I tried it once but I couldn't get into it

Warning: image is huuuge

Cleanup operation after Mineconflict's latest siege. There were two squads of normal goblins led by elite goblins, a small squad of trolls and a bonus squad of goblins using various underground creatures as mounts that were led by a demon. The demon was apparently the law-giver of the goblin civilization.

Also, an elven caravan arrived about 30 seconds before the siege, and was promply murdered by my dwarves goblins.

Expecting a human siege at some point too since I keep plundering their caravans they keep dieing in a serious of misfortunate accidents in the vicinity of my fortress.

>>1669
I forgot to add, there is an ettin in a prison of obsidian in the bottom of the map. For some reason, viewing an ettin's corpse makes my game crash, so I either had to abandon, lock up my fort forever, or seal it off with DFHack

>>1668
Pretty much this. I couldn't make anything out of all those numbers but maybe that's just because I'm stupid.

>>1672
You get used to quickly looking at stuff with K to see what it is pretty quickly, and DF is notorious for its learning curve. It is a fantastic game once you know it, though.

I always play with a graphics set and a truetype font, as the default ASCII with heavily aliased font are just eye rape.

I love Dwarf Fortress, but I suck at megaprojects. The last one I made was a series of screw pumps designed to push enemies into the nearby river to drown, but it wasn't much of a success.

>>1674
I haven't really done any megaprojects that were worth a shit. I carved a fort out of a mountain once by channeling out an above ground fort, and also made a city suspended over an artificial lake that spanned the entire map. I gave up on the first one due to nothing happening (forgot to check if other civs could access so got fuck all migrants and no caravans), and the second one took too long to fill the lake so I abandoned. I've been meaning to do a big ~20z tower at some point, though.

Here is a pic of Mineconflicts main area with stockpiles, bedrooms, dining room etc.

When the military dwarves are drafted and assigned uniforms, they seem to leave all their unneeded clothes wherever they are and fuck off to go get armor. They then completely forget about their old clothes and just leave the dining room full of useless cave spider silk trousers or whatever that I can't seem to get rid of even with trying to dump them.

The rooms at the bottom right that are totally empty were previously intended for use as some noble bedrooms and a jail, that I have failed to give a shit about now. I've gotten rid of my law enforcement after they executed a high master weaponsmith since he ignored the baron's mandate to make tin stuff, on a map with no tin. As for the bedrooms, i'm making a fancy set of rooms on the highest z-level for my king with some glass windows.

I love listening to the Dwarf Fortress podcast. the scope of the game is amazing. I havent played in a while though.

Hows this for a great artifact?

Thubilstukos, "The Nasty Razors", a steel battle axe.

This is a steel battle axe. All craftdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is encircled with bands of steel. This object menaces with spikes of horse bone and pig tail fiber.

Its worth 162000☼, and is currently in the hands of my militia commander.

A picture of Mineconflict as of 11th Galena, 156. 155 dwarves now with a 90 dwarf military. Waiting for a caravan to offer some serrated iron discs to so that I can finally have the king arrive to fill up those top 4 z-levels of the tower

I love Dwarf Fortress. Curious how I hadn't seen this thread until today...
Jesus, jpg made it dark as hell.

This is my newest fortress, "Greatrock," a village outpost of the Dwarven Civilization "The Magnificent Fortress." I love the names.

I am sure you can see for yourself the barracks, farm plots, turkey pen, food storages (West for food, East for booze, South for everything else), non-edible material storage, workshops, bedding, and, of course, my trade depot and dining room, both of which I just threw in there hurriedly because I forgot to plan them out, so I'll skip all that.

My greatest pride of this fortress is, as you might see, the bridge system around the center staircase to the outside (and to the deeper underground!). If, for any reason, enemies from the surface, or from the depths of the earth, become too much to hold back, my dwarves, who would already be in the fortress, can almost instantly raise all bridges to the Central Stairwell using the level located in the small room located on z-4. The grey lever. The other is useless for now, but I designed to hook it up to all the doors to the periphery staircases. However, if such a thing was needed, the fortress would be completely doomed anyway, so I don't see any practical point. The levers near the individual bridges all control that bridge, so if, for whatever reason, I need to isolate an area from the Central Stairwell, it can be easily done.

That aside, another model of mine, one which I have fervently used in almost all fortresses since I thought of it, are what I call "Drop-Pod Dorms." Quite simple in design, you will see on z-6 multiple small stairwells down to z-7, which lead into the various individual rooms for my dwarves. One quadrant contains 45 rooms, and though at this time my dwarves have filled up to half the second, I could have easily added two more quadrants if I hadn't decided to place my nobles' quarters there as well. Oh, and ignore the flooded tomb, and the one noble who, quite accidentally, got trapped in a pit below a bridge with both his legs broken. Pure accident, honest.

I think I will abandon this fortress, though, and start anew again. Not that I don't like it (Honestly, this is actually the only fortress I've ever struck adamantine in; plus, I love the names), but the spirit of the designer in me just cannot rest. The Central Stairwell idea was splendid, and I love it, however it occurred to me how to make it better: Add a waterfall going down the center of it. I can't do that with this fortress as it would require a complete rework of the Central Stairwell, and if I am going to do that, I might as well just start over. Plus, on embark, I thought I'd be finding gorillas and tigers, but found nothing but capybara and turkeys. Bah. At least I fought off a minotaur with a bunch of know-nothings armed with adamantine battle axes. That was fun. Especially when what actually killed him wasn't the adamantine axes, but a copper bolt to his lung, suffocating him, fired by a crossbow of pure gold (strange mood).

Ah, I love this game.

Mineconflict's workshop area. Also in view are the water system that supplies water to the well in the dining room and the farm plot, and also the bridge below the dumping pit to smash stuff. There are also 16 magma forges and magma smelters down near the magma sea.

Mineconflict is at 211 dwarves now. Not much has changed from previous images of the other parts of the fort other than the king who now lives in the tower up top, and the third set of 80 bedrooms for future migrants.

My dwarf setup is as follows (profiles in Dwarf Therapist):

4x Clothworkers/Leatherworkers/Tanners/Weavers
4x Doctors
9x Butchers/Farmers/Cooks/Brewers
4x Glass/Gems
4x Mechanics
16x Metalworkers
12x Mason/Engravers
4x Carpenters/Woodcutters/Bone Carvers
39x Axe Lords
61x Swordmasters
Manager/Bookkeeper/Broker/Miner
Count
King

The rest are unassigned haulers or children.

I don't know if many people here play it, but I'll bump it regardless.

Picture is an old screenshot I've always wanted to post. I honestly got this while hitting the "random name" button.

Several new versions over the last few days. Was pleased to load my fort into 0.31.24 and find one of my bed surfers in the hospital who was a cripple previously, get assigned a crutch and walk out.

I haven't played DF in a few years now, how much has the game changed since the 2010 update? I kind of stopped playing during that massive drought of updates during 2009.

>>1912
So much has changed. The military system is different, and there are more jobs now, but that's not even half of it.

>>1913
Okay then, I guess I have something to do now.

New cities around the world are going to be crazy to explore in adventure mode. One pixel is one ingame tile, by the way. And they can be even bigger with bigger civs apparently.

I had a fortress and in two saves managed to make expansive and complete underground floors for everything I needed, was almost finished with my above-ground fortifications and towers for my marksdwarves to shoot from, had haulers hauling adamantine out from the earth, which had to have been 80 or 100 ores, I fought off a goblin siege of two squads, and I was just about to begin building manga furnaces and such. Indeed, the very moment, the very moment, I finished designating the last magma smelter to be built, when Windows 7 told me DF crashed, and gave me the two options of closing DF or closing DF.

When I rebooted the program, the save file was the very first I made (not even the second of the saves; that is, the one I loaded today, but the one I loaded yesterday!), just a single season into the game. Only one floor, no adamantine, no military, no mechanisms, no bridges, nothing.

Goddammit.

>>2502
Update to the latest version, and turn on seasonal autosaves in d_init.txt

Also, in init.text, make sure you have the TrueType font off. While it looks much nicer than most tileset's fonts, it has a bug that can crash the game when looking at something with a name that extends beyond the screen. Any megabeast or goblin commander or one of your best military dwarves will have an enormous name thanks to getting loads of kills. Trying to view them will crash the game. Usually happens to dwarves that have had surtures or something, as in their inventory menu it will have a long string for them saying 'Giant cave spider silk cloth, sewn into right lower arm' that will go off the screen, and crash the game on TrueType.

>>2491
I thought that was the most developed city. It wasn't.

great, now adventure mode will be even more unplayably slow.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-of-dwarf-fortress.html?_r=1

Article by the New York Times on Dwarf Fortress. Very nice read, I learned a lot about Tarn I didn't know. I really recommend reading it.

My personal favorite lines include:
>Tarn didn’t take notes in class, such was his facility with the material, and he still “4.0’d almost everything.” In his final year, the faculty named him best math major.

>but Tarn disdains M.M.O.’s. To him, they replace the deep pleasures of imaginative game design with the novelty of community and are invariably oriented toward mass, lowest-common-denominator appeal.

>“The processing power that Dwarf Fortress uses is on the same scale as modern engineering software for designing aerospace hardware,” says Ames, the engineer. “You have more complicated simulations in Dwarf Fortress than when you model the aerodynamics of a wing.”

>He calls games like Angry Birds or Bejeweled, which ensnare players in addictive loops of frustration and gratification under the pretense that skill is required to win, “abusive”
>“Many popular games tap into something in a person that is compulsive, like hoarding,” he said, “the need to make progress with points or collect things. You sit there saying yeah-yeah-yeah and then you wake up and say, What the hell was I doing?

And, of course,
>A sheet of plywood, edged with black foam rubber, was wedged into the window frame and affixed there by metal clamps. Tarn wakes up around 3 p.m. every day, codes through the night and goes to bed around 6 a.m


Particularly, I have to praise how the editor ended the article. It was very well done and gave the perfect feeling to the reader.

>>4048
what a great article

he actually got offered $300000 to license the game and turned it down? what a champ

A wonderful article about a great guy. I knew next to nothing about Tarn before I began reading it but now I think I could label myself as his fan. This guy is the very definition of what I think about when I hear the phrase 'living the dream'. Because that's exactly what he's doing - he decided to pursue one goal and one goal only in his life and he sure seems to have lots of fun along the ride and on top of that, he does something he - and thousands of fans - deems meaningful. The strangest part about it is that I'm not envious like I always am when I look at people I (or others but most of the time their standards are horseshit) see as 'successful'. Rather than that, I simply admire him and feel something akin to pride that there is a fellow human like him out there.

>Massive multiplayer online games have been a lucrative industry trend for years, but Tarn disdains M.M.O.’s. To him, they replace the deep pleasures of imaginative game design with the novelty of community and are invariably oriented toward mass, lowest-common-denominator appeal. “Half the people I met were 12-year-olds yelling homophobic slurs,” he says.

Everything about MMOs (or online gaming in general for that matter) I ever had to say. Way to go. One other thing I admire is the fact that he's opinionated. Normally I hate people who impose their standards on others (that's the very definition of what normals do) but this coming from him (who has lots to lose from comments like that) sounds convincing, honest and not discriminating in any way.

But I don't get this at all:

>Growing up, Tarn was enamored of Dungeons & Dragons and J.R.R. Tolkien, but he has never been a lockstep member of the geek culture so much as a wanderer on the fringes. He didn’t read superhero comics as a kid, and later, he never became obsessed with the “Game of Thrones” books, say, or with “Lost.”

... Wait, what? Going from D&D, superhero comics to Lost? Am I getting trolled? Lost is as mainstream as you could possibly hope to get. What the hell does it have to do with geeks?

I've had my last 20 or so forts fail after they got to the 10 years mark, hopefully i'll do better with the knowledge i have accumulated from these accidents forts.

>>4373
REMEMBER: LOSING IS FUN!

Goblins mad

I love the concept of dwarf fortress, but I can't stand the horrible bloat (for the sake of "realism), the atrocious UI and really the inanity of it all. There's so much lore and descriptions and such but they don't actually DO anything.

>>4400
I agree, I love the game but the UI is absolutely horrible.

>>4375
..and after i built up a skilled military

Is there anyway to cut down on the number of goblin sieges? I love having my Dwarven Hammerlords bash goblins skulls in.. but when goblins siege 3 or 4 times a year i just don't have the time to collect all the things they drop and treat my wounded.

>>4690
Theres no way to reduce sieges without just getting rid of them completely.

One thing you could do is wall off a large portion of the map with the only entrance being a moated drawbrige, then only fight the gobbos inside the walls. Then you can just let future sieges wait outside until you're done cleaning up all the previous shit.

Who else is excited for the next update?

When it comes out in Never

>>5797
I've had an RSS feed of the devlog for as long as I can remember. I've been religiously checking the new post every night.

Toady's put an insane amount of work into this update, but I really wish he would spend some time on Dwarf mode as well as Adventure mode. I can't help but think I'm going to disappointed by the lack of change when I start a new fortress.

I actually like adventure mode. the combat is so detailed and cool compared to proper roguelikes. I wish it had a bit more content instead of just attacking lairs and bandit camps (and eventually snapping and going on a rampage through a peaceful village).

New version is out! I just started an adventurer and boy, Toady was not joking when he said these cities are actually the size of cities.

I've always had an interest in trying this, but the graphics have always thrown me off.

Which tileset would you guys recommend for someone like me?

>>6085
There won't be a tileset out for a day or so at least, but I can recommend Phoebus'. ASCII with a truetypt font is quite nice, if you can't wait. I use DejaVu Sans Bold.



My first adventure character in the new version has started out pretty well. I wandered around a town for a while before departing. The first fort I came across had an enormous stockpile of armour and clothes, so I robbed them blind while nobody was in the room then got out fast. I'm in a mixture of iron and bronze gear now. After noticing you need to eat and drink now, I ran out of food and drink fast. I couldn't find any shops in the nearest town, so I stole a big stack of berries from some poor guy's house and filled up a load of waterskins at well.

I noticed a big purple tower on the map, so decided to go to it. Opened the door and got shouted at by a master necromancer and his apprentice. Yes, all of those Blue Ñs are raised corpses.

--
Welp, after posting that I got torn to shreds in a matter of seconds. I'm not exactly sure how you kill raised corpses. I got one of those 'shattering the skull and tearing apart the brain' hits on a corpse's head at one point and nothing happened. They don't bleed either, so getting rid of limbs doesn't seem to do a thing. Perhaps you need to kill the necromancers? I never even got to one of them before I was overwhelmed.

Post edited on 14th Feb 2012, 2:05am

>>6085
>>6086
I've been using my guybrush tileset ever since 40d and ran into no problems at all.

Haven't really experienced the new update yet. Adv mode seems massive fun right now, though.
Also set up a new fort, but put it on hold as soon as the first migrants arrived, dwarf therapist is addicting.

>>6088
I did that too. I've become far too reliant on Therapist and DFHack. This update changed a lot, so I'm not expecting a release any time soon.

For now, adventure mode!

New update has come in. Newest features include segmentation faults, kamikaze birds and paranoid schizophrenia coupled with dissociative identity disorder.
Also big trees, fruits, world activation and it was inevitable.

Playing adventurer exclusively until most crashes are fixed and new Therapist is out.