Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 87: Mailbag, Mushrooms, and !FUN!

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

Hey there friends - we wrap up the first 2023 session by checking in with our listeners and shooting the breeze. It's been a fun year so far - thanks for joining us on the way! Roland's Twitch channel DF Hack on Steam and Github

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfie. Every couple weeks or so, your hosts gather to talk about our favorite game, Dwarf Fortress. So let's join your hosts, Roland. Newfound country of green bushes and untouched nature. You're the ones with the dirty minds, not me. My heart is pure. I can live with myself. And Jonathan. It's on your content.

Have you thought about fully repurposing your podcast content for socials? As they present insightful, irreverent, and often incorrect analysis. And always remember, losing is fun. Uh, howdy, I think is appropriate. Which emoji should we start with? The, the, there is a cowboy hat emoji, right? Yeah, let's start with the cowboy hat emoji. I think that's the correct one.

Cowboy hat emoji. Howdy, partner? How is your fortress doing tonight? What? That sounds like it's from a Philly Crystal movie. It is. What was that? That was a happy trail.

City Slickers. City Slickers, thank you. It was something folksy. Hey, guys. How you doing, everybody? Doing wonderfully. We're going to just, we're just going to go ahead and get to it. Right.

So, Agent Topics of today. Let's go into the mailbag. Mailbag. All right, let's start there. Shuffling through the letters. Do you guys like my Foley work? Do we read the one from the scammer? Can we start with that?

No, no. That's going to be bonus content just for the... Oh, just the best for people. That's the best, the best. Live your best life. So Benjamin Goldstein, Stein, Steen? I'm not sure which. We're going to say Goldstein and correct us if we're wrong, Benjamin.

Wrote in and talked about a couple episodes ago, we were discussing Stairs in Dwarfortress. I think it was the episode that Willow was on. Of course, we've talked about them several times. Controversial topic of stairs. But yes, I remember now. It was Willow who said that they, whenever they would punch through the ceiling of the caverns, they now feel like that they have to drill off to the, mine off to the side, close that up,

then approach the cavern from a side area where they can successfully close it off. And Benjamin Goldstein said that that that's, exactly what he does and ask how we built stairs before or is it just the removal aspect of the stairs that we have problems with and perhaps they misunderstood the problem no I think that they understood the problem very well there but what I did before it was if I punched through the ceiling and I would then come in from the side later but we would construct a constructed staircase in the middle of the cavern room if we were able to do so and at that point you could then treat it just like a regular staircase.

So that doesn't seem to work now, right? I've been using hatch covers and then I lock them. Hatch covers? Yeah, the stairway seems to continue to exist. Because my first thing was I would, when I punched through into the cavern below, I would put flooring over it. But then I think if you put flooring on it, then it just leaves a hole in the ceiling above and there's no stairway to connect it.

So I think a hatch cover seems to solve that problem with. standing the doors. If you put a floor there, it does. If you put a floor there, whenever you are in the cavern below looking upward, is that still open to the floor above? I mean, in the real world, it wouldn't be, but in Tor Fortress Land, can things still fly up? There's a floor there?

I think if it's a floor, they can't fly up, but then the doors can't get up to the floor above them anymore, because by building the floor, you destroy the stairs. Yeah, but the cool thing was you could also just use an up staircase, which ultimately closed off this space. Okay, how do I explain this correctly? Up-down staircases, the single up-down staircase would punch a hole down and have half a stair up. With that half stair, you could not reach the level above you, and with the half stair down, you could not reach the level above you. and with the half stair down you could not reach the level below you

but there was a hole in the ceiling so something could fly up to the staircase and walk through and you could build half a staircase up on top of that removing the hole in the ground while still remaining with half a staircase which then connected to the staircase that went further up totally straightforward i can't believe that's not still part of the game. Well, we learn, we learn. I like the idea of having the advanced mode button for the steps. And this is one case where doing an audio podcast really doesn't work as well because

this would be good to have a diagram to try to show people because saying this audibly is a little tough. And there are plenty of a Reddit and things like that of people who have diagrammed it out. yeah there's a lot of good work done on this so you you needn't suffer in silence folks and benjamin still recommend hatch covers yeah true and benjamin don't feel bad because it is a more complicated topic than it seems like it should be apparently and it is hard to describe so we may have not even to have described it well whenever we did it the first time and that's a good chance that that's what confused you but thanks for sending an email in

and if you're more confused now than when you started I feel as though we've done our jobs. That is exactly what we probably just did. Yeah. So, yeah, Benjamin, thanks for sending in the email. And let's move to the next one. What do you say? Dear dwarf god.

Oh, this is from Nick. Nick says, dear dwarf gods. Thanks, Nick. That's nice. I like it. I feel really good. I don't know if it's like caffeine in my coffee or being called a dwarf god that it's like got my head all spinning now, guys.

This is great. You are four. thank you nick so anyway nick says dear dwarf gods i've been listening to your podcast backwards recently from episode 74 i'm currently listening to episode 61 and you guys gave me an idea for a steam workshop mod that i'd like to share with you the singed metal bloodline for it particularly particularly wow that's easier to write than say particular well how do you think it's going to sound backwards i have not been drinking i promise it's going to sound weird when you say it backwards, when he listens to it.

Iculecib. I don't know how it's going to sound. Anyway, multiplayer seems kind of impossible in this game. But what about the option to have multiple people? Let's say four players, Max, can spectate one fort together. All their own view window and can spectate different things in the map and one person has the controls. Then the next step would be making it possible to pass the controls of the fort

from one of the other three players. I guess he's talking about a Steam Workshop mod to mechanize what's the word for it? I've always called a bloodline fortresses, but I think it sounds awesome. Nick, if you build it, I'm downloading it. It sounds pretty fun. I would say one caution is the ability to do mods is pretty limited in a lot of ways. Like there's some things you can and can't do it. I think, like, big changes like that, I wonder.

But you never know, man, motivated people, creativity, little whiskey. I mean, they never know what's going to happen. I believe the real question would simply be how do you string together the different PCs, you know, because you have it run on one machine, but several other are spectating on probably their own machines. Otherwise, you just sit in a room and then somebody gets up and somebody else gets into the chair. or, you know. Yeah, it sounds like it'd have to be more of a client. Yeah. More like, you know, a networking client,

or as much a networking client as a Door Fortress mod. Yeah, it's a tricky one, for sure. Not impossible. Like, look what DF hack can do. Like, DF hack does a lot. So, who knows? I love it. I download it.

Look, though, Nick, that's a great idea. And if you can figure out how to do it, we would definitely play it, review it. I would love to see something like that. Sounds cool. closes his letter with uh greetings from the netherlands so greetings to you wherever you are in the netherlands and lastly nick i would say try listening to the podcast in forwards forwards mode because i think makes more sense maybe it's better i might make more sense i don't know i don't know i'm not sure i'm not

dutch you know could be that nick is in mensa and one of the exercises is to comprehend things when they are played in reverse. Yeah, I think it's awesome. Thanks, Nick. I love the idea. I think it sounds super fun. And if you build it, please let us know because that did it.

Or if it inspires anybody else to build it. Cool. I do like the idea a lot of the Bloodline Fortresses. I think that you started one up with a couple people recently, Roland. Yep. Didn't you? Is it still going all right?

How did it work? It's still going on. It is distant coal. It is called. And it is working well, even though there is a lot of angry birds around the map, because we're in like a very savage biome. So we, you cut one tree and you get like angry birds, angry animals rushing into your fortress. But thank God, I do it with Tekit, because that man knows what he's doing.

And he's actually protecting the entrance and built like a wall made of iron. blocks. So I can sit here, twiddle my thumbs, and kiss my militia good night while we don't actually have to use them. So that's pretty good. Don't you need like the special kind of angry bird to break through the iron wall like the big like the like the corpulent yellow one or something that like smashes through it? Or is that a different one of the angry birds? Okay. I got that reference. It's also not the yellow one is triangled. Okay. Yeah, it seems like a big, a big boy. that might be able to break through as Techids Iron Walls.

I do really feel like a green pig sometimes when I play that game. I get nothing done, and then it's like, scrah, scraw! And there's an angry bird again, and I'm like, okay. I'm going to tune into Techids Angry Birds channel

to get some hot tips. Yep. There's also cool forest fires going on. So you should definitely check that out. But in general, Succession forks can be really, really fun. I just feel like I rather need like a bigger plan on what I'm actually going to do, like what my part in the fortress is,

because if you start shuffling and like putting your hands all over the fortress and doing everything at once, which I usually do when I play alone, then, you know, it's a different play style, but it's cool. Yeah, you don't want to be working at cross purposes. You know, if you're not aligned, then like you build something and then the other player comes in and ignores it or, resources reallocates the materials to something else and you're kind of like fighting against each other rather than working together I haven't had a lot of luck with them um you guys like how's

how's it been in the past like I found you know we'll start but then it can somebody will just not not take their turn or take weeks and then I forget and then I'm like I don't know what I'm doing anymore administration seems to me to be the hang up for bloodline fortresses for succession Fortresses. What I've had for that idea to do it was, and it's not an in-game thing, it is basically a website that you can sign up for if you want to participate in the Succession Fortress. You get an email whenever it's your turn, and you have two weeks to finish your year, and if you don't finish your year, the next person in line gets an email, and they pick up,

you basically lost your turn if you don't get it resubmitted in the two weeks or whatever the time that you agree on. And that way, the next person in line can pick it up and go with it. Maybe two weeks is too long, but you know what I'm saying? That way, it will keep it moving and it won't be held up by one person. And it's a machine that's, you know, being mean to people and not a person who's not wanting to make anybody mad. Well, I'll tell you what, that idea of Nick's Mod, I'm going to start calling it Nick's Mod. Okay.

You know, I wonder, you do it outside the game. like DF hack, and it knows where the save games are, and it can automatically bundle and send the save games or something. I think there's a really, actually, the more I think about it, the more I'm like, yeah, you know, that's pretty neat, but it would like be an external app, I think. And here's where the mod could be, and I don't know that this would be too tough.

At the end of a year, it gives you a stop, and it says, okay, you have finished your time. It's time to hit this button, back up the save, and resubmit it to the group. And perhaps you could even have it be the next person gets a password to start the next year or something like that. But have the game itself say, okay, you're done. That's the end of your year. Send it back. Yep.

Yeah. I mean, I think there's something there. But yeah, I'm thinking companion program now. Yeah. Yeah, like a companion program that would also, like if we don't modify the game too much, even a companion program that kind of instantly copies your safe files and uploads them. So the moment you're here... That would make it easier.

Or whatever is done. You just click on, I'm done. And then the next person gets notified. Your folder gets automatically uploaded. And the next person can click on start playing, and then it downloads the correct folder. And then you can... That would be really cool. yeah thanks nick let's just get somebody somebody should write nick's companion mod that sounds amazing

yeah somebody write this down somebody write this down nick nick do you have it well i'll tell you what i will not archive that email i will put it back in the inbox uh for future consideration because yeah it's it's pretty cool yeah i mean you know the more you sit with it the more fun that is i wonder if that would even make it easier because i bet part of the problem is like where are those damn save files you know like it's it's cumbersome So, Nick, a year from now, whenever this program is on Steam, you can look up at Nick's Succession Fortress Mod, and maybe Nick did write it. Maybe Nick does write it. I'm not sure what Nick's program. If somebody else writes it, and they don't call it Nick's Succession Fortress Mod, we're going to send some goons after you. We're going to report them to the EFF, and then the EFF will go after whoever it is.

The revered historian Andrew Campbell's ancient tomes unveil the tale of Elder Bim Lickett Jeb, the founding luminary of New Tower of Showing. Bim's essence contained two contrasting facets, drawing others close with warmth and compassion while grappling with analytical challenges and impatience. Amidst a sense of self-importance and a delicate equilibrium between martial admiration and personal aversion,

Bim bore the weight of resolute duty. In his heart, a fervent ember of hope burned bright, guiding the path toward a future adorned with triumph and splendor. With unwavering determination, Bim carried the torch of conviction, inspiring kin to shape their destiny in the annals of history. These revelations, chronicled by Andrew Campbell, unraveled the enigma of Elder Bim Lickett Jeb, the founding sage of New Tower of Showing.

Uris from Norway, says. Cool. Just wanted to point out that the reason you guys experienced dwarves leaving the borough designations is due to a setting that you can toggle that will allow or forbid the gathering of job-related materials outside of the designated borough. Been a longtime listener, first-time emailer. Thanks for providing me with a masterwork quality D.F podcast throughout 2022. Looking forward to many more episodes in 2023. When did this get? Oh, wow.

This got set in January. Jeez. Sorry, man. I'm five months late on this. Well, it takes a long time to get email from Norway because it's got across the ocean. So I'm really sorry about that. Sometimes things get lost in the cable. Yeah, it's been in a routing loop for ages, right?

Sharks, yeah. Sharks attack the internet again. Yeah, and I think, you know, we've done less mailbag lately. That's very good observation. and I just, I think D.F. Hack addresses this now, doesn't it? Have you played around with it? Yeah, it's got the don't let them leave button or whatever. You can click it.

I believe so. I, for one, am tickled pink that D.F. Hack is available and usable. And, man, I just love D.F. Hack is back. It is just makes a lot of crafty things that you have to do easier. And it makes the game more fun. And that's what it's all about. I'm certainly not a purist. I'll tell you, can we, can we take a quick diversion here on DFF?

Sure, absolutely. Yeah, DFAC, top two things, that button that doesn't let them leave the borough, pretty helpful. And the button that, maybe I'm just an idiot or whatever, but I feel like there's, you know how when you were putting down furniture or walls, you'd like put it and then you'd have to choose the material or the one that you wanted there. And maybe I'm an idiot here, and you could always do that. But it seems like with D.F. Hack now, you can basically just have it automatically grab the closest available option. So if you're putting down 12 chairs, you don't have to pick the material for all 12 chairs. You can just be like, go get whatever is easiest. Yeah, I think that was available.

I love it. Was it available before? Yeah. You know, it's really fun is, you know, discovering things that are obvious to everyone, but being the last one to do it. It's actually, it's actually really fun. It's sort of like, you know. taking delight in something that everyone else knew. I think that if you choose the option to keep building after placement, once you do the key building after placement,

then it gives you the option to choose the closest one or pick the... Yeah, see, I thought that was a D.F. Hack. I've just been... I've been... You may have noticed it after DF. Hack came into play. Yeah, I've been chuckles here all the time with that. I've been an idiot. So that's cool. It's fun.

But, yeah, it's a fun thing. So if it's not a DFHack feature. What I do like the DFHack has added back is the planning mode, where you can choose to only put things in the room that are of exceptional quality or better. Oh, bless. You can not have crappy, ugly stuff built by some apprentice carpenter that does a crappy job and makes three legs one length

and one leg of the other length and it's got a permanent wobble. Yeah. Yeah, I don't want that in my tavern. No, you definitely don't. No one's going to come to that tavern. One of my bedrooms. I consider the bedroom mood boosts more important than the tavern mood boost. I could be wrong.

It certainly gets you more dwarves in your fortress, doesn't it? Yeah, I mean, you're correct. The bedrooms are really good, and they get their own personal room. I just really like looking at taverns because I always imagine, what would it feel? Like, how would it feel to actually sit in that tavern and listen to it? them and like watch out of my gem windows into the like dark unknown caverns below yeah i like my i like my taverns yeah they're they're really fun on the tavern thing i have a question so one thing i've done to keep visitors out of certain parts on my fort is i'll put a hallway

and then i'll designate one or two squares of that hallway as a tavern that only citizens can go in and then I've noticed visitors won't go past it. Does that actually work, or am I seeing a placebo effect of some kind? Wait, come again, please? So, you know, if you designate a tavern and you say it's only for citizens. Right. If I put that in a hallway, nobody that's from outside the fort will cross that tile. Creatures will.

Huh. But people don't seem to, because I was having a problem with things getting stolen. The one problem that they seem to have adapted is now instead of them taking it themselves, they'll co-opt a citizen to go steal it. But it bought me some time. Will invaders cross it? Yeah. The invaders don't care.

And creatures will. Definitely will. But that's interesting. I have to check that out. Yeah, see if it works because what I noticed is I was having so many things stolen. And then I put that in. And then they just couldn't get to where I was storing my artifacts. And then like a year or so later, then all of a sudden my citizens started stealing

stuff because somebody was like leaning into them. We'd be shame if something happened to your beautiful child kind of stuff seemed to be happening. Well, that would be a way to make a super secret area of your fortress that only Fortress citizens could approach. You could just block off the access with a dummy tavern. Yeah, and no one seemed to gather there because maybe a couple of dogs or whatever, but otherwise nobody else really did that.

And the dogs get soaked pretty quickly if there's too many of them. So sorry, dog lovers. Dogs get soaped? You know what I mean. don't make me go there oh gosh you put them in the like the shower i turn the excess of dogs into meatloaf and soap yeah that's exactly what i yeah yeah and then you scrub your dog so he's clean it doesn't really soap him up you know yeah i'm not proud of this but you know it happens and what are you going to do you know i'm not bob barker i didn't have the dogs spayed and neutered like i should

have done. And you end up with an excess in a quandary, an ethical quandary. All right. So I think that is all of the unattended email and questions that we have. If I am mistaken, my email organization abilities have not been up in the greatest the last couple months. So if I have missed your email, I sincerely apologize. Please send us another email in to ask the question again, and we will get it on the

podcast. And thank you, everybody, for sending in the emails. If you'd like to send an email, you can send it to Eurist at DFRoundable.com. That's UR-I-S-T at D-F Roundtable.com. That sounded really good, by the way. I just wanted to compliment you on that. Oh, thank you. Can that maybe.

Yeah, I think so, too. It sounded incredibly professional. You'd use your best radio voice. I like that. Yeah. Keep it. I just wanted to call that out. All right.

So let's take a look at the weather forecast. Now we've got sunny skies. It's overcast here with a high of 50, which is 13 and Celsius. Possibility of blood rain. In the annals penned by the revered scribe Old School Vidya, it is recounted that the late spring of the year 107 enveloped the hamlet of New Tower of Showing. Elder Bim, slumbering amidst the gentle patter of rain, delved into a dream reflecting upon the fortress's accomplishments,

during its first 18 months of existence. With steadfast determination, the dwarves erected the house of healing, where skilled hands tended to the wounded and ailing. They adorned the realm with fine chambers, ensuring each resident found solace in their own abode. And under the capable leadership of elder Eurist Usherjmer, they forged a martial force known as the bridled works, ready to defend their haven.

The fortunes of New Tower flourished, and a sense of contentment prevailed. Yet, the revelation of divine purpose had not yet graced Elder Bim's consciousness, though he harbored no apprehension. For he possessed an unyielding faith that the unveiling of their great calling would come to pass. So it is etched in the chronicles, woven by the quill of the great scribe, old school vidya. I still can't get over how dark my fortress might be. Like, it just, like, how are they getting around?

Like, nobody's carrying candles. Okay, but I was, you know, dwarves have infravision, man. Is that what's happening? Because I can see it too. Does that see your thought of there, Roland? I was going to say that, okay, I get that stuff is not in the game, but then again, how do they fish? Huh? I know that the humor section on the wiki tells me that they fish with their beard, okay?

Yeah, very funny. Okay, ha-ha. But, come on. They do have things to fish with. So the game literally does not tell you about certain things. And I can't get over the image in my head where people have candles in their beards, which is an extreme fire hazard, but it's like a waxy dripping beard full of candles. Blackbeard the pirate was known for that.

That has a basis in pirate lore. It seems like a terrible idea. but Victorians also put candles in their Christmas treats, which also sounds pretty unsafe. Depends on how old that Christmas tree is. I suppose if you're in Europe or something where it's wet at the holidays. Anywho, not advocating for that. I've now got a Krug Smash art piece in my head of a dwarf walking around with a candle in his beard.

Yeah, yeah. Like, okay, this will not tell you anything, but maybe some of the listeners will know. the cobalds from early world of warcraft had candles on their hats and then the image of the cobald is basically like he has like a mining helmet and then the the drippy wax is like rolling down his skull and that is really fun and i really like that so that is what i have in my head just the dwarfs put candles on themselves mostly in their beards and then they run along. See, I think we just have to use a little bit of, you know, a little bit of imagination here. You know, it's like, you know, you watch Star Wars and nobody's ever seen Chewbacca use the bathroom. Like, how does that work? Does he use a litter box?

Does he go into the toilet? Like, I don't know. Like, you know what I mean? Like, nobody's asking about that. But anyway, let's move on. Let's move on. Chubbock's litter box. Plump helmets.

Yes. Here's my question, and you can, you can heckle me if this is straightforward. But so when I do an embark, I like one of my first things I do is I try to get my farm set up. And so I dig in the uncool soil, you know, the poor quality soil up at the first couple layers. Draw a couple of little patches, get some little plumpies growing. And, and very quickly, I run out of seeds. and I've turned off cooking because I've heard cooking will destroy the seeds

and so all they're doing is brewing but I heard brewing preserves the seeds but like after one run of this I run out of plump helmet spawns so you know I power through it by telling him to go gather whatever's on the surface and then you know punch into the cavern layers and then let the muck grow

and then I go harvest more seeds from the you know like you create sustainable forests But, but I mean, like, what am I doing? Why am I running out of plump helmet spine? Why am I having to, you know, scramble and have these, like, these time periods? Because I don't remember that being a problem in the older versions. Oh, it was a big problem for me in pre-50. But I learned the, I learned the, well, maybe it was overpopulation with just one tile of seeds.

But, yeah, it was, I did have feeder stockpiles for seeds set up, and some would have no barrels. and that kind of thing. But, no, I've not really run into that with version 50 myself. I don't depend on plump helmets nearly as much anymore as I used to. I stopped building the dirt farms as just a matter of course, and I have started collecting plants from outside and getting more fruit. So my dwarves depend more on gathering than they do on plump helmet farming now. Okay.

Okay, so you're getting past it with gathering. what are you doing rolander what do you think i'm doing wrong hmm okay i'm thinking did you so you actually do run out of plump helmets like in general you have yeah yeah all zero and i'll go to to plant the fields and they'll leave them fallow because it'll say plump helmet no seeds like where where are you putting them guys uh okay so do you have a extra seed stockpile no should i be making seed stockpiles i I'm not sure if it's needed, but I am a, how you say, I'm a collector of food items. So I very often have like over 10K food items just laying around.

And that means I really have to make stockpiles for everything. So that my food stockpile is not like pushing out seeds. So I always have an extra seed stockpile, which also slightly reduces the amount of like walkway that your dwarfs have if your seed stockpiles right. next to the underground farms, but whatever. And I noted that that actually gives me the ability to collect and store a lot more seeds because the seeds do not have like a storage problem with the rest of the food stuff, where you have a lot of food stuff in general, and then the seeds just kind of fly around your map. it could also be that your food stockpiles are fairly full and or that you do not have enough barrels or storage pots and then sometimes your dwarfs will not go and actually harvest the plump helmet and it will wither on the farm plot and that will remove the seed because now that is inedible and the seed just goes so they need to keep making them yeah yeah okay okay i wonder if something's

Okay, good to know. So I'm going to try the seed stockpile thing and see if that solves my, if that solves my dilemma. Yeah, and technically you don't need that much space because they put the seeds and bags and the bags in a barrel. And even in my biggest fortress, in one of my longest fortresses that I have running right now, I have like four barrels at all. And three of them are full, which is still a ridiculous amount of seeds. But I'm just saying like a tiny six by six is already too much for a seed stock. You can very easily do it like three by three and just put it somewhere instead of a farm plot. So you always have a special place to collect your seeds. Okay.

Okay. I'm going to give that a go. Cool. Awesome. I'm sure that's it. Hopefully. Confident that's it. I was totally muddled though because I was like, man, I'm not, you know, I'm not letting them use the.

The drink, the other trick they were doing is using the drinks that they would make to make food, which is, which is not cool. So they would use the Dwarven wine to make Dorman Wine loaves or Dauvin Wine roasts and run me out of, run me out of liquor pretty quick. So like, don't cook the liquor, guys. Just leave it alone. Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. That's why I started linking stockpiles to the kitchen.

And then I have two kitchens. One kitchen is the kitchen where I make food, and the other is just to render fat. And the render fat doesn't take in any work orders. It just is right next to the butchery shop. And the other is linked to the specific stockpiles that I want, which also, by the way, enables me if I close the door and the whole thing, it enables me to sometimes actually cook royal jelly. and I'm very proud of that. Oh, the bee stuff, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I know that you're supposed to have better luck or better productivity whenever you build a farm plot in the caverns. I don't like the aesthetics of that, though. It's this farm plot in the middle of an open room. I like to have my farm plots tucked out of the way. You don't have to put them in the caverns directly. They're more talking about muddied stone,

so you don't have to go into the actual caverns and, like, do it there. Finding the stone layer that is no longer actually in the soil layer, but below the soil layer, and then muddying the stone also counts as cavern. So that is good enough. And then you can get off,

you can do it square. I thought it was that you had to, to get the benefits of the increased productivity that you needed to go to a cavern and find a mossy place in the cavern to build your farm plot. Nope. the way it is phrased can be difficult because that is just called cavern.

But yeah. And aside here, I was at a business lunch the other day and the person knew that I was involved in a podcast. He didn't quite understand how a game podcast would work whenever you aren't playing the game at the time that you're making the podcast. It's not a playthrough. I said, no, we're just discussing, discussing the game. And he's a Dwarfortress player as well. And was like, so you have that much to talk about? You've done, what, 85 episodes now?

And you don't have play-throughs. But yeah, that's really what we do. We just talk about the game and we talk about our experiences with it. Well, I mean, there was. Yeah, we did that, didn't we? A couple, yeah. We did actually sit down and play the game. So we also did that.

Yeah, it didn't work very well. Yeah. Yeah. When Adventure Mode comes back out, though, I want to try to do another one of those. Do that again. And maybe we'll do a Twitch stream or something on it. We do have a Dwarf Fortress Roundtable Twitch channel. There's just never been anything on it. well i think streaming the game is tough i think i don't know i think there's a demographic a demographic that that enjoys that and that's cool i'm glad it's there but i'm not to me it doesn't necessarily lend itself well to it because everything takes a long time and sitting there watching somebody else like get their farms running and stuff

to me it feels sort of like watching paint dry but um hey man to each they're on you know well let people like things it's mine to me it's more than watching paint dry. It's so interesting that I can't have Roland's stream on in the background whenever I'm trying to get work done because I won't get any work done. I'll look at Roland's stream. I can have a baseball game in the background. I can have football in the background. I can have a lot of things in the background. But Roland's Dwarfortress streams, I can't do. There's been several times. The Rolling's a lot better than baseball to be watching baseball, to be honest. I'm like, I don't care. He could be having lunch and just having it run by itself. still think I'd put it over watching TV baseball, but hey, okay. Well, there's been three or four times that I've dropped in on rolling in the middle of a stream, and I'll be there for 30 minutes, and I'll be like, dude, I've got to take half out of here.

I'm getting no work done. Perfect. I love it. It's the comments you'll love to hear. In the enchanting verses sung by Bard Adrian Roses, the tale of New Tower of Showing unfolds. Within its walls, the death sect of ashes gathers devotees, calling for a temple and priest. Elder Bim, leader of the citizens, commands the construction and furnishing of this sacred abode. Simultaneously, in the skilled hands of Udn and Cole Dachper, a masterpiece is born, a flawless Morian named Spoil Feasts, the squashed Vanishment. Adorned with Octagon Cut Morians, this artifact of utmost craftsmanship is generously gifted to the fortress government. the Violet Rack, finding its revered place in the Fated Temple.

Elder Bim contemplates the profound presence of the Death Sect of Ashes, with nearly half the Hamlet's residents embracing the worship of death. This realization prompts introspection, as Bim appoints Udn and Aleth Ramler as the Holy Skull of the Fated Temple. Thus resounds the song of Adrian Roses, the bard who weaves these tales. Next topic. We haven't said this on the show yet, but we're going to go ahead and start our summer hiatus after the release of this episode. We'll be back somewhere around Labor Day, I suspect.

Labor Day in the U.S. That would be the first weekend of September, I believe, or maybe it's the last weekend of August. Somewhere in that neighborhood, don't change your schedule for the release of our podcast episode because we have a tendency to not stay on schedule sometimes. Before you change your clocks back. Yeah, yeah. in October. But, you know, we did the...

Typically, we will take two breaks during the year. One will be in the summer, and one will be around somewhere around Thanksgiving, U.S. Thanksgiving, and Christmas and New Year's. But we skipped that this time because version 50 was released, and there has been a lot of activity in the Door Fortress community because of that. And so I wanted to ask the question, now that we've had about

six months with the game, Roland, Tony, do you think that the game is better now than it was in version 4705, I think was the final pre-50 version? Let me say that another way as well. Do you think it's more fun to play now, or was it more fun to play before? Are you going to jump on this one, Roland? Yeah, that actually is a good question, yes. I should have warned you, too, because I actually. went back and spun up 4705 and played for a few hours.

Oh, no, I do remember. My memory is actually good enough for that, but it's hard to say because I believe I looked at the game in a slightly different tone because they're, okay, yes, I sometimes did play with the tile sets, but I kept switching them, and I imagined my dwarfs in a specific way, and sure, sometimes you read their description. and then you're like, oh, okay, I get it, but sometimes I read the description kind of wrong or I got it wrong or whatever,

and then I had a very different image of the dwarf in my mind, and now I kind of see the dwarf and whatever. And so this is what we now see. I don't want to say has taken away some of my artistic ability to imagine them because it didn't, but it has definitely influenced the way I see my dwarfs. before there were very like dark fantasy gritty dwarfs and now they're a little bit lighthearted and nicer because the textures that I just see are nicer beyond that we now get to actually see things I do believe that it has become very different to play sure the first months of us trying were basically like oh

God, I don't know how to play anymore, which, yeah, okay, okay. Stop making fun of me, man. Oh, no, I'm also making fun of myself because I sat here and I keep clicking. Still, I keep clicking buttons and then I say to myself, Roland, that is the wrong version. These are not the buttons anymore. You don't have to click them. And sure, some things have slowed down tremendously. Okay, the bedrooms faster than before.

but the clickety clickety clickety click that we did before man that it had it had a character you know i'm with you i found that very satisfying yeah i don't believe you agree that that was satisfying i mean i i don't know i guess i don't i i liked both i mean i played the game a lot when it was in that mode and i like a lot of the changes i i i guess i wasn't as you know i don't think i was as impacted i just kind of rolled with the punches a bit i really like the tile set there were things about the old version that I found kind of a little tedious that they've sorted out

in the new version. I would say the one thing that kind of dooms me in the current version is that I feel more removed from the game because it's much harder I guess for me to see the announcements that come up.

So quite often I'll miss combat. Like there will be like I'll be down in the caverns like fixing a magna fortress or digging some tunnels out or whatever and doing some exploration. Meanwhile, up in the tavern, somebody's gone crazy and killed two people. And I just, I never see it until I go up and I'm like, oh God, there's bodies

around. What the hell? So, you know, and I know people have talked about ways to solve that and stuff. And I, you know, I haven't looked into it. Modified my announcement.comtext or anything like that. So I'm sure it's solvable, but like that's the one part that I think isn't

as great is just the kind of fact that you're much more removed. from the day to day than you used to be. And I'm sure that was a choice, but, you know. Well, happily, the game's not finished. Yeah. Well, no, I don't think it was a finishing thing. I think it was a decision that was made.

Oh, you think so? Yeah, yeah. I think to kind of, I think it was a decision that was made to make it feel less micromanagey. I feel like that was advice that was given by somebody. And so they were like, okay. I mean, that was one of the outcries when it was released. So I suspect that that is going to be re-implemented.

Re-evaluated. Yeah, and I, you know, I'm like, by all means, don't just flip it back. Like, I can see why people might like that, especially if you're just getting to know the game, you know, and learn it. You don't want to be bogged down by every year. I can understand why it would be done, but it would be neat if it was more configurable. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, that's pretty small, I guess, in the grand scheme of things.

I think overall there's the game has been improved my undercurrent though is now don't come on I love the new graphics but I did enjoy tile set bouncing and I don't know if we if that is even possible with the new so I don't know if other of you have dug into the folder structure of dual fortress version 50 but are the graphics tile sets done in the same manner that they were before no no yeah so it may be more tough it would be great to be able to have the option to bounce tile sets like we uh like we did before and i'm i'm i'm blending in tile sets and graphics packs because i'm not an expert at doing any of those things and to me it's all one blob of things that you see yeah because what we got now is it has a lot more detail because it has uh layers like layered graphics so we we get like a dwarf that is no longer just one graphic for this is a dwarf that is a milker but we do get the milker layer we do get the hair layer we got we got the hair cut layer we got the gender base no actually i'm not sure if they do actually have a bad

a gender base, scratch that. I think they do. So if you want to make a tile set, you would need to work on a lot more things if you don't want a tile set that feels like crunched down

from the originals, if you know what I mean. I don't. Please rephrase that. Okay. Do you know those like children books where you can make like a giraffe that has like a front of a giraffe in the middle of a lion and then the back of a porcupine?

Yes. You can kind of imagine it like this. Your dwarf is a mix made out of different pictures. And if you want to make, again, a new tile set or a graphic set in this case, that has the same depths as the current original one, then you need... not to only make a dwarf, like one little pixelated image of a milk-milker, but you need to make an image of different hairstyles and colors and clothing colors and maybe even the attire, if you want to change how their clothing looks.

And then you have caps and gloves and blah, blah, blah. So we went from, we have one, basically like a sprite, because every milker used to look the same, because it was just one sprite. And now we have, you have a pallid of where it can switch up your little dwarf, and now he has like a giraffe head and the lion middle and a porcupine behind. So you have to work a lot more to actually make a graphic set now. I get what you're saying now, yeah. It is still possible. and at some point we get it, but it is a lot more work. I think during our hiatus,

I'm going to try to play some Dwarf Fortress in the Askey graphics mode with the version 50, because with the improvements of the user interface that carry over to the non-pixel art graphics, yeah, I think I'll give that a shot and see if it changes the way I feel about, Don't get me wrong. No, I think it's better now.

I did never say that. I think that version 50 overall is a much better experience than version 4704 was, or 4705. But whenever I was playing it, I absolutely felt some nostalgia, if you can feel nostalgia for something that was six months ago. It's been in some time. And I think we've got, you know, probably given the way the release schedule works, like kind of a year until the next big release, probably. I don't know. From the way that I think it was Putnam, but the way that someone was talking on either Reddit or Kip Fox or something,

something I read sounded like 51 or 52 wasn't that far down the road. Interesting. I think that 52, I think is the number that I read. Don't quote me on that, maybe 51. But I think that it's going to be implementing adventure mode. Okay. That would be fun. It would be fun.

Procedural. deep procedural game generation is definitely a hotness now there's a there's another big procedural game that just came out a voxel game called Shadows of Doubt that's like a procedural detective game

and it's got definitely feels like there's some Dorfie vibes in the DNA of it so that's kind of fun yeah I don't have room in my life for more than two games I'm kind of with you

I got two going at the time and that's about it yeah I've got Dorf Fortress and I've got Doom and that's pretty much the gaming slots in my schedule right now. Legacy. A little bit of Empire Earth on Saturday nights, right?

A little splash out for the weekend. Cool. Look, guys, I have a hard out that I need to take here. So let's go ahead and wrap this up. Again, we will be back after the summer hiatus, and we thank everybody for downloading and listening. And I'd like to especially thank the people who support us on Patreon that make it such an easy thing to do financially. So the tools that we're using, we really appreciate the patrons taking that load off of us.

So thank you folks so much. Other than that, hey, it has been a really exciting six months for staff of this year. We'd like to thank all the people who have been guests on the podcast. I want to tell those guests, if they're listening, that we've had feedback, general feedback from all of our people who send us emails and comments on Reddit that they really enjoyed the guests that we've had this season. So thanks to all of the people who've come on here and we'll continue it this fall. Delightful. Enjoy your summer and remember to use sunblock. And if you're in the Southern Hemisphere, have a great winter.

Yeah. Good luck. We'll see you on the other side. See you on the other side. Yeah, thanks for listening in. Thanks for downloading this. Thanks for supporting us because we like this. We like doing this.

We like, see you all. And the minion meme. What did we say? September? October? September. September. It's one of the timbers.

Should we ask everyone to send us lots of questions? Yeah, sure. Sure. Yes, send us lots of questions. See you all in September. Have a great time Dwarfing around. Tell us all about it.

We love to hear about it. See you then. And have a good night. 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.

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