I actually don’t like bones levels. I feel like I am cheating by basically getting an artificial boost of equipment and spells that are only in the game due to a prior failure (i.e. they are not part of the “basic” game).
Perhaps another way of saying it is that I don’t think your chance of ascension should vary based on whether it is your first play or 100th, other than the change in player skill that should occur over that time.
I think bones files are very much a part of the basic game - Nethack was originally developed for multiuser systems, after all, which is what the nethack.alt.org server attempts to emulate. Bones files don’t really seem all that unbalanced - yeah, there might be good stuff left, but a lot of it will be cursed, you have to deal with the ghost, and whatever killed the former owner is still around too.
And hey, you still need a damn lot of Nethack experience to ascend, even if you do find some decent stuff off a bones level.
Given that I’ve lost more characters to bones with Jubilex wandering around on them than I’ve had ascensions aided by nifty stuff off of bones, I don’t think they’re unbalancing.
As per Dwarf Fortress, my concern is that it doesn’t really seem to even resemble a roguelike, based on how people are describing it. Teams of people wandering around planting crops?
Is it truly random? Is the river flooding stuff something that will happen from game to game, or is there a system (kind of like Kings of Dragon Pass or whatever)?
For me, the point of a roguelike in large part is the randomness of the dungeons, that (in the good ones) still manages to be interesting and balanced. This game just sounds too complex to really achieve that (I’m asking, not saying at this point).
There’s a lot of randomness to it, and I guess if you plot your own course you have to find a safe place to settle down for a fort. But if you just hit “play now”, it finds one for you automatically. (basically a river outside and near a mountain, which has underground rivers all throughout it).
Past that, it’s pretty damn random. In my last game I was going terrific until snakemen came from the underground river and killed a lot of my guys. Next time I’m just going to try to channel the river outside into the cave.
What’s being talked about is the “RTS” mode, where you build and manage a group of dwarves into building a mine/empire/fortress.
There’s some standards, as it runs on a calendar year with seasons. When you find the underground river, it will flood your fort. Every year, the rivers flood in the spring, yadda, yadda.
You always end up near a river at a cliff face. The only difference between “play now” and manual is you can pre-assign skills and/or buy supplies, and pick a specific map square from a large group of “suggested” fort sites.
It’s very important to use doors to help fortify the cave (and especially at the underground river entrance, to keep out the flood). The outside river is kind of buggy, because it was never intended to be shunted into the cliff. It can be done, but you sometimes get goofy floods that end up covering the entire landmass.
There’s also the whole “Adventure” side of the game, where you do control a single adventurer in the world.
I just started one of those, and ran across my very first Dwarven outpost. That was a creepy and short adventure. Corpses everywhere, a few with possessions worth looting. I ran into an angry, giant mole who made the meeting hall its home…and that was the end of me.
Hardest part about this game is figuring it out. Definately worth the effort though. The ASCII is growing on me, it seems pretty well done. Items sort of look like what they are supposed to represent in many cases. I do think I’m going to fail on my first fortress however. I didn’t get the floodgates down in time to catch a big flood and the fall flood was miniscule.
It’s more like an ASCII Dungeon Keeper. Except you are good, not evil. Well, I’ve read about some people creating death traps for traders to loot their stuff, so perhaps “good” isn’t the right word.
My latest game, I waited until winter before digging to the underground river. It didn’t flood when I broke through. Then I dug out a lot of ground next to it (silver and tin seams), and a channel from the river to the outside. When the spring floods came, it flooded all the area I had dug out next to it, but barely made it to the channel. I’ve been able to plant most of the dug-out area.
I think that works a lot better than monkeying around with floodgates. Particularly since I can’t figure out how to get them to work? I can’t open them, I tried placing a mechanism as a lever to be connected to one, but it just keeps telling me I need more mechanisms. I tried placing three, was still getting the “need more” message, then the flood came and did no damage. So I’m doing without right now.
I’ve also learned not to have any of my dwarves start as hunters. They just wander off and get killed by wolves or alligators or something. Instead: 2 miners, 2 carpenters, a craftsman, a cook/butcher/tanner type, and a fisherman.
Well, dwarf.
Anyway, that’s a mix that seems to work well, and gives me all the skills I need to get going relatively quickly.
I expect something bad will happen to this game sooner or later. Next time I restart, I need to try to design the fort with an eye to defense. I’ve been just putting stuff down anywhere right now, figuring out what I need and when I need it, rather than thinking strategically.
One thing’s a bit weird. The entire area in front of my main gate - maybe 6x12 - is all covered in bloodstains, from when my fisherdwarf was catching fish and stockpiling it in that area. It looks like there’s been some sort of major battle. I wonder if that ever gets cleaned up.
Oh yeah, one other thing: build stone cabinets. Build stone doors. Build stone tables. Build stone everything. You end up with lots of it, so need to use it - but wood, now, that becomes pretty hard to acquire pretty quick. I’ve cleared out the entire area on the east side of the outdoor river for several screens north and south, and I need lots more to make charcoal for my forge.
One of the tasks under the job list is clean, and it supposedly deals with blood, but it is a very low priority. If you want to get rid of it, try setting one guy only to clean.
Yeah, that’s what it is sounding like. I think I’m going to wait a bit to download this; it sounds interesting, but I was thinking it was a roguelike and I’m hearing discussions on the best timing to plant the crops and hydroengineering projects involving local rivers.
It includes a roguelike - the Adventure mode.
Any feedback on how “deep” the polish goes? Does it appear that it is in an initial state where the first part of the game is thought out but the remaining 75% of it sucks (a problem with new roguelikes), or does it seem pretty polished all the way through?
The Adventure part is very bare-bones still. I wouldn’t say it sucks, just that there’s a lot of features not implemented yet - basically it seems to be planned as an outgrowth of fortress mode, so features in fortress have to be implemented first.
Floodgates are annoying. I’ve managed to make three work but I don’t know how to make dwarves prioritize opening and shutting them when I want. That can cause problems. ;)
It’s actually grabbed from the first game, so it’s mostly to show off the combat engine.
Adventuring is mildly entertaining. It reminds me of Daggerfall, minus the plot. You run around this huge world that’s populated with random towns, caves, dark towers, etc. The quests are simple missions to slay some badguy nearby. Everything is persistent, so you can return to a dungeon where your last guy got killed and hear his killer brag about it. Or explore your failed Dwarf Fort attempts.
The characters are not very fleshed out. You have combat skills and wounds. That’s the extent of your self knowledge. No stats or abilities that I’ve seen. So far it seems like the point is to run around, explore the big world, and die a quick and terrible death.
By quick and terrible death, I mean having a cyclops grab your head with one hand and smash you into “an explosion of gore” with the other. That actually happened to me last night. It’s something you could do to an opponent with the right wrestling moves, too.
Combat is bloody as hell. It’s also messy, because you and your opponent get knocked around, fall down on each other, wrestle down on the bloody ground, lose limbs, get eyes poked out, and so on. Funny stuff.
Ok, I’ve gotten the hang of this, I think. Built carpentry, masonry, and fishery workshops outside. Tunneled straight in, found a vein of ore, followed it, stockpiling all the ore on the spot while my other guys chopped trees, built tables and beds, and fished for turtles (which, in Dwarfworld, are apparently “fish”). My craftsman took all the leftover shells and bones and started churning out assorted crafts items.
The miners built a quick one-room barracks with one well and a bunch of beds, then began north and south tunnels, and promptly found new veins in each direction. Exploiting those was taking a while, so I had them strike out eastward again, after sticking a rock door on the end of the central cavern. I promptly ran into yet another vein of ore, and while following up on that, ran into the river. Actually I came out behind a waterfall (!) - it looks pretty good, with ASCII mist clouds and everything. The area in front of the door got flooded (it’s cool watching the miners run just ahead of the flood - I guess if it’s not too far they can outrun it; first game I got flooded, my miner drowned), and I quickly planted that with assorted seeds I had. Then started laying out my actual rooms.
I’ve about figured out the sequence of supplies, from raw materials through the various workshops to the end products I need, so for instance I’ve got a storeroom for wood, next to which is the wood furnace, next to which is a bars/blocks storeroom, then the smelter, then the forge (my smith showed up right about when I was digging all this out, just in time), then another bar/block room. Transitioning the food indoors took a while - for one thing I’d been running low on alcohol and I think I could tell that my miners were definitely slowing down because of it. It might also be just that I’d had them mining ore rather than just excavating for most of the time, though.
Anyway, a food storeroom near the waterfall farm, a still, a fishery, then other workshops and a big dining room complete with personalized place settings because the dwarves are complaining about lack of tables . Meanwhile, melting down the silver ore I’d stockpiled to make some coins and a few craft items. Everyone’s still sleeping in barracks.
The caravan arrives, with three pages’ worth of goods. I move all my turtleshell crafts into the trade depot, along with three obsidian swords I’d made. Those turn out to be really valuable; I manage to buy all of the caravan’s food with one, and the other two get me a good bit of the cloth and leather. The turtleshell crafts and my silver let me buy everything else except two cave spider silks.
Soon after the caravan leaves, 8 immigrants arrive. Crap. Shouldn’t have been so blatant in advertising my wealth to the traders. Dig a quick secondary barracks for them, place some spare beds in it, and it’s time to dig out proper sleeping quarters for everyone. So that’s what I spend the winter doing; a whole network of little 3x3 rooms up north of the main area. Also set up the floodgates and levers to control them to properly irrigate my farm plot. Also build all sorts of other little workshops and other things.
Didn’t really come close to running out of food. Mid-spring now, things are going pretty well. I’ve got piles and piles of uncut gems I just haven’t had time to deal with, and another huge pile of turtleshell crafts lying around outside (every time I see stuff building up in the refuse pile, I tell the craftsman to make some stuff - no point in letting it go to waste). Still don’t have a leather or cloth storeroom either, so all the stuff I bought from the traders has been lying around outside all winter. You’d think it would rot. For this game, I’m glad it doesn’t yet.
Plans: build more farm plots. Build more floodgates to control them. Make lots of fertilizer. Try to find an iron or copper vein; the only stuff I’ve found to make weapons with so far is silver, and I’m not sure it’s appropriate for that (though, that would be interesting - a dwarf city with all silver weapons). Also I’ve found one component of brass, I need to find the other somewhere. Start putting together the basics for a military.
Also, start thinking about redundancy. Next group of immigrants I get, I’m going to have enough people for my dwarves to start going fey and getting possessed and such things, and THEN things will get really interesting in the Chinese sense.
Is a trade depot best placed outside?