Bay 12 Games Forum

By using Dfhack and switching into companions, I found it is fairly common for them to have novice level swimming to start with (at least among my sample of like 10 from I think 34.06).  In any case, they definitely *can* have some starting swimming ability.  Whether there is any logic to who knows how to swim is not clear...

I could do some !!Science!! if there is a strong interest.  Then again, Toady is likely to change lots of follower related stuff in the next release, so maybe not worth worrying about that much.

This would be most useful when crossing rivers. Damn rivers.

If this were added, I assume it would be in the context of other controls for followers (which is definitely planned as part of the "Hero Role" update).  Although not specifically listed, I hope one that one such command would be a simple "move here", which could be more useful for getting followers across rivers, assuming that it could be made to behave reasonably near rivers.  I realize this is a lot of assumptions, but I would imagine that we will at least get the same level of control over followers that we currently have for squads in fortress mode. 

In the meantime, as I mentioned above you can use DFHack to assume control of followers right now, if you really want that.  To be honest though, I haven't found it to very useful for crossing rivers, as when you switch to the guy that's floundering in the water, all the idiots that got across already jump back in.  I usually avoid crossing rivers altogether (bridges in towns are your friends), and when I do have to cross one, I try to do it really fast and then fast travel before anybody drowns...

I think it might be nice if upon the death/capture of your adventurer, you could be given the option to transfer control to one of your followers.  In particular, I think this might make a lot more sense in the context of the "Hero" role updates Toady is planning to work on next.  If your followers have more of a personality, and different levels of loyalty to you, then perhaps you could only be allowed to transfer to a follower who is extremely loyal, as a kind of reward for making them happy.  This also could be very interesting in the context of of justice, as if you are captured then you could take control of your followers and have them mount a rescue or raise your ransom.  I feel like if your little group is going to become an entity and be given a name, then maybe it should be able to persist even without it's leader.

Today I had an idea for a much easier way to distribute my "bosses" to nasty places:  I use DFHack to permanently switch to one of my followers, then I can have him "give in to starvation" or whatever, leaving my actual adventurer (and any other followers) alive at whatever location I want.  So far I guess I only tried this for a night creature lair, but I assume it should work for any kind of site.  This should make it much easier to get whatever specific nasty characters I generate to the fort I want.  It also means that I can do things like make a dragon or other megabeast adventurer and then retire them to a cave/lair. 

It just occurred to me that I could use any historical figure as the pasty who dies, so I could swap with some random goblin boss, or a werecreature, or whatever and then take over their lair.  This could be quite useful, as my adventurers could have trouble recruiting followers once they kill a whole bunch of people...

I also have been playing around with Perfect World (got it running on Ubuntu , and I have a map that I like pretty well.  I am still working on tweaking the entity tags to get civs that I like.  I think I will add [BUILDS_OUTDOOR_FORTIFICATIONS] to at least some of the evil civs so they build castles, and I don't think I got the nightwings to breed yet (I think there need to be male and female castes).  I couldn't resist making a Mordor inspired region in the northwest, complete with a pass that I plan to eventually block with a "gate" fortress that adventurers will have to fight through to gain entrance to the region (unless I also put in a back door...)

Dear Kobolds,

It appears that, if a lever is positioned correctly, and so is a drawbridge, you are a self-solving problem. Your stupidity and mischief has shown me that my dreams of a suicide booth for you guys, gremlins, and other cheeky creatures can be a reality. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

-A proud new inventor, off to sell this to the Mountainhome.

I can't believe you would do such a thing to poor Deebus and his friends?!? 

Backpacks, bags, etc currently only hold a limited volume of items (not a limited number), and a sword is rather large so it might not fit in a bag even if the bag is empty.  The volumes of items are currently not handled very well by the game, so things that seem like they should fit (such as a sword into an empty bag) may not work. 

Backpacks are currently bugged (possibly intentionally to get around the weird volume issues?) so that any item you pick up from the ground will go into your backpack if you don't have a free hand, regardless of whether there is any space inside your backpack.  However, if you try to put away an item you have in your hand, you will need to have a container with enough free space.  As you have noted, you can get around this by just dropping things and then picking them up again.

How's the finger doing?  Are you going to have to attempt some sort of amputation (maybe with another adventurer?), or will Jeebus *ahem* have power over life and death? 

Surprised that he hadn't died, Jeebus quickly drew out the spear and jabbed the troglodyte in the chest again.

Am I reading the wiki correctly that adding "[ADVENTURE_TIER:4]" to an entity will allow you to adventure as a member of a civilization from this race, as opposed to an outsider (which is what you get if you add [INDIV_CONTROLLABLE])?  I will definitely have to try this...