Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 68: Elves, Wine, and To What They Lead

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

Kitfox Festival Adams Brothers InterviewAnna Blackwell's site where you can find DelveKruggsmash video on Delve

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfee. 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 closer to the German word. No, it's Vinson with a Z. Tony. Same kind of thing. So you can tell we were all pals at one point in this.

and Jonathan. Vintner. Oh, that's a good one. Yes. That's much more satisfying than winemaker. As they present insightful, irreverent, and often incorrect analysis. And always remember, losing is fun. All right.

Yeah, we are recording. So today on Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, we're talking about winemaking. No. We could. I've made wine. We could talk about that. Yeah, there's not really much of a... Yeah, there is wine.

Yeah, but there's not much of a choice you can make about it, right? can you tell your dwarves to make wine? Oh, in real life, I've done it. Yeah. Oh, that's pretty cool. In the universe. Yeah, in the game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can do that, but they'll make wine out of other stuff, too, won't they? They'll make, like, apple wine or something or, like, potato. Like, they're all fruit. Strawberry wine. They're accepting of all fruits. It's from this way I understood it. Strawberry wine, the choice of the younger. The dwarves from Boone's Farm.

Exactly. So you guys were saying very short histories usually had a really good way to see, like, dragons and things like that. Yes, yes. They sadly die all very quickly. Although, of course, it's only been two years, but my latest fortress has been running for a couple years. There have been, sadly, no dragons as of yet. That is sad. Hmm.

Got like 90-something dwarves in the fortress right now. What do you guys think of these worlds that get generated where they're all, like, islands and stuff? I'm never a fan of the island or fortresses. It is the most fun way to play Empire Earth, though. Fair enough. I'm trying to decide if we're keeping this island map. Did you just say Empire Earth? Yeah.

That's pretty old. Yeah, it is. But I tend to like the islands because. You can really focus on what's just on your island. And very tiny islands do not tickle my fancy. I need something that is slightly larger, and maybe it can take, like, two fortresses on it. But then you have, like, a really cool little dwarven island,

and you can focus on whatever is on that island. And once I had an island that was the only reanimation biome in the entire world. Oh, right. And that was terrible. And I still have nightmares. Fair enough. I've never really delved very deep into the advanced settings of world creation. Is that something the continent size or island size?

Is that something that you can affect? I think it is, yeah. Every time I look at it, I start trying to change stuff. And then I run the island generator, and it's like, oh, you mess that up. We're not generating anything now. So it makes it a little tricky. Yeah, I think you have to work with the, like, the, like, damp. of the ocean and the height of the mountains a little bit so that you have a really deep ocean

and really high mountains so you have a lot of islands but that is only what i know about it on paper because it never works for me when i use advanced generation as well i i can't do it a few episodes ago we were talking about how the individual world updates happened while you're doing a fortress. So does it happen? Does everything in the world happen with every click while your fortress is happening? And Clano Dev indicated that it happens in batches. So apparently, I don't know that it actually happens seasonally, but he said that it happens in batch. Sounds pretty reasonable. What are you guys feelings about aquifers now with the new, in our new aquifer light world? I still say no. Yeah. I still don't.

I can deal with them. I can deal with them, but they're just a pain in the ass. Yeah, agreed. I just get annoyed by them. But maybe I should just learn to embrace them. Well, yeah. I have actually come around to, well, I can't really say anything positive about aquifers. So I'm not going to use the word enjoying, but I have been using them.

I cannot deal with the heavy ones. they're really a pain but like a light aquifer is very much like a free drinking cistern and then you you usually get enough water to not only fill like a small cistern that you can dip in with a well from your tavern

so you have always like clean drinking water from both your tavern and if you do it large enough from your hospital as well which is just whewy but you can maybe also do a dwarven cleaning station. You know, so like a small depression within your entrance hall

and everybody has to go through basically like two deep water. Then they clean themselves. I mean, that's pretty nice. Not that you usually need that. Yeah, I just am not very good at taining them when I'm building my stairways down, having to like go and build the walls. So I've rolled us a place

To start our new fortress And I've managed to pick a place with no trees So there will be no beds for anyone Which is fine They don't need beds Is it a bad land or just like I think it's it was supposed to be mirthful surroundings But I don't think anyone's here

Alligator snapping turtle Alligator snapping turtle That's okay That's not exactly the mirthful world that I was expecting. But anyway, and then we've got a waterfall, which is exciting. And it's like something's fallen in the waterfall. I think it's has some blood there. So that's always exciting. And it was a turkey. Oh, nope, one of our doors. Everyone's dying in the waterfall. So that's... Okay, they're all throwing themselves into the waterfall.

So that's the end of that fortress. Thanks for playing everybody. We're down three. That has to be a record for the fastest demise of a fortress I've ever seen. Do you think they were, they were limited at it? There's no trees. You split up the world, the fortress, and, you know, less than 15 minutes into the podcast, it's already gone. We're done. I don't really know what happened there. That's, that's amazing.

That was, that didn't work out for us. That's fine. We'll just try it again. That's the spirit. I believe what happened is they, one fell into the waterfall and everybody else tried to retrieve their items. because the waterfall was kind of small. You could sometimes see even twos in there. I think they believed that to be walkable.

And then they just got pushed off with the water. See, and then there's salt water. What are you going to do, these dumb dwarves? But salt water is okay. You have to pump it, though, to clean it, right? Well, it depends on where you're taking it. If you are on the coast, it just means, like, you have a coast. but like the ponds or the rivers or light aquifers they're still clean water so it's still

very much drinkable let's go yeah settle on that settle on the small lake it's pretty cool i always do cornees so hey roland i saw that you posted you posted that message from neutral 0 814 we were talking about dragons a couple episodes ago neutral 0814 indicates that dragons cannot fly in or wingless, which... I heard about that. Yeah. Wow. It's, you know, I know that memory is not at all reliable, but I could swear that my

dragon was flying around before he torched my forest. I'm hoping to run into another one, and I will very much take note. Maybe it was just my assumptions about dragons flying, and my brain has just scrambled things up. Yeah, that could be, because we do tend to go for the, the image of, like, the western Vivern, you know, like, uh, like two wings and two legs, and it can fly and can spew fire. Yeah. Every dragon in my head is Smile of the Magnificent. Yeah, well, that's the, that's the, that's the archetype, isn't it? Oh, it's lots of things going on here. It looks like the hippos are killing us. All the hippos are going berserk. It would be,

They fell the tree on top of the hippo, and then it attacked them, and then they killed him. Oh, hippo. That's what I saw there. There are elephants here, so that's not great. I saw, I've... No, it is great. Elephants are amazing because, A, you have unlimited meat per elephant. It's literally like 250, 350 meat per elephant, and you can tame them into one animals.

Something I didn't realize they were a war-tameable. That's brilliant. I don't have to hack anything to make that work. It just goes. What a delight this game is. All right, I've got to turn your screen off because I'm paying more attention to what you're playing than I am. Yes, see, this is what has happened here.

Let's just look at what's going on here. Oh, let's see, they're all cutting down trees. Fascinating. Why is he doing that? I don't know. You must have auto chop turned on. No, I set trees that I wished to have chopped. They've done that for me, which is kind of them.

What was our list of topics? So we were just talking about dragons. Yeah, so I wanted a dragon to come. That's why I've put this world so young, because I thought, well, that's what they told me last time. That's what our people said. We can get dragons if we cut it out. You know,

It's still going to take some time. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. But I thought the line went up. I don't understand. It just goes up. It only goes one way. Sorry. Wrong world.

Now let's judge your building skills. Yeah. I try something different. And I watch people who are really competent at this and try to copy what they do to limited and varying degree of success. Attention members and get. Guilt Hall Administrator Brendan Poole invites all members of the Farmers Guild the Oaken Hall to visit the lush clam. Come to the lush clam to see demonstrations and receive knowledge of agricultural dwarven science.

The lush clam is also the home to the artifact artiswalter, a Tanzanite cage. For more information, visit Brendan Poole at the hall on the seventh level of hatchet romances. Hey, I watched the video with Zach and Tarn and Alexandra. The Kit Fox games. Yeah, it was quite interesting. What did you learn? Well, I learned that they seem optimistic that it's going to come out soon. Of course, as they say, time is relative.

Yeah, they said soon. So I was thinking 2023 release. Is that kind of what we're thinking still? No, I got the feeling that it was, much closer than that. They said things like we're about done. Everything sounded very positive on the progress

like they're getting close. And here's, I jotted down a quote. Tarn said, this is an exciting, an exciting time to be a dwarfy person. All right. Yeah, it sounds like that they've got just about everything done as far as Fortress Mode goes.

And there's a couple of things that they skipped. Like he needs to go in. and create a screen for custom naming your fortresses and your embark and things like that. But yeah, they talked like it was pretty darn close. Bullish, if true. Very bullish.

So I recommend everyone go out and watch the video. They talked a little bit about boats. Okay. Apparently Tarn has been reading some literature and some fiction that, I don't even know who was fiction or not, but he's been reading about boats. Is it Titanic?

Because that seems like that. like the type of book he might want to like. It seems like that books might bring the right up as alley. Well, it was a great start, but they failed. It sank. I like this boat. Titanic well after the 1400 cut off. Yes, exactly.

It is. It is just slightly after that 1400s cut off. They talked about a finish in the villains arc. Talked about implementing procedurally generated magic system. That sounds neat. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Zach did note that the game is going to be a lot easier, just because the user interface apparently has improved so, so much. You know what I want is for the dwarfs to keep digging, even when they realize the stone is wet, because it makes it really difficult to deal with aquifers when they have constantly freeze what they're doing. It's a wet tile detected. There is a magic way of dealing with that using a thing of a jig.

I thought it just didn't pause, but they don't dig the square. Yeah, yeah. You can edit that in the raw to make sure that the game isn't pausing and specific things anymore. However, will it, oh, specific things you mean you can determine the things that it does and does not pause for? Okay. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I have to look into that. Because there are some things you really do want to pause.

If there's a Ware Beast, you definitely want it to pause for them. I seem to have made a. I was trying to cope with the aquifer in a unique way, and I've accidentally made a pool here. Hey, drink your water. That's a thing. That's a thing that happened. So that's totally what I meant to do.

That's absolutely what I meant to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all about the confidence that you exude. You can tell people. I definitely, definitely meant to dig that hole like I did. Yeah. So I guess I'll try to deal with this. in my normal way, an exciting way I was trying to deal with.

Anywho. Oh, Tarn also mentioned putting a regenerate tag on forgotten beasts so they can grow back lips. Oh. Does that sound fun? That sounds like a way to make something that was challenging more so. But that's an interesting mechanic. Yeah, he talked like it would be hard to do.

It is true. It's not hard to do. It sounds hard to kill. Yeah. Forgotten beasts have gotten surprisingly easy to deal with. So, I mean, you might lose a few. dwarves whenever they have things like deadly dust or webs

but if you send two squads that are relatively decently trained then they're probably going to be able to take care of it yeah at least that's what I've found recently that's the theory isn't it yeah the actual beast itself is not

really that much of a problem anymore and even webs can be dealt with if you I don't know have terrible means of dispatching the enemy like militias, you know, if you clog up the enemy and then shoot at it with archers, it works. Not that you should do that because that's a terrible way of dealing with your dwarfs,

but it works. Well, I'm coming around to a different way of doing things here with my aquifer suppression which is the way I usually dig the stairwell and hope for the best. Yeah. So what are you guys thinking now with the release date? Based on what you heard in that interview, you're thinking? I think fall seems, I think fall seems reasonable. Okay.

And that's not a optimistic or pessimistic. No, that seems pragmatic. That seems reasonable. Like, it gives. I think that's what they're shit in for. I think that's plenty of time to kind of get things done. And, well, I've never looked forward to fall before so much of my life. So that's great.

The way it sounded to me is that they were wrapping up the things that they need to do before a release with without adventure mode and they'll probably spend the next couple of months smoothing things out. That's just kind of the feeling that I thought. That's right. He's putting in all that code for NFTs, isn't he? I'm kidding.

I am very much kidding. Smash the television that they're watching this on a recording device. I was kidding. Sorry. NFTs are going to go the way of Java Applets. Real audio. Remember that?

Exactly. Any takers on that one? Yes. I recommend that anyone watches that video, though, because there are also some nice little Tarnisms and Zachisms. It was great seeing both Tarn and Zach in the video. Tard did say that planting orchards are more likely than you think in the next 30 years. So within the next 30 years, he's going to implement the plan to grow orchards.

That's fantastic. So when I'm, you know, but I'm in our 80s, then that's something to look forward to for sure. Grandkids. Then you might be actually able to plant a grove of apple trees. Well, here's the thing. You can actually raise that development in real time. So you can go out with an apple today that you've picked up at this supermarket and go plant the seeds and see what comes up first. Do your very own orchard?

Joking. You will be harvesting really. diverse apples, probably before you harvest them and you're self-grown. You can harvest apples, sure. How about them apples? I thought that was going to be better. I mean, if you're insane enough, you can already do it in the game right now. It's possible.

All you have to do is, like, clean a lot of land and just make sure that only specific trees are allowed to grow because, you know, we already have trees growing. and if it's not the tree that you desire, you just stump the sapling before it can grow. And if it's out of line, you stump the sapling and just wait until you have like an apple tree sapling growing. And then boom, orchard. Wow, you talk about micromanage.

That sounds like the way that I'm going to play this fortress. That's all these guys are going to do is they're just going to be orchardists. What's an orchardist called a farmer, I guess, is the word we have for that in English? Gather. Gatherer, but there's a cultivar. That's the type of thing. I don't know. Somebody's probably this grows fruit trees.

Finally, did get an explanation, though, from the primary source of why elves eat their enemies. Ah, interesting. Because they're delicious? Is that why? No, Zach said, and this is part of the elven naturalistic tendencies, elves eat their enemies, and this is a direct quote, because they don't want to waste the meat. Yes. That makes them somehow worse in my eyes.

Yep, I really hate them. Well, you know what we're going to do? We're going to farm elves for this particular fortress. Farm elves? Okay, but can we can we farm them for pets and meat? But hold on. That implies the fact that

the elf actually does not enjoy the whole fact of eating you. He just does it because he feels obligate. to not waste your meat. So automatically, I have a picture of, like, several elves on a battlefield strewn around corpses, eating them while crying, because they hate what they're doing.

But they have to do it because it's like their other... No, I don't know. How about that one? Don't let him go to waste. Let's get him off the field. Oh, very good. You can very much enjoy something that is obligatory. I guess it's like, you know, when there's,

the last few chips left in the packet and you don't really want to eat the crumbs at the bottom because they're sort of greasy and they're smaller and they don't taste quite as good but you also don't want to just throw them in the garbage that's what I think is good. Oh my my favorite part is about my bag. There's a huge difference. Yeah but

there is a huge difference between like crumbs at the bottom of the package and eating sentient creatures because you killed them within a war. I guess it depends on the chips but yeah. A key is still in one of our picks.

Also, Taked just said, isn't Roland the one who said elves are just pitiful creatures? I don't remember that quote. Please quote me that, but the exact timestamp. I could see him farming them like cattle. Now, you're just being, that is defamation.

Farming the late cattle. Yeah, why not? I don't, you know, farm these guys like cats. I don't know if you can get them reproduced them. Yeah, that's true. Let's say that you cage a male and a female, elf and you lock them into a into a dungeon room together I'm I'm not sure that they're ever going to reproduce well I mean why actually not because I sometimes do it with the troglodytes

and they're also sentient creatures within the game so you can't really eat their meat or use their products or bones or whatever oh I see dark times ahead for uh for a Roland fortress Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Okay, hang on. I'm getting the idea, okay. So, you just fill the chamber with some, I don't know, some wine, some straw mats and some ennio music. And I don't know. That should do it for the elves, right?

That'll set the mood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, all you have to do is put the elves in there. They cannot work. They cannot do anything. They can only sleep on the floor and socialize. And, uh... Enya's not going to do it.

Make it, you know, Marvin Gay. Well, they're elves. That's why I was thinking, you know, would be their kind of thing. They like crystals and stuff, don't they elves? Aren't there any elves in my world, hang on? Attention members and guests. Hall administrator Blood Toes requests all members of the Gloved Company to attend the upcoming demonstration of weaving

by talented weaver Eurist Melbelcatten on the 12th of Obsidian. This exhibition will be presented at noon at the Guild Hall the creation of fortifying. Contact Blood Toes for more information at the Guild Hall on Level 7 of Hatchet Romances. Yeah, we were supposed to talk about Elves' episode because that was the last segment of the what is weird about Dwarfortress,

the What the Heck is Dwarfurtress anyway, series of episodes. So is there anything else interesting besides the fact that elves grow their weapons. That's weird. Well, you know, I think that they secretly carve the weapons and just call them grown. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

My sword grew into that sharp edge. I mean, we do have to establish the fact that the elves within this game are not like Tolkien-esque elves. Like, snobby,

intelligent, and well-dressed and have like magic powers and live forever i mean we have some overlap with that um they are snobby yes but uh i i will not call them very smart because the elves and Tolkien actually know a lot of things because they a really old and b they have been through a lot of things so they know quite some stuff and um the else that we have here are just like it's it's like And I love Kevin, but he dresses in weird clothing, bark, and sings to trees. So I refrain from... So you think there's sort of like the idioticry version of elves?

You know, the thing is... You mean they died out? Elves and Tolkien always annoyed me anyway. They were just so much better than everybody else. Oh, yeah. We've been here forever. We have the... We have the undying lands.

I thought the one that was... You guys just don't understand, you mortals. I thought the one from Lord of the Rings that was the, you know, the one that's Mr. Anderson from The Matrix or whatever. You know what I'm talking about? That guy. Yeah, Elrod. That's the guy.

Yeah, I thought he was supposed to be like the cool guy. Or if I just totally... Well, I think he was totally miscast. I never did like Hugo weaving as Elron. No. From the books, you know, I read the books long before I saw the movie. And for the books, I saw Elron as being, you know, a beautiful specimen of Elvindom. That sounded weird.

I never got the feeling that Elron was particularly bitter in the, from reading the books. So you feel like... And the character of Elron was a bit of a jerk, I thought, in the movies. Really? Well, okay, fair enough, I could not have read the book before the film. Why not? that was just not possible for my age

you know you're really talking at age three I mean the first real book that I read was at age seven and that was a damn brown book but it's about the right level

I mean to be fair you can watch movies way way earlier and maybe you know the whole Tolkien saga is not child friendly enough but anyway I liked him

but okay we're derailing we're now talking about actors but I'm just saying that like Tolkien else are very different from Dwar fortress else

and when I just We wouldn't have to talk about actors If we'd get a release of Dwar Fortress soon Dwarf fortress The movie I'm still And it's just I think I've

This This fortress here Because I think I didn't prioritize getting these guys food soon enough thinking that I might have a little bit longer than I do to get that sorted out but

I think I'm about to do that. Hey-ho the Dario, they're going to die. What else can one say about these dwarf order selves? Right, I mean, they are very, very much immortal. They don't have a max age, meaning that they just

continue living. And the only reason why any elf would ever die is because he met a violent end. So that is a big overlap with Tolkien, where the elves are also like really old and never really die. And even if they, even if they die, they kind of don't. Yeah. They're very, very, I would say overly protective of the trees. Yeah.

Which is weird, obsessively protective of the trees. Yeah. And they also live in trees, which is, in my opinion, the biggest difference between, like, the token elves and the dwarf horse elves. Oh, no, no, no, the Lurian, all of the elves and Lurian lived in the trees. Yeah, but they had towns or something. Yeah, but that is more like a regional thing, because you also had other elves that definitely built. Yeah, yeah. But there were also some else that built boats.

Yeah, the Tolkien elves were very much seafaring. Yes, yes. That is obviously due to his like of, you know, the open water. But fair, we don't actually have boats in Dwarfurtress. But even though I don't actually see our Dwarfurtress elves ever building any boats because they would need to sing the boat into existence. And yes, I have this weird thing in my head. where they're just seeing to trees and the morphs.

It's just my fantasy niche. But they would kind of need to grow a boat, which to me sounds kind of ridiculous. Because imagine how long just a normal chair or normal sword takes to grow into the actual sword. And it's years. You know what? But now do it with the whole boat.

70 million over infinity is still zero. yep can't argue that so if they're immortal then if it takes if it takes a thousand years to grow their boats it'll be it

I got a thousand years yeah I mean yeah no definitely I'm just saying that if we start like what generation you won't see any

elven boats until like you hit level 125 and you have the first like canoes and if you you go like 10,000 years

into the future you suddenly have like elves having actual water boats while the dwarfs already built their spaceships and leave your planet for another one. So you have definitely added to my mental image of elves with the idea of an elf sitting out in the woods singing to a tree so that it can make a chair. I like that. Yeah, I don't even know where that came from.

I don't either, but it's great. It is a good image. It makes me not want to kill them as much now. I'm feeling softer suddenly. I think I've always thought of dwarfs. Fortress Elves is kind of the wood elves, though, from Tolkien's, more like the wood elves than the, than the Eldar or whatever they call them, the ones that came from the Undying West. See, I'm totally good with all of the elves. I just, what I don't like is when they start getting crotchety about me needing to, like, not cut down the trees.

I need beds. I justize me for that. This new world that I've started up, the elves, I guess, are at war with my civilization, because I've never had a caravan. I think I've had like three years so far, no caravans, but I have been attacked by them. I think that we must be at war. I haven't checked. It was an easy attack to repel. Hey, did y'all see that video from Krug Smash about the Dwellvgate?

I watched that video. I watched it. What did you think? Yeah, I'm going to buy that. Yeah, I am too. I'm going to buy that. It did. It looked really neat.

I didn't end up watching the whole thing. I did, yeah. But I enjoyed it. It was fun. I think it'll be cool to see how it plays out. Have you bought it yet, or are you planning? I watched the whole video, and I will not spoil how the bump up. We're being honest.

I fell asleep. It was great. Yeah, I put it on my watch list. Enjoyed the idea. Yeah, so I think I'm going to buy that. Hopefully by the time we have our next episode, we will have a report on the play-thru. That sounds really cool. Yeah, I, yeah, looked fun, definitely fit his art.

What I thought was cool about it, yeah, it very much goes along with Crook Smash's art style. That whole game, it's basically a 2D ant farm kind of randomly generated sort of building out of a fortress. And I've seen Crug Smash videos before, and it's some of my favorite artistic ones of him, where he, I think that he was talking about other things. But in the meantime, it's showing him drawing a 2D representation of a dwarf fortress. fort and drawing the the caverns and the different rooms and workshops as the the fortress delve deeper and deeper. So this game really does match up with that kind of a aesthetic. Yeah, and it sounds like you can buy it straight from her website.

Yeah. In a PDF form or apparently she's got something really cool that you can purchase to down, that basically something you can purchase. Yeah, you can purchase it, or you can download the digital version. Yeah, like she's got a really very cool. Yeah, anyway, sounds really cool. Yeah, looking forward to playing with that. It's time again for Memorial Gardens, brought to you at this time by Lucas, Lord Warden of the Hatchet Romances Memorial.

Hall. This is an exceptional Micah Memorial to Lina Inevitamame. The slab reads, In memory of Lina Inevitamame went missing in the year eight. This is a superior quality Salpeter Memorial to Dodok High. Mamuzostov. The slab reads, In memory of Dodok Mamousastov, suffocated in the year eight. Hatchet Romances Memorial Hall brings you this service as communicated by Lord Warden Lucas,

Kinem Rosh. Why, I wish that they would have some new Fortress content, because it's getting harder and harder to make things up to talk about. Yeah, only until fall. We're going to get there. I think, you know, what I'm thinking is trying to set out on, I'm wondering about this as an idea, we give ourselves some constraints, and then we try to cooperatively, collaboratively get to it while we

talk about things. So in this particular fortress that I've got, we could always try to play through it and figure out what we want to do with it as you watch me make a dog's dinner of it all. Maybe until the release, you know, let's play kind of content. Wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Could be kind of a fun way to do.

I was actually listening to a this is old because I don't think it's currently anymore, but a Doom podcast where they were actually playing Wad on audio podcast where you don't see it. You're just hearing them play and hearing the hosts talk about playing the Wad. And it actually was quite entertaining because I have played Doom so many times.

In my mind's eye, I could already see kind of what they were talking about. So maybe audio of a let's play isn't the worst thing in the world. Yeah, I'm kind of, I think we could figure it out and we could try to set goals for ourselves that seemed very difficult. So how about this? why don't we have our next episode be another one of the adventure mode live streams? Okay. Because the topics have been becoming less and less organic.

Yeah. Well, I think we're kind of running on fumes because there's not a whole lot of new stuff to talk about. I really do appreciate the way that they Adams's are being so forthcoming about the development progress. I think that has made the long wait more. I think it's just made it feel better somehow, and I appreciate that. That's pretty cool. But I think there's some really foundational stuff I would love to start to get a better sense on how it all works. You know, things like what Roland was talking about, could you actually make an orchard that you could farm, see if that's possible. Or we could try to just be a passive cheese fortress, or we could go try to visit the circus and survive it.

Like, there's all kinds of things that I think we could try to do or build an idea. I don't know. I'm wondering if any of those things would be amusing for everyone. He wants to join us and try to do this with us. That could be quite interesting as well. The unfortunate part about that, though, is it not that I mind putting time into the podcast, but it would take a significant amount of off-air time to manipulate your world, to try to generate a, you know, an orchard that is going to take probably

15 game years before you would see a result. Way to keep them hooked. Yeah. Yeah, they would swallow a lot of time, yeah. That's right thing. We'll experiment. You know, we'll have to kind of play it by ear, but

yeah. Yeah, let's plan on if it's okay with you guys, and unless our audience has an uproar saying, no, we refuse to allow you to do a audio let's play. Let's do that thing we did with Adventure mode. Oh, yeah. Should we do that? Yep. That was a heck of a lot of fun. Well, I can always pop us into adventure mode right now. And I think that the audio of it would be intriguing. It'll be experimental. So, listeners, let us know what you think. So what directions were driven by the, you remember when

that question went out to the community? Do you want us to like focus on a fortress release or do everything or and leave adventure for later or how did that ever get resolved or did it or we still sort of thinking about things yeah there was amazingly little response right i got a response that was like i was like i think you should absolutely focus on the fortress and we're like oh that's not what we're asking and i was like whoa whoa i thought it what's what you're asking or it's like should we do mods and i was like yeah i do mods i think they're like that'll take five minutes and i'm like okay great then do it it sounds great we should definitely have mods i'm glad it's not going to be hard.

It's just kind of weird, but yeah, I think mods would be awesome, too. Oh, that was years ago. Yeah. I'm thinking something else. Yeah, I still haven't ever modded anything. I've doodled around with some of that stuff, but haven't done too much, Roland, I feel like you're the, you're the, you're the modder. No, no, sir, no, sir.

I mean, I dabbled. I made a three-eyed raven, if I remember correctly, that had. like a paralyzing gaze that was terrible terrible I tell you and I made like a funny adventurer class race thing that that was buggy because I tried to make an adventurer that was basically like a god so I could like test some things out in the world it didn't work because I just assumed I could make his steal his skin out of steel, so no weapon could penetrate him. But ultimately, his body would just continue to collapse under the weight.

So I also had to make his bones out of a really strong material, and then he just became, like, extremely really slow. And when I wanted him to fly, he was even slower. The way it goes. Oh, hey, before we get done here today, I did want to mention that Tech had released his fifth video in his five, part series of advanced military interaction with Dwar Fortress. And I think that TECED has now produced what could be called the definitive

tutorial series on Dwar Fortress Military. It is really, really good. Oh, good. This is what I want to spend my afternoon doing now. I've realized like that, the first, the part one of that, when I watched it, I was like, finally, somebody has made sense of all of this. and in a very clear way. It is incredibly good.

Yeah. And I think what makes it so good is that he's focusing on, he's making it a five-part series because it needs that much. And each, you know, they're just really good videos. So, yeah. Techin says it only took months. So we're not just blowing smoke here, Tekin. We know that you're watching, but that's not long.

Yeah, it's really good. It's really good content. I hope that everyone listens to it. Oh, so in the military screen, and because I've not got it in front of me now, it's really hard to describe, but there is a thing that says whenever you're training to require a certain number of dwarves, and it absolutely didn't mean what I thought it meant. So I had always dropped my require this many dwarves to train. I had always dropped it down to require only like four dwarves to train. Because I thought that that meant that if you didn't have four dwarves at a time training, then they wouldn't train. And Tech had actually explained what it meant, and I don't remember what it meant, but I do know that it was something that it didn't require them. So, yeah, says he doesn't actually require that many.

That minimum is a misleading word. So I've stopped doing that, and I've been fine. All right. I'm going. Turns out when they weren't training before, it was for other reasons. like I didn't set the squad to active slash training. That's a big one that I often forget to do. I often forget to set them to active training.

So I'm like, well, why aren't you stupid idiots utilizing this barracks I made for you? Because it's beautiful. I used a freaking artifact armor stand for you. Get in there and train. And it's because I didn't set them to active training. Well, that happens to the best of us. Yeah, it's a very complex thing. and you need a checklist, like landing the freaking Apollo lander.

It ain't easy. Check, check, check, check. And that's the kind of things that are in the Tech and Military videos that make them really, really cool. And plus, they're just really well made and has a great, clear speaking voice. And, yeah, I will stop drooling over Tekken's videos. Yeah, they're excellent. Highly recommend if you haven't seen them to not.

sleep on it go check them out i have also started using the orders system from the individual workshops not from the manager screen but from the individual workshops so that has stopped me from overproducing chairs table yeah that's it that's a that's a that's a really good thing to do i'm not very good at using it's i often find that i don't have time i i want to use it before i have a spare dwarf, if that makes sense. Just use the chief one, the one that's built in to the one that's built in. The, oh my God, my brain. I tend to just use the...

Put it on repeat? Yeah, I just put it on repeat. The DF hack. That's what I'm trying to say. Thank you. Well, let's go ahead and wrap this episode up before we get just too far in the weeds. And happy Mother's Day. All you mothers out there, we're recording on Mother's Day.

um which is a holiday made by the greeting cards industry in to so pieces of cardboard but yay if you're but it's always good to say in a different country you do not need to panic so there's always like there's the british mother's day and so you'll look around and people will say it's mother's day and there will be collective sense of panic around since people realize that They've put them on different days, I think, deliberately. And that sense of panic just tells you that the marketing worked. Exactly. All right, guys.

Perfect. Next time we will, we'll do some out-of-band communications about how we're going to do the adventure. Yeah, we'll figure that out. Yeah, I think we should do that next time. It'll be fun. It will be smooth and professional as you've come to. Yeah, boy. Surely.

All right, guys. See you. Everybody out there, happy Fortressing. Bye. See ya. 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 for this episode.

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