Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep 64: In Which We Find Roadmap Navigation and Baron Talk

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

We are back to talk a bit more about the roadmap release and barons in the fortress. Roadmap Post

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfy. Every couple weeks or so, your hosts gather to talk about our favorite game, Dwarf Fortress. So let's join your hosts, Roland. It's okay. It's not the first time. It's not going to be the last time. Tony. Yeah, and we can keep it tight, concise. and Jonathan. They are eating food just out of his reach

as they present insightful, irreverent, and often incorrect analysis. And always remember, losing is fun. Welcome back everybody to Dwarstress Roundtable. And it's been an exciting week in the community because we actually have had some movement in the development process of Dwarf fortress, which doesn't happen that often, right?

That is sadly very true. Visible movement. Well, I have a feeling. movement happens on a day-to-day, on a daily incremental basis, but usually the windows are boarded up and you can't see inside. And so I think they've taken down where the boys are going to be in here. So that's pretty neat. Yeah, yeah. So before we get into talking about the roadmap, let's talk a little bit about our fortresses.

And guys, for the first time ever, I have a barony. Hey, much. The baron is actually in one of my squads. Will the baron go out and fight? Yes. Yeah, he'll do anything. Actually, it's a she, so it's a baroness. Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, they're cool. Yeah, she will fight, but it has this very simple, quote-unquote, a downside that your baroness is acquiring fighting techniques and wearing armor, which makes her very hardy to accidents if they ever occur. I'm personally not the kind of person that has a lot of accidents happen to nobles in their fortress but I've heard that's a thing oh yeah you hate nobles no no not really I mean I roleplay with them but that usually also means that if there is a

noble that I really dislike then I kind of have to live with him but let's just say that if something happens And, you know, we see his life slowly spiraling downward. I'm not going to catch him. So what is the effect of a noble on your fortress? How is it different from, you know, your mayor or any other, I said noble, a baron or a king, royalty? Well, the, there's not really a difference. Like, the rest of your dwarfs will live just like they lived before.

baron is not like eating more or drinking more or whatever he's not they're not speeding up production or or happiness or anything really all that happens is you get one special dwarf that thinks they're hot shit and this one like a better room than anybody else um so it it is like the mayor but and a mausoleum yeah exactly and and on top of that You also get a lot of demands, which can be fun if they're like in your general direction what you're trying to achieve, but they're really annoying if, for example, they put specific materials in there. So they tell you, I want a lead bed.

And I'm like, how do you want that? How, how, how, what? I can't make lead beds. I can't help you, buddy. You're just going to be really sad and angry about this. but it's not going to happen ever. Yeah, I get that sometimes to the mandates. Like right now I'm looking at this one that we're streaming

and it says mandates from our baron here, Baroness, Jewel Terror. And she's banning export of traction benches. Now, never in my life have I thought that I would export a traction bench. So, like, how do you comply with this? Just simply not doing it? Yeah, you just don't sell any traction benches,

which is fine, you know, because traction benches are not a good, sport good because they're very heavy and what their the value is okayish their weight is just not good fair yeah so um but for example if you're trying to sell let's say crafts or or food or barrels you know food is in barrels and you sell the barrels as well and suddenly your mayor is like i don't want you to sell any barrels and you're like what the hell am I supposed to sell them? Huh?

Do you know how the economy actually works, buddy? Yeah, it's tricky. Nobody does. It's worse. That's true. Well, let's see. We've got a couple of barons in our fort here in this particular hard world that we've got. I guess what I want to know is, is there a downside to barons and kings other than having

to give them fancy accommodations and stuff like that? Yeah, kind of. It doesn't happen with basically having, in essence, three mares. Well, look, my, I've just, I don't know what you're supposed to do with them, but I've just accidentally sent my baron, the female, the one that said no traction benches. I've actually just sent her off to raid a necromancer tower. So, um, oh no. Oopsie doops.

That could make for an interesting legends mode later. Oops. But downsides? Well, that's what we're doing. Hmm. I'm not sure. Okay, I mean, sure, if you break one of those mandates or you don't fulfill it, somebody is going to get beaten, which is not ideal. Sure. So that might be a downside. And hey, Siege. That would happen with a mayor too, though, right? Yeah, yeah, it is basically the same. But now you don't have just one noble, but like three or more. Yeah. So a lot more people get beaten. But eh, whatever.

I'm pretty sure speaking of getting beaten in our fort we're streaming here A Vile Force of Darkness has just arrived after I've sent the most competent squad out for a raid at a Necrimencer Tower Plot twist Whoops Yeah it's probably the best to seal yourself in

Which I think seals the fate for that poor squad That's out right now Yeah Oh come on how many how many Goblins are attacking. Let's see. Oh, six so far. Yeah, that's fine.

That's fine. Let's just let this play out. I might just even have them in for some fun. You know, for everybody that is listening, something very similar happened to me in my Fortress Sinch Metal. You can check it out on Twitch. Yeah. Let's see.

This episode of Dural Fortress Roundtable is brought to you by Singe Metal. it's usually brought to us by Crook Smash doesn't he pay us a fortune to advertise for him No it's usually brought to us by our And Squarespace Oh sorry No not Squarespace Okay back on track people

Sorry All right we're just going to go fight these guys head on Look at them Look at these fools coming in here It's just a few You're going to be fine Although I think this is Ironhand The tile set

Or which one's the one that we're It's his iron hand isn't it This tile set we're using it's really good, isn't it? I really like this one. Look at those. Those goblins are really, really cool. Should we kill a squad? I've tried Vettlinger since he's updated. I want to try Vettlinger's

new one. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Is it in the lazy pack now? Because when it comes to doing it on by myself, I'm terrible with that. I don't think so. I don't, I'll have to check it out. All right, we're coming for a thacking here. I'm sending our

squads in, guys. See if we can manage this. So while our goblins and dwarves are fighting and dying on the stream, have either of you had any other fortress interesting items that have happened over the last couple weeks? I mean, sadly, I did not come around to actually play cinch metal because I was under the weather. But very sad. Yeah, I haven't played very much. Certainly not as much as I wish to be playing these days.

No, I haven't really done too much I had a fort with a king And I was really excited about it And then I screwed up and killed the king By accident with my drawbridge Oops And then I just couldn't face that world anymore So I retired it

I was just testing the drawbridge out I was just testing it That's all I was doing And the king just happened to be in the wrong place At the wrong time Oh boy And enough people saw it happen That you know

You know how that goes So here's what I'm curious about So I have this squad of 10 dwarves that I have asked to go do things, like kill the goblins. And so far one of them has come out. This guy right here, which seems to be flashing a well as a wrestler. So he's going to die. So let's sure we watch, you know, we can probably watch this guy go into battle by himself. And he was killed.

What is that flashing a well thing? I've seen that before. I don't know what that indicates. I think it's just probably a top like I think it's something that the tile set doesn't have a tile for he died pretty quick

yeah so everybody died really fast there and the others really aren't coming so it's interesting isn't it I don't know what I've done wrong my guys are kind of crappy oh well we've got lots of doors let's just keep throwing dors at him throwing dors at them just keep throwing

and, uh, oh, this guy says he's a competent Speerdorf. Congratulations. Hey, as long as you have, like, a surplus of armor and weapons lying around, you might actually kill those goblins with a lot of attrition. Well, it's going to be a lot of attrition for sure. How many people you got in your fortress? Well, I'm going to send the milker out, because if the milker can't do this, we've got 138, so I've got a lot of dwarves just hate down.

This is not an undead siege. This is not an undead siege. So if in an undead siege, that's like one undead versus a fort of 250, you're screwed. We're not doing great here. These are some pretty serious goblin archers. There's some pretty serious goblin archers. Wow, they're really kicking our butts. Now everybody's coming in.

Look at this. The whole troops coming out to beat the crap out of them. Look at the whole fort's coming out. They're looking around the corner, seeing what they're up against and then they're running away. Well, they've done it, I think. I think the siege is over. The siege is over, yeah. was it with great cost

which to which we'll never fully know you down to 120 now what did you start with 130 something I've got 139 so I don't think we lost too many I think we lost about 5 or 6 so we can take that that'll help the frame rate so thanks for as I say you're lives

20 to 30% attrition rate is perfectly acceptable in a in a siege it looks like they're pretty unhappy about what happened though I wonder why Yeah, they're not, oh, there's lots of stuff that seems to be causing them troubles. Oh, well, let, let's just let this play out. I'm going to do this as more of a laissez-f for it at this point in time.

You know, what are you going to do? Attention members and guests, Lucas invites all stoneworkers of the turquoise hall to come revel in the inspiration of the Crystal in Boulder. Lucas administers this grand guild hall for the improvement of the trade, and the betterment of iron-traded stoneworkers of the Turquoise Hall. So as we talked about in our quick episode last time, there was the release of the Dwarfortress Steam Roadmap on February 23rd. So let's talk about that a little bit more.

There are six items in it, and I will go ahead and just recite the first one. You can find this on the Steam Door Fortress page. You can find a link to it there. We'll also put a link in the show notes. So they want to finish the menus that haven't been upgraded yet. And those include the graphics and layout for justice, health, diplomacy, and hauling. These aren't small tasks. Each will take weeks.

They'll also be working with Jacob, the new artist, during this period on the sprites. They need to update throughout the project. cool so apparently they're still shuffling out some graphics huh yeah that had to have been a big hit on the dev cycle because i suspect i guess it was just a restart yeah i think it might have been you know if they were if they were busy using those other other graphics or they'd made a lot of progress who knows who knows was jacob involved in any tile sets before do we know that do i remember clino devs saying maybe yes or Do I misremember that? Shoot, I don't know.

I don't want to be misinformation here. If you're listening, let us know if, uh, if, if you know if Jacob was involved with any tile sets in the past, uh, if so, maybe there's something that we can take a look at and see what his past work was. I'm sure he's good at something. Yep. So they have the, the art stuff menus said that these will each take weeks. So it is what that is, right? Weeks, weeks is fine. Weeks are fine.

Weeks is good, month. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as I say, it would be awesome to have some hands-on experience with this before we get nuked. Yeah, by the time this comes out, who knows what... I mean, two weeks, man, yeah. Yay, 2020s. Do we need to start saving...

Do we need to start saving bottle caps? Bottle caps? No fallout players here. Aw. Oh, don't even, don't even talk about that. Oh, God. I got my stash. Never played Fallout.

It's fun. Came out. There was a period in my life where I did absolutely no gaming. And that was about from the late 90s through the, through the aughts. So, and that's, I think where Fallout really happened, right? Well, Fallout one was the, was the sort of tactical game where you did the, you know, What do you call it? What's the...

Roland, what's the genre called for that thing? Strategy? Like, it's not real-time strategy, turn-based strategy or whatever. I suppose. I've never played that. I only played, like, the less good versions. And New Vegas.

That's the one that... That was the one that really got me happy. I really enjoyed New Vegas. The other ones, Fallout 3, pretty cool, but I didn't get into it. But New Vegas, I thought was amazing. Fallout 4 didn't. Because the original fallout was turn-based, right?

Yeah, that's right. They were those, it was that isometric overhead turn-based strategy. No. Yeah. And I just kept getting wiped to the, you know, they just kept the wipe in the floor with me. But yeah, the other one was pretty neat. You know, decisions meant something. And the world was really immersive.

It was a really well-done game. I don't know if it holds up today. I took a break from like Diablo to Dwar Fortress. Didn't Door Fortress come out before Diablo? No, no, no. Diablo was pre-nated it just a little bit. Diablo was early 90s, or late 90s, right? Yeah. Mid, I think it's like 96.

It was 2000. Yeah. Boom. My heavens. My heavens. Okay. Moving on. Back to the roadmap.

Oh, yeah. I was going to say this, it sounds like the steam stuff. The steam integration is something that's, that's kind of seems like. a big thing to do as far as yeah the development work because I bet you there's like APIs and he'll have to hook these things in and how do you have door fortress communicate back with steam to tell it that you got the you know congratulations you've made your first animal soap that kind of stuff first castle bar yeah I've never really the only steam experience I have is with downloading games and playing them locally as if they weren't steam games

what is the steam achievements system and so i don't really have any experience with that is that like you know you've got a you've got a baron here's an achievement well it could be it could ultimately be anything um from ranging from oh yeah you embarked wow to breaching the caverns and slaughting your first drought or something the the question is just um how impossible it is for the development to like a link part A, like the in-game act to the Steam Achievement. I've never seen anything like, well, these are classic games too. Maybe that's the reason why I haven't seen anything like that.

But I've never seen anything like on SimCity 4. Congratulations, you've just had a monster to attack your city. Oh, so you get that in City Skylines if you play that game, which is kind of like I guess I would call it SimCity 5 Yeah you'll get stuff like Congratulations

Everyone hates you Like that's an achievement Like you can be the most hated mayor Or you know You can You know Congratulations on owning your first sports season Like they've got a whole bunch of those things

That are achievements that you can Move up and see I'm not very good with them Or for example One of the games that I personally really enjoy Is like a space age civilization simulator called Stolaris. And you get achievements like, oh, yeah, you created a new universe.

You wiped out every single sentient life form and replaced it with robots. Here, thumbs up, buddy. It's called Solaris. Stellaris, yeah. Techett says, achievement unlocked. You killed all seven of your dwarves with an aquifer. Quite. Oh, no.

It's one of the hidden achievements, yeah. Oh, there would be hilarious. I mean, it could be really, really funny, uh, for sure. So do these things get recorded in your, uh, in your Steam account? Like you go see your Steam Achievements? Yeah, I was just trying to see what I've done in my achievements, but I'm not, I mean, they're ultimately not really useful. Um, if you get like a rare achievement or something that is funny, you can put it on your profile, but ultimately it is, dopamine hits.

Yeah. Yeah, I like that. You know, it's, it's for achievement hunters. There's also card drops and badges and stuff like that. I don't even understand what that stuff is. I didn't even know I had them until I just looked right now. Oh, I've got badges. Great.

Candy Crush, dwarf fortress. Yeah, it's something like a game itself. Right. Yeah, it's a game that I haven't played. It's okay. It's neat that they're gamifying. I appreciate what they're doing, helping increase engagement. Let's see if I look at City's Skylines.

I was just trying to see if I can find out what I've done with it. I don't really know how to view my achievements. So I guess that tells you something. Yeah, there we go. It says, so for City Skylines, it says you've unlocked 14 out of 116 achievements. You can see it's obviously very important to me. But yeah, they're just stuff like naming a road. It's wintertime.

Change the churper to Winterluck. So it's just, you know, I think it's to kind of try to encourage you to try different things in the game. like this one, if you build a sauna. Okay. So I give the same kind of thing with, with Xbox. It's constantly telling me, you know, in Pinball Arcade, you've completed, you've got the high score on seven of nine tables from season one. And some of them, I feel like are these community added?

Like, here's one in Skylines. It's called the achievement is it's called Steve. And to get this one, you just name a road Steve. Yep. So congratulations to the Steve's out there. you can have an achievement yeah everything is possible and uh i will rebel i will put on a full revolution if there is not a single commitment where i said a sentient being on fire yeah this is not a job this is a threat so what form is your revolt going to take

ah not sure yet actually it's probably just going to be me being grunchy in front of my and, like, eating cookies while, uh, having my mouth full and, like, complaining to friends. So the worst kind. We'll give you an outlet here and, uh, you can, you can go off on the, on the, uh, listeners with your, with your, uh, revolt. Okay. So you were, you're talking about Stellaris. Stellaris is the game that you liked, right? They, they've gone in for the achievements as well.

Yeah. They've defined 130 of them. I've got zero of 124. Yeah, they have a lot of achievements in the game, but a lot of people, okay, this is like a bit off topic, but I'm just going to say this. In Solaris, there's like an Ironman mode, meaning you can't save, you can't reload anything, and you can't cheat, and only if you play it, quote, unquote, in a hardcore mode, you actually do get the achievements. Iron Man is a fully owned property of Marvel Comics Universe. I don't think we have an Iron Man mode in War Fortress because the entirety of War Fortress is already the Iron Man mode.

Yeah, exactly. It's on another level, for sure. Don't get too attached. That's where the roguelike stuff comes in. Yeah. Tour Fortress, don't get too attached. Losing us fun. Well, it turns out, I already owns Stalaris,

so I'm very excited to go check this out. if you're giving it a recommendation. Again, off topic, first of all, why the hell do you have it and you don't know? Do you not have Steam? Like, half the thing of having Steam is buying games that you never play. Like, that's the... Exactly. That's what Steve's all about, man.

I'm way too greedy to actually do that. Well, no, it's whenever they give you a game, it's like, okay, you can buy all 12 of the Ultima series for $3. Totally. I'm like, sure, I'll play Ultima 1 again. I'm never going to play Ultima 1 again. Yeah, I mean, that is not my kind of bread. I bought some games that I do not enjoy, but I still play them for like at least the price, you know. Roland, you play AAA games. I play Triple C games, right?

I don't, you know, the last AAA game that I played is, Stellaris. And other than that, I'm playing goddamn stuff like Deep Rock Galactic and Mac Warrior Online. That is literally garbage. Okay? Well, I'm going to download Stellaris right now. It's 15 gigs, so I feel like it's worth it.

While you're streaming? Is that a good idea? Yeah, it'll be a right. It's a perfect idea. Also, hit me up if you want to play together. It's going to be okay. Yeah, it's It looks awesome And it runs on Macs So that's pretty fun

Here's a game I'll never build Okay, well then If you guys are going to do that Then I've got to invite you all To one of our Doom sessions So Yay

On Sunday nights We'll occasionally Have a doom parties Me and a couple friends of mine Old school Doom Like as in I can play it on my Apple Watch Doom Yeah, okay

We do a We do a cooperative Cooperative Survival mode All right Right? So that's cool? Yeah, boy, many, many wasted hours playing that game. Oh, I'm still wasting my hours playing that.

That in an unreal tournament. Hey, hope everyone's moving back into mapping on Doom. So, oh, wait, are we? Wait, what's the podcast? We're talking about, uh, shoot, that's right. This is Star Wars. Triple A game. What did Doom Roundtable.

Talked to Doom Fortress Roundtable. Yeah, well, that's the, that's the thing. Oh, I can't wait for the PlayStation 5 version of Door Fortress. can you imagine oh god oh steam deck dwarf fortress how about it I think

I think it might not work very well because isn't that it needs a Linux version doesn't it I think Steam Deck runs Linux Well they're working on Linux version No I think all the stuff on Steam Deck runs is Linux No no it Well it does but

it's got the proton layer that So most Windows titles work on it Got it slick Yeah Well, I'm never a version 1 hardware guy, but when version 2 that thing comes out, I bet it's going to be awesome. Yeah, Steamback, and maybe Door Fortress will be on it by that point in time. That will be the reason I get a Steam deck is to play Door Fortress.

Hey, that's how I justified my last PC upgrade. It's like, well, we'll get more FBS. Hey, by the way, it would mean that you can actually have Dwar Fortress on the go when you don't own a laptop or have the whole like server thing going on that is like out there I'm not sure about that because I think it is Linux bound so what is that um it's like a remote you you play dwarf fortress as a remote game

yeah that I've played that a little bit um you can also play Door Fortress over SSH if you're I have done that Yeah. If you've got, you know, if you just want to be that guy, you can do it. I think it was Teked who, uh, who inspired me to do that. Oh, he'll, he's an enabler, that guy. Very much vanilla.

He's an enabler. Very much vanilla. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so our, our doors made it back from, uh, nourished punches, which sounds delicious. And one of our listeners. Oh, go ahead. Oh, go ahead.

No, I would like to hear about one of our listeners. One of our listeners, Techid. Oh. So that Proton should handle a Door Fortress flawlessly, and you can't imagine any plug-ins or anything like that blocking it. But that's not the concern for me so much, is how many keys on your keyboard do you need to use to play Door Fortress? And Steam Deck is going to have, you know,

PlayStation slash Nintendo slash Xbox type controllers. Yeah, I think the same reason World of Warcraft never came to consoles. There's just too many keys and buttons. Yeah. I mean, you're going to be able to use an external keyboard with it, sure, but that's You know, nobody wants to have a Nintendo Switch with a Steam deck

A hundred and one key keyboard attached to it Yeah, where is my World of Warcraft On the Nintendo Switch, huh? Well, exactly, that would be pretty neat. Terrible. Yet, yet, I don't think we'll see it. Hold on, that's, uh... Oh, wow!

Oh, sorry, that was a little bit too excited. He's like, I've just found this game. It's online, and it's with dwarves, and oh my God, it's open war, World? You should check it out, man. It's a new one. But, yeah, we haven't, I don't know that we've met since Microsoft has bought Activision Blizzard. They did, yeah, so now it's a Microsoft game. It's awesome. I'm so, I'm so excited for, for what that means, because I think it's going to be great for, kill World of Warcraft

finally. I don't know. I think they'll make it better. Like, I don't know. I feel pretty good about my company. I'm actually hopeful for it by shutting off the server, finally. Let the old man die in peace. And that comes from me, okay? I'm a hardcore World of Warcraft nerd. I literally have a World of Warcraft tattoo. I don't know. I feel like...

What I want to do is to support the old servers. There's a lot of really good stuff they could still do with it. And I just feel like, from what I heard about the way it was to work there during the old regime, it sounds like it was a pretty unpleasant place to be. And so, you know, I think Microsoft's not that. It's a better place to work from what I hear and read in the news. So I'm hoping that it's like if you give people a better work environment and, you know, and kind of let them get to it, everything's going to get better. So anyway, that's what I think.

I feel like there's more hope in it now. The way that Blizzard had turned, yeah. Yeah, it didn't sound like it was a good place to work. Like if basically, if women are getting sexually harassed daily is what it sounded like from some of the news stories. Like that's not a fun place to have anybody work because. you know, it just must be awful. So I'm, and I know Microsoft's not that. So, you know, it's like, it's amazing.

I think it'll have a, I think it'll be a good turnaround story. In corporate atmosphere, the two companies were heading in opposite directions. Microsoft was bad guys pretty much in the early 2000, which there's still a giant megacorp. I'm not saying that they're, no, I get what you're saying. It's interesting to see corporate turnarounds, isn't it? Because, you know, like Apple, nobody cared about Apple in the 90s. You know, like a few people had, you know, $12,000 Macs or whatever, and, you know, it wasn't awesome. But then they...

I really wanted a Mac in the 90s. I kind of did, but it was like, you know, well, you could have a Mac or you could, you know, eat for a couple months. Like, well, I guess eating went one, that one. But then they came, you know, then they flipped it, you know, and they still keep flipping it. So, yeah, and I think Microsoft during the Vista era, maybe not as awesome. But, you know, I feel like they've learned and pulled it together. So, for having such an important Dwar Fortress news item in front of this, this has really been off topic. We've gotten, we've really covered some important things today.

Yeah. And some Dwarfurtress as well. Let's see, let's take. And some door fortress. Well, we have. We have. Attention members and guests. Guildhall manager Euris J. Jennings invites engravers of the ochre company to come join the fellowship of the Guildhall, the Silvery Mines. Lectures, demonstrations.

and socialization are carved in stone at the Silvery Mines, Iron Traded's most detailed Guildhall. Do you have a feel for whether the Steam Workshop needs to adhere to some particular API? How does that work with other games, the Steam Workshop? I can mostly speak about those games where I actually use the Workshop, which is mostly just Skyrim. And you get absolutely everything from a mod that adds 15 pornographic books into the game to new models for every single race. Pornographic models? Yes, actually. Like, the amount of nudity and straight-up pornography is quite high.

But if you want to go like the extra mile and go beyond the red line, it's not on Steam anymore. So you have to go to like Nexus mods or whatever. You haven't heard that from me, but, you know, just keeping that in mind. At some point, I... Should that be cut too? I feel like... No, no, no, you can let that in.

It's okay. At some point, I feel like Steam cleaned it up a little bit. So they removed a lot of the mods and then the mods that remained were actually very high-quality mods. So you can just click on a single button and it downloads a mod and it installs for you and suddenly your entire game is like in modern 16K graphics with like moving grass and at like really high polygon models and it looks crisp as hell. And all you have to do is literally click a single button while in other games it just changes like the color of paper or something who knows man well i went out to the steam developer site while we're talking here because

i was curious and they have a huge library of documentation on how to do all this and you know so they've got videos from when it was launched talking about embracing user generated content and then and then talking about building your game with user generated content in mind and i think you know this is from 2014 i just feel like tarn already had that in his mind in a way because I feel like the community and Door Fortress already is kind of like natively thinking about mods and how to have that kind of freedom to go in and change the game. So I think he's already bought in, which seems to be one of the big things that they're trying to talk about here is like, you really do want to do this.

And I think he's just like, awesome, bring it on. So I think that's really cool. And then it's got a whole lot of documentation on how to integrate it. And I'll be it deeper than I can go because it's more. developer focused, and I'm not a developer. But it looks like it's very, looks like there's plenty of support. So I feel like when he gets to this part, there will be a lot of documentation, and I'm sure people who would be one. So things like him having the Raws that allow you to edit game attributes and keeping the art in its own directory so that you can have the tile sets, things like that

might make it easier to put things, make things available for Steam Workshop for, for, for community mods. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, but yeah, I bet you it'll make it easier. I guess we'll see. Hopefully, hopefully he doesn't, like, there's whatever happens. Like, I don't want him to feel like stuck or anything. Just, you know, do your best, dude. It's always great.

You know, that's kind of my philosophy with our door fortress. Honestly, even if it just boils down to the workshop, it becomes just used for tire sets, you know, you click on an item. then it starts the tile set and you can you have maybe like a small menu where you can change the tire sets i would be absolutely okay with that that's that is already like everything in the workshop that i would personally look for and if you have like small raw changes like making the goblin smaller or uh making the elves not sentient anymore so you can eat them uh yeah that's that's also cool you know but if it just boils down to slight graphic changes

Sure, I'm on board with everything. Our fortress was just, we did this raid just now, and Tekud Standard Plates was involved in this. The Serpent Woman. So there we go. The Serpent Woman? Yeah, there's a Serpent Woman. It says in early autumn 1042,

The Serpent Woman, Pale Corpse, Teckad, Standard Plates, left arm, was torn off by the Dorf Mathol Slip Treaties. that is pretty cool. Did you get your bear on back? That's a great question. Hard to say at this point, but somebody got killed because the purple text is the, uh-oh, but yeah, how do you guys read the mission report? So white text is kind of like, okay, yellow text is bad, but purple text is death, and what is the cyan text? Like, how do you decode the text? I think that's happened good for your people the cyan is good stuff yeah okay and the yellow is so-so i think that the yellow is is like incidental maybe that's what the white is i'm not sure the yellow it says in early autumn

1042 the elf plague thrall lida bridge thunders surprised the dwarf seagin cobalt grasp that doesn't sound good so that looks like where they've ambushed you oh okay so yellow is bad but teal er cyan is good and white is okay Good. Well, it didn't go great, but it didn't go badly. One person died. Let's hope it wasn't the baron. It looks like it was Reg Fence Spirals. Yeah. RIP. I'm glad that nobody got kidnapped. Have you guys had that bug where you send squads out to ambush and then they just never come back? Once, yeah. But apparently I was just stupid because one of the dogs that I had assigned to one of the soldiers was still in a page, and you also have to make sure that you send all the animals with them, because otherwise

it will not even start traveling. So one comment they made in the roadmap release that is intriguing as well as a little scary is that the path ahead is now shorter than the path behind, which if that's only a few feet shorter than the path behind, then that means that it could be, let's see, 2019, early 2019. was when the release was announced. So another four years. Cool. Yeah, great.

Awesome. So, yeah, I'm hoping that there's an early release kind of thing going on. Yeah, man, I do too. I take it made the point that early releases can end up being the release if the developers aren't careful, especially if the release does pretty well, then the other parts might not get added. But somehow, I don't think that's his style. consider toady to be a typical developer he's not going to rug pull us you know like as of all of the people

like he's not talking about especially considering the classic version he's committed to always being out there and being free and it has the adventure mode i think if he was out there like pumping his nftes on twitter or something i'd be more skeptical but it's not that's not this guy every dwarf in every game in every installation don't say it's it's a polarizing thing right now for sure. They have a UID, okay? Yeah, it's, it's, it is, it is, it is, it is what it is, it's a technology and I think it's being misused right now.

But, um, anywho, um, yeah, he's, he's not that. So, yeah, like, I totally hear you don't want to get, no, we've got somebody interrupted by a forgotten beast. That feels like something we should probably do you with. Nah, it's fine. Here it is. Well, how is this forgotten beast interrupt? Honestly, this down in.

The seven layer deep water doing absolutely nothing. Come on. How is anybody worried about this? What is it, though? What is it? Let's have us a look at this. Let's have us to look. It's an uninvited guest, that's for sure.

I like how it says that. That always makes me laugh. Uninvited guests. Oh, welcome. Oh, we didn't. It's a giant skinless seratopsid. It has branching antenna and it undulates rhythmically. Its eyes glow charitruis.

Beware it's dead. blood. So I don't know what a seratops it is. It's a seratops. It's a dinosaur. Okay. It's the one that has like, it looks like a goddamn curve and has like a little spikes on the back.

Oh, yeah, as in the tri-seratops, right? As in, you know, it presumably has a one horn if it's a seratops and if it had three, it would be a triceratops. There's a logic to that. Well, it sucks. Well, it sucks. I have an estimated picture of it.

It just has a horn. Yeah, I mean, I can just close my eyes and imagine it's a triceratops with one horn. Well, like a rhinoceros? Yeah, like a universe. No, no, no. The difference here is the triceratops is a specific species while as serotops it is the entire family. So it could be a triceratops if you wanted to. What else do we want to say about the roadmap?

Let me pull it back up here. Well, oh, interesting, he comments that he doesn't think that adventure mode is going to be any real big deal, which surprises the heck out of me. Who says this? Tony, this is the quote. Adventure mode is straightforward in its way. I don't expect it will have many real development gotchas, but it does have dozens of menus, some of them quite complex. Yeah, maybe the real hard part is the Fort, Fortress mode. And that, I think maybe that drives a lot of the logic of.

the game in adventure mode because you're basically just playing around a lot of fortress modes well if my vote counted i would say release it with fortress and legends mode so that we can actually get our hands on it and play it it's been since you know early 2019 i would say yeah i would do the same money before we're newked yeah it's like just you know they they did it because they were trying to raise money which is totally a great thing to do and i would love to give them money you know like i know i i donate but i would love it if I actually do give them money I don't have to be 12 games

But it would be nice to open up that door to You know it would just be really cool And I think Yes I have my crayon drawing of a dwarf Taking a draft from a tapped keg It's really nice Beautiful Yeah it's framed it on my wall

I'm looking at it now That's beautiful Yep yep Yeah I never managed to request that Okay guys we're good we'll have to see how this list gets updated in the upcoming weeks so maybe we'll see it eventually maybe maybe uh i let's do a time check no i keep saying that but i really can't wait this is going to be great and that rind and now the rhyme is over i agree i'm i'm just excited

to play it but i would be fine with no adventure mode in the steam release and adventure mode and the original whatever works for him best just give me the goddamn game please

yeah exactly we're cool let's just do this let's do this this this this episode is brought to you

in part by Brandon Wright creator of Ravadeb Archietz a sandpairwood splint all crafts dwarf ship is of the highest quality it is encrusted

with cushion cut red turmalins and decorated with wild boar bone. This object menaces with spikes of sand pear wood, larch, turkey bone, and nickel. On the splint is an image of dwarves in Larch. The dwarves are traveling. The artwork relates to the foundation of iron-traded

by the acts of subtleties of the ageless cave in the early spring of the year 17. We had planned to answer this looming user question that has been being postponed for now three episodes and we'll do our best to get to it next episode. Or we can just ask

it. We swear. I feel bad. Is it the Calvin C. email? It is the Calvin C. email. Okay. Oh, look, some migrants have arrived. Isn't that lovely for us? A bunch of idiots. There's a couple

questions here. One is from Alexander. Do any of you think the Dwarven economy will be re-implemented in the future? And if so, what kind of changes would you like to see added to make it work? The Coinbase, you know, I guess they call it fiat currency. No, fiat's where it's based on just paper money and no real money. I guess money is just money. And then there's cryptocurrency, which is unbacked money.

Other stuff. Yeah. So, well, what I'm trying to say is. is the coins release predated my playing of Door Fortress, so I don't know anything about what it was like then. Which coin? Whatever they had coins and tried to actually have an economy based on money. Yeah, instead of trade goods.

Right. With the, yeah, you can mint coins, but coins don't mean anything really. Yeah, it would be neat if you could like, yeah, if you could pay stuff, that would be cool. Yeah, not anymore. They used to that. They used to be the, yeah. But it would be kind of... But would it? Because it destroyed the game.

Did it? Yeah, because imagine this. If you have a lot of gold on the map, you have a lot of gold coins. Because you can buy absolutely everything. But if you don't have anything to mint coins out of that actually have any worth, you're kind of, you know, stranded. Isn't that the way that Earth works? Yeah, but let's be honest.

It's not fun. Only because it's real doesn't mean it's fun. Yes, exactly. I agree. Yeah, it is an unfun thing to do. Yeah, from that perspective, maybe it's okay. Maybe these dwarfs, they don't really care about coins. But ultimately, I want to say that I'm okay with no coins being in fort mode and you can't just trade items.

But I would really enjoy having like a coin system in adventure mode. I'm aware it really doesn't work that way. But I feel like going around as an adventurer and like, because I still do it, you know, if I play adventurer and I stab somebody, I loot them for coins. The coins are absolutely useless ultimately, but except for like throwing, but hey, whatever. But I would really like to do that, you know, like getting the coins from an enemy you killed and then going into the next town and buying stuff with this because you just found money, then you're broke again. because you spend it all on like beer? I like the idea of being able to have coins and play with coins in adventure mode. I think that's really neat.

But I can imagine how that would be near to impossible to implement given the way the game works. Because if fortresses can't rely on their currency to trade, well, what would that mean? It would be like, you know, my jewel tear might mint some gold coins. those might not have the same value over on the other side of the map in those worlds who've minted silver coins because gold doesn't matter to them. You know what I mean? I think it just it suddenly brings in all of the unfund dynamics of the real world like foreign exchange trading and arbitrage and automatic market makers and all those things that are just miserable and unfunded people who aren't like financial people. So yeah, I think it would break it. So I think it's just a

tougher problem to solve, although neat. I think what he would need to do to start with is to actually implement a functioning barter economy that actually is an economy. Because right now, we have what kind of looks like a bartering economy, but I really don't think the amount of goods that you produce in your fortress, like you produce 62,000 figurines of some particular dwarf, I don't think that affects the price of those figurines and other fortresses. So I think that if you can first implement an economy such that the things that you produce actually have an effect on the economy of the world at large, or at least your civilization, that's the first step, I think, to actually implementing a working, like, coin-based economy where you have money rather than barter goods.

I do kind of wish that that could happen because right now, all I have to do to get everything that I need to trade for is mine some jewels, have some craft store for make a lot of money. all kinds of rock crafts and then decorate them with jewels and I've got plenty of money to get anything that I need from any of the caravans. Well, I think this is a cool idea, but I also feel like it's a Pandora's Box. I think that's what they found out last time

whenever they tried to implement it and then took it out after a couple of times. Yeah, I agree. I think cool idea, Pandora's box. I think in order to do it, you'd have to dumb down a lot of the stuff in the game, which I feel like is kind of a bummer, or you'd have to get super, super, super in the weeds about how the different currencies in the game would work and who can mint them.

And I mean, my goodness, it just feels complicated. All right. Thanks, Alexander for the question. Calvin sent an email. And this is the question that we had postponed our last episode. He asks what our typical embark strategies are and what jobs and skills do we always jump on first, last or never at all. So, Roland, how do you start with a, and we've covered this, I think, before in a past episode, but it's been quite a while since, so let's talk about it again, because mine have changed.

Well, well, what is the last M-Bark that I did? I mean, I use one of the, like, lazy new pack embarks, and I changed it a little bit. I can't, I really can't remember what the original name was. For me, it's just called my embark now. But you get the basics. You know, you get one woodcutter. You got two miners because I usually have a lot of mining to do in the first few years. Then like a woodcrafter.

The woodcutter is also the woodcrafter. And then I have a quote-unquote dedicated soldier that has like some fighting skills and some masonry skills for the reason when I embark in a dangerous area. Then I bring some turkeys or some chickens, depending on where exactly I am, because I like to role play. You know, sometimes I take turkeys. Sometimes I take chickens. I sadly never do ducks because I feel like I want like a water fortress for ducks, but whatever.

and then at least one anvil I'm aware that you don't really need it there are ways to get it anyway but you don't have to make it harder than it is I always bring some sandbags because there was an exploit I'm not sure if it's still in there where the sandbag was slightly cheaper than the actual bag

or something like that Um, so I bring like one or two bags and then I empty out the sand and then I have like free bags, basically. Um, I, I, I just use corny's easy, peasy. I don't overthink it. The first thing I do is I dig out a little hole underground and soar all my wagon goods in it. I will then build a, a, um, trade depot because I have found that if I don't build the trade depot right off, I will forget to build the trade depot. Until they come. You're like, oops. And then it's too late, right? Because they don't say, hey, we need you to build a trade depot so that we can land here.

It says they have passed you by because you don't have a trade depot, you idiot. It's a little harsh, isn't it? Then I'll build a mushroom farm. And then I will start working on walling off, building some stone blocks so that I can wall off my trade depot. Because now, like, from Tony's suggestions, I now always build my trade depot. above ground, and I fence around it. So I've had three fortresses since I've started doing that, and they all seem to have worked out pretty well.

Well, apart from the ones that were overrun by zombies, but that had nothing to do with the fact that my trade depot was above ground. Sounds totally reasonable. What do you folks never mess with? What aspect of the game do you, just not pay attention to you. I think a few. If I think about it for longer,

I will come to a lot of conclusions. But for me, it is actually mine cards. And the whole like, how you say, machines, you know, all these water wheels and whatnot.

I mean, I tried them, not like mine cards, where I just did it once and then never again. I sometimes do it, but ultimately I ignore it because I, you know, I haven't even built a pump in the last, I don't know, 10 fortresses, not a single one. Yeah, I feel like the game doesn't really reward you enough for the effort that it takes to do it. So, you know, like other games like Timberborn or whatever, which is another kind of base builder, you really get to a point in developing.

the civilization where you have to develop power and you have to do those things. Otherwise, you kind of get stuck. And I don't, and I don't think it is that it's just sort of an option. You don't need to do it. Yeah. Yeah. You can perfectly, you can play the game perfectly fine without building a single water wheel. I mean, it's fine.

You know, having, having like a mill with an actual millstone is fun. You know, it's RP, but am I going to use it? No. So, indeed, indeed. If the pump stacks weren't such a pain to make, then I would think that the pump system and the waterways and the pump system would be rewarding enough because I love waterworks. And I love the idea of waterfalls. One of the most rewarding things that I've done in my fortresses is the time that I put the waterfall spraying down into my temple. And I built the waterfall such that it drained from basically, without any pumps, it just flooded.

I took a channel off of a river and drained it down into a hole that sprayed into my temple that was like seven levels deep. And below that level, it drained into another room that ended letting it leak back out off the map. So that was wonderful, very rewarding. And I do want to do things like waterfalls, but the pump stacks, they are just such a pain. the rear. Well, should we cap it there? Let's go ahead and cap it. Thanks so much, Calvin C, for sending in the question.

And if you would like to send in a question or a comment or just to say hi, Eurist at DF Roundtable.com, that's UR-I-ST at DF Roundtable.com. Okay, so exciting times. Again, if we don't end up with World War III, then maybe we'll have some wonderful steam-based dual fortress. to do here in a few months. Indeed. Indeed. We can keep ourselves warm next winter. Thanks for listening to

Dwarfortress Roundtable, and until next time, happy fortressing people. Perfect. All right. Bye. This has been the Dwarfortress Roundtable podcast. You can find all our past episodes at DFRoundtable.com. Stop by and leave a message or suggestion in the comments section

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