Dwarf Fortress you sick temptress, you!

Things you need to know:
- if you want easy metal access set metal scarcity in advanced world gen to 100
- herbivores eat grass and they must be in a pasture to eat. (new zone type) An animal that dies of starvation can't be butchers (I butcher starving animals )
- some birds lay eggs in nestboxes (a lot of eggs) and dwaves will steal em unless they are in accessible
- don't worry about losing or starting over from scratch over and over again

I've made a path finding simulator . I can handle traffic zones too which helped me explain how it works . My main motivation is to suggest an alternative to pure A* and I got a working model (room no cache navigator) but I need to refine it (including adding an update scheme). It's generally 10 times less complex than the current system when dealing with large mazes. It should also have better cache performance.

I've been taking it easy so far this is how the entrance to my fort looks like :
IMAGE(http://img857.imageshack.us/img857/8334/mynewcasstle.png)

When goblins come I retract those bridges and they have to zigzag while my archers shoot at them. It doesn't work too well because the weapon trap have a masterwork mechanism and anyone that dodges them tend to fall down ( I'm thinking about placing a few spikes bellow )

The ballistas aren't well placed so I'll need to figure out a better setup. Those goblin archers can be a pain ...

Another small tip - get a Sandy Bridge k2500 and overclock it ;). The alternative is avoiding digging down too much. You'll know you dag too much when your FPS drop to half

Gremlin wrote:

I've already got two ghosts in my latest fort. I should really look up what to do about it. That poor fisherman has been hanging around unburied ever since that unfortunate pumping accident swept him too far downriver to reach.

You can engrave slabs for them if you want them gone...

My current fort's population consists of 6 adult dwarfs, 7 children (we're slowly repopulating) About 50 dead dwarfs and about 30 ghosts and spirits. Dead merchants and caravan guards come back to haunt you as well, and for some reason on my current map the goblins are especially fierce, like 10 groups of ambushers for every caravan, butchering it before it gets to my depot. The sole entrance bridge to my fort got destroyed a while ago and I haven't rebuilt it since what seems to be happening now is that so many Human caravans got butchered by goblins that the Humans spam sieges, so periodically I see waves of 30-40 goblin ambushers spawn to fight the Human besieger's. I'm not brave enough to rebuild the bridge, knowing that it'd be the end of my fort.

Sounds like your fort is more like a cemetery. Lots of ghosts and everyone is just... *puts on glasses* dying to get in.

I cannot dig (mine?) on the main surface, only subsurface by going down levels after channeling a hole. How do I create (dig) my main surface level of my fortress? All the wikis just say dig but I don't see that option

If you've started in the middle of a field you'll have to dig down.

primer28 wrote:

I cannot dig (mine?) on the main surface, only subsurface by going down levels after channeling a hole. How do I create (dig) my main surface level of my fortress? All the wikis just say dig but I don't see that option

If your starting on a level surface you have to dig a staircase. I cant check right now so I may be wrong but I think its d - j for down, d - u for up and d - i for up/down.

You can also build walls with d - B - w

I've had it. I'm editing my raws and removing mandates. Stupid Baroness has managed to get all but 3 of the adult population killed for failing her mandates. All that are left are the Baroness, the Chief medical Dwarf (who has been getting a lot of work) and the Sheriff who has been punching people to death. I call him Kickpuncher, because his punches have the power of kicks.

primer28 wrote:

I cannot dig (mine?) on the main surface, only subsurface by going down levels after channeling a hole. How do I create (dig) my main surface level of my fortress? All the wikis just say dig but I don't see that option

You can't dig down. You have to dig stairwells (not build) in the surface level to reach the underground, then you can dig on the walls around the stair (careful you don't mine the stair itself) or keep digging stairwells down until you reach a couple of levels more.

In general, for basic game control actions, you'll find a quicker response here.

Prozac wrote:

I call him Kickpuncher, because his punches have the power of kicks.

The only thing beyond the reach of his fists is dwarfmanity.

You could always go for the traditional approach and prepare special "contingency chambers" early, preparing for the future arrival of nobles.

When the fort was prosperous I got to choose who I made baron. I chose my Legendary weaponsmith. I don't really want to lose them.

It's been awhile since I have delved (ha!) into DF. Can you still turn off Nobles in the config file? What gameplay elements does this eliminate in addition to the elimination of mandates?

I just went through the entity's file and changed all instances of Mandate_Max to 0. that way nobles are in, and can make demands, but no more sentencing people to death for their own stupidity.

Yonder wrote:

It's been awhile since I have delved (ha!) into DF. Can you still turn off Nobles in the config file? What gameplay elements does this eliminate in addition to the elimination of mandates?

Unless this has changed in the last couple of revisions, you can refuse to have your status elevated into a barony. So no nobles are present then.

Yeah, you can. but I'd normally welcome the extra challenge of mandates, it's just when you're down to 3 adult dwarfs and you're constantly besieged and cut of from the outside world you'd think the Baron would stop ordering people killed for not making enough amulets or something equally useless.

Toady One is such an insane genius.

Toady One wrote:

I set up the raw structure for the necromancer stuff. It works the same way as the dead being raised in evil regions, except now the interaction type is a "secret" instead of a regional power, and this secret can be learned in various ways. The general idea is that by learning certain secrets, a historical figure in world gen gains various traits -- in the example it is immortality and the ability to animate the dead (via a syndrome which negates aging and imparts the ability to perform an "interaction"). The secrets are at first imparted by gods or demons or megabeasts with the proper sphere alignment (death in this case), and then the secrets can be passed down in writing (if permitted by their tags), probably in the form of an artifact stone tablet/slab or something until we have books, so that direct supernatural intervention isn't always required, especially in longer history worlds. Secrets can also be experimentally researched by world gen people if their tags permit. The vanilla secrets will all be generated during world gen, but I'm also including some examples for people to look at for raw editing. I don't want to post those now because the format is still fluid.

There's no reason why a historical figure that gains immortality and the power to animate the dead should immediately become an antisocial evil tower-living guy, but we'll have to wing that part until we get to the personality rewrite in Release 6. However we do that, they should be able to harvest the bodies that it saves everywhere now, especially in places like battlefields where the dead are going to be more accessible, although it might be fun to do a kobold-style site infiltration in world gen to raise some bodies down in the catacombs to attack a city from within or something. We'll do whatever few things we have time for, and then we'll move on to the next night creature.

thanks for all the tips guys. i got my first fortress up and running now. such a goofy weird game

Hypatian wrote:

Toady One is such an insane genius.

Toady One wrote:

Secrets can also be experimentally researched by world gen people if their tags permit.

Sweet! Looks like the philosopher will finally get a purpose in life, and probably some related professions will prop up.

How crazy do I have to be that I look at the enormous complexity of Dwarf Fortress and say "well, that's all well and good, but do you have any research trees?"

"Don't worry, Urist McWidower, your loved one is back! Well, sort of."

Oh, I've found in DF2010 that weapon traps with large, serrated green glass disc components are incredibly effective at chopping goblins into goo. Large invading army goes in one end of the corridor; goblin paste comes out the other.

Malor wrote:

Oh, I've found in DF2010 that weapon traps with large, serrated green glass disc components are incredibly effective at chopping goblins into goo. Large invading army goes in one end of the corridor; goblin paste comes out the other.

Great, now I want to watch a Dwarf Fortress version of Dirty Jobs.

Malor wrote:

Oh, I've found in DF2010 that weapon traps with large, serrated green glass disc components are incredibly effective at chopping goblins into goo. Large invading army goes in one end of the corridor; goblin paste comes out the other.

Actually, if I remember correctly, glass weapon traps are bugged. Because of a bug (dangling pointer somewhere in his code), your green-glass-weapon traps get assigned a somewhat random damage number. This means that sometimes they can inflict damage to kill mythical beasts, and sometimes (more often than not) they do zero damage.

I'm still hoping for an update which fixes all the frame rate issues. All but one of my fortresses has died from lag, rather than other nasty creatures.

Well, I've yet to see an army get past the eighth or ninth weapon trap, and even a legendary minotaur was dead by the tenth, so buggy or not, they seem pretty effective.

Caddrel wrote:

I'm still hoping for an update which fixes all the frame rate issues. All but one of my fortresses has died from lag, rather than other nasty creatures.

Here is a good list of things you can do to help with your framerate.

ARGH. I thought I was being sooooooo smart. Embark with a single pick, mine some iron (which is everywhere because I set mineral density to 100), smelt it using charcoal, iron picks for everyone!

Traders come. I lose track of things. Traders leave. I haven't bought an anvil. Suffering ensues as I go all 4 seasons with a single miner. A legendary one, but even he can only mine so fast. I actually RUN OUT of stone. Metalcrafter goes into a strange mood and starves because I have no workshop for him. Sigh.

Also, didn't migrant numbers have to do with fortress wealth? Because my fortress was a dump and I didn't buy or sell ANYTHING to the traders. As far as the merchants or liason knew, my fort was just a barren hole in the ground. And yet I get a constant STREAM of 50 migrants arriving faster than I can assign jobs to them all. No miners, no engineers, 20 farmers.

Oh well, I have my anvil now, the only thing we suffer from now is a chronic booze shortage.

Has anyone figured out the new squad system? I want to turn all of these slackers into marksdwarves to man the walls. But the interface is... dense.

Malor wrote:

Well, I've yet to see an army get past the eighth or ninth weapon trap, and even a legendary minotaur was dead by the tenth, so buggy or not, they seem pretty effective.

If you scroll back you can see my "snake like" entrance .My weapon traps are 1 serrated steel disc each (I got more than 300 bars and I'm making morel) . As they go along the path into my fortress they lose limbs along the way while getting a few bolts inserted into them. If they hit the cage trap I later throw them into the pit ;).

Caddrel wrote:

I'm still hoping for an update which fixes all the frame rate issues. All but one of my fortresses has died from lag, rather than other nasty creatures.

Buy a 2500K and overclock it ;). It won't save you but it's extremely fast and more affordable than 2600k.For now you should turn off temperatures. The effects are minor (AFIK) but you gain about 20% FPS . Try not to let fliers loose because they got a big k^N .

As I said I've been working on a suggestion for an improved path finding algorithm. As I worked on it I made the original A* ( got it from 46dogs's blog)I about 1000 times faster (it's actually an agressive complexity reduction) which is really important when you use JS (scripting languages are very slow) . According to what I saw in DF hack headers (they replicate the data structure in the game ) node visit penalty can be fairly steep because each "wall" type (plant,rock,construction) seem to be on its own array.

A* likes getting lost and going through dead ends .that caused the unoptimized version to take 13 seconds and 190 million iterations in a 128X128 map (my regular simulator is 32X32) which were then reduced to about 100000 by optimization. The number of nodes it looks at didn't change due to optimization it's 7178 or 50% of the nodes on the map.

My algorithm divide the map into "rooms" (variation of breadth first search takes care of shape and edges) and then it tries to find the path between rooms (256 instead of 16K nodes) and then it finds paths from access point to access point. This reduce the path finding of the same map to 621 node visits (4~%) which take 7565 (insert in order into the queue). The penalty for a dead end is in A* accessing all accessible nodes on the map. My algorithm reduces that to visiting all the rooms.

My suggestion is not done because it's missing a room update scheme and a few optimizations. Things like merging ,splitting and updating rooms are not yet implemented. Those things are really important in a dynamic game like DF. It can work as is if you regenerate room from scratch periodically (take 90ms on the big map on chrome js engine) and this overhead might be wroth it because it can probably let you run a 16X16 embark without your fps dropping to 1 . The model is also scalable so you can practically run the whole world at once( provided you got enough memory). It still need work :lol:. My development algorithm is easy stuff first .

edits: added stuff , worked on wording.

Tamren wrote:

ARGH. I thought I was being sooooooo smart. Embark with a single pick, mine some iron (which is everywhere because I set mineral density to 100), smelt it using charcoal, iron picks for everyone!

Traders come. I lose track of things. Traders leave. I haven't bought an anvil. Suffering ensues as I go all 4 seasons with a single miner.

I usually get cassiterite, malachite (tetrahedrite if no malachite available) , an anvi (steel if iron isn't available) l, lots of bituminous coal ore a few stones, 1 coke/charcoal . I usually forget charcoal and make one myself but forgetting an anvil is rather unfortunate. Bronze is a much better bet on embark. It's much cheaper than Iron and is better or equal. You should only take iron if you are planning to get steel on embark (if you plan to equip a super soldier that's a good plan).

Tamren wrote:

Has anyone figured out the new squad system? I want to turn all of these slackers into marksdwarves to man the walls. But the interface is... dense.

I hope you are using "dwarf therapist" to figure out who to send to the military. Sorting by highest skill is really useful. All you need to do is create a squad , pick a uniform ( take stock archer at the beginning ) and start adding people. After you have a squad you can press s , pick it , activate it and then give it a bunch of orders.

A marksdwarf must have a quiver (and bolts) in order to shoot. You should either make some or trade for some. You can get a lot of leather cheaply from the caravans and turn it to all the equipment you need. Getting leathers by hunting/butchering is a lot more work compared to trading. Don't forget to assign a lot of bolts to your marks dwarves in the ammo menu (you can delete the ones assigned to hunters if you don't use any).

You can later create your own uniform. I give my archers steel mail shirt and steel helm as a bare minimum. I've noticed that they can also use a shield which would probably be a good Idea to give them one so they stand a chance against other archers. My archers also carry a silver war hammer (best can opener ) just in case . Just keep them from using expensive crossbows ( use wood/bone ones) and they'll switch to the hammer for melee . A hammer is is a much better melee weapon than a crossbow.

Good advice Niseg. I'm not too up to speed on squads, do you know if training works yet? what schedules do you set your military on?