Bay 12 Games Forum

I had a few pretty big ones back when i was still learning:

First, i had a decent fort up and running, but i was worried about cave adaptation. To counter this, i wanted to build a skylight in the dining room. I designated all the digging at once (big mistake), and shortly after, a wall came crashing directly through the dining room and bedroom below it. Not only did it crush a few dorfs, it also blasted dust on approximately 80% of my forts population. Many of them died on impact with walls, and others died from the subsequent injuries. This would have been survivable in and of itself, since i kindasorta had a hospital, but lo and behold, winter. Since i had no undergrould lakes, this obviously led to the dehydration of many injured dorfs, after which the fort succumbed to a tantrum spiral.

Next up, i had started a new fort, and was going to make such an underground lake, making use of the nearby river. Back then, i didn't know that water blocked constructions, and that constructions deconstructed on cave-in. So basically, i carve a direct path from the river into my fort, expecting to block it off when the lake was full. Oh wait, i can't construct there! Welp. Oh yeah, i'll drop a wall into the flow! Sadly, this did not work, and a dorf died in the cave-in. By this time, the fort was completely flooded, so i abandoned.

Although i'm not a terribly skilled artist, i've learned a few tricks by now:
- Eyes and ears are pretty much dead center on a head, height wise. To help visualize that, you can draw a cross on the head before drawing the face. The hair takes up a surprising amount of space on the noggin. The face-cross applies for anything where you have to maintain a heading, really.
- The upper head can reasonably be approximated as a sphere. After this, it's pretty easy to visualize the lower jaw as a trapezoid shape.



In fact i don't even know if i'm doing it right, but it looks pseudo-decent to my inexperienced eyes. Actually, i think it's better to use an ellipsis to shape the head, since this man ended up with a thunderdome for a head. Oh well, learn from your mistakes. And mine, in this case.
Anyways, my point is that your self portrait is pretty good, but the face is a bit long (unless your face really is long). Probably just the nose, as you mentioned. The lips look fine, except they're rather narrow (again, unless your lips really are narrow). It's a bit hard to tell without the picture, really.

Also, to repeat what everyone else said, practice is gooooood. Experimentation too. Try doing stuff you normally wouldn't. If it sucks, lesson learned. If it rocks, lesson learned! This is obviously easier on a computer, but bear with me, i'm only a pixel artist.

That sounds oddly hilarious. :U

Also, I modded in the ability for an adventurer to manifest balls of pure RAGE. These RAGEBALLS also evaporated instantly, turning into a cloud of RAGE on impact. It was funny.

I have no experience with all-out depressions, but i do have a rather unstable mood sometimes, which can end up bordering depression for no reason at all. Although the following may seem naive and childish, i'm being quite sincere. Forcing a smile on your lips, regardless of how little it fits your mood, can actually make you happy again. This is because your mind is, by now, wired to connect smiling and happiness with each other, in a joyous cause-and-effect loop. In other words, you smile when you're happy, so you'll be happy when you smile. Give it a shot, you won't be wasting anything by doing it.

A bit of mind wandering can be helpful too, i've found. If you let your thoughts roam freely, you might eventually get tired of thinking about all the depressing shit, and suddenly your mind is frolicking in meadows and rainbows. This did happen to me more than once, but take it with a grain of salt, considering my mildly neurotic behaviour.

Also, what Knight of Fools said about improving skills and such? It works, a lot. About a year ago, i found myself being very down at just about every evening, possibly because i had nothing new to do. I then decided to pick up Game Maker, and start making a game i had in mind for a while. Not only did it feel great to exercise my creative muscles, i also got a lot of compliments from others. It doesn't matter if the compliments came from the internet, they're stilll people behind the nicknames. Although i never finished the game, my night-time depressions are few and far between now, because i know for sure that i'm not just a useless puppet, i can actually entertain others with what i do. And, my point with this: Do something creative! Making something - ANYTHING - feels great, and rightfully so. Write a story, a rant, ramble about something, anything goes. If you can't think of anything, ramble about how you feel. Getting it out will make you feel better.

Also, let me finish off by saying that regardless of what you think, people will gladly help you get out of a depression. You see all these helpful replies? People care about your well being. It's the same thing in real life. Losing a wonderful person like yourself to depression would be a loss for the world.

my attempt to re-rail the thread: Why ARE most pre-teens so annoying?

This, my good sir, all comes down to hormones. Before puberty (which USUALLY sets in at ~11 years), people tend to act immature (because, quite frankly, they are), which annoys the more mature folks. This is not a universal constant, but it's reliable enough for some people to shut out a whole age group. It's typically only the more intelligent children who break out of this group, so consider yourself awesome if you do. To be painfully blunt, most admins don't want to deal with whiny little brats, which is probably why they act like they do. (note: i don't condone their acts)

Then comes puberty. Boys start overflowing with testosterone, and their minds are like "whoa holy shit this is awesome man", but is not used to it yet, thus causing instability and insecurity much of the time. This manifests as random rage and annoying behaviour. I'm only 19 years old myself, so i'm hardly past  that period yet, but it definitely was worst around 12-15 years of age. When people are in this age group, it's not unreasonable to expect behaviour similar  to a pissy wasp, but obviously this isn't the case all the time (which is readily apparent in this thread). Although pissy wasps are different from whiny brats, not many want to deal with them either.

As for what i think, i could hardly care less about physical age (in terms of communication only), maybe unless you're like 9 and coming on to me, in which case i'd have to make some distance. But otherwise, if you're a cool person to be around, then age doesn't matter. A bit of childish behavior isn't a bad thing in my eyes, since i'm a bit of a man child myself.

Wiki says their size is generally around 10.000.000. Half that of a BC, but definitely not something to be trifled with. My dorfs have learned that the hard way, multiple times.

More like Urist McNuggets.
Also, despite the rampant elfiness, this could be an interesting challenge. Very difficult, but interesting. It's rather different from my usual playstyle.

Oh yeah, inquiry: What about fish?