhat said. As I understand it, the number denotes the amount of time it takes to heal. I don't think anybody ever figured out what those numbers mean exactly, just that lower is faster.