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[Melly]

Well, if you build only one-way pipes that shouldn't be a problem. I think. Still don't get 95% of this game.

[idiotmeat]

So how are people liking this update?  the z-levels take some getting used to, but I'm liking the complexity.  Now only if you could turn your fortress into an empire... 

Though unless I'm missing something, the immigration waves seem to be a lot bigger.  After my first year, I went from 7 lonely dwarfs to 45 babbling nutcases.  Thank goodness you can dig out spartan-like endless pits to knock those pesky persians immigrants into.

[Stij]

Man, this is more awesome then I thought it would be. Steep learning curve though.

Me and some folks on the forums are designing a water-powered transport system. Imagine high-pressure streams of water piping your dwarves from place to place. Totally impractical, but it would be sweet. The only issuse to work out is how to prevent it from crushing your dwarves against the ceiling of the pipe and turning them into a bloody mess. : D

Update: Doesn't work with dwarves, but it works with water just fine. Which brings me to my next project: a huge, man-made (dwarf-made?) waterfall.

If it works I'll post the save for you guys to mess around with. I'm still a noob at this game though, so don't be suprised if something goes horribly wrong. :D ah well, that's the fun of DF.

[Inane]

That's gonna take a lot of pumps. Wonder if you could make a selfpowering thing that uses the flow from the water itself to power the pumps.

[Stij]

Actually, yeah, I'm using water pressure to power it. Some guy on the forums found out how to use it.

Works great in theory, but it's gonna be a pain to build...easier then screwpumps though.

[team_q]

I am in complete love with this game, Last to things I did of note:

In my blue fortress, (Outdoor walls of beautiful blue rock over my entrance port), Deep below the urf, I was creating great dugout lines to discover a magma source, I didn't find one, but what I did find was some wonderful Galena. I thought to myself,(after a wikipedia search for what the hell Galena was) "Wonderful! now I can make glorious silver instruments!"
Though, you see, one of the major components to Galena is lead. "Now what do you do with large quantities of lead?" I questioned myself, since there arn't any firearms in this game, even though the base materials for gunpowder are. "I know Ill sell lead instruments and toys to the elves! Serves them right for getting pissy about blood spattered iron breastplates!" With a new direction I ignored my previous plan of Silver for a new one, praying that the Elves wouldn't be smart enough to realize the dull gray metal trumpets I was trading for their cages of baboons would be their undoing! HAAHHAHAAHAHAHA
Second fortress in another world:
"Forget them!" Rigoth Gloveblaze said, "They do not understand my divine vision! My BROTHERS in MINING AND MASONRY! Let us rise up and build a shrine to our Dwarven Mastery! Follow me to The Belted Blueness of Clasps we shall create a spire rising out from the waters proving our true mastery of all things ROCK!" six young dwarves cheered and clapped, surely this would be the their ticket to fame, their story would be engraved in all the finest mead halls in the Mountanhomes!
With his clan of 7 assembled, Rigoth began deciding what he should bring with him on his quest. Forgoing the anvil and axes provided by Mountanhomes, instead stocking up on food and booze. They will need it to survive until  his plan comes to fruition, and the Lordaxe willing they will succeed!
With that Rigoth and his 6 disciples departed, arriving at a cliff rising above the beautiful blue lake.
"Strike the earth!" Rigoth Belted sending his pick deep into the loamy sand that borders the lake. "We must gather stone to construct the spire!"
And until the autum fell upon them, the dwarves toiled single mindedly on the task at hand.
Dwarven Caravan arrived in the fall.
Kivish Tinbrew stepped down from his donkey. The donkey heavy laden with alcohol, food and a caged cow, crouched down to relieve its weary legs of its burden.
"Well this is quite the site!" Kivish exclaimed, his eyes were filled with the sight of a huge 3 story tower, precariously balanced above the crashing waters of the lake below. "What sort of Fell mood inspired this?" Searching among the toiling dwarves for someone with some authority. He bumped into Rigoth, who was startled at the appearance of this new dwarf, " Hello sir! I suppose you are interested in what trinkets we could manufacture, come inside the spire I shall show you something wonderful!"
Kivish complied with the wishes of this strange dwarf, he needs to turn some sort of profit, and he doesn't wish to laughed out of Mountainhomes! Upon entering the spire Kivish noticed a strange sight, 5 of the other dwarves were already inside, seated against the wall amongst barrels of fish and wine, and boxes of minced wine roasts. Rigoth closed the door tightly, and forbade passage.
"Now is the moment of truth! LIMUL STRIKE THE BRIDGE"
a loud clang was heard followed by a heavy groan as the Dwarven spire lurched into the lake.
"No we shall rebuild below the waves! The only thing connecting us to the outside world being this beautiful spire! Our brilliant craftsdwarfship shall make us kings!"
Kivish began to rebuttal this insanity but he was cut short as the crafted rock walls buckled from the impact with the silty sand floor of the lake, first crushing then drowning the dwarven caravan master, followed shortly by the other 6, sealing them in their watery tomb.
Limul had toppled into the water after severing the bridge as the water choked the life from him, he had precious little time to reflect that he should've followed his father and became a cheesemaker.
2 years later an adventure of ironfiords happened upon this spot. the only sign of the former  spire was a single hatch over, covered in mussels and seagulls poking above the waves. He wrote in his lore journal the grim fate of "Hammercave".


OH yeah, would anyone like to do a dwarf fortess succession?

[Bennett]

Wake me up when it has a complete graphical tileset.

[Seth]

apparently it's not even possible to create a custom tile set for the land tiles, it has to use the font file (not like the sprites, which apparently use a different file, so it is possible to create a nice-looking sprite set).  I'd make one for sure if it was.  Though, I'm not sure what would be a fitting graphical style.

And these giant cave spiders are pissing me off

EDIT:  Augh, I wish the Dwarves were smarter about defending themselves.  A fire imp took out 6 workers, and then cornered another, so I said, "screw it," and turned him into a recruit (with no combat skills whatsoever).  Needless to say, that weak little  farmer made quick work of that imp.

[Stij]

Wake me up when it has a complete graphical tileset.

>_>

Yeah, the ascii can be confusing at first, but trust me, it's an amazing game. Don't let the lack of graphics scare you off.

(and there are partial graphic tilesets you can download, too)

[skaldicpoet9]

Hmm, personally I think they are some of the best ASCII graphics I have seen...but I like the way Roguelikes look so maybe I am imapartial.

[team_q]

I think "The Toady One" intentionally prevents people from being able to tile set it easily, it is openGL. If you can't get over the graphics, you probably cant get over the complexity  and lack of explicit goals, or the fact that their isn't a way to win, at all.

[Bennett]

I think "The Toady One" intentionally prevents people from being able to tile set it easily, it is openGL. If you can't get over the graphics, you probably cant get over the complexity  and lack of explicit goals, or the fact that their isn't a way to win, at all.

I'm prepared to deal with all of that, but I think it's a gameplay flaw that you have to manually identify every ascii object in the game. I'm prepared to spend time learning about the parts of the game which add to the experience, but it's just makes me gyp when I can't tell a rough stone road from a pile of vomit, or when I can't tell a coffer from a quiver.

I have eyes for a reason. They can do a bit more than distinguish between 128 ascii characters. They do it instantly, and they don't need a manual or any special training. Yup, the good old v1.0 eyeball.

A full tileset would lower this meaningless barrier to entry and leave behind just the necessary barriers to entry - the complexity and so on. For me, it's especially annoying to deal with completely pointless frustration, and it's honestly the one thing that stops me from playing the game. It's an insult.

[team_q]

Sorry that you can't get over the mental hump that a grey lowercase d means a war dog and a red lower case d means a puppy, you are really selling yourself short if you think you cant get your mind around imagining your own game world. When I think of my  tower, sure it was just a collection of dotted fullsquares and +'s but in my head, I thought up images of a brilliant tower floating above the crashing blue waves. I dunno, I don't think the game play fails because of graphical choice, its one of the few games I can come back to about every two months and do something completely new and interesting. I have big plans for my next fort, I want to start on magma, and make EVERYTHING out of metal. No wood no Rocks, all rocks will be thrown in the magma if we have time. Metal Doors, Metal Buildings, metal crafts, a dining room floored and walled entirely of copper, copper chairs and copper tables! I want to take my dwarves out of the stone age.

[Alex May]

People are different. The game doesn't cater to everyone, and it would be nice if it did. I am fine with the tile set capabilities as it is, but many aren't.

To say Bay 12 are deliberately holding off on tile sets is unfair to Toady, who is concentrating on the things he finds interesting, and unfair to players who want tilesets as it asserts that people who enjoy the game are some clique of elite users who the developers love more than people who don't like the graphics.

Just because you aren't bothered by the lack of tiles doesn't mean everyone shouldn't be.

[team_q]

People are different. The game doesn't cater to everyone, and it would be nice if it did. I am fine with the tile set capabilities as it is, but many aren't.

To say Bay 12 are deliberately holding off on tile sets is unfair to Toady, who is concentrating on the things he finds interesting, and unfair to players who want tilesets as it asserts that people who enjoy the game are some clique of elite users who the developers love more than people who don't like the graphics.

Just because you aren't bothered by the lack of tiles doesn't mean everyone shouldn't be.

I know, I don't mean to offend, I just feel that people giving a "No graphics, no care" are selling themselves short.
I think the addition of tiles is more to do with public pressure then any desire on Toady's part to include it.

[Seth]

I love Dwarf Fortress, and I'm willing to look past the graphics, but that doesn't mean I don't want better graphics.  Games are a visual medium, after all, and it's curious to neglect that aspect of a game.

[Bennett]

I should make it clear that it's not graphics I want. It's graphical tiles. Not so it looks nice and so i can imagine it, but so that they're more representative and so that there are just more tiles.

[Seth]

That's what I mean--video games are a visual medium, and whatever information you can get across visually and immediately instead of textually, you should.  There's no need to check what an object is manually when a well made tile would do the trick.

[Bennett]

Right, I feel like the 128-character ASCII tileset is a kind of meaningless limitation for a game which is coded in OpenGL. I'd be happy if the graphics were rudimentary pictograms, but I'd like a different pictogram for each object.

The other shitty thing about using ASCII characters when you don't have to is that many of them have their own meaning, which interferes with the in-game meaning of the character. So for example, it's ok to have cut gems represented by a ♦ symbol, but it's not really ok for armor stands to be represented by a ♫. It's ok for a potion to be represented by an ¡, but it's not ok that all the dwarves are represented by ☺ symbols, which makes them look moronically happy. I can't switch off these associations in my brain. They're there for a reason!

And how about this? The 'sun' symbol ☼ is used as the currency unit symbol, (as well as for gems and turtles), while the real-life currency symbols, ¢ and £ and ¥, are used to represent closed hatches, ore and lobsters.

[Alex May]

Right, I feel like the 128-character ASCII tileset is a kind of meaningless limitation for a game which is coded in OpenGL. I'd be happy if the graphics were rudimentary pictograms, but I'd like a different pictogram for each object.

The other shitty thing about using ASCII characters when you don't have to is that many of them have their own meaning, which interferes with the in-game meaning of the character. So for example, it's ok to have cut gems represented by a ♦ symbol, but it's not really ok for armor stands to be represented by a ♫. It's ok for a potion to be represented by an ¡, but it's not ok that all the dwarves are represented by ☺ symbols, which makes them look moronically happy. I can't switch off these associations in my brain. They're there for a reason!

And how about this? The 'sun' symbol ☼ is used as the currency unit symbol, (as well as for gems and turtles), while the real-life currency symbols, ¢ and £ and ¥, are used to represent closed hatches, ore and lobsters.

I completely disagree with you in a kind of total reversal sense.

In my opinion, it's completely OK for ♫ to be used by an armour stand, because semantically it is different from everything else in the game. Similarly with the currency symbols. The problem lies with these same symbols being used to mean different things within the game context. And quite why you'd expect modern currency symbols to be used to represent fantasy currency escapes me completely, though it's totally up to you if you prefer your fantasy paralleled with reality - I guess this is also why a musical note jars as a symbol for an armour stand. Since it's fairly unique for this object, as far as I know, you could edit this glyph to be something less... meaningful for you personally. But that isn't the case with all the things in the game and that's a shame, I agree.

I appreciate where you're coming from - I've argued in the past that using a laser to cut glass is pathetic as it breaks the player's suspension of disbelief (a visible-light laser obviously passes right through glass). On the one hand you are arguing for uniqueness in visual assets, and on the other you want similarity with things you already identify with; I would consider the former to be a useful addition, but consider the latter to be unnecessary.

That said, I can only imagine a display cluttered with different icons representing all types of entity in the game. It looks awful to me, in my mind - I think a very helpful aspect of the graphics as they stand is that it's easy to spot anomalies amongst a fairly uniform display.