Dwarf Fortress Wiki - User contributions [en]

40d Talk:System requirements

2010-02-09T06:07:03Z

Mephisto: /* Where do I get the Linux port? */

== DF Doesn't Need a Fancy GPU ==

Even considering how DF uses OpenGL for graphics, an integrated card should have absolutely no problem displaying 2000 quads on screen.

I threw together a quick and dirty test app to render 2000 dwarf faces, and it can manage 100 FPS with just 18% CPU load. Without throttling I get 600 FPS with 80% CPU. That's on an integrated (GMA x3100) card. So, at least for Intel's GMA cards going back at least two years, the graphics should perform just fine.

So that's why I don't think it should be necessary to recommend a powerful discrete GPU, especially when the screen isn't updated very often.

--[[User:Jcromartie|Jcromartie]] 13:31, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

:It's specifically stated that an old GPU will work just fine. Just a bargain bin 25$ card would be sufficient for the purpose. A '''BIG''' reason for using a separate GPU is the fact that they will share resources, (Shared Memory *and* CPU Cycles,) which will quickly affect performance of the CPU, which DF is quite power-hungry for at this stage, (and many future stages as well I'm sure.) --[[User:N9103|Edward]] 19:39, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

::Not to mention a seperate GPU takes ALL those 2000 quads off the processor. --[[User:Darkone|Darkone]] 20:35, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

== General Performance ==

I may be talking out of my butt here, and as a developer I can understand the challenges of (and reasons to avoid) optimization, but might it be time to start tuning DF? It uses 99% CPU on a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo ''all the time''. This is even the case when displaying the main menu or when paused.

Maybe [http://www.artima.com/cppsource/how_to_go_slow.html this article] can shed some light on why it uses so much CPU when it doesn't need to?

--[[User:Jcromartie|Jcromartie]] 13:31, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

:I can see where you're coming from, but being that the majority of the game has yet to even be programmed, it's far too early to begin real optimizations. Toady's made a few tweaks to do minor optimizations, so he's got it in mind, so far as it won't interfere with the many core and other items that still need to be added. Over half of the [[http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_core_1-20.html Core Components]] are still missing, and it's even farther from completion when looking at the [[http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_req_1-50.html Non-Core Required Components]], a good number of which deal directly with optimization. --[[User:N9103|Edward]] 19:33, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

== Dual Core ==

I believe it may be right to add back in a recommendation, but not for multiple cores but the processor itself. Someone made an erroneous edit in the history stating that a single core is usually faster then a dual- this is wrong, as the Core 2 architecture is ''Far'' more powerful then Pentium, though I do not have data for AMD processors. A Core running at a mere 1.86 gigahertz pulls in a 3000+ benchmark (cinebench) versus the lowly 1800-2000 of a 3 gigahertz pentium 4. Not to mention running DF on its own private core is probably the best thing you could do with it.--[[User:Darkone|Darkone]] 10:45, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

Someone please check if DF might be multi-threaded after all. At least on my machine (q6600) DF quite beautifully
utilizes all four cores with individual loads usually not maxing out (110 dwarves). 1 February 2010

== Small Edit ==

I changed the Mac OsX portion of the page to a more current update.

== init.txt ==

I think there should be some mentions of init.txt here and on [[Maximizing Framerate]]. I found that there was a considerable difference when I changed the init.txt.

I found that, by changing [SOUND], [PARTIAL_PRINT], and [PRIORITY], I was able to significantly increase performance.

While running 66 processes (DF as well), including iTunes, Firefox, Desktop Sidebar, and Last.fm, the game's default init.txt was very poor. It lagged frequently, very much so in Adventure mode. I changed the aforementioned values in init.txt and it now runs wonderfully, with the exception of world creation, entering towns, and a very small lag when placing buildings.

My FPS before was only at 100 FPS when paused, usually around 50-65 when playing. Now, I seldom see it anything other than 99 or 100.

My system is as follows:

* Windows XP SP3
* Hard Disk: 83.2 GB free, 140 GB total
* AMD Sempron 3300+ processor
* 448 MB RAM
* In short, [http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00796371&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&lang=en&product=3304167 This], bought Dec 15 2006.

== Linux system Requirements? ==
If you run Linux over Windows, does it enhance your FPS any?[[User:Kenji 03|Kenji 03]] 12:30, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

== Benchmarks ==

It would be really useful to use one or more specific fortresses for benchmarking purposes and post them all on DFFD, rather than just including various details which don't include certain vital statistics such as the number of objects, amount of revealed tiles, mid-air Z-levels which have been "allocated" by building into them (such that using "k" actually shows them as "open space" rather than nothing at all), and actual fortress layout (and thus how much CPU time is spent pathfinding). For example, a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo is listed as handling a minimalist 6x6 site with 95 dwarves at ~20fps, while my 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad was able to support an 8x4 site with magma + pit + underground river + HFS and 200 dwarves and get 20fps with everything turned '''on''' because I had taken care to organize the fortress in such a way as to minimize pathfinding load. --[[User:Quietust|Quietust]] 18:40, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

:I like this idea overall. I don´t think it would be possible to assume what an "average" person builds their fortress like or if they even take pathfinding into account, but a standardized fortress, set of options, DF version, and t/f on use of OpenGL "accelerator" would make this list much more insightful. Unfortunately, it would throw out all previous data collected. If someone has the will and time, I think it would benefit readers, but I think the section does already serve its purpose in giving people a very rough idea of what to expect. In the data I personally posted, I did use the same fort (which paid no attention to optimizing the layout for minimizing pathfinding calculations) but I didn´t think to upload the save and no longer have it.[[User:Kludge|-K]] 03:37, 7 February 2010 (UTC) (a post-post thought -- It´d also be nice to have standardized data since the data could be merged into a pretty table!)

== Where do I get the Linux port? ==

Well, the headline basically says it all. It's not linked on the official download page... it took quite a bit of searching until I found anything -- which I don't want to post here, as I don't know whether what I found is in any way recommendable. In a nutshell: the section about the linux port should probably start with '''where to get it'''. --[[Special:Contributions/93.104.144.228|93.104.144.228]] 16:33, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

When in doubt, check the [http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=40349 forum announcements.]
Or [http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=747e4a435324f30c2d12bf753bb62482&topic=44829.0 this one, which isn't announced,] if you're feeling particularly daring.[[User:Mephisto|Mephisto]] 06:04, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

40d Talk:System requirements

2010-02-09T06:04:51Z

Mephisto: /* Where do I get the Linux port? */

== DF Doesn't Need a Fancy GPU ==

Even considering how DF uses OpenGL for graphics, an integrated card should have absolutely no problem displaying 2000 quads on screen.

I threw together a quick and dirty test app to render 2000 dwarf faces, and it can manage 100 FPS with just 18% CPU load. Without throttling I get 600 FPS with 80% CPU. That's on an integrated (GMA x3100) card. So, at least for Intel's GMA cards going back at least two years, the graphics should perform just fine.

So that's why I don't think it should be necessary to recommend a powerful discrete GPU, especially when the screen isn't updated very often.

--[[User:Jcromartie|Jcromartie]] 13:31, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

:It's specifically stated that an old GPU will work just fine. Just a bargain bin 25$ card would be sufficient for the purpose. A '''BIG''' reason for using a separate GPU is the fact that they will share resources, (Shared Memory *and* CPU Cycles,) which will quickly affect performance of the CPU, which DF is quite power-hungry for at this stage, (and many future stages as well I'm sure.) --[[User:N9103|Edward]] 19:39, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

::Not to mention a seperate GPU takes ALL those 2000 quads off the processor. --[[User:Darkone|Darkone]] 20:35, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

== General Performance ==

I may be talking out of my butt here, and as a developer I can understand the challenges of (and reasons to avoid) optimization, but might it be time to start tuning DF? It uses 99% CPU on a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo ''all the time''. This is even the case when displaying the main menu or when paused.

Maybe [http://www.artima.com/cppsource/how_to_go_slow.html this article] can shed some light on why it uses so much CPU when it doesn't need to?

--[[User:Jcromartie|Jcromartie]] 13:31, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

:I can see where you're coming from, but being that the majority of the game has yet to even be programmed, it's far too early to begin real optimizations. Toady's made a few tweaks to do minor optimizations, so he's got it in mind, so far as it won't interfere with the many core and other items that still need to be added. Over half of the [[http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_core_1-20.html Core Components]] are still missing, and it's even farther from completion when looking at the [[http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_req_1-50.html Non-Core Required Components]], a good number of which deal directly with optimization. --[[User:N9103|Edward]] 19:33, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

== Dual Core ==

I believe it may be right to add back in a recommendation, but not for multiple cores but the processor itself. Someone made an erroneous edit in the history stating that a single core is usually faster then a dual- this is wrong, as the Core 2 architecture is ''Far'' more powerful then Pentium, though I do not have data for AMD processors. A Core running at a mere 1.86 gigahertz pulls in a 3000+ benchmark (cinebench) versus the lowly 1800-2000 of a 3 gigahertz pentium 4. Not to mention running DF on its own private core is probably the best thing you could do with it.--[[User:Darkone|Darkone]] 10:45, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

Someone please check if DF might be multi-threaded after all. At least on my machine (q6600) DF quite beautifully
utilizes all four cores with individual loads usually not maxing out (110 dwarves). 1 February 2010

== Small Edit ==

I changed the Mac OsX portion of the page to a more current update.

== init.txt ==

I think there should be some mentions of init.txt here and on [[Maximizing Framerate]]. I found that there was a considerable difference when I changed the init.txt.

I found that, by changing [SOUND], [PARTIAL_PRINT], and [PRIORITY], I was able to significantly increase performance.

While running 66 processes (DF as well), including iTunes, Firefox, Desktop Sidebar, and Last.fm, the game's default init.txt was very poor. It lagged frequently, very much so in Adventure mode. I changed the aforementioned values in init.txt and it now runs wonderfully, with the exception of world creation, entering towns, and a very small lag when placing buildings.

My FPS before was only at 100 FPS when paused, usually around 50-65 when playing. Now, I seldom see it anything other than 99 or 100.

My system is as follows:

* Windows XP SP3
* Hard Disk: 83.2 GB free, 140 GB total
* AMD Sempron 3300+ processor
* 448 MB RAM
* In short, [http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00796371&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&lang=en&product=3304167 This], bought Dec 15 2006.

== Linux system Requirements? ==
If you run Linux over Windows, does it enhance your FPS any?[[User:Kenji 03|Kenji 03]] 12:30, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

== Benchmarks ==

It would be really useful to use one or more specific fortresses for benchmarking purposes and post them all on DFFD, rather than just including various details which don't include certain vital statistics such as the number of objects, amount of revealed tiles, mid-air Z-levels which have been "allocated" by building into them (such that using "k" actually shows them as "open space" rather than nothing at all), and actual fortress layout (and thus how much CPU time is spent pathfinding). For example, a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo is listed as handling a minimalist 6x6 site with 95 dwarves at ~20fps, while my 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad was able to support an 8x4 site with magma + pit + underground river + HFS and 200 dwarves and get 20fps with everything turned '''on''' because I had taken care to organize the fortress in such a way as to minimize pathfinding load. --[[User:Quietust|Quietust]] 18:40, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

:I like this idea overall. I don´t think it would be possible to assume what an "average" person builds their fortress like or if they even take pathfinding into account, but a standardized fortress, set of options, DF version, and t/f on use of OpenGL "accelerator" would make this list much more insightful. Unfortunately, it would throw out all previous data collected. If someone has the will and time, I think it would benefit readers, but I think the section does already serve its purpose in giving people a very rough idea of what to expect. In the data I personally posted, I did use the same fort (which paid no attention to optimizing the layout for minimizing pathfinding calculations) but I didn´t think to upload the save and no longer have it.[[User:Kludge|-K]] 03:37, 7 February 2010 (UTC) (a post-post thought -- It´d also be nice to have standardized data since the data could be merged into a pretty table!)

== Where do I get the Linux port? ==

Well, the headline basically says it all. It's not linked on the official download page... it took quite a bit of searching until I found anything -- which I don't want to post here, as I don't know whether what I found is in any way recommendable. In a nutshell: the section about the linux port should probably start with '''where to get it'''. --[[Special:Contributions/93.104.144.228|93.104.144.228]] 16:33, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

When in doubt, check the [http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=40349 forum announcements.][[User:Mephisto|Mephisto]] 06:04, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

40d:System requirements

2009-07-22T01:11:09Z

Mephisto: /* Example results: What you can expect with various machines */ Acer Aspire One

:* Operating System: Requires Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, or newer ''(for other OS, see below)''

:* Disk Space: ~100MB. The game itself takes only about 20MB, but savegames and screenshots (if you take them) use considerable amounts of harddisk space. Some users spend over a gigabyte of space with dwarf fortress.

:* RAM: 256MB. The game uses 150+ MB memory while running (more if you select a local grid larger than 6x6). The more creatures, objects, and explored space on your map, the more memory you will need. Most of this can be kept in virtual memory (disk swap), but be sure to have at least 500MB total (physical + virtual) memory available. [[World generation]] requires 400MB at its peak.

:* CPU: Dwarf Fortress loves as much raw CPU power as you can provide it with. A Pentium II 500Mhz is sufficient, but you will not have much fun in late game stages with a lot of population.

Recommended:

::* Core2: 1.4GHz or higher
::* Pentium 4: 3.0GHz or higher
::* Athlon: 3000+ or higher

The larger your map and the more units on it, the harder your computer will need to work (see "optimization", below). Dwarf Fortress will take all the (single-)CPU power it is given. The speed of the simulation depends on the size of the map, the number of entities (dwarves, pets, etc.), the number of levels (mountainous maps have more depth levels), the number of objects and other factors. Modern computers should be able to run 3x3 maps with medium-sized fortresses at 80-100 FPS. Particularly fast processors may be able to handle much larger maps at the same speed.

You'll also want a decent video card to keep up with the CPU, but even a video card that's several years old will satisfy DF under most circumstances.

===Dual-core machines===

If you're running a lot of things at once while playing Dwarf Fortress, open Task Manager and set DF to Core1 and everything else to Core0. You will now have an entire core dedicated to running DF, which should give slightly better performance. Multi-threading support isn't currently implemented.

==Other Operating Systems==
===Linux===
Although DF is a Windows game, it works perfectly in Linux using Wine, as long as you have video drivers with working OpenGL acceleration – for all NVIDIA and newer ATI cards, this means using the vendor's closed source driver. Without 2D acceleration the game runs slow as [[Dwarven syrup]]. Most distributions provide Wine, so consult your distribution-specific documentation for help.

See [http://www.bay12games.com/cgi-local/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000448 this thread] for tips about Ubuntu and other distributions.

On 24 December, 2008 Toady released the first native Linux version of '''Dwarf Fortress'''. It is compiled for 32-bit environments, however, and may not run under 64-bit environments without additional libraries, depending on the Linux distribution.

====Ubuntu/Kubuntu====
Under an Ubuntu/Kubuntu installation one first of all needs the ia32-libs package installed. This is a standard Ubuntu package that contains 32-bit versions of many common libraries. Unfortunately, while it includes 32-bit versions of some SDL libaries, older versions of this package lack SDL_image, which '''Dwarf Fortress''' needs. In Jaunty Jackalope (Ubuntu 9.04) this shared library is included in the ia32-libs package and you can skip the other steps in this section.

The 32-bit package can be downloaded directly from [http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/i386/libsdl-image1.2/download Ubuntu's package repository]. Once the download is complete, open a console window and navigate to the directory containing the file. Extract the contents by typing:

dpkg-deb -x libsdl-image1.2_1.2.6-3_i386.deb ./libsdl-image

Copy the files from libsdl-image/usr/lib into the df_linux/libs directory and the game should now work.

====Ubuntu/Kubuntu - Using getlibs====
The other way to get the require SDL_image library is to use getlibs, which will get the correct 32bit library when run on 64bit Ubuntu and create all the required links.

At a command prompt:
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs getlibs
sudo getlibs -l libSDL_image-1.2.so.0

The game can now be run from the df_linux folder (or wherever you extracted it to) using the df bash script.

==== Gentoo ====

The required libraries can be pulled from portage before running DF.

For x86, you will need the basic GTK/OpenGL/SDL stuff, plus sdl-image, which means the following packages:

* x11-libs/gtk+:2
* media-libs/libsdl
* media-libs/sdl-image
* virtual/opengl
* virtual/glu

For amd64, you will need the 32-bit emulation libraries instead. Note that sdl-image is already included in the sdl emulation package, so you need:

* app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-sdl
* app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-baselibs
* app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-xlibs
* app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-gtklibs

==== Arch ====

The required libs can be pulled from pacman before running.

If using Gnome, or KDE with some Gnome applications, the following will most likely be installed already:

* gtk2
* libgl
* sdl
* sdl_image

In addition, libtiff (<= 4, to be exact) is also required. Libtiff 4 is not available on Arch. Linking or copying /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3.8.2 to /usr/lib/libtiff.so.4 is sufficient.

The Dwarf Fortress files can be installed with an AUR frontend, or from the AUR itself if so inclined. The current files are at [http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=22795 this page.]

At a command prompt:
wget http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dwarffortress/dwarffortress.tar.gz
tar xvzf dwarffortress.tar.gz
cd dwarffortress
makepkg -s
su
pacman -U dwarffortress-v0.28.181.40d11-5-i686.pkg.tar.gz

===OS X===
A port of Dwarf Fortress to Mac OS X has been completed, and runs on both Intel and PPC based macs. According to the [http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ Website]
it requires system 10.3 or later, 100mb of hard drive space, and a minimum of 512mb of ram.

==Optimizing Dwarf Fortress==
You can greatly increase game speed on all systems; details at [[Maximizing framerate]].

==Example results: What you can expect with various machines==

'''Pentium 4 at 2.2 GHz and 1 GByte RAM, running version 0.27.169.33g:'''

3x3 site, relatively hilly (ten z-levels of elevation change), without magma but with unfrozen brook, no caves, lakes, or monsters; virtually all possible speed-boosting edits in init.txt applied. Game starts to lag seriously at just under 80 dwarves.Speed is down to 30-45 FPS (varies) and occasional interface jerkiness is becoming noticeable.

'''Asus Eee PC 4G - 512 Ram - Windows XP(custom optimized) - DF v0.27.176.38c:'''

Smallest map possible with the smallest site, flatland only 1z above ground, 15z underground, volcano, some lakes, no underground water, 3 monsters, 9 creatures and 7 dwarfs. Speed boosting edits in init.txt. 10FPS on fullscreen mode and 20 on window mode. Some keys aren´t easy to press on that small keyboard, mainly when you have to press fn+shift+key. Conclusion: Play it on a desktop or a better EEE PC. :-(

'''Core Duo 4400 (2x2ghz) - 2 gb RAM - Windows Vista - .38c'''

3x3 site, pretty cliffy. Volcano, part of river and pretty big artificial pool. 120 dwarves, less than 10 roaming animals and ~50 fps. Decreases to 30 when merchants arrive or when many hauling jobs are started.

'''Athlon XP 2200(1.8) - 1 GB 6 year old RAM (DDR100/DDR133) - windows XP -no optimizations to XP or DF -.38c'''

Large site (6x6), medium world,with brook, no speed boost edits, Kapersky running with protection disabled. Slightly upwards slanted hill. Most of human town, no reveal.exe, running Dwarf Foreman, and with a relatively old (and thus slow) install of XP thats had several viruses- 35-40FPS with 17 humans, 38-48 FPS with 7. Drops to 30-35 with alot of hauling or when viewing 1 z level up (1 bellow human town, 1 above my start site). I imagine with a fresh install and a regular sized site it would likely hold 50+FPS. I don't really know where the speed is coming from compared to what other people are reporting- the processor only scores 1040 CB on a cinebench CPU benchmark.

'''Asus Eee PC 900 - 900 MHz Celeron / 1 GB RAM - Ubuntu-eee 8.04 - .40d11'''

4x4 site, population about 150, some beginners mistakes in logistics... 5 FPS Dwarven Syrup

'''Athlon64X2 5600 (2x2.8GHz) 2GB RAM - Ubuntu 9.04 (64 bits), nVidia drivers - .40d11'''

6x6 site, population 32, lava and wildfires, doing 100 FPS with flowing water.

''' Laptop, with Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 (2.00 Ghz) - 4 gb ram DDR2 - Nvidia Geforce 9600M - Windows Seven RC
* 151 Dwarves
* 170 Animals
* Around 400 creatures (dwarves + animals + merchants + wildlife)
* Brook, Magma pipe, HFS, Chasm
* 22 z-levels
* Medium-sized site
 
* Around 15-25 FPS (average FPS seems to be 20 or 21).

'''Acer Aspire One - 1.6 GHz Atom / 1 GB RAM - Windows XP - 40d11'''
Currently:
* 70 Dwarves
* 2 Animals
* 76 Misc (Revealed) Creatures
* Brook, Magma Pipe, Bottomless Pit, Chasm, HFS, Underground River
* HFS & UR are unbreached
* 6x6
* Hovers at 70 on new reclaim with nothing happening

==See also==
*[[Maximizing framerate]]

[[Category:FAQ]]

40d:System requirements

2009-05-07T16:57:25Z

Mephisto: /* Other Operating Systems */ Added Arch

Requires Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, or newer

~100MB Disk Space: The game itself takes only about 20MB, but savegames and screenshots (if you take them) use considerable amounts of harddisk space. Some users spend over a gigabyte of space with dwarf fortress.

256MB RAM: The game uses 150+ MB memory while running (more if you select a local grid larger than 6x6). The more creatures, objects, and explored space on your map, the more memory you will need. Most of this can be kept in virtual memory (disk swap), but be sure to have at least 500MB total (physical + virtual) memory available. [[World generation]] requires 400MB at its peak.

Dwarf Fortress loves as much raw CPU power as you can provide it with. Recommended:

Core2: 1.4GHz or higher

Pentium 4: 3.0GHz or higher

Athlon: 3000+ or higher

The larger your map and the more units on it, the harder your computer will need to work (see "optimization", below). Dwarf Fortress will take all the CPU power it is given. The speed of the simulation depends on the size of the map, the number of entities (dwarves, pets, etc.), the number of levels (mountainous maps have more depth levels), the number of objects and other factors. Modern computers should be able to run 3x3 maps with medium-sized fortresses at 80-100 FPS. Particularly fast processors may be able to handle much larger maps at the same speed.

You'll also want a decent video card to keep up with the CPU, but even a video card that's several years old will satisfy DF under most circumstances.

===Dual-core machines===

If you're running a lot of things at once while playing Dwarf Fortress, open Task Manager and set DF to Core1 and everything else to Core0. You will now have an entire core dedicated to running DF, which should give slightly better performance. Multi-threading support isn't currently implemented.

==Other Operating Systems==
===Linux===
Although DF is a Windows game, it works perfectly in Linux using Wine, as long as you have video drivers with working OpenGL acceleration – for all NVIDIA and newer ATI cards, this means using the vendor's closed source driver. Without 2D acceleration the game runs slow as [[Dwarven syrup]]. Most distributions provide Wine, so consult your distribution-specific documentation for help.

See [http://www.bay12games.com/cgi-local/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000448 this thread] for tips about Ubuntu and other distributions.

On 24 December, 2008 Toady released the first native Linux version of '''Dwarf Fortress'''. It is compiled for 32-bit environments, however, and may not run under 64-bit environments without additional libraries, depending on the Linux distribution.

====Ubuntu/Kubuntu====
Under an Ubuntu/Kubuntu installation one first of all needs the ia32-libs package installed. This is a standard Ubuntu package that contains 32-bit versions of many common libraries. Unfortunately, while it includes 32-bit versions of some SDL libaries, it lacks SDL_image, which '''Dwarf Fortress''' needs.

The 32-bit package can be downloaded directly from [http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/i386/libsdl-image1.2/download Ubuntu's package repository]. Once the download is complete, open a console window and navigate to the directory containing the file. Extract the contents by typing:

dpkg-deb -x libsdl-image1.2_1.2.6-3_i386.deb ./libsdl-image

Copy the files from libsdl-image/usr/lib into the df_linux/libs directory and the game should now work.

====Ubuntu/Kubuntu - Using getlibs====
The other way to get the require SDL_image library is to use getlibs, which will get the correct 32bit library when run on 64bit Ubuntu and create all the required links.

At a command prompt:
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs getlibs
sudo getlibs -l libSDL_image-1.2.so.0

The game can now be run from the df_linux folder (or wherever you extracted it to) using the df bash script.

==== Gentoo ====

The required libraries can be pulled from portage before running DF.

For x86, you will need the basic GTK/OpenGL/SDL stuff, plus sdl-image, which means the following packages:

* x11-libs/gtk+:2
* media-libs/libsdl
* media-libs/sdl-image
* virtual/opengl
* virtual/glu

For amd64, you will need the 32-bit emulation libraries instead. Note that sdl-image is already included in the sdl emulation package, so you need:

* app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-sdl
* app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-baselibs
* app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-xlibs
* app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-gtklibs

==== Arch ====

The required libs can be pulled from pacman before running.

If using Gnome, or KDE with some Gnome applications, the following will most likely be installed already:

* gtk2
* libgl
* sdl
* sdl_image

In addition, libtiff (<= 4, to be exact) is also required. Libtiff 4 is not available on Arch. Linking or copying /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3.8.2 to /usr/lib/libtiff.so.4 is sufficient.

The Dwarf Fortress files can be installed with an AUR frontend, or from the AUR itself if so inclined. The current files are at [http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=22795 this page.]

At a command prompt:
wget http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dwarffortress/dwarffortress.tar.gz
tar xvzf dwarffortress.tar.gz
cd dwarffortress
makepkg -s
su
pacman -U dwarffortress-v0.28.181.40d11-5-i686.pkg.tar.gz

===OS X===
A port of Dwarf Fortress to Mac OS X has been completed, and runs on both Intel and PPC based macs. According to the [http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ Website]
it requires system 10.3 or later, 100mb of hard drive space, and a minimum of 512mb of ram.

==Optimizing Dwarf Fortress==
You can greatly increase game speed on all systems; details at [[Maximizing framerate]].

==Example results: What you can expect with various machines==

'''Pentium 4 at 2.2 GHz and 1 GByte RAM, running version 0.27.169.33g:'''

3x3 site, relatively hilly (ten z-levels of elevation change), without magma but with unfrozen brook, no caves, lakes, or monsters; virtually all possible speed-boosting edits in init.txt applied. Game starts to lag seriously at just under 80 dwarves.Speed is down to 30-45 FPS (varies) and occasional interface jerkiness is becoming noticeable.

'''Asus Eee PC 4G - 512 Ram - Windows XP(custom optimized) - DF v0.27.176.38c:'''

Smallest map possible with the smallest site, flatland only 1z above ground, 15z underground, volcano, some lakes, no underground water, 3 monsters, 9 creatures and 7 dwarfs. Speed boosting edits in init.txt. 10FPS on fullscreen mode and 20 on window mode. Some keys aren´t easy to press on that small keyboard, mainly when you have to press fn+shift+key. Conclusion: Play it on a desktop or a better EEE PC. :-(

'''Core Duo 4400 (2x2ghz) - 2 gb RAM - Windows Vista - .38c'''

3x3 site, pretty cliffy. Volcano, part of river and pretty big artificial pool. 120 dwarves, less than 10 roaming animals and ~50 fps. Decreases to 30 when merchants arrive or when many hauling jobs are started.

'''Athlon XP 2200(1.8) - 1 GB 6 year old RAM (DDR100/DDR133) - windows XP -no optimizations to XP or DF -.38c'''

Large site (6x6), medium world,with brook, no speed boost edits, Kapersky running with protection disabled. Slightly upwards slanted hill. Most of human town, no reveal.exe, running Dwarf Foreman, and with a relatively old (and thus slow) install of XP thats had several viruses- 35-40FPS with 17 humans, 38-48 FPS with 7. Drops to 30-35 with alot of hauling or when viewing 1 z level up (1 bellow human town, 1 above my start site). I imagine with a fresh install and a regular sized site it would likely hold 50+FPS. I don't really know where the speed is coming from compared to what other people are reporting- the processor only scores 1040 CB on a cinebench CPU benchmark.

==See also==
*[[Maximizing framerate]]

[[Category:FAQ]]

40d:Custom grid

2008-08-30T20:53:37Z

Mephisto: removed erroneous entry in "notes" section

Version 0.28.181.39f introduced the ability to increase the grid from 80 tiles wide by 25 tiles high to as many as 200 by 200.
The resolution and font are still a critical concern and must be calculated to match, to avoid strange results and crushed fonts.

'''To work out what grid size you want for a given screen resolution and font tile size:'''
# Determine your tile size. This may be found by dividing the x value of the intended screen resolution of the font by the x value of the grid, and then the y values are divided by each other. Example: If we use the default grid size, 80:25, and the resolution of curses_800x600.bmp, 800x600, then we would divide 800 by 80 to get 10 and 600 by 25 to get 24. This means our tiles are each 10x24.
# Divide the x value of your screen resolution by the x value of the tile size to determine your wanted x grid value, then do the same with the y values to determine your y grid value.
# Change the [GRID] entry in the init.txt file to reflect your changes.
* Note: if your font is, for example, a 16x16 font, as specified in the filename, this means that each tile is intended to be 16x16 pixels in size, and you may therefore avoid the mathematics in step 1

==Notes==
* The title screen will be situated in the top right of the screen, instead of centred.
* Setting [TEXTURE_PARAM:LINEAR] instead of [TEXTURE_PARAM:NEAREST] will make squished tiles better looking.

== Notable Combinations ==
* [FULLSCREENX:1600], [FULLSCREENY:1200], [FONT:curses_640x300.bmp], [GRID:200:100] (640x300 is 8x12 per tile)
* [FULLSCREENX:1920], [FULLSCREENY:1200], [FONT:curses_800x600.bmp], [GRID:192:100] (800x600 utilized at 10x12 per tile, for an almost square aspect ratio with lots of view space)
* [FULLSCREENX:1680], [FULLSCREENY:1050], [FONT:{any 16x16 font}], [GRID:105:65]

== External links ==
*[http://www.vaevictus.net/dfcalc.html DF Grid Calculator] - A javascript tool to help with the above calculations.

{{Game Interface FAQ}}

RPPR Transcript

2008-08-16T05:41:09Z

Mephisto: I've begun proofreading and making corrections, as the original author asked others to do. Feel free to continue in my stead.

== Top ==

=== 0:00:00 - 0:30:00 ===
[http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2008/05/interview/rppr-interview-with-tarn-adams-creator-of-dwarf-fortress/ Role Playing Public Radio]: This is Ross Paiten for RPPR, and here with me is Tarn Adams the developer and programmer for Dwarf Fortress the Indie cult hit computer game.

0:00:12
RPPR: So Tarn, why don't we start off with your elevator pitch of Dwarf Fortress, introduce it to those who aren't familiar with it.

0:00:21
Tarn Adams: Ideally I'd like to say Dwarf Fortress is a fantasy world simulator, you know, kind of along the lines of other sim games you might be familiar with. But right now it's more of a Dwarf Fortress simulator, which is why it's got that native.

So basically you start a colony of dwarves, you start out with just seven of them, and you dig out a fortress in the ground, and I mean you kind of place workshops and so on. You might be reminded of a real time strategy game. But it's a bit different from that, they have jobs and overcome various standard fantasy adversity situations, and you're always destined to lose the game.

But the thing about this that makes is nice is that the whole entire world is saved. I mean I do have my eyes on this being a larger project with the entire world always being active. So your fortress will be saved in the world wherever you chose to place it. And you can come back with more dwarves later to try and revitalize it, or bring it back from nothing. Or you can come in with a more standard kind of RPG adventure, and see what's going on there, read old engravings that your dwarves made a hundred years ago, see if the Dragon is still living there, that kind of thing.

And I'm just focusing now on the actual world generation 'cus right when you start the game you go through this sort of world generation process where it starts from scratch, places some landscapes, and continents and so on and the seeds of a few civilizations here and there and some large standard fantasy monsters and so on and lets them do their thing for a thousand or so years. Then your involvement in the game begins with either your dwarf fortresses or your adventurers and we'd like to get you involved with more and more things as it goes, but as it stands the dwarf fortress component is the main part of the game.

0:03:01
RPPR: Right and even with just that component it's developed quite a following. I don't think I've seen any game with such a following over people who aren't even necessarily playing it but following other people playing it. For example the Saga of the fortress [[Boatmurdered]] which has become sort of a cult hit in of itself on the Internet. I've read people describing that they don't want to play the game so much as to run it and have them tell stories.

And yet at the same time you've also been very critical of narratives in video games today. What is the role of narrative in Dwarf Fortress and what's your critique of video game narratives?

0:03:53
TA: I'm certainly approaching it a little different than you'd often see in fantasy. To start with video games in general I haven't played a lot of games recently but, narrative wasn't sort of a fixed was always a down side mainly because your sort of investing your time the narrative is never quite like reading a book because you have to do parts over and over again, go back to old save points, see the same thing happen 20 times, and maybe not even have the ability to skip seeing it nineteen of those times, and it was just sort of a frustrating thing. But the main thing for us was we always wanted to write, and when I say we (I'll do that a lot) my brother's the other person working on this project. And when we started writing games, our main thing was just to write games we could play and if you're doing a game with a fixed plot it's just not that interesting to play as the designer because you know everything that's going to happen. You can't really surprise yourself that way. So we always kind of moved away from those things, but then again you've got things like strategy games out there and so on that don't really have necessarily any plot at all aside from maybe this is taking place in North Africa in World War 2 or something, and you have the entire narrative surrounding that to the extent that you know the history of the situation. But the types of stories that arise out of that would be these alternative history situations, who won this fight, what happened, what went wrong, that kind of thing.

Dwarf Fortress sort of thrives partially on the same thing, except you don't have the same kind of background. But, the idea was to kind of create that background randomly so that it's not something that would be easy to get burned out on at least when the project gets far enough along and right now we've just got this Human Dwarf Goblin Elf Kobold type thing that's been done a million times. But the fact that the back story is different every time, and with the next release there's going to be a lot of additions to that, to the history of the world, because I'm putting the world generation wars in. It gives you an interesting starting point and the main thing though now that doesn't matter so much right now the main thing is just that there's lots of little moving parts and one of the difference between computer games and other types of games is that you can track an awful lot of stuff and provided you don't have a lot of bugs it's all going to be internally consistent so you don't have to worry about forgetting something or having to cover for yourself later on when you're telling the story because it will just keep track of it for you.

So when you've got all of these things going on, when you're a player playing the game, you kind of focus on the things that you're interested, and there's an awful lot to do. You can see one of the favorite little dwarves that you've been working with, something will go terribly wrong, his cat will die or something, and he'll start going crazy and pick someone to beat up and that guy will go nuts and go pull a level or something he probably shouldn't have pulled, and bathe the entire lower level of the fortress and flood it from something you have for your sewer system or something like that. And those kind of things assuming that you're really invested in that then you'd have a story to tell and the things that you'd be watching about it are the things that you're interested in. As long as there's enough floating around for you to look at then it's a different kind of way of getting a narrative out of the game and then when you start again, assuming you aren't jaded on the whole process, then you can do it again, share what happens with your friends and so on, where as the whole thing of having a plot or a track that you need to walk down or a whole branching path that you need to explore that's really common in computer games, doesn't really come up. I mean there are a lot of people that like that kind of thing.

0:08:20
RPPR: Right, the sort of choose your own adventure method.

0:08:24
TA: Yeah, yeah, I mean it will have more/less branches and people will try and say it has more branches than it actually does sometimes. In the end, as the designer/developer here, it's really hard to write that sort of game then stick with it for a while. I mean you can kind of become invested in your world or whatever; a lot of people sort of like to build up a fixed world and add all kinds of interesting details. But, like I said we kind of wanted to play the game too. And so, I mean do get to mess around with that a little bit when I change the properties of the stock creatures that come with the game. You can modify anything almost, as to do with the creatures anyway. But I still have to ship some out, when I say ship I mean include in the little zip file that you can download from the website. But the Dwarves are a certain way, and Elves are a certain way, and Goblins are a certain way. And although the reasons that I make them different is not so much to liven up the universe as it is to introduce new mechanics to fiddle with, that can be used by other people, mixed and matched, that sort of thing. It's still fun to work with that; I've got my Goblins right now, for example, sort of have this Labyrinth the movie type of pathology, where they kidnap babies from other races then raise them. And it's led now in the world generation to some very strange scenarios where a Goblin would kidnap an Elf and then raise the Elf. But then the Elf would decide to become a Kidnapper themselves and kidnap another Elf or kidnap some Dwarves and then that Dwarf would lead an army and so on for the Goblins and all that kind of thing. And all that just came up; I didn't have to do anything once I got them doing the kidnapping everything else just happened automatically.

0:10:30
RPPR: Is that something you anticipated?

0:10:33
TA: Yeah, that was the reason I did it, I want some cool stuff to happen! No no, I don't anticipate everything certainly. But you can kind of tell what's going to happen, right? I mean the second you put in Goblins are going to kidnap and raise these babies, you know what's going to happen, you can tell they're going to be leading armies and being kidnappers and so on, but it's so funny to see it. And it's not something where I feel like you know, well I'm heading, when I fire up the game myself and look at the world generation, I don't feel like I'm heading to the kingdom of Agrotha for the thirty-seventh time to rescue the kidnapped prince or whatever I mean I'm seeing something interesting each time that's different. And the way that the pieces fit together you really start to kind of lose track and it gets really interesting to look at the files. It records almost everything that happens, certainly anything important, but even things like someone moving to a different house or something. So you can pick a character when you're looking at the legends and look at all the things that happened in their life, and go look at another one and kind of build up this narrative yourself. It's difficult as a computer game project to get the narrative produced by the game so you can just read it like a book. We're hoping to do more and more with that but it is a difficult process to have it pick out what's important and to focus on those characters and so on. And string on all the events together and then do all that in standard English without being repetitive.

It's a very difficult project but even having the players just able to see the information and reconstruct the narrative themselves it's sort of a tool for them to tell those stories. And everything you do in the game, at least our goal is, it does this to a good extent now but we'd like to do more so, get the events while you play recorded right along with the histories. That's already happening in a sort of half assed way right now. Then you can kind of weave your fortress, look at the history back before you were allowed to start playing, and just see this picture come into being.

0:13:05
RPPR: You mentioned several times that you developed this game to make it so you could play it yourself, and you mentioned you know make sure the character; as long as the player isn't jaded with it, as long as their still involved with the characters.
What do you do in Dwarf Fortress to try and keep players interested in the game or involved with it? Are there any techniques or anything that you use to keep them involved with the game or the narrative?

0:13:34
TA: Well, so a new player coming in, if they download Dwarf Fortress for the first time, they've got a lot to look at. Now if they don't like the interface, 'cause right now, I mean, we should say pretty early off this is essentially a text game. I mean if you've played a Rogue Like game, it's like that. It's got these ASCII text based graphics and although it's got some support for 2D tiles and so on. But it's not like it's going to get an overhaul and change into 3D or anything like that. So that's what you've got and that cuts off a lot of players there. And also the fact that it's documented poorly and the interface is still a very slow work in progress, because I'm still working on the game itself it's hard to focus on everything.

Once a player gets through all that, then they've got a lot to look at and I'm not really worried about them burning out on it, at least no more than on any other game. I mean when I was younger, playing a lot of games, I'd burn out on them, I never lasted more than a few days on any game. You know, you just get tired of them. But, what I'm doing for people playing the game now is I'm just putting out new versions all the time. Uhm, not ALL the time, I mean it's been a couple, two or three, months since I've put one out because I'm working on a pretty large project right now. But in general, I'll always be putting out these new versions and that gives people more things to play with, even in their existing fortresses, I've been pretty good about save game compatibility.

And you just need to put in more stuff, more stuff, more stuff and that's more elements for people to see in their stories. And it's all really generic, so I none of the worlds that it randomly generates are going to be a masterpiece of fantasy, with all this really subtle symbolisms and stuff going on they're always going to be kind of this cheap Beastmaster kind of knock off Tolkien crap, right? But it's fine, because if you're into that kind of thing, you're not going to get jaded on the game for that reason, right? It's not like “Oh I'm just sick and tired of dwarves” or whatever. It's not something that happens very often. I mean people do get tired of that crap, but they'll come back or they'll go on and find something else to do.

In general you just need to put in a lot of effort in putting in details into the game and so on. And people get tired of games, I'm surprised some people have been with the game since I've put it out on August 8th, and they're still there, August 8th 2006, and they're still there. I've never stuck with a game like that, so I'm not the first person you'd want to ask about how to stop people from getting jaded or whatever, because it's certainly beyond me to stay interested in anything that long. So it's cool for those people in that kind of limited group that can actually get into the game, something's going right. So I'll just keep doing things the way I'm doing it I guess.

0:16:47
RPPR: Well again if you look at Boatmurdered you can see how each player decided to take on their own projects, and they sort of interpreted like, I mean you call it a very generic sort of reporting of events in the game, but people interpreted them to turn this Saga of these sociopathic Dwarves setting the countryside on fire with lava channels and things like that. And I think there's a lot of interest in, you know, reinterpreting the works for your own amusement. But, one thing that always struck me that was real interesting was the emotional state of each character.

How do you model the dwarves? Did you just sort of make a sort of basic algorithm or A.I. for it? Or did you look at specific psychological personality profiling or anything like that?

0:17:28
TA: More, and more. As it started it was just really basic. You've got a Dwarf and you can set their jobs, what they do, and they'll go off and try and do those things. That's the very beginning before I released it, and I'm like “OK, I'm happy if they're actually working and not walking around in circles or jumping off cliffs or anything” right? So, if you want to create a character you don't just want them to be another unit in a war game or whatever you want to give them some more information. And so we gave them names, and it recorded their thoughts. Now the thoughts are when they see things they like, so we needed to give them likes and dislikes, have relationships with other characters and so on. It records all these things, their pets, and the types of animals they would keep as a pet, or at least the one they like the most. And, once you've got all that information, whether or not the dwarf is happy or sad, or that kind of thing, we don't really have a lot of emotional states right now, just sort of a linear spectrum from 0 to a very high number if they're really ecstatic. We'd like to do more with that basically because you have them in their thoughts they can see another dwarf with more stuff than they have and they can become jealous especially if that dwarf is in a sort of lower social station, meaning that the players kind of allowed them to have more things or given them a bigger room when the other dwarf things they shouldn't have it or so on. And you could say you're modeling jealousy at that point, but it's kind of weak, I mean it's certainly more than you see in a lot of other places, but it's still if that just makes their happiness number go down by 20 or something and they start pitching a fit or whatever. It's not a specific fit though, they aren't going after that particular dwarf and doing spiteful things to them or something, which is where we'd like to start pointing that stuff to get the specific emotions and having short term and long term relationships with people, emotional state that can flare up but still be different in the long term. There's lots of things that could be done, but it's a start. It's like every other system in the game you kind of work on it in stages and add things to it. But recently I've started looking at more things for instance for their personalities. Before a Dwarf meets other dwarves or things happen, now they've got a personality which is one of these partially implemented things I went with a, I don't remember the names of these things really well because I just find them on Wikipedia then look up supporting articles basically. So I think it's the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_NEO_Personality_Inventory Neo Pi-R]. It's a 30 facet personality model, they're grouped into five, five.. I guess the Big Five or something, things your sort of neurotic traits, like how paranoid you are or how angry you get or how much you can't control yourself, that kind of thing. And how open you are to new experiences, and how empathetic you are. And there's five categories there and each one has say six, I don't remember the exact set up, I know there are thirty total. But six different little traits like how cheerful you are or how artistic, that kind of thing. And those are the ones I'm using for now. There's some weaknesses, you kind of run into the weaknesses of the system pretty quickly when you already have the world in place. Certain things, certain facets don't exist that you'd like to have and so on. But I've got those and I've just been going back through the game and making dwarves start to change their decisions based on their personalities, so now they won't throw tantrums so much if they're supposed to be a calm Dwarf they'll handle the situation; they'll be able to more grief in their life anyway. But if they're really susceptible to it then they can become depressed, rather than throwing tantrums, and eventually just stop or whatever and jump into a chasm or something. Or, if they're really unable to control their anger then as their happiness goes down they'll start wrecking buildings and starting fist fights and throwing items and so on. And a dwarf that doesn't like to keep their situation organized wont clean up their room as often and so on. There's just little things put in like that. And as long as you don't start trying to hammer things into, you know like making all the dwarves suddenly, I don't know what a good example is. I mean something totally extreme would be like getting rid of pregnancy in female dwarves or something and have them jump out of the rock walls or something. I mean people would be unhappy with that. And if you made all the dwarves devoutly religious, and you had to build alters, or something; The dwarves have beliefs now, I recently added, but they're not strident about them, they don't do anything with them. If it were only the more feverishly devout dwarves doing those kind of things, so then that's good, but just having alters for everybody would be kind of bad. As long as you keep kind of everything open, and just add more details, but not sort of pigeon hole the experience for anybody, then people can continue building their stories. Continue to imagine the mechanics that don't exist, while making use of the mechanics that do exist. This is sort of how things like Boatmurdered and so on work, I mean a lot of the things that were described in that story Boatmurdered were game mechanics and did do exactly what they say. But there are other things in the story where they kind of ... about Boatmurdered was that the story, I mean there were a lot of things that came from the game itself, a lot of the mechanics and so on. But then there a lot of things where they embellished themselves, right? If they get into a dwarf's head and start doing dialog and all that kind of stuff they were doing, that's all made up, right? But as long as it isn't at odds with what I've set up for them then I think it works out better. But if I made all of the dwarves a certain way, or did something like that to them where they wouldn't have that freedom of narrative. And I mean it's already true to some extent, right? Because the dwarves all live in mountains, if they want to write a story that isn't about that, then they'd have to have their dwarves live outside, which kind of changes the game a little bit. But you just kind of go with people, so I don't anticipate ever hamstringing anyone like that. But it's just something to be careful of. Because sometimes when you get into your sort of stock universe ideas, you're set properties of the creatures and so on. Like I've been doing a bit, for instance with the goblins when I was talking about that kidnapping thing, they've always been doing that, but now it's really a more ingrained part of world generation. If that wasn't someones notion of a goblin, thats going to affect their ability not just to get into the game but to tell stories, and so on. And fortunately they can just go in and mod that out, there's just a thing in the goblin definition that says they do that kind of stuff and you can delete that line. But you don't want to force people to mod the game to get into it or whatever. In the end I'd like to move away from the stock universes more and have randomly generated creatures and more randomly generated items and situations and so on. You can go so far with that before it starts to look like gray goop or whatever, but I'd like to start moving in that direction, it's something I've always been saying. But anyway I'm rambling at this point so.

0:25:33
RPPR: That's fine, you're bringing up these randomly generated creatures in games. You've said recently that the people making Spore, the video game, have been playing Dwarf Fortress. and it's sort of an interesting thing.

0:25:45
TA: Who said that? That was Sims 3, those guys are playing it.

0:25:50
RPPR: Yeah, okay it was the Sims 3. But still it wouldn't surprise me if the Spore people were not at least aware of Dwarf Fortress. Certainly these game designers are keeping up with your game, it seems like. So what do you think the future of narrative or the future of storytelling in games is going to be like? Is it going to be more... Do you think it's leaning towards this direction of randomly or procedurally generated worlds or storytelling, like the Sims, like your game, and Spore?

0:26:38
TA: Theres always going to be a place for these RPGs, right? A big place for them, any kind of role playing game with a story, you know Bioshock, that kind of thing. People play those games and I think random content, because.. I mean theres a lot of reasons why this sort of procedurally generated stuff is springing up, a lot of them are just financial. And if in Spore you can get people to pay to create your content for you, I mean I guess that's not a bad situation right? (Laughing) I can't say I'm totally for that but if people want to pay to do it thats cool. And it's not like I'm not benefiting myself from moders and so on so it's the same kind of thing I guess.

But theres just more room for it, I guess, is the thing, and if people who were getting kind of jaded, like myself I don't play games anymore really I mean theres just not a lot that I like, if theres more of a place for that kind of thing, rather theres more of an opportunity for that kind of thing just be processors have gotten better and so on. And people who need their graphics fix at the same time can still get procedurally generated content now, at least thats what we're going to see with Spore I imagine. It's not so much I think that fixed plot narratives and so on are dying in games or something like that, that's just not the case. But theres going to be more and more interesting things coming out, I think. And I'm just glad to be a small part of that.

0:28:12
RPPR: Any predictions of particular types of procedurally generated content that, we haven't seen yet, that you think is going to happen in the next few years.

0:28:24
TA: A few years, maybe not, it seems like it's going to be dry. It's been dry, this year. Short term you always get into that thing where we're going to be having flying cars in five years, or whatever it is, 's silly. In the future it seems there's a lot of people working on procedurally generated storylines and characters, because it would be nice, right? Because it does increase the replay value and it decreases your need to hire certain, you know, (chuckling) writers and so on, I guess. Although they'd still have a lot of work just to get those characters to say things reasonably, and so on. But people have been working on that, there are a lot of projects that I've heard about that are making quite a bit of progress with creating actors, characters, non-player characters, in the world. Giving them their motivations and their personalities, and so on. Setting the stage for them, but then the story after that kind of writes itself.

0:29:20
RPPR: Sounds like a table top RPG, almost.

0:29:25
TA: Yeah, it's like that. A lot of people don't get into table top RPGs or can't play them anymore, and so on. There are ways to handle that, or whatever, and one of them is just (chuckle) to remove the other humans from the equation, and try to turn them into little computer people, that's more or less how I operate. I'm making a single player game, but there are a lot of multiplayer aspects to how people play Dwarf Fortress, such as continuing each others fortresses, and so on.

But in the end it's a single player game, and so you're confronted then, when you're writing a single player game, with making a character that you'd like it to be something that can kind of live on it's own, if you don't want to go have a fixed narrative. But even with something like an MMO or something, one of those Massive Multiplayer Online games, if the Non-Player Characters there could react a little bit better, and some times you need them if you don't have a high enough player population for example, right? Then having those characters react to whats going on around them, rather than following a script, you know, would be beneficial. And it's also one those things that's just fun to work on as a project, trying to overcome those kinds of obstacles and I know theres quite a few people working on that sort of thing.

And seeing something, I don't know, like The Sims, or something, getting merged with a Fantasy universe, or a Sci-Fi universe, or something, with more of a directed plot, it wouldn't surprise me at all. Having the kind of autonomous characters thrust into a situation where theres sort of more than a peaceful town going on around them, I mean, you can expect to see that right? (chuckling) Well you're going to see it with the stuff that I'm doing. But I expect that other places as well.

=== 0:30:00 - 1:00:00 ===
0:31:50
RPPR: Right, is this something in the future for Dwarf Fortress? Do you think that you're, at some point in the future, going to add this sort of 'randomly generated narratives' or quests or something like that?

0:32:00
TA: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I mean if you have a really low bar, that you could trip over, you know, hurt your ankle, I'm there already. (laugh) But, uh, if you want to do things that are more interesting, I'm heading there, it's just going to take a while. For instance, you have right now the randomly placed human towns everywhere, and if you're an adventurer and you go there, they'll ask you to deal with local situations. And these are all... local situations, things that they're threatened by, local minotaur, or something, is causing trouble. They're not actually causing trouble now, they're just there. But you know, you've got to expect that kind of penchant to kill monsters that haven't done anything, to you at all, from a human, right? But that sort of thing can be expanded upon. Now with the historical stuff that I've got, they can look back; do they have any history with these things? Are they currently fighting a group next to them? They might ask you to go raid an nearby town, that's coming up in the release after this one. And as they develop more of this personal history, and so on, they'll have more interesting things for you to do.

At some point you now are at “Now is this the same as 'which-way' games, where they've got four different ways to go, and you're just kind of throwing a little bit of randomness into the mix, which kind of decreases the value, in a sense, because you're doing the same things but it's not with a character that's been built over time, that you're interested in.” It's kind of how it feels now, but it's getting better. And at some point what I'm hoping for is that slowly one by one, Dwarf Fortress is able to subsume the worst plots you've seen in the Fantasy games. There's just a horrible “go kill the big monster” quest, or “go fetch this item” and stuff. That kind of stuff just, without a lot of backstory. Those things are already being gobbled up. And then, as you have more and more backstory we'll be able to match that as well. And hopefully for the people that play the game, it's hard to go back sometimes to the really horrible stuff. Same kind of thing happened with the combat system. It's hard for some people to go back to hit points now, because we've done away with that entirely. Added all kinds of stuff with wounds, and paralysis, and vomiting, all that kind of thing. Being stunned, crawling on ground, getting your finger chopped off, and all that stuff. And it's going to be the same thing with the plots, I mean I'm just going to keep snatching low hanging fruit until the game can generate something like a cheap fantasy game.

So there's always going to be a place for fixed RPGs, because people can be very creative. They can come up with something that's very immersive, although most of the time I'd just rather read a book. Because I don't have to play the same thing like seven times. So there's going to be a thing, where people will kinda, to make a fixed RPG I think, this all sort of vague, but. To make a fixed plot RPG people are just going to have to work harder. And they already do, you don't see a lot of things with really simple simple simple simple simple quests anymore. And stuff like that, you see quite a bit, but not so much. And people will just have to write at a higher standard and make games at a higher standard, not just because they're competing with a similar product. But because the procedural stuff is starting to match them. And I predict that's going to happen. It already is to some extent.

0:35:54
RPPR: Interesting. Of course then again, you can see popular games like Grand Theft Auto 4, which has had a record number of sales, I think like 500 million in its first week [liar! >.>]. With this sort of beginning, it has it's own randomly generated content where you're walking along this street and you don't know what sort of cars or people are going to be by. But it's mostly sort of a fixed narrative where you have limited choices you know, do you save this guy or do you kill him. And then later on, if you saved him, he can help you out himself. And things like that, but that's sort of an older style of game design philosophy, where it's sort of branching choices but they all converge at the same point, because obviously they can't procedurally generate cutscenes or dialog.

0:37:00
TA: Well I think they could if they tried.

0:37:05
RPPR Well, you can only have the voice actors say so much. But in Dwarf Fortress it's obvious that one of the things about it is its complexity. And not just the dwarves themselves, but you know, smelting ore to get metals and things like that. So what is your philosophy of game design in Dwarf Fortress, in terms of (one of the things I've wondered about is) at what point do you say “Okay this is too much, this is too complex. Let's cut it back. Lets simplify it.”?

0:37:37
TA: Well, yeah, so fortunately we don't run into that too much. Yeah, so there are certain thing; a lot of it is knowing ahead of time what's too much to bite off. Time travel for example, let's look at time travel. That's really hard, I mean there's the “I've got ten thousand people walking around, or whatever, they're not doing much right now. But certainly going back in time, I mean it's the thing that makes a lot of time travel theories sound silly, it's like everyone thinks there's a hard disk where every state of the universe has been saved, and you can just kind of go back. and just because you have memories, or something, you think every state of the universe has been saved and there is no reason to think that. And that's the kind of thing that'd be very difficult to do Time Travel in Dwarf Fortress because you'd have to rewind everything and go back to something, and it'd take hundreds and hundreds of gigs (gigabytes) to save that kind of information. I mean you could get away with little things, and try and kind of randomly set some stuff up but, it'd be a difficult project. That's the kind of thing we don't even think about, that's not going to happen.

But looking at geology or something, that's a part of the game the game that's obviously a bit overdone compared to some other parts of the game. At least at some level you've got the right type of stone, occurring in the right type of layer, or someone could have metamorphic rock or sedimentary rock and it'll have the right kinds of stuff in it. And there's a hundred something types of stone in the game, and so it's kinda crazy. I just kind of get in these moods, right? I'm like, okay let's work on geology, and so I work on it, I kind of set a vague time limit for myself, get as much done as I can and then move on to something else. And, at this point, sometimes I do go a little too far in one direction or another, like you can dye clothing right now specific colors, and so on. But you can't do some very basic stuff like send out a patrol to to look at, or assault a nearby town or something. Which, in the fantasy setting, is a much more basic activity than dying your clothes, or tanning a hide or something. So theres the focuses where I get kind of myopic and focus in on something for a while. But all in all, the basic idea would be to pick something that hasn't received a lot of attention, work on it for a while, and kind of bring the whole level of the game up and try and be comprehensive about it. You're never going to run into a real problem with sort of outdoing, you know, a modern computer, whatever, unless you just do a bad job with your optimizations, and so on. And you know, of course, I have some problems in that regard, when the game gets slow, and so on. That I'm going to work at, at some point. But, there's far more that you can add to a game like this, before you have to start worrying about, you know, bumping up into any walls, so it's more about rather than hitting some kind of technical restriction, it's more about trying to be comprehensive about it. And you know, sort of devote your attention to areas in equal measure. All though I've hardly could be said to have done that.

0:41:09
RPPR: People's computers being overwhelmed by Dwarf Fortress because of cats.

0:41:13
TA: You've heard of what?

0:41:15
RPPR: People's computers being overwhelmed in Dwarf Fortress because of the overpopulations, especially cats and other pets. The catsplosions, things like that.

0:41:25
TA: heh heh heh heh heh.

0:41:26
RPPR: Yeah, of course that's sort of an unintentional side effect of pets not needing to eat. And so they just keep breeding and breeding and breeding, till they're out of control.

0:41:36
TA: So as far as cats go... so yeah there's defiantly problems with optimization. Especially when you get up around 100 dwarves or something, and then you've got 50-60 cats going around, and all sorts of different pets, and so on. There are a number of problems there. Now when you say “an unintentional side effect of cats not eating”, the pets actually used to eat. And there were problems there too, because they'd eat you out of your fortresses. And so having them eat too much is a problem. So I took it out for the time being. And so you know you're going to get this overpopulation problem, but it's just a matter of balancing things out. Having the herbivores just be able to graze on grass for instance, they can't do that now. That would help a bit, although, of course, if they have a lot of grass, then it's not really going to help the population problem. But then if you could feed your cats, they could eat vermin although they'd run out after a time, because they'd eat out most of the vermin on the map. Dogs are another example, if wanted to feed them meat, or something; if you just had to feed them less, or something like that. I mean there are lots of ways to handle this. There's been a bit of discussion about this on the forums on my website (http:\\www.bay12games.com\) and uh, you know like anything it's just an ongoing issue.

0:43:00
RPPR: Yeah, heh heh, uhm. Of course the obvious solution would be to add a Spay or Neuter option to the butcher shops, or to the kennels I guess.

0:43:10
TA: Yeah, that came up as well. I think the consensus was that spaying was too advanced a technology, actually going in and doing some kind of operation like that. but just doing the castration would be fair game and castration is probably going into the game. Castration of your livestock and so on. Being able to do that. Uhm, I mean, it's something that you.. (nervous chuckle) I mean I guess it makes some people feel uncomfortable if you've got an animal being dragged off to the butcher shop to be denadded (what the hell?!), or whatever. But the uh, the worst part will be the bugs, where it messes up an item ID and then a Dwarf drags off another Dwarf, or something. but we'll weather that, we'll weather the storm there, eventually with better livestock management. :

0:44:33
RPPR: Alright, but what else did you, uh.. You know you mentioned earlier the wounds, the hit locations and things like that, which you've said you took from the Cyberpunk table top game. What else did you carry over from tabletop RPGs?

0:44:52
TA: So the idea here, the cyberpunk was largely inspirational for the wounds system. We've kind of had, we were playing D&D before we were playing cyberpunk, so with D&D and I think a lot of people experienced this at least, I don't know what the latest editions do, but I know we were up to, we started on first then went to second, I don't know the exact numbers or whatever. But theres these hit points, right? So you get frustrated, right? You're fighting these things, and hacking the crap out of them, you're kind of relying on your DM to say someones arm got chopped off. But you can't really chop his arm off unless he's dead, or something, because there weren't really a lot of rules in place, unless you make them yourself. And so cyberpunk was pretty refreshing we kind of wanted these things; we'd written a few little tiny little baby BASIC games, because we've been programming forever. And these really baby kind of games where someones arm would get blown off or something. But cyberpunk kind of had it; it was in line with how we were thinking, definitely reinforced a lot of that. Because it was easy to roll up a character really fast, and they could get killed in one hit all the time, there was none of this “hit points get higher and higher” type of thing. and easy for them to get messed up, put in the hospital really fast, with no way to stop it. And then you can roll up another character. So this kind of meat grinder effect, that was also how we played a lot of our Roguelike games, these early sort of randomized text games. It's the same kind of thing where you'd run a character, they'd get wiped out, you get a scorelist. This is the kind of thing that came from our, sort of this synergy between these Roll Playing Games, and the Roguelike games we were playing, is this persistence of a record of what you've done, that you have in a roll playing game because you've still got your sheets, and you can talk about your characters and stuff. But with the computer games it's a little more difficult. So you have a record of what you've done, so it doesn't matter if you lose it. And this is kind of an important thing for us, why we have so many things that are records about the game that you're playing. Because in a fixed-plot game, for example, you just kind of race off and do this plot and it doesn't matter if it records if you won or not, you just watch the little ten-second video saying everything is cool or whatever. And that's fine, but if the game is more like a strategy game, or something, then you want to have something that says that you were there, or whatever. and that's kind of far afield from the original topic.

0:47:52
RPPR: Heh, no that's actually very interesting.

0:47:53
TA: (random babbling for 10 seconds)

0:48:02
TA: The wound system and the pacing that we got from that, because it's kind of funny, when we were playing D&D, we basically approached it like a computer game. I mean I'm not sure where this fits in the theory of roll playing game, because it wasn't about a competition or anything like that. But we played it sort of like these early SSI games, or something, you'd go into a room and kill some monsters, sort of a dungeon crawl or whatever. And move on and eventually finish the plot or whatever. So it all kind of flows together. but the ... uh... (random babbling) Well I guess the train of thought was derailed a bit there. I'm kind of losing my track now.

0:48:40
RPPR: Right, that's sort of the old school of gaming is the “Kick the doors down, play it as a competition.” It's actually still very popular, the tactical challenge of conquering your foes and also recording your victories and defeats. The persistence, people telling stories of their [characters].

0:49:10
TA: Well just with the tactical thing, it's like, we didn't really care about “high tactics” or anything, or uh, it was almost like a grind. It's kind of funny, you know you get these things in front of you we didn't really think much about. But ah, either competing with each other, or really overcoming.. I mean it's almost meditative, how you kind of get through these things. This is the difference, for us, the way we played D&D and the way we played Cyberpunk. With D&D it was sort of this thing where, we didn't have a fixed DM, this is my brother and I and some random friends, depending on where we were living at the time. And we'd kind of just set up an adventure, I mean those things would mostly be for comedic effect or something, like where you ended up, or whatever. But mostly you're just sort of grinding against these monsters, and you knew you were always going to win. There were pretty much no characters die; we didn't kill peoples characters, it was just a pain in the ass to kill someones character. It's all your friends at the table, or whatever, and if someones gonna get knocked out, at the time we were young enough we didn't have a strategy for dealing with that. And when you get older you can deal with that in all kinds of ways. But, we played cyberpunk completely differently though, I guess it was because it was so much easier to roll up a character, it just took a few minutes to generate a character. And so we'd just ah.. peoples characters would just die at random. And they'd just kind of get a new one that would be weaved into the storyline. And so it was a different way of playing that didn't really relate to how we were playing; we played D&D more like we'd play a game other people wrote, and we played Cyberpunk more like a game that we wanted to write, and that we eventually took a stab at writing. But we essentially played D&D like the old role playing games, even the console role playing games, like dragon warrior or whatever it's called. Just kind of going through the motions, more or less. And yeah, it was pretty much always like that.

0:50:58
RPPR: All right, uhm heh heh. Are there any particular stories from your tabletop games that you still remember of “Oh my character killed a dragon this way” or any other anecdotes that you still remember?

0:51:17
TA: Well, heh heh heh, the only ones that stuck with me are the ones that were horrible, right? Because uh, I mean we didn't really.. heh.. we were young, right? We were young, and so we were entranced with the foul things that you could do. And bending the rules and so on. I mean we'd go through these fighting, and stuff like that, but it didn't really matter, we rarely finished a game of D&D. But there would things like I think my brother brought out this white dragon once that no one really had a chance of beating. It was just way better than us. And so he allowed us to use one of those stoneshaping spells to turn the ah mountain side a giant butt and then stone-to-flesh and it turned into giant fleshy butt, and then used fireball to light a fart at the dragon. That's the kind of level we were operating at as children, and that's something that I remember. Now there's plenty of other things, we're standard adventurers right? But those don't stick with you quite the same way, I don't know why.. but ah, that's one of my precious memories? I guess I just shared it with you. So ah yeah.. I mean the other stuff just amounts to getting shot in the head, and that's cyberpunk, you have memories of that. I had a character named shooter I remember, got shot in the head. And uh... Yeah. That's right, it's pretty high brow, you gotta watch out.

0:52:56
RPPR: Yeah there's ah, actually one role playing game I've played a lot called “Call of Cthulhu” which is a horror game. And characters, like in Cyberpunk, die very frequently. All though instead of being shot in their head, they're usually eaten by Cthulhu or some other Monster From Beyond Time and Space. So my fondest stories are of characters dying horrible deaths. So I that's sort of a tradition of gaming, the weird and memorable deaths and other exploits, rather than the victories. But since those early days of gaming, you're innocent days of first edition D&D, games have sort of advanced. This game design theory, like The Big Model [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Model] with gaming narrativists and simulationists [transcribers note: Where the hell did he pull those words from?]. And then of course, 4th edition D&D is launching in about a month with a very large online component, where people can play on a virtual tabletop. So what are you're impressions of these later developments in tabletop games? Especially when you compare them to video games.

0:53:58
TA: Yeah, so I've only become kind of familiarized with this stuff recently, because someone would mention Dwarf Fortress on a blog and the blog would also have a lot of stuff to say about tabletop gaming, and so on. And it seems there's really a awful lot going on, because when I was a kid you'd kind of know about D&D, and then you'd bump into whatever you kind of bump into at your local hobby shop. And I imagine it's a different game everywhere, for us it was cyberpunk. And you had the ones you're interested in. And I mean I guess people can probably find them easier now that theres an internet, and so on. Which we didn't really have a connection with, when we were growing up. But it just seems like there's a crazy amount different things going on. And as far as how it relates to video games, I'm not.. I mean, some of the things you mentioned about the theories, and so on, I mean I guess there's some applicability there, and now that you've got these online things... It doesn't relate to anything that I'm doing so particularly or just video games in general, because it seems like it's kind of a, I don't know, I wouldn't want to say it's something like Second Life or something, but just a place where people can get together and kind of have their avatars in the grid, and the monsters, and they can move the pieces around, and so on. I mean it all sounds very cool to me, especially because it gets people that are unable to play anymore, or you know, back playing with each other, and so on. But I mean it's kind of hard to draw a parallel, although I guess it could happen. I mean I never really got into Neverwinter Nights, I guess it had something like that, where it kind of drew the ah, you could have a DM or something like that and kind of play it kind of half-way between a regular D&D campaign and more of a traditional computer game. But uhm, yeah idon.. Idunno, huh?

0:55:58
RPPR: Heh heh, alright fair enough. Uhm.. I've also went on the SomethingAwful forums to ask, one of your larger fan bases, to see if they had any questions. They had a couple of questions about Dwarf Fortress. Uhm. Lets see here.

0:56:20
RPPR: Do you'll ever be able to finish the game? Or are you going to have a couple people help work out on the game?

0:56:26
TA: As far as finishing the game I've no idea, really, that that will really happen. But as far as getting to the version 1.0 or whatever, I've put up my goals for that. And I plan to do that all on my own. I mean I'm not going to involve other programmers, that kind of thing. I just feel the project will slip out of my grasp, if there were other people really involved with writing it. Then I wouldn't know what some of the code was somewhere. And so if someone dipped into the project and then dipped out, I'd just be left kinda more clueless with it. I mean I guess managing large teams is a kind of skill people develop and they're able to pay for that as well. But for me this is the way I do things, programming on my own, designing with my brother, taking input from people, and plugging along till I get to where I'm going. I imagine it'll be some years till the version 1 goals are complete, and if I'm still around, meaning people are still supporting what I'm doing through the donations, and so on, then I'll just continue and do the additional goals I had, and keep working my weekend games, and so on, eventually get some other games out. and everything is just going fine without actually involving other people in the technical stuff.

0:58:15
RPPR: All right, uhm, that was user Brannick [transcriber note: I apologize to the person who's name I just mangled] by the way. This next question is from crackbaby (heh heh): what are you doing to backup the source code? What if you lose all the source code in a crash? Distribute cool-aid to all the fans and yourself?

0:58:30
TA: Nah, see suicide is not the answer. But, I'd be distraught if I lost everything so I back it up. I don't have it online anywhere, I'm kind of paranoid about that whole thing having some kind of online send-your-source-code-off-to-somewhere repository sourceforgy type thing or whatever. For some reason, I don't know if it's just 'cus I'm an old fogy or something, but it just doesn't feel secure to me. So I burn CDs. I just burn CDs. I've got CDs scattered all over everywhere, not just in my apartment, but other places as well theres CDs.

And so if my apartment were burglarized and they stole the laptop I'd be a day back. If my apartment burned down I'd probably be three or four days back. And, you know, if we had some kind of North Korean situation where we lost the state of Washington, well that'd be the last of my worries I guess, where the source was. But, I think I'm all right.

I had a problem I think, before I released [Dwarf Fortress], maybe a year before I released it, where I got set two weeks back. That's when I tightened things up a little bit. I don't forget to back up now, I always back up and I always leave stuff off-site and so on. So I'm not that worried about it, I don't think I need to go do anything online or anything. And I don't know anything about RAID or Hard Drives and all that kind of stuff; I just burn CDs, I just burn lots of CDs. I mean theres all kinds of things. I think I've got an External Hard Drive sitting on the floor over here somebody gave me for Christmas or something, I haven't used that yet, I could probably use that too. But yeah, nothing fancy.

=== 1:00:00 - 1:30:00 ===

1:00:06
RPPR: All right. This is from Bootkerchif [transcriber note: I apologize profusely for the mangling] who wants to know how much ramen you eat.

1:00:15
TA: Well it's one of those things right? You have a certain amount of support, and it's okay, but it'd feel more okay if you didn't eat. Much. But I'm not on ramen, I eat rice, rice.. and I buy flour, and make bread. And uh, occasionally I'll splurge on some of my favorite little things or whatever. But mostly it's beans, canned beans. Can of tomatoes, flour, and I make pizza type stuff with that. Not with cheese but just with garlic and tomatoes and spices and stuff. And more rice, and uh water. It's pretty exciting, real exciting.

1:00:58
RPPR: Heh, uhm it's interesting, I've been reading the forums and a lot of the discussion is based on the fans worrying about you. Because “oh is he getting enough donations to get by?”, “Should we donate more?” and things like that, it's like you have a very concerned fanbase, about your well being, and I think that's sort of unique in the game design world.

1:01:27
TA: Yeah, I don't think I'm complaining too much, I guess, but I can understand why they worry about that. I mean, but all the months, I mean, ever since the z-coordinate release I've made enough money to support myself every month, so it's been pretty good. I still don't have health insurance, but a part of that is like I mean you have a good month, then you have a bad month, then you have a good month then you have a bad month, I mean you really want to drop a extra I don't know how many hundreds of dollars it would be every month on some kind of gamble with your own health, or whatever. I mean the only health crisis I've had so far I've been able to pay for out of my pocket with having the total cost be less than the cost of health insurance. But it's a fools game to keep playing it that way. But at the same time I don't feel like I can afford it. I don't know. But yeah, well I guess if I rant on like that they'll just be more concerned. But it's all right eveything's okay. They should still donate though, donations are cool.

1:02:42
RPPR: Right, heh of course. Uhm, Hamlin [transcribers note: Sorry if I screwed it up!] is asking what you thing of things like Regional Prospector [transcribers note: should link to the appropriate wiki pages.] , and Ricks Tools. And if those might be rolled into the game someday. I guess about Third-party mods and things like that. So.. uhm what are your thoughts on those tools.

1:02:59
TA: Yeaah... yeah, that one's like... It depends, it really really really depends, on the tool itself. There's kind of tools that are meant to replace the gross shortcomings of the interface, and those kinds of things , yeah over time I'll get to that. I mean I'm not going to roll in anyones code, or even look at them. I've never actually looked at one of these tools. But the kind of things that they want, and have asked for in the suggestions forum that people have made tools for, some of those things like setting their professions an easier way and so on. All of that stuff eventually will come in.

Then there's sort of the Debug type tools or cheating I guess you could call it, whatever that means, tools. Like Regional Prospector, for example, where people want to have more information than I would give them in the sort of stock setting situation. But I don't really mind them having it or whatever. Those kinds of things, as options, those kinds of things can creep in. But adding optional settings is kind of lower priority than stuff thats affects everybody. At the same time there are a few things like that, you know, you can really see the want. People want to have those and the fewer utilities there are, occasionally I'm not sure how many bug reports come out of people using a utility incorrectly, because I don't really know all of whats out there. But even if thats infrequent that's something that's kind of a small issue.

Then there are things like people making an entire, sort of, 3D visualizer overhead things, and that's when I start kind of feeling just leery about it. Just like “well can I lose control of my project this way” or something, because someones created a whole new interface for it and, you know, if it becomes popular an I going to become beholden to that person, even though it's my game. That kind of thing kind of worries the hell out of me sometimes. But uh, so far that hasn't been a problem. But when you have a game like where it's kind of, I've been working on it for a long time, it hasn't been released with a life substantially longer than a regular commercial game, because it's only been up for a year and something. But if it's still here after five years, that kind of thing will only tend to grow, and so sticking with the same project like that that's kind of a real risk to tying up your livelihood in one project, is that things like that will continue to happen. And it can only become more of an issue. But I'm not that worried about it, I go through fazes of worry on it, but right now everything's okay.

1:05:31
RPPR: Alright, that's good. Lastly theres a question from Brown Moses asking if you'd like to see player fortresses that can be left to run themselves while the player makes another fortress. And how that could be integrated into the game world.

1:05:47
TA: Yeah, yeah. Now if we're talking about just sort of the retirement of a fortress or the temporary retirement of a fortress while you go and do other things. That's come up quite a few times, and depending on how well you want to do it, it's anywhere from a sort of a trivial to an impossible problem. So I didn't want to just do it the trivial way where you like “Yes I abandoned the fortress and it just kind of sits there in a stasis” or whatever, with the people kind of, the Dwarves just kind of siting there and you can go visit them, even though that kind of IS what happens now because your Dwarves don't migrate after you abandoned, but actually leaving it as a settlement and your Dwarves just kind of sit there. I was kind of hoping to get through some of the Caravan arc [transcriber note: link to bay12games DF caravan stuff.] stuff where I'm going to start tracking resources throughout the world. And you know maybe a little bit more but really it's the Caravan arc's that's one of the main missing things. And then we can start thinking about that, I mean I'm certainly not against it because there's this kind of thing where there were originally the game was all about you know you play your game you just totally flame out lose, and then continue on but I mean I can see how that's not something people are always going to want to do. Especially if they've in a sense won, they're in their region, their local map, they've found everything that's there to find, they repel outside invasions without difficulty, and they're done. And they just want to keep that as some kind of giant dwarven capital and then start a new outpost. There's nothing wrong with that. The impetus to do that might decrease in the future now, after three or four releases on the army arc, because they'll be able to send out armies and affect the world. And when they get these large fortresses that's when they'll be in the best position to do that and so it'll increase the play value of a fortress like that. But still the same issue will be lurking there. And I'm for that, not for the issue lurking there but for allowing people to retire their fortresses. When it starts getting more tricky is when someone's like “Yeah I want to stop (sp?) this fortress for four game months while I'm working on this other project and then go back to the other fortress.” What should have happened to your fortress in between? You can sort of gloss over this by holding everyone in stasis, but that's the kind of thing I said I didn't want to do, I'd rather try and come up with a solution. It opens up a few tricky issues.

1:08:42
RPPR: So Tarn, what is next for Dwarf Fortress? What is coming soon and what are your upcoming plans for it? Is there anything you'd like to announce for Dwarf Fortress?

1:09:00
TA: Well right now we wanted to.. the main goal, which has actually been the main goal for more than a year is to get armies in the game, doing interesting things. Right now if you're running Dwarf Fortress you can be attacked by goblins or something. But with that whole world generation, placing goblin towers throughout the world, and human towns and elves have their places and Dwarves have their places, and so on. None of that really comes into play right now, in adventure mode you can visit those places but it's very static. So there are lots of ways to make a world come alive and become more dynamic, with places being removed and founded and so on. But a natural way to do that fits the genre is to have people killing each other, right? So I've been working on armies for a while, I've actually announced what I've been calling the army arc of development about what, January of last year? And I thought, “well okay I have to do the seamless maps and the z-axis stuff first” so I did all that and now I'm back to the army arc. And started ??? with world generation so that instead of just running forward a thousand years where nothing really happens they spread out, but they don't fight each other when they bump into each other, and nothing really happens when they bump into each other. Now though, it's really been cut lose, they'll fight with each other and abduct each other's children, steal each other's stuff to the extent that stuff is defined right now, it really isn't. Meaning there's no resources or trade or anything like that. But they'll raze each other's cities and build a Assyrian style corpse mounds and pillars, stretch their skin out over the walls and all that kind of stuff that you read when you're doing ancient history. And they'll enslave each other and the slaves will grow up in their new civilization and half to deal with that. It's all very sort of skeletal right now, there's not a lot. I'm fleshing it out, but just having that frame work in place is going to help a lot. And the stage after that we're going to make this stuff happen in the regular game so it'll take all that stuff that its been doing and allow it to continue on. Which is kind of the whole point so that you can interact with armies and if you get invaded in fortress mode you'll actually be invaded by an actual army which has something to do with the world rather than something that was generated for you. So that will cap in in three stages the first stage will just be getting that to happen at all, having the armies move around and having some interaction with the adventurer making adventure mode a bit more fun. Then I'll do the part where armies can actually attack you in Dwarf mode. And then finally, the thing that a lot of people have probably been looking forward to, is having you be able to send out armies from your fortress and cause trouble all over the world. At least as far as you can manage to stretch your tendrils. It's going to take a while, this first release is taking quite a bit longer than I thought. It's already been three or four months? I've gotten over most of the big hurdles now. But that's the direction things are going to go, just trying to make the world more dynamic through violence, and then it'll be more dynamic through trade and so on later. I mean I've got a caravan arc, diplomacy arc and so on, but this is kind of the natural one to start on.

1:12:33
RPPR: War comes first..

1:12:34
TA: That's right.

1:12:35
RPPR: Alright, very interesting, I look forward to seeing the sagas of armies marching on each other in the near future. Do you have a time frame on when the next release is going to be uploaded or released to the public?

1:12:54
TA: Yeah, I'm not sure. I've just gotten over the worst of it. I'd be hoping to get it out next month finally. But uh, every time I promise something it doesn't come true... You know? So I hope it comes out in June. You'd really expect that to happen.

1:13:11
RPPR: Cross your fingers.

1:13:13
TA: Yeah, 'cause this is not like the Z-Axis release took nine months to do. But that was a huge change. Adding a third coordinate to the game, and all kinds of other stuff that came under that release. And this one you're not really going to notice (HaaHAHHA) that much, I mean you'll have the world generation, but then when you start playing the actual game it'll be like “It's the same as usual..” 'cause those subsequent releases haven't happened yet where I actually make the stuff matter. So, uh.. I mean a lot of people, hopefully they're not getting too impatient with me but it has to go this way, because you have to set up the frame work first.

1:13:47
RPPR: Right, I've read a lot of your donation stories that are posted on the SA[something awful] forums. I really liked the Fish Dwarf saga today.

1:13:54
TA: Yeah, the guy.. yeah ...... We had this miscommunication were he, ah, 'cuz he sent two donations seven days apart. And so I was like “Okay I'll send you a cliffhanger and conclusion” right? And he's like “Well I don't really want the story to end but uh, okay.” And I was like “No I don't really want to end it, I just meant a cliffhanger and a conclusion to that part of the story.” and he's like “Well you know if you have to end the story, you have to end the story.” So now apparently I'm ending fish Dwarf. Ending fish Dwarf with a story that's going to be an epic conclusion to the fish Dwarf right now, he's entombed.

1:14:24
RPPR: Yeah in the underwater cavern.

1:14:26
TA: The underwater part, yeah yeah. I mean my brother writes most of those things. It's kind of unfortunate sometimes because uh, people post them on Something Awful and I will usually attribute either to my brother or myself but often times the attributions aren't included. I'm writing fish Dwarf and most of the other ones being posted were written by him, I think. I mean we have different writing styles, I tend to be a bit more dense and mess around with the words, and he has this sort of powerful more cinematic way of writing things. But yeah, I'm looking forward to finishing fish Dwarf, I have a bunch of other ones to continue first though. I tend to fall behind because I'm always doing the programming stuff I've got six or seven continuations to write, six or seven crayon art things to draw. My brothers' all caught up, he does the new ones, and they're all caught up. But I'm a month behind, I'm always a month behind, but uh 'cause everyone sent me money on my birthday.

1:15:33
RPPR: Nice that's a nice little gift.

1:15:34
TA: Yeah yeah, no it's a good birthday present. I got like three thousand dollars. I was like “Wooow..”

1:15:37
RPPR: Wow, yeah.

1:15:38
TA: Like holy sh*

1:15:40
RPPR: We've made like five bucks in google ads, so far.

1:15:46
TA: People have been telling me about google ads and stuff and I was like the rates don't seem that good unless you've got like some kind of site that's just meant to people in and give them career advices.

1:15:53
RPPR: It's all about the click-throughs, if you get a lot of click-throughs then you can actually get a pretty decent thing. But if you're not getting fifty thousand views a day or something, ten thousand views a day, it really it's not worth bothering with. I mean, on the other hand you can throw them up there it doesn't really cost you anything to put it up there so.

1:16:10
TA: Yeah, well I mean it does in a sense, if you've got this kind of image we do of this kind of “independant, commercial free environment” then I don't know, having the google ads there is kind of something I was trying to lean away from. But yeah, I don't care that much myself.

1:16:25
RPPR: It's going to be peanuts, I mean at best you'll just make some hosting fees back. So I don't know. How much bandwidth do you use a month?

1:16:34
TA: Yeah, it's what.. two hundred gigabytes, uhm. About? But the cap on my plan is five hundred.

1:16:42
RPPR: Who do you use?

1:16:43
TA: Unfortunatly I'm on Verio, they're one of the biggest ones. And it was a reasonable plan when I signed up in 2000. Heh heh heh. But now it's crap, I mean you see these plans all over the place that offer four times as much I've got at half the price. But moving is worse for me right now

1:17:00
RPPR: It is, it is a pain. I'm using Bluehost right now, I get for like $95 a year I get like six thousand gigs of transfer a month and six hundred gigs of storage. And so, I mean I maybe a hundred gigs a month but I'm moving MP3's so even a few hundred downloads of a file.

1:17:21
TA: Yeah but it's that kind of thing I see where people are just, it's basically the situation I was talking about, I've seen people getting about six thousand a month or whatever and I was like “Oh man, I could use six thousand a month.” So right now I'm mirroring my downloads, I don't know my download counts anymore because I've got three other people mirroring the downloads and I don't have stats on those. So I wouldn't have to if I had that, so I might move sometime, I could try. Because I'm probably moving forums soon, that was the main thing, 's 'cause I've got this creaky creaky ass old 2001 Ultimate Bulletin Board. And I need to move that, and I can't really move it it's kind of just stuck in the site. It's just this nasty old thing.

1:18:01
RPPR: Exporting all the users 's going to be a pain

1:18:03
TA: Yeah, just exporting everything. So I'm just going to start clean but maybe I should start clean somewhere else.

1:18:06
RPPR: I guess, do you go to any of the big cons of the year or anything like that?

1:18:09
TA: I never hear about them, people are like “Are you going to the...” there was some game dev one in San Fransisco or something, in February. And, is that GDC? I don't know what the hell they're called.

1:18:18
RPPR: Uh, Game Developers Conference, yeah.

1:18:21
TA: Yeah, and so they're like “Are yo ugoing to that in February?” and they wrote me that on like February 10th or something, I was like “Noo didn't even hear about it.” I mean I'm not sure what I think 'cuase it's a hassel for me to travel or whatever. And I'm not sure what the benefent is, getting together with a bunch of game developers.

1:18:40
RPPR: Get more donations!

1:18:42
TA: Yeah I guess, if you get actual people, I mean if it's like a game developer, if it's just developers, then it's like well.. You know, maybe that'd be cool, but I don't really like a lot of what they're doing so it's like I just go there and be like “ooh great...” I mean it's not their fault right? They've got all those corporate people above them who are essentially co-designers or whatever. S'like that guy you were talking to, I don't remember his name, the White Wolf guy who did the blood din pirates (???) was like where'd you get that name from and he's like “Well they gave us the name and we just had to work from there”

1:19:24
RPPR: Heh, I've done freelance game writing that's pretty much how it is. Like “We want something on Jack the Ripper” okay i'll write something on Jack the Ripper. Alright, you want twenty-five hundred words, I'll do twenty-five hundred words.

1:19:34
TA: Yeah, and then if you go too far afield it's like “No no, we just wanted it to be garden variety Jack the Ripper..”

1:19:40
RPPR: Yeah exactly.

1:19:41
TA: Yeah it sounded too bad with the crap he was doing with the underwater vampires and shit but they had some kind of eastern shit coming out or something.

1:19:47
RPPR: Oh yeah yeah yeah, that was vampires in Japan and Asia are more alien than the vampires that live underwater, haven't had human contact for thousands of years or whatever.

1:19:58
TA: Yeah, because they suck karma or something, it's like Karma Vampires. I like it when they cut loose though, because those are the books I like to go buy and then you just read them and let them stew. I think my favorite D&D book was, I don't know if it was 2nd Edition, Manual of the Plains was really interesting. Because they're just kind of, whatever came out of their mind, they're just like “and this plain is filled with Apes and giant bird like creatures” and stuff, and they're just going nuts. And then you read the Manual of the Plains for the later editions when they start getting all \Cutter and Burke\ [need proper names for authors] and Plainscape on your ass and you're like it's not apes and birdlike creatures it's like (ancient English professor accent) “There will be 2d4 Yeti, and 1d2 rocks” I'm like whaat?

1:20:43
RPPR: Yeah, there have been two RPGs that I really want to get, one is called CthuluTech it's like Cthulu mythos all these Elder gods and alien horrors and giant robots. Fighting each other, and it looks really cool and I haven't been able to get it.

1:20:57
TA: So it's kind of like Rifts or something, where it's kind of stuck together. I've never actually played Rifts.

1:21:05
RPPR: Yeah rifts is kind of cludgy but it's fun especially if you're a teenager and you're like “Ooh robots and dragons and ninas aah great. We're going to blow this shit up”

1:21:18
TA: Heh heh heh heh. Yeah I never played like that but my friend Alan (Alen?) from high school. They had this ritual, before I moved there he was with this group of roleplayers and they had this ritual where they would all roll up these 40th level characters or something, and they'd kill Odin. (laughing) it's like every week they'd kill Odin. It's like some kind of super power trip, I was like goddamn.

1:21:38
RPPR: Yeah I've been in games like that, that can be FUN you know? That whole “I've got three digit hitpoints,” “I've got four digit hitpoints,” you know, “I've got a strength of three digits,” something like that.

1:21:48
TA: Yeah where they start talking about 'Mega damage' and shit heh..

1:21:52
RPPR: Oh yeah, that is rediculous. There is one con I'm going to this year, and it's GenCon the big one in Indianapolis.

1:22:00
TA: Yeah I've heard of that.

1:22:01
RPPR: Yeah it's huge, there's like forty-fiftythousand people there. And that's where they announced D&D 4th Edition last year. And yeah, I'm going just to meet other broadcasters just hang out and have fun or whatever. That would be, I'm sure if you go there you would find quite a few Dwarf Fortress players there.

1:22:34
TA: you'd have to advertise somehow, probably just need to pay some kind of fee to set up a boothe, or something.

1:22:47
RPPR: Well yeah, to set up in the convention. I mean you can just walk around.

1:22:51
TA: I could just wear a “I wrote Dwarf Fortress” T-shirt or something?

1:22:54
RPPR: That would pretty much get you a crowd, I'd bet. Because they also showcase video games there, so all the World of Warcraft and Age of Conan people will be like “Aahh, is that? Are you really the Dwarf Fortress guy? That's awesome!” Or you could just sell Boatmurdered T-shirts that would be a great merchandising opportunity get some artists to draw burning Dwarves running around and put a t-shirt on it.

1:23:20
TA: I could hire some circus performers and set them on fire.

1:23:23
RPPR: Yeah yeah, some midgets uhh...

1:23:27
TA: Yeah yeah, though you have to get a bearded.. Have you seen, I don't know if this is a PC question or not, but have you seen one of the little people but with a big ass beard. I haven't really seen that.

1:23:34
RPPR: I've never really seen a bearded one. Uhh, a bearded Dwarf, or midget.

1:23:38
TA: Yeah, I don't know.. do they shave? Or do people like willow (??) they just can't grow that shit.

1:23:43
RPPR: Uuuhm I think, genetically, some of them can't but like others probably could, they just don't. I think I've seen... like the Lollypop Guild, I think that was fake, but in the Wizard of Oz, they had beards. Right?

1:23:58
TA: Aaaaah man that's been a while. But it's possible. But I'm just afraid that if I go in and type “Bearded Little Person” into the google images, I mean I think I've got my porn filter on, I think i'll be okay, I think i'll survive. But ah. Yeah, no it's just yeah, I've no idea I really don't have the slightest idea. Nah, they've got little kids holding beards over their faces and stuff. But that Bearded Dragons, you know the lizard? They've got them stacked, they've got four stacked on top of each other. I don't know what that has to do with that but.

1:24:32
RPPR: I actually have a Bearded Dragon, weird that you mentioned it.

1:24:35
TA: Yeah I had an Iguana but you can't mess with the Iguana. It got six feet long and then you can't put it on the table anymore. It was bitter. It was bitter because we didn't know to feed it calcium the first three years so it got this really giant overbite and would bite people. It was not trained.

1:24:50
RPPR: Yeah Bearded Dragons are about as pacifist of a lizard as you can have, they just do not care.

1:25:00
TA: yeah there's nothing on google. Google's doing me wrong here, ah. I mean I'm not going to type bearded Dwarf because that's like a waste of time, I think I'll just get D&D stuff that way. But I tried bearded a bunch of other stuff and nothing! Nothing, I mean that's intriguing to me.

1:25:14
RPPR: Interesting, maybe wikipedia will say “Oh they can't grow beards,” or whatever so.

1:25:17
TA: Yeah, because it seems strange. I don't know the roots of the mythology and so on were but it probably doesn't come from that because those Dwarves have giant beards.

1:25:28
RPPR: I don't know it's like one of those things like now all Dwarves are supposed to have scottish accents.

1:25:33
TA: Yeah yeah, heavy drinking, scottish accents. Ah no no here we go, the Dwarf Don Sebastian de Mora by Velasquez in his portait now they got a serious guy, but he's got a big honking civil war looking beard.

1:25:56
RPPR: Like a ZZ Top type beard.

1:25:59
TA: Ah, well it's not quite like General Longstreet type of beard but it's got the curling mustache with a giant kind of gotee. And it goes way down, yeah so.. So maybe it's just out of style. Maybe it's more of a style thing these days

1:26:21
RPPR: Yeah, or it could be just practical issues, I mean you don't want it to get too big then you'd be tripping over it or something like that.

1:26:29
TA: Ahem, ah heh yeah. Uh, Jesus.. I hope none of this goes on the podcast now.

1:26:35
RPPR: Well I can edit that part out, yeah. There would just be this weird gap where “blah blah, oh what about Dwarves,” and then silence “And then we'll talk about something blah blah blah.”

1:26:48
TA: Yeah, I don't know why my mind is flowing that direction these days but yeah. Uh yeah, that was just an intriguing question to me. Uhm, but there you go, it's been answered at least, back in the good old days when they could have beards.

1:27:00
RPPR: One final question: What is your personal favorite game of all time? You know, you're on a desert island, got one game, could be a video game can be a tabletop game assuming it'll be you and your brother so you have someone to play with if it's multiplayer. What would be your one desert island game?

1:27:19
TA: Huuh, so it depends, is this a desert island game for posterities sake, or just something I'd kind of be a fiend on?

1:27:26
RPPR: Yeah, something you'd be a fiend on, something you would be able to play the longest, get the most play time out of.

1:27:32
TA: Ah, yeah, because I get bored with things pretty fast, I mean there are games like Starflight and stuff where it's one of my favorite games, but I can't really play it now. It was really an eye opener for me, very influential when I was a child. But now? Yeah I hardly play anything anymore, I'm off minesweeper I don't play that anymore. Transport Tycoon, I think Transport Tycoon has my largest record as far as just playing. My brother and I played that once for fourty-six hours straight switching off, we switched off when we had to go to classes because we were both in school at that time. But not anymore you kind of get burned out on stuff. Right now I'm totally burned out on everything so ah.. (laugh) It's a harder question to answer that way. Things like Chess and so on and Go I play those, but meh, especially with my brother I mean he's better at chess than I am and I'm better than Go than he is so we'd just be miserable hehe.

1:28:30
RPPR: Okay well what's the game that has your fondest memories?

1:28:33
TA: Ah yeah, there's lots of games like that like I said. Starflight, going exploring the little critters, going to the planets. A lot of people don't know there were randomly generated critters with pretty long paragraphs describing them. And we, my brother and I, would make these journal entries where we'd draw the picture and describe them and just do that for days and days and days and days. We have fond memories of Seven Cities of Gold, and arcade games we played a lot of like Gauntlet and so on. And some of those D&D things Cyberpunk things we talked about are way up there. A few Roguelike memories, mostly involving obscene names of characters that get immortalized on the score list. Like we were playing Ragnarok once and that was the first game, ah not the first game, maybe Hack was for us, but it was one of those ones where you can polymorph, right? And so we had a character, and we were just naming our characters, and you know you go through them one at a time over a few minutes so the names just start to degenerate and we eventually just got down to one where the name was just “Fucker” we had this guy named Fucker, right? Because you're just playing you know, play play play play play. And then he got transformed somehow into this thing, we don't know how to say it really, but it looked like Jackass, so we got immortalized on the high score list, it was our best game ever, and it was immortalized at the top. We didn't think about the name at all but we got stuck with “Fucker the Jackass” on the top of our high score list for a year or so. And theres all kinds of things, I mean, you can kind of go on forever. But nothing new really, but yeah just all this old foggie type stuff, thirty and up.

1:30:55
RPPR: Sometimes the old games are the best games.

1:30:58
TA: Well, yeah I like them.

1:31:00
RPPR: Alright well, thank you very much for joining us at Role Playing Public Radio and next, I'm sure within a couple months or a year when the army arc comes out we'll come back and talk to you again, and thanks a lot.

1:31:24
TA: Okay thanks.

=== Links ===
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_NEO_Personality_Inventory

User talk:0x517A5D

2008-02-06T02:06:04Z

Mephisto: /* Seekret Projekt */

== Current Build ==

Interesting setup you've got there. I run something similar, though not completely abusive to game limits. (Leg+5 in everything? comeon! :P)

Got one guy with proficient in everything, while the rest have no skills and are purely haulers and pre-dabbling farmers.
Hauling and farming were the only tasks I decided to free my 'hero' dwarf from, since they're so god-awfully time consuming.

As for items: A single full suit of steel armor and one of each weapon, with only a handful of bolts, should an errant fire imp come over in the first season.
A couple dozen of each booze and both plump helmet and spawn, with 11 each of the remaining seeds.
Of course the mandatory 1 each of food and whatnot.
A hefty stock of giant cave spider thread to jumpstart my trading power (a single shoe will go for no less than 900 I think... initial investment is only 120p each)
A miscellany of assorted bars, wood, ores, and stone to spend the remaining points.
Also took along 3 wardogs for some additional protection and 10 cattle to get a herd going.

All-in-all I limit myself to 32000 total points, as it's the highest clean number that the signed integer will accept in a once-off edit.
Also used adjust start to give me 10 dwarves, and set Max_Pop to only 7, so no immigrants unless I get really short on helpers.

My guy's got something of a demi-god complex too, as his name is Master, the rest are named Servant, and the world is "Kôr Nòm" (Master of God). Remembered to look it up when I dabbled with the Regional Prospector ;)

Anyways, saw that you had a very similar idea for a build and thought you might want to hear you're not the only one going for the "God and Servants" route ;)
--[[User:n9103|n9103]] 01:49, 20 Dec 2007 (PST)

== Search Function ==

It may be helpful to make it clear the search function used in your version-independent code examples is a user-define function and is not associated with the STL search algorithm. I would also recommend posting the source files for search function, or commenting that they are available from the enable magma buildings zip file

--[[User:Masdus|Masdus]] 22:08, 28 November 2007 (EST)

:That's a good point about search(). I've just renamed it hexsearch() in my most recent (not yet released) source. I had started to document the search patterns in a more generic way, but decided that (a) it took me too long to translate, and (b) few of the target audience would be able and willing to retranslate into their own search-like functions. So I just started cutting and pasting patterns out of my source. As for posing the source to hexsearch(), I think that the target audience can track it down. (If we could host arbitrary files directly on this wiki, I would. I just think it's too big to put into a <code> block.) —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 16:17, 29 November 2007 (EST)

== Seekret Projekt ==

Wow, just tried it out and it works great in 33g. It's amazing the way it reveals the locations of all major features on every map square. I've only briefly checked it out, but I picked a 5x5 area which your tool revealed to have 2 magma vents, an underground water pool, adamantine, and part of a chasm. After embarking and running reveal.exe I confirmed that all features shown by your tool matched the features available and the correct locations. Your tool will make looking for good starting locations at least 5000x easier, considering you can see every single feature location when selecting where to embark. No need to embark and run reveal to find where the major features (especially adamantine) are. Truly great work. --[[User:Janus|Janus]] 21:53, 22 December 2007 (EST)
:Great! Good to hear. I am particularly interested in any feature that reveal turns up but was not shown by this tool. Also if you see a question mark in the local map view, please report that. (If at all possible, with world-seed and a screenshot showing the X cursors.) Off on a tangent, what should I call it? FeatureFinder? feature-finder, with a dash? Regional Prospector? —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 22:15, 22 December 2007 (EST)
::I've scanned around a fair bit on a couple of my current world maps and didn't come across any question mark squares. I have noted that caves don't show up. I don't know whether you could locate them in memory the same way as the map features though, since they're probably generated and allocated differently. I can provide a seed and location with a kobold cave if you need it. As for the name, FeatureFinder is concise, but the name "Regional Prospector" gives a better general idea of what it does. I like that one, particularly the "prospector" part. --[[User:Janus|Janus]] 23:02, 22 December 2007 (EST)
:::I didn't even think of caves. Yes, I'd like the seed and location. I can't promise anything though. I think caves are not a per-tile thing. —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 23:08, 22 December 2007 (EST)
::::Understandable. Here it is, the world seed is 7810 as posted in the description: [[:Image:Local_Kobold_Cave.png]] --[[User:Janus|Janus]] 00:47, 23 December 2007 (EST)
:::::I don't think I can do caves. It's gotta be stored somewhere, but it's not in the place that this tool looks. I will keep an eye out.
:::::Not a total loss, though, because I found a bug from looking at this map: the tool is not displaying underground rivers. Easy fix, but I'm not going to do a new beta version just to fix that one.
:::::I also saw some interesting behavior from DF's map sizing. If you choose a 2x2 with that volcano at top left, you get a 2x2. But if you choose a 3x3 with volcano at top left, you get a 5x5 with volcano at middle left. It looks like either the chasm or the cave triggers this, even though the chasm is entirely out of the 3x3 selection, and the cave appears to be built so that it is out of the selection as well. I need to play with this some more. —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 01:53, 23 December 2007 (EST)
:::Just wanted to chime in and say I vote for Regional Prospector.--[[User:N9103|N9103]] 16:05, 23 December 2007 (EST)

I'm impressed. I didn't even realise the features were in memory before you embarked into areas. This baby finds chasms, lakes, adamantine, and the smaller magma lakes that never showed up on the map. Finding good start locations has never been easier. Before I was having to find squares with good minerals and then just embark on the entire map and reveal it all to see if it had good features, with this you can just look at a glance. The only things I see missing are the caves and cave rivers, which you two already noticed. No errors so far, I'll report any if I find any. Thanks for a great tool. Also, I think FeatureFinder is a fitting name. - [[User:Paul|Paul]] 12:55, 23 December 2007 (EST)

I may have found a bug. Your utility shows a magma pool right next to a goblin tower, but upon reveal, it doesn't appear to exist. The seed is 3590640052 and the location is [http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/2849/misleadingmagmaia0.png here]. I have to say, though, that overall this is a fantastic utility- the most useful external program for this game since reveal. Heck, it's probably better than reveal in the long run. Thank you for finally allowing me to satisfy my OCD. --[[User:Eiba|Eiba]] 14:06, 24 December 2007 (EST)
:Yes, I get the same behavior. I didn't actually check with a debugger, but I checked with my test version, and it's definately flagged by the game for being a magma pool.
::[[Image:0x517A5D_Eiba%27s_bug_report_location.png]]
:I actually suspect that this is correct (if unexpected) behavior: the game's local-map generator is preventing features from being generated under or too close to civilization areas. It might be worth exploring other towns with a feature next to them. Anyway, I don't think I can do anything about this... it's just one of those things, y'know? And good luck with that OCD; this utility made mine worse. (I just know that if I keep looking, I'll find a 4x4 limestone magma water chasm pits trees haunted location.) —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 15:27, 24 December 2007 (EST)
:::So I was looking all over for the discussion of this thing - and I just got to hand it to you - you just saved countless hours of my life looking for the perfect starting location. Holy shit this is awesome. I could practically open-mouth kiss you. *cough
:::I can verify cavelakes and whatnot are revealed :) Anyhow, thanks - and I'm surprised that there aren't too many raving posts on the forums about this. (I'll also give you a heads up if I find that legendary adamantine/magma/trees/chasm/flux/sand epic location in a terrifying 5x5 or less) --[[User:KaelGotRice|KaelGotRice]] 00:43, 26 December 2007 (EST)
::::You should post about this tool in the forums! [[User:Bartavelle|Bartavelle]] 06:17, 27 December 2007 (EST)

::Great frickin' utility. If I find that haunted superdense 4x4 I'll let you know, I've been looking for it too. (Terrifying's even better, as it is evil + savage.)
::Small request: add a "map legend" to the Utilities page or include one in the zip. I've never seen those numbers displayed in the above screenshot, just #s and ~s.
::I saw one map where a red single ~ next to a long set of #s didn't turn up magma at any depth, so what you say about the local-map generator probably applies to features other than civilizations.--[[User:Maximus|Maximus]] 19:49, 26 December 2007 (EST)
:::A map key is a good idea. I'll package one with the next release, and I'll throw up a quick one one on the utilities page as well.
:::The numbers in the screenshot are from my initial alpha test version, which I never released. Do you think that I should put them in the normal tool, as an alternate display mode? I thought they wouldn't be useful.
:::Was there any feature where the magma should have been? Could it have drained out into the chasm? If you still have the seed and location, I'll look at it. —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 20:02, 26 December 2007 (EST)

::::Seed 92001, generated under .33e, I think. [[:Image:92001_busy.png]] It didn't drain into the chasm; there's no "empty space" anywhere in the column indicated by RP. This is a really nice location btw; two chasms, surface and underground river and lake, steel, sand, pits, and my favorite, skeletal elephants. There's over 200 hostiles on the map right at the outset. However, the pits/cave river and magma/elephants are not near each other, requiring a starting location at least 7x10.
::::I don't think having RP display numbers is necessary. I assume they indicate depth -- I'd rather know nothing about the actual placement of things as long as I know the grid contains the features I want.
::::Say, maybe you could create an automated map-searcher where you tick off what features you want and the searcher identifies starting locations containing them without telling you exactly where each feature is...--[[User:Maximus|Maximus]] 22:44, 26 December 2007 (EST)
:::::The numbers are the internal feature flag value. 2, for instance, is cave pool. I have been pondering such a map searcher. It would require extremely intimate knowledge of the internal map representation, which is presently beyond me. Regional Prospector does its magic by hooking into the drawing of each map cell, so it doesn't have to traverse the data structures itself. —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 22:59, 26 December 2007 (EST)
::::::If you're just hooking into the drawing of a map cell, couldn't you also add a call to something that would keep track of where, for instance, magma vents are? Something like that would make Ziusudra's magma search utility a lot faster; instead of waiting a quarter second and looking through the screen, such a search utility would scan across the map as fast as the game can update. —[[User:Tacroy|Tacroy]] 00:16, 31 December 2007 (EST)
:::::::Maybe... Hmm. Maybe. I could make a list with little problem. The hard part would be getting the info out. I immediately envision a co-process, probably a custom debugger, that collects the information from code tweaks in DF. And either that program, or an AHK script, would feed input to DF to traverse the map. Hmm. Really, this sounds like a project that's a couple orders of magnitude harder than RP was. With RP, I just inject a few lines of carefully written assembly code. Debuggers are hard. Interesting idea, though. Also, nice m-dash. —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 01:24, 31 December 2007 (EST)
::::::::I only copy from the best :) But anyway, as long as you're injecting assembly code, couldn't you extend it to open a file and write out the interesting features it finds? This probably wouldn't work if you're limited to a certain amount of injected code; I have to say that I have absolutely no idea whether or not this would work as I've never done anything with x86 assembly, nor have I ever messed around with injecting code into memory. —[[User:Tacroy|Tacroy]] 23:03, 31 December 2007 (EST)
:::::::::I theoretically could dump data to a file. The limit on how much code can be injected is so high that it will never actually be hit in real-world use. However, I would have to (a) do all of the file operations myself using relocatable assembly code (which is even harder to write than normal assembly language), and (b) track down the operating system call addresses from scratch, the way viruses do. (Have to do that because they can be at different addresses in different processes, so I can't just find them in the patcher process and copy them across.) I estimate 1000-2000 lines of assembly, all carefully coded to not disrupt DF itself. Using a custom-built debugger might actually be easier. I am, frankly, not eager to do such a project for little personal gain. RP suits my needs and tastes quite well. Now, if you can find someone else willing to do the gruntwork, I can give info such as good patch locations, and critique their techniques. Though I probably am not willing to debug crashes — and crashes will happen, and they can be weird and mysterious. —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 02:37, 1 January 2008 (EST)
::::::::::Why don't you let the patcher do the grunt work to find the system function addresses, all you'd have to do is read in the entire EXE image from the DF processes. The relocatable assembly is still definitely going to be a pain. I'd look into doing it myself, but I've already got my plate full just trying to make DFUF useful. -- [[User:Jifodus|Jifodus]] 15:09, 1 January 2008 (EST)
:::::::::::That's a interesting thought. Since the target is a single known executable, which almost certainly already imports the system calls I would need, I could indeed suck them out of the image. So that counters point b. I'll give it some thought. However if I do take on this project, I am actually leaning toward the custom debugger route. I could use C that way. And I'd learn more skills and techniques, I'm sure. —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 16:49, 1 January 2008 (EST)
Maybe it's only me, and I'm doing something extremely stupid, but I can't get it to apply the patch. When I run the .exe it says that it can't find the files that it needs to patch, and suggests that they perhaps already are patched, which, of course, they aren't. I'm probably doing something stupid, aren't I? I suspected that I had possibly put it in the wrong place or something, so I ended up running it from a whole bunch of different DF folders. Alas, there wasn't any sort of readme to help us simple people. Help would be appreciated though, it sounds like a fantastic utility. I'm tired of looking for underground pools with the random chance method. I'm using .33g--[[User:Yabbadabba|Yabbadabba]] 00:55, 1 January 2008 (EST)
:Okay, lets cover the misconception first: it doesn't patch files. It grabs the running copy of Dwarf Fortress by the <strike>balls</strike> throat, and patches its memory. But if DF isn't running, you will get a different error message. So it was running. So... try this: quit out of DF, then start it back up. When DF is at the initial title screen, run the RP utility. Only once. It should not give an error message. In fact, it should give no feedback at all. Then go back to DF and choose the Start Playing menu choice. When you're looking at the Choose a Fortress Location screen, you should automatically be looking at a region which has mountains. At this point, you should notice extra symbols on the local map view on the left of the screen. Report back if this doesn't work, and we can do some diagnostics. I do agree, there should be a readme to explain stuff, as well as give a map key of the new symbols. Soon. —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 02:37, 1 January 2008 (EST)
::Hey, thanks for the help man. Worked like a charm. I guess I just ran it before it got to the main menu last time. Or maybe I opened it twice. Either way, cheers.--[[User:Yabbadabba|Yabbadabba]] 03:21, 1 January 2008 (EST)
I gotta say, this is an awesome utility, I was thinking, exactly, wouldn't it be cool if someone would make a program that would fool the main DF exec into rendering "hidden" features? And a couple months later, you make it. I don't exactly know how it works, but is there a way to do the same thing to the "region" map? (the one in the middle) like, for example show the tiles that have any magma with a red background. [[User:Sergius|Sergius]] 23:13, 4 January 2008 (EST)
:Maybe. I have given this a little thought, but haven't done any of the necessary analysis of DF. The maps are rendered at different times, and by different routines, and I haven't explored what data is easily available to the Region renderer. I may look at this, or I may try to jump all the way to a "Map Info Dumper" or "Good Region Finder" as discussed above. Currently I'm devoting my efforts to art defacement tantrums. I am able to shut them off beforehand, but I can't yet counter the effect after the fact. —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 21:51, 5 January 2008 (EST)
::I just came here to request this feature as well. Red backgrounds for lava tiles in the region map is _exactly_ what I need!
:::I'd love to. I really would. But it's seriously hard. In my investigations, I have learned that the localmap view is generated dynamically. That makes sense — it would be wasteful to have 257*257 localmaps in memory all at once, when only one is needed at a time. But the consequence is that the magma flag that I am looking for is not available for any regionmap tile except the currently selected one. There has to be some flag somewhere, but I haven't found it yet, and I may not be able to. —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 17:24, 12 January 2008 (EST)
:::Made some progress I think. Haven't found the flag but have found the area where it must be. So maybe I can do this. —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 21:53, 12 January 2008 (EST)
::::I believe that magma is centered around some sort of invisible map feature, as all the magma I've found is in clusters. Volcanoes are obvious of course, but I've found many clusters that aren't near volcanoes. By clusters, I mean 9+ local areas with one or two pockets of magma, usually all touching, with the occasional pocket that's not touching the cluster. Anytime I'm searching, if I find one pocket, there are bound to be a handful of others in the immediate vicinity. Hope this helps in finding the token or flag that marks the clusters. --[[User:N9103|Edward]] 00:18, 13 January 2008 (EST)
:::This is proving to be very hard. I've already invested maybe 100 times the effort that the original RP features took me. I've gone down two or three long routes that lead to dead ends. Now I think I have found the list of map features — the same ones that show up in the region folders. If I can walk those looking for matching world x and y coordinates, and figure out where the magma flag is set in them, then it should work. If magma is even a feature, which I am not totally sure of yet. —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 18:05, 14 January 2008 (EST)
::::I'm wondering if you couldn't create a utility that automatically traverses every single local square and updates the regional map if it finds something...--[[User:Maximus|Maximus]] 02:24, 15 January 2008 (EST)
:::::Possibly. What for?  —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 04:06, 15 January 2008 (EST)
::::::I was suggesting that as a kludge if you couldn't find the magma data you were looking for (if there's magma on the local map, update the regional map), but apparently you have finally found it.--[[User:Maximus|Maximus]] 15:03, 15 January 2008 (EST)
Just wanted to say once again, damn fine job on the Regional Prospector. I've just posted a couple of locations found using it [[Pregenerated_worlds#Smata_Sagus.2C_The_Realms_Of_Dawn|over here]]. --[[User:Janus|Janus]] 21:55, 6 January 2008 (EST)

I'd just like to say great job on your Seekrit Projekt. It does not have to be updated for .38a. [[User:Mephisto|Mephisto]] 21:06, 5 February 2008 (EST)

== Regional Prospector version 2 ==

There is now a beta test version that highlights regional map squares containing magma in dark red. Thank you to Sergius and Polpoint for the idea. Hop on over to my main page. Leave feedback below. This project baked my brain; I am now off to bed. —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 04:09, 15 January 2008 (EST)

== Reverse questions ==

As you seem to have delved into the UI, do you know where the displayed map coordinates are stored? (not the cursor coordinates) [[User:Bartavelle|Bartavelle]] 07:44, 8 January 2008 (EST)
:Which map? I suspect you're talking about Dwarf Fortress mode post-embark, in the actual gameplay. And my answer is no, I haven't looked for that. As a half-assed guess, look in the block of data (.33g) from 0146963C to 014696BC (near other map data variables), and from 00906294 to 009062B4 (near the mouse-coord-on-map variables). —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 23:26, 8 January 2008 (EST)

== Incompatible with 38a. ==

"Failed to find memory locations to patch.
Please report this at
http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/User_talk:0x517A5D"

It is expected to work with future releases of Dwarf Fortress, as long as the embark code doesn't change too much.

Hehe, not too surprising considering the version jump that Toady made some major changes to embarkation. --[[User:N9103|Edward]] 09:35, 5 February 2008 (EST)

The embark screen still looks the same to me, exept that Seekret Projekt doesn't work anymore ofcourse.

User talk:Smoking Gnu

2008-02-01T19:27:30Z

Mephisto:

...How do you jump in adventure mode?--[[User:Smoking Gnu|Smoking Gnu]] 19:58, 1 November 2007 (EDT)
:No jumping, but you can [Alt] move to move carefully (jump, in effect) off a cliff or climb from a river onto dry land (only if you have swimming skill, I believe). [[User:Mephisto|Mephisto]] 14:27, 1 February 2008 (EST)

User:GarrieIrons/log

2008-02-01T19:24:42Z

Mephisto: /* Dead dwarves */

==Beginnings==
Well this game is intriguing.
Far from the roguelike I was expecting having played Angband since Frog Knows... in 199?

My first fortress was more of a mud hut and I had dwarves dropping from the mangy cougar which wandered around picking them off at will.

==Farming==
This time at least I have some real mountains around me. But I still cannot work out how to get my farming dwarves to get out of the pit and out there picking plants or growing plants where they are able to, so that they can in turn brew something for my alcohol-deprived dwarves to drink.

:Need more detail. What pit? Have you figured out how to {{key|b}}uild a farm plot yet?

::Could be that you haven't {{key|d}}esignated {{key|p}}lants to harvest? Or perhaps the dwarves in question have too much else to do, and need other labor preferences turned off? (Notably stone hauling) --[[User:N9103|Edward]] 23:18, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:::Most of my D's have all but a couple of jobs turned off ... then even though they should have work to do they end up idle...? [[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 06:58, 4 January 2008 (EST)

::::To get any job done, you'll need to a) build a workshop; b) turn on the appropriate labors on one or more dwarves (if they built the workshop, they'll usually have the right labors turned on); c) add whatever tasks you want done at the workshop via {{k|q}}-{{k|a}}. Set it to {{k|r}}epeat if you want it done continuously. If you don't have the right raw materials for the job (or you run out of them), you'll get an announcement to that effect (unless you turned announcements off via {{k|o}}rders).--[[User:Maximus|Maximus]] 13:27, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:::Pit comes from my Angband background... the Fortress / hole in the ground. Once I dug the first bit I had 6 dwarves inside and one outside, fishing, but letting all the fish he caught rot on the riverbank even though I had designated a space for a fishery to be built (and nobody would build it). 06:58, 4 January 2008 (EST)

::::Add [[fish cleaning]] to one or more dwarves. Once the fishery is built, add "process a raw fish" on repeat until all your fish is cleaned. Fish can be eaten once it's cleaned; it doesn't have to be cooked.

::::If they're just letting the fish rot by the riverbank, you need to create a food [[stockpile]]. Any dwarves with "food hauling" on will move the raw and/or processed fish to the stockpile so that it won't rot. If you have empty barrels available, they'll put the barrels on the stockpile and put the food in those.--[[User:Maximus|Maximus]] 13:27, 4 January 2008 (EST)

And I am still yet to work out how long a season takes, or how long between sleep intervals, in a world where there is no such thing as night and day.

:[[Talk:Economics#Dwarven_consumption]]

Well, I have now worked out - and maybe it's obvious ;) - that I can farm indefinately indoors on a patch of [[Silt]] cavern floor. For my new problem see below! [[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 09:49, 5 January 2008 (EST)

==Training animals==
Can I ever learn how to train a dog?
[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 08:50, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:Add the [[animal trainer]] labor to one of your dwarves, build a kennel, add a "train animal" task to the kennel. The trainer will seek out a stray dog, if you have one (it cannot be owned by another dwarf), and train it into a war dog (don't bother with hunting dogs).--[[User:Maximus|Maximus]] 15:43, 3 January 2008 (EST)
::Trying this method.[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 10:09, 4 January 2008 (EST)

Well, Day 2 of Real Life gets me....
#the Dwarven Caravan.... they don't sell me any food, and I've run out!
#I find some ore... but everyone is busy trying to stave off starvation
#I think I have tried to build too many workshops. What ones do I need to become self-sufficient (ie '''stay alive''') vs the ones I need to '''earn money'''?
[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 10:09, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:You actually don't need to earn money at all. In my current fort I've been experimenting with [[computing]] and haven't bothered to do a single thing beyond making enough food & booze to keep my dwarves alive. I haven't traded, I haven't made any industry (aside from kitchens, carpenter shops for barrels, stills, and whatever mechanisms/doors the computer requires), haven't made a military (I chose an island; the only dangerous thing around is unicorns), haven't dug any living space, and haven't made any furniture.

:In fact, I haven't even bothered with farming; too much maintenance on my part. I just periodically {{k|d}}esignate the entire map for plant gathering and make sure any idling dwarves have the Plant Gatherer labor turned on. I brew all the plants into alcohol and cook the alcohol into food (1 plant turns into 5 alcohol which can be cooked to produce 5 "prepared meals"). Lately, due to surpluses, I've been cooking the seeds instead. I finally set up a butcher shop to get rid of the strays running around; I'll render the fat & cook the resulting tallow eventually to get rid of it. (To butcher livestock, {{k|z}}-{{k|enter}} to go into the Animals screen; toggle "butcher" on any that aren't owned by a dwarf.)

:Despite having nothing more to offer than food, booze, and some strange machinery in the basement, the fort is in its 5th year and is at 120 dwarves, and they keep showing up.--[[User:Maximus|Maximus]] 13:27, 4 January 2008 (EST)
::Food, booze, and gadgetry. You have just managed to build a technical college. The geeks are flocking to you. --[[User:Ikkonoishi|Ikkonoishi]] 04:42, 5 January 2008 (EST)

OK, I have managed to train War Dogs. That is one personal mission achieved![[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 05:43, 5 January 2008 (EST)

==Hunting==
OK, so I have a Hunter. He is doing really well at catching prey animals.
I also have a Butcher and a Butchers Yard.
But no matter what I do: the hunter catches animals, and the Butcher says he hasn't got anything he can work with for either Butcher an animal, Catch an animal, or Extract from an animal. What gives?[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 10:09, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:Unless you changed your {{k|o}}ptions, the butcher's shop should be set to auto-butcher any available corpses. The corpse has to be dragged back to within 20 tiles or so of the butcher's shop, however. My hunter seems willing to drag his quarry back to a big food stockpile I have. Try creating one near the butcher's.--[[User:Maximus|Maximus]] 13:27, 4 January 2008 (EST)

::OK - so if I am having a butchers shop, fishery and a kitchen - I take it each of them need food stockpiles near them?
::Should my kitchen be "down in the mines" near where I want the miner to keep chipping away at it, or near where the food is bought in?[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 22:51, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:::You don't need more than one stockpile. It's usually best to have all food production, processing, and storage in one central location (along with a dining room). Sometimes you might want a secondary dining room (and food storage) in a more distant location where lots of dwarves work (like magma/metalworking operations, or a barracks), to keep them from traveling large distances to and from food/drink, but it can be hard to get them to actually use the nearer dining room. Don't bother moving food near your miners -- you'll probably have them working all over the fortress. I would however put everything indoors, behind defenses. It takes a few goblin raids before you know how to defend the fort properly, but as of the latest versions they don't happen until you have scores of dwarves.--[[User:Maximus|Maximus]] 23:45, 4 January 2008 (EST)

::OK I will create a new open space for a butchery and fishery downstairs near where I have made my kitchen and dining room. I had thought it best to keep those things outside but it seems that isn't essential... 01:57, 5 January 2008 (EST)
:::The animal corpses themselves need to go to a refuse pile not a food pile. Always have a refuse pile near the butcher's shop. Preferably enclosed by walls and doors. --[[User:Ikkonoishi|Ikkonoishi]] 04:44, 5 January 2008 (EST)
::::This would explain the miasma I just had hanging around my kitchen/butchery just now... ;) [[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 05:44, 5 January 2008 (EST)

Well, I ''think'' my hunter is working out. But I am not really sure. All I really know is, I now have a refuse room which is filling up with bones quicker than what my craft-dwarf can produce bolts on auto-repeat. [[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 09:48, 5 January 2008 (EST)

==Farming, mark 2==
OK, so how do I finish the life cycle from [[Plump helmet]] spawn -> [[Plump helmet]] (I'm getting this far!) back to [[Plump helmet]] spawn? ie how do my dwarves get the spawn back out of the mushrooms?[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 09:48, 5 January 2008 (EST)
:OM NOM NOM NOM. They eat them. Or you could brew them. With plump helmets you need to make sure you have a large food stockpile so they don't just rot on the field before your dwarves eat their way through the ones you already have.
::If you see your stockpile filling up, create a bigger one right beside it. It's a good idea to start a barrel-making industry too, as each barrel can store up to 10 units of food. This won't give you 10x the storage, as only two plant[5]s would be stored in a barrel (vs. 1 stockpile square for each plant[5]), but a 3x capacity increase is reasonable to expect.
::More importantly, you must have barrels on hand to make and store booze. In the stock{{k|p}}ile menu, give yourself at least 5 "reserved barrels"; these will be kept empty until you fill them at the still.--[[User:Maximus|Maximus]] 13:58, 5 January 2008 (EST)

:My dwarves evendutally started farming on a very ad-hoc basis but then...

===Oh, no it's winter...===
What's a dwarf to drink when there's no [[still]] and the brook is [[ice|frozen solid]]?
Who'd have thought that I can [[smelter|turn rock into iron]] and not melt ice?

So thanks to thirst, it's down from seven to one... and now the mine is too big, it's over-run with [[kobold|thieving little bastards]] and full of [[Hoary marmot|dead bloody vermin]] who are [[miasma|stinking the place up]].

At least I got everyone [[coffin|buried in style]]. Let's see how long the ranger challenge lasts?[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 08:45, 10 January 2008 (EST)

:Your best emergency response to thirst is to build a still and brew any plants you may have available. If you don't have any plants available, [[plant gathering|gather]] some. If all the plants are dead because it's winter, you're probably screwed. It's hard to keep them from dying if you run completely out of food or drink. Oh well, [[losing]] is fun.

:There's probably a way to melt that ice but then I believe you have to build a well, which is pretty complicated.--[[User:Maximus|Maximus]] 23:12, 10 January 2008 (EST)

::Yeah, my game just became a modified [[Starting builds#Hermit|hermit hut]].[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 00:55, 11 January 2008 (EST)

:::Well migration has kicked in and I'm back to 7 including one child... Yay! And one is a brewer so that might help me along maybe? [[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 01:21, 11 January 2008 (EST)

===The cruellest enemy: The [[Killer spouse]]===
::::Huh, just when migration had kicked in and I was back to 20 and rising... I walked away from the PC for ''a little while''. When I come back '''the game was off''', and I started to get into a [[strange mood]]. This darkened when upon reloading the game - I now had a new game world and my existing game was no longer active...

::::Maybe [[Killer spouse]] needs to be added to ways of [[losing is fun|losing]]?[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 19:46, 11 January 2008 (EST)

:::::DF is known to be incompatible with spouses. You'll have to uninstall her.--[[User:Maximus|Maximus]] 21:05, 11 January 2008 (EST)
::::::Huh, well my particular spouse plays more angband varients than I do (I only play vanilla) - I think she didn't know what to do after ctrl-x didn't work to "save and exit" so she may have just terminated the app. :( [[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 21:47, 12 January 2008 (EST)

:::::::Well, fine, but if she starts growing a beard, I suggest you hit ctrl-x yourself.--[[User:Maximus|Maximus]] 23:49, 12 January 2008 (EST)

==Trading==
All right, I must be missing ''something obvious'' here.
I've had one dwarven caravan turn up, show me their gear, got my gear delivered to the [[trading depot]], placed my order...
but they never sold me anything and never bought anything off me.
Now the elves are doing the same thing... they are about to leave and we haven't exchanged anything yet.
How is this meant to go?[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 21:49, 12 January 2008 (EST)

:You have to actually {{k|t}}rade with the caravan(s), after first moving the goods there and {{k|r}}equesting your broker/trader at the Depot. [[Your_first_fortress#Trading]] --[[User:N9103|Edward]] 00:13, 13 January 2008 (EST)

::Thanks, I will have a close read of that link.

==[[Sheriff]]==
All right: I'm expanding (rapidly, maybe too rapidly for my modest skills gaines thus far). My game tells me I need a Sheriff but when I try to fill the vacancy: ''No relevant skills''. Yes, I tried to [[RTFM]] on [[Sheriff]] (even fixing my spelling of the word ;) ) but it mentions what a dwarf needs to ''own'' not ''know''.

I guessed that some kind of marsmanship may help, but even my hunters have ''No relevant skills''? [[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 00:28, 13 January 2008 (EST)

:Is it just that he doesn't own enough stuff (desk etc) - if so, "skills" isn't that great a description of whats missing, is it?[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 04:26, 13 January 2008 (EST)
::I could be wrong, but I don't think there *are* relevant skills. I can't recall ever having a skill show up on my Uber-dwarf that I gave all skills to. I'll double check and edit this if I'm wrong, but I'd say that Sheriff is just one of several positions with no *truly* relevant skills. --[[User:N9103|Edward]] 07:41, 13 January 2008 (EST)

==[[Cheese maker]]==
Is there any use in keeping a cheesemaker if I don't find any [[purring maggots]]? Are they that hard to find (ie: if I keep my animal tamer at the traps, will he find some?)[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 07:34, 13 January 2008 (EST)
:You can also buy milk from caravans and turn that into cheese. That alone is profitable, and if you then cook it, you're looking at some 10k+ value meals for just the regular stuff if it's all cheese. --[[User:N9103|Edward]] 07:38, 13 January 2008 (EST)

::well all right, I've bought several barrels of milk, stored in stockpiles next to my farm workshop... yet when I try to produce cheese I get "no milk close enough" type messages!

==[[Goblin]] [[seige|horde]]==
Well I survived my first seige. The goblins were nice enough to massacre a [[human]] caravan for me! so there is stacks of loot to be had, for the price of a few peasants.

Oh well, it looks like I had better fire up the smithy and make some weapons now![[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 06:18, 31 January 2008 (EST)

==Windmill to millstone==
OK. I want to build a windmill on the top of the hill one level above an underground room in which I wish to build a millstone.

From my reading of [[windmill]] all I do is:
#Construct a room for the millstone
#{{key|b}}uild a millstone
#directly above it - {{key|b}}uild a windmill

Yes, I have the components for each of the above. But when I do that, I get an unpowered millstone. Do I need a vertical axle, or a channel or something?
:Check windmill itself. If it says total power is 0, then your map has no wind. If not, try digging a channel above millstone (remove floor between it and the windmill). Also: millstone should be directly under the center tile of a windmill.--[[User:Dorten|Dorten]] 07:18, 31 January 2008 (EST)
::Thx, I've just tried removing and reattaching (?) the millstone just now.. failing that I'll try digging a channel under an existing windmill...[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 07:22, 31 January 2008 (EST)
:::Having removed the millstone and rebuilt it worked. I guess it comes down to
:::#build the power source
:::#build the linkages (h/v axles)
:::#build the machine
:::[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 17:52, 31 January 2008 (EST)

::My next effort will be an attempt at a pond/moat thingy... need to get water to go from a N-S flowing brook on the west, via a channel running E-W, to a walled off earthen valley. Hopefully my rock walls will stop my mine from flooding?
::This will be a nice attempt at linking:
:::Water wheel to screw pump (at brook to get watter into channel at Eastern end)
:::Wind mill to screw pump (at Western end of channel to get water up two z-levels into the pond)

::What's the chance of the water wheel filling the ditch quicker than the windmill can empty it resulting in flooding?[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 07:22, 31 January 2008 (EST)

:::Shouldn't happen as all pumps seem to pump at the same rate regardless of power source. Do be aware of the perils of pressurized water however! Consider any levels under that of the uppermost level of the water, flooded; should the water find a way out from the bottom of that pond. --[[User:N9103|Edward]] 18:04, 31 January 2008 (EST)

==Dead dwarves==
So: "Ethan Deaddwarf has suffocated". But you cannot centre on a deceased inhabitant so how do I work out what happened to the poor bugger?[[User:GarrieIrons|GarrieIrons]] 06:29, 31 January 2008 (EST)
:You can view the dwarf's corpse through the [z] stocks menu. [[User:Mephisto|Mephisto]] 14:24, 1 February 2008 (EST)

40d:Fire man

2008-01-19T17:38:58Z

Mephisto: mote -> moat

Fire men seems to come out of the same places that imps do, but they are a little bolder and can go out a ways past the lava vent.

To stop fire men from attacking your dwarfs build a moat around the lava vent.
If you can, fill it with water from a river or a brook. Designating the moat as a pond should also work.

After you have made a moat the firemen should stop attacking

To stop them from attack your smiths is a little harder.

* First dig a channel but do not let it be full a lava yet

* Then put vertical steel bars as close to the entrance of the lava as you can (in the channel)

* Dig out the rest of the lava channel

* Then add walls to box in any lava squares that are before the steel bars.

* This stops the firemen from getting out before the steel bars.

40d:Pregenerated worlds

2008-01-18T06:58:32Z

Mephisto:

'''Pregenerated worlds''' are worlds that have been created and uploaded for use by others, so they may skip world generation, and are independent of version{{v|0.27.169.33g}}. '''Seeds''' are numbers that tell the world generator which world to create. These are usually given for particularly good [[location]]s, or for quick generating time. Below is a list of worlds and seeds that users have made, along with any interesting locations. Feel free to share and add to the list.

== World generation changes ==

Versions 0.27.169.33f and 0.27.169.33g changed the way world generation works slightly, so seeds from earlier versions will generate different worlds; these are archived at [[Seed archive]]. Random and custom names do not affect world generation.

== Downloadable worlds ==

Downloadable worlds are worlds which have been generated and then compressed into a single archive file for sharing over the internet. Download the file then extract the folder inside the archive into your /data/save folder in order to use it.

=== The Absolute Planet of Dawns ===

Direct download available here: [http://rapidshare.com/files/83977216/The_Absolute_Planet_of_Dawns.zip The Absolute Planet of Dawns] 
Download includes a list of magma and non-magma sites, each with (non-spoily) description and location map. I've made an attempt to provide a wide range of fortress locations, from mountain canyons to haunted glaciers to resource-rich forests. 

(version v0.27.169.33g, seed 2664204674, provided by Fedor)

=== The Future Dimensions ===
'''Download:''' http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PPYJXSDH 

[[Image:Fibonacci.PNG|thumb|500px]]

'''Map features:''' 
Small 3 by 8 (So good frame rate on older computers) 
Magma (obviously) 
Sand (top of map) 
Flux 
Trees (top) 
Adamantine (bottom right) 
Demon/Eerie glowing pits (bottom right) 
Chasm (2 z-levels down in the top of map with iron man and more) 
You can add the river by expanding two squares right (those of you with fast machines) 

=== Lathondur Minbaz ===

Direct download available here: [http://morlark.uwcs.co.uk/misc/region1.tar.gz Lathondur Minbaz]

=== The Legendary Ever-Realm ===
'''Download:''' http://hyperfileshare.com/d/f91fae26

[[Image:4265985437.PNG|thumb|500px]]

Has pretty much every feature in a small 4x5 area. 
'''Features:''' 
- Magma on lower left 
- Small cave river on lower left 
- Edge of chasm on far upper left corner 
- Pits & Adamantine on upper left 
- Sand and trees on far right green tile 
- Plenty of flux and iron for steel production 
- Representatives of all four major rock types: 
1. sedimentary - dolomite, claystone 
2. igneous extrusive - andesite 
3. igneous intrusive - granite, gabbro 
4. metamorphic - marble, schist 

=== Smata Sagus, The Realms Of Dawn ===

'''[http://dwarffiles.wimbli.com/smata_sagus.zip Download it here]''' 
Seed: 324316224 (6 rejects) 
Made in Dwarf Fortress v0.27.169.33g, created with a Core 2 Duo processor in WinXP. Found using the wonderful [[Utilities#Regional_Prospector|Regional Prospector]].

[[Image:Smata_Sagus_location.png|thumb|500px]]

This is a loaded 3x6 location with basically every major resource. No chasm, cliffs are no taller than 2, surroundings are Temperate and Mirthful. 
If you don't need a river, you can trim it to 3x5 by taking off the bottom edge and still get everything else.

* '''Adamantine''': towards the bottom left.
* '''Magma''': underground, located on layers 140-143.
* '''River''': a small curve of it in the lower right corner.
* '''Trees''': More than you'll ever use.
* '''Sand''': Yep.
* '''Soil''': Yep.
* '''Iron''': Magnetite patches near the surface, along with an occasional hematite and limonite vein.
* '''Flux''': More than you'll ever use.
* '''Fuel''': Plenty.
* '''Bauxite''': Several patches near the magma.
* '''Obsidian''': Available on the left side.

* '''Neighboring Civs''': All.

=== Ruspospazmon, The Eternal Windy Planes ===

'''[http://dwarffiles.wimbli.com/ruspospazmon.zip Download it here]''' 
Seed: 2851906008 (11 rejects) 
Made in Dwarf Fortress v0.27.169.33g, created with a Core 2 Duo processor in WinXP. Found using the wonderful [[Utilities#Regional_Prospector|Regional Prospector]].

[[Image:Ruspospazmon_location.png|thumb|500px]]

This is a 4x3 location with most major resources. No chasm, cliffs are very tall (6-9), surroundings are Scorching and Calm. There is a small spot of aquifer, just enough to be potentially useful while still out of the way. 
If you need a river, you can expand the selection north to include some river fingers and possibly west to also include a stretch of normal river. This will likely include more aquifer though.

* '''Adamantine''': towards the bottom left.
* '''Magma''': underground, located on layers 140-143.
* '''River''': only if you expand the area slightly.
* '''Aquifer''': There's a tiny area of it towards the top left on a few levels.
* '''Trees''': Yep.
* '''Sand''': Yep.
* '''Soil''': Yep.
* '''Iron''': Yes, towards the top and middle.
* '''Flux''': Yep.
* '''Fuel''': Yep.

* '''Neighboring Civs''': All.

=== Emeecamo Ametha, The Eternal Universe of Wind ===

'''[http://dwarffiles.wimbli.com/emeecamo_ametha.zip Download it here]''' 
Seed: 2135737780 (6 rejects) 
Made in Dwarf Fortress v0.27.169.33g, created with a Core 2 Duo processor in WinXP. Found using the wonderful [[Utilities#Regional_Prospector|Regional Prospector]].

[[Image:Emeecamo_Ametha_location.png|thumb|500px]]

This is a nice 3x3 (or potentially 2x2) location with almost all major resources. No chasm or sand available, cliffs are no higher than 1 (!), surroundings are Scorching and Untamed Wilds. The brook has a semi-waterfall where it drops 1 Z-level, causing a somewhat odd scene. 
If you don't need a river or as many trees, you could actually make it a 2x2 area instead with all other resources by cutting off the bottom and right edges.

* '''Adamantine''': in the middle.
* '''Magma''': Upper left corner, the top is fully open to the ground.
* '''River''': Yes, with a waterfall.
* '''Trees''': Limited, but enough to make do.
* '''Soil''': Yep.
* '''Iron''': Plenty.
* '''Flux''': More chalk than you could ever need.
* '''Fuel''': Plenty.
* '''Bauxite''': Some, check bottom middle of map one level below the lone hill.

* '''Neighboring Civs''': All.

== Seeds ==

Seeded worlds are special "codes" which tell the game's pseudo-random number generator (a sophisticated mathematical function which produces numbers that seem random) where to begin generating a world. Because the random number generator is actually just a mathematical function and thus always produces the same result when given a certain input, you can "seed" the generator to produce an entire series of random numbers on another computer that are exactly the same as they were originally produced on the first computer.

To use a seeded world, select ''Create a New World'' during the main menu, then hit {{key|s}} to specify a seed. Type in the seed and hit {{key|Enter}}, then hit {{key|Enter}} one more time to begin generation. It will still take the normal amount of time to generate the world, and you will still have rejects before the world is produced.

The random seed used also determines the world's name if a random name is selected. This disrupts the sequence of psudeorandom numbers. As a consequence, a seed with a player-given name will result in a completely different world than the same seed with a random name. Seed publishers should specify whether a random or a given name was selected when generating the world.

Mineral content is determined at the time it is allocated, (essentially when you dig near it). Accordingly the map seed determines the layers and therefore the probability of certain rocks/ores, but the ore veins themselves will vary.

A further warning: there may be other things that affect world generation, such as your operating system. If you generate a world different from one described here, with exactly the same seed, please mention it with the relevant details (operating system including any service packs, processor type, and game version) on the [[Talk:Pregenerated worlds|talk page]].

The following seeds were generated with version '''0.23.169.33g''' or later. Seeds for earlier versions are located at the [[seed archive]].

=== Quick generating seeds ===

====Chicken Seed: #389311515====
[[Image:Chickenseedfix.png]]

Only one reject. The location shown above has some magma right next to a brook... Lots of trees and plants, and plenty of sand. If you don't feel like you need the hills to the south, you can shrink the area a bit, there's nothing much else down that way.

=== Seeds and locations with many features (may run slower on older computers) ===
====Seed # 264622237====
This seed has 1 decent starting location, with the posibility of war with the local Kobolds, and one really good one with a cave and a cyclops and 12 giant spiders.

'''Volcano 1:'''

[[Image:V_33g_Seed_264622237_Volcano_1.png|500px]]

This location has Magma in the top middle, pits in the bottom middle (sometimes gets cut off, extend down one if it does it to you), chasm in the lower left, and iron + flux all over.

This map contains no flowing water in spite of the river shown. It does not exist, I checked. Your best bet would be to use the infinate water bug to create a lake, and keep control of it with a floodgate.

There is also no sand at all. Sorry folks, you gotta import glass.

Finally, there are no trees. For some bizarre reason, when I loaded the whole map, every last tile, it had trees everywhere, but if I cut anything off, the trees vanished. Your results may vary as this is odd IMO.

'''Volcano 2:'''

[[Image:V_33g_Seed_264622237_Volcano_2.png|500px]]

Now this location is nice. It's kinda cold, so bring a jacket.

You have unguarded magma in the upper left corner. Go for it as soon as you can make steel.

Lower-middle right you will have the caves. Many enemies there. Careful though, they are just a warm up! Directly below you have a pit and adamantine. Also, the majority of the iron is around the caves, so you will have to fight for it.

Just to the left of the caves, a level or 2 above the pits is an underground lake. It's not infinate, but it should last you, plus there are many lakes around, and when they freeze, they refill. You shouldn't be hurting for water for a while.

There is sand scattered around all over. If that wasn't enough with the magma, there is more sand on the shore of the underground lake. Can we say dwarven catapults throwing stones from glass houses? Heh heh heh.

Lots of farmable soil, but no indigenous plants to speak of. Build a shack and farm indoors early on till you can get other kinds of seeds.

Flux? Nope. Sorry. Import what you can, bring steel if you can. Wood? Ain't got that either. Get your magma smelter and glass furnace up fast so you can start producing trade goods. Without them you won't be able to import the wood you need for coal and flux for steel. Iron supplies as I said are mostly guarded by the Cyclops and crew as well. This could be a challenge for you, but there is plenty of copper and cassiterite to go around, import some tin, and combine it with some bismuth and you can have a cheap bronze as well.

All in all, I like the second one better of the 2. Both have nice features, but are missing key items.
This was generated in .33g, and it seems that seeds were broken again. Hopefully more people come out with their seeds soon :)
--[[User:Chthon|Chthon]] 19:46, 23 December 2007 (EST)

==== Seed #223885 - Pretty much what I have been waiting for ====

[[Image:seed223885-awesomeseed.JPG|643px]]

In a 5x8 area you can get chasm, magma, adamantite, cave lake, brook, flux, sedimentary layer, sand and trees. Alternatively you could fit all the above except cave lake to only 5x2. The selection in the picture was chosen to have more chalk in the area.

--[[User:Elmokki|Elmokki]] 07:41, 25 December 2007 (EST)

==== The Realm of Forever Start Seed #3094533934 ====

[[Image:The_Realm_of_Forever_Start_3094533934.png|643px]]

Ok, I cheated and used Sekret Projekt but hey! Look what I found!

River: Check

Magma: Well damn, someone just pointed out to me that the ~ was blue not red. I hadn't noticed. No magma here unfortunately :(

Iron: Lots of magnetite, check

Flux: Check and double check

Sand: Aww, none here

Adamantine and Pits: They're here too, check

Chasm: There's the end of one far to the east, so check.

Coal: Well, we have lignite, lots of lignite. Does that count? Check.

Trees: The whole SE is covered in them, check.

Can't get much better than this guys. Oh yeah, there was a Giant Cave Swallowman, about 10 Troglodites, 8 Naked Mole Dogs, and a giant mole just south of where I started. I'd get traps up stat if I were you.

Nothing else follows. --[[User:Chthon|Chthon]] 11:30, 25 December 2007 (EST)

==== The Cyclopean Planet of Tempests Seed #697480228 ====

[[Image:The_Cyclopean_Planet_of_Tempests_697480228_Start.png|643px]]

Ok, I swear this one is good. I double checked it even.

River: Nothing at all above ground, seek the cave river (not shown, center of the map with a chasm at the north end under the magma) or the Cave lake at the far north

Magma: Just south of the cave lake, at the same Z-level even.

Adamantine: Lots of it. The upper parts are very shallow in the south, but you have at least 5 Z-levels before you uncover the pits. I estimate about 50 tiles of easily minable Adamantine ore before you release the demons.

Flux: Lots of Marble. I mean lots. If you are in marble in the south, you are near the adamantine.

Iron: No magnetite, but quite a few hematite veins higher up. Don't dig too deep or you will miss them.

Chasm: One at the end of the cave river, but that's it.

Sand: Still no sand. For all you glass lovers; Sorry, keep looking.

Coal: None, sorry but burnables are lacking on this map. Import what you need for iron. It's cheap anyways.

Trees: A few. Seriously, it's not a lot, but it'll keep you going.

Hunting: If you want to train up some crossbowmen and at the same time find food, this area is home to Hoary Marmots. Eat up!

Final notes: This has a more traditional cliff face look to it. It faces south with the high ground on the north. It's narrow, but I like it. All the major features but the pits are towards the middle Z-levels, so be careful you don't dig in from the bottom.

--[[User:Chthon|Chthon]] 13:18, 25 December 2007 (EST)

==== Just another seed, I thought wold be nice (1291184248, v.33g) ====

[[Image:Seed1291184248.PNG|500px]]

About features:
*brook
*magma pipe
*adamantium (near lower left)
*chasm (two of them, actually)
*heavy forested tiles
*hematite (a lot of it)
*magnetite (at least one big cluster)
*bituminous coal (not that much as hematite, but still)
*flux (marble, lower right)
*sand (alongside brook, not much)

*warm climate
*most dangerous animals - wolves
*access to all civs

Starting in the {{K|F2}} biome will give you almost ideal starting position near the cliff wall, surrounded by trees, with a couple of nearby pools for your fish lovers (turtles, yay!).

==== A tiny but interesting location. Seed 1 ====

[[Image:0x517A5D_seed1_3x2_hard.PNG]]

The aquifer does not cover the whole map; the haunted area doesn't either. I, of course, use my [[Utilities#Regional Prospector|Regional Prospector]] utility. —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 15:15, 30 December 2007 (EST)

==== Doubleplusgood Seed #3480279584 ====

[[Image:Doubleplusgood.png]]

This is a rather cozy 5x4 area, it has all the basics, except for sand and surface river.

* A ridiculous amount of adamantite (at least 3 levels of demon-free ore for a total of 215 units, 3 more levels with stairs (looks cool) away from the pits with probably at least twice that amount - i counted nearly 150 in a single level, and it got denser further down... the stairs connected to the pits themselves which don't have that much adamantite, maybe a hundred more or so. That's a lot!
* Magma pocket thingy (underground, doesn't extend all the way to the bottom either. about 4 levels high)
* Underground river
* A big cave lake (exposed)
* Some magnetite (single level, only one of 'em big round glob cluster things)
* Plenty of vegetation
* Round chasm
* Many ores, like copper and gold
* Tons (and I mean TONS) of limestone. Literally half the map.
* Tons of obsidian if you care about that. Literally, the other half of the map.
* If you need charcoal just burn the damn trees.

It's possible that you can find more iron ore if you extend the map to the east, north and or/south.[[User:Sergius|Sergius]] 00:13, 5 January 2008 (EST)

==== Jackpot Seed: #7777777 ====

6 rejects, made on Vista with version 33g.

[[Image:Jackpot.png]]

Very nice location with damn near everything in an average-size region.

* '''Sand:''' In the bottom-left swamp area, also some at the top-middle.
* '''Trees & Plants:''' Yes.
* '''Flux:''' Some limestone up at the top-middle. Extend north to get more.
* '''Iron Ore:''' Should be a big splotch of magnetite up in the limestone.
* '''River:''' Above and below ground.
* '''Adamantine:''' Yes.
* '''Chasm:''' Yes.
* '''Magma:''' Yes; only four layers, though.
* '''Rock:''' All four types.
* '''Neighboring Civs:''' All four.

Only thing it doesn't have is a cave lake.--[[User:Untelligent|Untelligent]] 15:17, 6 January 2008 (EST)

====Near-Perfect Seed?====

3636098340

120 rejects, made on XP with 33g.

[[Image:Perfect.png]]

This location can be extended another row to the North to greatly increase the number of trees.

* '''Trees & Plants:''' Heavily forested, thick shrubs
* '''Flux:''' Unknown
* '''Ore:''' All but platinum
* '''Water:''' Brook, underground lake + river, lake is exposed
* '''Adamantine:''' Yes
* '''Chasm:''' Yes
* '''Magma:''' Yes, exposed
* '''Neighboring Civs:''' Unknown, believed to be all

:You forgot just one thing: THE SEED ITSELF--[[User:Dorten|Dorten]] 23:13, 17 January 2008 (EST)
:You saw nothing!--[[User:Mephisto|Mephisto]] 01:58, 18 January 2008 (EST)

40d:Pregenerated worlds

2008-01-18T01:24:23Z

Mephisto:

'''Pregenerated worlds''' are worlds that have been created and uploaded for use by others, so they may skip world generation, and are independent of version{{v|0.27.169.33g}}. '''Seeds''' are numbers that tell the world generator which world to create. These are usually given for particularly good [[location]]s, or for quick generating time. Below is a list of worlds and seeds that users have made, along with any interesting locations. Feel free to share and add to the list.

== World generation changes ==

Versions 0.27.169.33f and 0.27.169.33g changed the way world generation works slightly, so seeds from earlier versions will generate different worlds; these are archived at [[Seed archive]]. Random and custom names do not affect world generation.

== Downloadable worlds ==

Downloadable worlds are worlds which have been generated and then compressed into a single archive file for sharing over the internet. Download the file then extract the folder inside the archive into your /data/save folder in order to use it.

=== The Absolute Planet of Dawns ===

Direct download available here: [http://rapidshare.com/files/83977216/The_Absolute_Planet_of_Dawns.zip The Absolute Planet of Dawns] 
Download includes a list of magma and non-magma sites, each with (non-spoily) description and location map. I've made an attempt to provide a wide range of fortress locations, from mountain canyons to haunted glaciers to resource-rich forests. 

(version v0.27.169.33g, seed 2664204674, provided by Fedor)

=== The Future Dimensions ===
'''Download:''' http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PPYJXSDH 

[[Image:Fibonacci.PNG|thumb|500px]]

'''Map features:''' 
Small 3 by 8 (So good frame rate on older computers) 
Magma (obviously) 
Sand (top of map) 
Flux 
Trees (top) 
Adamantine (bottom right) 
Demon/Eerie glowing pits (bottom right) 
Chasm (2 z-levels down in the top of map with iron man and more) 
You can add the river by expanding two squares right (those of you with fast machines) 

=== Lathondur Minbaz ===

Direct download available here: [http://morlark.uwcs.co.uk/misc/region1.tar.gz Lathondur Minbaz]

=== The Legendary Ever-Realm ===
'''Download:''' http://hyperfileshare.com/d/f91fae26

[[Image:4265985437.PNG|thumb|500px]]

Has pretty much every feature in a small 4x5 area. 
'''Features:''' 
- Magma on lower left 
- Small cave river on lower left 
- Edge of chasm on far upper left corner 
- Pits & Adamantine on upper left 
- Sand and trees on far right green tile 
- Plenty of flux and iron for steel production 
- Representatives of all four major rock types: 
1. sedimentary - dolomite, claystone 
2. igneous extrusive - andesite 
3. igneous intrusive - granite, gabbro 
4. metamorphic - marble, schist 

=== Smata Sagus, The Realms Of Dawn ===

'''[http://dwarffiles.wimbli.com/smata_sagus.zip Download it here]''' 
Seed: 324316224 (6 rejects) 
Made in Dwarf Fortress v0.27.169.33g, created with a Core 2 Duo processor in WinXP. Found using the wonderful [[Utilities#Regional_Prospector|Regional Prospector]].

[[Image:Smata_Sagus_location.png|thumb|500px]]

This is a loaded 3x6 location with basically every major resource. No chasm, cliffs are no taller than 2, surroundings are Temperate and Mirthful. 
If you don't need a river, you can trim it to 3x5 by taking off the bottom edge and still get everything else.

* '''Adamantine''': towards the bottom left.
* '''Magma''': underground, located on layers 140-143.
* '''River''': a small curve of it in the lower right corner.
* '''Trees''': More than you'll ever use.
* '''Sand''': Yep.
* '''Soil''': Yep.
* '''Iron''': Magnetite patches near the surface, along with an occasional hematite and limonite vein.
* '''Flux''': More than you'll ever use.
* '''Fuel''': Plenty.
* '''Bauxite''': Several patches near the magma.
* '''Obsidian''': Available on the left side.

* '''Neighboring Civs''': All.

=== Ruspospazmon, The Eternal Windy Planes ===

'''[http://dwarffiles.wimbli.com/ruspospazmon.zip Download it here]''' 
Seed: 2851906008 (11 rejects) 
Made in Dwarf Fortress v0.27.169.33g, created with a Core 2 Duo processor in WinXP. Found using the wonderful [[Utilities#Regional_Prospector|Regional Prospector]].

[[Image:Ruspospazmon_location.png|thumb|500px]]

This is a 4x3 location with most major resources. No chasm, cliffs are very tall (6-9), surroundings are Scorching and Calm. There is a small spot of aquifer, just enough to be potentially useful while still out of the way. 
If you need a river, you can expand the selection north to include some river fingers and possibly west to also include a stretch of normal river. This will likely include more aquifer though.

* '''Adamantine''': towards the bottom left.
* '''Magma''': underground, located on layers 140-143.
* '''River''': only if you expand the area slightly.
* '''Aquifer''': There's a tiny area of it towards the top left on a few levels.
* '''Trees''': Yep.
* '''Sand''': Yep.
* '''Soil''': Yep.
* '''Iron''': Yes, towards the top and middle.
* '''Flux''': Yep.
* '''Fuel''': Yep.

* '''Neighboring Civs''': All.

=== Emeecamo Ametha, The Eternal Universe of Wind ===

'''[http://dwarffiles.wimbli.com/emeecamo_ametha.zip Download it here]''' 
Seed: 2135737780 (6 rejects) 
Made in Dwarf Fortress v0.27.169.33g, created with a Core 2 Duo processor in WinXP. Found using the wonderful [[Utilities#Regional_Prospector|Regional Prospector]].

[[Image:Emeecamo_Ametha_location.png|thumb|500px]]

This is a nice 3x3 (or potentially 2x2) location with almost all major resources. No chasm or sand available, cliffs are no higher than 1 (!), surroundings are Scorching and Untamed Wilds. The brook has a semi-waterfall where it drops 1 Z-level, causing a somewhat odd scene. 
If you don't need a river or as many trees, you could actually make it a 2x2 area instead with all other resources by cutting off the bottom and right edges.

* '''Adamantine''': in the middle.
* '''Magma''': Upper left corner, the top is fully open to the ground.
* '''River''': Yes, with a waterfall.
* '''Trees''': Limited, but enough to make do.
* '''Soil''': Yep.
* '''Iron''': Plenty.
* '''Flux''': More chalk than you could ever need.
* '''Fuel''': Plenty.
* '''Bauxite''': Some, check bottom middle of map one level below the lone hill.

* '''Neighboring Civs''': All.

== Seeds ==

Seeded worlds are special "codes" which tell the game's pseudo-random number generator (a sophisticated mathematical function which produces numbers that seem random) where to begin generating a world. Because the random number generator is actually just a mathematical function and thus always produces the same result when given a certain input, you can "seed" the generator to produce an entire series of random numbers on another computer that are exactly the same as they were originally produced on the first computer.

To use a seeded world, select ''Create a New World'' during the main menu, then hit {{key|s}} to specify a seed. Type in the seed and hit {{key|Enter}}, then hit {{key|Enter}} one more time to begin generation. It will still take the normal amount of time to generate the world, and you will still have rejects before the world is produced.

The random seed used also determines the world's name if a random name is selected. This disrupts the sequence of psudeorandom numbers. As a consequence, a seed with a player-given name will result in a completely different world than the same seed with a random name. Seed publishers should specify whether a random or a given name was selected when generating the world.

Mineral content is determined at the time it is allocated, (essentially when you dig near it). Accordingly the map seed determines the layers and therefore the probability of certain rocks/ores, but the ore veins themselves will vary.

A further warning: there may be other things that affect world generation, such as your operating system. If you generate a world different from one described here, with exactly the same seed, please mention it with the relevant details (operating system including any service packs, processor type, and game version) on the [[Talk:Pregenerated worlds|talk page]].

The following seeds were generated with version '''0.23.169.33g''' or later. Seeds for earlier versions are located at the [[seed archive]].

=== Quick generating seeds ===

====Chicken Seed: #389311515====
[[Image:Chickenseedfix.png]]

Only one reject. The location shown above has some magma right next to a brook... Lots of trees and plants, and plenty of sand. If you don't feel like you need the hills to the south, you can shrink the area a bit, there's nothing much else down that way.

=== Seeds and locations with many features (may run slower on older computers) ===
====Seed # 264622237====
This seed has 1 decent starting location, with the posibility of war with the local Kobolds, and one really good one with a cave and a cyclops and 12 giant spiders.

'''Volcano 1:'''

[[Image:V_33g_Seed_264622237_Volcano_1.png|500px]]

This location has Magma in the top middle, pits in the bottom middle (sometimes gets cut off, extend down one if it does it to you), chasm in the lower left, and iron + flux all over.

This map contains no flowing water in spite of the river shown. It does not exist, I checked. Your best bet would be to use the infinate water bug to create a lake, and keep control of it with a floodgate.

There is also no sand at all. Sorry folks, you gotta import glass.

Finally, there are no trees. For some bizarre reason, when I loaded the whole map, every last tile, it had trees everywhere, but if I cut anything off, the trees vanished. Your results may vary as this is odd IMO.

'''Volcano 2:'''

[[Image:V_33g_Seed_264622237_Volcano_2.png|500px]]

Now this location is nice. It's kinda cold, so bring a jacket.

You have unguarded magma in the upper left corner. Go for it as soon as you can make steel.

Lower-middle right you will have the caves. Many enemies there. Careful though, they are just a warm up! Directly below you have a pit and adamantine. Also, the majority of the iron is around the caves, so you will have to fight for it.

Just to the left of the caves, a level or 2 above the pits is an underground lake. It's not infinate, but it should last you, plus there are many lakes around, and when they freeze, they refill. You shouldn't be hurting for water for a while.

There is sand scattered around all over. If that wasn't enough with the magma, there is more sand on the shore of the underground lake. Can we say dwarven catapults throwing stones from glass houses? Heh heh heh.

Lots of farmable soil, but no indigenous plants to speak of. Build a shack and farm indoors early on till you can get other kinds of seeds.

Flux? Nope. Sorry. Import what you can, bring steel if you can. Wood? Ain't got that either. Get your magma smelter and glass furnace up fast so you can start producing trade goods. Without them you won't be able to import the wood you need for coal and flux for steel. Iron supplies as I said are mostly guarded by the Cyclops and crew as well. This could be a challenge for you, but there is plenty of copper and cassiterite to go around, import some tin, and combine it with some bismuth and you can have a cheap bronze as well.

All in all, I like the second one better of the 2. Both have nice features, but are missing key items.
This was generated in .33g, and it seems that seeds were broken again. Hopefully more people come out with their seeds soon :)
--[[User:Chthon|Chthon]] 19:46, 23 December 2007 (EST)

==== Seed #223885 - Pretty much what I have been waiting for ====

[[Image:seed223885-awesomeseed.JPG|643px]]

In a 5x8 area you can get chasm, magma, adamantite, cave lake, brook, flux, sedimentary layer, sand and trees. Alternatively you could fit all the above except cave lake to only 5x2. The selection in the picture was chosen to have more chalk in the area.

--[[User:Elmokki|Elmokki]] 07:41, 25 December 2007 (EST)

==== The Realm of Forever Start Seed #3094533934 ====

[[Image:The_Realm_of_Forever_Start_3094533934.png|643px]]

Ok, I cheated and used Sekret Projekt but hey! Look what I found!

River: Check

Magma: Well damn, someone just pointed out to me that the ~ was blue not red. I hadn't noticed. No magma here unfortunately :(

Iron: Lots of magnetite, check

Flux: Check and double check

Sand: Aww, none here

Adamantine and Pits: They're here too, check

Chasm: There's the end of one far to the east, so check.

Coal: Well, we have lignite, lots of lignite. Does that count? Check.

Trees: The whole SE is covered in them, check.

Can't get much better than this guys. Oh yeah, there was a Giant Cave Swallowman, about 10 Troglodites, 8 Naked Mole Dogs, and a giant mole just south of where I started. I'd get traps up stat if I were you.

Nothing else follows. --[[User:Chthon|Chthon]] 11:30, 25 December 2007 (EST)

==== The Cyclopean Planet of Tempests Seed #697480228 ====

[[Image:The_Cyclopean_Planet_of_Tempests_697480228_Start.png|643px]]

Ok, I swear this one is good. I double checked it even.

River: Nothing at all above ground, seek the cave river (not shown, center of the map with a chasm at the north end under the magma) or the Cave lake at the far north

Magma: Just south of the cave lake, at the same Z-level even.

Adamantine: Lots of it. The upper parts are very shallow in the south, but you have at least 5 Z-levels before you uncover the pits. I estimate about 50 tiles of easily minable Adamantine ore before you release the demons.

Flux: Lots of Marble. I mean lots. If you are in marble in the south, you are near the adamantine.

Iron: No magnetite, but quite a few hematite veins higher up. Don't dig too deep or you will miss them.

Chasm: One at the end of the cave river, but that's it.

Sand: Still no sand. For all you glass lovers; Sorry, keep looking.

Coal: None, sorry but burnables are lacking on this map. Import what you need for iron. It's cheap anyways.

Trees: A few. Seriously, it's not a lot, but it'll keep you going.

Hunting: If you want to train up some crossbowmen and at the same time find food, this area is home to Hoary Marmots. Eat up!

Final notes: This has a more traditional cliff face look to it. It faces south with the high ground on the north. It's narrow, but I like it. All the major features but the pits are towards the middle Z-levels, so be careful you don't dig in from the bottom.

--[[User:Chthon|Chthon]] 13:18, 25 December 2007 (EST)

==== Just another seed, I thought wold be nice (1291184248, v.33g) ====

[[Image:Seed1291184248.PNG|500px]]

About features:
*brook
*magma pipe
*adamantium (near lower left)
*chasm (two of them, actually)
*heavy forested tiles
*hematite (a lot of it)
*magnetite (at least one big cluster)
*bituminous coal (not that much as hematite, but still)
*flux (marble, lower right)
*sand (alongside brook, not much)

*warm climate
*most dangerous animals - wolves
*access to all civs

Starting in the {{K|F2}} biome will give you almost ideal starting position near the cliff wall, surrounded by trees, with a couple of nearby pools for your fish lovers (turtles, yay!).

==== A tiny but interesting location. Seed 1 ====

[[Image:0x517A5D_seed1_3x2_hard.PNG]]

The aquifer does not cover the whole map; the haunted area doesn't either. I, of course, use my [[Utilities#Regional Prospector|Regional Prospector]] utility. —[[User:0x517A5D|0x517A5D]] 15:15, 30 December 2007 (EST)

==== Doubleplusgood Seed #3480279584 ====

[[Image:Doubleplusgood.png]]

This is a rather cozy 5x4 area, it has all the basics, except for sand and surface river.

* A ridiculous amount of adamantite (at least 3 levels of demon-free ore for a total of 215 units, 3 more levels with stairs (looks cool) away from the pits with probably at least twice that amount - i counted nearly 150 in a single level, and it got denser further down... the stairs connected to the pits themselves which don't have that much adamantite, maybe a hundred more or so. That's a lot!
* Magma pocket thingy (underground, doesn't extend all the way to the bottom either. about 4 levels high)
* Underground river
* A big cave lake (exposed)
* Some magnetite (single level, only one of 'em big round glob cluster things)
* Plenty of vegetation
* Round chasm
* Many ores, like copper and gold
* Tons (and I mean TONS) of limestone. Literally half the map.
* Tons of obsidian if you care about that. Literally, the other half of the map.
* If you need charcoal just burn the damn trees.

It's possible that you can find more iron ore if you extend the map to the east, north and or/south.[[User:Sergius|Sergius]] 00:13, 5 January 2008 (EST)

==== Jackpot Seed: #7777777 ====

6 rejects, made on Vista with version 33g.

[[Image:Jackpot.png]]

Very nice location with damn near everything in an average-size region.

* '''Sand:''' In the bottom-left swamp area, also some at the top-middle.
* '''Trees & Plants:''' Yes.
* '''Flux:''' Some limestone up at the top-middle. Extend north to get more.
* '''Iron Ore:''' Should be a big splotch of magnetite up in the limestone.
* '''River:''' Above and below ground.
* '''Adamantine:''' Yes.
* '''Chasm:''' Yes.
* '''Magma:''' Yes; only four layers, though.
* '''Rock:''' All four types.
* '''Neighboring Civs:''' All four.

Only thing it doesn't have is a cave lake.--[[User:Untelligent|Untelligent]] 15:17, 6 January 2008 (EST)

====Near-Perfect Seed?====

120 rejects, made on XP with 33g.

[[Image:Perfect.png]]

This location can be extended another row to the North to greatly increase the number of trees.

* '''Trees & Plants:''' Heavily forested, thick shrubs
* '''Flux:''' Unknown
* '''Ore:''' All but platinum
* '''Water:''' Brook, underground lake + river, lake is exposed
* '''Adamantine:''' Yes
* '''Chasm:''' Yes
* '''Magma:''' Yes, exposed
* '''Neighboring Civs:''' Unknown, believed to be all

File:Perfect.png

2008-01-18T01:14:05Z

Mephisto: For the Pregenerated Worlds page

For the Pregenerated Worlds page

40d Talk:World generation

2007-11-09T21:09:57Z

Mephisto: Sorry for all of the edits

If you guys can think of anything to add to this, let me know. [[User:Schm0|Schm0]] 19:58, 30 October 2007 (EDT)

Oh yeah, and I can't get the last graphic to show, even though it exists. [[User:Schm0|Schm0]] 20:17, 30 October 2007 (EDT)

It took me *way* too long to figure out, but I know why the last picture isnt showing. It has "ad" in the URL, and you are using AdBlock.
:Thank you, anonymous. :)

From my own little experiments, it looks like the /wait commands aren't needed. There may be a difference in OS here, but under Windows XP Home SP2, I can create a .bat file with

dwarfort.exe -gen 1

dwarfort.exe -gen 2

right after the other. When one creation ends, the window closes and the next begins. The two [RANDOM]s aren't required, either. If the .bat is in the same folder as your executable, you don't have to go through the whole "C:\df\whatever" tree, either. [[User:Mephisto|Mephisto]] 16:08, 9 November 2007 (EST)

40d Talk:World generation

2007-11-09T21:08:49Z

Mephisto:

If you guys can think of anything to add to this, let me know. [[User:Schm0|Schm0]] 19:58, 30 October 2007 (EDT)

Oh yeah, and I can't get the last graphic to show, even though it exists. [[User:Schm0|Schm0]] 20:17, 30 October 2007 (EDT)

It took me *way* too long to figure out, but I know why the last picture isnt showing. It has "ad" in the URL, and you are using AdBlock.
:Thank you, anonymous. :)

From my own little experiments, it looks like the /wait commands aren't needed. There may be a difference in OS here, but under Windows XP Home SP2, I can create a .bat file with
dwarfort.exe -gen 1
dwarfort.exe -gen 2
right after the other. When one creation ends, the window closes and the next begins. The two [RANDOM]s aren't required, either. If the .bat is in the same folder as your executable, you don't have to go through the whole "C:\df\whatever" tree, either. [[User:Mephisto|Mephisto]] 16:08, 9 November 2007 (EST)

40d Talk:World generation

2007-11-09T21:08:33Z

Mephisto:

If you guys can think of anything to add to this, let me know. [[User:Schm0|Schm0]] 19:58, 30 October 2007 (EDT)

Oh yeah, and I can't get the last graphic to show, even though it exists. [[User:Schm0|Schm0]] 20:17, 30 October 2007 (EDT)

It took me *way* too long to figure out, but I know why the last picture isnt showing. It has "ad" in the URL, and you are using AdBlock.
:Thank you, anonymous. :)

From my own little experiments, it looks like the /wait commands aren't needed. There may be a difference in OS here, but under Windows XP Home SP2, I can create a .bat file with
dwarfort.exe -gen 1
dwarfort.exe -gen 2
right after the other. When one creation ends, the window closes and the next begins. The two [RANDOM]s aren't required, either. If the .bat is in the same folder as your executable, you don't have to go through the whole "C:\df\whatever" stuff, either. [[User:Mephisto|Mephisto]] 16:08, 9 November 2007 (EST)

40d Talk:Smelting

2007-11-07T14:40:46Z

Mephisto:

How does the melt option for items work, If I set things to melt and pick melt and item for the smelter it just seems to ignore it and pick ones I haven't marked. But if it works like dump I have no idea how to set a zone for it. --[[User:Shades|Shades]] 17:37, 4 November 2007 (EST)

:Really? mine only melts the items I checked, at least the last time I checked. (I hope). Perhaps it is a bug. --[[User:Soyweiser|Soyweiser]] 07:11, 7 November 2007 (EST)

=== Multiple Bars ===

Anyone else notice that when you smelt a multiple bar ore you alwas get the copper in the case of galenga? Perhaps the same is true for tetrdite. At the moment it looks like you get only one bar, while you have a chance for to. At least in my experience. --[[User:Soyweiser|Soyweiser]] 07:11, 7 November 2007 (EST)

===Word Choice===
"Note that galena smelted alone often produces lead which is only used in producing lay pewter, a low quality ore"
Pewter != ore. I would have fixed it, but I'm not sure of the proper wording. [[User:Mephisto|Mephisto]] 09:40, 7 November 2007 (EST)

40d:Tilesets

2007-11-04T05:05:53Z

Mephisto: /* What tiles are used for what */

''You may be looking for the [[List of user character sets]] or [[Graphics sets]].''

Graphics in Dwarf Fortress are implemented using [[Tilesets]]. Users create custom tilesets for a number of reasons, including increased visibility, aesthetics, or small size. Tilesets come in two flavors: "'''character sets'''" (also called "regular" or simply "tilesets", and previously called "standard tilesets") and "'''graphics sets'''", previously and somewhat confusingly called "object tilesets".

== Overview and installation ==

=== Character sets ===

A character set is an image in BMP format that contains the 256 different tiles, corresponding to the IBM Code-page 457 ASCII+Extended characters, which are used to display the main graphics. [[List of user character sets|Here is the list]] of user-made standard tilesets. To install any of these tilesets, follow these steps:

# Download the tileset.
# Convert it into a 24-bit BMP file. Do NOT just change the extension to .bmp; you must use a program like MS paint to save it as a .bmp.
# Put it in the data/art directory of your Dwarf Fortress installation.
# Open data/init/init.txt
# If you want to use the tileset in fullscreen mode, locate and modify the [FULLSCREENX:800], [FULLSCREENY:600], and [FULLFONT:curses_800x600.bmp] configuration lines to match the specifications from the [[List of user tilesets|tileset list]]. The FULLFONT directive should match the filename of the tileset you downloaded. If you want to use the tileset in windowed mode, search for the [WINDOWEDX:640], [WINDOWEDY:300], and [FONT:curses_640x300.bmp] lines and change them to the correct values.
# It is also recommended you change [BLACK_SPACE:NO] to [BLACK_SPACE:YES] to prevent stretching of the graphics.
# Save the file, then you're ready to play!

=== Graphics sets ===

Character sets only change certain graphics, while others are left out. The confusingly-named [[graphics sets]] are used to change the appearance of [[creatures]] in the game, such as dwarves and unicorns. These are usually designed to work together with certain characrter sets. The Dystopian Rhetoric graphics set comes with it's own DF installer; to install any others (or to install that one manually), you follow a similiar process to the above:

# Download the object tileset. (The list is [[Graphics sets|here]].)
# Convert it into a 24-bit BMP file using your favorite image editing program.
# Put it in the raw/graphics/example directory of your Dwarf Fortress installation, so it overwrites the existing file.
# Open /raw/graphics/example_text.txt
# Replace the contents with the appropriate text for the object tileset you downloaded. Save the file.
# Open data/init/init.txt
# Locate the [GRAPHICS:NO] line and change it to [GRAPHICS:YES].
# Change the resolution and font directories as above, this time for the lines starting with GRAPHICS instead. So, if you want to use fullscreen mode, modify [GRAPHICS_FULLSCREENX:800], [GRAPHICS_FULLSCREENY:600], and [GRAPHICS_FULLFONT:curses_800x600.bmp] to suit the standard tileset you want to use. For windowed mode, the lines to change are [GRAPHICS_WINDOWEDX:640], [GRAPHICS_WINDOWEDY:300], and [GRAPHICS_FONT:curses_640x300.bmp].
# Be sure to change [GRAPHICS_BLACK_SPACE] to the same setting as [BLACK_SPACE].
# Save the file, then you're ready to get mangled by a great-looking elephant!

== Custom tileset design ==

The gameplay viewport is 80 characters wide, and 25 characters tall. Therefore, a tileset's target resolution will be TILE_X_LENGTH * 80 by TILE_Y_LENGTH * 25. Since the tileset is arranged into a 16x16 grid of tiles (256 tiles total), the tileset image size will be TILE_X_LENGTH * 16 by TILE_Y_LENGTH * 16. Here are some common tile sizes:

* A tileset with 10x12 tiles will be 160x192 pixels large, and the target resolution will be 800x300.
* A tileset with 16x16 tiles will be 256x256 pixels large, and the target resolution will be 1280x400.

When creating a custom tileset, it's often easiest to start with an existing one, and edit it to your liking. Tilesets generally fall into three categories: rectangular tilesets, square tilesets, and 16x16 square tilesets. Rectangular tilesets have tiles that are taller than they are wide. The text in these tilesets is generally easier to read, but the map appears squished horizontally. Square tilesets usually provide more attractive graphics, but are slightly less readable. The 16x16 square tilesets are just a sub-set, which are grouped together because most [[Object Tilesets]] use 16x16 tiles. The graphics in Dwarf Fortress can be somewhat diversified and enhanced through the use of graphics sets.

Many tiles are used by the game in multiple ways, and this makes customizing the graphics difficult. The same icon is used for chairs and the north end of one-tile-wide vertical bridges. Ashes and broken arrows look the same, and many game entities (such as levers, floodgates, bags, and bins) share characters that are also used in Dwarven names or other bits of text in the interface.

=== How colors other than white and magenta work ===

When the game draws a tile, it will select a foreground color, a background color, and a tile based on the item being drawn. The background color will be used in place of magenta (Hex code #FF00FF or RGB 255 0 255). All other colors in the tile will be treated as a mask against the foreground color. Pure white (#FFFFFF) will always show the foreground color, while light grey (#CCCCCC) will be a slightly darker version of the foreground color, and dark grey (#888888) will be a dark version of the foreground color. Black (#000000) will always be black. It is impossible to use different shades of the background color.

In general, just remember these rules:

* Bright magenta (#FF00FF) is the background.
* Bright white (#FFFFFF) is the foreground.
* Darker shades of white and grey (#C0C0C0, #808080, etc) will display darker shades of the foreground color. It is possible to use any shade of grey, including ones like #333333 and #C2C2C2.
* Black (#000000) will always be black.
* It's probably best to avoid color in normal tilesets.

For an example, the game is drawing an exposed turquoise cluster with color bright blue (#0000FF). While loading the tile image, it encounters the color light grey (#CCCCCC). The color used in its place will be:

{| style="margin-bottom:20px; text-align:left; width:90%"
|-
! Color component || Foreground color || Color mask from tile || Calculation in hex || Calculation in decimal
|-
| Red || #0000FF || #CCCCCC || 0016 * CC16 / 10016 = 0016 || 0 * 204 / 256 = 0
|-
| Green || #0000FF || #CCCCCC ||0016 * CC16 / 10016 = 0016 || 0 * 204 / 256 = 0
|-
| Blue || #0000FF || #CCCCCC || FF16 * CC16 / 10016 = CB16 || 255 * 204 / 256 = 203
|-
| Final Color || || || #0000CB || 0 0 203
|}

Color masks with inequal amounts of R, G and B are calculated in the same fashion. The game is now drawing a speardwarf with color brown (#C0C000). It encounters the color cyan while loading the tile (#008080). The color used instead of cyan will be:

{| style="margin-bottom:20px; text-align:left; width:90%"
|-
! Color component || Foreground color || Color mask from tile || Calculation in hex || Calculation in decimal
|-
| Red || #C0C000 || #008080 || C016 * 0016 / 10016 = 0016 || 192 * 0 / 256 = 0
|-
| Green || #C0C000 || #008080 ||C016 * 8016 / 10016 = 6016 || 192 * 128 / 256 = 96
|-
| Blue || #C0C000 || #008080 || 0016 * 8016 / 10016 = 0016 || 0 * 128 / 256 = 0
|-
| Final Color || || || #006000 || 0 96 0
|}

As illustrated by this example, colors in the tileset can result in colors that aren't in the foreground color or the tile graphic. In this case, a brown foreground color with a cyan pixel color in the tileset results in a final color of green.

Theoretically, the way the game handles color masks could be used to display different graphics for items that use the same tile (but whose respective colors use different color component channels). For example, if a bright red object and a bright blue object use the same tile, the tile can use bright red for all pixels that only the red object uses, bright blue for all pixels only the blue object uses, and bright magenta (but NOT #FF00FF, it would have to be #FE00FE or something similar) for all pixels both objects use. In this fashion the two objects that share a tile would look completely different. In practice however, this is probably impossible because so many objects share the same tile, the chances of the potential foreground colors sharing a red, green, or blue color component are too great.

== What tiles are used for what ==

''''This section needs to be redone for the new DF version. Any Volunteers?''''

'''VERY IMPORTANT:''' Before removing ", others?" at the end, make absolutely sure that there are no other uses for the tile, and ''always'' add it if you are not absolutely sure that there are no other uses for the tile. Any edits not following this rule will get reverted.

Items marked with * can have their tile changed in the raw files.
Items marked with # can have their tile replaced by an [[Object Tileset]] image. This includes all non-vermin creatures (not sure about vermins).

{|
|-
|||||----- Row 01 (000-015) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| || No use
|-
| {{TST|☺}} || Civilian dwarves#
|-
| {{TST|☻}} || Military dwarves#
|-
| {{TST|♥}} || Dimple Cups*, others?
|-
| {{TST|♦}} || Cut gems, large gems, others?
|-
| {{TST|♣}} || Tower-caps*, Acacia trees*, Mangrove trees*, Maple trees*, quarry bushes(*?), others(no other tree)?
|-
| {{TST|♠}} || Plump Helmets*, Oak trees(*?), quarry bush leaves(*?), others?
|-
| {{TST|•}} || Stone, solid workshop tile for several workshops like the magma smelter, lakes in main map, caves in the main map, others?
|-
| {{TST|◘}} || Solid workshop tile for several other workshops like the magma forge, tanner workshop, catapult cup, others?
|-
| {{TST|○}} || Well, bracelet, others?
|-
| {{TST|◙}} ||
|-
| {{TST|♂}} || Male sign, bags, others?
|-
| {{TST|♀}} || Female sign, amulet, others?
|-
| {{TST|♪}} ||
|-
| {{TST|♫}} || Armor stands, others?
|-
| {{TST|☼}} || Gems, coal, currency symbol, masterpiece quality symbol, turtle*, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 02 (016-031) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|►}} || Head of ballista facing east, others?
|-
| {{TST|◄}} || Head of ballista facing west, others?
|-
| {{TST|↕}} ||
|-
| {{TST|‼}} || Cages, on-fire symbol, others?
|-
| {{TST|¶}} || Mugs, largest elven cities?, others?
|-
| {{TST|§}} || Restraints, others?
|-
| {{TST|▬}} || Logs, others?
|-
| {{TST|↨}} || Some tree types, others?
|-
| {{TST|↑}} || Interface text (bridge and aqueduct direction), others?
|-
| {{TST|↓}} || Hungry/thirsty/drowsy/unhappy indicator, bridge placement raising direction indicator, others?
|-
| {{TST|→}} || Interface text (bridge and aqueduct direction), others?
|-
| {{TST|←}} || Interface text (bridge and aqueduct direction), others?
|-
| {{TST|∟}} || Withered plants, others?
|-
| {{TST|↔}} ||
|-
| {{TST|▲}} || Head of ballista facing north, tree?, ramp, others?
|-
| {{TST|▼}} || Head of ballista facing south, ramp, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 03 (032-047) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| || No use
|-
| {{TST|!}} || Strange mood mark, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|"}} || Shrub, quotation marks, kobold's glowing eyes*, others?
|-
| {{TST|#}} || Chasm, pits, Basalt wall, Sandstone wall, others?
|-
| {{TST|$}} || Coins, others?
|-
| {{TST|%}} || Prepared food, unknown underground area, siltstone, others?
|-
| {{TST|&}} || Demons#, others?
|-
| {{TST|'}} || Rough floors, unknown underground, others?
|-
| {{TST|(}} || Foreign object opening tag, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|)}} || Foreign object closing tag, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|*}} || Ore, superior quality tags, key reference, others?
|-
| {{TST|+}} || Smooth floors, injured status, finely-crafted tags, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|,}} || Rough floors, unknown underground, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|-}} || Scepters, arrows in flight, well-crafted tags, keyboard reference, others?
|-
| {{TST|.}} || Rough floors, text, unknown underground, others?
|-
| {{TST|/}} || Weapons, bolts, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 04 (048-063) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|0}} || Coffins, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|1}} ||
|-
| {{TST|2}} ||
|-
| {{TST|3}} ||
|-
| {{TST|4}} ||
|-
| {{TST|5}} ||
|-
| {{TST|6}} ||
|-
| {{TST|7}} ||
|-
| {{TST|8}} ||
|-
| {{TST|9}} ||
|-
| {{TST|:}} || Strawberries, plants (type?), snowstorms, others?
|-
| {{TST|;}} || Workshop(which ones?), others?
|-
| {{TST|<}} || Stairs, others?
|-
| {{TST|=}} || Stockpiles, Flint Wall, others?
|-
| {{TST|>}} || Stairs, others?
|-
| {{TST|?}} || "Task assigned" indicator, looking for path(?), others?
|-
|||||----- Row 05 (064-079) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|@}} || Sheriff#, berserk dwarf#, adventurer#, fortress guard#, royal guard#, dwarven merchants#, caravan guards#
|-
| {{TST|A}} || Alligator#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|B}} ||
|-
| {{TST|C}} || Cow#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|D}} || Dragon#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|E}} || Elf#, elephant#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|F}} ||
|-
| {{TST|G}} ||
|-
| {{TST|H}} ||
|-
| {{TST|I}} || Support, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|J}} ||
|-
| {{TST|K}} ||
|-
| {{TST|L}} || Leopard
|-
| {{TST|M}} || Magma man#, mule#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|N}} ||
|-
| {{TST|O}} || Trade depot post, detailing system, text, wall ends, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 06 (080-095) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|P}} ||
|-
| {{TST|Q}} ||
|-
| {{TST|R}} ||
|-
| {{TST|S}} || Sasquatch#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|T}} ||
|-
| {{TST|U}} || Human#, Unicorn#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|V}} ||
|-
| {{TST|W}} ||
|-
| {{TST|X}} || Bin, floodgate, shop post, nausea/winded/stunned/unconscious/migrant indicator, text, up/down stairs, others?
|-
| {{TST|Y}} ||
|-
| {{TST|Z}} ||
|-
| {{TST|[}} || Clothes, armor?, others?
|-
| {{TST|\}} ||
|-
| {{TST|]}} || Clothes?, armor?, others?
|-
| {{TST|^}} || Trap, pressure plate (trap?), others?
|-
| {{TST|_}} || Channel, text, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 07 (096-111) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|`}} || Rough floors, unknown underground, others?
|-
| {{TST|a}} || Antman?
|-
| {{TST|b}} || Batman?
|-
| {{TST|c}} || Cat#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|d}} || Dog#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|e}} ||
|-
| {{TST|f}} || Frogman#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|g}} || Goblin#, gremlin#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|h}} || Harpy#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|i}} ||
|-
| {{TST|j}} ||
|-
| {{TST|k}} || Kobold#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|l}} ||
|-
| {{TST|m}} || Mandrill#, mussel, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|n}} ||
|-
| {{TST|o}} || Well construction, bridge construction, text, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 08 (112-127) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|p}} ||
|-
| {{TST|q}} ||
|-
| {{TST|r}} ||
|-
| {{TST|s}} || Snakeman#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|t}} || Troglodyte#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|u}} ||
|-
| {{TST|v}} ||
|-
| {{TST|w}} ||
|-
| {{TST|x}} ||
|-
| {{TST|y}} ||
|-
| {{TST|z}} ||
|-
| {{TST|{}} ||
|-
| {{TST||}} ||
|-
| {{TST|}}} ||
|-
| {{TST|~}} || Unfinished rough stone road, river, magma, fluids, dirt road, farm construction, others?
|-
| {{TST|⌂}} || Animal trap, low mountains on world map, part of mechanic's workshop?, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 09 (128-143) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|Ç}} || Mechanisms, others?
|-
| {{TST|ü}} ||
|-
| {{TST|é}} ||
|-
| {{TST|â}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ä}} ||
|-
| {{TST|à}} ||
|-
| {{TST|å}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ç}} || Totems, text?, others?
|-
| {{TST|ê}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ë}} ||
|-
| {{TST|è}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ï}} ||
|-
| {{TST|î}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ì}} ||
|-
| {{TST|Ä}} ||
|-
| {{TST|Å}} || Idols, text, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 10 (144-159) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|É}} ||
|-
| {{TST|æ}} || Toys, others?
|-
| {{TST|Æ}} || Coffers, Quivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|ô}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ö}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ò}} || Unactivated levers, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|û}} || Bucket, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|ù}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ÿ}} ||
|-
| {{TST|Ö}} ||
|-
| {{TST|Ü}} ||
|-
| {{TST|¢}} ||
|-
| {{TST|£}} || Ore in walls, others?
|-
| {{TST|¥}} || Lobster*, others?
|-
| {{TST|₧}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ƒ}} ||
|-
|||||----- Row 11 (160-175) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|á}} ||
|-
| {{TST|í}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ó}} || Activated levers, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|ú}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ñ}} ||
|-
| {{TST|Ñ}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ª}} ||
|-
| {{TST|º}} || Cloth, others?
|-
| {{TST|¿}} || Instrument, others?
|-
| {{TST|⌐}} ||
|-
| {{TST|¬}} ||
|-
| {{TST|½}} ||
|-
| {{TST|¼}} ||
|-
| {{TST|¡}} || Flask, waterskin, others?
|-
| {{TST|«}} || Ballista arrow tail for west-facing ballistae, decoration mark, others?
|-
| {{TST|»}} || Ballista arrow tail for east-facing ballistae, decoration mark, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 12 (176-191) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|░}} || Partially dug rock, gases, workshop tiles(which ones?), others?
|-
| {{TST|▒}} || Partially dug rock, gases, workshop tiles(which ones)?, side tiles for catapult, window, others?
|-
| {{TST|▓}} || Partially dug rock, gases, workshop tiles(which ones)?, others?
|-
| {{TST|│}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|┤}} || Overworld rivers, top-right tile for Loom, others?
|-
| {{TST|╡}} || Tree in winter, part of bridge system, others?
|-
| {{TST|╢}} ||
|-
| {{TST|╖}} || Ends of smooth walls, Waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╕}} || Ends of smooth walls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╣}} || Walls, waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|║}} || Walls, bridges, waterfalls, wooden doors, others?
|-
| {{TST|╗}} || Walls, bridges, others?
|-
| {{TST|╝}} || Walls, bridges, others?
|-
| {{TST|╜}} || Ends of smooth walls, waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╛}} || Ends of smooth walls, others?
|-
| {{TST|┐}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 13 (192-207) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|└}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|┴}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|┬}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|├}} || Overworld rivers, top-left tile for Loom, others?
|-
| {{TST|─}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|┼}} || Doors, overworld rivers, (flashing) floor detailing/engraving in progress, others?
|-
| {{TST|╞}} || Bridges, trees in winter, catapult tile, others?
|-
| {{TST|╟}} ||
|-
| {{TST|╚}} || Walls, bridges, others?
|-
| {{TST|╔}} || Walls, bridges, others?
|-
| {{TST|╩}} || Walls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╦}} || Walls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╠}} || Walls, waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|═}} || Walls, bridges, planted fields, center catapult tile, others?
|-
| {{TST|╬}} || Walls, bridges, fortifications, (flashing) wall detailing/engraving/fortifying in progress, others?
|-
| {{TST|╧}} ||
|-
|||||----- Row 14 (208-223) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|╨}} || Bridges, waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╤}} || Table, others?
|-
| {{TST|╥}} || Chairs, bridges, waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╙}} || Ends of smooth walls, waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╘}} || Ends of smooth walls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╒}} || Ends of smooth walls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╓}} || Ends of smooth walls, waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╫}} || Some types of floodgates (metal? wood?)?, others?
|-
| {{TST|╪}} || Some types of doors (metal?), others?
|-
| {{TST|┘}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|┌}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|█}} || Any solid color tile
|-
| {{TST|▄}} || Siege machine parts, others?
|-
| {{TST|▌}} || Ballista, others?
|-
| {{TST|▐}} || Ballista, others?
|-
| {{TST|▀}} ||
|-
|||||----- Row 15 (224-239) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|α}} || Fish, fishery tile(which one?), meat (except?), others?
|-
| {{TST|ß}} || Leather, others?
|-
| {{TST|Γ}} || Weight symbol, others?
|-
| {{TST|π}} || Cabinet, others?
|-
| {{TST|Σ}} || Trap weapon, others?
|-
| {{TST|σ}} || Anvil, others?
|-
| {{TST|µ}} || Plants*(which?), crown, others?
|-
| {{TST|τ}} || Pig tails*, Tower cap sapling others?
|-
| {{TST|Φ}} || Sweet pods*, bloated tuber*, others?
|-
| {{TST|Θ}} || Beds, others?
|-
| {{TST|Ω}} || Statues, Dwarven cities on map, others?
|-
| {{TST|δ}} || Earrings, kennel tile, others?
|-
| {{TST|∞}} || Unmined andesite*, unmined pumice*, others?
|-
| {{TST|φ}} || Thread, others?
|-
| {{TST|ε}} ||
|-
| {{TST|∩}} ||
|-
|||||----- Row 16 (240-255) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|≡}} || Bars, excellence quality symbol, others?
|-
| {{TST|±}} || Unfinished road, others?
|-
| {{TST|≥}} || Spent ammo (catapult stones count), ashes, others?
|-
| {{TST|≤}} || Spent ammo (catapult stones count), ashes, others?
|-
| {{TST|⌠}} || Willow tree*, other trees?, others?
|-
| {{TST|⌡}} ||
|-
| {{TST|÷}} || Barrel, others?
|-
| {{TST|≈}} || Rough stone road, river, lava, glop, fat, tallow, farm, vomit, blood pools others?
|-
| {{TST|°}} || Ring, others?
|-
| {{TST|∙}} || Vermin*, others?
|-
| {{TST|·}} || Seeds, others?
|-
| {{TST|√}} || Weapon racks, tall grass in main map, text in selection screen for building construction to indicate that an object will be used, others?
|-
| {{TST|ⁿ}} || Something in main map(what is it?), others?
|-
| {{TST|²}} || Body parts, chunks, corpses, bone, shell, skin, others?
|-
| {{TST|■}} || Blocks, first image seen for a creature falling into the chasm, others?
|-
| || No use
|}



[[Category:Modding]]
[[Category:Interface]]

40d:Tilesets

2007-11-04T04:58:23Z

Mephisto: /* What tiles are used for what */

''You may be looking for the [[List of user character sets]] or [[Graphics sets]].''

Graphics in Dwarf Fortress are implemented using [[Tilesets]]. Users create custom tilesets for a number of reasons, including increased visibility, aesthetics, or small size. Tilesets come in two flavors: "'''character sets'''" (also called "regular" or simply "tilesets", and previously called "standard tilesets") and "'''graphics sets'''", previously and somewhat confusingly called "object tilesets".

== Overview and installation ==

=== Character sets ===

A character set is an image in BMP format that contains the 256 different tiles, corresponding to the IBM Code-page 457 ASCII+Extended characters, which are used to display the main graphics. [[List of user character sets|Here is the list]] of user-made standard tilesets. To install any of these tilesets, follow these steps:

# Download the tileset.
# Convert it into a 24-bit BMP file. Do NOT just change the extension to .bmp; you must use a program like MS paint to save it as a .bmp.
# Put it in the data/art directory of your Dwarf Fortress installation.
# Open data/init/init.txt
# If you want to use the tileset in fullscreen mode, locate and modify the [FULLSCREENX:800], [FULLSCREENY:600], and [FULLFONT:curses_800x600.bmp] configuration lines to match the specifications from the [[List of user tilesets|tileset list]]. The FULLFONT directive should match the filename of the tileset you downloaded. If you want to use the tileset in windowed mode, search for the [WINDOWEDX:640], [WINDOWEDY:300], and [FONT:curses_640x300.bmp] lines and change them to the correct values.
# It is also recommended you change [BLACK_SPACE:NO] to [BLACK_SPACE:YES] to prevent stretching of the graphics.
# Save the file, then you're ready to play!

=== Graphics sets ===

Character sets only change certain graphics, while others are left out. The confusingly-named [[graphics sets]] are used to change the appearance of [[creatures]] in the game, such as dwarves and unicorns. These are usually designed to work together with certain characrter sets. The Dystopian Rhetoric graphics set comes with it's own DF installer; to install any others (or to install that one manually), you follow a similiar process to the above:

# Download the object tileset. (The list is [[Graphics sets|here]].)
# Convert it into a 24-bit BMP file using your favorite image editing program.
# Put it in the raw/graphics/example directory of your Dwarf Fortress installation, so it overwrites the existing file.
# Open /raw/graphics/example_text.txt
# Replace the contents with the appropriate text for the object tileset you downloaded. Save the file.
# Open data/init/init.txt
# Locate the [GRAPHICS:NO] line and change it to [GRAPHICS:YES].
# Change the resolution and font directories as above, this time for the lines starting with GRAPHICS instead. So, if you want to use fullscreen mode, modify [GRAPHICS_FULLSCREENX:800], [GRAPHICS_FULLSCREENY:600], and [GRAPHICS_FULLFONT:curses_800x600.bmp] to suit the standard tileset you want to use. For windowed mode, the lines to change are [GRAPHICS_WINDOWEDX:640], [GRAPHICS_WINDOWEDY:300], and [GRAPHICS_FONT:curses_640x300.bmp].
# Be sure to change [GRAPHICS_BLACK_SPACE] to the same setting as [BLACK_SPACE].
# Save the file, then you're ready to get mangled by a great-looking elephant!

== Custom tileset design ==

The gameplay viewport is 80 characters wide, and 25 characters tall. Therefore, a tileset's target resolution will be TILE_X_LENGTH * 80 by TILE_Y_LENGTH * 25. Since the tileset is arranged into a 16x16 grid of tiles (256 tiles total), the tileset image size will be TILE_X_LENGTH * 16 by TILE_Y_LENGTH * 16. Here are some common tile sizes:

* A tileset with 10x12 tiles will be 160x192 pixels large, and the target resolution will be 800x300.
* A tileset with 16x16 tiles will be 256x256 pixels large, and the target resolution will be 1280x400.

When creating a custom tileset, it's often easiest to start with an existing one, and edit it to your liking. Tilesets generally fall into three categories: rectangular tilesets, square tilesets, and 16x16 square tilesets. Rectangular tilesets have tiles that are taller than they are wide. The text in these tilesets is generally easier to read, but the map appears squished horizontally. Square tilesets usually provide more attractive graphics, but are slightly less readable. The 16x16 square tilesets are just a sub-set, which are grouped together because most [[Object Tilesets]] use 16x16 tiles. The graphics in Dwarf Fortress can be somewhat diversified and enhanced through the use of graphics sets.

Many tiles are used by the game in multiple ways, and this makes customizing the graphics difficult. The same icon is used for chairs and the north end of one-tile-wide vertical bridges. Ashes and broken arrows look the same, and many game entities (such as levers, floodgates, bags, and bins) share characters that are also used in Dwarven names or other bits of text in the interface.

=== How colors other than white and magenta work ===

When the game draws a tile, it will select a foreground color, a background color, and a tile based on the item being drawn. The background color will be used in place of magenta (Hex code #FF00FF or RGB 255 0 255). All other colors in the tile will be treated as a mask against the foreground color. Pure white (#FFFFFF) will always show the foreground color, while light grey (#CCCCCC) will be a slightly darker version of the foreground color, and dark grey (#888888) will be a dark version of the foreground color. Black (#000000) will always be black. It is impossible to use different shades of the background color.

In general, just remember these rules:

* Bright magenta (#FF00FF) is the background.
* Bright white (#FFFFFF) is the foreground.
* Darker shades of white and grey (#C0C0C0, #808080, etc) will display darker shades of the foreground color. It is possible to use any shade of grey, including ones like #333333 and #C2C2C2.
* Black (#000000) will always be black.
* It's probably best to avoid color in normal tilesets.

For an example, the game is drawing an exposed turquoise cluster with color bright blue (#0000FF). While loading the tile image, it encounters the color light grey (#CCCCCC). The color used in its place will be:

{| style="margin-bottom:20px; text-align:left; width:90%"
|-
! Color component || Foreground color || Color mask from tile || Calculation in hex || Calculation in decimal
|-
| Red || #0000FF || #CCCCCC || 0016 * CC16 / 10016 = 0016 || 0 * 204 / 256 = 0
|-
| Green || #0000FF || #CCCCCC ||0016 * CC16 / 10016 = 0016 || 0 * 204 / 256 = 0
|-
| Blue || #0000FF || #CCCCCC || FF16 * CC16 / 10016 = CB16 || 255 * 204 / 256 = 203
|-
| Final Color || || || #0000CB || 0 0 203
|}

Color masks with inequal amounts of R, G and B are calculated in the same fashion. The game is now drawing a speardwarf with color brown (#C0C000). It encounters the color cyan while loading the tile (#008080). The color used instead of cyan will be:

{| style="margin-bottom:20px; text-align:left; width:90%"
|-
! Color component || Foreground color || Color mask from tile || Calculation in hex || Calculation in decimal
|-
| Red || #C0C000 || #008080 || C016 * 0016 / 10016 = 0016 || 192 * 0 / 256 = 0
|-
| Green || #C0C000 || #008080 ||C016 * 8016 / 10016 = 6016 || 192 * 128 / 256 = 96
|-
| Blue || #C0C000 || #008080 || 0016 * 8016 / 10016 = 0016 || 0 * 128 / 256 = 0
|-
| Final Color || || || #006000 || 0 96 0
|}

As illustrated by this example, colors in the tileset can result in colors that aren't in the foreground color or the tile graphic. In this case, a brown foreground color with a cyan pixel color in the tileset results in a final color of green.

Theoretically, the way the game handles color masks could be used to display different graphics for items that use the same tile (but whose respective colors use different color component channels). For example, if a bright red object and a bright blue object use the same tile, the tile can use bright red for all pixels that only the red object uses, bright blue for all pixels only the blue object uses, and bright magenta (but NOT #FF00FF, it would have to be #FE00FE or something similar) for all pixels both objects use. In this fashion the two objects that share a tile would look completely different. In practice however, this is probably impossible because so many objects share the same tile, the chances of the potential foreground colors sharing a red, green, or blue color component are too great.

== What tiles are used for what ==

''''This section needs to be redone for the new DF version. Any Volunteers?''''

'''VERY IMPORTANT:''' Before removing ", others?" at the end, make absolutely sure that there are no other uses for the tile, and ''always'' add it if you are not absolutely sure that there are no other uses for the tile. Any edits not following this rule will get reverted.

Items marked with * can have their tile changed in the raw files.
Items marked with # can have their tile replaced by an [[Object Tileset]] image. This includes all non-vermin creatures (not sure about vermins).

{|
|-
|||||----- Row 01 (000-015) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| || No use
|-
| {{TST|☺}} || Civilian dwarves#
|-
| {{TST|☻}} || Military dwarves#
|-
| {{TST|♥}} || Dimple Cups*, others?
|-
| {{TST|♦}} || Cut gems, large gems, others?
|-
| {{TST|♣}} || Tower-caps*, Acacia trees*, Mangrove trees*, Maple trees*, quarry bushes(*?), others(no other tree)?
|-
| {{TST|♠}} || Plump Helmets*, Oak trees(*?), quarry bush leaves(*?), others?
|-
| {{TST|•}} || Stone, solid workshop tile for several workshops like the magma smelter, lakes in main map, caves in the main map, others?
|-
| {{TST|◘}} || Solid workshop tile for several other workshops like the magma forge, tanner workshop, catapult cup, others?
|-
| {{TST|○}} || Well, bracelet, others?
|-
| {{TST|◙}} ||
|-
| {{TST|♂}} || Male sign, bags, others?
|-
| {{TST|♀}} || Female sign, amulet, others?
|-
| {{TST|♪}} ||
|-
| {{TST|♫}} || Armor stands, others?
|-
| {{TST|☼}} || Gems, coal, currency symbol, masterpiece quality symbol, turtle*, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 02 (016-031) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|►}} || Head of ballista facing east, others?
|-
| {{TST|◄}} || Head of ballista facing west, others?
|-
| {{TST|↕}} ||
|-
| {{TST|‼}} || Cages, on-fire symbol, others?
|-
| {{TST|¶}} || Mugs, largest elven cities?, others?
|-
| {{TST|§}} || Restraints, others?
|-
| {{TST|▬}} || Logs, others?
|-
| {{TST|↨}} || Some tree types, others?
|-
| {{TST|↑}} || Interface text (bridge and aqueduct direction), others?
|-
| {{TST|↓}} || Hungry/thirsty/drowsy/unhappy indicator, bridge placement raising direction indicator, others?
|-
| {{TST|→}} || Interface text (bridge and aqueduct direction), others?
|-
| {{TST|←}} || Interface text (bridge and aqueduct direction), others?
|-
| {{TST|∟}} || Withered plants, others?
|-
| {{TST|↔}} ||
|-
| {{TST|▲}} || Head of ballista facing north, tree?, ramp, others?
|-
| {{TST|▼}} || Head of ballista facing south, ramp, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 03 (032-047) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| || No use
|-
| {{TST|!}} || Strange mood mark, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|"}} || Shrub, quotation marks, kobold's glowing eyes*, others?
|-
| {{TST|#}} || Chasm, pits, Basalt wall, Sandstone wall, others?
|-
| {{TST|$}} || Coins, others?
|-
| {{TST|%}} || Prepared food, unknown underground area, siltstone, others?
|-
| {{TST|&}} || Demons#, others?
|-
| {{TST|'}} || Rough floors, unknown underground, others?
|-
| {{TST|(}} || Foreign object opening tag, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|)}} || Foreign object closing tag, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|*}} || Ore, superior quality tags, key reference, others?
|-
| {{TST|+}} || Smooth floors, injured status, finely-crafted tags, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|,}} || Rough floors, unknown underground, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|-}} || Scepters, arrows in flight, well-crafted tags, keyboard reference, others?
|-
| {{TST|.}} || Rough floors, text, unknown underground, others?
|-
| {{TST|/}} || Weapons, bolts, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 04 (048-063) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|0}} || Coffins, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|1}} ||
|-
| {{TST|2}} ||
|-
| {{TST|3}} ||
|-
| {{TST|4}} ||
|-
| {{TST|5}} ||
|-
| {{TST|6}} ||
|-
| {{TST|7}} ||
|-
| {{TST|8}} ||
|-
| {{TST|9}} ||
|-
| {{TST|:}} || Strawberries, plants (type?), snowstorms, others?
|-
| {{TST|;}} || Workshop(which ones?), others?
|-
| {{TST|<}} || Stairs, others?
|-
| {{TST|=}} || Stockpiles, Flint Wall, others?
|-
| {{TST|>}} || Stairs, others?
|-
| {{TST|?}} || "Task assigned" indicator, looking for path(?), others?
|-
|||||----- Row 05 (064-079) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|@}} || Sheriff#, berserk dwarf#, adventurer#, fortress guard#, royal guard#, dwarven merchants#, caravan guards#
|-
| {{TST|A}} || Alligator#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|B}} ||
|-
| {{TST|C}} || Cow#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|D}} || Dragon#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|E}} || Elf#, elephant#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|F}} ||
|-
| {{TST|G}} ||
|-
| {{TST|H}} ||
|-
| {{TST|I}} || Support, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|J}} ||
|-
| {{TST|K}} ||
|-
| {{TST|L}} ||
|-
| {{TST|M}} || Magma man#, mule#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|N}} ||
|-
| {{TST|O}} || Trade depot post, detailing system, text, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 06 (080-095) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|P}} ||
|-
| {{TST|Q}} ||
|-
| {{TST|R}} ||
|-
| {{TST|S}} || Sasquatch#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|T}} ||
|-
| {{TST|U}} || Human#, Unicorn#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|V}} ||
|-
| {{TST|W}} ||
|-
| {{TST|X}} || Bin, floodgate, shop post, nausea/winded/stunned/unconscious/migrant indicator, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|Y}} ||
|-
| {{TST|Z}} ||
|-
| {{TST|[}} || Clothes, armor?, others?
|-
| {{TST|\}} ||
|-
| {{TST|]}} || Clothes?, armor?, others?
|-
| {{TST|^}} || Trap, others?
|-
| {{TST|_}} || Channel, text, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 07 (096-111) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|`}} || Rough floors, unknown underground, others?
|-
| {{TST|a}} ||
|-
| {{TST|b}} ||
|-
| {{TST|c}} || Cat#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|d}} || Dog#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|e}} ||
|-
| {{TST|f}} || Frogman#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|g}} || Goblin#, gremlin#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|h}} || Harpy#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|i}} ||
|-
| {{TST|j}} ||
|-
| {{TST|k}} || Kobold#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|l}} ||
|-
| {{TST|m}} || Mandrill#, mussel, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|n}} ||
|-
| {{TST|o}} || Well construction, bridge construction, text, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 08 (112-127) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|p}} ||
|-
| {{TST|q}} ||
|-
| {{TST|r}} ||
|-
| {{TST|s}} || Snakeman#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|t}} || Troglodyte#, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|u}} ||
|-
| {{TST|v}} ||
|-
| {{TST|w}} ||
|-
| {{TST|x}} ||
|-
| {{TST|y}} ||
|-
| {{TST|z}} ||
|-
| {{TST|{}} ||
|-
| {{TST||}} ||
|-
| {{TST|}}} ||
|-
| {{TST|~}} || Unfinished rough stone road, river, magma, fluids, dirt road, farm construction, others?
|-
| {{TST|⌂}} || Animal trap, low mountains on world map, part of mechanic's workshop?, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 09 (128-143) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|Ç}} || Mechanisms, others?
|-
| {{TST|ü}} ||
|-
| {{TST|é}} ||
|-
| {{TST|â}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ä}} ||
|-
| {{TST|à}} ||
|-
| {{TST|å}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ç}} || Totems, text?, others?
|-
| {{TST|ê}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ë}} ||
|-
| {{TST|è}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ï}} ||
|-
| {{TST|î}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ì}} ||
|-
| {{TST|Ä}} ||
|-
| {{TST|Å}} || Idols, text, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 10 (144-159) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|É}} ||
|-
| {{TST|æ}} || Toys, others?
|-
| {{TST|Æ}} || Coffers, Quivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|ô}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ö}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ò}} || Unactivated levers, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|û}} || Bucket, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|ù}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ÿ}} ||
|-
| {{TST|Ö}} ||
|-
| {{TST|Ü}} ||
|-
| {{TST|¢}} ||
|-
| {{TST|£}} || Ore in walls, others?
|-
| {{TST|¥}} || Lobster*, others?
|-
| {{TST|₧}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ƒ}} ||
|-
|||||----- Row 11 (160-175) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|á}} ||
|-
| {{TST|í}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ó}} || Activated levers, text, others?
|-
| {{TST|ú}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ñ}} ||
|-
| {{TST|Ñ}} ||
|-
| {{TST|ª}} ||
|-
| {{TST|º}} || Cloth, others?
|-
| {{TST|¿}} || Instrument, others?
|-
| {{TST|⌐}} ||
|-
| {{TST|¬}} ||
|-
| {{TST|½}} ||
|-
| {{TST|¼}} ||
|-
| {{TST|¡}} || Flask, waterskin, others?
|-
| {{TST|«}} || Ballista arrow tail for west-facing ballistae, decoration mark, others?
|-
| {{TST|»}} || Ballista arrow tail for east-facing ballistae, decoration mark, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 12 (176-191) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|░}} || Partially dug rock, gases, workshop tiles(which ones?), others?
|-
| {{TST|▒}} || Partially dug rock, gases, workshop tiles(which ones)?, side tiles for catapult, window, others?
|-
| {{TST|▓}} || Partially dug rock, gases, workshop tiles(which ones)?, others?
|-
| {{TST|│}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|┤}} || Overworld rivers, top-right tile for Loom, others?
|-
| {{TST|╡}} || Tree in winter, part of bridge system, others?
|-
| {{TST|╢}} ||
|-
| {{TST|╖}} || Ends of smooth walls, Waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╕}} || Ends of smooth walls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╣}} || Walls, waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|║}} || Walls, bridges, waterfalls, wooden doors, others?
|-
| {{TST|╗}} || Walls, bridges, others?
|-
| {{TST|╝}} || Walls, bridges, others?
|-
| {{TST|╜}} || Ends of smooth walls, waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╛}} || Ends of smooth walls, others?
|-
| {{TST|┐}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
|||||----- Row 13 (192-207) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|└}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|┴}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|┬}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|├}} || Overworld rivers, top-left tile for Loom, others?
|-
| {{TST|─}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|┼}} || Doors, overworld rivers, (flashing) floor detailing/engraving in progress, others?
|-
| {{TST|╞}} || Bridges, trees in winter, catapult tile, others?
|-
| {{TST|╟}} ||
|-
| {{TST|╚}} || Walls, bridges, others?
|-
| {{TST|╔}} || Walls, bridges, others?
|-
| {{TST|╩}} || Walls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╦}} || Walls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╠}} || Walls, waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|═}} || Walls, bridges, planted fields, center catapult tile, others?
|-
| {{TST|╬}} || Walls, bridges, fortifications, (flashing) wall detailing/engraving/fortifying in progress, others?
|-
| {{TST|╧}} ||
|-
|||||----- Row 14 (208-223) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|╨}} || Bridges, waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╤}} || Table, others?
|-
| {{TST|╥}} || Chairs, bridges, waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╙}} || Ends of smooth walls, waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╘}} || Ends of smooth walls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╒}} || Ends of smooth walls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╓}} || Ends of smooth walls, waterfalls, others?
|-
| {{TST|╫}} || Some types of floodgates (metal? wood?)?, others?
|-
| {{TST|╪}} || Some types of doors (metal?), others?
|-
| {{TST|┘}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|┌}} || Overworld rivers, others?
|-
| {{TST|█}} || Any solid color tile
|-
| {{TST|▄}} || Siege machine parts, others?
|-
| {{TST|▌}} || Ballista, others?
|-
| {{TST|▐}} || Ballista, others?
|-
| {{TST|▀}} ||
|-
|||||----- Row 15 (224-239) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|α}} || Fish, fishery tile(which one?), meat (except?), others?
|-
| {{TST|ß}} || Leather, others?
|-
| {{TST|Γ}} || Weight symbol, others?
|-
| {{TST|π}} || Cabinet, others?
|-
| {{TST|Σ}} || Trap weapon, others?
|-
| {{TST|σ}} || Anvil, others?
|-
| {{TST|µ}} || Plants*(which?), crown, others?
|-
| {{TST|τ}} || Pig tails*, Tower cap sapling others?
|-
| {{TST|Φ}} || Sweet pods*, bloated tuber*, others?
|-
| {{TST|Θ}} || Beds, others?
|-
| {{TST|Ω}} || Statues, Dwarven cities on map, others?
|-
| {{TST|δ}} || Earrings, kennel tile, others?
|-
| {{TST|∞}} || Unmined andesite*, unmined pumice*, others?
|-
| {{TST|φ}} || Thread, others?
|-
| {{TST|ε}} ||
|-
| {{TST|∩}} ||
|-
|||||----- Row 16 (240-255) ---------------------------------------------
|-
| {{TST|≡}} || Bars, excellence quality symbol, others?
|-
| {{TST|±}} || Unfinished road, others?
|-
| {{TST|≥}} || Spent ammo (catapult stones count), ashes, others?
|-
| {{TST|≤}} || Spent ammo (catapult stones count), ashes, others?
|-
| {{TST|⌠}} || Willow tree*, other trees?, others?
|-
| {{TST|⌡}} ||
|-
| {{TST|÷}} || Barrel, others?
|-
| {{TST|≈}} || Rough stone road, river, lava, glop, fat, tallow, farm, vomit, blood pools others?
|-
| {{TST|°}} || Ring, others?
|-
| {{TST|∙}} || Vermin*, others?
|-
| {{TST|·}} || Seeds, others?
|-
| {{TST|√}} || Weapon racks, tall grass in main map, text in selection screen for building construction to indicate that an object will be used, others?
|-
| {{TST|ⁿ}} || Something in main map(what is it?), others?
|-
| {{TST|²}} || Body parts, chunks, corpses, bone, shell, skin, others?
|-
| {{TST|■}} || Blocks, first image seen for a creature falling into the chasm, others?
|-
| || No use
|}



[[Category:Modding]]
[[Category:Interface]]

40d Talk:Quarry bush

2007-11-04T00:40:51Z

Mephisto:

== Updated the page ==

I updated the page based on the archive, and added some commonsensical stuff to it. --[[User:Rockjianrock|Rockjianrock]] 10:00 (+8GMT), 03 October 2007 (EDT)

Don't all indoors crops grow year round? The quarry bush listing says they only grow from spring to fall. [[User:Mephisto|Mephisto]] 20:40, 3 November 2007 (EDT)