Bay 12 Games Forum

(Just to make it clear, I'm talking about dreams as in REM sleep, not lifelong wishes which are already in.)

In the very early (unreleased) versions of DF, there used to be a wizard that would show up to the fortress to request a specific dwarf to go on a journey and if you refused, someone in your fortress would have a "terrifying dream about an army of the dead" shortly before your fortress getting invaded by, well, said army of the dead. Of course this was all very scripted and this part of the code is now inactive, but I believe this predictable system could be expanded into a procedurally generated one.

Basically, sentient creatures (or any kind of creature really? I believe animals can dream, though I'm not sure which ones) should be able to experience dreams when they are unconscious. You'd be able to see it in lieu of their current "thought of the moment" in the thought screen. The description of the dream would look very much like item descriptions depicting common historical events, except the depictions here would be somewhat random (ideally they'd make sort of sense in the weird way dreams do, that is, not at all outside of a context) For instance, "Urist Uristurist is dreaming of the theft of the forgotten beast Edros Urbrask's left foot, fourth toe by the kobold Thiskklikumis in the Cave of Eternity. Urist is making a plaintive gesture. The kobold is secreting freakish grey muck. The kobold is wearing a giant cave spider bone hat. On the hat is an engraving of Urist's mother. It menaces with spikes of elf leather. On the hat is a coating of the goblin Sokol Sklmuis's vomit." And so on. The dreams would usually be about recent events and depicting objects and people known to the dreamer (whether by personal acquaintance, worship, recent killings, etc.) and could betray the thoughts, needs and current concerns of the dwarf. A dwarf could feel a wide array of emotions after any particular dream, from relief after a nightmare to fondness after a dream of romance.

Now the reason such a system could be worthwhile on top of fleshing out already complex personalities is that sometimes, not very often, some dwarves would be struck by premonitory dreams. These dreams could alert the player of an imminent danger (from the arrival of a titan to an impeding siege, or the so-called "army of the dead" if we're talking about a necro siege, or even just a deadly evil cloud) and trigger an announcement so the player takes it seriously. I guess there could be a system where some dwarves are naturally more sensible to these dreams than others (and this could be derived from their personality and values) and have them more often. It could also be related to religious aspects, for instance a dwarf that worships a god of death could have a premonition of a terrifying army of the dead (again) laying siege to the fortress, a god of war could warn about goblins, and so on. There could be an increased incidence of such dreams during full moon. Some forgotten beasts could also induce dreams in dwarves who worship them, driving them mad from behind their sealed drawbridges, thus giving the player an incentive to go and fight them. In any case, the possibilities are numerous and I think I'm only scratching the surface.

The best thing is that the framework shouldn't be that hard, it's basically just changing the thought screen to a procedurally generated engraving description from time to time, and then it's easy to go from there to actual, scary business.
Anyway, I did a (admittedly quick) search for similar suggestions but only found some related to lifelong goals, not actual dreams, due to the multiple meanings of the word, so sorry if I missed an existing thread.

So, I've been told to look for Zostra Groupfight who killed mercilessly a whole town's livestock, how the hell do I find him? The travel map tells me I'm exactly on the same location as him but I don't find him. What, should I start looking in every house and start talking to everyone to see if one's named Zostra Groupfight? Am I missing something?

There were the vampires, as you now know, and there's a lot of city cleanup left to do, and I have to finish up the sponsorship animals, new tags or not, before the release.  Maybe that's it.  As long as vampires took to finish, the city cleanup will take longer.

Seriously I wanna kill myself right now.

I don't care about your overused and abused arguments about why we shouldn't complain, how we should be very grateful for Toady's work, how we don't have a word to say because it's his toy, how he does what he wants and deal with it. I've read them all, and at least ten times each. The purpose of this thread is to express your frustration freely without fear of the consequences. I know I'm not the only one.

In other words, will I be able to start a Giant Cave Swallow breeding program?

In order to add more fun and more realism to the game, I suggest we add natural disasters to the game.

- Earthquakes: basically messes with the inside of your fortress. Dwarves are awoken and may sustain minor injuries as they are immobilized on the floor. Buildings such as workshops are destroyed, items are thrown randomly. Areas too large may cave in (which may solve partially the problem of one pillar holding the entire earth crust). But earthquakes can have benefits, such as opening ways to ore veins and caverns - but earthquakes may not occur in the magma sea (so no unfortunate opening to the circus) because of geological reasons.

- Hurricanes: not much to say. Just like a snow storm, but it's very violent and creatures may be thrown away and possibly killed. It also gives a new meaning for the weight of an item.

- Floods: a never ending rain that makes the water level in a river rise, until it reaches the entrance of the fortress and floods everything. The fun part is that a flood should behave just like a normal rainfall (and have the same announcement message), so you never know whether a rainfall is a flooding one, and when you find out it's too late.

- Meteor storms: okay, this one isn't quite realistic, but adds even more fun. A very huge and very hot rock falls in your fortress area, killing everything under it and digging down several z-levels. The result is a valuable ore vein, magnetite or even raw adamantine (the core of your meteorite) surrounded by melted rock, i.e. MAGMA. This partially solves the problem of magma being accessible only at absurdly low z-levels and also the new scarcity of metals.

Goblin caravans are very unlikely, but it would be cool to have Kobolds steal your stuff then come with a caravan to sell it back.

My question may be stupid, but how the hell do you force the broker to trade? I assigned him to a burrow, I disabled all his labor preferences, yet this bugger still wants to go get items. I don't want to rely on luck each season and see if I'll be able to trade, how do you make him trade?