Comments on: Roburky’s Dwarf Fortress Diary

By: Nesetalis

Nesetalis — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:51:18 +0000

I regularly read the dev blog myself.. though i havnt played for a while. I cant wait for the new version to come out, thats when I’ll start up again.

By: Snall

Snall — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 10:12:59 +0000

Possibly the best game ever made, waiting eagerly for the new updates. (And trying to live in an undead zone)

By: Funky Badger

Funky Badger — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 22:03:09 +0000

This might be useful...

By: Serondal

Serondal — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:54:22 +0000

Not so hard, You could just put a long retractable draw bridge over a magma pit and dump them in it when they’re walking across, just have to be a bit more inventive then flooding the entire world lol

By: Wisq

Wisq — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:41:04 +0000

@Serondal: Using magma as a trap is a lot harder these days than it used to be in the 2D days, when magma was infinite. It’s still technically infinite if you have a magma pipe, but it takes too long to refill. Also, it takes a long time before the hall is safe to collect stuff, and I don’t know if it irretrievably destroys metal stuff or just melts it to slag. That’s metal that you do actually want for melting, particularly if you already have magma to fuel the smelters.

By: Wisq

Wisq — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:36:55 +0000

@Jarvoll: I haven’t looked recently but I don’t usually have that problem. Granted, I use a large font where the centered dot of ‘ground below’ looks different enough from the regular period of ‘ground here’. And the long lines of terrain ramps, plus the big square blocks of ‘tree below’, tend to make it clear.

By: Serondal

Serondal — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:26:24 +0000

@Moeity and that gives your mason practice. Of course if you have a location where wood is hard to come by bins can be very important for keeping things uncluttered.

By: EyeMessiah

EyeMessiah — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:55:41 +0000

Ok, I take it back. The Mayday tileset is officially OK!

By: moeity

moeity — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:52:31 +0000

To get rid of all the stones, have your masons make rock blocks. These are stackable (in bins) and can be used to make all the standard mason type stuff – walls, floors, workshops, etc. Plus, they give additional value to these things because they’re not considered ‘rough-hewn’.

By: jarvoll

jarvoll — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:56:11 +0000

@Wisq: Wouldn’t that make normal ground look exactly the same as viewing ground from 1 z-level above (e.g. viewing z-level 1 from z-level 2)?

By: Serondal

Serondal — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:02:07 +0000

Or you could just USE magma to kill them that way all they’re crap would be burnt up in the process of killing them.

By: Wisq

Wisq — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:04:03 +0000

Regarding the unreadability of DF:

The single biggest thing you can do to improve the “ASCII barf” problem, I find, is to turn off “varied ground tiles” in the init.txt file. Having all ground be periods rather than some five different things makes it a hell of a lot easier to see when something isn’t just plain ground.

It also helps to turn on the “engravings start obscured” option. Maybe some people like seeing random symbols everywhere that only vaguely depict what an engraving is about, but I don’t.

@Jonathanstrange:

The best caravan-saving solution I’ve found is to dig a tunnel that leads from your trade depot to an edge of the map, then a little ramp up to the surface, then surround it with statues / walls / channels to ensure the caravan only spawns on that exact spot and immediately takes the ramp down into your halls. Now they’re safe from ranged attacks. Then line the halls with traps, or put a drawbridge immediately after the ramp, to taste. Now they’re safe from goblins that might follow them in.

The most impervious system I’ve come up with so far is to have all my fortress entrances be like that, even if it means a long trip to get to the surface. Also, all the passages converge to a blind drop into a pit of war dogs, which forces all kobold thieves to retreat or die. And then you pass through the barracks, where someone is probably sparring (if they aren’t already on guard because you’ve killed a bunch of war dogs to get there). And then, only then, do they finally reach the trade depot.

Cage traps are imbalanced at the moment. Not only do they avoid friendly fire (unconscious dwarves), but they also stop just about anything, even glass terrariums like I use.

The main weakness of cage traps? Elves. They show up on horses, and the elf and horse each get a separate trap. Elves are the main reason I put a couple rows of weapon traps at the end of each of these tunnels.

Also, cage traps require you to either keep producing more cages, or else start combining and storing / executing the victims. Combining requires armed guards, since dwarves are frankly terrible at moving live creatures from one cage to another. But I guess that’s not terribly unrealistic either.

Of course, the all-trap defense gets a bit boring. You also start to accumulate more crap from the invaders than you can possibly sell off fast enough. I may just start taking anything metal from invaders and dumping the rest in magma or something.