Bay 12 Games Forum

What is this VBO graphics mode of which you speak?

Thanks for the offer Anathema but I think knowing how fast your comp could run my fort might lead to more sadness rather than less

I always hated upgrading processors and mobos because you have to start from scratch, while you can just swap out a drive, ram, or video card and don't have to reinstall OS and lose all your games and programs and be forced to spend hours reinstalling everything.

So what you're saying is the relative inaccessibility and complexity of DF really puts it in a class by itself, rising above any potential similarities in the margins it may have with other games.

I'll buy that.

And you're right. Playing DF kinda makes me feel like a marine compared to other gamers. I mean, I'm not saying I'm anything like a *real* marine...those guys are hard core, but the general idea applies. The few, the proud, and all that.

"Oh, you spent an hour on a nice scripted CoD mission where you didn't even need to fire your gun and still win? That's cool. I just built 15 platinum tables, trained a grizzly bear for war, and Yeah, that's right."

I have an intel core i7 920 overclocked to 3.2ghz (originally at 2.67).
6 gigs high end gaming ram (it's been awhile...corsair I think)
I also built my rig myself about two years ago. Just my heatsinks and chip fans are the size of a football.

I have a decade old (in game that is) fort with 209 dwarves and everything else standard. I pasture all my animals save a few cats for vermin patrol.

I'm averaging 40fps. I want to pull my hair our that my comp can handle Skyrim (granted, I also have a top of the line video card, which DF doesn't even use I don't think) but can't get at least 100fps at this stage of my fortress.

Is the solution just waiting for better computers, or is there some way the code can be optimized to run better? What's the fun of turning off weather, water, embarking on 2x2, etc. I really want to embark on like 3x5 (perfect to zoom out with on a widescreen monitor) but I can only imagine how slow that would be. Sigh.

Sutremaine - how is that done?

Thanks!

Maybe that didn't need a spoiler tag, but who knows? Has anyone *not* read the wiki at this point?

Hello all,

I was wondering about the caverns, and maybe a few of the things I'm looking for I will need to play with WorldGen (something I have absolutely know idea how to do).

Anyway, my latest hobby is watching Dwarf Fortress Let's Plays, and one thing I have noticed is that caverns in the Let's Plays look different from the ones I get. Primarily, the caverns I see on the let's plays have big wide expansive "ground" areas (with trees and shrubs) and mostly large, contiguous "wall" sections. This seems like a lot of fun because you can wall off/tame the ground sections and you have a large tree farm as well as pasture area, and then you can build rooms in the large wall sections (one LPer actually made their main fortress in the walls of the 1st cavern layer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDjqWcdhzsM). So imagine my disappointment when "my" caverns looks like the screencap below. You can't exploit these caverns in any way. IRL they would basically be really thin, high walled (on my 2nd layer cavern it was 34 z levels high from tippy top to bottom of underground lake - that just seems too high to me) slot canyons.



So I'm wondering if it's just luck of the draw or if there is some way to tweak the settings to create more reduced z-level, wide caverns. I want to feel like I am exploring and conquering each layer, and that's hard to do with a 30+ z level high, incredibly fractured cavern with hundreds of thin tall pillars surrounded by twisting, 1 square wide passageways.

Also, I can't ever seem to get three cavern layers, which I assume is default but I always create large worlds using the standard "create a world" and I usually get only 2, with the first one just a few z-levels from the surface. I also always get deep pits or downward passages (two in one 3x3 embark alone!) which I don't like as they allow the more dangerous creatures to migrate up and it feels less like conquering "layers" of cavern and more like one big mess. I'd prefer the first cavern to be down a bit more and for the three levels to be completely distinct.

Was this just an unlucky embark (many, actually) or do I need to create an "advanced" world with parameters to get what I want, and if so, how?

I hope someday the caverns are just as interesting as the surface, with underground civilizations with their own worldgen histories and wars, just like the surface races. That's another reason to want the layers separate, it would be neat to run into two completely different civs who have no knowledge of each other or the surface. As you get lower, they become more fantastical, from simple "dark goblins" to like insect men and weirder (journey to the center of the earth dinosaurs, anyone?).

About the HFS:


ALSO, completely unrelated, but I use the Lazy Newb Pack with the Phoebus graphics pack and I was wondering if there existed a "key" to what the symbols mean as most of the wiki tells you what things mean in standard ascii chars but not with the graphics packs. Specifically, I want to understand the world map better (where the civs are, cities, goblin towers, etc...) and I also want to be able to tell at a glance if a green gem is an emerald or some worthless minor gem of the same color. Does there exist something like that? Another thing I have noticed is when trading, an exceptional item and a masterful item have the same designation (a square, basically, before and after the name) while on the wiki it says they should have two distinct symbols (the best one being a dwarfbuck/sun symbol, which apparently Phoebus doesn't carry over).

Thanks!

Dang, I thought 10 levels would be enough...looks like not quite 100%. I can't go down any more because of cavern layer )I tend to always get high caverns, not sure why, my worlds are normally generated).

Looks like I need to invest in a hallway with weapon/cage traps for any survivors.

Thank you all for your answers!

I disagree with the noble's programming, though. I think as long as their room is far and away the best, it shouldn't matter to them it others have good room. It's not like Bill Gates gets mad that the average American lives a lot better than the average citizen of a developing nation.

In terms of walling off your space, I was thinking about creating a + pattern with walls effectively separating the entire region into four unconnected areas (with my fort entrance in the middle). That way, if a merchant and a vile force of darkness both spawn, maybe they will spawn in different quadrants and won't be able to fight each other. That works until the game is fixed so civs don't declare war on YOU if the goblins kill their merchants. (they certainly don't if the merchants get killed "off screen", so I don't see why it matters if they are in eyesight of your fortress.)

Actually, that leads to another question. Will offering large sums of goods to a nation (say the elves) make them less likely to be upset at your woodcutting and less likely to declare war if their merchants are ambushed by goblins?