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[DarkMagnus]

I recently decided to take advantage of some of the hacks available for DF.

At first the ability to pinpoint the adamantine, magma and water was awesome. I could use reveal and find out where all the platinum was, I could make sure my new map had enough metal ore, or see if there was anything interesting in the chasms.

And then the more I played with them the pickier I'd get, eventually spending more time and finding the perfect location than playing the game.

The games suddenly became about reaching the places I had revealed so I could exploit them and become incredibly powerful incredibly fast.

And then I realized I wasn't having any fun.

I dunno, I appreciate the use of these tools. I don't look down on the people that use them. I just feel like the game is much more fun when the most in depth elements of it are a surprise.

I'm starting over now, this time with no regional prospector and no tweak. I think I'm going to enjoy it a lot more.

[KrunkSplein]

That's exactly why I don't use Tweak or any similar tools, though I do use Regional Prospector.  I don't need to know where it is right away, but I like to know it's there.

[DarkMagnus]

I can understand using prospector to find adamantine. I'm just not doing it because it'll be that much better if it's actually there.

[Logical2u]

I use prospector to find an ideal location: Magma, river, HFS.

I use tweak for a few reasons: To remember where the HFS was (my fortress is oddly designed so I didn't expect to find it, but the HFS was right under my bedroom area), to heal dwarves that for some reason aren't resting even though they have no leg injuries and are ultratough (I am confused as to why they're just sitting there wounded, people have even brought them water as they stand around outside with a wounded arm!), to attempt to heal dwarves with a pierced heart from one second of wrestling a wolf (which failed after the guy bleed to death), to extricate visiting dignitaries from moats (he stood on a channel.), and to kill invisible enemies to free up processor time (this is really handy actually).

I don't like using tweak, and I try to avoid using it even if it means the deaths of my dwarves. I will never kill an enemy my guys are fighting (I did on a demon once. It was lame).

Similarly I won't teleport my guys away from danger. I had a novice wrestler who fought off 3 pikegoblins... with no armor. Although he died to an axe-goblin. He was a lyemaker

[Angellus]

the only hack I use is the tile editor, I use it to get magma below my furnaces.

I really hate the need for wood.
Too bad beds cant be made from stone ^^

[DarkMagnus]

the only hack I use is the tile editor, I use it to get magma below my furnaces.

I really hate the need for wood.
Too bad beds cant be made from stone ^^

Meh, but that's part of the game. But that's a really useful hack, I know.

Actually, I'd like to figure out how to hack some sand into a map. It's the only thing I think wouldn't detract at all, considering you can't import sand at all.

[SirPenguin]

This topic brings up a good point, and probably the best evidence that "Losing = Fun" is, indeed, true.

And it is. What you're doing, and what a lot do, is basically 'minmaxing', the idea of getting the best possible whatever in the best possible way. It ruins games.

[TrouserDemon]

I only use the starting set up part of tweak, so I don't have to enter it in every time, I wish Toady would have some option to save your starting set-up.

[Sappho]

Yes, I agree, cheating at this game to get everything basically takes away the point of the game.  Once you have everything and are ultra-powerful, what more is there to do?  There is no joy in achieving something without any work whatsoever.  Honestly I'm puzzled by people who do cheat a lot and still manage to enjoy it.  I suppose their motivation for playing games is different than mine.

I suppose it's useful for story-telling and creating monuments and such, but trust me, I cheated to build my pyramid, and by the end of it all the joy had been sucked out of the game for me.  I never want to see that pyramid again!  And I couldn't bring myself to play at all again for a long time.  It had gone from game to work.

[Surma]

the only hack I use is the tile editor, I use it to get magma below my furnaces.

I really hate the need for wood.
Too bad beds cant be made from stone ^^

Meh, but that's part of the game. But that's a really useful hack, I know.

Actually, I'd like to figure out how to hack some sand into a map. It's the only thing I think wouldn't detract at all, considering you can't important sand at all.

The easiest and fastest way to do that would be to change the soil tiles in
matgloss_stone_soil.txt to make all soils have the [SOIL_SAND] tag.

Then again I only do that for the ones that have "sand" somewhere in their name.

Yes, I agree, cheating at this game to get everything basically takes away the point of the game.  Once you have everything and are ultra-powerful, what more is there to do?  There is no joy in achieving something without any work whatsoever.  Honestly I'm puzzled by people who do cheat a lot and still manage to enjoy it.  I suppose their motivation for playing games is different than mine.

Some people have different expectations than others, hell every time I get a magma vent/pool I move the imps and magma men to somewhere my dwarves can fight them without getting knocked or pulled into the magma >.>

... It had gone from game to work.

That describes most of my game playing experiences after a few days, I found that even games like GTA or FF or really any game RPG or not can become more work than play. It gets especially bad in the RPGs that have random encounters, having to wade through tides of baddies just to get to the next town only to find out that it's not the correct town is a major source of painful memories for me.

[Logical2u]

Now, as one of the guys that cheats a bit...

1. Getting your ass handed to you by demons seems to be work to me. (Especially when you're trying your best not to have it handed to you and the game doesn't cooperate and you lose a surprisingly good fort. Although I've now found a better one, and when it collapses, I'll upload the seed + story, as best I can remember it)
2. Getting your ass handed to you by a lagging computer seems to be work to me.
3. Losing a dwarf for a stupid reason (Wouldn't rest, no one feeds em) seems to cause too much work. The worst wound I healed was a crippled-heart, but the external-bleeding remaining, killing the guy. Then, there were three guys that all lost an arm into my moat, but I didn't realize it at the time... and then I found their arms... and a moat of blood...
4. Never having a liaison again because he fell in a 1-square empty moat is also silly.

I never cheat for strange-moods, getting extra-things, getting better dwarves, adding more stuff to the initial loadout, turning stone into magma. If I can't find it with prospector and, if I'm desperate, reveal, then I don't need it.

My dwarves still fail pathetically at dealing with seiges, plus my mayor wants green glass. That's too bad, I don't have sand and I don't modify raws/use tile-edit/auto-designate (after I ended up with an lime green infinite-stone type warm reservoir when I tried to auto-designate a fractal design). She'll have to do without. I am not a military dwarf-master, but that doesn't mean I'll cheat and make them uber-bad-ass.

Although, right now I'm using a drawbridge and a neat little aqueduct thing to stop nearly all goblin advances...and I imagine I'll be making the aqueduct thingy even more secure by adding a bridge to it as well. Plus traps are OP. Someday this'll be an impervious castle... but not until my metalcrafters finally get to competent... which is taking forever, btw.

[MaxVance]

Not being able to cheat is one of the advantages of playing DF on a Mac.

[Surma]

Just remember, it's all point of view.
I'm sure someone somewhere wishes that Tweak and the other 'utilities' worked on mac. 

[Seth]

i actually wish there was an option for the game to semi randomly pick a mountain area for you to start at, i already spend too much time looking for magma and flux, my fondest memories of this game are when i was first starting out and had no idea what i was coming across

that's also why i wish there was more random features to happen across (like stuff inside mountain etc, or small settlements that don't appear on the selection map.) i want to be surprised now and again

though i haven't even found adamantium yet!

[Wooty]

The only cheat I use is making all smelting reactions take no ore or fuel. I don't outfit my military in adamantine or anything, I just think an iron tower or a bedroom made of pure silver is a thousand times more awsome when you think about it. And it still takes 3 dwarf actions and hauling(smelt,craft,build) to make the metal wall or furniture, compared to 2 dwarf actions(craft,build) for stone.

I also use wafers as a trade good, because trading prices are so borked I don't consider it that cheaty.


Cheating doesn't always ruin games...doing things like spawning a hundred knives in dues ex or boiling the ocean in DF or making the entire map have random artilllery explosions in i-forget-which-game- was so much more fun than playing through the levels.