Bay 12 Games Forum

In your dwarf fortress folder, go to data/init/announcement.txt. Inside that file, you can specify which events the game pauses for. There's more info on the wiki:

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Announcement

When fort goes under attack, military repels it without civilian casualties and few soldiers die, there should not be riot as a result.

Has to be said, though, that this doesn't happen in a fortress unless there are a lot of other stressors at work. Dwarves that have been sleeping in meager accommodations, suffering long patrols, eating the same monotonous food or none at all, and then, and only then, does the loss of a good friend set them off into inconsolable grief and rage.  It's the last straw, not the sole cause.

I've had mature fortresses where entire squads of legendary dwarves get slaughtered and there's barely a batted eye because everyone is fat, dumb, and happy on their masterwork roasts, legendary dining rooms, and bedrooms like personal palaces.

I do agree, though, that the whole tantrum issue could use a lot more nuance, more like a civil war or insurrection than a hundred unorganized dwarves alone smashing tables or ripping the wings off the geese. But as it is now, after the first two or three years of a fortress, tantrum spirals are usually avoidable unless there's some major, fortress-ending disaster.

The alpaca was a member of their civilization, so you made yourself an enemy by killing it.  Make sure that the animals you kill are wild, and you should be okay.

I figured that was the explanation for the villagers. But still, alpacas and their ilk are prey animals. Kill one of them, and the rest should flee, not go all red in tooth and claw.

Kind of an aside, but has anyone found evidence that bone meal was used as fertilizer in the middle ages? I would imagine it wasn't used before the eighteenth century at the earliest, when plant nutrition first began to be understood, but I'm far from sure about that. Ink was made from bone char, though, so there's that if book production ever becomes a reality. In any case, discarded animal bones are pretty ubiquitous in medieval archeological sites, which seems to indicate that supply far exceeded demand in reality too..

I voted the clothing bug. Besides the contagion issue, I've always wanted to build a fortress specializing in clothing production, especially now that we have wool- and hair-based cloth, but if the dwarfs won't wear the fancy raiment they manufacture, kinda disappointing.

Wasn't there some history to this bug, that clothing used to work but it was disabled because it caused some other issues having to do with clutter?

Also, the bug tracker lists it as "resolved," but do marksdwarves now choose the proper bolts assigned for practice? Last I tried, they still weren't distinguishing between bolts assigned for combat and those assigned for practice, but that may have been a few versions ago.

Mostly simulationist, though I sometimes get the bug to create some huge, improbable construction of some sort. But I do think there is a valid distinction between simulationist and narrativist (simulated detail for the purpose of realism versus simulated detail for the sake of good story generation), and it's the latter that appeals to me more: DF is one of the very few computer games I've played with the potential to generate good stories that aren't part of a pre-scripted plot.

And it's not just the whole grand sweeping history, but the small personal vignettes that occur: In one of my first fortresses, I had a legendary axedwarf killed by a chance blow of a goblin's steel whip, and noticed after the battle was over, that about a half dozen children had gathered near the place where she died, all with the thought "lost a friend to tragedy recently." Turns out she was friends with most of the fort's children, like some kindly old godmother. A minor thing, but after that, I was hooked. Those kind of events are, to me, what makes DF a much superior game to most big-developer endeavors that focus on shiny graphics and tack on an anemic plot as an afterthought.

Those kind of stories to me are the biggest appeal. I appreciate the efforts to add greater depth and complexity to the world, but I appreciate them most when those complexities just add good opportunities to generate narrative without unnecessarily encumbering the game with extraneous detail. I'm perfectly happy if the game hand waves tiny details of alloy composition or animal anatomy as long as it keeps the stories coming.

Quote from: hoveringdog on October 12, 2011, 01:02:42 am

the hungry, and such. And when it does, I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult, coding wise, to program other sentient creatures who also initiate those kind of tasks.

If they do it randomly yes. If they do it properly, you are oh so wrong.

Well, random, but in that way that DF effectively makes random look like an intentional narrative.

Apologies, my exaggeration for humorous effect didn't work out as I had intended. But I hope the point, with regard to fantasy and myth and how it might be potentially interpreted in DF, still makes some sense. Even the more benevolent deities and powers have their quirky taboos no mortal is allowed to violate lest they get a divine bolt to the face.