Bay 12 Games Forum

It is terrific!

Quote from: Henny on July 09, 2014, 11:00:26 am

There should only be three types of chairs in The Sims: one shitty but cheap chair, one mediocre chair and one decadent chair. Anything else is just detracting from gameplay.

Oh, that furthers MY point.

I've always hated that in The Sims what you wear is completely ignored and makes no difference mechanically. You could go around in underwear but no one would show any kind of reaction. An example of variation that is merely cosmetic when you instead expect actual depth.

And then I do think chairs can have different stats on them? I don't know how much granularity, but I guess it's variation that DF doesn't have.

This thread is winding down because everything that can be said has already been said, but I thought I'd throw my two cents in because the dogpile isn't big enough.

Cosmetics doesn't have to have a concrete mechanical purpose. It's cosmetic. That's the point of a simulator: It simulates and throws in all the cosmetics and fancy fluff. If you want a game where every single object is necessary and no fluff is permitted go play one of the Dwarf Fortress spiritual successors like Gnomeria. If you took out all the extra couches from the Sims it would strip the player of choices and the ability to customize his house. If you stripped all the clothing options (Even though you get bare bones stuff to begin with unless you inject money into their simpoints...) and made "YOU MUST WEAR SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE CLOTHING OR BE SHUNNED" mandatory the game would be terrible. I WANT my sim to have a wedding in his tighty-whities with his bright purple and pink mohawk and no one bats an eye. It's funny and I enjoy it.

The same can be said of Dwarf Fortress. It's got all these cool geological features that make it seem like these are actual mountains with geological history. I don't just dig into "stone" and "dirt" until I hit "ore" like this is Minecraft. I dig through a mountain that was simulated to be an actual mountain, and I can colour-coordinate my fort with the rich dwarves getting marble doors and statues while the plebs get mudstone doors and rickety wooden chests. I utilize what's in the fort and have enjoyment in all the variation. (My only dissent to this is when I have a lovely brown fort then suddenly strike this huge bright yellow mass in the mountain and my OCD makes me abandon.)

Heck, I even enjoy doing it without DF therapist; the only utilities I used in .34 were soundsense and DF hack for mass-obliterating rotten clothes. I find equal enjoyment in ASCII and tiles, and equal enjoyment from vanilla and mods. I'd rather these mods not become mandatory parts of the game, but I don't have to worry about that because this thread isn't going to change the way Toady has been developing the game.

Well I'll throw out a few ideas.

"Bird Detonation Simulator"

"OH GOD THE TREES ARE SO PRETTY Simulator"

"It Was Inevitable."

In Adventure mode I walked into a goblin site as a human, claimed it, then decapitated the goblin leader there. Everyone was horrified and started to flee, even the macemen. One archer actually fired a shot at me and I quickly cut him down. I fell asleep there after giving my title to a random goblin surgeon, then inexplicably woke up to being attacked by about 12 human recruits.

I tried the same thing in a human hamlet after I left but got a bolt in the skull for the effort, I love that when I spawned a new adventurer in the same place I found the town talking about it.

Fortress mode looks gorgeous, though flying creatures seem to be spontaneously exploding; a large group of ravens tried to travel across the site and exploded all around my woodcutter, who was horrified.

You have to dump water on the tiles you want plots to be on so they have mud, and in most cases this lets you build the farms. In rare cases this doesn't help, so all you're left with is a big ugly muddy field.

I tend to be a rather moral overlord, though its a rather standardized generosity rather than looking after specific dwarfs preferences. Early on in a fort I try to give everyone a smoothed room with a stone chest and dresser. It has the dual benefits of making my dwarves happy, and improving the skills of my masons. Later on when my fort is a sprawling mass of dirty migrants the rooms tend to taper off because everyone is usually occupied in the more important tasks of building coffins and decorative items for the common areas... Usually for the nobles.

The hospital is always well stocked and I burrow the chief medical dwarf in there along with a surgeon and a nurse or two; allowing them only to work in the hospital and kitchen stockpile means when they aren't eating or sleeping they have no excuse to not fix up the dwarves with fractured livers.

My moral standing tends to erode when I complete the danger rooms and the surgeons end up with a lot of practice in their craft, though deaths are rare unless I leave it on repeat and get distracted by something else in the fort.

My current fort is the only surviving fort left in our civilization, so I felt it would make sense to have everyone be militarized to an extent. So drafting everyone in a squad lead by a legendary speardwarf until they're all at least competent or adequete, then they either get released from the training squad or bumped into the militia, legion of professionals, or put back into civilian life.

And every dwarf has something to do, even if its not their starting labor.

To be super lazy about screenshot, simply hit "print screen", ctrl-v to paint, save, then upload to http://cubeupload.com/ for quick uploading, then post the link you get here. I want to see this end of times.