Bay 12 Games Forum

this is bad, really bad

29 ratman

Iti Edumaloruca, dragon -current resident

17 naked mole dogs

16 giant bats

21 troglodytes

23 iron man

16 gaint rats

1 hoary marmot

I think thats a large army right there and I have 7 dwarves.

I lost him right when I started the game.
It was an island location between tropical lake, some kind of grassland, and a desert, all the biomes are good aligned.
The instant I start, right next to water, my fisher plunks down, throws his line, and must of angered a hippo, now he is dead.

I have other sources of food, so I can survive, but that was some incredible bad luck.

I guess you need to fish away from hippos then, though that was some incredible bad luck.

edit: It isn't all bad, I dug down into the sedimentary layer and found magnetite and limonite for iron, I started with an anvil, and also native platinum.

edit: I've continued playing, and I am going to record some of my experiences here

I've dug down, and finally figured out how to set up so I can make things out of metal, for some reason, this isn't well covered in the wiki, the information is there, but I can't find any tutorial or demo that describes only what you need to start forging out of metal, the smelting article does give the information it, just it isn't linked and it doesn't give an concise tutorial. So I'll just write one here and then transfer it to the smelting article and link it to the tutorials section, feel free to change it if you want.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Introductory Guide to smelting by a newbie:

The a smelter is used to make metal bars out of ore.

Skills required: building designer (architecture) and furnace operator
If you want to use wood as fuel you also need the Wood Burner skill

Materials required: heat-resistant building material, ore, which determines what metal you get; fuel, coke from Bituminous coal or Lignite, or charcoal from wood

In order to make metal bars out of ore you need to use the "smelter" building.

-In building (b) -> furnaces (e) -> smelter (s)

In order to use the smelter building you need fuel.

-the smelter can make coke from bituminous coal (makes 2 coke) or lignite (makes 1 coke)
-the wood furnace (produces 1 charcoal)

The smelter requires one unit of fuel each time it is used. Note that this means smelting lignite or bituminous coal contain an additional unit of coke that is used up in order to smelt them.

After you have a source of fuel you simply give the smelter an order using (q) telling it to use your ore and fuel. Obviously, whatever ore you choose determines what metal bar you get.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

after I put this in the wiki I'll write a summary of my expedition so far and post it in this thread.

[ November 18, 2007: Message edited by: RaSchumann ]

[ November 18, 2007: Message edited by: RaSchumann ]

I found this nice starting position, and I think it would be good place to build a glittering, towering, fortress of obsidian and glass.

Created in DF v0.27.169.33d.

[WORLD_GEN]
   [TITLE:IEJC]
   [SEED:47320]

Location:

in The Everseeing Realm, on  a volcanic island/peninsula in The Flowery Water, just off The Land of Sculptures

World Map: 3 up, 5 right
Region Map: 1 tile south of the volcano

Types of Layers: soil, Sand, igneous extrusive, metamorphic, igneous intrusive

Cliff indicator: mostly medium to high, with extreme cliffs in the norts

Biomes:

The Swamp of Bends: Tropical Freshwater Swamp, Scorching, Heavily Forested, Thick, Wilderness, Yellow sand, Andesite, gneiss, Diorite

Steep slopes will prevent wood from growing

The Flowery Water: Tropical Freshwater Lake, Hot, No vegetation, Mirthful, Sandy Clay loam, Yellow sand, Silt Loam (aquifer), Clay, Obsidian, Quartzite, Granite

Big body of water, is constantly filled by a brook from off-map

The Wall of Play: Mountain, Hot, no vegetation, Wilderness, Obsidian, Quartzite, Granite

I really like the high obsidian cliffs.

I did a quick-start to check the local area and for lag.

From the highest point I had, 8th from the right and 3 down, the map goes 50 deep. I would have to select a large area to get everything I want, though my computer might be able to handle it. (Athalon X2 4200+ with 3 gigs of ddr800)

I don't have to flood to get farmland, there is sand for glass, magma, obsidian, and running water.

Even tough it is a volcanic lake island, it is connected to the main land, Dwarves, Elves, Goblins, and Humans are neighbors. Therefore I could trade for anything I don't have locally.

This is a forum suggestion, mainly from what I've observed just today.

There are so many different possibilities with world generation that I think it would be a good idea to create a separate topic just for world generation and starting positions.

Each world would have its own thread, including the values used for generation. The rest of the thread could be used for discussion of different things people noticed about that world and anything interesting they discovered and good starting positions, maybe even how their fortress fared at a specific location.

People could notice oddities, such as 2000+ reject worlds, or 0 reject worlds, or worlds with an abundance of a rare feature. This  could also be used to create competitions in different situations, and with the stricter rules, keep it quite organized.

This would alleviate some random clutter popping up everywhere, and I believe is worth at least a shot. Just a single thread would be too little, you would end up with multiple discussions popping up everywhere. Additionally, I think world generation covers an area that needs to be beyond nearly all parts of the game.

The other side for this, is it would require management, and might not be a big enough field to warrant its own part of the forum.

This should be a group discussion and consensus, with the dwarf gods having the final word, and as I'm pretty new to this, I think it should not be my choice to change the way things work around here, I'm just presenting an idea, nor do I want to become some sort of servant for dwarven gods either.

If this has been gone over before or is stated in some rule I didn't read. Feel free to ignore this, because with the universe being infinitely big and all, and me knowing only a finite amount, I could be considered quite an idiot. I'm sorry if I just wasted your time.

Massive wall of text warning

Hi, I love this game. I find random things where you have an opportunity to just explore very interesting. A couple other games like this, just to let you know where my interests lie is Sword of the Stars by Kerberos Producions, which is a space empire game with pretty simple empire management and customizable ships with a huge variety of weapon and other technologies to use in real time combat. My piece of advice is to start playing on a small (less than fifty or maybe you might want to go to the minimum) Like dwarf fortress, the starts are completely random, as in it does not pull punches. You can be trapped as humans with travel lanes traveling through enemy space, your enemy might find a dozen perfect worlds while you have to go halfway across the map to find something decent, did I mention there are random encounters? I once had "sparky" eat through pretty much ALL my original colonies as human, with a way more powerful AI Tarka player  that I was not friends with next to me, and I had to slowboat it something like 20 turns to the next habitable star because he had a colony between me and it. I gave up on that game, in fact, I usually never finish most games I buy. Its fun just for the variety of things it can throw at you, kind of like Dwarf Fortress.

That was way sidetracked, but I think its a game that shares the philosophy of "you never know what you are going to get." Which I enjoy about Dwarf Fortress, I didn't pay money for it, and I'm pretty stingy and I've only had one job as a high school student. Even just to watch the world generating is fascinating for me, it didn't last too long, only a few minutes, on a Athalon X2 4200+ with 3 gigabytes of fast ram (way to much), don't have an exact time, the world generation parameters where a custom seed and from the text file in the directory it says:

Created in DF v0.27.169.33b.

[WORLD_GEN]
   [TITLE:SEED]
   [SEED:473220798]

I used a ID number for me I know, kind of like the whole telephone-number thing in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, I jumbled it up a bit but it gave good base to just give a different seed. Also, in case your some stalker or something, you won't find anything with that, unless probability really likes you. I want to share it because it is actually pretty interesting.

One piece of advice I have, when you generate a world, export the image, it gives you a very clear, wide view and lets you see volcanoes and seas and mountains and all that stuff. That particular seed is interesting to me because there is a very large ocean and a relatively TINY ocean also. Several Volcanoes, and something I don't think is seen often, TWO major rivers, which have nearby volcanoes. The rivers don't exist in the same spot as the volcanoes, however looking around searching for a site (I'll pick one after I finish this) I noticed that magma pockets (at least if I read the map right) were in the same tile as the major rivers, and the biomes have aquifers and are quite hilly and sandy. I'm fairly sure this might be rare and it was my first seed this release I did, so I wanted to share it. I wonder how an aquifer, magma, and a major river would interact?

I have the image, though don't know how to put it on here, so if someone else does I'll say if its the same world.

I never actually tried going beyond just setting up the party and honestly, I only played continuously for a short while. I might try and make something of the next one though.

There are my thoughts, everything I though where somewhat important. If you read it all, you have quite some time on your hands, kinda like me.

Two more things, maybe a bit off topic but I link with this game.

I listen to the (I don't like the word classical) fine arts station in Chicago when I'm playing Dwarf Fortress, 98.7 wfmt. That station is just plain awesome. I'm streaming it off their site as I'm writing this.

I'm also into Infinity: The Quest For Earth, a space massively multiplayer online game with a massive procedurally generated universe.

The Violoncello is the greatest instrument ever. (according to me)

Boy, is that long, and meandering, and cheese, oh well.

Keep up the awesome work.

edit: small update, first: a question: is the right place for this?
second:Large Rivers must be really common in this version because I found 2 more for a total of 4
third: maybe a topic of discussion: What do you listen to while playing? The music that comes with it is pretty good, even if the music that comes with is kinda sparse. I find the music that comes with can get repetitive, nothing just gets boring, anything on your computer or compact disks needs to be monitored, so I just listen too the radio, all I have to do is remember not to close the browser window. (boy thats a run-on sentence)

Question: How do I underline stuff so I can highlight all the important points, and even more useful would being able to do it on other peoples posts so I can more easily understand them.

[ November 17, 2007: Message edited by: RaSchumann ]

Second edit: how come I can't see my signature, probably just me though, if it isn't there, its a disclaimer that probably belongs at the top of the page. Also I did a subject title change.

The official count on the world I created as far as I can see (I didn't try anything fancy too see hidden stuff, that would be cheating) is 4 large rivers and 6 oceans, plenty of volcanoes, and not too many rejects.

[ November 17, 2007: Message edited by: RaSchumann ]