Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 102: Corp Fortress

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

A little late to the game but we talk about the upcoming DF Beta release - and somehow we get hung up on making a DF mod about corporate structure. Enjoy! Brancliff's Speedrun to 1M

Welcome to Dwar Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things, Dwarfee. I'm Jonathan. I'm Roland. And I'm Tony. As we record this, it is April 14th. And Torrance birthday is April 17th, which I think that that is the target to release the beta of adventurer mode. Is it the 17th? Is that correct?

well that's what that's what uh drew and christin said so i'm just taking that word for it i don't know him personally no i mean the release date well they said he said that he said that he's going to release it for the beta on his birthday oh okay well then there we go yeah so that's that this could be our very last pre-adventure mode recording so yeah i was going to say that by the time that this actually is released then people will be playing the beta of adventure mode so i was listening to the strange mood podcast the other day and they asked the question to their audience and I think that it would be a good one for us to mull over. What are you doing to prepare for adventure mode? Because it's going to be save compatible with existing worlds. So we could either use the existing world that

you have to run an adventure in or you could create a new world, but you're going to be able to have that be backwards compatible. So tell you what, I've decided I'm going to do. I'm taking that world that is infested with werewolves or wear moose, and I'm going to do my adventure in that world and see if I can come across any wear creatures. Courageous. Yeah, well, you know what? I don't know that I will be playing adventure mode for a long amount of time, but I'm kind of interested to see what the newness of it is.

And I have always wondered if how much the fortress activity affects the adventure mode side of things. and I know that that world seems extremely infested with wear creatures because every fortress that I have dives into where creature hell, where moose hell. So, yeah, that's what I'm planning on doing. I'm not going to retire Metalbent or even do an alternate timeline for that world because I'm having too much fun with my fortress called Metalbent.

That's awesome. Have you guys given any thought to it? How are you going to do it whenever it comes up? I haven't given any thought to it, and I don't think I'm going to do anything different. I think I'll probably install it and play it and see how it goes. But like you, I don't, you know, like for me, it's probably not going to be the core thing that I play all the time. You know what I mean? Like, I think I'm just going to go check it out and see how it is.

Yeah, yeah. I'm certainly not doing anything to prepare for it. Do you have a fortress right now that you're running that is kind of a long run fortress that you'd – Yeah. Because you're going to have to retire a fortress if you play. play in the same world you're in. Oh, yeah, that's tricky, unless you, uh, yeah, exactly. No, yeah, I've got one that's going my, my one where I'm so good at the game,

I can't die, that one. Yeah. And I've been looking for the, uh, I've been looking for the, you know, the fun layer and I haven't found it yet, though we've been working awful hard to do it. Like, everyone's a minor now. And all we do is dig, dig, dig, dig. But, uh, so far, we haven't found it. So it's disappointing.

You can always save to a new, um, you can keep the, um, you can keep that that that fortress going and and make a save and basically have a parallel universe of the same world yeah and you know i think also older the older the world is the better it is i think for that that's my guess for adventure mode yeah does that sound like something well you got more things going on i guess i don't know that's just kind of what i was thinking like you know Yeah, more population, more population, more stories, more history, I don't know, more wars. I suppose that's true, unless it's wear moose. I was going to say your population's probably going to be more homogenous with an older world.

Well, that's probably true. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. That's a tough one. I don't know what to do. I was going to say, I'm going to wing it. Yep. How about you, Roland? Yeah, I think I'm just going to make a new world first, like a tiny world.

one. I usually don't play with the tiny worlds. I'm going to make a tiny somewhat older world. I'm aiming for probably something around 500 years. Not a thousand. I just can't wait that long. And just see what goes and like cruise around and check on goblins and try to stab some people on the road and just, you know, get a feel for the new adventure mode. And when I feel like, okay, I dig it. I like it. I get now. to play adventure mode in the new system. I think then I'm going to consider going back to my old world that I've been playing because I also don't want to shut off my current fortress. I don't want to abandon it right now.

It runs pretty good. I like it. But I do want to return to the world simply because I have grown very fond of that one civilization. Is this your Cobra Men? Exactly. The cobra man. Yeah, that's too good. Yeah, I mean, I could play as one. They now exist in the world. Yeah, that's pretty neat. You've really, you've really, now remind me again, how did you get those guys? Did one of them just ambled into the fortress and decide it seemed good?

Yeah, a small group of them just came by. And I, I checked, and it's very weird, because before that point, there's basically no cobra men in the world. So I'm not exactly sure where they come from, and it doesn't exactly say that they have been part of any other civilization. Wow. So they have been in that civilization a while. It's just four of them. That's wild. Wow. Extremely lucky, I guess.

I have very, very few animal people in any of my fortresses. Is there some kind of a, is there a secret? it to WorldGen, where you can stack the cards to get more of them? Or do you have to just have a newer world where they haven't been eradicated? Are there any tips? That is something that I've been thinking about a lot, to be honest. Larger worlds tend to generate more different kind of species. So, for example, larger world had, like in the past, had the more,

of a possibility that you get to play as weird animal people in adventure mode. If you generate like a very small world and that's older, it's very likely that back in the day it would have only shown you if you want to play as an elf or a dwarf or like a human or whatever. But fresh, massive worlds often came with a whole list of like polar bearman and yakman, but actually meeting them, actually finding out if there are people of that species, that is, that seems to be completely different. So I've played worlds as, I don't know, polar bear man or whatever, but I've never actually met a single polar bear man. And when you go into Legends viewer and you check how many polar bear men there are in the world, it says one.

So I honestly have no clue how to reliably get more animal people. It seems to be just based on pure luck. RNG. You're pretty lucky with it. Yeah, you are. That's a win. That's a massive win. I always run very young worlds.

I usually just stop at year five because I want more forgotten beasts because they intrigue me. But I go with big worlds, you know, medium to large. I have young worlds And I don't know that I have I don't recall ever having an animal man Animal person come up to my fortress yet So in all these years I think I've had one Spider-Man

Not the Spider-Man Or the amazing Spider-Man Just a Spider-Man A spider person Okay Spider-Person That's right That's right

I think it was a man But yeah I don't know if it was a he or I didn't ask their pronouns I remember that I used to have a like bear people and I had a family of rat people and I think the the rat people were the first time I had like proper animal people live as citizens in my fortress and actually have offspring because I do very clearly remember me realizing that rat people are very tiny and they're way too tiny and weak to bear arms so that was a little bit annoying if you could have the polar bear men in your world you could arm bears oh yeah it's too early legs up that

The joke fell flat. It's the quality everyone's paying for. Yeah, but yeah, animal people. This segment of Dwarf Fortress Roundtable is brought to you by Patrick Shaw, creator of Art of Artem, Combined Fight. This is a green glass throne. All crafts worship is of the highest quality. It is decorated with oval-cut green glass gems and encircled with bands of llama wool.

This object menaces with spikes of green glass. On the item is an image of ass-pastorches the dwarf and dwarves in badger leather. As-pastorches is surrounded by the dwarves. The artwork relates to the appointment of the dwarf ass-pastorches to the position of diplomat of the castle of stops in the year one. Ardabardum Combine Fight An artifact green glass throne by Patrick Shaw You can find it on display in King Ascendent Post's throne room in Meadowbent.

Last episode, we did a sort of a listener mailbag, and we postponed one question from InVlado to today to this episode, because we thought that it might have conversation that took too long to record in that last episode but Imvado asks or says

Imvlato orders us to tell him about our current fort goals and how we picked them in general. For myself, I always start off with a goal of having some wonderful megastructure that I'm going to build but it never works out

that way. It always, it always ends up, you know, degenerating into something much, much smaller that is a, uh, that is the task of the moment. But I like to, I like to have a goal of having some really big thing that I can take a stone sense picture of them, posted on the wiki and have people like to look at it. Oh, so like New Year's resolutions, yeah? Yeah, kind of like that. I've stopped, I've stopped making those, though. I've, I've, don't know that I've ever cover you're more likely to not make a new year's resolution and do the good thing than it is if you do it on new year's i think but in any case do you folks plan before you start your fortress or do you just go in there and wing it and see what happens well so i usually

have like a like a standard fortress layout from the last fortress so i try to copy be the last fortress that I did because I liked it. And then I change one or two major acids in some form or way and then try to figure out, is this better or is this worse? How can I make, for example, the metal industry better? And then I tweak the layout and then if I like it, that gets adapted into the major blueprint and then it's also to be found in my next fortress. And I do tend to have an idea, like, oh, I want to make like a library. I want to make a large underground temple district.

But I never really just stay with that. I don't make like a library, and then I say, okay, we're not going to make, I don't know, a lot of metal industry because I kind of need it, you know, the gold, bound books, I do need a Smith to do that. And so it always ends up being like a full-fledged fortress that has everything. It's just

one of the parts in that fortress is the original reason why I created it. For example, the old fortress that I did was a library fortress. So the library was done within the first maybe like

two years of the fortress. I dug it out. And then I redecorated it like twice because I had better stuff to put in while the current one is more of a soldier fortress I mean it's called sword kingdom

was that random or was that something you chose actually that was random and I ran with it because it fit very well I wanted to have a fortress that gets a lot of people in gets a lot of soldiers and then crushes the goblins and the

north that were great the goblins didn't even try they just it was kind of pathetic but uh yeah so and you really you see it in the way that i shaped my fortress because in the previous one i had a massive paper industry and like a lot of scholars i had i don't know like 20 scholars overall and they also had side jobs but whatever so most of the people were scholars while a lot of the people now in Sword Kingdom are either soldiers or make armor or weapons or are smiths. So now I have a massive like metal industry, I guess, in general. So the parts of my fortress always balloon up in the, like for what I need. But I think I always overshoot what I actually want to do.

like oh yeah you know i want soldiers and then i have like a whole fortress that is just centered around smithing stuff so like the opposite of me yeah i i go in with a grand plan and and never accomplish it you go in with reasonable goals and you exceed them well i don't think they're reasonable i do i do have some unrealistic expectations do you make a lot of above-ground structures for your mega project that's All my mega projects I try to make above ground. Okay. That's cool.

Because I noted that I spread much more underground than I want, but everything that I want to do above ground just kind of fails. I wanted to make like a proper island fortress for Sword Kingdom and have like a real medieval castle stuff going on. And I just failed. At some point, I was like, oh, God, building. Well, you know, I said that as if I have megastructures that actually succeed. I've never completed one. I've gotten, like, I think the most I've ever gotten was like 10 rows up high. Well, I take that back.

I completed a pyramid once that was really kind of cool. And that sort of, you know, fueled my fire for it. But, but yeah, typically I fail for some other reason because something like werewolves or where moose distract me from my goals. So, you know, this, my current fortress, like I said, I wanted to build a megastructure, but I got a king and I'm kind of locked in at about 50 dwarves, and it goes really slow if you only have a few dwarves who are stacking blocks. So, yeah, I'm considering having my king get impatient, and I think that he wants to have adamantine everything. So I think that that's going to be the new focus for my fort. You can always use Fastorf if you want to speed things up a little bit.

Yeah, I don't really like doing that, though, because I like watching my Dwarves, you know, toil. So, Tony, do you go in with a goal before you start a fort, or do you, yeah, do you typically go in with a grand design? It depends. Sometimes I have an idea or a concept that I want to try to figure out. And then, I don't know, it just feels like nothing ever quite goes according to plan. Or then some other thing happens or some, like, rat person shows up and suddenly the whole fortress is being redesigned around that. I don't know. That kind of tends to be my thing.

I like the idea of trying to get big, diverse populations. That's kind of fun where I get a lot of elves and stuff. I know that's a hot take here. So what's your current port goal? What are you working on right now? I'm trying to kill everyone. but they're really good and then they won't die

so I don't know I mean I could run them out of food but that's not fun I want to find some sort of threat that you know you're trying to kill the people inside the fortress yeah I'm trying to get them in over their head because I think they've like the story that I have going on

here is that that they're full of hubris because they've basically win every fight they get into for some reason. I think I had like a legendary teacher and then a legendary axe guy come in and then he's, I think, really good at teaching everybody. So now I have like squads of legendary everybody's and they just win every fight. And I went out and started conquering all the goblin towns and I did that. And so the goblins will show up and say, you know, in order to avoid loss of, you know,

in order to avoid more loss of life, please let us surrender to you or whatever. and give us an artifact. And I'm like, I'm not giving you an artifact. And then I say no. And then it turns into a siege, but they don't actually attack. They just kind of hang out on the map. And then I end up having to kill them. And then they come back later, trying to do the same thing again.

They just seem to want to surrender or call a truce. I'm like, I'm not doing that guy. You're going down. But there's a lot of them. So the genocide is taking a long time. But we just keep winning. So now I want to go fight the demons, and I can't find him. I don't think that I ever had a parley request before version 50,

and now I get them all the time. Yeah. I'm pretty sure they are new, right? Are they? Yeah, they must be. I agreed. I was really surprised when I saw that. I think that I have always said no.

I think maybe I gave them something once because I was in a vulnerable situation. but yeah, I think that for the most part I'm like, yeah, yeah, I found my nose at you like me. If it's the elves, I feel like you almost have to just attack, yeah, the goblins are the ones that want to. Like, I think you guys were supposed to be tough.

Why are you trying to surrender to me? You're supposed to fight to the end. Goons. I don't know what's going on. Yeah, I also just deny them because, like, it's my artifacts, please. Yeah, I'm giving you an artifact. Yeah, but the first time,

the humans came by, because I accidentally, like I nabbed a trader from the trading depot to interrogate him. Apparently, they really don't like that. Oh, no. Instantly declared war on me, which was very, very sad because the humans used to trade me elephants. Annoying. So when they came by, I thought maybe, maybe if I give them the artifact, they, you know, they chillax and leave and we're not at war anymore. But nope, nope, nope, nope. They just took the artifact and a while later sent another siege and we're like, okay, since you already gave us like an artifact, can you give us another?

Like, get off my, what the hell? No, now it's time for the, now you've got to attack them. But if you raid their civilization, if you raid their base, can you steal animals from them? They have not brought me back any elephants, sadly. Oh, yeah. But I always end up with a lot of beak dogs. That's, yeah, yeah. But I think I got, what was it, goats?

Kind of bog standard, but, you know, meat is meat, I guess. But I did take over their castle, so that's, you know, nice. Yeah, I think the humans might be next for me. We'll see. I've got to get these goblins wiped up. They just seem to be so many civilizations, so many towns. Yeah. dam you'll build a dam i want to build a dam i think i think my next fortress i'm going to

have in a mountainous region with the river that's on high because because you can't build a dam or a lake any higher than the highest level of the river on that uh on that particular map so oh is that right okay so yeah if you if you want to dam something up you want to make sure that the river is not the lowest thing in your fortress so if you have a waterfall on the on the map you can you can dam it up. So I think I'm going to do that. I want to make it glass or metal. I think a metal dam would look cool.

Glass is kind of cool, though. Can you make it on Jim Windows? Regular glass is pretty easy when you get the workflow down. Yeah. I like to do the glass roofs just because I think that's a nice thing to do. I think Jim Windows, a small dam of gym window, well, or make it a big dam of Jim Windows, but you have to have a lot of gemstones to do that with. That could be a goal.

Crazy dwarves who build a dam out of gemstones. Nope, we're not trading them. Nope, we're not decorating things. We are turning them into bricks. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a great idea, too. Because gem windows also, do they have, like, don't they give, like, a good feeling?

Don't they like having gem windows? Oh, yeah, they do. They do. I would also pull this information out of my ass, but I'm pretty sure that if they like a certain gem that is inside that window, they probably get like an additional fall because it's made of that gem. But I don't know. I don't make gym windows.

I make glass windows. Oh, what I can do. I can have the dam be made of gym windows and then have that be one of the interior walls of the fortress and build a fortress up against the dam. What could go wrong? No, what could go wrong. So like half inside the water? well no you'll be on the you'd be on the dry side of the dam but you know build the fortress

yeah to where to where the walls of the main you know tavern are the is like walls of the of the of the of the of the dam yeah it'd take a lot of engineering and i don't know that i have that kind of time but you know i've built the under underwater library i built a glass building with my library and then i flooded it Roland, that's an example of me over, you know, over-grandizing my goals. It's better to have one. No, it's good. You're quite right.

I like the ambition. I really, I like, I want to see one of your big engineering projects come to fruition. I can show you a lot of them. They look like, you know, if you have one of those situations where someone starts building a cinder block building and they run out of money after a month and they abandoned the site, that is my rebar. They leave the rebar. the rebar sticking up off the roof exactly exactly

it'll happen does anybody else have anything else that they would like to talk about goals I like to have smart goals where they're specific measurable actionable

I don't know whatever SM A R T those are my goals so you like corporate forces I've changed it into a mod it's called corp fortress if they ever have the economics update

you'll be golden. Oh, yeah. I mean, if I can get TPS reports crank, and that's going to be something. Hey, did you get the memo? So you're saying that your fortresses are not really just like living spaces, but they're like independent companies built by one grand dwarven company. And they, they have branch companies.

That's right, the Scranton branch. Yeah, you take it very seriously whenever they say that those other. villages are depending on you for their economic well-being. Like you're darn tootin. Okay. So become like the general manager of the area. Okay. That's right. That'll be my

Corp Fortress that's coming out next year. You don't have a king. You have a CEO. That's right. Lord Bezos commands you. Make books. Oh yeah, that's going to be a mod, yes. The corporate mod. Yeah. Yeah. actually literally reading yeah we're on it honestly that is an interesting concept not to not to

like completely run away with it but go for it being being like the general manager of the what is my place called currently turquoise murk or some stuff yeah okay okay i can see that is company a word that you can make from your dwarven uh whenever your name of fortress is company any one of the words? Oh, my God, that is a... Oh, yeah, a company is a thing of... You can be, like, a company of... I think I've had dance troops or whatever come through.

They're, like, Company of Pearls or whatever. Yeah, I would also assume that... I would assume that company is definitely in there. Oh, my God. So if you could find a name of your fortress whenever you're, like, giving it a custom name, like, mine... My fortress's name is Metalbent. If you could be like...

Company of worms or whatever. Yeah, they get those kind of things. Company of money. You could make shoes and stuff. Call your Fort Prada. I don't even know if it was our discord or strange moods or we're to even see this. But someone was basically having a speed run to a million dwarf bucks. Wow.

That's kind of cool. Like who can get to the a million dwarf bucks value produced by your fortress in the lowest year number? Wow. That's kind of cool. basically it's just gold you just do everything with gold is that kind of the jam is that how you do it

or I suppose there's lots of ways to do it is platinum worth more than gold in DF yeah I think so is that right yeah if you could if you could stack it with platinum just to be absolutely clear to answer the question company is in fact

a word you can use so you can absolutely name a fortress for example bridge gods the company of Hegemon's that is very possible. Yes, that's it. That's me. That's my next one.

That's going to be my, I'm going to have my corp fort. Oh, yes. I got to go in and modify some stuff. You see, to me, metal bit sounds like a company name.

It does. It does. They sound like they would, you know, do things with elements. It's a metal fabrication company. Yeah, exactly.

That is metal bent. Yeah, that's right. I think it totally is. Brilliant. I love it. I'm going to see if I can start playing with these raw files now.

just just like rename kings into CEOs yeah exactly I mean we do have a bookkeeper and a manager production orders a champion is just the the worker of the year or month so I haven't watched this video I'll post a link to it uh Brancliffe in our discord server if you haven't joined the dwarf fortress roundtable discord server I recommend that you do that go to df roundtable.com and look in the menu, there is a link you can join the Discord server. I thought that did. But anyway, Brancliffe posted a video on YouTube that is called Speed Running to a Million Dwarf bucks. Awesome.

It seems like something fun to shoot for. How quick can you get to a million? Really cool. So you want to be a millionaire dwarf. Let's see. You make three prepared meals. Oh, yeah. Those are very valuable.

Yeah. How quick can you, that just turns it into, you know, top shut. Yes, exactly. You just become American. Perchmash had like a chef competition, I think, at one point. Oh, yeah. I don't know if I went anywhere. Hell's Kitchen.

Nice. And where if you get it wrong, you actually are thrown into the magma. Oh, that's nice. You've been chopped. Literally. No pictures for you today. When you lose, you lose. I think wasn't he also like dictating ingredients and stuff for it?

So he could, like, they would make certain things. I think he went real next level with it. it. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense to have just three dwarfs cook the same thing and then see who's cooking better. Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. That was some years ago. I'll have to see if I can dig up that old video. Don't add it, isn't he? He is. Good for him. Love it, love it, love it. All right, do either of you have another topic that is burning before we get into the surprise DFFHack Corner? I don't have any other serious questions or discussions. No, it's very important that we maintain professionalism now that it's Corp Fortress.

Instead of task lists, you'll have action items. I'm on this. This is going to be great. And the sheriff is HR. That's right. Please everyone just make this mod. I want to play it. Dwarf Fortress Roundtable is brought to you in part by Michael Eller, creator of Ngoton Riffitt, the cult of blocking. This is a donkey bone cabinet. All crafts worship is of the highest quality.

This object menaces with spikes of conglomerate and donkey bone. On the item is an image of dwarves in iron. The dwarves are laboring. The artwork relates to the foundation of Metalbent by the strong standard of the castle of stops in the early spring of the year five. Ngoten Riffitt The Cult of Blocking An Artifact Donkey Bone Cabinet by Michael Eller.

You can find it on display in King Ascent Post's throne room in Meadowbent. All right, let's move on then to, oh, I didn't even tell you guys what D.F. Hack Corner was going to be this week. It's a mystery. DF Hack Corner this week is Open Legends. Open Legends. Now, I don't know how long this has been a part of DF Hack, but I think that it might be new. But I heard about it and I tried it. and it is what we've been asking for.

So you open up DF hack, you can go to the DF hack GUI launcher, type in open hyphen legends, and it will strongly suggest that you make a auto save at that point, and you make that

auto save, then you click go to Legends mode, and it opens up Legends mode from there. Now, you can't continue your fortress from that point. You have to actually kill it. It actually terminate store fortress because of reasons but you can then

access Legends mode whenever you go hey I wonder this thing you can now pop in Legends mode and check it out yeah what do you mean when you say it terminates

well I'm going to go ahead and go through it here I'm typing in I'm in the DF hack launcher the GUI launcher I'm going to go open dash Legends and hit Enter and it gives me a dialogue box that says

This script allows you to jump into Legends mode from an active game But beware This is a one-way trip Returning to Fort mode from Legends mode Would make the game unstable So to protect your save game Dual Fortress will exit when you're done browsing

This is your last chance to save your game That's ominous Please click here to create an auto save Okay So I clicked there So once this save game happens, I'm going to click the line that says, click here to continue to Legends mode. I'm still saving. Still saving.

Yeah, but saving's, you know, not the fastest thing. But it's got a lot to save, doesn't it? Yeah. Okay, it's done. Click here to continue to Legends mode. And boom, I'm in Legends mode. Nice. So now I can check out, well, it's basically, you're just in Legends mode.

in D.F. Legends mode. So I can click out sites, artifacts, historical figures, and all that kind of fun stuff that you can do in Legends mode. However, when you click Done, it terminates the game from Legends mode. Hmm. Interesting. It doesn't go back to a menu or anything. It terminates the game, which is a wonderful trade-off to me.

It's not something you want to do all the time. But if you really need to know, like, where the hell did this vampire come from, you can find that out. Yeah. Without retiring your fortress. Yeah, okay. Do they have, how are the Legends viewers come in? I know that they weren't available for a while.

Has anyone been following that? I've just realized I have not been following it. No, I haven't. I haven't. Those are pretty good. I've been following Dwar fortress news as much as I should be really considering we have a podcast about the game. Well, you know, we do, yeah. But yeah, I get most of my news off of strange moves.

actually. And also the chatting and the Tor Fortress Roundtable Discord server. Always a good place to be. Yeah. I think that's fair. I mean, I have the excuse that I accidentally slid into a different

video game, but man, oh man. Do pray tell. Oh yeah, what's the alternate? Well, it's just that this whole of DF at adventure mode has been filled with the kenshi for the last two weeks oh yeah and uh spicy pickled

cabbage yes yes i'm almost at 80 hours already and i am questioning what what the hell is up but that really does show to me that df adventure mode is now now really in my head i i am really waiting for it. And I think the last time we talked about it, I did say that I'm not sure if I'm going to download the demo or whatever. It looks very different now. I can't wait. I can't wait to beat up goblins. Yeah, I'm looking for fighting wear creatures in hand-to-hand combat and then seeing what happens if I get scratched. What happens to an adventurer whenever they become a wear creature? I'm hoping to find that out. Oh, yeah. I think you just get to control yourself as a rare creature.

Oh. Do you actually get to control yourself? Okay, that's pretty neat. I mean, that can be fun. You know, it would be weird if the character is just taken over in that moment, and suddenly you look on your screen in horror as your where chameleon dwarf is now ripping apart his travel buddies. I kind of love it, though. That's kind of awesome.

It would be pretty cool, but consider. the length of a day in the adventure mode it's true yeah it could be the dragon some roguelikes handle it by well for example a brogue is a roguelike

it is a shoe also but in this case we're talking about brogue the roguelike whenever you are hit with certain potions or certain gas attacks from creatures they will make you hallucinate and your whenever you move your

your character, they will not go in the direction that you told them to go and the things that you see that are attacking you are not necessarily the actual things that are attacking so it shows you, it forces you to hallucinate. You just go to sleep and then wake up in the morning and you're somewhere else and maybe there's carnage.

Oh, they will be confusing as hell. Imagine going to sleep in a fortress and then you click on the sleep button and then you remember, oh no, it's today. And then you wake up in a blood-bloody fortress. Wake up nude in a pile of muddy, yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah, blood mud. That would be pretty cool.

Okay. Yeah, that would be awesome. I could have fun with that. I don't foresee that to be what happens in the game, though. Nope, I don't think so. Yeah, I think it's more like the werewolf transformation in Skyrim. You transform into a werewolf, and then you just, you're still yourself, but now you're kind of hungry for meat.

Yeah. But yeah, now that you say that, though, I have the original American Warwolf in London in my mind. That was a fun movie. Oh, gosh, yeah. That's from the olden times. Dwarf Fortress Roundtable is made possible by a grant from Clino Dev, creator of a Philstimumumulter Thurlith, Weakbroil, the Common Snake. This is a conglomerate ring. All crafts worship is of the highest quality.

It is decorated with donkey leather and insertion. with bands of oval jet cabachshons and donkey leather. This object menaces with spikes of milk quartz. On the item is an image of cushion cabichons in conglomerate. On the item is an image of single grain wheat in milk quartz. On the item is an image of a saguaro in bloodstone. On the item is an image of swamp titans in donkey leather. On the item is an image of a round, brilliant cut gem in donkey bone.

Othelstimum Ultertherlith Weak broil The Common Snake An artifact conglomerate ring By Clino Dev Proudly on display in Crafts Guild Hall The Net of Boats in Metalbent Oh yeah

Well we may have a relatively short episode today Which is fine I don't really have anything else to talk about though We're going to make up for it when we talk about adventure mode the next time. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I need to get on that beta branch. Yeah, I'm just thirsting for adventure mode at this point.

I can't wait. I'm ready. I'm really hoping that the graphics make it more playable for me, because that was always the asky aspect of it. And even with the tile sets, the old adventure mode, it just was too incomprehensible for me to enjoy. I agree. It used to be so the UI would just glitch up all the time.

Yep. And it would just make it really difficult to figure out what was going on. So I'm hoping that that makes everything more fun. And the better menus, too. Better menus, yeah. Just to stable UI, the look and the feel, I'm optimistic that this is going to be pretty, pretty flippin' neat. And it may be boring as hell. Yeah. Well, it might be. Well, you know, he did do that. Like, guys, let's set some expectations here as to what this is actually going to be. But I think it's going to actually be a graphically updated, more playable version of adventure mode. Like, you know, I know what I'm kidding. I used to play the old one. You know, it was a rough world. But, yeah.

I mean, are we expecting anything else, but adventure mode, but with a better haircut? That's what I'm looking for, yeah Watch, he'll remove Fortress mode You can have one or the other guys That's all you get That's it, period That is probably the worst A proil-fool's joke he could play

You know, he missed the opportunity, didn't he? I actually am happy as a sidebar That people have stopped doing that Because those were getting really annoying for a while I think the pandemic Stomp that out of people Well, I mean, honestly, you don't need another proil-fool's joke, like the whole, oh, by the way, you now get to stay at home. Okay.

I was trying to figure out if there were other things like Legends mode, and somebody's made something called Dorvin Surveyor. I don't know if you guys have seen it, but it looks like you kind of dump it, and then it makes, it generates a graphic map for you to be able to look around and click and see. stuff. It seems kind of neat. Is that a steam mod or? No, it's, uh, where is it? It's here. He says it's, it's, it's on his itch, itch.I.O. Dwarven surveyor is what it's called. So I haven't, like, I haven't used it. It says it doesn't really work on a 4K monitor, so I haven't tried it yet. But it was also posted in the Reddit. Humble brag. Although 4K is not really,

4K is not really much of humble brag anymore. It's not like 8K. Okay. Oh, 4K is kind of table stakes. Yeah, that one looks pretty cool. But I was just trying to see if there were other good Legends viewers because I really liked. That was one of my favorite things to do is kind of browse around in the... Fully agreed, yeah. Yeah, Legends Browser in Paradexas, Arant's, Dwarven whatever pack.

Oh, gosh, yeah, the lazy noob, I think is what it was, right? Yeah. Boy, them were the days. There were some issues with that name, and I agreed with it. I tried to call it what it actually. what was called the launcher pack. Now I can't remember what it was. I only remember lazy noob pack,

but it was so condescending the lazy nob pack thing because I used it because it was much more convenient than setting all that crap up yourself. Yeah. And I didn't consider myself lazy or a nob. No, I think just the irony of calling anybody that plays Dorf Fortress lazy is kind of hilarious. It's just, you're just not.

Starter Pack. Starrett's Starat. Starter Pack. Yeah. I did not even think about that implication. No. No, no, no, absolutely not. Although, I've been browsing Reddit and like yesterday or whatever, shocker, I know,

and there was a completely unrelated post and a completely unrelated. Do you have some role in Reddit? I don't know. Is Reddit a website? What is it? Do people at home know how to get to that site? Is it an app that you download? But anyway...

I'll call it out. Roland is a moderator. Yeah. I am a slightly overweight Reddit moderator that never showers. Anyway, the...

Jesus. The actual post I was going to talk about was on a completely unrelated subreddit. And, you know, I scroll, scroll, suddenly something dwarf orders. I go up again.

And I'm like, hmm, yeah. Wait. Huh? This isn't even the dwarf Fortress separate. I go into the comments and it's like all Dwar Fortress players telling other people like, oh, you have to play the game

and then everybody else is like, oh my God, I'm so afraid. It's pretty funny. It was very funny and that reminded me a little bit that while Dwarf Fortress by itself is somewhat known in the gaming community a lot of people are just very afraid

of it. They perceive it to be some kind of Hercules an effort game where you have to have like a like a brain that is like pulsing through your skull to to understand what the hell is going on but i think we as a community kind of perpetuated that too we uh we kind of enjoyed the condescension i guess a little bit it seems i feel like there was definitely something with the oh i play it an asky versus i play it with a tile set thing like people that that's that's true i remember that thing and especially the...

I remember some comments about me saying that I play Lazy New Pack on the Reddit and other forums, and people weren't like, oh, yeah, lazy noob, am I right? Well, I play Dwar Fortress on Slack. Yeah, yeah, like, hello, I'm still playing the game, dude.

Yeah, there's no gatekeeping. It's not like, oh, I compile my own next kernel. Oh, well, dang, that's released well. You know, that's great, good for you. Since the premium release, Since version 50 came out, I have noticed a lot less of the commentary about how hard it is to play. That seems to have gone a little bit on the back burner, which is a good thing. Well, I think games like Rimworld and Kenchi and those kind of things are kind of hard to play.

And if you can play Rimworld, you can absolutely play Door Fortress. Like, what he did in Rimworld is really cool in kind of like getting people into the, because I think wasn't his thing. Like, I want to make a sci-fi easier. to play a version of Door Fortress and then he went completely in his own direction and it's cool.

If you haven't checked out Rommroll, they just put out a new X-Pack that I haven't looked at yet, but it looks pretty neat. I do actually believe that these games are hard in the way that the game is somewhat easy to play. Like, you click around, you understand what you see

because you have proper graphics and you have proper buttons and stuff like that. But then the game just beats you up like a schoolyard bully it is relentless if you play kenshi you get beat up that's kind of the game part

right that's how you level up toughness in the game you get beaten off the got by by rand bandits and they strip you naked and then you get sold into slavery that's that isn't just like what can happen in the game it is the game and rim world as well

Rimworld has this thing where the narrator program in the background keeps sending threats at you. Some of these threats are like seriously dense to master. You get like people in power armor just waltzing into your map with machine guns and going like at everything that moves. That's hard. That's hard if you have only like muskids and you live in tents. But Dwarf Fortress is not that. Dwarf fortress, I really believe that Dwarfurtress by itself is not hard. It is just hard to understand because Kenchi and especially Rimworld, they tell you what to do.

They help you. They give you like text. They give you explanation. Dwar fortress is like, they drop you somewhere and then they tell you, strike the earth, and that's it. And even now with the tutorial, the tutorial is barely scratching the surface in Dwar Fortress. There's so much to do, so much different things and how to build and what to do. But essentially, when it comes down to it, it is easy. There are no threats that continuously spawn like Ringworld.

At some point, they stop because there's no more forgotten beasts and you just reach the population cap on your map with dead people. That's possible. And then you don't have any animals spawning anymore. It's possible. I got that in my long fortress. There were no more animals spawning because they killed too many.

Well, that also brings up a question that I have. I think that the balance may have tipped a little bit too much towards the dwarves in dwarf fortress at this point, because either I have become a lot better player of dual Fortress or the game has become easier to play, you know, with the success of releases since I first started. It may be a bit of both, but yeah, Tony, you're having trouble, you know, killing off your own dwarves.

That's, that says something. Well, it's just, it's all, it's all, you know, it's all RNG, uh, because it just happened to get lucky where I got the legendary teacher who I think is really good. And then we got Steele pretty early on and, you know, like everything just kind of like aligned in a way that I haven't always had that happen. I just, I just thought of something. You know, remember back early on in the first few episodes of the podcast, I wasn't even putting doors on the front of my fortress. It was just an open entry. I remember we did our first fortress swap and you're like, dude, where's your security? I'm like, what security?

Yeah, I do believe that on the one hand, we all have grown as players because, like, I've been doing this for like, what, eight years? But on the other, the game itself is not that hard. Your dwarfs are actually very competent. You get some competent farmers and they're like seriously competent or you get good soldiers and they just, they are incredible. incredibly strong and to get there you don't have to do too much like the soldiers they train by themselves setting up the farm okay but then keeping the seeds on stock and like making drinks and what it's very easy to set up you all you need is a manager and do that farms and that's that's that's pretty much it then it can't just run by itself auto farm massively helpful i mean yeah one of my favorites I really, really like it. Especially if you do play with D.F. Hack commands like that. The game is just, I don't want to say, simple. It was so long before I learned how to use a manager. So that was a huge step up in my gameplay.

Yeah, no, that I totally agree. It took me forever to do that as well. And then, and then I used to use DFHack, you know, where you could like alt-wire or whatever. and manager production workflows and stuff. And it just didn't work as well as a manager. Like, manager was just... Yeah, I appreciate Techids videos on that.

Those are the ones that really rolled it into my head how to do things. So, yeah. Yeah, I would encourage anybody if you were wondering about how stuff worked, like workflows and military and all that kind of stuff. He, I think, still has, in my opinion, some of the best tutorials out there. I mean, there's a lot of great content, but his, I think, production quality is really high And the way he explains it is good. Yeah, it's micro tutorials.

And he's also got a great voice. Looking forward to him getting back into someday doing Door Fortress. Because his tutorials are from the earlier versions of Door Fortress, but I think that they're still relevant now, especially for things like the management. Yeah, I think it all applies for sure. The terminology of the setting up the automated orders for stuff, they're still relevant.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, so much for having a shorter episode. We did it. We filled it up. I know. We did it. All right. We did it.

Okay, so everyone, be sure to check out our website and check out our Discord server and check out our email address and, you know, just check out Door Fortress. And, hey, check out Adventure mode because by the time you hear this, unless they have a release delay, you will be able to play the beta. It's going to be a thing. I don't think there's going to be a release delay. Famous last words, but I really don't. I don't think they. I think they definitely don't say they're going to do something unless they're going to do it. This is not Ubisoft.

They are very happy with saying it'll be ready when it's ready. Yeah. And they didn't do that this time. No. All right. So thanks everyone for listening. And until next time, good luck and dig deep, right? Oh, yeah, for sure.

I want a shout-out on my Slaf paralysed demon give. Thank you, that you me the name of God gave him. This has been the Dwarf Fortress Roundtable podcast. You can find all our past episodes at DFRoundable.com.

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