Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 34: In Which We Return From Summer Holiday and Chat With Community Member Jack.

Episode Date: August 2, 2020

We are back after taking a break and are happy to introduce a new segment: Community Conversations. Our featured image was drawn by Kruggsmash (see link in show notes) for our guest Jack, and he generously shared the image with the community. Also, Roland wasn't able to make it today, so it's just Jonathan and Tony hosting this episode. Enjoy! Bay 12 Games Development NotesKruggsmashByron's Email Support Dwarf Fortress Roundtable on Patreon 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/ Black Vortex by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3442-black-vortexLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

We're burying nuggets in the virtual litter box of this show for us to scoop out later on when it gets edited. God, that was horrible. I'm really sorry. Yeah, and there's a good chance that that's going to remain in the podcast. Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for All Things Dwarfy. I'm Jonathan. And I'm Tony. Roland is hopefully going to make it here in a few minutes. He is AFK at the moment.

So we're back. It was a hot July. Everyone's just holding on and making it through, I suppose. Pandemonium. Pandemonium, pandemic. Is it a coincidence? Mysteries. Probably not.

Lots of mysteries. The roots of the words, yeah. Yeah, I've been playing less of everything these days, but, but I am starting to think more about my lack of experience playing. What do you call it there? The adventure mode. If you look at the header on the program itself, it is adventurer mode, but that's so hard to say. Does it say? Adventurer mode?

Wow. Yeah. No one calls it that, though. Adventurer mode. It's like that show that had the rural juror for a while. What was that 30 Rock when they talk about? about their TV show, Rural Jur. So I think it's the same sort of thing.

Adventureur mode. Adventureur mode, yeah. All right. And what else is going on? There was some problems with DFFD. They did a migration of Door Fortress File Depot. And apparently, as happens whenever you're changing providers and you have migrations, things went haywire and there were lots of outages and lots of fun stuff.

DNS jankiness. But it looks like it looks like it looks like. we're back in business here. Yeah, I haven't heard a whole lot about it since probably the beginning of July. There was another little hiccup, but I think we've all got it sorted out. And I think they've got a good tech team behind them. But also pretty exciting, the DF talks have come back. So that's kind of neat to hear that.

Yes, yes. I was, even whenever they were doing it regularly, and I should fly air quotes when I say regularly, regularly. that's like that's like adventurer mode regularly twice a year it seems pretty regular yeah that was it was regularly twice a year but uh but now we've had two and two months so we'll see if they have another one here in a in a couple weeks i hope so because you know as much as we enjoy talking about it we do it almost totally from the from the players point of view the player side. It is so great to be able to get into Todi's head like happens on a

on a DF talk. Yeah, those are cool. You know, I also think I really love the transparency. You know, like he's kind of in it to win it and share all this stuff. It's pretty cool. But I think he also kind of plays some of the stuff close to his vest, which I think is cool too, because then you don't get into the overpromise underdeliver category of software of development where people expect X and they get Y and then they're sad. So I kind of like so much of what he talks about is, well, you know, we have these grand plans

of pretty soon the dwarves will become sentient and take the computer over and play the game itself, you know, or whatever he does. But he, I feel like he keeps all that kind of in check and, you know, always talks about things really in the future. And then we just randomly end up with cool stuff in the next release. And you're like, oh, I didn't think that was coming. That's awesome. Yeah.

Well, this last episode was talking a whole lot about. about myth and magic and the and going over the procedurally generated universe creation, you know, their myth creation. That was just awesome. Oh, yeah, I got to, I got to do some catch up then. Sounds pretty neat. Yeah, myth and magic. So, yeah, that's what they was the big topic for this last one.

And it's really cool. There's like a procedurally generated creation myth generator. And it makes, it kind of reminds me of, I'm not sure how familiar you are with the Silmarillion from Tolkien's universe and the creation chapter that starts off the Silmarillion. But it kind of reminds me of that, but it talks about the origin story of the dwarves, the humans, and the dwarven afterlife and how they came to be placed in the world. And he spun up like three of these, and you can put little sliders on them for, you know,

like how violent you want the creation myth to be. Whoa, that's a little dark, but I wouldn't expect anything less, to be honest. It goes from, you know, standard dual fortress ultraviolence to carebearer's kind of stuff. Yeah, very, very interesting. And everyone get out there and listen to Dwar Fortress Talk episode 24 because it's great as, as usual. But it sounded like the creation myth generator is about 75% done, which we all know that the last quarter of any programming project takes about three quarters of the time. So it's probably

about two and a half, three years away, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And that's after the steam release. Yeah, exactly. It's steam release. I think it's January. Yeah, who knows. Yeah, he knows. We'll go. January, I'd be pleased. Yeah. Yeah. Congratulations, you survived 2020 gift. I had a point that I was going to make, and I can't remember what it was. So I had a fort going really well and then I flooded it, which I don't do very often. I was trying to be clever and irrigate a room like I had carved out of like this nice round chamber and I was going to turn that into a growing thing because I built this fortress up in the tundra and so like you can't grow anything up there.

I didn't and then there wasn't much. It was basically just ice, ice, ice, ice rock. Like there was no real dirt layer or not, not much of it that wasn't wet. And so, yeah, I was like, oh, I'll do this. So I punched down underneath the cavern layers and thought I'd have this clever thing. And yeah, I flooded the thing. So that was, sorry, dwarves of the frozen tundra. Their fortress flooded and then they fled to the surface.

And that was dead. Meet hypothermia. So is often the case with our intrepid dwarves. What are you going to do? yeah um yeah so how have your how of your run's been going do you have the chance to do anything exciting any any fun plays i remember now what my point was going to be um he confirmed in the dwarf fortress talk 24 episode that this coming up is going to be the and this is this is capitalized the big weight so which one when the what's the big weight the big weight is the big weight is

the myth and magic release? Yeah, I think he's said that before, hasn't he? He's teased us with that. Once Steam happens, I'm out for a while. Enjoy it. That's probably okay, I think, with Steam. I'll be really interested to see how those Steam releases go, because I know, you know, I mean, I wonder if he'll have to get more, like,

drop little updates or something. I think the problem with the little updates, when we had him on, it seemed to be anytime he changes one thing it's like the butterfly effect and so you you know if he adds one tiny thing it has such systemic impacts that then it breaks lots of other stuff and he has to go and do all sorts of sorts of sort and so maybe that won't work maybe it maybe it will truly remain a long wait but yeah so i'll be so curious to see how it looks on Steam. And also, I wonder if players are able to do easier mods,

I think once it hits Steam, that'll be super interesting to see. Because people go super creative on mods and stuff. Like, look at what happened to Rimworld. That's so awesome. Like the mod, the player ecosystem there is truly, like, it's great. Like, you can do anything there. So if that sort of framework opens up, that's going to be pretty neat, I think. Well, it's certainly going to open the game up

to some people who hadn't seen it before and will, well, you know, they'll see the opportunity for, for, uh, modification,

creativity. So that'd be cool. Yeah. So I think it'll open up. Well, we'll get some, some new fresh tile sets and such from people who were, uh,

who, who, you know, weren't part of the community before. Yeah. And I think, um, I'm hoping that it will become a little bit more inclusive because I've

showed this, I've showed the game to, We've talked about this before, but I recently showed it to somebody who I thought would be completely down with it in every way, shape, and form. Like, consumes the stories, loves hearing about it. Then I, you know, I did a little screen share, and he was like, what am I looking at here? Looks like I'm looking at the Matrix, you know? And I was like, no, this is actually, you know, and I think I loaded it up with, I don't know, a gem set or something that's not, you know, it's sort of ASCII hybrid almost. but then I put the, what is it, the Vettlinger setup, and he's like, okay, it's still, but it was, it was interesting because it's still, I think he was still just kind of like, it's weird, why are they flashing? What's a down arrow mean? You know, like there's all the things you kind of stop thinking about.

I think Phoebus is a nice tile set to show people, uh, Door Fortress for the first time on, because Bedlinger's, while, while beautiful, it is very detailed. And, uh, I, I, I think that the cartooniness of Phoebus, uh, is nice. I do wish Phoebus was a 32 by 32. I think it's a 16 by 16. And as such, when you zoom in, things get fairly blurry. I think I'm not sure how it works in the programming code, but I was playing with an AI model that will take a lower resolution file and upscale it without massive quality diminishment. Like it'll take a thumbnail of a photo and blow it up into the regular photo.

You know, if you look, if you pixel peep, it's kind of weird. I wonder if you could do that with those tile set gifts, and I don't know what sort of back-end programming I need. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is I think maybe we could scale it up. That could be fun. We'll see what I can do. That would be cool. That would be cool.

Yeah, because I have to say, if you try to do a vetlinger in anything less than a 4K monitor, it does look very dense. It's amazing. And what I love about it is like the color and the quality of the stone that he uses. I think that's really, really cool. And of course, shout out to Meph for the Spider-Man, you know, the brown recluse man that looks like Spider-Man. Anyway, I love it.

That made it in there. But yeah, I think the unified graphics under Steam are going to bring that whole new level to it where it looks more like a game that people could jump into. And then I guess also the interface, let's talk about that maybe. I personally feel like I've memorized how things work now, and so if it changes a lot, I'm going to be trying to relearn, but I guess that's okay. But I do think it's very, very confusing to new players to trying to figure out, especially the military and developing outfits for people. And I'm sure that there's something in the interface that I haven't done that means that they use their crossbows as bludgeon instead of as weapons.

You know, so I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Yeah, I'd love some de-obfuscation in that because that's a bit. And then the whole thing of like the assumption that you've got a number pad accessible, I think is probably an assumption that's less sound now. So if there could be less of the asterisk slash minus plus business, I think that would be pretty neat. I've gotten used to that, actually. So that one doesn't really bother me because I've,

I've also, I think it's probably got to do with the fact that my, my laptop doesn't have a, doesn't have a numpad. And in programming, whenever I want to use plus, I have to use the shift key. So it's, it's almost become second nature to me now. But, you know, that had to be built for muscle memory over, you know, a fairly decent amount of time. Yeah, exactly. Plus key with a shift key. I think if your goal is to rake in new players, it's going to have to be a little easier. So I think that's on the horizon.

But there's just so much density. Oh, I'm quite sure it is. Based on Zach's comments in one of the beginning of the month commentaries that he makes, based on that, they are definitely working on the user interface and the menu systems. Yeah, and I would say things like the. building the workshops and and doing all of that stuff. I mean, that's, that doesn't, that's not too complicated because like, B, build, you know, like, or D design, you know, D designate. Like, those things seem pretty straightforward. It's when you start getting into some of the

things like, you know, all the steps required to build pump stacks and the steps to, you know, it's like sometimes it ends up going just a little too down the rabbit hole. So, yeah, it does. But I think that you've got to get the basics, you know, dead simple before you worry about making the pump stack. It's more simplified. You know how to actually irrigate

ground before we drown. I'm still never made a pump stack. I've been in this for how many years and I've never felt the need to build a pump stack and it would probably be great. No, I haven't done it either. I would love to do that. Build those mine cart shotguns and all that.

I haven't done it yet. Yeah, I'm to the point where I can definitely sustain the fortress indefinitely. I think that I've solved, you know, barring the unforeseen circumstances like punching into the circus or whatever. But, you know, I do think that stress and stuff, definitely he's sorted that out in this release because I don't have tantrum spirals like I used to and the old one. So that's a neat. So you brought up the fact that.

So you brought up the fact that you have some of your people bashing people over the head with crossbows. That is a nice segue into something that I wanted to talk about here. We have a listener named Byron that sent us a very nice email that talked about a good way to set up your training for your Marks dwarves. and I would like to perform a dramatic reading of this email. It's a few paragraphs long, so... I'm excited. So sit back and listen in. To train Marx dwarves, you need two 11-by-11 rooms.

Designate one of them as a stockpile for bolts, no bins. In the other, you need three, three-by-10 hallways with an archery target at the end. Set the targets as ranges shooting in the... appropriate direction, then assign your Marks Dwarf squad to train at the ranges. Do not set up another training area for the squad. I think the further the distance to the target, the better they learn. I also use POWs as a lot of target practice. This works using fortifications, but sometimes gives them bad thoughts, but it's great skills training.

I found that Dwarves will use whatever combat skill they are best in, so if you train them in close quarters sparring, then they train as hammer dwarves, and we use the crossbow as a poor hammer. I train them at the targets until they are elite marks dwarves, and then assign them a room to train melee skills, so they're not useless if they get caught in the field. I use bone bolts for training, gives me something to do with all the bones. I don't want to keep them, but bonus tip, if you do, then channel out behind the target and the bolts that miss will fall in the channel and can be reclaimed. I've attached a picture showing a squad I put together just for this demo. They're a brand new squad and headed straight for the targets.

Hope this helps. I think what you do is you have a necromancer, crossboat Dorf, and then you do that, and then they kill things, and then raise them, and killed them again, and then raise them again, and then kill them again, and you could kind of infinitely train your necromancer marks doors like that. I mean, lots of unintended consequences, but. That's funny. I want to share this with the listeners, too. I didn't put this in the dramatic reading of the Marksworth tutorial. So I'm going to go over this. It says, and on an unrelated note, I just had the fort taken down by a wear panther. You see, it was a visitor in the temple when it turned, and it got beaten to death right away. But another visitor, who happened to know the secrets of life and death, thought it would be cool to bring it back.

Then I had an intelligent, undead, wear panther with super strength and magic powers. And that was the end of that chapter of Dwarven history. That'll do that. Thanks so much for the email, Byron. man that's the double-edged that's the double-edged sword there with the uh having having the necromancers around because we had a we had a I had a fork gone and everything was awesome we managed to take down the forgotten beast and then it again and it comes back you know 10,000 times more powerful and equally more aggressive yeah like come on what are you doing dude

Tony admitted in D.F. Talk 24 that the necromancers were broken, but I don't really recall the details, but they weren't broken in quite the way that I expected him to think that they were broken. It was something else than what we have seen. I thought I remembered seeing him say something like, yeah, I hadn't really meant them to turn up for a cup of tea in the tavern or whatever. Yeah, exactly. So that was interesting. But I do love that idea of them bringing books back from Ray. and then having all these things to read and just being like, golly, that's interesting. You know, like that happened in one of my forts. Basically, one guy grabbed the necromancer book and then learned about it. And then sat and started writing tons more books on it.

And then he would like go give the books to people and then pretty soon the whole fort. Basically, if you weren't a necromancer, you almost were certain to become one because he, because of what he did, this guy. That makes simplifies bedrooms, food, drink. You know, it definitely makes some things easier because they don't, they're not very needy. They, apparently, if Krugsmath's, a good model for your necromancer, they can be quite temperamental, though. Yeah, he seems to have found a really interesting character in his, in his guy. But that guy is such a great storyteller anyway.

You know, where does the game leave off and he pick up? I don't know, and that's even better. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's just, it's pretty cool the way that guy does it. And that is why, and that is why you get 100,000 subscribers. A lot of other people feel that way. The Adam brothers are great because they've been working on the game for over 10 years. I would get bored after working on something for just a week.

This is a community conversation. All craftsmanship is of the highest quality. It menaces with spikes of community. On the conversation is engraved a picture of our guests being praised by the community. The conversation relates to the interview in this podcast episode. We'd like to welcome Jack to the episode. Thank you for being on the show today, Jack. Thanks for having me.

So Jack contacted us. after he listened to the podcast for a couple months, right? Oh, I listened to the whole thing. I got into a little bit late, but all the way to start to finish. It was really good. Whoa, you binge listen to it? Man, I'm so sorry. I got a lot of transit time, so it's nice to be able to listen to something of a Dorf Fortress on my way to work.

Yeah, this is the most common trope in podcast, but I swear I have a lot of trouble listening to those early episodes. Not that they've improved that much. Well, I mean, I think that's with most things. You watch any TV show the first couple of seasons are a little bit poor compared to the rest of it, right? Yep, yep, yep. Try watching the first season of Star Trek Next Gen. Ooh.

It is very, very awkward. So how long have you been playing in Twor Fortress? How'd you get your start in the game, Jack? I think I've been playing for about four or so years now. I started playing a while back, and I just heard about it from a friend, and I picked it up and tried it. And the classic thing is I couldn't figure it out, and I put it away, never touched it again. So common.

You know, classic Dwar Fortress story. Absolutely. And then I went to, I was on YouTube, and I saw a Krug Smash video, and I started checking him out. He looked pretty interesting. I found out that what he's playing was this game that made no sense to me a couple years back. And I said, hey, I'll give it a try again. And that's where we are today. Yeah, I think it's so interesting to me, like, so many.

many people have that. You know, you hear about this game and you're like, this sounds amazing. I can't wait to try it. This is so rich. Or you've read an boat murdered, I guess, or whatever. And you're like, God, it's so amazing. And you get into it and you're like, what is happening here? I'm looking into the matrix. And it just doesn't. It's totally incomprehensible until you just sort of sit down with it and think about it. Yeah, it's just so interesting to hear another person with that same experience. Yeah, it definitely takes a lot of sitting. down and figuring out before you can really start to enjoy the game and make sense of it. But once you get there, it's definitely worth it.

It is. It is. It's the classic learning curve. You can't play guitar for the first two years that you pick it up. Then once you get it, you have trouble stopping playing anymore. I definitely have trouble stopping playing this game sometimes. It is one that will drag you past your bedtime and make you have only a couple hours sleep for work. think it's because it doesn't have any pausing spot there's no point where you can just say oh okay we're good for tonight we can just pause it and go to bed there's always something happening something more's gonna drag you just when you think you get out pull you back in again yep i agree unless you play adventure mode then then i mean you know power to you there's plenty of spaces to stop

power to you if you can make that one work because that is punishing in a fun way have you played much adventure mode jack i've dabbled in it a little bit uh just to mess around and see what it's like i wanted to see how the systems interacted with four mode and adventure mode um i did a little bit of modding to make it so my lizard character could breathe fire i messed around with that for a little bit um but not much adventure mode aside from that cool cool so you've done modding cool i know that i wouldn't really put myself in the modding category i just you know asked around and looked at the tags a little bit. I don't really know my way around the code, though.

So were you just able to put a fire breathing tag on your lizard man? Yeah, that's pretty much it. Well, actually, it had to affect all of the lizard person race that I was using. I think it was like monitor lizard people. So all of the monitor lizard people in that world could breathe fire. But I think I might have just been the only one, so I was safe. That sounds so cool. I wish it was that way in real life.

I don't know if you want fire breathing, monitor lizard people roaming the earth. That sounds a little bit scary to me. but yet so 20-20 this is the year for it I'm telling you that's true anything can happen so what's a crazy fortress story like what's

like if you're trying to draw your friends into this game what's the one that you go to and you're like guys or that was a non-gender specific use of the word guys by the way for listeners but what do you say like how do you how do you you know

I think I think the most memorable fort that I've had actually involves KrugSmash in a way because when I became a Patreon to him, he commissioned an art piece for me of that fort. And what happened was actually I have the picture somewhere. I could find it and post it later for you guys if you'd like. Yeah, yeah, if you don't mind us posted on the website. Yeah, for sure, I definitely will.

Yeah. But what happened was I had played Door Fortress for a little bit. I was still, this was after I learned about Krug Smash, obviously, and I learned to play a little bit, and I knew the ropes a little bit. And I wanted to mess around with bookmaking. So I wanted to make a paper industry and just have a fortress that was all just bookmaking. And that was the idea. At this point, I didn't really understand water too well, if anybody really understands water too well.

But my well was not secure. And I had a were beast to attack my fort. And that was like one of the first wear beasts I've ever had for myself. I've seen and watched YouTube videos and heard about them and read the wiki on them. But I never had one myself, so it was really exciting. And it was, I didn't really know how to deal with it too well, though. So I got some bites on some of my dwarves in the fortress that I didn't notice. And my well started to fill up too much when the snow defrosted, I guess.

And it all culminated into the well exploding and flooding my stockpile. And then the three were beasts all coming out at the same time for the next full moon. And just my entire fortress just started crumbling from there. okay so what do you remember what version you were playing like it was not this latest release from january right or was it no no no no no this was um it would have been i guess last year or the year before i'm not sure exactly what version though okay so i don't understand what the difference is between how i did things and how everyone else does things because that was my every fortress i had would get taken down by wear beasts one of our first started and you know other people say it was kind of rare i think Yeah, I think that's, I think that's an unlucky world gen is what I think that is. No, it happened in multiple world gen, so. You know what? I want to say you're right.

I never had an issue with too many of them, though. That was one of my, like I said, one of the first or second ones I've had myself. I haven't had any problems with them since, since 4704 or whatever we're on now. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't, I don't think I've run into a Were Beast, a single Ware Beast with this release. I've had a couple, but they've been. I don't know, more manageable

somehow. I don't know. I think it's not instant death. I can remember at least one of them coming to one of my forts in this most recent version and one of them coming and then almost immediately leaving. He had somewhere to be. Yeah, I guess so. He's a man on a mission.

Stopping by to say hello. What I ended up learning about We're obese and I guess this is an advantage of getting hit by them so often is that what you do is as soon as you, find it, you find it, you know, as soon as it shows up on the outskirts of your, of your map, you know, sequester everybody, lock the doors, and just give up whoever happens

to be left outside for dead. And it's not long before they just leave. So what I don't understand, and maybe I'm a dummy here, but I see, I've seen, I, my fortress design, first things I always try to do is build a wall and then I build a drawbridge because I had this time, And I want to say it was with a wear beast where it just bashed the door down. And then we were, you know, it was curtains for the fort. And I see, like, Krug Smash can have these, you know, fortresses with basically developing sentient life as far as I can tell in the game. And he's just using, like, regular doors.

And he's like, and I'll lock that door. And I'm like, how did you do this? So I'm, I'm puzzled by that. I call that the wear beast conundrum. I always err on the side of caution when it comes to doors and stuff. And I always just like to make sure I have traps and a drawbridge outside and to the cave. So nobody can get in without at least a drawbridge and a trap. Well, I do now after these guys let me know that my fortress security was lacking whenever I passed on our first group fortress.

What were you missing there? Just the straight staircase into the cave? Pretty much, yeah, it wasn't even a staircase. It was just cut into the, you know, into the wall. Yeah, there was a door, was there? Yeah, I think it was just open. You were like, it's cool. I mean, I'm assuming positive intent here.

Well, it was open up to the point where just behind the, uh, the, the, uh, the trade depot, there was a single wide door. I think there may have been two or three that were lockable. So, uh, but. But, yeah, the mushroom farm and the dog pen and all that stuff was up there. Pretty much open to the outside. I don't do it anymore. Maybe you're just staking your claim of the entire cave.

You didn't need a door because that's just connecting to the rest of your fortress. I'm sitting here trying to remember what the layout of it was. I don't remember that much because by the time I got it back after those two had gotten done with it, it was a radically different fortress. That's always fun to see. I tried one of those when I was like, you know what? I can see I've got a couple wear beasts in this fort, and you know what? I'm going to go with it, and I'm just going to let, you know, maybe this will be a wear beast fort.

Yeah, that's not so good. That's not a, I don't think that's a winning strategy. I think you could maybe play it out with vampires, as we've seen. But the whole wear beast thing was a little, that's not so good. Yeah, yeah. The first time I saw them, I didn't realize what they were. and they attacked, they fought with some people, and they left, and then the next full moon came around, and it was just a bloodbath.

And I also didn't realize the bit about burying and memorializing dead dwarves with slabs. So I had werebees and ghosts everywhere. It was a nasty bit. Oh, no. I forgot to mention the actual art. piece that Krugsmash drew was the the Ware Lama, what they were, coming through a hallway as the well was overflowing, so there's like water on the floor.

Oh, we've got to see that. Yeah, that's going to be the image for this episode, I think. If you can get it up. I'll just have to go through the messages on Patreon to find it, but for sure. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. It's been a while since we've had a really good picture for our episode.

I'm happy to provide some uh this picture then so what's your favorite part of the game what whenever you sit down to do a fortress what part do you look forward to the most i i guess i i really look forward to losing my favorite part of the game is when everything kind of just falls apart do you do you self sabotage or do you just let it happen naturally i try my best to to to play safe and you know i look out for my dwarves i i'm not a savage that lena leaves them to die but you know accidents happen you forget to link up a lever and you know whoopty do there's clowns everywhere uh yes i i yeah i had a a plan recently where i thought uh lava would be awesome or magma sorry sorry people magma below ground

um i that that wasn't and another that wasn't a very good strategy either they don't care about that um so that was a surprise i'm just i'm working on a volcano for right now and you said lava so that's what i'm thinking about and i was trying to figure out a way I could introduce lava into my trap hallway and try to use like, I don't know, some sort of lava trap to flood out my enemies. But I honestly just don't even want to risk it because I know that I'll just end up flooding everything. So I want to get a little bit situated first and then I'm going to dig it out.

So it's a little bit more devastating and horrible when everything goes to go horrible. You know, that reminds me a couple years ago, actually it's more than a couple years ago, but in an old episode of Dwar Fortress Talk, I know that Tony was talking about the and how they don't erupt, and how he said that that was absolutely in the road map is having the, the dwarf fortress, sorry, the volcanoes erupt, because what's the fun of having volcanoes if they never erupt? So I'm hoping that that is going to be coming up soon. If this volcano erupts, it would be the end for this for it, because my staircase down is right next to the magma tube. I hear fun in the cards I think this must have been happening

closer to the beginning of closer to the beginning of Honey Soker or the end of Monster Killer that area if you're looking for a specific update but I'm not sure that's really funny yeah whenever I point people to

to an episode or a series of of Crook Smash listen to if they're trying to, if they want to get into Door Fortress, I always point him to Honeystoker. That is such an excellent, excellent storyline. I think it really just shows the depth that you can get out of the game with the stories.

And, you know, just the gameplay, just, you know, it writes the stories themselves. And it's just crazy. The level of detail you can get over, just, you know, role-playing out just a little bit, but enough to make a full cohesive story. And he ties some of those things together, some of the kind of, like, loose ends,

he'll sort of tie together. That's probably why they did that. Of course. He does an excellent job. He is a master of the craft. Great storyteller. Yeah. Great storyteller.

Yeah. Super fun. Yeah. And I'm kind of digging the whole vibe of combining adventure with fort. It's pretty neat. Because I think the thing with adventure that's hard to grasp, when you first start, if you just like generate a world and you jump in and you head out, it feels a bit, daunting because none of really makes sense.

But if you've done a fort, you kind of get a sense of who the players are and what's happening. And maybe you've even done things like, well, he's done. You've shaped the world a little bit. So then you can go kind of explore and see what happens. Yeah. That's kind of cool. Yeah, because I always get a little overwhelmed in adventure mode. Sometimes I'm like, okay, well, this guy doesn't know anything.

He's telling me to go talk to an elf and he doesn't know where he is. Oh, okay. Everyone says the same thing. Come on, guys. Cool it together. I really want to perform what his original vision for Dwar Fortress was, which is create a fortress, let that fortress die in its natural death that it has, and then immediately start up an adventure mode game and explore the ruins of the fortress that just died.

It sounds so cool. I think it's kind of the forgotten gameplay loop almost of Dore Fortress, because that's like almost the intended. way to play but almost nobody plays it that way that's sure how he uh originally envisioned it at least uh according to his uh his uh interviews and such yeah i did that the first time i basically my first one of my first early fords died i was like oh maybe i'll go find that so i did it took me a while but i finally got back to my fort after like hundreds of deaths uh and then i got there and it was it was full of the clowns um and i was very surprised by that

because that's not why the four died. So I don't really understand what on earth happened or how that happened. That would be very surprising. Just had a party. Yeah. So suddenly that happened. And then I was immediately like, oh, okay, I'm never doing this again. That's obviously what happens.

But then I've come to realize I don't think that's normal. So it definitely does not sound normal. Was this the same world in which you discovered the circus and then quickly close down the, close down the fortress and I think you stopped using the world after that point. I just burn it down.

Oh, it's where I let him out onto the surface and I was like, whoopsie-doopsy. And then that I think is a world-ending thing, isn't it, if they get out onto the surface? I had a near miss with that a little while back where I didn't secure the tunnel

where I was mining some candy and some clowns got out and just by complete luck they were there was no exit to the the rest of my fort from where they came in and the drawbridge that I had didn't work because I just forgot to use the lever so I thought that I was screwed because I saw the screams I was like oh no the clowns are laughing they're coming up to have a have a fun time in my fortress and the draw bridge won't close I'm like oh no this is the end but they just I guess bugged out and

didn't walk to the door so my My dwarves just walked inside and I closed the door, and everything was fine. And they just hung out in the cave. So I didn't go into the caves anymore, but the fort was okay. Cool. Jack, is there anything that you had hoped to talk about whenever we came on that we haven't? I just really wanted to just talk about Tor Fortress Center. You guys probably play some forts on your own, but you guys have your succession or your bloodline fort as well.

How are things going with that? So the way it works is I started it, and this happened. last time to. I start the fortress. I take way too long before I pass it on because one thing leads to another and I'm, I'm slow. So then I pass it on to Roland and then he passes it on to Tony. And Tony, last time, the only time that he's had a year where the fortress basically did it in a week and then passed it back to me. So that's right, man. I'm looking at you. Yeah. So my second, my second shot with Lurid Whips, which was our first fortress. My second shot with it went much quicker.

And I think that was whenever I built the Dwar Fortress Roundtable logo on the floor. Oh, that was class act. Yeah, that was a class act. I'll do that again whenever I get this one. So, yeah, it looked pretty cool. But the answer to that is I have had a year with it. I got the fortress on a better start, I think, this year than I did the last time. Can we play these?

It's in Roland's hands right now, and we're not sure where he's at with it. I think we're in the one year of game time is one year of real life. So literally play one day each day. So it's a special documentary project we're doing. So what I'm planning on... Oh, that's okay. Go ahead. I was just going to say those successure bloodline boards do take a long time.

I've tried a couple myself and they never really end up going anywhere after the first couple of years. Yeah, I'm thinking that might be the case. Yeah. That's fair. I think it's a lot of coordination. Because, you know, it's, for me, sometimes Door Fortress, you know, fits and starts. Like, I'll play for a bunch of time.

And then it's like a couple weeks, three weeks, whatever. And I haven't touched it. And I'm like, oh, yeah, shit. Hey, I think I got it. I like doing that. I think I got it. Yeah. What do is we do a year.

We publish it on the, on the website. and we tell listeners that the during the game during the podcast that whoever grabs it plays a year and returns it to us first that will be the next year in the in the fortress and then we examine it look at it and then we post it again and then you know whoever is the first one to grab it play a year and send it back to us they'll be the person who gets talked about that next year it's a pretty good idea yeah all right and that takes all the work off of our shoulders when do we get to play yeah you guys don't get to play then come on man what do you do you're cutting us out of this no maybe every third year we inject some of our nonsense into it well that will always give us the option to uh to grab the fortress and and play a year of ourselves because you know it's it's our fort so so we can do that i think i like about the the bloodline concept is it's pretty cool to see the way other people are building their forts and the

way that they do things because I definitely feel like I can get in a rut how I do things where I'm like, right, okay, and I'm going to build a wall, and I'm going to build this, and I'm going to get my pen, and I'm going to have my farm going, and then I'm going to do this, and everything looks the same thing. And I'm like, oh, I've just built the exact same fortuit the last 10 times. Hmm. Interesting. What am I doing? Jack, have you done a bloodline with anybody? I've tried to do a couple of them. I did one briefly on one of the unofficial dwarf fortress community dwarf discords and it lasted I think I think we got to five years and there was seven of us so that didn't go too well aside from that I started one and sent a world off and it never got

back to me so yeah how those dwarves are doing now those poor dwarves lost somewhere in the hard drives of the world it's a shame just they'll never get to see the light a day but that's all right they wouldn't like it anyway yeah no probably not they'd probably die I'm sure they'd complain. There's a TV show I was watching, and it's about people that go and try to live and build forts in extreme conditions. Okay. It's called Alone.

So I guess it's Solo Mode Door Fortress, but these dudes get dropped off on Vancouver Island in Canada and have to not die, basically, and live as long as they can. And there's, like, a whole episode, and they're like, oh, my God, I hate the rain so much. I'm miserable and I was like oh yeah it does rain a lot here yeah I think particularly at the end at the end it was raining a lot no I was going to say at the very

end of Vancouver Island the one towards the ocean I think it's like exceedingly wet there in the rainy season oh yeah like the Tafino area is really brutal sometimes for rain yeah so Jack thanks for stopping by and chatting with us and thanks for having me we look forward to having more of these chats with with listeners and other folks who may just random people

that we bring on the podcast than people who don't listen it is always it is always nice to have fresh voices and fresh perspectives on the show I think that makes it more of a round table instead of a triangle table so that's awesome yeah yeah well thanks for having me I really appreciate it it's nice to talk about dwarf fortress you know it's a great game and uh yeah it's great to have you. Thanks a little deal, man. Thanks for coming and hang around to Discord. No problem. Thanks so much for letting us use that picture from Crookesmash for our show. I mean, I want people to see it. It's great. Thank you. Have a good one.

Hey, gang, this is Sean Roski calling. I'm a long time listener, actually. I'm surprised to learn I'm only one of possibly 14, 15 people. I think that number is very low and I think there are many more listening in So for the roguelike mode I found it much more interesting to generate these really old worlds because by that point you've had time to get necromancer experiments

as basically races in the world and it's done two things one in adventure mode I can play as those characters and they don't seem to suffer from the same hunger thirst issues. So that kind of takes some of the monotony out of it. And that was fun I saw. And two, when you're in a fortress, well, same kind of things apply. I had a fortress. The year was like 1800 or whatever. And, you know, everything was just necromancer creations by

that point in time. It was basically like nothing else existed really. A few elves existed, but mostly just necromancer experiments. And so the whole fort was basically, you know, broken one door of fishermen or whatever. And so that thought that was interesting. Like the older it gets, the less likely there is to be anything other than these undead experiments. So that's cheery.

So, yeah, you've been playing some adventure mode. and yeah i'm trying to figure out the you know the keys and how you do stuff and i've managed to do basic things like i made a party of a couple of yahoo's in a mount and went in and raided a tomb and got some armor and knocked over all the statues because that's what i like to do nothing's happened though i keep hoping i'll get cursed but it haven't so far found weapon traps set up my own little base built a couple of buildings and and that sort of thing and named it

and then it became part of the world so I wonder if I can settle there if I can build a fort there I don't know now I'm curious and I want to play a little bit more with that I was playing

and I had trouble finding anybody there was so I'm my character is walking around I'm looking for someone to interact with and so far I have found no one

so my last act was to go by a river that is outside of what I think is a town and he's just sitting there telling stories and shouting out for anyone to hear it's basically his performance art is telling stories and he's trying to gather people to him yeah

that's a good story I am I used to have problems getting people to join me on things so I made a guy that was a really good poet and then he would just go in and start performing and doing that sort of things. And then instead of joining me on adventures, it would join me to be joined me to entertain the world. And so basically I ended up just having a performance group that traveled around and people clapped for and stuff. So that was the thing I did. I'm like, oh, okay.

Now I've made it into a poetry scene. Brilliant. maybe i should maybe i should do a video video on uh on the adventure mode tutorial from the wiki yeah there's a few that are out there um but my personal feeling is sometimes with tutorials and this is what in my in my bucket list of tutorials that i plan to do in the future but haven't done yet um i would probably do one where it was just like i'm going to do this and this is what we're going to do and this is how it's going to happen and you hit you know g to get water and i to water skin from the river and you know just just instead of trying to go through every single

command on the interface and what it does i would just sort of like play it and figure it out that's kind of the way that i would i'm and i've approached this tutorial that may or may not happen well i think that you may that you may have misunderstood me i'm not actually going to create a tutorial the video is going to be a let's play of me following their tutorial I love it That is awesome I think you should totally do that And then you could keep doing it too

You can generate a new world and a new venture And it's going to be a totally different thing That's kind of cool I like it Yeah I don't think I've actually looked at the wiki tutorial I thought it was more just like push I for this Push C for this push D for this I didn't know if it was like here's what you should do Yeah I'm all for that

I mean it's so my takeaways are It seems like it has a ton of promise I am really struggling to find stuff stuff to do properly because I would go out and it'd be like, oh, the goblin over here, so-and-so wants their treasure back. So I found one goblin and I found and killed the goblin. And then I tried to loot all this stuff. And then I went back to the village and nobody cared.

And I was like, okay, well, you told me about this guy and I went out and dealt with it. And I'm back and I told you I did. And now you guys are being jerked. You know, it's like, I just hooked you up. And what do you got? So I don't know how much continuity of story there is yet. Like, I don't think it, I think that maybe at some point it will be in, and I hope if somebody's, they're like, that's not the way it works.

It does work. Then I would love to hear it. But right now, I don't think it's got that same quest continuity of story that something like World of Warcraft has where you go do a quest and then you come back and you talk to them and something happens. I think it's just like, here's the thing you could do if you wanted. We don't care if you do or don't. but you could

I feel maybe like that's more what it is but I don't really know we've also had a few a few of our listeners ask us to do a little bit more adventure mode

in particular there's a listener named wow you know sometimes I wonder if this is a last name or if it's a handle but I think it's Neweiman N-U-A-Y-M-A-N left a comment on the website

at DFroundtable.com is the website. You can go there to interact with us. But in any case, I will. Yeah. Yeah. So he wrote in, hey, haven't really been listening to every episode? But from reading the description of them, it looks like you guys don't talk about adventure mode. It would be awesome if you guys played and talked about it more.

Well, as it turns out, friend, we're that, that is, we are all on that path. That is the direction of Dwarfortress Roundtable. series 2.2. I'm all about the hybrid. So I want to build a cool fort and then go explore it or go explore things and figure out who these creatures are and then interact more with them. So I feel like it come full circle. Yeah.

I feel like there's an intention. Yeah. Like there's an intention that you could build something and then go first person and then hop out of first person and then come back. And so the last updates changes to Adventure Remote are pretty. unique um and i've been having some fun with that so right now it's like uh oh i thought i've another of my failed experiments in adventure mode where there was an necromancer tower and i was like i'm going to take this down and so i went up and then i've never died so fast

in adventure mode like the outs just all of a sudden this wave of undead just swept down and that was we weren't even able to run away and we were we were we were killed. So, uh, there, there's clearly stuff to do. Um, and, uh, you have to be very careful because it's dangerous. You're also able to do things that you don't realize you're doing if you're not careful. I don't know how many ducks my guy has killed. Why? And I didn't even realize that the, yeah, several times I would, I would look at the, uh, at the log of, of what I've been doing. And it would say like, you know, you kill the duck. Uh, a duck attacked you. You, you killed a duck. And I'm like, I don't see these ducks. Where are these ducks at?

No, some of the combat gore is insane. Like, um, you just want to stop that happen. You hit and the ear goes flying off in an arc. Oh, brutal. I actually really enjoy when Krug Smash does his things and he talks about her left teeth is smashed and her, you know, like he'll read it literally and it just cracks me up that he doesn't, you know, I find that to be absolutely hilarious. and I'm sure it's intentionally done and intentionally done to be funny and I enjoy it every time. Yeah, I'm going to be doing more adventurer mode.

I've just spun up a hot new world that's 1,000, 50 years old, and I've got my playable characters are Black Barb's hand or Bridge City Soldier or Coolers hand. So those are exciting options to have. I think I'm going to put my other project on the back burner and move toward a

adventure mode tutorial play-through for a let's-play. I might try to see if I can get a video up maybe every couple weeks. I'm not going to make it a regular thing. I've got so many things going on right now that don't want to add too much to my plate. Always good to keep your projects in scope.

that awesome like to thank jack for stopping by and and chatting with us today and if you would like to be on the podcast and do that sort of thing as well stop by dfroundtable.com and drop us a note in the comments of one of the shows or you can send us an email at urest at df roundtable.com that's probably the best way to get a hold of us is Urist at D.FRoundtable.com. That's UR-I-S.T at D-FRontable.com. I sound like a 1980s TV commercial. 19-95.

Yeah. Okay. So, great. Looks like for speaking for Roland, I'm Jonathan. And we hope you have a very wonderful day. And we'll catch you all next time. See you later. Bye.

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