Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 103: It’s Adventurer Time!

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

We think something was released a couple weeks ago. We like what it may become.

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfee. I'm Jonathan. I'm Roland. I'm Tony. And did something change about the program the last couple weeks since we last recorded? Hmm. I think there was something, yeah. So I heard that they've made, uh, what is it, a new, um...

RPG mode? Is that what it's called? Yeah. R.P. Something. Minor changes to the game. Yeah. Some minor changes to the game.

Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. Yep. And they've also, in case anybody's noticed,

they've updated the regular branch to make it less crashy if you're not, if you're not doing an adventure remote. Were those changes that are rolled in from the beta of 50, was it 51.03 or something that they're up to now? So was those? were those backported to 50.13? Good question. Probably. They probably found some things in the crashes that were happening because when Adventure Mode dropped,

a lot of people were talking about how crashy it was. I didn't have that issue. Yeah, I think if you play it on Windows, you're probably good. It worked fine on Windows. The Mac-emulated version just crashes constantly. Like, you can't go for more than five minutes. fails. Did you have any crash issues, Roland? Have you played? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Did you go into the beta mode? Well, it's hard to say played. I don't think that is the appropriate word because it was

very crashy for me. I tried several things and made, you know, as I said, I made a new world and tried everything. And it crashed three times just trying to make a character and going into the world. One time after I started speaking to someone and I tried to pet them. Okay. You tried to pet the person? Yeah. I tried to pet the person. Was it uninvited petting? Um, it, uh, that's, uh, hmm. I, I don't think I have to answer that question. You do not. You don't have to answer that, but that, that ultimately ended my adventure mode adventure. And, uh, yeah. So going to wait it out a little bit longer, see if they stabilize it? Yes, because, you know, I do like, honestly, I like staring at the pictures alone and, like, looking at the animal people.

Yes, I like that. But after like four crashes within one hour, yeah, I'm going to wait. Your opinions, Tony? Yeah, I tried it on the Mac. It absolutely just crashed and burned, just no success at all. oh dear so i found myself an old windows laptop and put it on that and i played it for a bit and yeah i mean it's kind of the it's sort of like what it always was it just looks cooler so i think it to me it feels like it's the start of something rather than the finishing point of something

if that makes sense and that does make sense and it's also you know it's beta there's several menu items that say coming soon that the operations aren't available yet and i found it after i got used to the fact that the menus are so much better so much better and the graphics i could actually understand what i saw on the screen was what i had in my mind if you will or maybe the other way around but once i got past that it was uh it was adventure mode and adventure mode while it's neat I think that I play Dwar Fortress for Fortress mode at the end of the day. I think I might be the same way, although if it keeps getting better, it might be fun to go do things in the forts, you know,

just for fun to be able to check it out, you know, like when you could drive a car in SimCity or whatever, that kind of thing. You know what I mean when you drive around your city or something? Like, that's kind of cool. Yeah. Well, SimCopter. SimCopter was pretty awesome. It was a SimCity spinoff game, and you could take a city.

The game in itself wasn't very much fun. You rescued people off the tops of buildings. But what you could do, though, is you could build up your city and be able to fly around it in a helicopter and fly between the buildings and look at the cars on the street and all that. So you could take a city that you'd built in SimCity and load that up in SimCopter and fly around it. So that was pretty awesome. Yeah, that does sound cool. Yeah, it's the same sort of thing. That's what I think I'll enjoy with it is at some point, being able to do that would be fun.

I would like to visit my fortress. Yeah. I think so, too, yeah. But right now I'm not ready to do that because, well, it would crash. Yeah, that is the thing, right? But ignoring the constraint of the game possibly crashing, I am also very interested in going into my own fortresses and like talking to my people that I know from my game and then trying to retire there after like doing something cool and then going back to fortress mode and suddenly I now have my, I don't know, elephant, walrus man

chilling in my fortress or something. You have an avatar there. Yeah, kind of. Yeah. I did very much enjoy the conversations that I was having in an adventurer mode. It was, I mean, they were very simplistic, very surface level, but I thought it was was neat whenever I would attack somebody in a tavern or in a building, then they would announce to other people in the tavern that my character attacked them.

It was great. And then they would announce to other people. My character attacked this third person. And yeah, I died because just attacking people apparently is not the best idea when you're a low-level character. Yeah, well, anyone really, don't do that. Just attacking is a bad move. Just don't attack people in places.

Yeah, I mean, you know, that's not. cool what type of did you play a hippo man hell yeah did everyone do hippo hippo people no i played a dwarf dwarf you played a dwarf yeah it's a good choice i i also loaded it up in my wear creature infested world but i never did run into someone that i knew was a wear creature but you know now that i think about it i don't know if the moon was right so that may have had something to do with it time goes so much slower in adventure mode than it does in fortress mode so yeah that is true yeah yeah It's turn by turn, isn't it? It's like each tick is its own.

Like, you're moving in each tick. And it doesn't work without you moving. I guess, is there a way that you can just, like, sit down and let the game play itself? You can go on travel mode. I suppose, but don't you still have to move to advance the clock? Like, you can't just unpause it and let it just go and play. Well, you can click on... What is that?

Wait and sleep. Period. Period. On your keyboard, for me at least. Then it advances one click. and you can, maybe you can just hold it down or, like, put a weight on it and, like, do something else for a while. I mean, there's an option to wait or sleep for a number of amount of time. That's way smarter, yeah.

Yeah. I think you have to be outside of a site, though, to be able to do that. At least it was telling me that you're not, you can't sleep until you leave this site. Oh, right. That's so bad, because I feel like you should stay in a hotel or if there's a bed. Plus, it stops, like, you stop waiting when you get hungry or thirsty. So you always have to take care of those needs because otherwise you will not be able. And plus, it's not like you can just wait out a month in like a few minutes in real life.

It would still take a considerable amount of time. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Okay, so adventure mode, nice start. I think that sounds like our opinion. Yeah, that is a good, good conclusion. It is a nice start. It's really nice. I mean, look, it had to end up in there, and he had to spend time working on it to get it out there.

Yeah. And I'm glad. I'm very glad that he didn't wait this long to get adventure mode up and running before releasing the premium version. Yeah, me too. I would love to, yeah, exactly. Gosh, can you imagine if we'd have lost all that steam time? I know. And I think the fortress mode's just about.

been a real delight to have had all this time. So that's cool. It's a good word for it. Yeah. It's a good word. Version 50 is a lot better than version 47 was. I agree. I agree.

It's a net positive in the world. Absolutely. Yeah. My, let's see, 650 plus hours also say that I have enjoyed the fortress mode and I would have been very sad if we had to wait until now to get like the steam release or whatever. Yeah, no kidding. Harkin now to the grand saga of Mr. Gutzi, who weaves the legend of Metalbent and the mighty King Asin Dent Post. In the fifth year of his reign, a restless spirit stirred

within King Asin, driving him to proclaim a decree that echoed through the annals of time. He commanded his valiant miners to embark on a quest for the fabled Azure element, a rare and wondrous substance that would ensure his legacy endured for Ian's. With this mystical blue ore, King Aeson envisioned the construction of a majestic pyramid of jet, its pinnacle adorned with the coveted element. This edifice would crown the castle of stops as the paramount civilization across the known realms. Not content with mere monuments, King Aeson aspired to embody the virtues of a true leader. He honed his skills alongside his subjects, mastering the art of the hammer until he stood as a peerless hammer dwarf. Through these deeds, King Asin Dent Post sought to etch his name into the annals of history

as the greatest monarch the world had ever beheld. Thus spoke Mr. Gutzi, the chronicler of legends. One of the things that they did for version 50.13, the main branch, they backported portraits and fortress mode to it. So, awesome. Neat. See, I think I'm going to probably switch back to the main branch. ranch of Dwar Fortress, and before I play Adventure Mode again, I probably am going to wait

until they release it for the main release. I've got so many things I need to do in Metal Bent. You know, I've got to sweep the floors and clean the house and dig deeper. Dig deeper. Yeah, you do. Okay. Any other comments you guys have about the Adventure Mode drop before we move on? I would like to put a question into the room.

sure that is what is your favorite animal person type and what like race are you playing right now I'm playing a dwarf I have never played an animal person so I wouldn't know oh but I you know I'm I don't I've not played much adventure mode so but I think is ant-man a problem a option yeah I think an ant-man would be awesome I love ants can they talk though I Okay, am I mixing this up? We can use sign language. We can use pheromone language. I think there's even like and worker people.

Ooh. Well, I think I'd be want to be an aunt queen walking around, strutting my stuff. Ant queen. Yeah. Ant man form worker, soldier, drone, and queen casks. That's really, really cool. Yeah, that's what you need. Well, worker, oh, no, soldier would be.

I think Aunt Soldier would be the coolest. You know, you could use your pinchers to chop off. people's heads. Ouch. Yeah. Yeah. They're tiny, though. Just pointing that out.

And men are tiny? Well, yeah, they're tiny. Like, maximum is 20,000 cubic centimeters. Uh, uh, I don't understand that. What is that in, what is that in a cubic feet? Well, you know, answer small in real life. So that is true. Right.

But men are large in real life. So thank God. Answer small. A dwarf is, I believe, uh, 35,000 cubic. big. Oh, you know, two-thirds a height of a dwarf. That's fine. I've seen some chihuahuas that will rip your arm off. So, look, I mean, that's fine. Sorry, 60. A dwarf is 60. Okay, so one-third the size of a dwarf. That's still fine. What is a human? Depends on the human. That's, you know, that's, that's, that's probably what, how many cubic centimeters is a, is a human? That's probably going to be a better reference for me than a dwarf. 70. 70? Okay. So about once, about two seven.

the size of a, of a human. Did you really just say two-sevenths? That is an amazing fraction. Jeepers, jeepers. Well, 20,000 to 70,000. So, yeah, that's two-sevents. Oh, they're too small to actually carry some weapons. Yeah, if you got pinchers, though, I'll buy their legs off.

I don't know. That's true. That intrigues me. Ants intrigue me, so being an ant-man, a soldier ant-man would intrigue me. You can get as many followers as you. you want, so it should be possible to become a queen and have like 30 soldier ants behind you. Wow, you could really go nuts with this. If only you could find something to do while you're on the map because after a while

roaming across the desert would get old. What is this? Kenchi? What? I haven't played Kenchi. Should I pick it up? I mean, I've got it. I think of the Korean cabbage.

Kimchi. Kimchi, yeah, it's quite close. It's a different thing. But one is very delicious and the other feels like eating nails. Yeah, it's becoming an old joke, so I'll try to stop doing that. I mean, this isn't a Kenchi podcast, but I think it's very safe to say that, yes, you should pick that up. If you're like an E and you're in the niche of like a little bit of adventure mode, a little bit of fortress mode, but in like a futuristic sci-fi set, just pick it up. That's what I need.

Something else to take my hours. Something's got to do it. So, Tony, what's your preferred animal person type? And what are you running as when you're doing adventure mode? So I like to get the ones that can fly because sometimes those are fun. You can, well, you can fly. And that's kind of neat, I think. Yeah.

So I'll pick Raven Man or Crow Man or, you know, one of those types of things. Those are fun. I've enjoyed those. or the spider Spider-man when you can have multiple arms those are kind of cool and you get a bite

and sometimes the bite's venomous Oh nice Good choice Yeah I mean I'm gonna try to use Nature against the dwarves If I can Or elf

Just I just love elves You know what can I say I just want to play elves Like elves I'm kidding Okay Spiderman Spiderman

Spiderman It's like Neil Spiderman Yeah that's right It's Joe Spider-Man It's going to come fix the pipes Being Spider-Man in some kind of medieval setting What kind of suck

Because you can actually swing between skyscrapers We just hop from chimney to chimney Hmm Hmm Okay For a thought I guess Yeah Roland did you tell us

No you're an elephant man right Oh I like elephant man But The elephant man They're a little bit cheesy But I also like the seal men because I do remember once playing was it elephant seal

and then I just big seals yeah like the the big big elephant seal and they're like very slow but you can push people and they just kind of explode if you're large enough that was the elephant seal and a walrus are different right yeah they're different those are two different animals yes

okay right and saltwater crocodile man and you don't get any weapons you however do get to be a very competent biter that was fun i would think that the uh that the soldier aunt man would be a good bit of a good bit of a different size i think the crocodile saltwater crocodile man is way never underestimate the utility of biting someone's legs off never smile at a crocodile that is true Saltwater Crocodile Man is, oh my God, size, 435 cubic centimeters. Thousand, sorry. He's tiny.

No, no, no, no, no. 400 plus thousand cubic centimeters. He's way, way larger than a human. They're big. Holy crocodiles, Batman. So, yeah, this is like an eight-foot walking dinosaur person. I loved playing with them. And now it is explained by this maximum size why they're so dangerous to play. Wow. Well, how are you looking up the sizes of the animal people? Is that in one of

the files somewhere? Oh, I'm just checking on the wiki because, you know, there's the thing on the side and I scroll down and then it says size and then got it. Once again, it's been a while since I've said this, thank you, Dwar Fortress Wiki. You are awesome. Everyone who's contributed to it, awesome. A true lifesaver, yes. Yes. Yeah.

This game would be something completely different without it. Yep. Okay, so we're ready to move on? Yes, sounds good. We've got some more questions from our listeners, and I know that we've recently done a listener question-driven episode, but hey, you know, you keep asking, we'll keep answering. That's what we're here for. All right, so we've got four.

We'll see if we can get to all of them today. Definitely. So I'm going to start off with one from Brandcliffe via the Discord channel. If you're not in the Discord, why not? You can join from the menu in our website, DFR Roundtable.com. But anyway, Brankliff asks, what do you guys think it means to be good at Dwarf Fortress? Or is that even a reasonable thing to say? Are you having fun?

I think that is my measure of are you good at Dorf Fortress? Yeah, you know, I do think it's fair. We could measure it and like, are you able to set up a proper farm system? But in the end, it's hard to say whether or not you're good at it because you're not actually the one doing the work. It's your dwarfs doing the work. It's not like room world, you know? So, you know, I agree with Tony and this.

Are you having fun? And I think that is all it takes to be good. You know, while that sounds like a cop-out answer, it really isn't. Because until you actually get to some level of competency at Door Fortress, it's really not that much fun because it's work up to a point, at least in previous to version 50, it was work up to a point. And then once you got past that point, once you got over that hump, it became fun. And then, yeah, I think being good at,

Dwarf fortress is being able to explore the aspects of the game that you want to explore without being held back by your inability to know how the mechanics work. That is a good way of describing it. Well, well put. Yeah, I think you just keep building on it. And if you're still having fun with it, then you're good at it, you know? Like, can you, I don't know, can you do what you want to do? I mean, you know, for me, it took like, let's say six years, six years of playtime.

That's what it took me, but I think some people are faster, some are slower, but it's hard to measure such things because you can go online or on the wiki or whatever on the Reddit, I mean, and see people doing like these automated mine card shotguns and mega structures that are dwarven deities with magma mouth waterfalls. And it's like, what? And I'm just sitting here with my like 200-person fortress and cruising along and doing nothing. Well, I mean, there's a difference between being good and golf and being professional golfer good. Exactly, exactly. So it doesn't bother me that I've never really quite figured out mind carts. Someday, if I want to put my effort into doing that, I will. Right now, I'm fine with getting my.

Fortresses. You know, if your fortresses don't fail because of your own incompetence, then you should probably consider yourself good at it. Yeah, I guess if you can keep it going, I mean, but everything, it's like it doesn't matter. It's like you could be the best player in the world. And if one of your traders or your diplomat that's inside the fortress turns into a wear jackal, you're screwed. And that's that. I did qualify that by your own incompetence.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's an important. World record. There are people talking about speed running dwarf fortress, like how quick it gets, you can get to a million. But, yeah,

you'd have to go buy, like, maybe vanilla with no one. I don't know. That's pure luck. Honestly, if you, if you're measuring it at,

like, a fortress value, and you get an early artifact with, I don't know, platinum and gold and, like, two rubies, then,

uh, Kachink, that's it. You're done. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, be like, I want all of my,

my stones to be platinum ore. We need to have something like that. I've always been fascinated by doom speed runs. I suck at them, but I've always been fascinated at the people who do the speed runs and watching them do it. So I don't know if there's, I don't know if Dwarf can even lend itself to anything like that. I'm not in hurry.

Yeah, except for Fast Worf. Oh, I like Fast Wharf. The speed run. Okay. Well, it is a little tedious when you're just trying to dig something out and you're like, Oh, my God, come on. Just guys. Yeah, we're very different in that. I enjoy watching the slow digging out.

It's like hypnotic to me. I understand. I think we've answered that question, though. Yeah, I think we have. I was asking, Brancliff, do you feel like we've answered your question? Speak now or forever hold your piece? No, no. Bramcliffe gets a...

Should I say if he's on the Discord server right now? I think he's good with it. I really feel like he's happy with the answer that we've given. Well, now he has to be. So thanks, Brian Cliff, for asking the question, yeah. Yeah, no, it's good. Extra points for him in the channel. Attend now to the Chronicles inscribed by the venerable scribe Lucas,

who faithfully recorded the epic clash known as the onslaught of Searing. In the early spring of the 16th year, the malevolent forces of the curses of washing descended upon the strong standard of the castle of Stops, laying siege to the dwarven stronghold of Metalbent. In that dire hour, the stout-hearted dwarves stood resolute against the marauding goblin horde, waging a fierce and valiant defense. Triumph was theirs, yet it came at a grievous cost. King Ascendent Post, determined to exemplify true leadership, led his valiant squad, the celebrated canyons, into the heart of the fray.

But fate dealt a cruel blow, and the noble king was struck by a vile goblin's iron bolt. Carried from the battlefield, King Asin was born to the sanctuary of crafting, were the most skilled healers among the dwarves endeavored to mend his grievous wounds. For three arduous months, they fought to save their beloved king, but despite their tireless efforts, King Asin's reign of joy was cut tragically short after only six years. Thus ended the tale of a noble monarch, as recounted. by the great scribe Lucas. Lee Morgan, via email.

You two were commenting that the dwarfs sound like, and I was thinking of how I see Tom's dwarves as being very similar to Terry Pratchett's dwarfs in the Discworld series. Have any of you read Terry Pratchett? No, I've tried. I just haven't gotten into it. That is the same for me. I tried, but then I was sidetracked by other fantasy media. Lee continues on in the email saying that if you've never read the books,

the covers are always ridiculous, except at least the old versions. The stories are great. I don't know what the dwarves would sound like. You know, in my head, dwarves are Tolkienesque dwarves. Yeah, yeah. I think that is pretty. much the same for me. My dwarfs are also very

Tolkien-esque creatures. Who wrote the Shinar series? Hey, Siri. What's that? Hey, Siri. Who wrote the Shinar series? Terry Brooks.

Terry Brooks wrote the Shinar. Okay. Terry Brooks wrote Shinar. Did you guys hear? Yeah, we did. Perfect. Yeah, they didn't have dwarves in that book.

They had gnomes. So that was another way you could go with it. And they were evil. Yeah, I always think of them as the World of Warcraft is what I mind. So I've never played World of Warcraft. What's the once in my life? Why don't you go download it? No, just go get on with it.

Go play World of Warcraft. Don't get retail, though. Don't get the retail. No, get the, oh, do you like classic? Is that what you are? Oh, I don't like classic. Yeah. No, I'm not a classic person either. I played Warcraft and Warcraft two orcs and humans, but those were RTSS games.

Yeah, it's a different thing. It's a different thing. It's pretty cool. It's a good story, though, but the World of Warcraft is just like MMO and you can be like a random idiot in the world of Warcraft. You know, that's why it's called World of Warcraft. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So Lee, Sorry that we didn't get to expound on your question too much, but maybe we will check out Pratchett's work in the future. Yeah, but so thanks so much for, so what Lee's doing is listening to old episodes. So they are starting at the very beginning of the podcast. Courageous.

So, yeah, I sent a response back saying, those were some really rough episodes back then. so yeah very brave for the people who who are listening to the backlog it's it's a way I listen to a podcast though listen to a few current episodes and if I like them thank you for your sacrifice thanks so much for the question Lee and so he's going to hear this answer in like two years from now he or she it was never actually indicated in the email I'm not sure which but I wouldn't say this is bingeable content I'm just going to put that out no Well, I don't know. I don't agree at all.

Okay, okay, okay. So, yeah, I'm being very contrary to you today, Tony. No, you're good. You're good. This is not the podcast of the yes people, so. I listen to, I binge on Dorforker's talk, and that is much more dense than this. Okay. I've been called dense before, so I'll take it.

Okay, so Tony, you want to read Andreas's email? Andres P says, by email, regarding your prompt on misgenerators in episode 98, I have found that, well, not at all necessary, they are a true one-size-fits-all approach for door of unhappiness. So far, misgenerators have consistently increased the average mood of my forts. Well, it's not a must. The easy designs that are available make me highly recommend them. Cool. Yeah. What do you guys think?

Mist generators? Are we sold on this? I've done one misgenerator. It was pretty cool. It dropped down like 10 levels and it dumped into the main temple, the non-denominational temple that was in my fortress. And it came through the center of the ceiling in the room and dropped down onto grates and continued through to levels below. and it made the mist throughout the temple. And the dwarves just seemed to just eat it up.

They loved it. Hmm. I feel like I would make things damp and slippery. That's what I would think, but I'm not a dwarf. So, you know. Whatever. I mean, yeah, it probably does. But then again, you do live underground in like a large rock formation.

So I think there's always some dampness. Fair, fair. I have a misgenerator technically right now in my attack. It is one of the small ones, you know, the ones where you have a certain portion of water that just gets sucked up by pump stacks and then dropped into the next tile and then sucked up again. So it is the same water tile that indefinitely gets pumped around and generates mist on the level below it. It's a little bit cheaty, I guess, because, you know, but I didn't actually want to get the whole waterfall through hot. my fortress and like smush into my tavern and then ruin my fbs did like a small thing and i think because of the size of it i don't feel too much of an impact but i don't know somehow you have to

keep the snake people happy so i did they like that i know blind i r l's really big on uh on misgenerators yeah i've i've made them and i've felt that they've been useful yeah you know what i I think they would be easier to do if I learned how to do pump stacks properly. And that's probably something we're going to talk about in a little bit. I am, however, very curious whether or not these misgenerators do scale with size. So if I divert like a half a river and flood it down into my fortress to generate mist, does it actually generate more mist? Is there like a functional difference between a lot of water doing a lot of mist or my little flack of little water that just gets like pumped around? I have the feeling that it is a function of the amount of water that's flowing because my mist generator that flowed from higher up, it was being dumped in by a river.

this was in version 47 so but the you know the little puffy clouds of mist that will sometimes show up on the on the older version i've not done it with 50 yet there was always lots of misty looking smoky stuff that was around whenever i would do that i had i think it was a three by three grid of grates that the that the river was dumping onto in that temple so yeah it's pretty good sized wow i am you Yeah, I think it seems cool. Yeah, so you were bringing the river inside, basically? Yep, yep. I dug a trench from the river. I dug a canal along the top layer, and I dug a hole that just dropped straight down into my, into my temple about about 10 layers down. How's your FBS doing? I don't remember.

At that point, I usually was running somewhere around 30. 30 or 40 frames per second. Again, this was back whenever it was version 45 or 47. So frame rates were worse at that point, but I had learned to live with a fairly low frame rate. Yeah. What kind of a computer do you play it on? It's an old I-3, eighth-generation I-3, four-core. Wow, four cores.

Yep. Okay. I think eighth generation was the first generation. and the I-3's had four cores. So I'll say the Mac, under emulation, I've got an M3 Mac, under emulation, it runs great. You know, I can run full fortress of 100 plus dwarves with, you know, 60 FPS still.

It's pretty good. I can't imagine what the reel is going to, what native is going to be like. It's going to be insane. Did you ask that, Roland, because of the idea that a large waterfall with a lot of mist might hurt the frame rate? Kill it.

Yeah, that is the only thing that actually scares me about these, like, large misgenerator projects, not the actual working with water, but the potential that I now have to live with a massively decreased frame rate. No, no, I think that that will go into my list of things to add to the metal bent fortress that my king is going to ask for, because, yeah, metal bent is very stable. there's not really getting any threats from the outside. I've not seen any wear beasts. And the goblin sieges, I've no longer wait for them to come into the traps. I now send a squad out to dispatch them. And my squads don't even get scratch when they go out there. So, yeah, I think that maybe we'll add that to the list, Miss Generator.

Yeah, I'm going to start doing that too. My big, yeah, I get my things that I like to do. and then kind of add on it. But I think, yeah, misgenerator. I was doing it for a while, but I stopped. One note I'd like to add, Andreas speaks of the average mood of his forts. I actually have come up with a happiness index that is calculated such that you can take a look and see what the, it's in essence, the average happiness with a number on it in your fortress.

And also, it's got a standard deviation aspect to it. so you can see the happiness index and the standard deviation so yeah i want to take a look i might i might see if i can poke some of these folks who are who are good at modding because i think that would be a cool mod to have have that happiness index and the standard deviation be just a number that's up in the corner of the screen yep that sounds great yep i i'm right now i keep track of it on Excel. You keep track of the happiness via Excel? That's pretty neat.

Yeah, and there's a graph like so each year. Whenever I think of it, I write down the happiness index and the standard deviation so that I can kind of see how my fortresses happiness has changed over time. Damn, okay. Standard deviation is how far your data is spread out, the distance that you're, you know what, I'm not a statistician. I have it in my head what it is. I kind of understand it.

but I don't know that I can explain it very well. Tony, can you explain standard deviation? You know what? My kid was just doing statistics, and so I was helping with that, and I did a lot of Googling and kind of learned it, and it felt a bit like sorcery to me. So I don't think I really ever understood it. Yeah, it's, well, if you have a low standard deviation,

that means that most of your data is centered around, particular area of your data population a bell curve i think that like a certain percentage of your uh if you have a bell curve you have a certain percentage of your of your data lies within one standard deviation of your mean okay so well that that's anyway somebody all that is to say a lot of that crap is going to get cut out numbers and things numbers and things so all that is to say is that i would like to do a mod that has the number being played on the on the screen and be able to pull up a graph whenever you click it to show you what your historical uh happiness index was so yeah that's cool that's cool sounds it sounds really

good yeah i note it duly noted hark bliss to the lay sung by the bard emrob who wove the tale of the fortress of Medelbent. The castle of Stops mourned deeply for the loss of their cherished King Ascendent Post. Yet, in their sorrow, the people soon found a new leader to rise from their ranks. Tabol wheel channels emerged, a dwarf of remarkable prowess and spirit. Once a stalwart fortress guard, she commanded the squad known as the ochre justices. Tabol was renowned for her unyielding focus, an ironclad will, and a profound sense of empathy. She had fought bravely alongside King Aeson during the onslaught of searing, where the valiant king met his tragic end by a goblin's cruel bolt. Though Tobol II was wounded in that fateful battle, she recovered, bearing only a limp as a testament to her grievous injury.

A master bowyer and a skilled herbalist, Tobol wheel channels stood as a true champion of the people. The bard M. Robb proclaimed her ascension with these words, The king is dead. Long live the queen King Aeson is dead Long live queen to bull wheel channels Defonzo said on the Discord What would you like to be able to do

in adventure mode? So for example Become a king, changes Siv's cultural values Right a goblin ringmaster Drink an entire ocean Jesus So first of all Goblin Ringmaster

we're talking about the demon lord's is that the demon lord name is it called ringmasters you got me I don't know I think so I'm still thinking about the ocean thing I mean I was coming around to that because drinking one entire

I don't think a dwarf drinks one like one out of seven water per sippy sip so just drinking a puddle is going to be an interesting amount of work. But if you have 750,000, okay, no, adventure mode, so no way, that's, yeah.

Can you drink ocean water in adventure mode? I haven't tested. I don't think they can because it's salt water and a pretty short toty put that in that you can't drink salt water. Because I do remember my adventure as being very picky when it comes to water because I filled my drink, my flask from a puddle and so they were just licking the water instead of actually drinking it. Do remember that being a thing. Wow. All right. We're getting caught up in the minutiae though. We are getting caught up. What would you like to be able to do in

adventure mode? I would like to be able to have a goal given to me. Okay. Namely, I would like to be given a quest to go complete like go kill a dragon um and how it matter i mean i ran into people who were talking about there was a uh treasure that was missing and that maybe i could go get it but then i couldn't find anyone to tell me anything else about that treasure or where it might be located or who stole it so it's like okay yeah um yeah it's almost like they make it up i mean i would like for somehow a thread to be generated that can be followed. Yep, that would be neat.

I do think that there is a threat. It's just the problem that the dwarfs sometimes don't know that there might be a threat or who might know about the threat. For example, I mean... So, like, thread, a line of inquiry. That is just my Germanic accent. Okay, okay. I thought you said threat as in someone who is going to attack you.

I thought that's a thread, thread soft a D. But for example, if we look at other games that have like RPG elements, sometimes the NPCs know too much and they shouldn't actually be able to know that. For example, Skyrim, okay, the Golden Claw mission, you go there and somebody is like, hey, like a solid golden claw got stolen, I know exactly that the thieves are in like that drogger nonsense over there. like, when you know, why, I mean, okay, it's thieves and he's like a shopkeeper. He's not going to do anything but there's stick arms against a bunch of thieves. But then again, it's like, you know it's there and, huh. And I think the way that currently quests are being generated in Dwar Fortress is just that people tell you about like something happening in the world, but then they lack the necessary

information to actually give you the proper quest foundation because those dwarves will say, somebody stole my golden claw and I have no clue where he is, go find it. I'm very interested in

how quests are going to be approached and like future updates by TOTI because I do believe that he wants to redo them a little bit, like fine-tune them. And if that is just meaning that he's going to take some information out of the void and give to the player

whenever a quest is being offered, then that would already make it so much easier. Like, you tell me to kill a hydra, tell me where the hydra is. Or at least, you know, that you think it's in this mountain range over here.

Yeah, that would be enough already. But if you say, go kill a hydra, I have no clue where it lives. Yeah, I need to know where it is. Yeah, well, I am so puzzled about a few of these things because, like, they'll, I don't know how, I guess I'm, I guess when I'm thinking about it as a computer science problem, and I'm like, I don't know how he'd pull it off. I mean, seriously, like, I don't know how you, how you'd keep persistence of all of that, because I don't know, I don't know how he does it, but maybe, maybe he's thinking about this and he's got away.

well if it had access to the uh legends mode data you can know that some artifact was stolen by some other entity be it a hydra or a or a thief and and you know the owner of that artifact that was stolen can say my artifact was stolen i don't know by whom don't know yeah so that is something that i would want in adventure mode said i look forward to him solving this. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. For me, it's magic what he does.

It really is. Coming back to something explicit in the... Explicit? I don't think it's a correct word. That's right. Yeah? Okay. In the question is change as civilization's cultural value.

And I would so love that. If I could, for example, change, even if that is in Fortress mode, I would be fine with that being in Fortress mode. If I could tune a civilization, for example, this civilization all value martial prowess and make it like a very warlike culture. I would also love it if I could create gods, but I don't think that fits into adventure mode. And drinking one entire ocean is, I don't think that's possible because I think the water responds to fast back.

That is the problem here. I don't think it's... Oh, drink, yeah, you couldn't do it because it would just respond. I see what you're saying, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think you could probably try it, but it would be... It would have to be like some kind of freshwater lake, right? Because the ocean is salty.

That would be cool. Honestly, that would be very cool. It would be completely useless. But it would be pretty cool if you could drink a lake. make sure we get that in the feature request part of the well that's going to be just a drop right it would be cool if we could drink a lake yeah that'd be neat let's let's let's let's let's focus on that let's get let's get some effort put on that can I play as a fish person a person only in water

maybe this is a DFAC add on we could do stop spawning the oceans type become a fish person and build up a civilization on the bottom of the ocean or something. You brought up a good question. Is there a finite amount of water in the world? I don't think so, because for Brooks and stuff, the water does just kind of spawn at your map edge, no matter how much you dig it away or whatever, it just spawns more water.

Yeah. Yeah, well, then the game's ruined to me now. I only wanted to play the game if it had a complete and realistic weather cycle. I'm giving up on this game. Tony, you? What would you like to do in Adventure Mode? I would love to be able to play it without crashing to go five or more minutes where I could do stuff. That would be neat.

No, for me, what I want to do is like explore my own. Fortress and park there, like generate a, you know, a squid person or whatever, and then park them in the fort and then come back to the fort and be able to play that for it. That would be really fun, I think. Yeah, that might be doable now, perhaps, if you can keep it not crashed long enough. Yeah. I'm excited for that. Thank you, Alfonso.

Pumpstacks. You said something about pump stacks, Tony? I'm not doing great. I'm not having a good. I'm not, I've, I've watched the video, and I've made so many attempts at the doggone pump stacks, and I just keep crashing and burning. I do not know what I am doing wrong, but I don't know. I can't seem to get the things lined up, so I'm about to go back to basics. One of my big projects for today was building pump stack on one level and seeing how it works, and then trying to figure out how to do stacks.

I don't know. It's just not going great. Was it Rurik? Not going great. Rurik or Mike in the Discord channel posted an animated GIF on it. I don't know how helpful it was. I haven't tried to work against it, but maybe they both have. I know that Rurik is, you know, is exploring work in mind carts right now.

Yeah, it's tricky. Yeah, I mean, the pump stacks are like a whole thing, aren't they? Yep. They're the new archery. Yeah, he's got... Archery. I don't know about that. I think archery is the system failure, but the pump stacks are more like a player-based problem. Ah, gotcha. He's done, the DF hack has in the, what is it, QuickFort or whatever, has a really cool, like, thing that you can do.

Yeah, I wasn't able to get it working, though. To follow on. No, me neither. It's just not working, not working great for me at all. We're going to have Mike on here again to talk about QuickFort. And when we, when we have him held captive, we will, we will explore QuickFort Pump stacks a little bit. Yeah, maybe we can just have him walk us through it live. We need to get him on before we take our summer break. Oh, yeah, that's right. Which is a couple months for now.

We've got vacation coming up. Yeah. So. Vacation. Anybody got anything else that they want to bring up with for this episode of DF Roundtable? I think I'm good I bet something is going to come to mind as soon as we stop recording

We'll put it in the podcast topics channel And we will cover it next time I bet we've got more to talk about next time I think you will probably be correct You know it still amazes me that this many episodes in We still really don't have any trouble filling up an hour of conversation About Door Fortress It's a pretty cool game

It kind of makes me wonder Why I still can't get How Stacks working even though people have gone to the trouble of making really, really good comprehensive tutorials. And I'm still just digging deep holes. And, yeah, it's, you know, it was a long time before I could get a farm to work whenever I first started playing. So it's probably one of those things that once it clicks, it clicks. Yep.

It's going to be good. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. All right. All right. So that's it for this episode of Dwarfortress Roundtable. Thanks so much for tuning in. And we do encourage.

you to go to the website df roundtable.com and click the join the discord server link and join us for uh live somewhat live somewhat uh what's the word for it um the opposite of live asynchronous somewhat asynchronous conversation so but until next time this is dwarf fortress roundtable and good luck and dig deep right yeah adios see you next time i i wish for everyone to sent me all their harp seal men that you find and just to be clear. That doesn't mean you sent me a lot of harp seal men. I mean, send me all of your harp seal men. Thank you very much. This has been the Dwarf Fortress Roundtable podcast. You can find all our past episodes at DFroundtable.com. Stop by and leave a message or suggestion in the comments section for this episode.

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Thanks, Delphonseo.