Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 71: Dedicated To The Memory of Scamps.

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Thanks to Tarn for sharing all those stories of Scamps' rambunctiousness on the Dwarf Fortress Talk podcast. Sounds like he was a cat Urist would really have admired.

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. Yeah, it is, it is. I am probably not going to pursue a job in that field. Tony launched three copies of the game, so let's just chill a little bit. And Jonathan... Give the directory a date stamp. It's like 2020-6-15.

As they present insightful, irreverent, and often incorrect analysis. And always remember, losing is fun. I'm not very good with roads. I can never get these damn dwarfs to build a road. All they do is they keep suspending the construction. They're so annoying. I can't get him to build, like, shoddily paved roads, but I can't get him to build proper stone block paved roads.

Interesting. Yeah. So what's the difference between a road and a floor built outside? That is a good question. Does a road have some special property that gets, you know, caravans to ride on them? Not really. There is, the camera brands will use a, like a corridor without trees and without obstruction. So they would also use a normal floor instead of any cool road, which, you know, kind of sad.

but I think roads don't have to be built block by block, but you just need all the materials and just one dwarf building it, and then it pops up out of existence like a bridge, for example. So it's a multi-tile construction built by one dwarf,

but I'm not sure how they actually work because for me they used to always like show the underground so it wasn't like a solid construction that was just there but when I told them to do a paved road it would keep like showing the title underneath like a dwarf that changes into another dwarf when they stand on the same tile, you know?

That switcheroo, it would continuously show me what is below the tile and I've found that to be weird. Interesting. Hey, Logan. And I was going to say, I'm going to have to promptly shut down my stream here because I will not be paying any attention of the podcast. I'll just start viewing the podcast and become a listener instead of a participant. Well, that's the, that's the problem, isn't it? I mean, I have it. Oh, look, there's a skull thing here,

Bull's skull totem. That's pretty cool. Oh, that's cool. Wow, look at that. Look at that thing. Well, I've got a lot happening on my screen right now with this streaming, so I'm just kind of have to defer to you guys to see what's going on. Otherwise, I'm going to fail. Open link. There we are. Yeah. So did you two hear the, the sad news of poor scamps? I heard. Passing on. RIP, buddy.

Yeah, that's really sad. Yeah. It's cats are, yeah, I mean, you've had the cat a long time. You get pretty doggone attached to it. Yep, yep. I remember the cat doing things like knocking laptops off the table while recording To a Fortress Talk. Yep. And Tarn commenting.

on the fact that smud, not smudge, that scamps wanted to see the tendons in his arm? Well, may he see the arm tendons in the sky? He would chase quarters around the room. Yeah. Yeah, it sucks to, it sucks to lose a cat because you've usually had a cat for a really, really, really, really long time. That's a blow. We're going to pour out some mushroom wine in his honor.

All right. So I have not played hardly any Dwarf Fortress at all. I had a fairly bad sinus infection. Basically, right after we recorded our last episode, I went down, and I didn't come up for like three or four days. So I have not gotten much dwarfing done. Have y'all? I've been doodling and noodling with the idea of building a tunnel, which I talked about. underneath the sea to connect two continents together or two parts of the world together.

So I generated for myself this world which I'm showing on the YouTube stream that is very long, thin, but it has this landmass up at the top that's, I can't tell if it's an islander if it's locked by the ice sheet, but anyway, no one seems to be able to get to it. And there's not much here except for, I guess, a necromancer tower, some dark guys. Goblins, nothing to be afraid of there, I'm sure. And then I've built my fortress between, I guess it's called an isthmus. I'm whatever word I'm looking for there is what it is, with the intent to connect the rest of this very large land body to this cutoff area.

So in doing that, I'm hoping that I'll know it's a very large area. There's bigger areas that I would love to connect, but I haven't figured out quite. how to do that yet but is this a large world it's a medium world um see i guess i could zoom out here show people but yeah there's it's you know it's like one of those typical things where there's a spray of islands and then there's lots of land masses and then there was one big peninsula that seemed to cut off by the others and so i i tunneled so what i've done let's see what i've done um i'll zoom out from the top here so you kind of to get a sense of, I made it a long, skinny embark, so I could capture as much of the

stuff as possible. So when you're looking at it, it's basically, there's a tiny little bit of land on top, and there's a tiny little bit of land on the bottom, and then there's just a giant ocean between the two. And then what I did is I've made a road coming down from the top, and then it sort of goes down some cascading ramps, down, down, down, down, and, and then it sort of goes down, under the sea and then I had a couple of little accidents where I punched into the seawater. Then that didn't do me very, didn't do me very well. But also it ends well, I did manage to get around it and then came back up the other side and built a trade depot on the other side.

And then I used the command to see if the depots were active, you know, that capital D. Oh, that's cool. Wow. And so I've connected both sides now. So it should show my whole underground tunnel is being wagon accessible. I guess it is. Wow. So that's my fun that I've had.

I think it's all successfully done. Although I'm concerned that I've missed something here. But anyway. That's cool. Oh, yeah, I had to go up and then back down. It was an interesting experiment, but fun. So I don't know what impact this has on the broader world, if any. I'm hoping that it has some.

But that's what I've been up to. And I guess the point where I am now is I should, I was going to kind of wait for an invasion and see if the invading forces came through the tunnel or what happened. I suppose what my intent was is to just abandon the fortress to ruin or retire the fortress, I guess, and then just see if the world started to use it. I know there's a warning. Anytime that you're on a coastal area,

there's a warning about having trouble because you don't have access to freshwater. Is that actually true? The cavern water is still fresh water, right? The drawers can drink it. Yeah, yeah, and hot water is too. Yeah. Okay, so there's no real disadvantage to having a coastal embark, right? Not really.

I don't think so. No. I just tunneled down and I made... Oh, look, there we go. A human caravan has arrived. Let's see where they go. They're going to go to the Easy Pickens Depot here. I should destroy the depot on this side and put it on the other side and see if they go to it.

That's what I need to do. See if they use. He used a tunnel to get to it. I think they're, I think. I've never had them use. If there were two depots, they would always use the oldest one and ignore the new one. Yeah, I'm going to blow this one away as soon as these characters take off. I'm going to.

Or you can blow it away now and just get all their stuff. Piss off the humans. Aw. Yeah. Well, I'm a human. And so I can empathize with the plight of our people. So I'll not do that. But I don't want to give them my bull skull totem.

that seems pretty cool. On the northern continent, there isn't really anything except for like goblins and the necromance, right? Yeah, it's not going to go well, I think, connecting them. I think it's going to have only brought pain to the world. It's probably one of those things when, you know, years later, people are going to look back and go, why did that door of civilization bridge our peaceful worlds,

obvious aggressors? Why did you do that? But sometimes it's a great leader's job to just do and not ask why. If you could go back in time and shoot, Unib Sarzmalkaban, would you do it? Yeah. Who's responsible for this mess? I don't know. I'm going to blame it on one of the children.

It's obviously one of these kids' fault, so we'll just throw them to the sea. What's your fortress's name? What's the fortress's name? That is an excellent question. It is called Crystal Deer. Crystal deer, yeah. The primitive boulders. Perhaps the residence of crystal deer will be caught like a crystal deer in the headlights as the goblin civilization comes to invade.

But yeah, it looks like it is just over here. It looks like the goblins have been relatively successful here, more successful than us. The fragile scourge, that's a good sign for the name of an evil civilization. If they're fragile, right, it should be nothing to worry about. Well, I think the ultimate way of actually testing if your land bridge works is retiring this fortress and making a second fortress a little bit close to this, then checking if you can send people up into the north. Because if you can, then it works. Yeah. Oh, let's give that a go, shall we?

Yeah, sure. Let's retire this fortress right now. Retire it for the time being. Sure. Okay. So while you're building your new fortress, we're going to. want to move on to our question and answer section. What an excellent idea.

Thank you for that suggestion. See, this is a problem. I always get distracted. I'm like, but then, I could do this. A dish. Oh, boy. Dwarf Fortress Roundtable is brought to you in part by a grant from potato bomb, creator of Yuzon Ozer, the allegiance of subtleties, a bauxite ring.

All crafts' warship is of the highest quality. It is encrusted with round boxite cabbashons and decorated. with cherry wood. This object menaces with spikes of lignite. On the item is an image of author covered, the Tanzanite cage in lignite. Potato bombs use an azzar. On display now in the fruit of theaters

on level two of bolt stills. So it's been a while since we've really covered user responses and I don't know if I should apologize for that or just kind of the way we roll. I should apologize. That's everything I do is wrong. On your knees. On my knees, yes.

Anywho, so we're going back now to episode 66 to pick up comments from there. And if we miss your comment, it's not because we have anything against you whatsoever. It's just because I am not the best at managing comments. And so please feel free to poke us again. And we'll be happy to answer your question or put your comment online. Probably Jody commented on episode 66 that basically just that he's tried out Cleaner Dev's Embark Profile that we talked about in a previous episode and that he's digging it.

Oh, good. That's great. That's awesome. I love the idea of Cleaner Dev's Embark Profile, I think it's called the Craftmasters or something like that. But the idea is that they're extremely skilled dwarves for things that need extremely skilled dwarves, and you start off by building your picks and setting up a little metal industry to build things to start with. And that probably really does optimize efficiency. But I'm also

lazy. And I think that I've got a particular style, a particular algorithm that I follow with my fortresses that seems to be working well for me. So I went back to using, oh, what's the name of it? There's there's another one of the in Paradexas surround starter pack. There's another one of the starter embark. Somebody help me. What's the word I'm looking for? The Embark profile is probably the word you're looking for. I use one of two. Yeah, I use that word gornies. Nebulatron is the one that I have gone back to just because it makes it really easy to quickly set up all of your nobles. And I find that to be quite valuable. Gorney gang. here. I might go

ahead and go back to clean our devs. You know what? I've got to take a look and see exactly what that's called. Oh, look, I can raid these forts. That's kind of a good sign. Look, I'm going to should I raid the, I'm going to raid one of these 60 people. Let's do it. This is going to end

incredibly well. Perfect. I'm sending the whole fortress out to that. Great. Off we go. Everyone's heading out. Everyone's gone. There are no doors living here. Perfect. I didn't know you could do that. Eris doesn't live here anymore. That's weird.

I've never had a fort like this before. There are no doors living here. Well, this makes my job very easy. So we wait and see if they come back from their seven. From their terrifying, is time even going to pass? It should. It should. Yeah, yeah.

That's just when they return. Or if. In like a few days, I guess. If we'll get migrants beforehand and they'll just come. And there's no fortress here. I haven't built anything. Well, there's an answer. It let me do it.

So presumably they've gone through. So there we go. That's the answer that we're looking for. Yes, you can bridge continents. It's nice. That's nice. It's reassuring. But now what I wonder is can I bridge multiple tiles across the sea?

Can I start a bridge or a tunnel and then connect to that bridge in the tunnel if I start a new fortress? I doubt it. Yeah, no, I doubt it because the fortress will not start in the tunnel. It will start on top of the world, which. is in the water. There's no embark underground, so you'd have to have, you'd have to do some kind of,

I feel like these guys might not come back. No, they will. Just give it like four in-game days, and then they should return. That's right. I should have looked to see how long it takes to send them up to wherever I sent them. Okay, it takes more than a day's travel.

Okay. No, this is not a good sign. When I mouse over the village that I sent them to raid, it says, current prisoners, and there are three of my dwarves. They're held prisoner. Well, so that's probably an indication of how well things went. Oh, well, all swell, but then swell. Swell.

Oh, this is that 1,050-year-old world that I generated. All of this is that I'm doing on my end here is looking up what Clean Our Dev's profile, Inbar profile is called. Yeah, it's like craft lords or something, isn't it? annotated craft lords, thank you. Yeah. Cleaner Doves, annotated craft lord, Zimbark. It's neat, but I could do absolutely nothing with it.

Like, that fortress got absolutely slaughtered. So I... Well, that's because you are in a world where zombies show up on, you know, month two. A diplomat has left unhappy. A diplomacy stymied. Oh, I wonder why. Sorry, there's nobody here. Sorry to have disappointed.

you, sir. I don't think I broke the game. I think I broke the game. There's no, there's no dwarves. I honestly, this is the first time I've ever seen that. I've never, I've never sent everyone in the fort out at once, I guess. So from the, from the YouTube chat, Luke is asking if any of us have used the book, getting started with Dwar Fortress.

Is that the O'Reilly book? Oh, from the, from the ancient times. I think it is. No, I want a copy of it, though, not because I would use it, just because I want it. Yeah. And I've not been able to, I haven't looked real hard, but I've not been able to find a copy of it out there. It's, it's, I think it's on, it's based on the 30 release period or whatever, right? But it's, it is 3D, I'm pretty sure.

Okay. It's after the 2D. Okay. So, but no, I have not used getting started with Door Fortress. And if you are indeed talking about the O'Reilly book, of course, I've not used it, even if you aren't talking about the Orionian book. And I think we're talking about getting started with Door Fortress, learned to play the most complex video game ever. first edition. There's a selling point.

Which came out in, uh, in 2012. So the book is 10 years old. So at least one release away. Exactly. Yeah. I don't think so. There's another book that was recommended to me called the Glimber Cage Eurists or a catalog of Dorvan calamities, which I had no idea that existed.

Uh, Luke said that, yeah, he was talking about the, uh, the O'Reilly book. Yeah, I, I, I try. I mean, I've picked it up. I've had copies of it in the past. And, yeah, I mean, it was. And you moved and sold them. Don't need them to a book? Yeah, I mean, it was pretty dated, to be honest, which is the thing that happens.

What was the animal on the front of the book, though? Or was there an animal? The dwarf head. And I'll just, yeah, you don't get to pick that as an author for them, by the way. They choose it for you. They pick what they? They pick it for you. Okay, so five of the dwarfs came back.

Hey, that's something. Hey, that's wonderful. Let's look at the combat log and see how it went. Let's see. Oh, some migrants have arrived. Oh, yeah, no, it was migrants. My dudes never came back. So I got five migrants to the fortress.

Should I send them out to? Yeah, sure. Why not? Let's just conscript everybody. Let's do it. Oh, look, they're gone. They're dead. And I can't.

Oh, no. I think we've really broken the game here. I can't add anyone to the military because I need somebody who can appoint this position. So do I have to, and I can't make anyone a noble. I can't even instruct these dwarves with my troop gone. Oh, dear. Should I abandon the raid? Will they do what I'm asking them to do these dwarves?

Yeah, they're still digging. They'll still dig tunnels. Okay, so I just can't, I've broken it. I can't have nobles anymore. And I can't build military squads. That's probably not cool. great for being honest. Right.

Coming back to questions. Yes, let's go back to questions. See, this is a distraction. Yes, it really is, but it is fascinating. On episode 66, this was also the same one that probably Jody commented on, Benjamin said that, yes, there are ski resorts in Chile. That makes sense. Which after we left that episode, I got to think, I was like, well, of course there are. There's the stinking Andes.

And there's ski resorts in Australia. And there are ski resorts. I mean, there are actually ski resorts in Australia. So it does make sense that there would be. I mean, there's a ski slope in St. Louis, but I don't know if I'd call it a resort. So we saw the garbage dump and you thought, you know, it's not good to have that big pilot trash. So we put some dirt on it and come ski with us. I mean.

I said St. Louis, not St. Paul. Okay. You're right. It's a wrong scene. We even have like one ski resort thing in northern Germany. and northern Germany is flat as hell. It's a complete building, and it has one ski slope in and a lift, and it's, like, inside and there's, like, fake snow.

It's amazing. Never been, though, but it looks cool. I think I've heard that Germany has mountains. Yeah, but, like, either in the middle or, like, really south, but not in the north, because the north is extremely flat. Uh-huh. When I think Bavaria, I think... Gummy bears?

mountainous regions... Chocolate cake. Yeah, but that's in the south. With women carrying beer bugs around. That's in the south, yeah. Yeah. Oh, oh, geography is showing... I just think about gummy bears

and chocolate cakes with cherry in them. That's what I think of. Because which forest did the gummy bears? About Bavaria. Where do they catch the gummy bears? Is that... They catch the gummy bears. Yeah, that's a black forest.

That's a black forest. It's more like middle. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. This is going to go really, really well. Our ignorance, our ignorance at what? What is that? Do you talk about...

We got a siege. To those people who are on the audio-only podcast, if any of this makes it into the actual podcast, a vile force of darkness has arrived in Toml's Fortress. Into the bugged fortress that can't scramble a military because nobody can appoint the position. So, you know, whenever we had my fortress that got wiped out and all of my dwarves were killed,

but there was one human left. What happens if all of your dwarves are killed? Well, except for the ones that are out on a raid. Well, we're about to see because right now there's a vile force of darkness. Open, everyone ran away. Oh, dear. I think this is probably going to end well. There's nothing I can do about it.

I don't think this fortress is going to survive this. Like, I'm gambling here, and I'm saying it will crumble. I feel like it probably will crumble. Oh, if there's one minor, still alive, he's a trooper. has an indoor ski slope. Yes, it does. Of course it does. Something like a, that's something, of course it does.

And it is on top of that giant spire of a building. Wait, it is? No, it's not in the birch. It's not in the birch, it's not, I've been at the top of that. It's not, there's no ski slope there. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sure it's in one of the billion malls that they've got. I think it's malls everywhere.

They've got like, there's one mall that's got like a whale in it or something. It's a really weird place. Oh, a lot of animals are being found dead. Take care of everything. Not outside mine. We're not. It's not going up. There's no doors.

We're back to no doors. Look, this fortress, I've beat the game, guys. I cannot be defeated. Is everybody dead? Everyone's dead. Oh, wow. There are no dwarves living here. So that tells me that whenever you have a raiding party out,

that all of your dwarves are dead who are there, the game does not stop. It waits for your people to come back. Look. and we still have the invaders still kicking around here. So as long as nobody, if the invaders just leave because they're bored, because there's nothing else to kill, which I'm hoping will happen, I'll get more migrants and this fortress will last forever. Like, it literally can't be killed.

I've made an unkillable fortress here. Until your rating party comes back. Did we just, did we just find a bug in the game? Because if you send out your whole thing. That is not correct. that's a feature but seriously your rating party can still come back

they could but I think they're about too because you know you get those bugged rating parties where they go away and they never come back yeah they should have been fixed but I think they're not like 100% fixed and ultimately I think it has to do with the fact that you send everybody out

so the title of like what's it called expedition leader could not be assumed by anybody else on the fortress and that, you know, did something. I think if you send out your expedition leader, it's game over for you. Okay. Maybe it's not game over, but it's a game-breaking bug, I think, because now I can't, when I had that migrant wave, I couldn't appoint a new person at all.

This segment is brought to you by Adam Hudson, creator of Aroflin, Magic Moths, and Applewood Toy Axe. All Crafts Worship is of the high. highest quality. It is decorated with foxbone and encircled with bands of bronze. This object menaces with spikes of applewood. Adam Hudson's Arothlin. On display now in the fierce sanctuary, temple of the healing of soldiers, on level four of bolt stills. Honestly, this is a decent segue into Alexander's comment for episode 67 in which

foes are discussed. Alexander writes, do any of you use any exploits in your fore? stuff like duplicating metal or finding cavern layers with farm plots. Thank you for the podcast, by the way. Thank you for writing in Alexander. Also, Benjamin, thank you for writing in and probably Jody as well. Yeah, would this be an exploit? Having a, I'm not sure if you call this an exploit. No.

This was just an accident. I don't think it's gotten me much. It's gotten me stuck is what it's gotten me. Yeah, I think this is not like an exploit. It's more like a shot in the knee. I think it's going to let me succumb to the invasion, which will be good. Probably. I don't know that it's going to.

Oops, your strength has been broken. That's good. Oh, well, yeah, that's because you initiated it, right? Yeah, I did. It was never going to stop. But exploits, talking about exploits. I personally have to admit that I've become a cheater, not an exploiter. I have become a straight-up cheater.

I use one D.F. Hack command every time I start a fortress, and that is reveal. So I can see the entire map, and where ore is, and where my caverns are. And then I look for a very nice, cushy position within the caverns that actually like tightens my fortress layout a little bit. So I don't have the entire layer to spread out, but I only have like a spire that is like hangar from the ceiling in the cavern or something. And that has... Wait till Kevin hears about this.

And that has been really, really fun and enjoyable. And I will not be stopping with that. So you're doing what? You're doing reveal to reveal all of the minerals? Yeah, I reveal the map. And then I like check for a good spot where to set down. It is quite nice because my last fortress that kind of died on itself was... It had a well inside my tavern that went straight down into a large, like, underground lake.

And that was really enjoyable. And I even put it in such a way that nothing could crawl up into the well because it had like a secured grate below the water line and stuff. That was really good. That was really good. But that was the only exploit slash cheat I use this reveal thing, just so I know where to put my layout and then I continue from there.

But the whole smelting a singular bolt or arrow to get more bars out, I've never really done that because I... Well, that's just a pain. I mean, that's more trouble than it's worth. Yeah, yeah. And either you stop... I'll tell you what, though.

Quantum trash compactors, though. Yeah. Okay, fair. In the message room brought that up. I certainly use that. Yeah, I do too. Dwarven Adam Smashers. I like that a lot, the Dwarven Adam Smashers stuff.

It's fun. It doesn't feel like an export, but it just feels like that they're disposing of goods. It feels like we're having fun. You actually have to build something and do something. And also, Tarn indicated that he's not planning on taking that sort of thing out because it's become less of an exploit and more of a feature because of other deficiencies in the game. What's the Embark Anywhere button?

Do you guys remember that? There's some way you can do it. You can like force it embark. I think that's a command on another button. Okay. But I think that lets you embark into embark locations that otherwise would have been. Yeah, that it says don't do it.

Yeah, I think I've seen that embark anywhere. Like places where there's like a human settlement. Yeah, exactly. That or like straight ocean. Yep. They don't like that usually. It's very damp. It usually also doesn't work, but yeah.

I don't use exploits much. I do, when I generate worlds, I do make minerals available everywhere. I always set that one to high because I don't really want to spend a lot of my time searching, doing those tunnel, digging the shafts to look for stuff. So I usually just kind of hook myself up a little bit by putting minerals around. And I use the workshop assistance rather than what TechEd says or he uses managers to do this stuff. I need to watch this video on how to do that anyway because I think it

seems better, but... What's a workshop assistant? When you hit AltW, and then you can repeat and give them orders and DF hack manages your workflow for you? Oh, I've ever tried that. So you're not doing... It's limited. It has limitations where you get stuck. Like, if you leave one fort and you've got

everything, like, you know, make 50 barrels of pumpkin wine or whatever, you know, it's going to keep the settings between forts, so you'd have to manually clear. It's just kind of a pain in the butt because you get a lot of cancellation spam. But it works. Like, it's pretty manageable. So I cheat with that one. And sometimes I'll use a reveal if I'm getting really frustrated and I can't find something. Yeah, I need to use the manager even more. Yeah. I mean, I don't accidentally want to find the circus because that does feel cheaty to me. So I want that to happen naturally.

In Hatcher Romances, I did use the manager that are crap. What's, wow, I'm just having a hell of the time with words. I swear I'm not drunk. I'm not mine. What's the word for that, that whole mechanism where, uh, where you, where you, where you, uh, send a job to the manager? You mean putting something into the manager? Um, that is just using the manager. Or what do you mean? Setting up orders. Yeah, I guess work orders is, it's the, okay, I need to, anyway, let me try to start that entire thought over again. So I do use the manager from the workshop itself. I don't go to the manager's screen and set up, you know, work from any workshop, but I do use the production management from the actual workshops themselves. And I had a

entire steel industry set up in hatchet romances that way. And if I would have set up, apparently my alcohol making industry that way, then I probably wouldn't have lost that fortress in such a horrible manner. But I did not. I keep running out of things to brew is my problem. Really? Even though I have mushroom farms that seem to produce enough mushrooms for everybody, I tend to always run out of stuff to turn into booze. That is curious.

Yeah. Hmm. I don't think that's supposed to happen. I do the same, like, mine all, even though I tell it not to eat the seeds or whatever. Yeah, eventually I run out of plump helmets. And I found a way to get around that is, like my hack to get around that is I dig out huge portions of the second or third layer down, which is still soil, and then weight, and then mushrooms will naturally spawn there, and then you can harvest.

Can you? Yeah. And then you can get more spores. I never knew that you could harvest the fungi that was growing just because you opened up the caverns. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Wow. Yeah, you can do that in the caverns in general as well, but the caverns have to be kind of

open up so that I guess the spores from the fungi like slowly creep up through your fortress because you say slowly it happens like immediately it does but um if you haven't breached into the caverns nothing is going to grow under underground right you can even breach the caverns and immediately build a bridge over the hole that you just made that breached the caverns and that doesn't stop the fungus from coming up yeah let me make sure your floor's ugly and you have to put construction down to make them look decent again. I feel like I've just done a really crap embark. It's all water, really narrow, and I don't really know what I've just done.

Oh, no. Oh, no, they're going to drown, aren't they? It's not going well. To that note, Tarn has said that in the new version, going to be able to build things like workshops and stuff onto constructed floors. Oh, that's candy. Yeah, that's really neat. That is great because I love messing with.

and with cool floors and making tile designs and stuff, but then it takes up the space and you can't use it for anything else. Well, Taran, that's great. I really appreciate that function. That's pretty nifty, because that'll make things like tree houses more fun. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Pretty cool. Financial consideration for Dwarf Fortress Roundtable has been provided by Justin Lothamer, creator of Ziskin Shithath, the reticent perishment, a boxside hatch cover. All crafts' warship is of the highest quality. It is encrusted with oval bauxite cabachshons. This object is adorned with hanging rings of green turmaline

and menaces with spikes of applewood. On the item is an image of author covered, the Tanzanite Cage in Lignite. Justin Lothammer's Ziskin Shithath. On display now in the tavern, fruit of theaters, on level two of boltstills. All right. Episode 68 was Elves, Wine, and What They Lead, and it was released in late May.

Eshep emailed in, aren't Dwar Fortress Elves just Treehugger Park Hippies? No. Well, I like that. Perhaps. But they're more like, you know, Manson family treehugger park hippies. Oh, God. Oh, God. Right.

It says that they could grow their wooden stuffs effectively if their tree singing has magical growing powers. We were talking about just exactly how do you grow a wooden sword? Yeah, so that didn't work. I had a bad experience. Yeah, so I wasn't able to bridge a large chasm. I could do a small one, but not a large one. Not more than one tile. That's sad.

Yeah. I think we've hit limitations here. Yeah, where would we? Three magic tree powers. I believe they have to have some magic. power it's simpler because they crank out so many like sharp sticks that they can't just grow it naturally because there's no way you can produce a billion crappy swords made out of wood in like a week like that so I believe they have some weird shenanigans going on

but you know I have I have no actual proof so is magic coming in this next episode Is that a thing that... You mean the next release? Yeah, next episode. Next release? No. That's a longer term thing. Yeah.

Now, magic is along the same lines as the Army arc, which still isn't finished. Right. So, yeah, I think that's a... Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if it never came. Tarn's retirement plan. Working on it. Wolf Chew says about Tolkien's elves.

It says that Tolkien's elves are influenced by us. Catholicism, and they're basically man but before the fall, and they were never kicked out of Eden, so they really are just better than everyone without sin or fear of mortality. Everything you read by Tolkien has the conceit that he translated it from the original

ancient books of Middle Earth, all of them written by elves or by hobbits who are buddies with the elves. So the Lord of the Rings is basically elven propaganda. It is. They were probably huge assholes, but they're not going to tell you that. Yeah, fair enough. Thank you, Eshep, and also Wolfchew for sending those comments in.

And I have read that before that Tolkien's work was really influenced heavily by his faith. Yeah, I've heard this. But I've never read it that way whenever I was reading it. I tried to read it that way, but I just see, I don't know, fire-breathing dragons and small goblins and, you know, cool fantasy stuff happening. But maybe that's just me not being religious. Yeah, the fall of Numenor I could almost see is almost like Satan being cast out of heaven. And that was, I don't think that was so much biblical as Milton. All right.

Carrying on. Brian says that maybe we should discuss advanced world generation in a future episode. One thing that he likes to do is changing the cavern openness value to a higher level and the cavern density to zero to 50 or something like that. And it will give your caverns a more flat open area, not densely packed with webs, and probably will allow you to have easier viewing of, you know, floors in your caverns. Okay. Interesting. So, caverns like this are much easier to visually parse, and it makes the concept of building organically into the caverns much more viable.

That is pretty interesting because it can be very difficult to kind of wrap your head around how the caverns are working sometimes when it's like the things kind of go down and up. And I mean, I guess that's more normal, but it's also kind of harder to mentally picture. So that is an interesting thing. I don't know that I have ever created an advanced world generation world. So yeah, maybe in a episode, much like our Adventure Mode episode, we did a couple of weeks ago. Maybe we do one that is all about an advanced world generation instance and talk about the things we're doing. We got some good feedback, by the way, on the adventure mode, play-through audio-only stuff.

So I was happy about that. Very good. Neat. I had more than one listener say, you know, I was skeptical about it. It sounded like it was going to be awful, but it turned out that it was a really good listen. So we may do that again.

Story of my life. I don't even know how to process that. All right. Thanks a lot, Brian. There are a lot of options in this advanced world gym. There's a lot to chew on here. Yeah. Really even understand what's happening.

It is. Yeah. I don't really know what's going on. It is. I once tried to get like into it, but nothing really worked, whatever I did. So I, whatever, but it's something that we should definitely, you know, take a foothold in. Yeah. Also on episode 68, Euris wrote in that he was listening to the episode and was curious if he could put together an orchard of some kind.

thought that he could just cut away every tree, but the ones that he wanted to control. And he was running through that thought. And lo and behold, we just started talking about that exact thing. Glad that we were able to read Eur's mine there. Perfect. Yes. And that he's willing to share his fortress with us if we'd like to see how the orchard is progressing. Yes.

Yes, yes, yes. That's, you would like that? I was going to say, that sounds great, but I'm afraid that we would get the save, and I would just let it sit there forever, like a real. bad host. I would definitely be interested, even if it's just looking over the project for like 10 minutes or something, I would still be very interested in seeing how, you know, somebody made that happen because I already ran through a certain amount of possibilities, but they

all kind of, and so I would love to see that. So whenever Eurist here is done doing his Orchard, I would love to see it because I'm very curious. Well, this was probably a month ago that Euris sent the message in so he may be done with it right now. I'm still catching up on the comments. But yeah, hey, Eurist, I will go ahead and respond your email and I'll send you a link that you can send us the zipped up save of that. And yeah, Roland will take a look at that, I guess. Episode 69 This is what I was just talking about

Episode 69 The Life and Times of Tira Equatoria Probably Jody said Not gonna lie, I was iffy on the concept of the episode But I truly love this Also, kind of enjoyed hearing the character set up process

Had no idea you could play As a Demigod or what that meant In the context of Adventure Mode And the episode made Jody Want to play Adventure Mode Jody, for one, would like another one like it All right.

I think we can do that sounds great. Yeah. I also like the idea of a let's play on the advanced dungeon or the advanced world generation. Even if the world crashes, it will give us a chance to talk about the various aspects of world creation. Sounds good. Sounds really good. Episode 70, which was our previous episode, Progress bars, Mouse Control, and the Fall of Hatcher Romances. Eli, Hollow Knight is the name

that they wrote in, but then it says, my name is Eli. He loves the podcast. He loves playing Dwar Fortress, even though he's not a master, that Eli has just, or Hollow Night has just finished listening to all the episodes for the second time. Okay. Awesome. That's amazing. Yeah. Brilliant.

And I responded to the email. I was like, really? A second time? I don't... I'm calling the next world, Eli. I want to say I'm sorry, but I mean, I looked it up. You can do it in slightly below three days. So, I mean, okay, sure, sure you can do it. But the question is why? Is that three 24-hour days or three days, eight hours a day?

How long is it day in Germany? No, I mean, if we go with, we are around 70 episodes, every episode is like around one hour. that is, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I managed to actually puzzle that together.

But that's great. That actually somebody listens to this more than once, which is like, but I can feel the sentiment and he doesn't really have anybody to talk about it. I feel that because in my life outside this podcast, yes, it exists, all my friends know about Roe Fortress. Nobody understands it. And at this point, I feel like nobody actually wants to hear about it anymore. Because every time I started, they're like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.

And you can see that. And I'm like, no. But ultimately, that is a big reason why I started this podcast with all of you. So, uh... Yeah, it's nice to have people that aren't going to look at you and go, ah, that's neat. Okay. Swell for you, pal. I don't typically recommend a red one.

but I really do highly recommend the Dwar Fortress subreddit because it is not, it's not evil. It's a great place. And let's just talk about how extraordinarily well that subreddit is moderated. I was about to say that is all a reflection of the moderators. So I know Clino Dev and I guess Paradexas Aeron. Beautifully done. Beautifully done, folks. I'm not sure if they are the only moderators or if they are two of the moderators.

Plano Dev is really active there, and Plano Dev is just awesome. Yeah, and it's, thank you so much for making that. It's such a great place to just read. Yeah. Nobody's angry there, it seems. At least if they are, it's not. He moderates the hell out of them if they are. Yeah, maybe that's the reason why.

I mean, I've obviously done something horribly wrong with advanced world gen because everything's being rejected. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is exactly what I mean. Every time I try it. This is my experience. with it. It's just like, you're crap. Stop what you're doing. You're ruining everything. But Holo Night, yeah, go to Reddit slash R slash Dwar Fortress. Check out, if you've not done this

already, check out the subreddit there. It's a great place. People will tell you if you've got something wrong also, which I think is kind of cool without you having to resort to, what is it, Pozla or Cunningham's Law, the one where you have to say something wrong to get the right answer. Like, you'll usually get good answers from people without having to. to pretend to be wrong first. Yeah. It's good. It's a good one.

Yes. So I think that we are caught up on our Q&A. If you'd like to send us a question or a comment, you can do so by either going to DFRoundtable.com and commenting on one of the episodes. I unfortunately don't catch all the comments, but I do my best. But you can also send us an email at Eurist at DFRontable.com. That's UR-I-S-T-R-T-R-T-E-F-Rontable.com. and that's probably going to be the best way to get your question or comment on the podcast.

At some point. Yeah, at some point, yeah. It may be, you know, season six before we get to it. It's a best effort podcast, vote. Okay, I haven't got anything else for today. It is Father's Day. Happy Father's Day to all those fathers out there. And I guess I should not be sexist at all and say for Father's Day,

the same thing that I took some flack about whenever I said it on Mother's Day, that it is a creation of the greeting card industry. and that's what it's all about. It's an expectation of the greening card industry to make your family watch you play Door Fortress for... That's what we're doing today. Oh, God, not that game. Sorry, guys.

You can record a podcast today? We're doing it. Oh, no, we're doing Family Door Fortress. It's going to be a real hoot. All right, guys. Everybody out there, happy Fortressing, and we'll catch you next time. Tremendous. Thanks all. See ya.

All right. This has been the Dwarf Fortress Roundtable podcast. You can find all our past episodes at DFRoundable.com. Stop by and leave a message or suggestion in the comments section for this episode. While you're there, you can subscribe to Dwarfortress Roundtable or find us in the podcast service of your choice. You can find video content on our YouTube channel, and you can send us an email at Urest at DFRoundable.com.

That's UR-I-S-T at D-F Roundtable.com. Please consider donating to the creators of Dwarf Fortress at bay12games.com. If you'd like to help support this podcast, you can find us at patreon.com slash df roundtable. This is a conversational podcast. Allcraft Swanship is of the highest quality.