Bay 12 Games Forum

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Originally posted by Solara:
<STRONG>I can't believe people are giving up so easily - patiently wait nine months just to take a quick look at one screen (a labeled and fairly self-explanatory one at that) and immediately throw your hands up in defeat?</STRONG>

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I'm not giving up in defeat, just waiting for proper documentation.

And I haven't been waiting for nine months; I'm part of the wave of people who found out about DF in the last couple months. I had the forums and wiki to help me learn, and it was still a chore. I've been gaming since TRS-80's in the late 1970s, too, so I've seen it all.

I think it might be easy for the core group of folks here to forget how indecipherable the game can be for those who haven't been immersed in it - buried in the wiki and spending months following the daily progress of the hundred-page FOTF threads.

I really do dig DF, and I don't want to come across as slamming the idea. I know a two-man dev team is going to have limits, and I'm glad they choose to focus on gameplay. That being said, there comes a time when you can't make excuses about documentation anymore if you want to draw in new players.

With the massive changes this version made, one expects equal documentation of it all. I understand that discovering how things tick is a big part of the fun, but imagine what it's like for people coming to the game now - the wiki won't be fully fleshed out by the veterans for weeks, maybe months. In the meantime, the only documentation resource is the forums. And in combination with unexplained gameplay elements, figuring out where commands are hidden in 4-deep menus and wrestling with the interface in trial-and-error fashion really isn't fun; it's work. Not a lot of people are going to fight their way up the learning cliff if they have to make a forum post about almost every simple gameplay/interface problem they encounter.

So, I am just sayin'... it's time for a real manual.

[ October 30, 2007: Message edited by: Joker ]

Ah, thanks... progressing to new area of cluelessness!

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Originally posted by Entity:
<STRONG>I think the fact that a handful of seeds counts as one unit of food makes cooking seeds a bit of an exploit. But it's also a useful way of freeing up bags from the dwarven habit of trying to give every single seed its own dedicated seed bag, so I count it as a bug workaround.</STRONG>

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Yes, without the Economy going (which is just too broken to use for now) there's no way to get rid of the massive seed surpluses that pile up. I don't cook alcohol, and I wouldn't cook seeds if I didn't have to in order to purge them, but for now it's a workaround. Sort of. You still end up with hundreds more than you need even if you try to make your Dwarves eat mostly meals made of seeds. You still have to brew, and grow plants to brew, and gathering plants leaves you with odds and ends of seeds you don't want to plant - the march of the seeds cannot be stopped!  

Perhaps the ability to chasm all items should be implemented without having to have the noble/economy for it.

There REALLY needs to be some documentation on how all the opening screens work, what every option means, etc. I've been playing the old version a good while now, and I feel completely lost on how to get started, especially in terms of making decisions on all these unexplained options.

Evolution!

(First post! New DF addict here.)

Anyway, I have to agree with the suggestions to look to your hauling assignments and job specialization as the problems if you are having any trouble with food.

Related to hauling and VERY important is stockpile customization. Dwarf Fortress mirrors real life in this demand for success: logistics, logistics, logistics.

Keep barrels in reserve for brewing and stash them right beside the still. Don't have long walks among the farm/still/kitchen/stockpiles. Sort stockpiles to the finest level of detail, i.e., only seeds, only barrels, only "output" food (next to dining area), etc.

I usually use a slightly enlarged version of the "food-at-the-centre" layout found here: http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Design_Examples

I make the workshop areas deeper and use a horizontally-aligned dining room, but the idea is the same: Nobody has to walk more than maybe 10 squares at any point in the food chain from farm/fishing to dining room.

I am still pretty much a newbie to DF and I find food production trivial to the point of leaving farms fallow for seasons at a time. I don't even cook booze, either. Nor do I use hunting/trapping. With farming, fishing and plant gathering I can generate TONS of food with just 3 or 4 dwarves doing the work, and without using cheesy booze-cooking tactics. All I really have to do with those dwarves is make sure they aren't hauling stone or wood and there's usually no downtime or waste in my food chain. Sometimes I have to scramble a little to keep up with booze demand, but food just piles up.

Edit: Almost forgot livestock. Get a horse/cat/whatever breeding program going, and restrain the animals you plan to use for food/bone/leather in a room behind your butcher/tanning/leather workshop area so it doesn't take forever to haul them to slaughter. This has an added benefit of getting all your livestock out from underfoot and slowing Dwarf movement. I find horses to be especially fruitful if I have 3 of them to start, and before the first winter is done you can have a nice meat-farming operation going.

[ October 02, 2007: Message edited by: Joker ]

[ October 02, 2007: Message edited by: Joker ]

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Originally posted by Solara:
<STRONG>Oh God you're right, this illogical belief in magic is CLEARLY depraved and dangerous, quick let's take all their children away and reeducate them in order to avoid the Icelandic jihad that will lead to WWIII!

[ October 29, 2007: Message edited by: Solara ]</STRONG>

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Funny you mention World Wars.

As I seem to recall, a strong belief in the supernatural and religious hatred were prime motivating factors for both the madman who started the second one, as well as the millions who followed him.

There is no harmless application of irrationalism. Garbage in, garbage out.

It isn't just the countless hundreds of millions of direct deaths and acts of violence, either; it's the chilling effect on thought. There has been no greater bane to humanity than irrationalism, most specifically mysticism.

You see a story about elves and people who leave boulders in roads because of them and think it's cute and have happy dreams of Santa Claus. I think of Galileo under house arrest and libraries burning.

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Originally posted by Thallone:
<STRONG>Myself i've yet to too-deep a fortress. i usually get about 4 years in when I realise that I could have done <insert> so much better, and start over. Right now I'm working an elephant fort. Who knows, maybe this one'll go the distance.</STRONG>

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rofl... I'm exactly the same.   :p