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[Toady One]

Yeah, that's all one bug -- when a guy picked another wounded guy, it would call the stuff that frees them from bondage in case they were stuck to a chain or in a cage.  Inside there, it checked if they were in a cage (but not a chain) when deciding to make them happy or not, so everybody was made happy.  Not that you shouldn't be happy when you are rescued, but it's the wrong thought for it.  I think Demon noticed the thought sitting in the rescued guy's head, so it was pretty easy to find after that.

It should work on Windows 98, though I haven't tested it there.  That should be enough memory, as long as you aren't running a ton of other programs.  The speed issue is of course the main problem, and I haven't had access to anybody with a computer running at less than 1GHz, so far as I know.  I think the early game should be fine and any lag should creep in over time slowly.  There are a couple of exceptions maybe -- world generation will probably be torture, but you only have to do it once in a long while, and you can read a book or something since it's not active play.  Also, if you don't have some kind of graphicsy stuff inside your machine, the OpenGL rendering might bog things down a lot.  I think the curses version of dwarves still runs -- however, curses has serious problems of its own, regarding input in real time games, and I'm not sure of the way around this, though we can fiddle with it if it comes to that.

So, you can try it, and I can try to fix it, and we can continue that process indefinitely until it works.  There are certain parts of the game that are always going to be intensive (e.g. world gen, opengl), but the rest is tweakafixable, even if I have to add an option to make the dwarves (even) less intelligent, etc.  The best we can do is be persistent and not get discouraged, anyway.  Work work work.. .  work work work...  wrok wrko........

[Toady One]

[rings the little two week bell]

Still fixing things up.  Still some evil evil bugs floating around...

[Ancient_Sleeping_Dude_Rei]

So what time is the release aiming for? 00:01? 10:00? 14:00? 23:59? Wow, if you add the first time, to the last time, and the middle times to eachother, you get 24 hours! Twice! 48!

[Toady One]

I'll release it sometime on August 8th, according to the official forum timer thingy.  Now, since Zonk was somehow related to this, and he's at...  forumish +8 or +9 or so, I suppose it'll have to be earlier on August 8th rather than some kind of August-9th-In-Zonkland time.

[Gezol]

added new shit talking

Excellent.

On the computer issue, I may end up getting a new one before(or for) my birthday anyway, so all that might be a moot point. We'll see how things transpire...

[Toady One]

It's not nearly up to standards, but we can only work toward the future.  We haven't hit up the source texts enough...  in fact, we've mostly been making dumb jokes...

[Ancient_Sleeping_Dude_Rei]

The edit of this post will reveal where I am at according to the forum!

Edit:
It said 11:20ish while it's 17:20ish! Boy is the forum clock on backwards.

[ July 28, 2006: Message edited by: Ancient_Sleeping_Dude_Reinc ]

[Solara]

One thing I've never quite been able to pick up on just from skimming some of the thirty pages here, is will you be able to give direct orders to your dwarves? Or will you focus more on building your fortress and settlement? (ie: order a building to be made, or a monster killed, and any nearby dwarves with the appropriate skill and with no more pressing problems will do it?

Or I guess a more simplistic way to phrase this question would be, is it going to be more like Age of Empires or Majesty? (And yes, I realize those are very, very simplistic in comparison, but they get my point across in terms of how the units are controlled...)

[Toady One]

I guess it's really in between...  maybe closer to Majesty?  They won't just stand around motionless (or do that creepy breathing animation a lot of games have for idle units) like in an RTS game.  You prepare a list of orders, and anybody who can do it will get to it when they get to it.  If you activate a squad, you can tell them where they should patrol and station, and they'll do that...  as long as they don't need to sleep or eat or find their missing child or something like that.  More will probably be done with military control, such as creature-kill designations and so on.  Right now they just attack nearby threats, and you tell them where you want them to be.  You are sort of like the site manager, and they are your workers.  You control what furniture is in their rooms, but they decide on their personal possessions.  For combat, you're something like a general, but they handle all of the particulars.  Sometimes they don't make good choices, but the overall arc of the game depends on what you decide, more or less.  It's almost a random mix of what they handle and what you handle, based on what I thought would be fun (and what I had time for!).  I definitely want the individual dwarves to have character outside of your plans for them, but I don't want you to feel powerless either.

[Captain_Action]

Do crazed dwarves fight well? Because I was think of making an areana or the dwarven version of fight club.

Ooo! Is drunken brawling in? Or would that be a bloat too?

[ July 31, 2006: Message edited by: Captain_Action ]

[Ancient_Sleeping_Dude_Rei]

The first rule of Dwarf Fortress is that you do not speak about Dwarf Fortress... Sadly, I fail miserable at that keeping the first rule.

[Toady One]

Dwarves don't currently get drunk.  It helps them work better...

When they get upset though, they can throw tantrums.  Then they can start fights...  last time this happened to me, a dwarf picked a fight with a cat, broke its leg and was happier and stopped the tantrum.  It's really quite a disgusting little game.

[Ancient_Sleeping_Dude_Rei]

One word: WTF?! I've tested *all* the games on the site, and nothing... NOOOOTHING!!! Compares to the cruel act of harming a poor innocent cat just to cheer oneself up. Screw this! I'm going home! *slams door*

Well actually I'm still gonna play DF, but I won't let any poor cats near the dwarves

[Captain Mayday]

Whoo, a week to go. Give or take a few hours. ETA's get so difficult when you live in futureland.

I'm so jazzed about this, and my girlfriend is finally getting her own damn computer so my computer will be all mine again! Mine! BWAHAHAHA. Soon it shall taste delicious dwarf fortressness?

[Toady One]

[rings the little one week bell]

Now, you know, all that energy being spent on enthusiasm would probably be best used lowering your expectations.  It'll be fun to play test though.  Then I can finish the game in 2 years.