Bay 12 Games Forum

There's a utility called dfterm3 which is capable of co-op multiplayer, essentially letting you and a friend both have input and share a view over the web in real time.  This would probably be enough for OP's request.

Why does everyone think that turn-based gameplay is a problem. That's nonsense.

It isn't a problem at all when two players are playing on one fort, the pause simply stops the game for both of them and both of them can continue giving commands in that time.

dfterm3 - multiplayer is decent fun already, if the lag/crashyness issues are any better than when I last tried. It would be much more fun, if multiple cursors, i.e. multiple simultaneous inputs were possible. Then we could have true collaborative building. The menus would pause, sure, but the players would have to agree on that themselves. But that would require a rewrite of how DF handles keyboard/mouse inputs, and would be useful only for that type of gameplay. For more extensive rewrites, some of the pausing menus could be changed so that players would choose whether they pause while browsing or not. I'm assuming that many menus require the game to be paused when you e.g. add or delete jobs (be they designations or workshop jobs) and such, but even if that's true, it could be possible to browse the menus without pausing, then when the command is given by a player, do a quick (automatic) pause-issue command-unpause. If that's too laggy, collect commands into a buffer like DwarfTherapist does. Would be really fun though, to have multiple simultaneous overminds on a single fort, instead of the current multiple personalities fighting for control in one overmind that dfterm3 does at the moment.


As for the "multiple forts in the same world" type of multiplayer, possibly with caravans, raiding parties, patrols, military assistance expeditions (to help lift sieges), stuff like that... well, that could be interesting. If caravans are set to happen in a fixed season each year, you could e.g. make the decisions about the caravans before the end of spring (assuming autumn caravans for dwarves like now), and then the world would be synced at the end of spring. That would allow each player to play out a 1-year "turn" at their own pace, before syncing has to be done. This would be  similar to a play by email type of strategy game (e.g. The civilization franchise), except the "turns" of 1 dwarven year aren't played around the table by each player, but simultaneously, and then they're combined in the "end of turn" processing (there have been at least tactical turn-based games that handle combat like this. You either tell your guys to shoot in some direction as suppressive fire/because you assume enemies will be coming from there, or use some kind of overwatch mode, where they shoot on their own initiative if they see the enemy). For 2 player games there isn't much difference, btu the latter approach makes it much easier to increase the player count without vastly increasing the time you have to wait for your turn again. Heck, with the coming retiring AI, you could even give an ultimatum that if people don't play their turn on time, their fort will be handled by handled as being retired for that year.

This would still require splitting the world-advancement processes from the regular fortress gameplay stuff in a way that's probably different than what's being done at the moment/in the next patch. E.g. at the end of turn, you'd probably have to predetermine what migrants, sieges, megabeasts, FBs, animals (if any populations are shared between the forts), possibly caravans, and so forth, all the players get the next year, so you don't get a historical figure attacking/migrating to 2 different forts. Caravans are a possibly because currently they just come and go from thin air, but that's set to change; once traded items are tracked in even an abstract way, the stuff they bring to the fort would have to be generated in at least that abstract way, e.g. X food, Y weapons supplies, prior to any caravans "setting off" towards the forts.

For the military-type stuff mentioned above, we'd have to wait until the DF version that adds sending out patrols/counter-raids against goblins, anyway (AFAIK, planned but little or no timeline features). To be able to do this sort of thing at any time, you'd need to keep the world synced much more often than 1 year, but you could maybe also give orders for the whole year in advance. Or for a slightly more frequent interval that still allows some independent play time for people, once a season or once a month syncs. Imagine all forts are at least 2 weeks away from each other (for one sync per month). The communications delays would also make things more interesting, if you have to employ dwarven couriers to send messages etc. Extra points if the couriers and armies (patrols etc.) actually travel to the destination on the map, thus taking longer to get to faraway forts, and extraextra points if they can get attacked/obstructed on their mission. The army movement stuff is already coming in the next version though, so that isn't a big problem.

The above 2 variants, or some slightly more developed versions of them, are I think the closest to multiplayer DF that we could sensibly get without making it a vastly different game. But as mentioned before, Toady has expressed no interest in doing any kind of multiplayer. I think the systems I roughly laid out above might still be possible a few versions/years from now if the external plugins and such would advance enough (especially the armies stuff needs a few releases), and definitely possible (though not assured to happen) if the DF source code is ever released. Which is going to take at least a decade, and probably several decades (until DF is ready and/or official development stops).

The most important decision regarding cage traps is whether to use them at all.

That should probably be "whether to use them at all for fortress defence". Because without any cage traps, it's gonna be much harder, if not impossible, to capture any wild animals for taming/breeding programs. I have a couple of traps per cavern entrance (also have troops training a bit inward from them), and a few traps in a few locations topside (with walls to make pathing into them more likely, without having to use dozens of traps), for this purpose. But after the first time I had a 4x3 formation of cage traps in my main entranceway in one of my first forts, I haven't used them for actual fortress defence.

I think it's possible to get a small enough island just with the basic worldgen, but you need luck, and you do need to spend some time searching for it, since they don't show up on the zoomed-out version of the world map.

At the very least, I'm pretty certain I've found islands that spread over only 2 16x16 views, without using advanced world gen, or even checking the whole map.

sirdvae, the point of contention was that melting metal objects would count as producing bars the same way as smelting ores, i.e. they can be demanded. But to counter that, you said that you accidentally(?) forbade some bars still owned by merchants, and then seemed to claim that the fact that those bars were not demanded in moods was evidence that melted bars can't be demanded. I'm not saying you're wrong about melting, I'm saying that this paragraph does not in fact say anything about bars from melted items not being "demandable":

Ive posted what I have because that the experience I had. I definately had dwarves with a preference for a metal I had bars of that used the bars I wanted. To start with i was atom smashing all the goblinite but then I ended up with a few bars of metals I didnt want via forbiding all bars via the stock screen when a merchant was in the depot (so I forbidded the merchants bars and they "became mine"). after this the preferences still did not mandate the material (I was still forbidding the metals I didnt want to be used)

You just say you used to atomsmash goblinite, but apparently stopped. And then you got some bars by forbidding the merchants'. I repeat, neither has any bearing on whether bars from melting can be demanded. I can only judge your evidence based off what you say, not what you did in your fort. Or said in your most recent post, but not earlier. You may have been implying it earlier, but you didn't state clear evidence.


About the boasting thing: I do pick my words carefully, e.g. both "I wouldn't boast..." and "(sounded like one, initially)" were phrased that way for a reason. I wasn't actually accusing you of boasting, just saying that your first post in this thread did sound somewhat boastful ("I've got lots of artefacts, lots of them weapons/armor, practically all out of steel, too"), but I also said that once you mentioned that it was an artifact-generation testing fort, the context changed entirely.

Lastly, forbidding all but the desired metals is a (small) exploit in my books (which is not to say I haven't used it a few times, but normally not): I think that if it was intended for the player to be able to cherry-pick materials for moods, then there would actually be a UI for that, like for regular weaponcrafting, for example... Of course, even if the forbidding trick, or restricting materials via burrows, were fixed to remove them as possibilities for the savvy player, the savvy player would still find ways to get mooders to use the (non-demanded) materials they want used, not what the dwarf would pick: for example, locking/walling potential mooders in rooms with only the materials desired/dumping in any decoration materials.
tl;dr: Artifacts are meant to be random, and a product of a dwarf going temporarily crazy; what makes you think you're meant to be able to pick the materials in them?

Quote from: Fenrisson on October 03, 2013, 10:15:16 am

Shield are always good artifacts! Light Materials are considered better though....

Not particularly. Shield-bashing can be quite useful. A black bronze shield is good for that.

As for this, the correct, or at least better, statement would be "Not necessarily". Light materials are good for less weight, heavy materials for shield-bashing, and there are some relatively marginal situations (at least in vanilla) where ideally you'd have them at least be fire-safe. Nether-cap is even dragonfire-safe, but since the shield is only affected by the tile the wearer is standing on, not by the direct dragonbreath, which is just blocked, it doesn't really matter much, unless a dwarf drops the shield on the battlefield, and it gets breathed on after that.

Dear Urist McPumpoperator

I appreciate your enthusiasm for your job. I built a pump next to the ocean to both draw up some water and desalinate it and you ran right to it when I asked for someone to operate it. I even made a channel on the other end for the water to drain into after you pumped it.

However, you must have been trying impress somebody because you went at that pump like it was a freaking Olympic sport, pumped so much water that it overwhelmed the ditch, flooded onto the ground and washed you away into the ocean.

Perhaps in the next life you'll learn to take it easier.

Dear overseer,

oooooooOOOoooOOOOOOoooOOOoo

Translation: Well, we pump operators would be out of jobs if we pumped any slower than windmill- or waterwheel-powered pumps, wouldn't we? And then you'd just have even more dwarves just lazing about hauling socks back and forth.

Giant Thrips, like (most?) other giant insects, only live for 1 year IIRC. And wild animals do die of old age. Think about it, otherwise once you caught e.g. a male cave croc, you could just put it in a restraint or pit somewhere, and half of your breeding pair would be immortal. Could be done with the female as well, maybe*. But since they do age, you can't have immortal breeders.

I think usually when dwarves butcher caged animals, they leave the cage where it was (whether built or in a stockpile, or just lying around if your stockpile is full), then "pull" the animal to the butcher's, like they would when butchering tame animals, pitting creatures, or milking/shearing. And usually creatures that die of old age can't be butchered, which really doesn't make much sense, at least the bones should be fine, even if the meat isn't at it's best anymore... and let's face it, dwarves will eat anything that isn't sentient, so it's kind of odd they get fussy about old animals/animals killed by invaders. But the "wild animals can be butchered if they were caged on death" thing is new.


* I read a claim that while offspring do gain the mother's training quality, the offspring can also be tamed straight from wild to domestic if it's done before adulthood. Or something like that.

On a seaside hot biome, desperately looking for the caverns. I don't care which layer at this point. I need some fresh water and I need those floor fungus/subterranean tree spores as I have limited amounts of trees to chop down and lots of hungry livestock.

I also noted that the two biomes (part tropical ocean and part tropical shrubland) both listed metal. So far I've hit...zinc and lead ore. I'm hoping that isn't the extent of my 'metals' listed on embark.

At least I found cobalt to make pretty blue walls with!

Pumps will desalinate water. And in my experience, the site finder is exact about it's plurals. If both biomes listed only 1 of shallow/deep metal, you've got your 2 metals. If one of them had both a shallow and deep metal, or the plural "metals" was used anywhere, you've still got a chance. Unless both biomes or both shallow/deep were zinc/lead

I have this problem sometimes. The issue is ramps. Dwarves regard the tile of entry from a ramp as valid which makes the dwarf stand directly on to the lower (or upper) area. So the dwarf will continually attempt to build from above and then move down (or up) the ramp and occupy the building site, resulting in cancellation. In my experience you can control where a dwarf stands when building by making other building designations in the area where you don't want them to stand (like an extra wall) and then manually suspend them. You might try designating these false walls in the area from above where the dwarf enters, this will hopefully make them stand where you need them to stand.

Basically your dwarf thinks that since it can stand in the northwest corner from above and move into the build site, that it can build from there. It can't in practice so it tries to move into the pit thinking there's nowhere else to stand. The easiest way to deal with this is to always build from the southeast corner to the northwest if you want your dwarf to remain outside a structure. The opposite is true if you want them to remain inside instead.

Sure, ramps can cause it. But I get "creature occupying site" errors of the builder occupying site -kind all the time, even on completely flat land. In which case a speculative cause may be that the builder's preferred non-obstructing tile to build from is already occupied by another dwarf building a neighbouring designation, which causes him to move into his designation to try to build.

Regardless of the cause, and there probably are several possible ones, remember that you always need to cancel and redesignate to have a chance for them to try and build from another spot.