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[timotheos]

I'm only using therapist. I did have DF hack a couple of versions ago but i found the temptation to "cheat" all the time too much. And half of the least cheaty options I used to use have now been added to vanilla by Toady.
As for graphics i'm used to asci now. Whenever someone post screenshots with a pack it confuses me. And i've not seen any other addons that I felt worth adding.

[Lemunde]

I generally avoid dfhack. I tend to use graphical mods such as Phoebus but lately I've just been using simple tilesets and color mods as I don't have to wait for updates.

[Jako98145]

I can only play vanilla at this point.  Texture packs hurt my eyes, since I'm so used to the ASCII graphics, and I like to learn through ruining my fortresses, instead of modifying the settings.  I'll only use dfhack to mess around, or look at my clusterfuck glorious fort with Armok Vision.  And I'll only use Dwarf Therapist if things become too bothersome.

[Urist McWoodBurner]

I was doing pure Vanilla with Therapist for a couple weeks but the graphics for engraving smooth stone kills me every time so I use CLA graphics set now which is similar enough to vanilla for me. Used Dfhack once like two years ago but I could never get into it.

[Sanctume]

I have played both vanilla and used of starter packs.

dfhack plugin that remembers that wall material I used last was gabbro block and it lists it first is a carpal tunnel saver.  I won't play vanilla when doing above ground mega projects.

DTherapist is just much more efficient in micro managing dorfs from the starting 7 to 200+ pop.  I'd play vanilla if I will not bother micro-managing dorfs above 20 count. 

dfhack script forum-dwarves is just a time saver to text dump dwarf descriptions for some off-game story notes.

I prefer using the LNP than vanilla.

[Alluvian_Est-Endrati]

Thus far I have not used a starter pack. Only dfhack or Dwarf Therapist. I quite like the ASCII art of the main game, especially after I change it to the 800x600 font in the init file. I have contemplated Masterwork, but would have a hard time deciding between the original for 0.34.x or the 'newer' one for 0.42.06.

[jecowa]

The main thing to keep in mind here is that if you do not want, these tools will not change anything in the gameplay, make it less hardcore or make it "not df" any other way. Using DFHack does not mean you're cheating or incapable of playing vanilla DF.

I personally do not use any gameplay-changing plugins myself, and I don't like that "newbie packs" come with a lot of plugins and custom shortcuts enabled by default. Still, at least the launcher app can be useful for changing settings in init/d_init files, if needed.

So even though DFHack comes with 80+ plugins, they are all disabled by default?

As for DFHack, if you don't want to change anything in gameplay (mostly it's related to automation of certain tasks), there are useful plugins that improve UI, adding things that are missing just because they are low-priority for Toady. Like search in all lists, comfortable labour management, improved game load screen, quicksave to avoid losing all progress in case of a crash, and some others. Previously DFHack also included fixes for some acknowledged bugs, but not anymore, as Toady releases bugfixes more often.

Thanks for the list. Do you think any of those should be enabled by default in a Lazy Newb Pack?

I don't use starter packs. Too many changes I don't know about. Too many utilities I don't use. I can play equally well on graphic or ASCII, though I'm stuck on ASCII until I learn how to setup the raws without a pack.

That's why I stopped using Lazy Newb Pack - I saw it had a bunch of mods enabled by default. I thought I was just playing vanilla with a graphics pack. I was amazed when I played vanilla and saw the awesome intro that the Lazy Newb Pack had kept hidden from me. (The intro is disabled by default in the MacNewbie Pack.) So I downloaded a copy of Spacefox's graphics pack straight from the OP of his forum page (to ensure that I had the latest version), installed it, and I proceeded to unknowingly play with a corrupt version of Dwarf Fortress and couldn't figure out why I couldn't brew plump helmets into alcohol.

[Miuramir]

I play vanilla, although I do use the advanced world gen options, a larger screen, and these days usually install a square-ASCII font with strong VGA roots.  (Yes, technically everyone uses a tileset unless using the old curses version.  That said, IMO something like Marble Dice's 16x16 is for practical purposes more usefully described as a font than a tileset.)

I've not yet found a graphical tileset that is as readable or clear as the better ASCII ones.  And from a mod standpoint, I've seen too many times in both DF and other games that dabbling too heavily into mods in early development makes it difficult to properly test; we're already to the point that a significant number of the "problems" people report are actually problems with mods, not the actual game.  The few mods I've dabbled in over the years are either ones that increase realism (e.g. better distinguished material characteristics), or occasionally prune things back for play on low-end computers (e.g. fewer kinds of leather).  In an ideal world the first sort of mod should make its way into vanilla as Toady gradually improves the raws; and the second sort should be part of a well-supported "help, I'm playing on a potato" package for people who need it. 

Edit: I want to make more clear that the last bit isn't intended to be dismissive or derogatory.  I'm a big fan of accessible computers like the Raspberry Pi; and one of my dreams is to figure out how to get a stripped-down future version of DF that will run on some future generation of Pi.  Like the portable Minecraft, it will have to be simplified, but it would open a vast potential audience. 

[thvaz]

I always play vanilla. Never bothered to use Therapist, though sometimes I install Stonesense and the Soudsense pack.

[Rince Wind]

I play vanilla. Though I used dfhack, and would use it again, because some things are convenient, especially that it remembers the material used for the last construction job of the same thing.
Other than that I used it to dig out veins, but vanilla can do that now.

[ORCACommander]

I hate all the extra bloat that comes with lnp and others. and i have to spend moretime disabling shit than i would just installing my gfx pack of choice, a custom mod or two and dfhack

[mifki]

Yeah, we really need to have a minimalistic pack, with no gameplay-changing plugins enabled/installed.

[Dirst]

Yeah, we really need to have a minimalistic pack, with no gameplay-changing plugins enabled/installed.

Anyone want to maintain a Stable Pack?

[jecowa]

It's a lot of the utilities included that make Newb Packs so bulky. I think a lite Newb Pack should include:

• Graphics Packs
• Dwarf Therapist
• Sound Sense

I believe installing graphics packs is the main purpose of a Lazy Newb Pack, so it's good to include a lot of these. Lazy Mac Pack includes a bunch and all together, they only take up 23 MB compressed.

Dwarf Therapist takes a few days to update, but that gives the graphics packs time to update too. Dwarf Therapist is used by a good percentage of people, and installing the memory layouts manually gives some users trouble. It's about 17 MB compressed for the Windows version.

Sound Sense is kind of tricky to install, so it would be helpful to include a properly installed version. It only takes 1.1 MB when compressed and doesn't need to update for every version of Dwarf Fortress.

Although Armok Vision is pretty cool, it's 34 MB compressed for the Windows version. I don't think it's tricky to install at all; it looks like you just download and open it. Maybe instead of including every utility, it could include links to their forum pages or whatever.

I'm not really sure about embark profiles. They don't seem very newbie-friendly. If you don't use an embark profile, you always start with an anvil, food, and alcohol. Embark profiles are very likely to not give you all of those. And then there's no way to back out of it after an embark profile is loaded. I think New players are better off choosing "play now"

Also, there are lots of init and d_init settings changed. What settings should an Lazy Newb Pack use in the init settings?

• Print Mode - 2D (default), Standard, or TWBT?
• Scaling - Linear (default) or Nearest?
• FPS Counter - off (default) or on? I think it's kind of ugly.
• TrueType - on or off? (default is "24")
• Computational FPS - the default of "100" or something else?
• Graphics FPS -  the default of "50" or something else?
• VSync - default setting of "off" or is it better to have it turned on for some reason? I'm guessing there must be some reason that it's off by default.
• Zoom Speed (how many tile pressing shift+arrow key moves the cursor) - default is 10, but Newb Packs seems to often change it to "5"
• Macro Delay (in miliseconds) - default delay is "15 ms" but some of the packs change it to "0". Does this matter either way?
• Default Embark rectangle size - default is 4x4. Starter packs usually change it to 3x3. Smaller embark sizes should lower RAM and CPU requirements a bit, but is this something that should be changed from the default setting?
• Population Cap - default setting is 200. Newb Packs often change it to something like 120 or 160.
• Baby Child Cap - default setting is 100:1000 (First number is a Max of 100 children. Second number is, I think, the Max percentage of your fortress that can consist of children). Newb packs often set this to 10:20. While children are pretty useless, I think reducing the number of children might be robbing players of lots of fun and challenge.
• Engravings start obscured - default setting is "No". Newb Packs will often have them obscured, though. I don't think having a Newb Pack obscure engravings is helpful. For graphics packs it's often good to have them obscured, but I think graphics packs can change this setting if the author feels that engravings should be obscured with the pack.
• Show Flow amounts (uses a number to show how deep a liquid tile is) - default setting is "No", Newb Packs often have it on, though.


Keyboard settings - Should a Newb Pack change keyboard settings to make it easier to use on laptop keyboards? What keys should laptop users expect to use for browsing menus instead of using the + and - keys on the Num Pad? Are there other issues for laptop users besides that one?

[Dirst]

If folks want to crowd-design a lite or stable pack, it might deserve its own thread.  But in any case TWBT should not be the default (which is a shame because TWBT with GemSet looks awesome), and it's debatable whether it should even be included.  Not because it's a huge file, but because it is a DFHack plugin, and DFHack seems like a poor fit for Hypothetical Pack.

If there is a PyLNP wrapper, then there is no harm in including several keyboard layouts, embark profiles, graphics packs and color sets.  Just needs decent tooltips and maybe pretty HTML documentation.

In an ideal world, the Pack would be able to download additional tools from DFFD.  DF is hardly the only game with a wide selection of mods of variable quality... it just needs a safe starting point.