Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 33: In Which We Discuss Suspended Jobs and Fortress Layout Evolution

Episode Date: June 28, 2020

Tony had to chase down a kea who had stolen his adamantine stepladder, so he wasn't able to make it to the studio today. But Jonathan and Roland have a good ole' time talking about dwarven interior decorating and keeping your dwarves working. See you in August! BLindiRL episode with ToadyNoClip Toady Interview Musical Attribution - Thanks so much to Kevin MacLeod for making his awesome music available to content creators! Skye Cuillin by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4371-skye-cuillin License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Folk Round by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3770-folk-round License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Support Dwarf Fortress Roundtable on Patreon

Honestly, it comes down to you if you can make a session in like a week, if that's enough time for you. Here's the sad truth. It won't change my workflow at all because typically I wait for a week to start doing it anyway. I apparently am motivated highly by deadlines. Welcome to Dwarfortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfie. I'm Jonathan. Hi, I'm Raymond. We are here today just being Roland, at least for the time being.

So how's it been, Roland? It's quite hot here, so I've been barricaded in my room for a while. Also, holidays are coming up, and holidays means dwarf fortress time. Cool, cool. I don't think that we get, I'm being pessimistic about like the steam release, I know, but I don't think that I get the steam release before my birthday. Let's see, it would be nice. I don't think so either.

Just hearing some of the interviews that Tarn gave over the last, that I've watched over the last week. Yeah, I think it's going to be maybe a little bit longer than we were kind of hoping. Things look nice, but it sounds like things are still quite always from being complete. Yeah, yeah, sadly. Yeah. So have you done any fortressing over the last couple weeks? I wasn't doing fortressing myself, but I was trying to get friends into a fortress. How'd that go?

I've noticed that I have a very distinct plan of fortress layouts in my head and I was really, really trying to not say anything about the layouts that they made because I wanted to let them their freedom so that they can come up with their own layouts so that their fortress doesn't look like my fortress if you get my drift. Right. Portriss layout is one of the creativity outlets that's indoor fortress. So, yeah. Then I wanted to show older fortresses of mine to them,

and I realized how much my own layout changed over the last, even just the last year, because I still have most of my fortresses there, most of my worlds intact, so they're all still in my computer and I can still load them up and all those layouts have changed so much. For example, there was one where I just had a volcano and I barreled down besides like next to the volcano itself and it looked horrible and it also wasn't. worked really horrible because my dwarfs had so much places to go and I only had one big stare at well or for example even like the simple thing of putting your tanner workshop next to your butcher workshop so that the like fresh hides don't have to go that far to get tanned You know, it's really simple, really.

But I did not know that, and I didn't do that. So my tanners workshops are like way, way, way, way down with the clothing stuff, because this is where my leather working is. I think that the biggest change for me for my fortress layouts, I have really started thinking more in three dimensions than I used to. When I first started playing, everything was laid out pretty much. on one level, and I would end up having my dwarves walk 20 steps to get from the Mason's workshop to the stone stockpile. And I didn't really realize that it was much closer,

that, you know, 20 Z levels down is the same in Dwar fortress as 20 steps on the same level. Yeah. So, yeah. So, you know, it's, you have so much more room to work with than you really think, which is another argument to embark with a three by three or a two by two to make things go faster because you can always go down. I did not know that

either, like with the sea level stuff and so on. And I did the put it all in one layer layout for like the longest time. And I've noticed that one of my fortresses

is very unique. It is very different from the things that I usually did. It just looks so, so different that when I loaded it up, I was confused on what the hell I was doing there. This fortress was actually the fortress that I played the longest. And I think... Is that the one where you were working for world domination? I mean, that's basically me playing the game. But, yeah, yeah, it was.

When we first started recording, you were working on a fortress that the idea was to make all other civilizations extinct and have, you know, basically kill all the elves, kill all the goblins, kill all the humans. Yeah, that was it. And for the reason, I lived on, like, a small island full of zombies. and what I wanted to do was basically make a shaft down to the hellscape and as soon as my military bodies are buff I would breach into the hellscape and then release the demons into the world and I took like a long, long, long time with that because I wanted to make sure that it works.

it is good my my military is now sufficient and strong enough and so on that layout changed so much just by me taking my sweet sweet time with it and it it is really noticeable and how much this very fortress influenced the others that i played after that it's cool it's really cool to see so what I'm basically trying to say is make sure to save your fortresses and maybe load them up. You don't have to play them. Just load them up and look into them because you will be surprised how much it probably changed. Yeah, yeah, I don't do that. I typically will just delete a previous version of Door Fortress whenever I download a new one.

And with that deletion goes all of my past fortresses. Yeah, I mean, I'm always saving the safe follower. Yeah, I should start doing that. All right, it really stinks when my dwarves won't wear boots, low boots or high boots. I can't figure out how to make them wear boots. it's really great when my dwarfs decide to go out from the rain during your siege get in the borough you nuggets so there's been my audio problem that i've been having for weeks with my uh with with my windows box

but i also just recently did a update on my intel i've got a uh, you know, Intel integrated graphics on my, on my machine. And I updated the drivers for the Intel graphics drivers. And it made it such that I can't run text will be text anymore. It puts these ugly green bars across my, across my screen.

And I have pretty much isolated it down to the Intel drivers that are causing it. And I can still play Vodalodora Fortress, but I can't play any of the, the sets or packs that do better with text will be text because any time I turn text will be text on, it fries my display, fries the window. So I'm kind of waiting for Intel to come out with an update to their drivers for that.

Happily for me, it's not just Dwar Fortress that's affected. I saw that there was Dwar Fortress is affected. There's a Doom court that was affected, not that Intel would update just for those things. But it also affects an Adobe program. I think it's called Adobe Producer. But anyway, it's an Adobe program. So if there's an Adobe program that people use for photo editing

or video editing that's affected by this bug, then it's going to end up getting fixed. So you have to wait for the bark fix itself. Yeah, I have actually tried playing, and I'm going through the different tile sets, which actually has been interesting in itself, but I'm going through the tile sets to find out which ones look the least bad

whether that text will be text. So that's been a challenge the last couple weeks for my Thorntress Play, at least on Windows. And I'm also having my own problems with playing it on Linux, too, with, it turns out that my new version of Ubuntu that I've got installed here,

2004, does not have Python 2 installed by default, and the lazy noob pack uses Python 2 to run. So actually today I tried to install Python 2. I did install it, but for whatever reason, I still didn't get it to work. I never had such extreme bugs in my game, but I currently have a little problem that sometimes there is just a space in between letters, which makes sense. it really hard to like read and sometimes the letters themselves are not there you can't see them but if I resize my screen then it's fine probably like what I just

resize my screen and it's gone I can read again it makes no sense The Adam's brothers are great because they made possibly the most intriguing and intricate game that I've ever encountered after decades and decades of living on this earth. All right, so let's move on to the DevNotes section. Dev Notes, it seems to be more of the same, and it probably will be for the foreseeable future because they're still working on the Steam release, they're still working on graphics stuff, and I don't really know that there's much else to say about it.

Tarn has been on several interviews lately that has been on various platforms, and in each of them, he has been talking about the Steamwork, And while everything seems to be progressing well, it also seems that they are a long way from a release. You had hoped for your birthday release, right? Yeah, it's definitely not happening. But, you know, usually I, whenever there is an update which involves, like, graphical stuff that is fairly easy to understand. and it's not like deaf notes oh yeah we we fixed cats being drunk and etc then i usually show to my

my parents or my friends and i'm absolutely amazed by it so all all my friends go like you know with it and go like ah yeah and um the the newest thing is water and water animation and i love it I really, really love it. Like the water flow in, especially in the brook that he uploaded, was so lovely. So lovely. It looks shallow. It looks nice. Okay, maybe you can't really see where the water's actually going to the right or to the left.

But it's coming there. That'll be fixed. He had comment on the interviews that I saw in more than one of them. He commented that he never thought that he never thought that he. You would have 16 frame animations going in Dwar Fortress, but there you go. Yeah, it's really amazing work. And I will definitely buy this Steam version, even though I could normally have it, you know, for free. But I would buy just to support them, even if I never played it.

But the things, the way things are going, I think that that's looking like it's going to be a prettier tile set. And part of me doesn't like that. Part of me doesn't want the steam release to become the tile set, because one of the great things about Dwarfurtress is that there's such a variety of the tile sets and the mods and stuff. So I hope that there's some way that alternate tile sets can get integrated into the Steam version. But in any case, yeah, it looks really nice, and I'm going to be probably playing it as my main version. Sorry, I was a little rambly there. No, no, it makes sense, but I can't, like, imagine this.

Okay, yes, it is a really, really good tile set, but I can't imagine that just because it is a really good tile set, suddenly we don't have anything else. Rather than that, I would actually believe that it, like, kicks the butt of, like, Vettlinger. and just makes him go crazy and he suddenly boosts out wonderful new

whatever texture packs and stuff so I would believe that if there is a chance that implementing tire sets into the game will become easier then we will have an upgrade in the whole graphic area like through the bank

Yeah, you may be right. Do that make sense? Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And while you were talking, I thought, you know, that you had a really good point. If the tools that are being developed to put the graphics set in the steam release become available to the modders, then the modders might end up having 16 frame animations in their tile sets as well. And if that happens, then some of these folks who, you know, I don't really consider MEP or May Day to be. any better or worse than like Betlinger or the Phoebus sets. They're all different.

They have different aesthetics. So, yeah, if we can have Betlinger get a hold of the tools that are being able to be used by the developers who are on the Steam version, that would be, yeah, a whole new boon to tile set development. And if it makes it easier to actually make the mods for whatever reason, then hopefully there will be a lot more people out there who have nice tile sets and, and, you know, are able to share them. I would be interested in doing that sort of thing.

I like this stuff. I'm no artist, though, and they would be, you know, mine would be the Johann Tuck's ugly set. I mean, I'm no artist either, but I would definitely want to create my own tire set at some point just because, you know, there is a possibility of me doing that. And even though if my dwarfs look like, I don't know,

like three boxes stacked on each other, like really, really, really bad. It doesn't matter, you know. I made something, and it's cool. Yep, yep, yep. The most important thing about Fortresskeeping is remembering to seal the ocean plug before fall. You guys are great. Let's move to community news. Actually, I think I'll start off this section by saying that we have had some, as people can hear already.

We have had some activity on our Dwar Fortress Roundtable bumper blurb line. We've had several people leave messages, and thank you so much for that. So if anyone wants to leave us a message, we're going to put blurbs inside the inside the show between segments and carrier rates may apply. People got a good laugh out of my computer voice that got inserted in saying that carrier rates will apply. We had a few comments about that. But if you want to give us a call and leave some message, it's 417-312-9453.

It is not toll-free. So if those sort of calls cost you money, especially if you live outside the United States, States, then be aware of that. We are, I am looking at a alternative method for leaving us a message using a button to be able to record it with your computer. And also, you know what, if you feel like we're recording a blurb on your computer and sending it to us, that's fine too. You can send it to erst at df roundtable.com.

You are IST at DFRoundable.com. You could probably send us a up to 3 meg or so MP3 file directly to that, or if it's, you know, hopefully won't be that much bigger because we're only looking for like 20-second sound bites. But anyway, you can send us a link and we can go to it that way too. so 417 312 9453 or erst at df roundtable.com. Other community news, there's been quite a few interviews as we touched on earlier for Tarn in the community lately.

He yesterday did a game dev days conversation, and you can find that. You know, if I can find that, I will post a link to it. it was on Twitch Also Blind RL Blendy RL

There was another podcast that had a Tarn on and also an interview that was done at game developer conference about a year ago was on NoClips

YouTube channel I'll put links to all of those in the show notes did you get a chance to watch any of those yes actually i watched the first one i think uh no clip and um i'm not sure how recently it was made but it was a year ago yeah i thought so that it was it was like a bit older

um but it was nice i still have to like watch the rest of them but uh yeah and i'll put a link back to our our episode where we interviewed them because those were really nice. And what I really like about ours and I think that more people should do is get Zach on there because he's an integral part of the game as well.

Yeah, also he's really funny. Oh, yes. His stories are amazing. I hate to hear on the game dev interview, Tarn revealed that that Zach had broken his ankle falling downstairs and it had to do with the crayon rewards.

And I was one of the people who rushed to get my request in for a crayon reward before when they announced that they were going to be stopping doing that. So I feel guilty now that I might have contributed to Zach's broken ankle. Sorry about that, Zach. Oh, no. See, one more thing. we had Alexei on our last episode talking about Rogue-like Celebration.

So yeah, Rogue-like celebration will be October 3rd and 4th. And I know that the call for papers that's closing for general speakers on the 30th of June. So that's just going to be a couple days after this has been released. So if you are someone who has anything to do with Rogelikes at all, to a Fortress in particular. I suspect that there are a lot of people who possibly program or have, or are into the, the Rogelike community in general who listen to this podcast.

Head over torogelike.club, and if you would like to submit a paper for giving a presentation, they are really looking forward to having people send in their ideas. It's going to be new this year. It's going to be all virtual. something a little bit different so they are wide open to all kinds of ideas for virtual content that our listeners might have in mind

so head on over to roguelike.club get your call for papers response in and give a presentation at roguelike celebration this year the most important thing about fortress keeping is experimentation and I will go on record saying that it was only last summer that I really put my effort in to master this game and strike the earth. Yes, so here's the deal. The last, recently I was playing, and I had my dwarves, you know, one of the first things that I do now is I will build a drawbridge to close off the main entrance of the fore.

is one of the first things for fortress security. And so I was building that drawbridge, and for some reason, and I don't know what the reason was, I still can't figure out why. They had plenty of materials, but they suspended the job like one tile from being done with building the bridge. So I looked on the dwarf fortress wiki, which is how I typically go for my documentation needs, and I couldn't find anywhere on how to get them to pick the job back up. Have you got any insight on that?

Okay. What you want is to click on the bridge if you have mouse control, so that on the right side of your screen is now the information about the bridge. So that would be the same as doing the queue, I think. Is that the same information that you get whenever you click on a workshop? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's the Q-key if you're using vanilla dwarf fortress. Go ahead.

Exactly. And so now it should say suspended, and all you have to do is basically click S, like small S, and it should unsuspend the bridge, but then some dwarf has to pick up the labor again and redo the whole process of getting the job going there. and building the bridge. But yeah, you just have to press S to unsuspend or to suspend a job for construction, especially. What will cause them to suspend the job?

There are so many things that could happen. I had like a lot of scared wolves when they, for example, if you are in a what's a called a savage biome and then sometimes you have like flying animal man or flying giant insects or something and some of those stuff is just scaring your dwarfs and that's it that there's really not much to it your dwarfs can get scared run away bridge get suspended or even if a dwarf is mingling around the area where you want to build. So if you want a bridge that raises itself and it's not just gone, you have to put a single tile of the bridge on land so it can like,

go on there. Do I make sense? Yes, yes, you do. And if a dwarf is like mingling, in that area and like the architect comes on and it's like oh yeah I can't build here and the guy's like I'm sorry I'm standing here you know you have to build around me and the architect goes like oh no I can't work I'm going to drink and then the bridge gets suspended um so or or even if you have like bigger projects and you're trying to build like a long long wall Sometimes a dwarf with a piece of rock goes through the construction while another dwarf is trying to construct, and then it gets suspended. It's so annoying, but it happens. So, yeah, you basically just have to click S, and then it probably gets finished.

Okay. Okay, well, I will try that. It seems like I might have, but. So if you click as, and the reason for the suspension is still active, then it's not going to restart the project, will it? Or will it? Well, it probably will restart the project until the point, until to the exact point where the dwarf cannot build further,

and then he will suspend again. So, for example, if there's still, like, guy on your bridge or an animal in your wall construction, then the dwarves get stone, gets to the construction side, sees that he can't work, and just leaves again. So, yeah, it's kind of weird, honestly. So the game I'm playing right now, I actually built a really big bridge, told them to build a really big bridge, told him to build a really big bridge. And I'm hoping that it will suspend the progress. I suspend the job while I'm sitting here looking at it.

And it looks like he's going to be successful, actually. Okay. So is there a way to find out why it was suspended? I have not, every time that I've had a job suspended, it just says the job was suspended and I never am able to find out what the reason was so I can try to fix it. Yeah, well, if it's some kind of military dispute or anything, like, dangerous really, you will either find it in the, like, what's it called, the attack lock, or the combat lock, I'm sorry,

or just the normal information when you press A, like alerts, then most of the time it just, it just says bridge got suspended but but it hints at why for sometimes it will say bridge got suspended construction side yes and that that can either mean there's somebody standing there something is in the way or the dwarf cannot reach his destination. Right, that can happen when you lock a door or pull up a drawbridge or turn on burrow. Exactly, but you can also, you know, try to build at a point where the dwarf used to be able to get you, but it's basically draw bridges or if you make like an elaborate mode system and then suddenly wonder,

Oh, no, I can't reach the other side of my moat. Yeah, you know. All right. That's going to wrap it up for this episode of Dwarfortress Roundtable. And one quick announcement, we are going to take a hiatus for the month of July. And we will be back at the beginning of August for another episode of Dwarfortress Round Table. We've decided to kind of take two breaks a year, one in the middle of summer and one in December. around the Christmas holidays and Hanukkah.

And so, yeah, I think we will take a couple weeks off. Does that sound good to you, Roland? I hope that as soon as we get back, we have something amazing to tell you guys. But we will see about that. Yeah, maybe that amazing thing will be that everybody in the world loves each other. there are no pandemic viruses flying around and everyone has decided to destroy all weapons

that would be cool except for swords, axes, maces, hammers, and anything that your dwarf needs to wipe out goblins. All right, all right. So, yeah, everybody will catch you next time and until then, have a good July. Bye. Bye, bye.

This has been Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfee. You can find all our past episodes at DFRoundable.com. Please stop by and leave a comment or suggestion in the comments section for this episode. While you're there, you can subscribe to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable or find us in the podcast service of your choice. Music for this episode is from filmmusic.io. Skykew Ellen and Folk Round are both. by Kevin McLeod. You can find more music from Kevin MacLeod at Incompetec.com. Please consider donating to the creators of Dwarfortress at Bay12games.com.

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