I’m in Az. until mid-August - can’t really do much organising until I get back. Someon else is welcome to start, thought! And thanks for the awesome pic.
Reading the forums, the marksdwarves are now working again, which is good… but armor is now largely ineffective. Reports are that goblin whips, hammers, and copper bolts go through adamantine armor like it isn’t there.
I’m not currently playing, but if I were, I wouldn’t download 31.10. The only thing that made combat workable for me was the way steel and adamantine armor kept my dwarves alive. Not forever, they’d definitely die if fighting one of those unkillable forgotten beasts long enough, but they didn’t fall over dead to the first blow. Which is what is happening now.
The game is hard enough as it is without us torturing ourselves with bugs.
Wolff
2645
Yeah I would love to get in another game but the game loses alot of charm for me when things just don’t work. I’m fine waiting for a consensus of “Yeah still a little broken, but mostly working”
The whole new-based-on-the-old farming system doesn’t work for me, really; I enjoyed the previous system (any non-rock ground was farmable and didn’t require that silly one time irrigation thingie) and it could be logically explained as well (e.g: farmers carry around little buckets or whatnot and water the crops as they go along) but this new system forces the player to irrigate, at least once, the target farm plots and as such, for me at least, removes much of my forward planning while designing a new dungeon because it FORCES me to find a solution to something that I find ridiculous from the get go.
Anyway, that (and mostly that) plus the combat bugs are still keeping me far away from DF.
I miss the old versions pre-2010, I which they had countless Z levels and caves and stuff but without some of the stupid updates. :(
I absolutely defend Today’s right to do exactly what he wants with this game. It’s free after all.
Having said that, I do think we’re probably going to get to the point where some version will become the maximally playable/fun version and subsequent versions will devolve into unplayability/torture.
In fact, I know people that felt that the move to “3d” was actually a bad thing and find the stable 3d versions (19 maybe?) impossible/boring/torture.
I’ve actually never been able to even get to the point where I can handle the more extreme challenges of the version that I actually play…I’ve never made a magma furnace, never fought the tougher mobs, etc
I tend to play it like it’s The Sims in some ways.
I’m actually pretty skeptical that I’ll ever play or enjoy the newest version…my guess is that this is finally the point where I think it’s too complicated to enjoy.
I actually rather like irrigation. Far from “removing” forward planning, it forces me to come up with an irrigation plan. That said, since you only need to irrigate once, unlike the 2D version, it’s not difficult. In fact, I typically re-use the water. Flood one room, move the water down one level to flood another, repeat until the water dries up. Since farm plots produce enormous amounts of food, one 5x5 room of water is typically enough to make enough farmland to meet my food needs forever.
I’ve made magma furnaces, but they seem kind of pointless to me. On every map I’ve been on, by the time I’m ready to go that deep, I’ve made all the metal objects I want with coal, and I’ve got enough coal left over to processes any adamantium I find.
I don’t really see the point of exposing yourself to the Forgotten Beasts in the caverns or the demons in the magma. There’s nothing in the caverns worth any risk at all. The magma has some value, but you can access that without setting yourself up for a demon attack.
So… Goblin Camp is out. Bay12ers hate it and the author intensely, so it must be pretty good.
Marcin
2650
Interesting. He certainly seems to be aiming to eliminate the parts I like the least (micromanagement and resource drudgery), so that’s a good start. Will have to give it a shot, thanks for linking!
Oh, wow. Just the addition of mouse and right-click and dragging … I’m in UI heaven. :P
Indeed, Toady could learn some things from him in terms of mouse support/right clicking menus.
Wolff
2652
I imagine that in the next year or so two things could happen with DF.
Toady will come around to fixing existing problems and programming the direction most of his fan base seems interested in (note: Not single player adventure mode)
or
More and more projects will pop up that take the heart of DF and spin it into a more playable/learn-able game. Minecraft and this new goblin town seem like just the tip of the indy iceberg.
At this point I believe I may have crossed the line from seeing Toady as an eccentric programmer that does things his own way to a guy who is just out of touch.
Its his product (I have donated) and he can do what he wants with it, but I would really like to see it succeed.
June Donations: $2364.29
May Donations: $3201.62
April Donations: $16104.49
March Donations: $4387.99
February Donations: $1452.57
Looks like his current direction might not be so great.
I’d be interested to see a longer trend.
My favorite mode in Dwarf Fort is adventure, and I’m waiting for his updates with enthusiasm. There’s nothing like adventuring in a failed fort and finding artifacts and rooms you spent hours laboring over. Nor is there anything like reading the history of the game, finding a particularly evil badie, and venturing out to try to defeat it. His engine makes an amazing world every time, and I love exploring it.
OMG! I just did the first tutorial. ??!??
Daagar
2656
Goblin Camp certainly looks interesting. While very much a DF “lookalike”, based off his ‘What is Goblin Camp’ section, it looks to be Settlers 2 in ASCII form. Which I guess DF is as well, but the streamlining might be a really huge bonus. Thanks for the pointer.
Let us know what it’s like, Daagar?
Volbard
2658
Played Goblin Camp a bit. Ok, more than a bit, but I couldn’t say why. There really isn’t anything to it yet, but the mouse interface is promising. It was also easy to make a squad and tell them to guard a position, though making more than one squad is either impossible or beyond my grasp.
JM1
2659
Putting a mouse interface together using libtcod is actually pretty straightforward. libtcod’s been such a shot in the arm for the roguelike community. Hell, I’m even bothering to try and learn python (again) and see what I can make.
Goblin Camp really is in its early stages and I’m a little worried by some of the more pie-in-the-sky ideas being thrown around on the forums.
