Dwarf Fortress: Very Ambitious Roguelike

[Mr Popov]

regarding refuse piles filling with vermin, I've taken to not embarking with cats anymore. And any migrants which bring cats go straight to the butcher or otherwise fall to an "unfortunate accident"

[chequers]

The pool doesn't touch the edge of the map, so if I drain it it won't refill. Anyone have any thoughts on how I could get down there to try building some grates? I'm thinking the answer is there's no way to do it, but since apparently my fort has become Mecca for amphibious forgotten beasts I thought I might give it a try. :P

The general solution is this to build a mini-lake off to the side, and put grates in the connection between the mini-lake and main water source, then connect them together, and then wall over the top. Crappy ASCII art that might explain what I mean if you're confused (or just confuse you more!):

Step 1:
Level n:
7......
7.    .
7.    .
7......
Level n-1:

7......
7.#   .
7.#   .
7......
Step 2:
Level n:
7......
777777.
777777.
7......
Level n-1:

 7......
 7#7777.
 7#7777.
 7......
Step 3:
Level n:
7WF....
7WF777.
7WF777.
7WF....
Level n-1:

 7......
 7#7777.
 7#7777.
 7......

[Gus_Smedstad]

You need to have equipped quivers on your Marksdwarves for them to actually use their crossbows.

They have quivers, but they still don't gather arrows or shoot

---
I added a pit trap to my defenses the other night. It's a long, narrow bridge over a ten level high hole, activated by a pressure plate on the far side. It takes several steps to activate, but it's been very effective against large (30+) goblin / troll invasions. The leader steps on the plate, and about ten beats later the bridge dumps all of the goblins following him into the pit, which inflicts very serious injuries if not outright death. This limits the groups that make it past the bridge to groups of 3-4, which usually die quickly in the weapon traps, and the weapon traps have plenty of time to reset for the next group.

I still wish the marksdwarves in the archer towers would shoot, though.

- Gus

[Morberis]

Monthly Report

April Donations: $16104.49

That's half the money he made last year or something crazy like that, in one month.

[Gus_Smedstad]

Well, he did make his first release in what, two years, on April 1st. The really amazing thing is that he was making any money at all from donations for a project that was old and very much niche. I expect it'll show the same sort of slope that regular software sales do, dropping off fairly rapidly from that initial bulge.

- Gus

[ZekeDMS]

Amazing what restoring our faith in the game's development can do, I suppose. I know I chipped in when a new release hit, if only to remind Toady "If you don't take two years to update, more people will give you money because they believe this product exists." Though he's still not on schedule with his old twice a day updates, he's made nice progress.

I'm just waiting for fish to get fixed before jumping back in. And blunt weapons would be nice as a fix too, I suppose.

[rezaf]

People have pumped more than 100k into this freeware game voluntarily since 2007.

From what Toady writes, on April 1st alone 83 people have donated an average of more than $40 each - for a bug infested game with a horrible UI and without graphics.

What has the world come to?
_____
rezaf

[John Many Jars]

Shows the value that can adhere to doing something more than slightly different.

[Eric Majkut]

Fun with Numbers:

Well, that was awesome. Just on April 1st itself, $3466.76 came in from 83 different people. It has been a crazy hectic month in a great way, and I'm happy that so many people are still supporting the game even after such a long delay. I'll try my best for more frequent releases from here on out.



April Donations: $16104.49
March Donations: $4387.99
February Donations: $1452.57
January Donations: $2291.50
December Donations: $4762.98.

SIXTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS in April! Holy cow!

If anyone doubted the DF community before, I think this certainly highlights how awesome they are :)

[Aeroplane]

Are the bugs in the latest release the sort of thing that would turn off a newcomer to the game? I think I'd like to try it out, but if it makes sense to wait for things to stabilize, I'll do that.

[Wolff]

I would try calistas's tutorial to get the basic which uses an older build, the game is head scratchy enough without trying to figure out if something is broken cause you are doing it wrong or a bug.

[Aeroplane]

Sounds good. Thanks, Wolff.

[Sir Digby]

SIXTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS in April! Holy cow!

If anyone doubted the DF community before, I think this certainly highlights how awesome they are :)

I just hope the merging with 40d, the bug fixing, etc, just gets a bit... faster. I won't mind donating more if things move slightly faster because frankly, as it is, I can't be bothered to play it.

[Pogo]

SIXTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS in April! Holy cow!

If anyone doubted the DF community before, I think this certainly highlights how awesome they are :)

Or gullible, or hopeful.

[Wolff]

I just hope the merging with 40d, the bug fixing, etc, just gets a bit... faster. I won't mind donating more if things move slightly faster because frankly, as it is, I can't be bothered to play it.

same here I've started a few forts, but the bugs really just slow it down and make me feel like I'm playing a hamstringed 40d

[Calistas]

Wow, good cash for toady! I hope the April donations demonstrate how if he releases a new build he will get the moneyz. It might help focus his mind on features rather than beard growing and dirt and whatnot....

....aww heck, I can't resist his love of the obscure! I want features and growing nails! I want it all!

[Eric Majkut]

Or gullible, or hopeful.

When I read this post, I thought to myself "I bet Pogo said that". Then I looked, and sure enough, you did.

True story.

[Tim James]

When I read this post, I thought to myself "I bet Pogo said that". Then I looked, and sure enough, you did.

True story.

Weird, I had the same dream.

Was Pogo naked in yours too?

[Eric Majkut]

Weird, I had the same dream.

Was Pogo naked in yours too?

Let's just say I now know why they call him Pogo.

[Calistas]

I graphed the donations over the last year and half over on afteractionreporter.com - man - 16k is THREE TIMES his highest value month in recent memory! Nice!

[Gus_Smedstad]

Are the bugs in the latest release the sort of thing that would turn off a newcomer to the game? I think I'd like to try it out, but if it makes sense to wait for things to stabilize, I'll do that.

Well, aside from the one sure-fire crash to desktop I know of (melting items for the metal), what's far more likely to turn you off is how difficult the UI is. You really have to be prepared to learn the quirks of every menu. That, and you need to be ready to lose forts you've spent days on because you're too inexperienced to prepare for certain dangers.

I'd say the current version is fairly playable. Of course, I didn't play 40d, so I don't know what I'm missing in terms of performance. I'm running this on a machine with a Q6600, and it runs at about 10-12 FPS with a 200 dwarf fort. It's really CPU intensive.

- Gus

[Gus_Smedstad]

Let's just say I now know why they call him Pogo.

Because he's completely genderless? Pogo never did wear any pants.

[John Many Jars]

I graphed the donations over the last year and half over on afteractionreporter.com - man - 16k is THREE TIMES his highest value month in recent memory! Nice!

You graphed them? I swear, Calistas, you're such a dwarf. ;)

[Mr Popov]

I hope this convinces him to "hire" someone to help him! I think he is a being a bit stubborn on that front and it is starting to really impact how much one (two I know, but only one actually codes iirc) person can really do.

[Morberis]

I think I found my problem, Dwarf Therapist bug report.

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Set "mining" labor on for a dwarf who does not currently have it enabled
2. Check active job of dwarf in DF

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
Dwarf should pickup equipment (pickaxe) and begin mining.

Instead the dwarf continues doing whatever he was doing anyways. The mining
labor is shown to be "on" in DF, yet the dwarf won't begin doing it until
the labor is toggled via DF.

Note this also occurs when setting Wood Cutting and Hunting.

[Calistas]

You graphed them? I swear, Calistas, you're such a dwarf. ;)

Haha, thanks! I think? I would have highlighted some of the key dates last year but in the end all differences were dwarfed by April's donations.

[Gus_Smedstad]

I hope this convinces him to "hire" someone to help him!

That'd probably be a mistake. $16k in one month sounds pretty good, but long term it's been more like $25k-$30k a year, unless I'm mistaken. That's tough for one guy to live on, let alone hire someone.

- Gus

[Mr Popov]

I put hire in quotes because I know it's certainly not enough to actually pay someone. I meant is as in let someone else from the community with dedication and coding skills to help him

[chequers]

I'd be surprised if anyone could help him. He's someone with no professional experience, who has coded this as his first "big" game, by himself, for more than five years.

The code is so bad that replacing the drawing code (either with the code rewrite or the DF Accelerator opengl.dll hack) can lead to 50% performance improvements. ... For a 20fps game!!!

[Mr Popov]

actually your example just proves the point that there are people able and willing to help with little or no compensation and with little to no direct access to the code.

Look I am not hating on him or his methods, just giving some constructive criticism for a game I love and am willing to pay for!