Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: frightlever on March 13, 2019, 02:44:48 pm

I can't see DF selling a fraction of that unless the interface is comparable. Rimworld is LITERALLY like a combination of DF, DFHack and DTherapist in a single unified interface. I dream of DF being as user friendly.

I couldn't agree more - it's all down to the user interface.

In my opinion, it's the only reason why DF has been relegated to the 'hardcore' gaming sphere, rather than going mainstream. More than that, I feel it'd just take a little (relatively speaking) polish - a bit more unification, mouse support (already in DFHack) and a few tooltips/etc.

I feel it would need DTherapist built in - I find it a bit too obtuse without it. Perhaps it could be a DT 'light' which stops it being quite so spoilery, but it definitely needs a similar interface.

...

I haven't played for a couple/few years, came back to the forums because of this news, but wasn't there a DFHack plugin that basically was a DTherapist-type UI screen, only accessible in-game? Was it discontinued? The option to maintain stocks of products (e.g. if there are less than 10 tunics free in stock, make more) used to only be available with the workflow plugin too, but I vaguely recalled and now checked to see that it was added as a feature in work orders in v0.43. Searching for the name now (but gonna have to go to bed soon), I think it was probably one of Falconne's?

Ok, I think I found it (not Falconne's though I guess?), manipulator, or apparently there's also a newer branch, Cavern Keeper. Something like that would definitely be good to have as a built-in feature in the vanilla game, yes.

Quote from: Broms on March 13, 2019, 04:53:25 pm

Does anyone know what the "V - Visualize" key does in the steam screenshot of the new ui?

Yes. Nothing. Shouldn't be there, move along please.

Kitfox has 8 members, and Tanya has written 2 books together with Tarn. They are friends, this is not EA buying Bay12 or so.

In the long run I'd assume that the free Df version will look better than the steam DF, simply because of the large community of people producing mods, tilesets and utilities. Not sure what that does to the Steam sales though.

Overall I approve of this quite heartily, not only because of Tarns financial situation, but because I want to game to be as good as it can be, and for more people to play it.

I suppose modders could also publish their tilesets on Steam Workshop as well as here?

Sanctume: you're assuming everyone, or at least most people, would primarily want to play PvP. I wouldn't.

Player versus Player requires Multiplayer, obviously, but the reverse is not true.

Not a quote, but related to the "my river stopped" stuff above: I fondly remember reading about a story where someone embarked on a waterfall map, where the downriver i.e. lower portion of the map was a colder climate, that froze in winter, while the upriver part didn't freeze (or froze only later?). Cue a LOT of flooding in the lowland parts and long-term low-fps until he built a dam or abandoned, since the biome border of course wasn't exactly at the waterfall's cliff.

Quote from: MDFification on November 08, 2015, 04:57:59 pm

If you do want to make it multiplayer, I suggest making players share a map (larger than current fortress maps) but have limited number of dwarves under their control. They can choose to collaborate to make a superfortress or make their own isolated hamlets and compete.

Oh, and there's another reason why a DFHack version would be very difficult. You can't stop one player's dwarves from trying to take another player's jobs. (Maybe you could use burrows, but then there's territorial issues preventing offensive engineering and recovering items.)

However, if the engine made it possible to divvy up the dwarves between multiple players somehow, THAT could actually be a fairly interesting way to implement multiplayer while avoiding jobs stealing dwarves or dwarves stealing jobs -type conflicts. It could, and probably should, go further than just civilian vs. military; one way could be to allow players to select who is in charge of what "spheres": military, construction (buildings, mechanisms, possibly workshops), mining, manufacturing (setting work orders), with possible further splits into industries eg. farming, metalworks, etc. Each dwarf would belong to a certain pool - a social caste/guild, if you will. The pools themselves could be customisable down to profession level, at least (so e.g. the military could be allowed some civilian jobs in peacetime). Of course, some mechanic of transferring dwarves between pools, possibly requiring your dwarven manager to sign off on it, would probably also be a good idea, to account for changing priorities as the population size, fort maturity and other circumstances change. Also the same for changing who controls what. Players could requisition dwarves/items/buildings/more abstract things from others, probably best done as an informal chat. Now I'm reminded of Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator, a bit, although this would probably work just as good with text chat as in the same room.

I just thought of this, but this sort of "dwarven council" of each player managing one of the different spheres of dwarven life is the best idea for an actual working, cooperative, interesting DF-like (see "roguelike") Multiplayer game that I remember reading/hearing/thinking of. Any game devs out there, feel free to grab this for the next Gnomoria/Banished/whatever.

For DF itself, this would probably require a rewrite of a decent amount of the current DF UI code, and several medium-to-large portions and rewrites in the rest, too. Obviously some basics are already in, since military on duty with active orders don't "look at" civilian jobs and vice versa, but that would have to be expanded on *a lot*. For Toady, I'd much rather he just keeps doing what he's doing, which is doing what he wants to do, while of course interacting with the community.

Quote from: NJW2000 on November 05, 2015, 01:18:05 pm

Quote from: pisskop on November 05, 2015, 12:59:01 pm

Combat mechanics are those of a mount.

Babies are treated as mounting the mother in combat.  That includes not being the primary target unless the mother is distracted.

I'd like to reiterate that my understanding was that they carried the baby. Part of this is that dwarven mothers at least used to occasionally block using the baby. This is why using females for military was not recommended (besides that a fact that even if the baby doesn't die from being used as a shield, if the mother dies, the baby would starve to death more often than not).

technically babies ride their mother as if they were mounts.  at least mechanically

I thought the mother carried the baby in one hand? Doesn't seem like it could be both.

I think realism went out the door with infinite source/sink aquifer tiles 

As indicated, I did get transmutation of one type of sand into 3 different kinds of soil, but the top aquifer one, at least, was not supporting the aquifer. If of sufficient interest I could start up the save and plug the leak(s) in the top one to check the bottom one.

I doubt it's worth the effort just to test this, but if you're going to be playing that save anyway, why not?

Infinite source/sink aquifer tiles aren't necessarily unrealistic if you consider them as an approximation, after all the play are is fairly small, and water tavle levels don't change very fast. The source/sink speed is rather high, though.

Just as a quick reply:

• The best posts to look at are #205 and #206 (they don't have the central hole)
• the single tile in the middle being hollowed out is unnecessary, it was used by one guy, not a huge problem to have but it does mean you'll need a bucket to empty it out. Can't remember what their reason for adding that was.
• See #205-206, I don't think there's anything else except open floor and ramps on the (flooded) bottom aquifer layer pre-drop in those? So the plug doesn't hit any supports on its way down.
• With regards to failing the 2-z chicken runs: yes, that's why I want to test it in a newer version. I vaguely recall someone mentioning that chicken-runnin would be much more difficult or even impossible in 0.40 and on, but I don't have any experience myself. Incidentally, if that's true, all the classic chicken run methods already on the wiki would also fail.
• ...In which case my go-to method for a 2-thick aquifer pierce would probably still be a concentric cave-in if possible (enough soil), or if not, handle the top layer with a basic cave-in, and then use the hatch trick for the 2nd.