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Official 'dex Dwarf Fortress Thread

Chris Avelltwo

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Joined
Mar 3, 2017
Messages
678
Maybe he just cannot into UI design. And maybe he doesn't need to, as spitting things out in text certainly makes it easy to overlay a third party UI on it.

He is a one man team, after all. Also, if you're smart enough to program dwarf fortress, then using the UI for it should be trivial in comparison. I think he just makes the game the way he wants to make it and not the way one would make a game for mass market appeal. He kinda does care about the money because the donations he receives are his only income, but he obviously isn't too worried about about becoming a millionaire from this. And that's in large part what makes DF so great, because he has a real passion for it and designs it from the perspective of a player himself. But yeah, you have to learn the UI, or else use some 3rd party tools if you're a new player and feel daunted by it being in text only.
 

Perkel

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Mar 28, 2014
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Thinking of starting a new session and a need some help to experience FUN. Every world, except one I have made has actually been dangerous. I think the only reason that fortress turned awesome was my necromancer neighbor. But besides attacking zombie hordes and the eventual goblin crusade, there isn't much going on. So I'm looking for help to create a fun world. What is the best settings for it? I want monsters roaming, legendary beasts and war.


Try to conquer abyss. Prepare best you can and mine for adamantine. Tell us how it went.
 

Alienman

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
You mean the area below the lava? Never actually got there. But I'm more interested in a more dangerous top world with strange creatures and what not. Not sure really what settings is needed to create a world like that.
 

Perkel

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You mean the area below the lava? Never actually got there. But I'm more interested in a more dangerous top world with strange creatures and what not. Not sure really what settings is needed to create a world like that.

Maybe you should try different playstyle or some mods ?

Instead of playing dwarf in ground play humans and try to build town on ground.
Then try to make town without broken AI defense like bridges or moats. Instead of gates relly on soldier patrols, traps and defensive buidlings which will stall enemy advancement.

I personally these days only play as humans and i usually build small village with some kind of lord mansion, barracks and fort that works as village last line of defense and where usually non combatants take refugee while in siege or some other things.

I try to build actually proper village instead of heap of garbage. If someone is getting married then i try to place them in one building in which both have close to their work. Instead of building 3x3 workshops on ground with nothing else i build whole building with complete design plan, cellars etc according to workshop use.

Let's say i want to build still. I build building where parter level something like 4x7, where 3x3 is still, 2x3 is small stockpile for empty barrels/jugs close to still, stairs up/down where cellar is for finished product which is about 4x6 while top level is for most of empty barrels stockpile which is connected to that previous one which is refilled from bigger one. Aside from that i add small room about 3x3 or 4x2 to it for food from which ale will be made. Aside from that depending on my playstyle i add living room for dude who will be working in it or i build separate house near it. Then i build a roof to finish it. Not just flat roof but multileveled one in cone shape which takes a lot of resources and it is harder to build.

It is a lot of work but once you finish it, it gives a lot of satisfaction. Then you also start to think about other type of buildings like farms etc. and you realize that for example farmer wife could be good carpenter but teaching her part of farming would be more efficient in long run. In any case you can also build her small carpentry workshop behind house for her exclusive use.

As i learned over the years villages build that way are really really really satisfying to play. Especially since you know most of your dwarves and what they do thus when someone dies it feels different than just another urist death. Case of ware creatures etc also are more impactful in such case as usually there are multiple victims and your start to think about isolations, chaining people etc trying to figure out who was biten and so on.

Defense is such scenario is also a way different. Creating patrols, defense lines, choke points. Properly managing your squads, building watchtowers outside of city to stall enemy, militia training aside from regular army, shelters in case of total mayhem.


Then there are mods. I think best one at least for me is Dark Age. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=132486.0

There are added shitload of creatures and new factions that are not on map but they can attack you and much more diverse in what can attack you. Spectres, monster packs etc.
 

Alienman

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Sounds very interesting. Are you totally excluded from digging out large areas when you play as humans?
 

Perkel

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Mar 28, 2014
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Sounds very interesting. Are you totally excluded from digging out large areas when you play as humans?

My general aproach to humans is to focus on trade. So i don't really mine stuff but focus on trade and sell stuff to melt or outright buy gear.

As for mining. If i do mining i approach it in way that humans do open mining or very shallow tunnels. Which means i excavate stuff from ground without digging tunnels but outright digging holes.


But that naturally depends on type of village i am trying to do. If i want to do some outpost then i focus on small craft production to buy gear and some open mining for rocks to build stuff.

If i try to do temple then i focus on ale production and trade ale. With this type of setup recent update where i can hire mercenaries is really fun way of getting soldiers without you personally training them. So i can get my temple guards without long chain of production.

I think biggest obstacle for you if you want to play that style is buiding multileveled buildings. I approach to it same way we build stuff. I place scaffolding around building i build or as i build it from up/down stairs. Usually all the way not just few tiles. later on i deconstruct it level by level to avoid mistakes and dwarfs being dead due to falling from scaffolding.

Creating 3D building is way more interesting than just flat spaces. Especially fun is to design empty space in building. Like in case of temple where above rows of chairs i usually place 3-4 level empty tiles and then roof.

Later on you can look at your work with stonesense. I had some screeshots from stonesense posted here somewhere of my work. Though i don't think in this thread. I'll try to find some.
 

Perkel

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Mar 28, 2014
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btw here is a bit older version of DF with mods i made:

https://mega.nz/#!yAw1maQZ!yXpyK1HPo92QscnX657xWJWy3D6uooePutj5Xk1i8ZU

You can play here as humans. I did rework some weapons and armor but not much, added orcs as basically goblin faction but way stronger than them (but they are way lower in numbers and use their own crude weapons).

Also i modified leather production so depending on size of creature you will get more raw leather instead of 1 like in vanilla.

Also i modified how certain parts of goverment work. Every year there is evaluation based around number of people you have to get new positions in goverment and i modified some noble types and added few new ones like priest and upgrade system for most of nobles. Like priest upon reaching certain number of people will be high pries and 2 new priests will be elected from people with their own need for housing etc.

By no means it is perfect mod and there are some kinks in it but overall i found it pretty fun to play as humans
 

Perkel

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Mar 28, 2014
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Also as humans use wood. Trees are good material to make villages out of it. Use stone mostly on critical buildings like garnison, city walls, temple etc.

Only annoying thing about wood is that there are many types of trees so imo best type of ground to build villages is to build them in taiga places because they are either Larch or Pines trees or mix of both. Larch trees give absolute shitload of wood and you can just import for decoration other type of woods from caravans.

With mixed trees i usually try first to cut big chunk of map and then check in inventory which type of tree logs is most abundant and i use those for walls, 2nd abundant for roofs and 3rd for flooring. This way you can ensure that your village doesn't look like random patches of different buildings sewn together.

Trees regrow every 1-3 years and in heavily forested area it is pretty much impossible to run out of wood and frankly speaking forest is sometimes annoying as tree can grow inside of city where you don't want it to.
This is why you should from time to time build dirt roads which cleans up buds.

As you village will grow with more people they will naturally make dirt paths as they will trample grass and destroy vegetation and buds under their foot (i was fucking stunned when i realized that game simulates natural dirt road creation according to how many people use some path)

I wish DF would work a lot faster though. I would love to see my villages going from few people to 600-1000 people over 10x10 map but that would murder any cpu.

Also it is good to do some restricted zones to manage flow of people to avoid them cutting corners and going some weird ways to get to their work. This ways you can set up patrols on those pathways and in case of ware creature attack or something you always will have some soldier near highly use village path.
 
Last edited:

Alienman

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I guess I have to try to play as humans then :) I'm not sure I'm as dedicated as you though, but I do try to "roleplay" the game instead of meta-game it for best optimal possible. Find that boring.

Btw, here is a Codex LP of Dwarf Fortress I started, sorry to say I never finished it. But as you can see I enjoy building upwards instead of just building downwards. Love those fortresses :)

lp7w6rC.jpg
 

Perkel

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Mar 28, 2014
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uhh i really hate standard stonesense grass. Everytime i install starter pack i usually spend a bit of time in photoshop to reduce size of it. so nothing is dwarfed by it.
 

Johannes

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Joined
Nov 20, 2010
Messages
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Location
casting coach
Can somebody do a quick rundown of the different UI addon tools?

What is LNP / DFHack / Therapist and what are their pros and cons, and compatibility / overlap with each other?

I've played the game but that's almost 10 years ago, but without any of these. The base game graphics are fine but I could use some other kinds of UI improvement
 

Grif

Learned
Joined
Nov 4, 2016
Messages
231
Can somebody do a quick rundown of the different UI addon tools?

What is LNP / DFHack / Therapist and what are their pros and cons, and compatibility / overlap with each other?

I've played the game but that's almost 10 years ago, but without any of these. The base game graphics are fine but I could use some other kinds of UI improvement

Lazy Newb Pack or LNP is basically a collection of all the addon mod tools you need to do stuff. So it contains stuff like Soundsense (excellent if you want some sort of sound), Dwarf Therapist, various graphical packs and DFHack(?). Get this if you don't know what to get. It'll probably cover most of your needs. Also provides a nice UI to allow you to install/uninstall stuff as needed.

Dwarf Therapist specifically provides a UI to allow you to assign jobs to dwarfs, as well as view their skills and whatnot. Honestly, I'd consider this the very minimum you need to maintain some sort of sanity when playing anything larger than your initial expedition. It should be compatible with any other UI tools you install.

DFHack I have not used, but I gathered it's for more advanced fucking around with your save. I don't really use it and you can get by fine without it.

I'll throw in a special mention for Soundsense, because it adds the sound component that the game sorely needed. Pretty much a hack that involves reading the game's log files, it nevertheless alerts you to things happening ingame which you may otherwise miss. (May get annoying though, so remember to tweak it to your specification.)
 

Perkel

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Mar 28, 2014
Messages
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DFHack I have not used, but I gathered it's for more advanced fucking around with your save. I don't really use it and you can get by fine without it.

lol. If you ever used Therapist or almost any other mod to DF outside of editing raw you used DFhack to achieve that.
As for DFhack it provides shitload of things.

Most important one is filtering imo. Default game doesn't have any filtering method as i am aware so when you buy something from merchants you need to scroll your screen where with DFhack you hit f and just type what you want.

Outside of that DFhack provides various changes to gameplay if you want like making enemies able to dig tunnels and destroy walls.
 

Hoaxmetal

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Joined
Jul 19, 2009
Messages
9,157
DFHack I have not used, but I gathered it's for more advanced fucking around with your save. I don't really use it and you can get by fine without it.

lol. If you ever used Therapist or almost any other mod to DF outside of editing raw you used DFhack to achieve that.
As for DFhack it provides shitload of things.

Most important one is filtering imo. Default game doesn't have any filtering method as i am aware so when you buy something from merchants you need to scroll your screen where with DFhack you hit f and just type what you want.

Outside of that DFhack provides various changes to gameplay if you want like making enemies able to dig tunnels and destroy walls.
DFHack also offers some performance improvements among other stuff so it's p. essential.
 

Grif

Learned
Joined
Nov 4, 2016
Messages
231
lol. If you ever used Therapist or almost any other mod to DF outside of editing raw you used DFhack to achieve that.
As for DFhack it provides shitload of things.

Most important one is filtering imo. Default game doesn't have any filtering method as i am aware so when you buy something from merchants you need to scroll your screen where with DFhack you hit f and just type what you want.

Outside of that DFhack provides various changes to gameplay if you want like making enemies able to dig tunnels and destroy walls.

DFHack also offers some performance improvements among other stuff so it's p. essential.

Good to know. I have never personally messed with these tools, so the setup I usually went with was Dwarf Therapist + Soundsense at most.
 

Perkel

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Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,810
After i got PSVR i realized my PC had been a bit slow for me mostly due to various software stacks (connected to PSVR) that take up CPU time. So i build new PC:

CPU: Intel - 7700k
MEMORY: Corsair Vengence 2x4GB DDR4-3000mhz
MOBO: Gigabyte z270 chip one
GPU: ASUS RX480 strix 8gb.
DRIVE: NVMe 256GB toshiba drive (2,5GB/s read sec.)

I will be assembling today everything and then it hit me... I build Dwarf Fortress PC. Because aside from VR games like Fallout New Vegas i am playing mostly DF daily.

This is also good test to see if there is any improvement to DF when you change hardware and how much it will speed up.
I will try to build a fort that has maximum amount of dwarves in it before FPS death and then i will switch my PC.

My old PC is i5-3470 + 2x4GB DDR3-1600mhz + rx480 8GB asus strix.
 
Joined
Mar 16, 2016
Messages
450
It's lagging mainly due path-finding. So dig-out a lot of space and connect Z levels randomly. don't forget shitton of items everywhere.
 

Beowulf

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Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
1,963
It's lagging mainly due path-finding. So dig-out a lot of space and connect Z levels randomly. don't forget shitton of items everywhere.
Don't forget to kill all the cats (or put them in cages, if you want to diversify your diet).
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,810
It's lagging mainly due path-finding. So dig-out a lot of space and connect Z levels randomly. don't forget shitton of items everywhere.
Don't forget to kill all the cats (or put them in cages, if you want to diversify your diet).

He gave me tips to DECREASE fps instead of increasing to stress my pc.
 

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