A Scourge of Elf Attacks

December 23, 2010 6:48 AM

Maturl Remrit: A Dwarf Fortress Tale.

Dwarf Fortress Fiction, previously.

Via Kotaku, who have a trailer. Graphics are provided by stonesense.

posted by griphus (31 comments total)

I came to post about how awesome that tileset is, and how if I had that it might be the thing to finally get me over the DF learning curve (on at least my fourth failed attempt).

Then I realized that the screenshots are made with a separate visualizer program, not real time.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:55 AM on December 23, 2010 [2 favorites]

Shoot, I should have included that. I dropped a line to the mods so they can add that part to the post.
posted by griphus at 7:01 AM on December 23, 2010

Blam!
posted by cortex at 7:06 AM on December 23, 2010

Oh, they haven't figured out a way to make the interface usable in-game, yet? Thank god, otherwise I'd have to start playing immediately.
posted by FatherDagon at 7:09 AM on December 23, 2010

Oh Mittens how your fur shined
Oh Mittens how your head purred
Oh Mittens how your feet landed (when hurled)
Oh Mittens where have you left
Oh Mittens do you miss me too
- "Ode to Mittens" by Exi the Poemhaver

wow, this is great! i heart DF fiction
posted by r_nebblesworthII at 7:13 AM on December 23, 2010 [1 favorite]

Love the missing cat poster.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 7:21 AM on December 23, 2010 [1 favorite]

Then I realized that the screenshots are made with a separate visualizer program, not real time.

stonesense updates in real time if that makes a difference to you
posted by p3on at 7:24 AM on December 23, 2010

23rd Hematite 1051
Scheme solved. The wood is used to construct beds. Implications are terrifying.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 7:35 AM on December 23, 2010

I love this. This is the first DF Let's Play interaction I've seen that edged sideways into the psychological horror. I think the way the updates are done is better than straight narrative, as it mirrors the gameplay a little better.
posted by cobaltnine at 8:09 AM on December 23, 2010

13th Felsite 1051
I am concerned for Mar. She has developed hand bumps and I informed her in my doctor opinion unless severed they will grow into elves and fall off. She asked: what sort of elves? I explained: the horrific kind.

22nd Felsite 1051
I have begun a promotion for the medical room. The first patient will receive another limb.

I have my concerns with the state of Dwarven medicine.
posted by JHarris at 8:25 AM on December 23, 2010 [1 favorite]

Someone wrote a thesis on these things, and it's a pretty good read.
posted by LiteOpera at 8:53 AM on December 23, 2010 [3 favorites]

Prediction: the much-predicted apocalypse of 2012 is the result of someone completing the inevitable merger of minecraft and dwarf fortress.
posted by empath at 9:29 AM on December 23, 2010

It will only be a conceptual apocalypse. "Reality" will simply be transferred to a global server where every human being is simultaneously playing that game. Like The Matrix, but we will have done it to ourselves.

...beats Idiocracy, right?
posted by griphus at 10:00 AM on December 23, 2010

Dammit all. I finally got to the part where they start underground farming and it still makes no sense to my addled brain! HOW THE HELL? How do you do it? Every time I try to punch a hole in a pond or river everything floods, everyone dies, there's no way to get the water out, no way to plug the hole... so impossibly frustrating. I can't build a corkscrew pump until I have enough food to actually produce the kind of dwarves that will build a corkscrew pump! The underground mud farming thing breaks the damned game for me.

I've read the wiki about farming, it still makes no sense. How do you block the hole that you've sprung in the bottom of the pond? How do you get the dwarf to swim across the flooding waters underground to close a floodgate or lay down a new wall?
posted by Baby_Balrog at 10:01 AM on December 23, 2010

All it says is, "Exi blocked the hole with a pillar." How did Exi get to the hole? It's in a flooding room!
posted by Baby_Balrog at 10:02 AM on December 23, 2010

The easiest way to do underground farming is by making a sufficiently large room beneath a pond that the water from the pond will spread out to 1/7 when a hole is punched through.
posted by Stove at 10:10 AM on December 23, 2010 [1 favorite]

So you punch a hole in the ceiling?
posted by Baby_Balrog at 10:12 AM on December 23, 2010

Yep. An upward slope works. Just make sure the room the water is flowing into is a few times larger than the pond.
posted by Stove at 10:23 AM on December 23, 2010 [1 favorite]

(1) baby balrog, the easiest way is to dig out a large room (MUCH larger, like 4-5x) than the pond you're going to breach, right next to said pond. when the "farm plot room" is totally dug out, then punch a hole in the wall to the pond.

(2) You could also dig the farm room under the pond, and breach using the "dig ramp" (which basically channels upwards) from the farm room. But this is a little harder and more dangerous IMO.

(3) Finally, you could dig a hallway from the pond to the farm room, build a floodgate in the hallway, and breach the wall between pond and hallway from above using c(H)annel. You can use the floodgate to decide how much water to let through.
posted by r_nebblesworthII at 10:23 AM on December 23, 2010 [1 favorite]

If you do (1) or (2), you block up the hallway/ramp by building a wall or floor, AFTER the pond is done emptying (this is to prevent rain from refilling and reflooding the room).
posted by r_nebblesworthII at 10:24 AM on December 23, 2010 [1 favorite]

If you do (3) connected to a river or a brook instead, you can make any arbitrarily large underground room muddy, and grow an underground forest. The floodgate has to be connected to a lever in order to control it.
posted by Stove at 10:29 AM on December 23, 2010 [1 favorite]

Took me a while to figure out too. I usually dig out the intended farm room on the same level the water is on (not the surface of the water, the actual water), dig a path to the water but leave the last square, then build a grate, install it, then build a floodgate, install it, build a lever, link the lever and the floodgate, then go to where the water surface is and channel out that last square to flood my chamber, then have someone pull the lever to open the floodgate and close it again when everything's flooded. I also put a door on the path to the farm room and lock it to keep the water from going everywhere.

MeMail me if you have further questions.
posted by BeerFilter at 10:31 AM on December 23, 2010 [1 favorite]

26rd Limestone 1051: I was fierce with the crop.

That's terrific and makes me want to start another LP of my own.
posted by boo_radley at 10:32 AM on December 23, 2010

T.D. Strange: Stonesense is a separate visualizer program that runs in real time.

Well... Dwarf time.
posted by ODiV at 10:45 AM on December 23, 2010

Thanks for the help everybody! It hadn't occurred to me that a pond holds a limited stack of water, though this seems quite obvious now. I may drown a few dreggs in the process, but hell, l.i.f.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 11:12 AM on December 23, 2010

This is really well done. I particularly liked the lost cat engraving. Got a speck of gabbro in my eye, there. And speaking of engravings, BEHOLD THE HORROR OF THE BUCKETS, if you dare.
posted by gamera at 12:17 PM on December 23, 2010 [2 favorites]

I usually build a pump early on; you can build all the parts out of wood. In fact, I'll usually buy a few bits of timber at outset to get pumps and beds built faster.
posted by kaibutsu at 12:18 PM on December 23, 2010

I do not like how Trumpet stares. I do not have rock nuts for Trumpet.

monster truck weekend was delighted by a war mule lately.
posted by monster truck weekend at 1:21 PM on December 23, 2010

Note: In this story is the word "furtively". Giggity.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:00 AM on December 24, 2010

LiteOpera: Someone wrote a thesis on these things, and it's a pretty good read.

Holy crap, that thesis cites the interview I did with Tarn Adams!
posted by JHarris at 1:53 AM on December 24, 2010 [3 favorites]

Oh man. Dwarf Fortress. The last time we had one of these threads, I reinstalled it just to see what was new in the latest version.
I came to 12 hours later. As far as I could tell, I had been in the middle of upgrading the drowning trap in the inner courtyard to work completely automatically, just in case the goblins made it that far. I'm not sure what the reasoning was there, since only one of them had even made it as far as the cage traps, while the others were busy drowning in the outer courtyard.
I am so glad I don't have a computer that can run DF anymore.

(By the way, are any of you hosting games on DFTerm?)
posted by marakesh at 11:41 PM on December 24, 2010