PDA

View Full Version : Dwarf Fortress? More like Dwarf Shanty Town :(



vogonpoet
10-29-2009, 07:14 AM
So I know Silf is a big fan, and I guess there are other ADoMers who have played DF a fair bit here, so I thought I would ask here:

I am a complete DF n00b, and am still on my very first first fortress, and I am starting to get concerned, probably way too early, about the lack of immigration - autumn came, and brought my first dwarven traders, and 2 seasons later, the first elvish traders have just left, so I think my dwarves have been building away now for about a year, and I am still beavering away with just my first 7 dwarves, which is kinda slow going.

Ok, so my fortress won't be winning any design awards in distant future, but all my dwarves seem reasonably happy/ecstatic. I am a bit concerned that my only major interface based cock up so far has put potential immigrants off - the dwarven caravan went off happily with shit loads of crappy stone crafts, but I accidentally 'spaced' out of my liaison meetings (I can't even find a nice explanation of the key bindings for those screens, but I guess next time a liaison pops by, I will just go very very slowly), and the dude was like, oh well then sod it, no trade agreement for you, and seemed less than impressed by my head dwarfs fledgling diplomacy skills. Should I just be more patient immigration-wise?

I guess I should just be glad no one starved to death yet, although basically all my dwarves are alcoholic vegetarians, as I haven't really sussed out animal handling yet.

/or how to use z axis properly
/or what to do about a water supply
/or how to combat thieves
/or when to form a military
/etc etc

Silfir
10-29-2009, 10:34 AM
Pro tip: Use the Dwarf Fortress Wiki! It is pretty much perfect as far as community-created wikis go.

You are right around the point where the first immigration wave is set to start - starting with autumn or summer. If you were producing stone crafts 24/7 for several seasons I even think you'll be getting 15 dwarves or something like that, i. e. a tripling of your previous population. So yes, a bit more patience is advised, they will come.

Trade agreements function in the way that you select certain items you are willing to pay higher price for - up and down keys select items, + and - keys select item groups, left and right keys set the demand level. Basically you think "Hmm, what does my fortress really need" and increase the demand level for that. The caravan will bring these items in higher number the next year. In return, the caravan leader will do the same; he will be willing to pay higher prices for certain items (up to just over 200% price increase actually), but he will only do that if you're willing to tell HIM what you would be willing to pay higher prices for - that's why it's a trade agreement. This whole shebang has nothing do with why you didn't get immigrations yet - as I said, just be a bit more patient; the existence of the dwarven caravan proves that the dwarven civilization still exists, after all. Immigration is a random thing; sometimes I got immigration waves before the first winter.

z axis: Well, you shift in z axis the same way you climb stairs in ADOM, so the trick to this is to just build stairs :) Every stairwell consists of at least two parts, the down staircase built on the upper level and the up staircase built on the lower level. You can dig the stairs out of the stone, and if you've dug out the down staircase you can dig out the up staircase from above. What do you use this for? Well, the same reasons why houses generally are built with several stories; shorter walking, more efficient design. It becomes more complicated once you try to build structures outside; in the beginning I advise staying indoors and making a nice dwarfy underground/mountain fortress using your miners.

water supply: You want one because bed-ridden dwarves for some reason may only drink water, so they will die of thirst if the other dwarves can't get them some using a bucket (you MUST have at least one bucket). If there is a river or brook on the map (I always advise having a brook, not so much the river because of the carp), your dwarves will go there to get water, but sooner or later you will want an indoor water source, namely a well. The hard part is that building a well, especially one with running water (which dwarves will like more than stagnant water), requires understanding of both the z-axis and water pressure. The wiki article has additional details. A basic well design would look like this:



##### ^
#W |
# ### |
brook~~#~### |
######~#~### z axis
######~~~### |
############ |


W is the well tile, ~ is water, # is rock, and brook is a brook.

Building your well farther away from the brook just requires digging longer piping, so to speak. So you can build your well basically anywhere, as long as you keep in mind that even if water is led through lower levels it will "flow up", so to speak, due to water pressure. A mistake may flood half your fortress and kill your dwarves. We demand pictures.

combat thieves: Buy some dogs, manufacture or buy a rope, train them to be war dogs (this is as easy as giving a dwarf novice animal trainer, or giving any dwarf the animal trainer labor if you know how to, building a kennel, and training them in it), then build a "chains" building near the entrance (it will not obstruct caravan wagons), and chain them up. Thieves will not get past them, unless of course you have more than one entrance. If your problem is mandrills or rhesus macaques, war dogs are still the answer - they will try and fight them if they are nearby. However, they will follow their trainer unless you assign them to other dwarves as pets, so if you have a dwarf working near the entrance you should give the dogs to him.

If you don't have any dogs...

military: I start my military using the first immigrant wave. Usually I get a stock of four or six dwarves that somehow thought Fish Dissector or Soap Maker or something along those lines would be the perfect professions for a fledgling dwarven outpost. These guys make nice recruits. Organize them in squads using the military screen. An on-duty squad can be stationed near entrances to hopefully discover and defeat thieves, an off-duty squad will spar in your barracks and quickly become stronger. Of course, they should get some degree of weaponry. This is possible without a metalworking industry, to a degree. If your map has obsidian, obsidian short swords (requires one obsidian and one log) are an excellent weapon. Bone and wooden crossbows as well as bone and wooden bolts can also be manufactured, to get marksdwarves. Leather can be used to make leather armor and leather shields (though wood can also be used for shields, and turtle shells can be used to make helmets). You can also trade some weapons. Sooner or later though you will want metal weaponry and especially armor, since it is plain better. Even copper. This would take longer to explain, so I'll defer you to the wiki on this one ;)

vogonpoet
10-29-2009, 12:15 PM
Cheers Silfir.

My main concern z-axis wise is trying to work out the whole 'slopes providing additional access to my fortress vs open space non-natural cliff 'malarkey... visualising potential leaks is tricky. The wiki certainly is useful.

Meanwhile, hopefully some horrendous catastrophe will befall my first fortress soon, and I will be able to start again at a new less carelessly placed site with a more organised approach... Until that happens though, I shall make do with the mess I already made...

/stupid lazy immigrants not wanting to visit my fortress of chaos.

Silfir
10-29-2009, 01:09 PM
In that case, I advise you try and build a well and moat. There's a good chance for a horrendous deadly mistake right there ;)

vogonpoet
10-29-2009, 04:04 PM
Well fuck me. That will teach me. First immigrants arrived, and there seems to be at least 20 of them, nicely quadrupling my population. What the hell to do with them... Nice :)

22 altogether in fact. Damn

BlkDucky
01-14-2010, 12:33 AM
Hi. :D

So.. yeah.
I was gonna make a thread about this, but I may as well revive this one. :D

Rather interesting Dwarf Fortress mod:
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=42027.0


This mod is an attempt to implement the first 151 pokemon from the original Red/Blue games into DF. After all, what's cooler, getting torn apart by carp, or getting torn apart by Gyarados? Who wouldn't want to wear a -Pikachu Leather Helm- or proudly hold up a +cubone skull totem+? What part of War Charizard don't you understand?!"

Interesting even if you don't play Pokemon anymore (or ever used to). :)

Silfir
01-14-2010, 06:59 AM
What, no love for the other 312? Damn, this would be on my list of required mods if installing mods were my thing. We'll see if it gets updated to the new version. If yes, I just might add that thing.

Jigglypuff leather tongs for the win!

BlkDucky
01-14-2010, 10:07 PM
What, no love for the other 312? Damn, this would be on my list of required mods if installing mods were my thing. We'll see if it gets updated to the new version. If yes, I just might add that thing.

Jigglypuff leather tongs for the win!

Haha. To be honest, I don't usually install mods either, but I couldn't resist this one. :D

Edit: Just started watching some of your ADOM videos, you have an awesome voice. XD

Silfir
01-15-2010, 12:39 AM
... It's thongs, isn't it. Damn my imperfect grasp of English spelling regarding skimpy underwear!



Oh, sure. Have my 2000th post be about friggin' thongs and correction of spelling. Well, here's my bloody retrospective considering this thundering milestone: I wish I saw more thongs and less spelling mistakes in my life. That is all.

vogonpoet
01-15-2010, 10:24 AM
Truly a beautiful way to pass such a mighty landmark in your A&JF career.

Meanwhile, my fortresses are no longer shanty towns, but die from lack of FPS before anything properly interesting happens... old laptop is old.

BlkDucky
01-15-2010, 06:07 PM
... It's thongs, isn't it. Damn my imperfect grasp of English spelling regarding skimpy underwear!



Oh, sure. Have my 2000th post be about friggin' thongs and correction of spelling. Well, here's my bloody retrospective considering this thundering milestone: I wish I saw more thongs and less spelling mistakes in my life. That is all.

http://www.littlegriddle.com/images/tongs.jpg
:D

Edit: Agh, big image is big. :(

Tupimus
01-16-2010, 03:45 PM
[IMG]*Big-ass image*
:D

Edit: Agh, big image is big. :(

Those are tongs, not thongs. :p

BlkDucky
01-16-2010, 05:12 PM
Those are tongs, not thongs. :p

Exactly. I quoted the wrong post. XD


What, no love for the other 312? Damn, this would be on my list of required mods if installing mods were my thing. We'll see if it gets updated to the new version. If yes, I just might add that thing.

Jigglypuff leather tongs for the win!

vogonpoet
04-02-2010, 07:04 PM
The new version, whilst buggy, is awesome. Like truly mental. And epic.

Anyone else enjoying themselves with DF 0.31?

Silfir
04-02-2010, 07:10 PM
I would, but I'm about to leave for a skiing holiday.

(Though I am taking my laptop. There will be Dwarf Fortress next week, rest assured.)

vogonpoet
04-02-2010, 08:31 PM
Well fair enough - I am jealous of your skiing plans :)
Have fun.

nathrakh
04-02-2010, 08:36 PM
I once tried DF and caused me a headache... Some weeks after that, I decided to give it a serious try. I read some guides and stuff, readied my mind, put on my robe and wizard hat and put some chill gaming music to play on the background.

After few hours I deleted the game and decided to never dl it again. Too much for me simple head, ya know.

fazisi
04-03-2010, 05:46 AM
Anyone tried this game called "chess", yo?

Dorten
04-07-2010, 04:03 AM
Me enjoys new version. Bay12 forums do not work for me, so I'll try to ask here: My bonecarver went into fey mood and wanted body parts. What did he need?

vogonpoet
04-07-2010, 08:00 AM
Yeah the Bay12 forums have been acting very strangely of late...

I am pretty sure that for the moment body parts means bones, and that bones won't be visible as bones at all right now - refuse is pretty buggy. If you have any animals, give em a good butchering and your carver should take a chunk or whatever, and be happy. I think.

Dorten
04-08-2010, 06:32 AM
I had bones.
And hoofs and hair and many things, that count for body parts. Then I throwed a donkey from a cliff to have some more standard body parts like rear legs and tail... Didn't help.

He went insane, chased my woodcutter with her baby, and then I decided to test new 'kill order'. Drafted her into a squad, and told to kill the bugger. Forgot to tell her wield an axe, though, so she dropped it and gave him some sound beating, teeth flying and all... Now I'm spammed with 'Local' Wattshisname, Baby cancels clean himself: too insane from her son, who got his hip broken in the process :D

gut
04-08-2010, 06:36 AM
She wielded her baby in melee!?
That's awesome!

Dorten
04-08-2010, 06:49 AM
She wielded her baby in melee!?
That's awesome!

Didn't check if this was really the case, but everything can happen in new version :D

vogonpoet
04-08-2010, 09:15 AM
If you hit 'r' you ought to be able to see the combat log, might clarify whether the baby was used as a weapon or the more usual shield :)

Soirana
04-08-2010, 09:31 AM
The new version, whilst buggy, is awesome. Like truly mental. And epic.

Anyone else enjoying themselves with DF 0.31?

I will wait for bugfixes and good guide to new features. Probably cause i am brain dead.

Dorten
04-09-2010, 04:43 AM
Yep bugfixes would be cool. My game crashed after quite a time from last save :mad:

Silfir
04-10-2010, 09:46 PM
I managed to clock in some hours spent regenerating worlds over and over to get the perfect spot. Which is hard since I can't look for magma pipes anymore, so to get my sweet, sweet magma it appears I have to create lots of volcanos and settle nearby. Which also means I don't get perfectly flat worlds anymore.

Guess I'm gonna wait for some new bugfixes and try again properly. A friend of mine I went skiing with who is quite a bit more fanatical about the game did check out lots of the new goodness, including a bug in which glass maker furnaces started producing items of "unknown material" or something.

Also, skiing: Quite fun. And apparently you get featured on the official adom blog if you stay away from the internet for too long? (Dammit now I have to finally make new videos)

vogonpoet
04-13-2010, 07:47 AM
Well version 0.31.03 is out (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/df_31_03.zip), but the forums over there still seem to be acting very weirdly - I just can't see any of the threads from work, but can from home :perplexed:.

I am still struggling to get to grips with the new military screen - apart from direct 'kill' orders, I am not doing very well.

Meanwhile, I too have had a moody dwarf go all melancholy and infinitely sad due to a lack of 'body parts'. Maybe I should have tried to kill a dwarf as well as random animals.

Orbic
04-13-2010, 12:09 PM
Humble help request:
Extracting the downloaded file gives me an extracting error, and the game does not run (quits at world generation). It was the same with the previous version, fixed by patching the missing files from someone who was able to extract them.
What do you extract the zip file with?
Would you be so kind as to repack the thing somewhere for me?
Thank you!

vogonpoet
04-13-2010, 01:26 PM
Well I always use jZip (http://www.jzip.com/)for my packing/unpacking needs, but won't be able to confirm whether this version is working for me until I get home... my work computer laughs manically at the very thought of being powerful enough to run DF.
...
Ha, scratch that, I just successfully embarked in a newly generated world - world gen was incredibly slow, even though I stopped it early, and speed wise I don't really have a playable FPS, but still.
So, new version worked fine for me up to embarkation, will have to wait till later to see how it plays.

gut
04-13-2010, 03:34 PM
I DL'd the new version. Used winrar to unzip it.
Everything worked fine, but I still can't get the
hang of things. Will try again later.