Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - In Which Jonathan Shows His Lack Of Dwarf Fortress Knowledge – And Traps Too. VI

Episode Date: May 20, 2019

o:00 - Intro and Fortress and Adventure modes as a continuum9:04 - Trap talk15:45 - Post Battle Cleanup Strategy20:20 - Archers… not good.25:25 - Flood Traps – food trading – tattered clothing30:00 - Learning Aids Discussed38:15 - Dev Notes41:00 - State of the Fortress46:42 - Wrap Up Links: Nookrium Dwarf Fortress videos Mooncanyon videosAvarice RPGKruggsmashIncompetechBay12 Games -- Please Donate!Featured Picture Attribution

Hi, and welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfee. I'm Jonathan. I'm Roland. And we've got Tony again with us. Hey, Tony. Hey, guys. How's it going? So you say that the Reddit community is getting pretty psyched up about the steam release?

Yeah, it looks like there's just a lot more activity there. And I don't know if you guys caught this at all, but last week, one of the guys working on the Steam graphics posted a, I guess, sort of a preview of the world gen of what the map's going to look like after WorldGen. And it is super cool looking. It's, you know, it's very like Super Nintendo 16-bit kind of awesomeness. So that was pretty exciting if you caught that. Was it a MEP?

Yeah, that's right. Yep, it was Meph, the man behind the Meph graphics pack who's doing a lot of the work. But yeah, it was like the cleanest map gen I've seen. So that I think is going to make things a little easier because I'd say for me, the map that I have in mind when you hit C and look at your global map, it's a bit messy, and that one just cleaned it right up. It's really cool.

I think I'm looking at it right now, and it's wonderful. You have these little tiny triangle mountain. Really nice. It really makes me want to play this game. Oh, wait, I am actually... playing this game right now. And it makes me want to do it even more.

Well, I personally have high hopes for adventure mode because I'm not yet a real pro when it comes to adventure mode. And I hope for this team release to actually help me a bit, especially if it looks like this, you can imagine yourself actually playing on a Nintendo or something. Yeah, totally. You know, one of the things that I had to, I say it, I say this authoritative.

I had to go in adventure mode to solve a problem. But I've been having some problems with this goblin outposts. I can't seem to defeat it no matter what I throw at it. So I went in an adventure mode to try to explore it. And I found it, but I can't figure out how to navigate those goblin pits at all. It's like trenches and crosses and people running around. And, I mean, it's total chaos. So I don't know if anybody's seen anything about how to successfully navigate some of these procedurally

generated bad evases, that would be cool, because it is, it is terrifying. That's quite awful, yeah. That is a very interesting way to think about playing the game, not as you're either in fortress mode or you're in adventure mode, but to think of it as just a continuous world and if your main goal is your fortress, that's great. But then whenever it turns out that there's something that you need to do that just can't get done with fortress mode and your squads that you're sending out can't take care of the goblin pit. Then you go into adventure mode and you see if you can do a clandestine

infiltration of the pit and see what you can do to destroy it that way. That's a nice idea and a nice continuum. Kind of purloined the idea for that from watching those Krug Smash videos because I think before I saw what he had done, I had kind of just been in the school of thought of like, well, I'll generate a world and if my fort dies, I'll generate new world and then see what happens. And this way I've, you know, I've kind of kept persistently in this same generated world now for almost 50 in-game years, just kind of seeing what's happening. And it's definitely added to the depth, I think. Yeah, definitely. Especially when they made some kind of artifact I wanted to have. So I retired my fortress and went there as an adventure to try to try and steal it. It

didn't really work out because I made a mistake so I went there as an animal person like I usually do I think it was an hyena man because they have the same height as a dwarf

and for some reason all my dwarfs attacked me I don't even know why but they saw me as an animal and slaughtered me and I was like no please I'm your friend no yeah he's not of the body

Yeah, yeah. They knew I was going to steal there. I don't even know what it was. Armor weapon? Something. It was cool. Have you managed to get it yet? No, I just started another fort. And then I tried to go into that fort as an adventurer. So I made a fort really tiny. I got like 15 wolves or something. Then I retired. Made an adventure and tried to go there. So my adventure. could retire there and become like a super militia whatever, but I haven't killed enough things or animals or people. So my militia dwarf, you know, you have to go to your fort and then talk to your militia dwarf leader, whatever and ask them to be able to stay for the permission. And sometimes they decline if you're like nobody. and well I haven't killed enough things yet so he said like who are you and no no just leave leave

and I was like hmm okay so I wandered around just killing random animals from horses to whatever I could find then I came back and bragged about all the kills I had and then tried again and he was like oh you slaughtered a tortoise well now you can join and I think just there's just such a hidden world in adventure mode. I just haven't even begun to scratch the surface of, you know, between getting stuck in trees or lost in goblin pits or procedurally generated forts. I have not gotten very far at all. So it's, yeah, I'm really looking forward to kind of dig it into that because it seems super cool. Yeah. I know that you can build in adventure mode and you can even dig in adventure mode that blew my mind because now I want to make an adventurer level.

him up a bit and whatever and then just retire him somewhere and build him a small house and I don't know come back later or something or make it to the tavern so that this old adventure guy actually settled down and made a tavern for himself and that would be cool yes oh for sure and I mean could you then do an embark in a place that you built in adventure mode I wonder if that would work I wonder too yeah I hope so yeah well there's only one way to find out. I do know that the Krug Smash in the lead-up to the Honeystoker series whenever Moses, the boar man, was wandering around the world.

One of the first things he did after he left his fortress that had collapsed was go out and build a shelter out in the middle of nowhere, I believe. So yeah, it's certainly something that you can do. And it looked like it was quite similar to doing it in fortress mode. In that, you go out, you cut trees. and you actually, you know, designate for areas for building and things like that, build walls. You have this goblin woman, too, and she built a tavern, I think. And that was the way I found out that you can actually build in adventure mode,

and that is just the same when it comes to building. And I was like, it's possible that that's what I was thinking about. if I understand things right, the whole point of it was to have an adventure mode rogue-like experience built in a rich world that was developed through Fortress mode. So I think the end game is to have adventure mode be awesome. Yeah, for sure. And I think some of his speeches that I've seen on YouTube that he's given, he definitely

talks a lot about adventure mode. But I think one of the things that I've heard recently is some of the interviews he's done, he's definitely talking more about fortress mode now. So I'm wondering if he's sort of like, oh, okay, you know, I better get back to some of this fortress mode stuff as we approach the steam release. Wasn't it that he personally plays more adventure mode and knows that most of his fan base plays ford mode? Yeah, I think I saw that same thing.

I wonder if he's just sitting there and, you know, in front of his computer going, come on, people, you're missing the opportunity here. You can't see it. I hope he bears with us and keeps... Keeps working on the Fortress mode stuff because it's really cool. Well, maybe he's listening to us and is shaking his fist at his computer right now. Yeah. These people don't know.

They're putting words in my mouth. I don't know what they're talking about. Yeah. I hate them. He said he's going to personally name all the dwarves after. There's a new starship mode, I heard. Oh, my God. So I think last week, didn't we mention traps or talking about traps or something?

I did mention talking about traps in that I still have not built a successful trap. Really? And I want to learn them. I want to learn how to build traps because that is going to end up being the secret to my, no, not secret, but the key to my success and keeping a fortress going longer than, you know, 20 years or two years even I've gotten them going longer than two years I think that my oldest fortress that I've run has lasted about seven, eight years now

so but what do you mean when you say you haven't built a trap yet do you do you mean like cage traps or really elaborate traps? I'm thinking more like spike traps and traps for defense bridges that will collapse whenever certain things happen.

And I guess that would be a pit trap, right? You know, it's not that I haven't figured it out. It's that I haven't tried to figure it out enough yet, I suppose. Yeah, I got excited when I saw the pressure plate spike traps in that in that Krug Smash video. I haven't been able to make that work because I can't seem to tie spike traps. spikes to the pressure plate trigger, it just doesn't seem to let me do that. So I still use just your old bog standard weapon traps, and that seems to be pretty effective. But there's a certain kind of hilariously sadistic element to having spiked pressure plates.

So Roland, have you ever successfully done that? Or what kind of traps do you use? Well, I too use just weapon traps or cage traps, because a little bit too overpowered. And I'm so sadistic that I actually go as far as to use only sharp things in my weapon traps. So whatever passes through actually loses limbs. I tried a spike and pressure thingy for secure in my caverns. But I'm not sure if it worked because it seems that too much stuff actually goes over. with it and doesn't get hit by the spheres or whatever.

I don't know what's wrong with that. Yeah, I've only had taking a cue from something you talked about last time, which was the fun pit where you get to throw animals and things into it. I made one of those kind of after that conversation where it sort of opened up accidentally over a cavern. So the pit dropped like eight Z levels and then it dropped into a cavern with all sorts of ledges and ridges all the way down, about 20 levels down. And I just put spikes all along the way down.

So things would just kind of bounce and smash and bounce and smash. And then there was just a pile of carnage at the bottom. And I thought, that was satisfying. How did I put that off so long? What a great idea. Everything's going in a pit. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Well, if Adam is listening, then perhaps we can ask whenever he finishes up with Honeystoker, that he could do a series of trap to, tutorials showing how he did his his pressure plate spike trap and his uh you know he had some really nice traps that even that I don't know I don't know if it's anything special or not but like the collapsing materials traps that are in front of his gates and maybe it maybe it would be in order for a few tutorial episodes of Krug Smash on trap building that would be cool Hint, Adam, hint.

Yeah, I would watch them. Of course, I'd probably watch him make a grocery list or something. I don't know. You know, like, it's still pretty cool. Especially if there was art with dwarves making grocery lists. Yeah, I mean, you know, if he's out of ideas, you know, no charge for that one. That's a freebie. Shopping with Dwarves.

Speaking of which, have you seen some of the horrendous things they cook in their kitchens? Oh, yes. I mean, they're not great. What? What, the prepared mosquito brain? I mean, that's delicious. Sounds delicious. I'd eat it.

Like, seriously, I'd really eat it. It would be hard. I mean, where I live, mosquitoes are pretty small. So these storks have really got some advanced technology to try to get that out of there. Just imagine how many mosquitoes you would need for a tablespoon full of mosquito brain. Sort of tells me I wouldn't want to. live in a door fort because if they have that many mosquitoes, it sounds incredibly unpleasant. You don't live in the Mississippi Delta, apparently.

Well, you did live in the Central U.S. at one point, but the rice fields in the Mississippi Delta in Arkansas just have, I mean, mosquitoes are large and thick and will carry you away. So having driven through there a time or two, I can see how mosquitoes could have a big enough population such that if you actually formed their brains, that you would have a nice powder that would probably be more of a mosquito brain flower. So there's a restaurant idea for anybody listening in the Mississippi Valley right now, mosquito brain bakery. It would not sell because everyone there hates mosquitoes.

Well, you've never tried the loaf. Which is you try to export it? That's not raisins. I can't believe it's not raisins. So on the thing of traps, I had this clever idea that I would just basically put the entrance to my fort and then I would just line it with traps because obviously my dwarves and visitors and friends, they're just fine. They just seem to roll right over the traps. They're like, hey, it's not for me. But then, of course, the goblins come in or the humans or the elves or whoever's decided to attack me. And then they just can't help themselves. I mean, it's just gore everywhere. Then I realized that after a siege, everybody comes out of the fort and they're like oh we survive oh my god and then everyone panics and we end up in complete chaos and the fort spirals down and everyone goes nuts and the next thing you know we're making dwarf bone amulets um so yeah i mean what have you guys

thought of in wait for ways to kind of get around the you know the cleanup the post siege massacre abatement like what's what's what's a good way to deal with that i mean i have a couple ideas, but I don't know how successful they are. I'm thinking put an outer wall to your fortress entrance such that you keep the main entrance to your fortress far enough away from where the enemies, where the siege

people would come in, far enough away from the main entrance of your fortress that hopefully that's not going to be as much of a problem. Well, we all know that I build this giant toilet, right? Giant toilet cleans up things very easily.

You just need a lever somewhere, I don't know, deep down. And I mean, if you make it elaborate enough, you could totally clean the entrance of your fort. You could seal it with bridges, then flood it, and it all goes down the pit, and then you stop the water and to let the bridges down again. Yeah. Yeah, hey, if you did channel, if you put some pumps by the river and you channeled water to a basically kind of a normally open area in front of your fortress entrance where the battle would happen and everything needs cleaned up, if you get all your dwarves underground, you flooded occasionally, would that clean up your area?

Well, it definitely should flush away heavy corpses and the blood. But just the thing is, especially when humans attack or goblins, it's sad that you might lose all the iron that comes with it, no, like the weapons and stuff. So you might want to make something so that you can clear the corpses of this stuff, but then you would need dwarves again. So you have to find your dwarves that in their personalities, they say that dead bodies don't bother them and have them be your cleaning crew. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. You can train your dwarfs for that. You make a squad of militia dwarfs to let them train.

So they, it's a discipline skill that the dwarfs don't run away from battles and stuff. They don't get frightened as easily. it's also a good skill for your medical dwarf by the way so you might want to get that up and only enable for them corpse cleanup that could work oh that's a great idea yeah you could have like the cleanup crew with labor that you could you know toggle on and off so like after a siege you could basically just say okay everybody just let the you know let the heavies get in and go clean up that's a good idea because there's a lot of good stuff that the goblins bring with them You know, sometimes that'll be my iron supply for the year.

I can fully imagine how useless a medical dwarf would be that panics at the side of blood. Yes. At the same time, I can totally imagine a dwarf doing that. I think I'd set up siege weapons one time, and the dwarfs panicked and ran away. Whoever was supposed to operate the siege weapon, saw the siege coming and panicked and ran away. And I was like, all right, I'm done with siege weapons. This was not good. Yeah, the discipline skill is always good.

That's why I try, I at least try to train most of my dwarfs, even though I disband the squad later on or something, discipline skill stays up and that works really good, I think. That's a great idea. That's definitely a good argument for putting everybody in a squad and having them train like a month a year or something. Especially if you have this cleanup squad, whatever, you don't assign any work for them or just random craftsmen wax stuff so they get a bit creative

from time to time and don't get too sad about that unless they train with I don't know your wood weapons you are lying around from the elves from time to time you can send them off in the caverns and kill things so they get an extra bonus on like no emotions when they see dead things Yeah, we got to turn them into hard souls, or build a scholar for it, and then they can all debate things to the end of the universe. That's... Dude, dude, dude, if you actually get this mod to expand on arches, so arches actually get the ass off and train for once,

that's the thing ever. Like, mm, do it. I love the idea of archers Because archers, you know, can work from a distance Range attacks are always prevalent They don't, yeah They don't They're like

A goblin, better bash him with my bow That's right Yeah, it's like I might as well start making crossbows with spikes Because they only use them as melee weapons Yeah Even though they've got all the bolts in the world Yeah, and trying to get them to train.

Every once in a while I have a fort where magically they will start training. The archers will train and it's so exciting and wonderful when it happens, but it's not that common. Like, oh my God, they're doing it. I'm so proud of them. And then I get them all killed or something, you know, and it's like, nobody's ever going to do this again. You know what works great instead of a normal military training, just assign them to a hundred. But it does train their archery skill, and for once, they will actually train enough to level up. Hunting annoys me somewhat in that it seems that my hunters will always go out, they will kill the prey, and then they will just leave it to rot.

Hey, they're just, they just like to kill. Yeah, it's like, hunter cancels, cancels return of prey or something like that is what it tells me every time. Well, it could be that your butcher workshop is just full. For some reason, the dwarfs will tend to not go back to what they killed yesterday. So like, hmm, well, now the butcher workshop is free. I could get the whatever turkey and butcher today. Instead, they go out and hunt again. So just build two butcher workshops and you should be fine.

Okay, that's what I will try then. I hadn't actually thought of that I assumed that they had a refrigerator or something that they would just put it in a Dorvan refrigerator There's another mod for you I'm going to keep that mosquito brain fresh Yo

Ringworld actually does this refrigerated thing Where you have to assign a stockpile And if it's your food stockpile You have to cool it or your food will spoil Which makes sense And I don't know if it would be hard to implement that in dwarf fortress because, I mean, it is medieval style, so it cannot do like

an electric cooling system. But some dwarfy way of cooling things would be nice. It would be annoying, especially at the start if you have to cool your stuff. But I don't know. He's got the concept of power in already, which is interesting. But yeah, I mean, I wonder how far that would go because, I mean, I suppose if you had a, if you lived in an ice biome, you could cut out ice cubes or something but there we go the ice traders have arrived oh great every once in a while i step back and i and i think of how amazing it is that this all you know sprung from the mind of of you know two people yeah and that it's been so consistently developed over the years and and i do gather we're in for a bit of a wait before the steam

release comes but hey i mean that's cool like it's you know there's still plenty to do but Yeah, it is amazing that he can manage to keep, you know, plugging away at this. That's awesome. Has anybody read an estimated time on when the Steam release might be? No. Yeah, I think when it's done, it's sort of the thing. Yeah, I think people were, I read something that said, okay, so Kit Fox Games has their own Discord. And I think I'd read some comments somewhere, I don't know where on the internet, I read them, but that basically people were kind of asking Kit Fox for information.

Kit Fox is like, I don't know. So, you know, whenever they get to a stopping point, and it seems to range from almost there to not going to happen this year. So I don't know. Who knows? Dwar Fortress on Steam in 2023. Everyone's excited. Well, I bet they're just refraining of telling when because maybe they're just taking their

time. And especially, I think that's a good thing. They should take their time and fix problems and, you know, take a year, whatever. I don't want to have a weird game or something. Anytime that you put a date on a piece of software, it's not going to hit it. If you work in software, you know that, and you just understand that things are going to get pushed out over and over again. But the general public doesn't know that. So I get that.

Yeah, and I think when you put a date on something, like you end up with Fallout 76 or whatever, you get this game that met its deadline, but nobody likes it because it's bad. So, you know, I didn't really mean. Sorry for mentioning. them together. Somewhere in that talk, I realized another great trap would be to have the hall, like you were talking about Tony, and combine that with Roland's idea of taking a water flood and washing it clean.

Why not have a pump that you could start with a leather, with a lever that will flood out an entryway while your enemies are trying to access it and clean it and kill them all at the same time. Yeah, a trap and flood. A flood trap. Yeah, wash them away. Wash away all your problems. Has that been done?

Oh, I bet it has. The question, it says it been done with magma. Oh, my God. But then when you do it with magma, you would not get the items and the iron, whatever, short sort of I know this is like I can make my own iron, but I like looting.

That's okay. I totally get it because I don't like making my own food. One of my favorite things to do whenever a caravan comes is I don't even bother with farming or hunting too much. I just buy all the food on the caravan, trade it off for goblets and cups and spare beds. And, you know, that always, until I have a situation where the caravan stops, coming, that seems to be working very well. Yeah, I noticed that I saw that in some tutorial video, and I had just always kind of, I guess, because the tutorials I used when I started, they're like, make crafts and sell those for other things, trinkets or whatever, when the trade caravan comes, and I'd never really thought

of it as a, like, this would actually be a good way to get food until I saw somebody actually kind of successfully doing that. And then there's that game scenario generator. I think I sent that link out earlier. We'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, and it generates these absolutely mind-bendingly difficult scenarios for you to complete. And one of them I got was play at Fort Mode, but the only industry you can have is clothes making. So I was like, wow, that's hard.

I'll have to trade everything for dresses. I've never bothered with trading for clothes, although that will probably become a problem. Does it affect dwarfs' outlook on life whenever they're wearing tattered clothing? Yeah. How long does it take for clothing to get tattered? Well, it depends on how hard your dwarfs are working. So when they're working just normally and doing the craft stuff and hanging around, it will take a year, maybe longer for the small X to pop up.

And if they fight or something, it will get tattered really, really fast. one fight and always clothe a ruin, basically, especially if you have a weaponized fight, so it's not a fist fight in your tavern. So there is a indicator, a small X that comes up whenever your clothes are tattered. Is that what I'm hearing here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tattered clothes have a small X and in front and after them, after the name of the clothes. Gotcha.

Then there is a giant X. I think they're even... That's another thing that I have not yet deciphered. My goodness, I've been playing this for, like, going on a year and a half now, and there is so much of this game that I just am clueless about. It's still fun, but like whenever I'm going through all of my inventory, especially whenever I'm trading things to caravans, I will see all the symbols to the sides of the things that I have built in my fortress.

And I kind of assume that the cooler they look, those little symbols, that are on either side of the name of the thing that I'm trying to trade off. I assume that the cooler they look, the more impressive that particular item is. So, you know, a mug or goblet with like 12 asterisk to the side of it is probably going to be a pretty dang cool goblet. And I should expect to get more money out of it. But I don't know that. That's just me thinking. And I very often think wrong with this game.

Yeah. There's a list on the wiki shows you which symbols. map to what which has been helpful for me oh wiki so what's the what's the breakdown for you guys how much do you use like video tutorials versus just kind of trying to read wiki entries or is it split 50 50 i'm kind of all over the place i am all wiki pretty much i watch some tutorial videos i watch some let's plays. The only one that I really watch religiously, though, is Krug Smash. And I kind of watch that as kind of a TV show series that happens, uh, you know, each week. And it's not so much that it's a tutorial that I'm looking for there. It's more of an entertainment kind of thing and

just ideas. So as far as learning the game, after I figured out how to dig, how to farm, and how to build squads. After that, it's all been wiki for me. It's not been hardly any video for learning. For me, too, I'm actually just 100% wiki. The only videos I watched was the video from Joe Vineshaus where I came to play

World Fortress after. And a few from a truck smash because entertainment purposes, but else I'm only on the wiki and reading there and sometimes I'm so bored that I actually go on the wiki on random and click through random pages to read. Works great. Yes, you learn obsidian farming just by randomly clicking around. I came across somebody called DasTastic on YouTube that did a series of like, I don't know, 50 or 60 tutorials on how to basically starting from how to not get killed

by a badger to how to build, you know, a magma fountain on the surface. I mean, he kind of starts basic and goes all the way up. And I think he's got some sort of scenarios, like very proto-crug smash type things where he's trying to do these creative things. Pretty cool. I definitely picked stuff up from him, and he's more entertaining than your usual. Like, today we will cover this. This is what we'll, you know, I don't know. I get bored really quickly with tutorials, but his were so many entertaining so I found that useful but otherwise yeah

I'm with you guys it's just I like to read about it rather than watch a let's play or whatever well it tends to be because I have the control whenever I go to the wiki on what it is that I'm looking at and it almost always is what it is that I'm trying to do right now

yeah I agree tutorials aren't the best for that unless you have you know it might not be a bad idea for somebody maybe something that we could do Maybe it should be a Dwarfortures Roundtable video series of tutorials that are five minutes long about how to make a flood trap. Well, for real, I think that would be pretty cool because, you know, there is a lot of that. I think that there's definitely, you know, a lot to be said for good editing.

And I think that's one of the things Krug Smash does really well, is that he really edits it down. So by the time you're watching that video, you're not actually watching him accidentally flood and kill the fort and then have to stop and redo and rebu. rebuild the fort you know he might just be like whoops okay we'll be right back and then he comes back and it's all rebuilt and i find that kind of editing to be pretty useful especially with a game like door fortress where so much of it is just kind of like oh let's wait now for 10 minutes while the dors go off and dig out the tunnels you know because it's just it doesn't strike me as a game that naturally lends itself to a let's play streaming video or something i think editing is helpful yeah and you know i don't want this to turn into a we love crugs smash to the uh to the uh to

exclusive of everybody else kind of thing. But he does seem to have hit a sweet spot of turning Dwarf Fortress play into an entertainment medium. And it has to do also with his art. His art is certainly, you know, lends to that. Well, somebody else doing something really cool is, I don't know if you've come across it, but there's a guy that does really awesome pixel art. And his series is called Moon Canyon. That sounds right.

It's all in Spanish. And he's subtitled it. But his Spanish is really clear. So if you're learning Spanish, it's actually not too hard to follow. And his art is amazing. He's a really good artist. And he's really kind of piecing it together like Cruxmash. So that's another one, I think, to keep an eye on somebody that's doing some really cool stuff.

I think that it was Nucrium that was actually the very first tutorials that I ever watched. I'm pretty sure it was Nucrium. And those are the ones that I started with my very first. fortresses that I actually was able to get something done in. Those are the ones that I learned how, and it was, I believe it was an ASCII, and I was able to first do my farming, my first designations for mining, my first designations for stockpiles, learned how to dismember my wagon and all that. Probably I should have given him more credit from the very start about being the way that I actually learned how to get things done into a fortress.

that's what it's all about right that's that's the key to enjoying door fortress is getting those first few things such that you can do something build something and not just sit there staring at the screen and thinking that it's a completely undesofferable mess right i'm with yeah joan tux's monologue for the day there it was no i think it there's just such value in that and people kind of doing more and kind of giving back and I think what's really cool is it's interesting to see that kind of community build around a game that's free and that hasn't, you know, a relatively relaxed development cycle. It's pretty neat. And the fact that there are all these possibilities for graphics packs and mods and, you know, that Tody hasn't tried to put his foot down and squash D.F. Hack, you know, and you're sort of, it's an exercise left to the player how much you want to use DF hack.

and I'll admit to, I'll cop to having perhaps overused it on occasion. Well, honestly. I've gotten frustrated. Honestly, if 21 was to squash a DF hack, then he would actually be shooting himself on the foot. And I think he knows that. Oh, totally. Yeah.

I mean, I think it's, because it enables like text will be text and all the mods and the graphics packs and stuff. I think it's so cool that it seamlessly fits in the ecosystem and the fact that it'll be part of the steam release. and all of that, I think, is just super cool. And I also love that it kind of frees him up to work on the, you know, the cunning strategy and the grand plan. You know, it just occurred to me that whenever I was looking through YouTube

and I saw that Nucrium tutorial and I realized just now that that is how I first learned and how I kind of feel bad now for not giving him a little bit of a, of a, you know, a shout out before. I'd like to ask anybody who's listening if you have somebody who has done good tutorials and that's the way that you learned and you think that they need to get

some recognition, go to df roundtable.com, make a comment on this video and let us know who needs shoutouts and we'll be happy to say, hey, check it out and we'll do that.

I think that's a great idea. And I think the cool thing about tutorials is just because there's already a tutorial for how to build, you know, a magma hospital or whatever. It doesn't mean that there can't be like five others because the cool thing about the game is that just because you do it one way doesn't mean you can't think of 12 other ways to do it. And so, you know, that's kind of my thing.

And there was a Reddit thread and somebody was kind of saying, oh, I don't know if I should do it. I'm thinking, yeah, man, do it. The more the better. I looked at it. I mean, I think it's just more of the same stuff. Like we, I think we know he's working on the villains pretty hard. And he sort of shares little insights. But, you know, I think there's nothing major that's come out recently about it. I think he's just like kind of answering the same questions like, you know, when steam, when villains, you know, and I think it's, you know, he's just kind of like, I'm working on it and soon, hopefully. There is the line on the Bay 12 games on the 5119 blurb there on the dev page that says, now to begin supernatural villains and perhaps our first end of the world. What does that mean?

End of the world. Is there going to be a situation such that the world that you have generated can cataclysmically end? Oh, yeah. I'm totally in for that. That sounds amazing. That does. Uh-oh, you just, you know, released the pit of Balrogs. Oh, wait, that's probably got a trademark on it.

I can't use that one. The pit of evil demons from darkness. And sorry, but all of those civilizations that you were working toward defeating and yours are now gone. There are cases where if you leave WorldGen running too long, the WorldGen fails. Because I had this great idea of, you know, break. you know, leaving it running overnight and saying, oh, it'd be so cool to have a world with 1,500 years of history. And they came back in the morning and it was like, nope, sorry, world ended, didn't work.

Try again. It's like everybody just wiped themselves out, I guess. So, whoops. I know that they can reject, that WorldGen will reject things whenever you've given it a set of a set of parameters that that particular world doesn't meet. Then they'll say, nope, rejected, nope, nope, rejected. And then you have to loosen your parameters somewhat. But they cracked me up.

So I guess that'll happen if you just let the history run too long. Mass genocide. Yeah, they basically are just feeding the goblins, you know, at that point, because I think they usually win unless there's, you know, some sort of world-ending scenario. And it's like one Dorphin, one hedgehog man monster fighting to the death. And that's it. The longest world I've ever let generate was probably like 600, 700 years or something like that.

And by that time, it was taking, you know, a half hour or so for it to go through a year. I, unfortunately, have not played a single frame of Dwar Fortress in the last two weeks. That is very sad. I, unfortunately, have just had way too many things going on, and I've just not been able to sit down and do it. So I am recusing myself of the state of the state of the state of the state. fortress for this episode. Tell us. I haven't played myself, but a friend of mine played, and I tried to show her what is going on in the game. And there was this little heartbreaking moment. So we played on Aski

without any textures or something. And there was this little heartbreaking moment for me when she asked me why dogs weren't moving anymore. And I had to tell her that the little red background actually means they're all dead. Oh. Did you throw the dogs in a pit? Admit it. No, she didn't fit.

I wasn't allowed to play. And I refrain from actually telling her how to design her fortress because I want to see how she goes over problems herself and it comes to this design for herself because she's she's quite creative and i think she will get solutions for problems that i don't have or i manage differently or something and i just want to see a different approach to several problems donnie have you've you played this week I have. Probably more than I should have. I'm really dedicated on wiping out the goblin civilization called the grieving hate. And my objective is nearing completion. And I've pretty much wiped out every fortress in the south part of my continent and either taken them over with my wonderful civilization called a virtuous roof. Or I've just obliterated them from the face of the earth, which is also. so satisfying. But there's one fort called FlyTomb that turns out to have been the headquarters

of the evil goblin empire. And as I found out, it's inhabited by a hedgehog man monster called Emu. And that little dude is just an unbelievable force to be reckoned with, like just wiped out squad after squad of legendary Axdorbs. And that's when I mentioned earlier that I went into adventure mode, just to see if there's something I could do, like wall them in or kill him or or something. I couldn't even find him. Yeah. So I started yet another fort just to see if I can try to deal with this character. And this is just a straight up military fort. It's going to be like some sort of military dictatorship that I'm running here. But we're all going to be legendary and we're just going to stay at it because these guys have got to go. I guess you put it really

close, really close to the to the fortress of the goblin pit you're trying to destroy. Absolutely as close as the embark tool would let me get. So I am right on. on them. And they don't have very many goblins anymore to throw at me, but I think they still have like 200 elves and like 5,000 trolls. So it's going to take some time to keep chewing. I don't know where all the trolls come from, to be honest. I mean, I have cage traps just filled with trolls that I, you know, love throwing in pits. Now, thanks Roland. That's been one of my new favorite things in the world to do. It's like, yay, more stuff for the pit. Ray. I just can't wait. It is the most satisfying thing I've experienced in this game.

Yeah, my pit going into the caverns was my favorite. But, you know, the other ones will have to do. But yeah, so that's where I am. And so hopefully at some point, the virtuous roof will succeed. But it's pretty cool because this is like the fifth fortress that I've had in this part of my map. And so it's pretty neat to see, you know, coins. Like every year I make gold coins for whatever fort I have. And so, you know, I've seen gold coins from some of my other forts turn up on, you know, there have randomly appeared in my treasury and weapons that I've created in other forts have magically appeared. Actually, I cheated in one fort and spawned in two or three adamantine axes because I was panicking because I was getting, like, well, do something. So I D.F hacked it. And

those axes are still around. And they've got names and people. are showing up on my fort with them. So that's pretty cool to see the legacy of my dishonesty haunting me to this day. But all as well that ends well. So, hey, I got a note from a guy that is developing a RPG, pencil and paper RPG based on Dwarfortress. So that sounded pretty weird. Okay. I don't know any details of it.

I'm going to ask him for more details. He put a couple of posts on Reddit. Yeah. So I think the info is there. Okay. Rock and roll. All right. So that's going to wrap up this episode of Dwarfortress Roundtable.

I would like to remind everyone to give us some names of people who make great tutorials for shoutouts. And send us comment on DFRoundtable.com. And we will get the name out there and get some recognition to those people who have helped you learn for Fortress. So I suppose until next time, this is John. Jonathan. And I'm Roland. And I'm Tony. Have a good week. This has been Dwarfortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfee.

You can find all our past episodes at DFRoundtable.com. Please stop by and leave a comment or suggestion in the comment section of this episode. While you're there, you can subscribe to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable or find us in the podcast service of your choice. Music is Sky Q. Elin composed by Kevin McLeod. You can find Kevin McLeod's music at Incompetec.com. You can find a link in the show notes. Icastitas, safety join. A date palm podcast.

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