Dwarf Fortress 34.11 : Whereupon minecarts were loosed into the world

[Garian]

Hello guys, it's looking like everyone's favourite civilization simulator is ramping up for an update in the next month or two, so maybe we could get something rolling on a succession game or at least share some stories of forgotton beasts and titans!

So what is it?

For those of you who don't know, Dwarf Fortress is a very deep game that simulates a fantasy world from its creation onward, and the player is tasked with telling his/her dwarves to build a fortress from the raw materials of the land. The world generation is extremely robust and creates many options for play styles ranging from the easy (mountains next to forests, say) to absurdly difficult (terrifying swamps with an aquifer and no metals). The game has an extremely steep learning curve and there is no actual victory... The game's tagline is "Losing is Fun!" and among DF players the most fun occurs when ridiculous events happen, like accidentally flooding the entire fortress with magma that was piped to the surface.

The game uses ascii graphics similar to Roguelikes such as NetHack and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, but for softies like me there are graphical tilesets also available!

So where can I get it?

So you can get the game (for free!) at http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves but if you're not too familiar with it, it's better to just get the Lazy Newb Pack, a collection of utilities and a few graphics packs, and the game itself that was organized by a few of the bay12 games forum users. Once you have the game, you'll probably definitely most likely want to check out some video tutorials on

. Setting up your first fortress can take some time, and I had no idea how to even dig the first two times I played (but I was also stubborn and refused to check out tutorials).

So now what?

A succession game is one in which the users trade the game save back and forth taking turns (usually an in-game year but obviously it could be a different span of time agreed upon by the group). I'd be interested in seeing what kind of wacky hijinks we could create should we get enough interest! We're all insufferable nerds here, right? Guys?

Overseers: (in play order)

!! (Turned in! writeup!)

Moomba (Turned in! writeup on page 3!)

Sensai (Turned In! Writeup coming soon!)

JadeAuto (Turned In! Writeup incoming)

Xerol (Now playing, due Thursday, Feb 16)

HalcyonSpirit

Ectogemia

Super Duper Sombrero

Garian

Poor saps willing to lend their names to dwarves:

Chroxic

Triad Orion

Hoopyfrood

*IMO ReMixer and other community members' names should be fair game, but if someone requests to not be used please respect their wishes.

If/when we get started, turns will be 1 year of in-game time, from 1st Granite to 1st Granite. Since it seems we have a mixture of experienced and inexperienced players we should establish some rules regarding our embark site (eg: no aquifers). I would appreciate it if people didn't deliberately fail, although I realize that shit does happen (especially in DF) so if you end up getting invaded by blind cave ogres because you forgot to seal off the caverns, no big deal.

Gentlemen, behold! The Planets of Prophecy! The mass of grey on the central continent seems to mostly be savannah and shrubland with some rocky wastes and of course mountains.

Xerol gave me some options to check off in the init file. We should all probably use the same settings to help make things easier, particularly the autosaves and backups that way we don't lose any work.

Strike the earth!!

[JadeAuto]

I would be very interested in this. I tried getting a succession game going awhile back but we never picked up enough interest to get it going.

My problem was usually learning how to do the advanced crafting and dwarf management above ~25 or so dwarves.

[Garian]

Dwarf Therapist and nicknames are your friends! I usually get into trouble once I hit about 50 dwarves, I've had as many as 120 but that game ended pretty badly with a troll entering from the caves and killing people, and the tantrum spirals beginning because of the conscription and death lol. It was glorious.

[Super-Duper Sombrero]

I had wondered why there was no thread on this. I'd be down for a succession game if there are enough people.

I've done a few before, and actually we had a blog setup for it here.

I drew like some comics and stuff for it, too, if anyone wants to check it out.

[Garian]

STRONG BEARD HAS GROWN TO BECOME A DWARVEN CHILD.

Excellent. So it seems we're up to 4 people including !!, let's see if we can't get this interest rolling!

Also has anyone been following Toady One's updates? Blood rain and evil mists ahoy!

[Super-Duper Sombrero]

I haven't actually played since that writeup I did, the next guy in line died or something and never finished his turn.

[alfredofreak]

Good god, I have such a hard time playing this game.

That being said, I'd love to see something as insane as Boatmurdered or Headshoots going on here, especially if names from the community get tossed in as characters.

EDIT: I'm not going to play, but I'm cool with being casted in as a random character.

[HalcyonSpirit]

I'm still trying to get back into the game, so if this goes down, I'm good for participating.

[Nase]

thanks, i read about the game quite a while ago and completely forgot.

i'll be keeping the download for the next time im completely bored out of my mind.

from what i've heard it's probably a great game, but sadly i'm not hardcore enough to get sucked into ascii-based worlds whenever i want to.

[Garian]

Excellent! Glad to see there's at least moderate interest, and using community names is of course going to happen. I'll edit the OP when I'm not playing so much LoL to include a list of interested players and name donors.

Nase, the Lazy Newb Pack includes graphical packs that make the game much more bearable (I'm not hardcore enough for ascii myself).

ThndrShk2k suggested coming up with some celebration goals, such as population 70 surviving dwarves living sustainably... Anyone with more experience want to chime in?

[Moomba]

I think it'd be fun to join in if you'll have me! I only started playing fairly recently, but after some hardcore tutorial reading I seem to have a decent grasp of the game. The military side of things is still a pain though D:

[Garian]

The more the merrier!

I updated the OP the other day, cleaning it up a bit and including a list of people interested in playing and donating their names.

I'm figuring 6 or 7 people should be sufficient to get a fort going, but I'm curious about our method of designating our player order. I was also slightly confused about Boatmurdered, I'm guessing that the write-ups were written before the save file was passed on? Seems like it would make the most sense to do it that way although I'm not too familiar yet

SDS do you have any insight to how your previous succession game was managed?

[Super-Duper Sombrero]

When we did ours, we passed the save file along, then did a writeup. And then it died.

one of the problems we faced was that players just didn't play when it came to their turn. I recommend putting up some kind of flexible time limit, so if someone disappears or doesn't have time, they get skipped.

[Moomba]

A flexible time limit sounds like a good idea - that way we'd be able to keep the game going more easily.

Random question - I use the Lazy Newb Pack and I noticed that "Water Depth" seems to be off by default, any clues as to why that might be? It seems kind of odd considering everything else is set to be on.

Additionally, do these paramaters only contribute during the world's generation or could we potentially face issues passing around a save if different people have different values set? For example if one person had population capped at 200 and another at 100?

[ectogemia]

Ehhh, go ahead and tentatively add me. I can't guarantee I'll have the time to participate, but I'm decent enough at the game (read: actually pretty bad) that I can carry a fortress for a little while.

Just don't expect me to play it in ASCII, you crazy assholes.

[JadeAuto]

a time limit on how long we wait for people would be a good idea. Maybe 3-4 days?

And if someone's lazy, they get kicked to the end of the player queue and given another chance. If they miss that too, out they go?

[Super-Duper Sombrero]

Water depth is just a display option if I remember right.

Are we going to start on the new version, or the current one? I see you already generated a map, but I'm not sure if it'll carry over to the next release if that's what you're planning.

Also it might be worth just uploading the entire folder somewhere, to prevent any discrepancies between player files.

A suggestion for player order would be to have an experienced player start for year one, then alternate between less experienced and more experienced players. This would probably give us more room for mistakes without the fort falling apart entirely, and gives us a pretty decent timeline. Year 1 is like setup and general self-sufficiency, year 2 is mostly crafts and exploration, year 3 might be a military setup and expansion, year 4 could be a bit more exploration and expansion, and year 5 might get magma. There's no hard rules or guidelines for that kind of thing, so it's really anyone's guess, but keeping newer players separated can prevent a progression drought.

[Garian]

I was planning on starting on the current stable release, while I am greatly anticipating the next version I do not plan on it being stable enough upon release to be reliable. Toady seems to do a great job addressing the issues that he and Three Toe find but they're a very small team so it's understandable that the actual deployment brings out the rest of the glaring bugs.

I'm definitely going to upload the entire folder-- I'm using the IronHand 0.57 graphics set included in the Lazy Newb Pack, but I can revert the save folders to the ascii with a push of a button so there are no discrepancies.

As for a time limit, since I totally forgot that the game can actually go by pretty quickly, I would agree with about 3 or 4 days although a bit of flexibility is always a good thing. It is early in the spring semester so I think it's understandable that some folks may be a bit busier than they anticipated going forward, but we do want to give everyone a shot at playing as well.

I also think that the alternating between experience levels is probably the best bet. I'm not sure of where everyone's skill levels are quite yet, !! seems to be around where I am based on what he's told me and from what I've seen SDS is probably our most experienced player. I'm gonna throw a few more feelers out for guys I know who play who used to rock the OCR TF2 and see if they'd be interested in giving it a shot and we'll see if we can get a couple more guys who are good at it to join in.

[Xerol Oplan]

Put me down for an overseer role. What kind of time limit will there be for playing your year? More often than not I've had SGs die on me when someone doesn't show up for their turn and no one's sure how much time to give them before passing it off to someone else.

I guess it's about time I updated to .25 and the latest version of Therapist; I've been running .23 and the version of Therapist that was out at that release. Does Therapist still crash if you try to turn off beekeeping?

Also you may need to prod me in IRC about this since I rarely come to these forums anymore.

[Garian]

Alright guys! Tentative player order go!

!!

Moomba

Sensai

JadeAuto

Xerol

HalcyonSpirit

Ectogemia

Super Duper Sombrero

Garian

If there are no objections, I think this spreads out our experience levels so that in case of calamity, there should be a way for one of our more experienced players to pull us from the brink of collapse.

I sent !! the region zip, and have given him four days starting tomorrow (since I kinda sprung it up suddenly on him) to play out his year. As stated in the OP, years are 1 Granite through 1 Granite. You'll want to have seasonal autosave as well as autosave pausing turned on (there are checkboxes in LNP for those options). If you want to get a little more precise you can do these things suggested by Xerol to help out as well:

[13:23] <Xerol> [AUTOSAVE:SEASONAL]

[13:23] <Xerol> [AUTOBACKUP:YES]

[13:23] <Xerol> [AUTOSAVE_PAUSE:YES]

09[13:23] <Garian> AHA yes I do need to set those

[13:23] <Xerol> those are good settings to use too, so the game automatically saves and pauses at the end of a term

[13:24] <Xerol> [VARIED_GROUND_TILES:NO]

[13:24] <Xerol> [ENGRAVINGS_START_OBSCURED:YES]

[13:24] <Xerol> make for cleaner screenshots

[13:24] <Xerol> and speeds up the game a little

[13:24] <Xerol> and [sHOW_FLOW_AMOUNTS:YES]

[13:26] <Xerol> in init.txt, fps: yes, fps_cap: 200, g_fps_cap: 20

[Garian]

Forgive the double post, but !! has given me the lowdown on the embark site, I'll just post the full log of our Steam conversation

5:53 PM - !!: ok so

5:53 PM - !!: autosave on?

5:53 PM - Garian: Hi, yes

5:53 PM - Garian: and pause on autosave

5:53 PM - Garian: autosave seasonal

5:53 PM - !!: seasonal

5:53 PM - Garian: yes

5:53 PM - !!: anything else?

5:53 PM - Garian: I think that's the big one

5:55 PM - !!: ok check it

5:55 PM - !!: temp = warm

5:55 PM - !!: biome 1 = heavily forested + thick veg surrounding = wilderness

5:56 PM - Garian: Nice nice

5:56 PM - !!: biome 2 = mountains

5:56 PM - Garian: Excellent

5:56 PM - !!: brook

5:56 PM - !!: no aquifiers

5:56 PM - !!: shallow and deep metals

5:56 PM - !!: little soil though

5:56 PM - Garian: Hmm

5:56 PM - !!: not a big deal since we only need the soil for growing

5:56 PM - Garian: Right

5:57 PM - !!: should i enlarge the size?

5:57 PM - Garian: Nah, 4x4 should be fine

5:57 PM - Garian: don't want to weird anyone out

5:57 PM - Garian: Mind if I post our conversation to the thread?

5:57 PM - !!: go for it

5:57 PM - !!: you might wanna wait till i finish setting up though

5:57 PM - Garian: Yup

5:57 PM - !!: cause imma do the name and stuff right away

5:57 PM - Garian: Just asking preemptory

5:58 PM - !!: uhhhh

5:58 PM - !!: do you want me to do the preparations myself or take one of the packs or just go play now

5:59 PM - Garian: If you're competent (and I trust you are) set up yourself unless you're impatient

5:59 PM - Garian: I usually do the 2 miners 1 woodcutter 1 mason 1 carpenter 1 brewer/farmer

5:59 PM - Garian: 1 hunter

5:59 PM - Garian: but if you do that assign someone butchery and someone else tanning and get those buildings up asap

6:00 PM - !!: ok ill do what i usually do

6:00 PM - Garian: or else your hunter will extinct the local wildlife lol

6:00 PM - Garian: Sure thing

6:00 PM - !!: i dont take hunter off the bat

6:00 PM - !!: i find that they ususally come in droves with immigrants

6:00 PM - !!: or if i dont get one in the first wave i can always make one

6:01 PM - Garian: heh

6:01 PM - Garian: ofc

6:02 PM - !!: ok so you said you wanted me to keep a log

6:02 PM - !!: so what do i record

6:02 PM - !!: and how much do you want me to tell you now?

6:03 PM - Garian: record things like moods (and items demanded), animal attacks, legendary craftworks, immigrant waves/sizes, babies being born

6:03 PM - Garian: anything that pauses your game for sure (except for autosave)

6:04 PM - Garian: but yeah also animal attacks, or if you establish some sort of megaproject you might want to mention that

6:04 PM - Garian: if you strike the caves

6:04 PM - Garian: if someone dies

!! is now Away.

!! is now Online.

6:21 PM - !!: hup

6:21 PM - Garian: Hup!!

6:21 PM - !!: fortress name = Prisonshanks

6:22 PM - Garian: Prisonshanks is LIVE

6:22 PM - !!: group name = The Bane of Society

6:22 PM - Garian: lol

6:22 PM - !!: I FEEL I HAVE A METAPHOR FOR SOMETHING HERE

6:22 PM - Garian: ;p;

6:22 PM - Garian: lol

6:23 PM - !!: basically if anyone wants to RP a prison collony we have it

6:23 PM - Garian: haha

6:23 PM - Garian: Tell me about your starting gear/skills, too

6:24 PM - Garian: anything outrageous, or is it more or less a standard embarkment?

6:24 PM - !!: uhhh

6:24 PM - Garian: (in before we're embarking iwth all social skills and 12 grandfather clocks)

6:24 PM - !!: well sort of

6:24 PM - !!: its MY standard embark

6:24 PM - Garian: Give me the quick version

6:24 PM - !!: trader

6:24 PM - Garian: Interesting

6:24 PM - !!: miner / mason

6:24 PM - Garian: aha

6:25 PM - !!: miner / mechanic / stonecrafter / building architect (last 2 at +1 skill)

6:25 PM - Garian: Hm

6:25 PM - !!: furnace operator / armor smith / weapon smith / wood burner (furnace and wood at + 1 skill)

6:26 PM - !!: carpenter / woodcutter

6:26 PM - Garian: Seems pretty solid

6:26 PM - !!: grower / brewer

6:26 PM - !!: and finally hammer dwarf / armor user / fighter / shield user

6:26 PM - Garian: haha

6:27 PM - Garian: Interesting choice considering we won't need a military so early in a wilderness area

6:27 PM - Garian: but it's also a safe one

6:27 PM - Garian: just in case

6:27 PM - !!: embark was basically sell all splints + crutches + 2 cloth + 2 thread + 1 battle axe to buy a copper war hammer + some extra booze + some extra seeds

6:27 PM - !!: i like to try get my military training early as possible

6:27 PM - Garian: Makes senes

6:27 PM - Garian: sense

6:28 PM - Garian: And in case we're assaulted by macaques it's nice

6:28 PM - Garian: what about animals?

6:28 PM - Garian: 1m1f dogs, 1m1f cats?

6:28 PM - !!: none

6:28 PM - !!: i figure that will all come with immigrant waves

6:28 PM - Garian: dangerous

6:29 PM - !!: im probably not trying anything too fancy

6:29 PM - Garian: cats are essential

6:29 PM - Garian: or else we'll have vermin in the food stores

6:29 PM - Garian: and you picked a warm climate

6:29 PM - Garian: so vermin year round

6:29 PM - Garian: What's done is done, we'll survive

6:29 PM - !!: yeah but i think i can get food production up enough to negate any eating

6:29 PM - Garian:

6:29 PM - !!: ok so embar

6:29 PM - !!: er embark site

6:30 PM - Garian: STRIKE THE EARTH!

6:30 PM - !!: brook runs left to right (mostly)

6:30 PM - !!: the map is about half mountain half forest

6:30 PM - !!: LOTS of pools around

6:31 PM - !!: some patches of sand but i dunno if its enough to do a glass industry

6:31 PM - !!: im sure we can find out

6:31 PM - Garian: Would be nice to at least collect some and try

TL/DR: !! founded Prisonshanks with The Bane of Society, has a fairly standard lineup of dwarves/gear but has no animals and is banking on immigration waves bringing cats/dogs. The site is heavily wooded with mountains and a brook, with normal wilderness savagery. I look forward to seeing how our first year goes!

[Super-Duper Sombrero]

So we pretty much just founded a dwarven Australia?

I approve.

No animals on embark, eh? Very unusual, but certainly not impossible. Looking forward to the writeup!!

[Moomba]

All right.

I did my year today, and completed the writeup! It's in pdf format mostly because it got a bit loooooong and pictures.

Just a few quick notes:

- It's kind of weird.

- I didn't take enough screenshots, I promise I'll take more next time

- I don't really have a vendetta against the elves... I just traded wood to them in a past game and well... it was fun.

- The prohibition was unintentional. I'm sure I set the still to repeat, but apparently they either ran out of barrels or I just forgot to actually do it and so there's absolutely no alcohol in the entire fortress (or so I'm told). I wrote it in as intentional anyway.

Anywho, pdf is here.

I look forward to reading other people's writeups!

[JadeAuto]

Whew. This should prove to be entertaining.

I can't wait for my turn. Hoping we have some fun with this.

[Triad Orion]

You guys totally need to make a Boatmurdered styled LP out of this succession game. It could really be funny.

Also, I too offer up my name for some poor Dwarf to use. XD