Dwarf Fortress: The child punches the cave spider in the thorax, bruising the brain!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Dwarf Fortress: The child punches the cave spider in the thorax, bruising the brain!

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moonmazed: Dec 27, 2021; by VideoGames

do you have stepladders

# ? Jun 2, 2022 13:07

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# ? May 25, 2024 21:23

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Yes, 6 dwarves have the labor turned on. I'll try the zone, see what happens.. Shoot, it works!

Weird stuff, I never had this problem before, but if they keep using the zone I'm good.

# ? Jun 2, 2022 13:15

Nosfereefer: Jun 15, 2011; IF YOU FIND THIS POSTER OUTSIDE BYOB, PLEASE RETURN THEM. WE ARE VERY WORRIED AND WE MISS THEM

that sounds like bad news, better check

mother of god
e:

Nosfereefer fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Jun 2, 2022

# ? Jun 2, 2022 17:55

Captain Invictus: Apr 5, 2005; Try reading some manga!; Clever Betty

quick, make them think of ants!

# ? Jun 2, 2022 19:13

RBA-Wintrow: Nov 4, 2009; Clapping Larry

Do you have a place for the gathered plants to go?

# ? Jun 2, 2022 22:28

Flesh Forge: Jan 31, 2011; LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY DOG

Tias posted:

Yes, 6 dwarves have the labor turned on. I'll try the zone, see what happens.. Shoot, it works!

Weird stuff, I never had this problem before, but if they keep using the zone I'm good.

glad that worked around it at least :shrug:

# ? Jun 2, 2022 23:30

Wolfechu: May 2, 2009; All the world's a stage I'm going through

I didn't even know there were plant gathering zones till this page

# ? Jun 4, 2022 08:27

Comrade Koba: Jul 2, 2007

How are the zone mechanics supposed to work?
I always assumed that if you had designated a zone for plant gathering/fishing, any dwarves with that labor enabled would use that zone exclusively, but if there weren�t any zones they�d just gather/fish wherever they felt like.

# ? Jun 4, 2022 08:32

Flesh Forge: Jan 31, 2011; LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY DOG

fishing is a little different, fishers will go fish from a well if there isn't a zone but plant gathering by zone is newer and doesn't behave the same way. if you don't designate specific plants and also don't have a zone then workers with herbalist labor enabled won't ever do it (as far as I've experienced at least). as somebody else mentioned if you make stepladders, they'll also climb up in trees and collect fruit! and often get stuck!

# ? Jun 4, 2022 14:12

Wolfechu: May 2, 2009; All the world's a stage I'm going through

Toadyone posted:

After the various additions from last time, I turned back to instructing new players. It didn't take us long to decide we needed tutorials after all, ha ha ha. Now as you are entering the embark map, it asks if you'd like to do a tutorial. The game searches the world for an optimal tutorial location - forested, brook, pretty flat, shallow metals, if it can get all this - and plops you down there after a short animation. As it stands, and this is subject to change of course, there's a short four stage tutorial covering camera controls, mining a staircase, chopping trees and stockpiling wood, making a carpenter's shop and adding a task. Obviously there's a lot left to teach, and this may expand. Whatever isn't tutorialized we're trying to cover by other means - I've also added ten instructional popups so far for various menus (using the typical "don't show me this again" checkbox), and we have more stuff in the works. Hopefully by the time we're done, people will have enough of a handle on the game to continue learning on their own.

I also updated the save options and cleanup screens which had been lingering up to this point - no news here, just making them fit. Thanks to a tip from Putnam, world gen is somewhat faster now (25% or so, people were obsessing about their books a bit too much), and I did some other speed optimizations that apply everywhere. Continued tweaking item values. And Jacob and Carolyn have been sending in art which I've been incorporating. More items show their material colors now where they didn't before.

(Is it useful sharing the Dev logs on here? I don't know much everyone in the thread keeps up on these)

# ? Jun 7, 2022 02:17

SSJ_naruto_2003: Oct 12, 2012

Wolfechu posted:

(Is it useful sharing the Dev logs on here? I don't know much everyone in the thread keeps up on these)

This is the only place I read them

# ? Jun 7, 2022 02:25

neogeo0823: Jul 4, 2007; NO THAT'S NOT ME!!

SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:

This is the only place I read them

Seconded. I only read DF stuff here, and I greatly appreciate the dev logs and news tidbits and the like.

And if anyone knows where to post something that toady will actually see, please suggest some means of resetting the "don't show this again" checkboxes at, say, world gen. I know I go for months between plays, so if I spend a ton of time on a particular fort, click a few of those checkboxes, drop that fort, and come back to a new one the next year or whatever, I'll have forgotten the now-hidden tutorial stuff by that point.

# ? Jun 7, 2022 03:03

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

neogeo0823 posted:

Seconded. I only read DF stuff here, and I greatly appreciate the dev logs and news tidbits and the like.

And if anyone knows where to post something that toady will actually see, please suggest some means of resetting the "don't show this again" checkboxes at, say, world gen. I know I go for months between plays, so if I spend a ton of time on a particular fort, click a few of those checkboxes, drop that fort, and come back to a new one the next year or whatever, I'll have forgotten the now-hidden tutorial stuff by that point.

I put this in the Future of the Fortress thread over on Bay12. He tends to read that if properly formatted.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8379884#msg8379884

EDIT: Toady's expanded on the interface changes in that thread

Toady One posted:

Keyboard stuff: There was some confusion over in the linked suggestions thread above and elsewhere about hotkeys etc., and generally I should clarify the different pieces of keyboard support and where we are at:

For hotkeys, I'll have to move some of them, since I can't assume we have a numberpad and wasd has to camp out over on the left side of the keyboard forever, but hotkeys for opening and using menus seems pretty easy to support. We do have to show them to the player somehow. Tooltips are one typical way, and there could be some layer that draws them under buttons as well (I guess some games have done, like, holding 'alt' for this kind of thing.)

For designations, I think the wasd+mouse combination can handle some things that people aren't giving it credit for (long tunnels etc.), and camera keys also work for doing up/down staircases. But we've listened to the feedback here, and a cursor mode is easy to support, since most of the code is sitting around for it and we already have cursor graphics. We just have to make sure new people don't get stuck in there.

For menu navigation, missing the numberpad and our old (sometimes inconsistent and annoying) methods of scrolling put us in a bind in some cases. Focus and button use etc. probably can't be the same between the various menus, because they are quite different from each other. Though I think, as with the Classic display and adventure mode, the main issue here is time. I see the pathway through for Classic/adventure stuff though, so it's easy to commit to doing those in as timely a fashion as possible after launch if that's the way we go. With a few of the menus, I'm not sure how much work it'd take.

We read through all of the comments and take them seriously, even the negative ones - there's no need to be rude or assume the worst. We're going to try to address issues and we think things are going to turn out well, but everything just takes time.

Gnoman fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jun 9, 2022

# ? Jun 7, 2022 04:57

Wolfechu: May 2, 2009; All the world's a stage I'm going through

https://twitter.com/Kotaku/status/1534927803983986690

Kotaku article which kinda makes it sound like the brothers are begging for money (I don't think they are, if you read past the headline, just that donations have fallen a bit)

Amused by the guy in the comments who's not putting his money into a game until it's finished. Gonna be a long wait for you, pal

# ? Jun 10, 2022 22:31

FreudianSlippers: Apr 12, 2010; Shooting and Fucking
are the same thing!

He'll pay $600 bucks ($50 in modern dollars) in 2078 when Robo Tarn finally releases the final version of DF into Cyberspace.

# ? Jun 10, 2022 22:40

Wolfechu: May 2, 2009; All the world's a stage I'm going through

Oh, and a threetoe devlog:

Threetoe posted:

A game with this level of complexity can be confusing and overwhelming for the average gamer. It already has a reputation for being one of the most obtuse games every created. That ends here. As we go through the UI overhaul, we are adding short guides for the crucial mechanics on top of the tooltips that are already there. These can be dismissed and disabled in order not to annoy, but we are on a mission. There are so many aspects of this game that are hidden inside menus or info screens. We are going to shed a light on these tools and show the world the result of twenty plus years of work they have only seen a glimpse of.

These guides are only a tiny part of the time we are spending on improvements, improvements that you made possible. Your generosity is being put to use squashing some of the most important bugs that have dogged the project for years. Did we tell you that we ran worldgen on the laptop for 1000 years on a medium world and it only took 28 minutes?

# ? Jun 10, 2022 22:42

Shalebridge Cradle: Apr 23, 2008

Wolfechu posted:

Oh, and a threetoe devlog:

no loving way lol. good for them

# ? Jun 11, 2022 06:16

Appoda: Oct 30, 2013

I love the "it only took 28 minutes" bit.

Like I understand that it's probably really good progress, and most people are more likely to do a worldgen that only takes a few minutes, but imagine reading that with no familiarity with DF.

# ? Jun 11, 2022 11:56

neogeo0823: Jul 4, 2007; NO THAT'S NOT ME!!

Appoda posted:

I love the "it only took 28 minutes" bit.

Like I understand that it's probably really good progress, and most people are more likely to do a worldgen that only takes a few minutes, but imagine reading that with no familiarity with DF.

In context, that sounds like great progress. With no context, it sounds kinda like "Oh, yeah, we built our castle on the wreckage of the 5th attempt, and this time, it stayed up for 28 minutes! Progress."

# ? Jun 11, 2022 17:24

M_Gargantua: Oct 16, 2006; STOMP'N ON INTO THE POWERLINES; Exciting Lemon

To anyone who doesn't have the context of Dwarf Fortress 1000 years is also an impressive length of time

# ? Jun 11, 2022 17:37

Wolfechu: May 2, 2009; All the world's a stage I'm going through

Yeah, I mean it takes me almost as long to generate a world for 250 years right now, and all the time is in the last half of that. 1000 years would normally be a 'set it running before you go to bed and hope it doesn't crash overnight' situation

# ? Jun 11, 2022 18:43

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

probably would be reasonable to ship with a pregenned tutorial world with interesting things already happening

# ? Jun 11, 2022 18:56

Captain Invictus: Apr 5, 2005; Try reading some manga!; Clever Betty

Tunicate posted:

probably would be reasonable to ship with a pregenned tutorial world with interesting things already happening

absolutely, they really really need to make a static tutorial to set up how basic functions work. anything else I think would be far too complicated or uneven.

# ? Jun 11, 2022 19:00

Wolfechu: May 2, 2009; All the world's a stage I'm going through

They could do a lot worse than having something like PeridexisErrant's walkthrough included (the guy who does the Lazy Newb Pack). I never went through it, but I know a few people who did and it helped them get into the game. There's a pregenned world and specific embark site so people can follow along the steps.

https://df-walkthrough.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

# ? Jun 12, 2022 03:17

Wolfechu: May 2, 2009; All the world's a stage I'm going through

Another Toady Devlog. These aren't usually this frequent, which is encouraging. I think Threetoe has posted more in the last month than he ever has total, because he's doing the bulk of playtesting right now.

ToadyOne posted:

The continuing efforts. One side of it as we've mentioned is setting up the framework for further tutorials and instruction sheets and filling them with text. Another is fixing up bugs as they arise to keep the upcoming Stage 3 manageable.

Then there's the general approachability of the game, which is where stuff like the worldgen speed changes came in. To make sure that wasn't just reliant on necromancers killing the world, I ran a world without any of that, and a medium still only took 27 minutes! I noticed the world was infested with rocs, and people worshipped them, as they tend to do when there's enough city attacks, but there weren't any formal roc religions. Turns out megabeast prophets weren't generating properly - fixed now! Ran another world and after some hundreds of years, somebody founded a bronze colossus worshipping monastery ha ha. They are reasonably rare but it is wholesome to have them.

As for the necromancers tending to kill off most worlds in their later years, we're still pondering that - our planned solution for that was to have religions organize the destruction of the secret scrolls and the keeping of forbidden slabs, and the rise of undead-hunting orders and such, but it's probably best not to start anything ambitious or prone to breakdown at this stage. But we'll see what happens!

Also in the usability vein, I added in place and object lists, kind of analogous to the previous rooms and treasure list buttons, but with categories and more information. So far I've done zones, stockpiles, locations, workshops, and farm plots in separate subtabs, and objects are grouped as crafted artifacts, symbols (of positions), named objects, and written content. This means that if you've misplaced your dump zone or a favorite stockpile, say, you won't have to look all over for it. You can just find it in the list and recenter.

We've also extended the endgame and given it a bit of optional structure, on top of the underground rewrite we already mentioned. Getting the monarch requires a certain baseline of happiness now. Once you get your monarch situated with proper rooms, it'll give you a little congratulatory message, and then the game gives you a more ambitious goal to become a true Mountainhome, involving the underground and such. If you can do it, you're pretty good at the game! It's not like Archcrystal-ambitious, just a little taste. It doesn't kick you out for 'winning' the game (see: a much older version of DF that literally did this ha ha), but it's good to continue to have something, just as the goal of getting the monarch or deeper treasures was there already as a previous form of victory. Now they are just united somewhat. You can still get the monarch early if you know how, and go from there (get them rooms, do the ambitious thing.)

# ? Jun 14, 2022 00:05

Shalebridge Cradle: Apr 23, 2008

quote:

Turns out megabeast prophets weren't generating properly

quote:

our planned solution for that was to have religions organize the destruction of the secret scrolls and the keeping of forbidden slabs, and the rise of undead-hunting orders and such

I can not imagine any other game where these are perfectly normal things to see in developer updates.

# ? Jun 14, 2022 00:37

Tuxedo Catfish: Mar 17, 2007; You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

really want to get a fort full of dragon-worshipers going. i think that's possible now, technically, it just relies on a bunch of very uncertain semi-random events

# ? Jun 14, 2022 00:38

Khanstant: Apr 5, 2007

I wonder if Toadyy couldn't just generate a hundred worlds, pick the dozen most interesting, and then include them in some kind of quick start selection for people who dont wanna sit through a fresh worldgen and honestly for any generated game i often look up seeds to use anyway so nice if some interesting ones are in by default.

# ? Jun 14, 2022 00:42

Gamerofthegame: Oct 28, 2010; Could at least flip one or two, maybe.

I got to admit, half the time I just mod in dwarves worshipping the Force like loving elves just so I don't have to juggle a pantheon of thirty powers that two dwarves worship each

it's one of the bigger things I wish weren't randomly generated

# ? Jun 14, 2022 04:21

Pharnakes: Aug 14, 2009

I thought you could make ecumenical temples these days to deal with that?

# ? Jun 14, 2022 06:48

Tuxedo Catfish: Mar 17, 2007; You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Pharnakes posted:

I thought you could make ecumenical temples these days to deal with that?

extremely religious dwarves won't worship alongside heathens

# ? Jun 14, 2022 06:51

Appoda: Oct 30, 2013

I haven't played much in recent years. You mean to tell me there's a God aside from Armok?

# ? Jun 14, 2022 08:19

Muscle Tracer: Feb 23, 2007; Medals only weigh one down.

Wolfechu posted:

Another Toady Devlog. These aren't usually this frequent, which is encouraging. I think Threetoe has posted more in the last month than he ever has total, because he's doing the bulk of playtesting right now.

I gotta say, it kinda DOES make sense for a game subtitled "God of Blood" to canonically end with the world being overrun by necromancers. Feature, not bug?

# ? Jun 14, 2022 12:42

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

Have there been any timeline update on the steam release yet, or is it still possibly years away?

# ? Jun 15, 2022 13:02

Zesty: Jan 17, 2012; The Great Twist

I believe it's a few more years of framework building and bug fixing, a weekend of adding cool undead-slaying religious organizations, and then the Steam Release, and then a month of intense bug fixing before it's playable.

# ? Jun 15, 2022 13:18

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Dante posted:

Have there been any timeline update on the steam release yet, or is it still possibly years away?

They recently stated that

quote:

Work has now progressed to the point that we feel like we can share a plan for the next several months of development, all the way up to the release. . . .

When we finish the first three points, we'll have the playable fort game on Windows. The path ahead is now shorter than the path behind, and looking at the amount of graphics left to produce and the amount of menus to update, it looks like our earliest possible launch date would be in the fall.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/975370/view/3099043827445055732

# ? Jun 15, 2022 13:30

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

They recently stated that

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/975370/view/3099043827445055732

Ok but fall of which year?

# ? Jun 15, 2022 18:26

Khanstant: Apr 5, 2007

nobody knows the date of the fall of mankind yet

# ? Jun 15, 2022 18:33

Sankis: Mar 8, 2004; But I remember the fella who told me. Big lad. Arms as thick as oak trees, a stunning collection of scars, nice eye patch. A REAL therapist he was. Er wait. Maybe it was rapist?

Wolfechu posted:

https://twitter.com/Kotaku/status/1534927803983986690

Kotaku article which kinda makes it sound like the brothers are begging for money (I don't think they are, if you read past the headline, just that donations have fallen a bit)

Amused by the guy in the comments who's not putting his money into a game until it's finished. Gonna be a long wait for you, pal

Seems like it worked, either way :unsmith:

Patreon is up $2k at least

# ? Jun 15, 2022 19:45

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# ? May 25, 2024 21:23

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Sankis posted:

Seems like it worked, either way

Patreon is up $2k at least

I�ve been donating to them for years now and I don�t even play the game. I just really appreciate their work and wish they�d be more rewarded for it.

They definitely deserve it and then some.

# ? Jun 15, 2022 19:52

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Dwarf Fortress: The child punches the cave spider in the thorax, bruising the brain!

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