Bay 12 Games Forum

Urist McTrader: "No, seriously, I won't buy any more stone mugs. We already got plenty of those, and nobody uses them anyway. Wait a minute, is this dwarf over there carrying a stinking, totally worn out sock to the trade depot? Why by Amork would he do that? What am I supposed to do with it, trade it for my excellent goods?"

Have you tried the video-tutorials from captn duck? They have helped many a players get into dwarf mode.
If you use the lazy noob pack, you can even start with a very similar embark profile to the tutorials.
They start at absolute newcomer level and even show you the keyboard commands.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL06686270DA5FF439
 

First of all: Go see a doctor.

I had a similar phenomenon in my youth, but without the head-hitting bit. I got a bitter taste in my mouth in moments of axiety or contentration. Turned out this was caused in a hairline crack in a tooth, which was rotting away from the inside without me noticing it. Ew. The crack spread apart a bit whenever i clenched my teeth, which i did frequently when stressed or frightened.
The chance that your problems have the same causre are minimal, but if your family doctor can't help you, you might want to check when you last saw a dentist.

Working with strings? Easy? Perl!
Okay,okay,python and lua will do the trick less messy, but I still can't resist recommending perl here.

I know you want to do it yourself, which is excellent, but just to demonstrate the power of perl, here's a part of your program in a one line of code:
printf "I am a %s %s \n", qw(male female)[rand 2], qw (human goblin lumberjack)[rand 3];

a more generic approach would be:

@race = ('human','goblin','lumberjack');
@gender = ('male','female');
printf "I am a %s %s \n", $gender[rand int(@gender)], $race[rand int(@race)];

If you are interested in learning programming beyond your project, i recommend reading through some of the programming threads in the forum, like the recent beginners programming question: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122911.0

Name: Grey
Fruit: Bergamot orange
Gender: male
Country: Bitta
Bio: A small and quite bitter green citrus fruit, with a tendency to facepalm in the face of utter stupidity.

While losing is fun, I like to wrestle with defeat for prolonged times until succumbing to it.
This is especially true for really good embarking locations, e.g. a location that provides iron, bituminous coal, flux, sand and clay all at once. Depending on the ultimate demise of a fortress, I often found it near to impossible to reclaim a once prosperous fortress.
They main reasons for this are stray insane former inhabitants, settled uninvited guests or violent ghosts that strangle your stone crafter before he even has a chance to memorialize them.

So i'm currently thinking about a design for a safe/panic room that aims to provide the following goals:
-provide safety for up to,say, 10 dwarves from tantrum spirals (together with all other possible dangers)
-keep them alive and happy for prolonged periods of time
-provide them with the means necesarry to memorialize those poor souls outside of the fortress
-help them deal with remaining invaders or berserk dwarves once the slaughter is over

secondary goals:
-double as a forward base for a reclaim in case of defeat in spite of the saferoom
-maybe provide the means to clean up the main fortress prior to leaving the shelter (with magma, if possible)
-if purging the outer fortress should be impossible, psychologically prepare them for the mess outside

I would like if anyone of you ever tried this approach to tantrum-spiral-countermeasure before and can give me some hints to come up with an efficient design. I don't want a secondary fortress, I want a saferoom with restricted dimensions. (say 15*15)
My current thoughts about the contents of the room include:

-A stockpile with enough high quality food and drink to feed 10 dwarves for 5 years.
-a stockpile of clothing
-minimalist legendary dining and bedrooms (maybe out of platinum, if available
-a good amount of slabs for memorializing and a craftdwarf's workshop
-a small dangerroom and some sets of steel armor and weapons
-a back entrance sealed by a wall for easy access after a reclaim
-maybe a dwarf-powered waterfall
-a long corridor to a room full of workshops. A wall of the corridor is a raiser drawbridige to atom smash moody dwarves on the way to their doomed workshop claim

I also would like to hear your estimations of the success chances of the concept. The crucial moments will be the moment a tantrum spiral is about to form, and the moment the dwarves leave the shelter and see the carnage outside. Is there a realistic chance to lock a score of dwarves in the underground Ark before the spiral of madness reaches them?

It would have made an awesome 50's horror film monster though:
"A digestive won't help you when encountering this nauseating creature: There's no escaping The Bile of the Barf Beast! (Parental guidance is adviced.)"

Train social skills with smalltalk and hope to gain juristic immunity after being elected as mayor.

WWUD if he didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition?