Right before the carp took their dominant position on top of the food chain.Originally Posted by Hawkeye Fierce
I have elephants wandering around my entrance way. They don't bother anyone or get in the way. I have yet to have o e set off a trap, though. Damn. And how would I train them? They would be good guards I figure! Maybe a pit with a platform loaded with elephants lifting it's way into a goblin siege from below would be a laugh. "unleash the elephantine hordes!"
They're neutral to you. I'm guessing you're in a Good region? Most animals ignore you then. Target one with a squad and once you attack one your traps should start hitting them. I'm pretty sure any elephant you directly attack will never be fully tamed though.
Water underground only evaporates at 1/7.
Only above ground temperature causes loss of water at higher water levels.
I'll say that I think Toady has lost a bit the aim.
I think that the best and most fun release so far has been the one before the z-levels. A lot of the success of this game wasn't because of the minutiae of modeling single fingers on dwarves, but having players sharing their own layouts for dungeons and having some impressive fortresses and epic battles with sieges. Remember where everyone posted pictures of their fortress and each had a very distinctive style?
That's what made the game great. Building things with personality, setting up economy and invent spectacular ways to wreck havoc.
After that we got locked into year-long development phases with some good ideas but lots of broken things and gameplay being limited or hampered by features that do not work quite well.
Now this is all fair when you have long term ambition and what's broken today is to lay ground for tomorrow, but with year long development phases I think Toady should start to content players as well.
I'd really hope he dropped any plan to build new features and have another year off the scene and spend some several months to make sure that the current version is actually fun and playable again.
It's really tiresome to have to re-explain Toady's process to people on every other page.
The usual process goes like this:
1. Take a while adding some new features. This particular version took a long time because there was a lot of stuff that would break save compatibilities that he wanted to get out of the way, meaning updates to future versions won't break your saved games from older versions as much/at all. There were also major overhauls and additions to the way materials are simulated in the game, to the military, and to many other areas. Stuff that involved ripping out the old bits completely and starting from scratch to create something much more detailed and complex now.
2. Toady always, ALWAYS spends weeks/months doing bug fixes after a new major release. I've seen more than one release in a day before.
3. The version that came out 4/1/10 isn't even done yet. It still needs to be merged with an earlier code branch from the old version (which is why a lot of the features currently don't work, also why there is OpenGL weirdness/slowness) and still have other major kinks worked out of it. He only released it to prime the pumps on the bug tracker so he knows what needs to be fixed first.
So yeah, CALM DOWN :)
No way, the military alone has seen a fantastic improvement in this version. Never even mind what the caverns bring to a long-term game.
I might agree that fifth-false-rib-modelling is a bit much for game purposes - I'll allow a genius his peculiarities - but the notion that he hasn't made actual, significant, ferreal technical improvements beyond that is an unjust appraisal.
Besides, you can always go back to the pre-z game. Or follow the man's example, even.
He can't lose it. He's making a system. What people do with it is at their own freedom.
I'd say people are a lot more creative now with the z-level and beyond versions anyway. I've seen everything from the equivalent of a Dwarf Fortress Rapture where someone built an underwater city, to a fort that was made entirely out of glass and then submerged in magma, to wooden forts in the forest, volcanic tropical islands, ice forts built into glaciers, etc. There's WAAAAAY more possibility for variation and awesomeness now :)
Ice fortress building is insanely awesome. And by that, I mean insane!
I love the latest versions. The only thing I would like to see is having certain sieges lead to enemies breaking in some how. It is still too easy to hold the bad guys at arm's length.
Oh, and continuity would be fun, whereby you can send off 7 chosen dwarfs to be settlers somewhere else and then rebuild all over again.
This is true. But it isn't something Toady is unaware of. I think he knew going in that adding the z-level and moving to a heavier reliance on the world-building and simulation was going to break a lot of the game-like fun of it, and it would take a long time to rebuild what was lost using the deeper mechanics and simulation.
This release is the start of that, though. The addition of the underground caverns is an attempt to add back in the increasing challenge levels of digging deeper that you used to get with the River->Chasm->Magma->HiddenFunStuff in the old 2D version.
My hope is that he stays on the current version long enough for it to get back on the fun before going again on a tangent.
It's just that I wouldn't bet on it.
Weird, I've been having fun with the new version and you've been complaining about this very issue for years. It's almost as if the problem is with you and not the game.
If Toady even has an end-goal, I think it's to properly simulate a world. In 10 years time or so you could put humans.txt instead and properly run two versions of Foundation... You may derive amusement from Dwarf Fortress but you are mistaken because you're assuming this is a mere video game.
Dwarf Accelerator. Double your FPS QUICKLY and LEGALLY. YMMV.
The only annoying yhing about the acceleratore is that you have to fully disable it when world building/embarking. That's like 30 seconds of my life down the drain!
The 2d version had it's charms, but personally I couldn't go back to that. I take a lot of joy in finding fun spots to start forts and spending time at the beginning of each game looking around the map and figuring out how to lay things out.
Last edited by Sepiche; 04-09-2010 at 08:16 AM.
Well, sort of. A lot of it is horribly, horribly broken. And there's some problems with the way materials are working which suggests that all that work he's done on material layers and properties might be a little borked as well.No way, the military alone has seen a fantastic improvement in this version.
A lot? Horribly broken?
There are certainly a lot of bugs in the game as a whole, but the only major bugs I can think of with the military are with active training (that can be avoided by letting your dwarves train individually), some quirks with dwarves equipping, and a bug with the arsenal dwarf position showing up. Even with those bugs I think the new system is a vast improvement on the old one.
I think once it's all working well and documented, then the military stuff will be great. I always had problems getting my dwarfs all equipped with the items I wanted in the previous versions.
The big issues I have with the latest release are the difficulty in killing things without blades (or even trying the undead), and the lack of fish everywhere. Once it's all hammered out, this version will be great. No more getting bored because sieges aren't happening often enough!
I think the bug that annoys the most is the one with dwarves sleeping in ANY bed, stupid dwarf you have your own bedroom, stop sleeping in the barracks!
Heh, yeah, I ran into that as well.
Also, why do dwarves insist on letting their stuff lie around anywhere and where does it even come from?
I'm not producing any clothing, but despite all dwarves appearing fully dressed, there's also socks and cloaks and stuff belonging to them lying around in the great hall, in the barracks, in (thankfully usually their) rooms and even outside by the river... I wonder where they get the spare parts from...
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rezaf
Dwarves sparring in the barracks will occasionally rip each other's clothes off (true story, search the wiki) and those discarded garments couldn't be dumped, they just staid there unless destroyed by magma or whatnot, not sure if any of the 40d versions removed that bug;
also, has any of your dwarves died? When they die their clothes drop to the ground and sometimes are un-claimable like the above example.
Dwarves wrestling in a muddy pit ripping their clothes off? Oh, idea.
Is there a way to tell dwarves to train in armor but unarmed, and then use X weapon for real battles?
I know about the sparring issue, but iirc it only appears when wrestling.
Also, most items lying around are really not in the barracks but in other places. The most prominent being their room, which does make some sense.
And these items are "mine" - well, ours, they are listed as belonging to a dwarf, but I guess I could dump them (the option is available).
Regardless, I think it's a bit sad that they simply drop them and stop caring, for example the items get just left behind if I relocate their room or the barracks.
Wasn't there a similar issue (not sure if the term bug applies here) with coin stacks in older versions? It's been a while since I last played a fortress long enough for the economy to kick in...
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rezaf
Yes, apart from those rather major issues there's also problems with dwarfs not responding to any commands, and tantrums for military dwarfs when they're on station too long and then as soon as they're taken off.
It's a mess.
It was like that before with many dwarves --- some are really acquisitive and will fill their rooms with objects made of material they like. My last Baroness liked naked mole rat leather, so pretty much any object made of it was going to be claimed by her and brought to her rooms.
Also, when dwarves put on armor they often drop clothes on the square where they changed, but it still belongs to them so you can't have it hauled to the trade depot (which has always been my preferred disposal method). Don't know about dumping.
Still, those're all bugs, not features. Once they get knocked into place the system will be fantastic.
And even before, it's still an improvement. I had plenty of bugs with the old system, but not nearly as much control. Being able to task individual dwarves in a squad is so much better.
He ought to add training on the direct orders ..
I guess the problem is I see that as an "if", not "when". I prefer the crazy fun bugs. :)
I ditched my last fort and reclaimed it with a new group, kept my manager alive, and I'm still not getting an arsenal dwarf. They don't seem to be able to pick up their assigned outfits, and I can't even specify weapons for them I know I have. My 'specific weapon' screen only shows the two copper battle axes with which I had arrived.
So there are some bugs for me which can't be ifs.
But, anyhow, that was only in contention with the suggestion that this release brought nothing more than fingernail growth simulation. The squad system desperately needed improvement. The new system itself is great - it's just bugged at present.
Yes, well, at least you could in the 40d version, just open the squad inventory/equipment window and set them to use the armor your want but unarmed. They will level wrestling though, not a weapon skill, so you will have to equip them later, when they are much more resilient, and let them train, maybe get some gobbos, unequip them and release them in a fighting pit. :)
How many dwarves you had when reclaiming? you need atleast 20 to have an arsenal dwarf.
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