Bay 12 Games Forum

Title says it all. You can see their English translated name while alive by zooming to them or viewing them, but once they die only their dwarven name is shown on the coffin, any slabs, and in the dead units list. Is there any way I can see the translated name?

Thanks!

Hello folks.

Ok, so I have my Armory up near the surface with my barracks, and my smelters down at the magma sea. I have all my metalworkers and furnace operators in a burrow so they never stray too far from the sea (two floors basically, one workshops/smelters/stockpiles, the other living/dining).

I am trying to melt down some non-steel weaponry and armor.

The first fail was that the smelters couldn't get up to the armory to pick up the stuff. Then I tried creating a dump near the forges and dumping all the weapons there. However, the smelters wouldn't take forbidden items. I read on the wiki that items set for melting would be "left alone" but the moment I reclaim them guys come down with bins to take them back up to the surface. I don't want to put a weapons/armor stockpile down at the sea because then good weapons may be stored there.

Is there any way around this?

Thanks!

Hello,

Had two completely unrelated questions and didn't want to spam the board with multiple topics. These are both referring to the latest version of DF.

Firstly, I am trying to create a world that is a bit more good than usual. Specifically, I want to embark in a good forest biome. However, messing with advanced world gen I doubled the minimum good squares in small, medium, and large subregions, increased subregions to max, and also reduced evil subregions by a small amount. What I have noticed is that pretty much every hill, plain, desert, swamp, and mountain range on the map comes up good, but no forests. Inexplicably, while mostly neutral, there are many evil patches of forest all over the place. Can forests not be "good" aligned? If not, what am I doing wrong here? I tried messing with savagery but it just returned a string of rejected maps.

Secondly, have there been changes to the distance an enemy must fall to splat? The consensus before used to be 10 z levels but I built a 10 z-level dodge me trap passage in my latest fort with the newest version and nearly every goblin survived the fall (they had broken this and that, but were able to move around). Now, it may be worth noting that they were all riding something (voracious cave crawlers, jabberers, and something that looked like an evil black-furred lemur). If they are riding something are they immune to falls? Has anyone created a working dodge me trap in the new version and if so, how deep was it? I have yet to see a necromancer, but would a long fall also kill undead? Could they be resurrected all the way down at the bottom of the pit if the necromancer is standing on the top?

Thanks!

Hello!

I was creating a cistern and mistakenly channeled it out without a way for my miners to escape. No problem, I thought, because I had an up/down stair dug into the z-level above, so I designated an up stair be built on the open space below it. The game let me make that build order.

However, nothing is happening. The job is listed as inactive and my miners have long since died. I could have sworn I was able to build stairs "down" (like from the cavern ceiling to keep my main shaft straight) underneath dug stairs. But nothing is happening. What did I do wrong?

X_______              X= up/down stair.  __ = floor
________

As I become a more and more advanced player of DF, I have done my best to look "under the hood" so to speak, and have used the dfhack tools to do things like create a huge embark not to play but just to see how the game sets stone layers, ore veins, gems, caverns, etc.

What I have noticed first of all is stone isn't random at all. You usually get a big oval of one specific type of stone in every embark "square". They never mix or cross over "square" boundaries. That kind of bums me out.

Back on topic, another thing I have found is even if I finely pick a site that has "deep metals and shallow metals"  (note the S's) odds are I will get a whole ton of one kind of crappy ore (galena, etc.) a little bit more of another one, and that is it.

I would prefer an embark to have a little bit of everything, rather than enough of one thing to cover the whole world in.

In game: Is there a particluar biome/site location that helps with variety? Would embarking at a site with as many biomes as possible help?

Out of game: Are there world settings (aside from scarcity, which I reduce to next to nothing to get ores everywhere) that can increase ore variety?

Thanks!

Over the years I have installed and reinstalled DF many times. (The first time I deleted it after about five minutes wondering what the heck people were seeing that was good there. I just didn't get it). More recently, Mayday's graphics pack (and eventually the LNP that spawned from the graphics pack ideas) made it much more user friendly for me and I've been pretty much hooked ever since.

Anyway, recently though I have had my immersion in the game go up in a huge way, and the reason why is Let's Plays on Youtube. Sure, I first saw the Boatmurdered story and the Tim Denee (I hope that's right) artwork, and they were awesome, but nothing really beat watching other people play the game to learn the intricacies and fully understand the depth of this game.

On a technical note, I do not watch the videos on youtube, but burn them on DVDs and watch them on a HDTV (which is honestly the way they should be viewed, if that's a possibility for you).

DJRodW, Riothouse, and Psy-Syndicate taught me advanced concepts. Revocane got me into Genesis (and the concept of building your fortress in the caverns, rather than the first few surface layers), CapnDuck is pretty funny to watch and when he embarked on a coastline it was the first time I realized that DF even modeled the tides. You know how you see all those internet meme jokes about "seeing something" hidden in a photo and "shitting bricks", well, this was the video version of that. Lately, I've been watching TheZemalf's videos which are completely different in that they are a slooooooow paced almost academic rumination on the game, which is great in its own way as well. I'm sure there are tons more that I may have not personally seen but are just as good as the ones I cited. The great thing about this community is it has spawned WAY more Let's Plays then even commercial AAA games. Go on Youtube and look any of these guys up and you'll have a great experience.

So, the purposes of this thread is 1) to thank these great Let's Players for basically expanding my love of DF and quite possibly introducing a lot of folks into the game and making it understandable for them. Seriously, I think these guys are the "mavens" of DF (in the New York Times writer Malcolm Gladwell sense, the people who popularize and spread a trend). 2) To encourage others with different points of view and expertise in the game to make their own Let's Plays. 3) To expose these videos to anyone here on the boards who hasn't seen them.

If you or anyone you know has a good sense of humor, good speaking skills, and an expertise in the game, the one area I think is under-explored in Let's Plays is the late game. Most LPers tend to get tired or have FUN after only a couple in game years, so there is relatively little on mass military actions, cavern conquest (especially below the first layer) and the of course HFS. I could be wrong (I have seen a LOT of these things, hundred hours at least) but I don't think I've seen a King or really anything higher than the first level noble (Baron?) and I'd love to see someone successfully satisfy their needs (since I seem to not be able to!).

Thanks guys!

Subject says it all. I created a 9 z level drop mass pit and put some pandamen down it and they got pretty wrecked but were still alive and able to move. The ground was cluttered with 9 levels of mined stone.

I dropped fully armed gobbos down a 10z and they splattered all over the place so I assume the stones are somehow breaking the fall of the pandamen? Or do animals just require a longer drop than goblins to splat?

Also, if I create a succession of forts in the same world, will my newer forts engrave and make items referencing the older forts or only if they are the same civ?

Also, I usually get like 10 dwarven civs on embark, but only a few of them have blinking blue statues denoting where their area of influence is. Does that mean all the other civs are dead? And if so, why can I choose them?

As for worldgen, I mentioned this in a previous post but it was tangential to my main question so no one directly answered it. I created a custom world where I didn't change anything except 1) made caverns more open and less dense (open stat changed from 50-100 to 75-100 and density stat changes from 0-50 to 0-25).2) Increased levels of stone between surface and 1st cavern (10) and between each cavern (5). I did not change distance from last cavern to magma sea or ms to HFS.

Sooo when I played this world the caverns were certainly more open and I was happy with their shape, but they had muddy marble for the most part and no plants or trees were growing. SOME parts had the multicolored moss floor and growing things but for the most part it didn't. Every "standard" world I have made was all growing, there was never any exposed cavern floor that was just muddy stone with no flora. Did something I do cause this, because I liked my custom caves, but I want them to be growing stuff to be used for pasture. Is there some limit to z levels? What I mean is if I ask for more z levels between caves does that "smash" the caves so they take up less vertical space (this is actually desirable for me) or does it lead to bugs and errors (my fear with this world). Also, what is the numerical equivalent in advanced world gen to the "everywhere" mineral setting in the standard world gen. I lowered mineral rarity substantially from the default, but there were still hardly any ores anywhere.

Thank you!