Dwarf Fortress: Loss of Spearwaved

Alas it was not some megaproject or megabeast that brought about the doom of Spearwaved, but rather user-error. I think I may just have to set up a backup script of some sort to prevent a miss-click from ruining too much of my work in the future. The good news? I was able to run the fort long enough to discover some of the bugs present in the current version of the game. Alas it seems producing mead will not be possible till a bug-fix (heh) and hopefully that is one of the priorities for the next update.

Luckily for all us Dwarf Fortress fans, it seems bug crunching will be the focus of development for a while. Some of the new features do seem to work rather nicely, such as grazing for various domestic animals. However if grazing ends up on someones pet, you may have a bit of a problem getting them fed properly. Poor Spearwaved, at least I didn't end up drowning the lot out by accident.

Now I just need to decide if I want to regress to the previous more stable version for purely Fun playing or not. I may just do that as I have some mods I am still tinkering with that could use some more TLC without some of the weird issues in the latest patch perhaps causing problems.

My grand ideas of a ceramic fortress (or one made out of wax) will just have to wait a wee bit longer.

Spearwaved Early Winter

Alas I neglected the Autumn update. Winter has come and with it the merchants from the mountain home. Building has been much slower than I had originally planned, but I am more than willing to see my dwarves a bit inconvenienced to achieve perfection.

I have built a few bee hives around the foot and am looking forward to adding some more so I can have a sustainable mead industry. The construction of the irrigation and farming zones is almost complete as well. Next time I start a fort from scratch I think I may opt for some temporary farmlands to provide some minimal harvests till larger scale farming operations are possible.

As there seems to be the occasional herd of elephants wandering about the map, I have contemplated re-purposing a few dwarves to engage in hunting. The area seems to have sufficient wildlife for a meat industry, especially if I could capture some animals in cages for breeding purposes.

Spearwaved Early Summer

Summer has recently arrived on the map. Not as much has been accomplished as I would have liked, but I tend to favor more ordered construction efforts whenever possible. Alas this means my farming industry has not been setup yet, but the space for the farms is getting close to being constructed. Underground caves that will become coated with mud when I tap into the river running through the site.

Luckily my site has not been attacked yet, but I am sure I will win no love from the elves with how many trees I have cut down to make room for the surface fortifications. The first floor of the inner keep is almost finished, only needing a few doors to make it secure.

The proper first workshop and living area is coming along nicely, thanks to the limestone layers that exist below the embark site. A space for the dining hall has been finished (and kitchens & food supplies) as well as some areas for workshops. No living quarters yet, as the fortifications and farming levels are more of a priority.

My two fisher dwarves are doing a good business catching turtles and other water creatures. I have not been forced, yet, to slaughter any animals for meat. Booze supplies are fair so far and I am hoping I can get some stills up and running before this becomes a sober fortress.

Dwarf Fortress: Lokumuker: Spearwaved

The fortress site has been selected. This time around I have chosen to go with a relatively flat section of terrain with a stream moving through. The fortress name is Lokumuker, which means Spearwaved. It hails from the wonderfully named civilization of "The Silvers of Whipping". Here are the location details via screenshot.

Dwarf Fortress: Histories of Magma and Unfortunate Accidents

Lo and behold, a new version of Dwarf Fortress has arrived with gifts of angry bees. I have been contemplating working on my own DF LP story, but as the current recent version of DF is bound to have some bugs, I think I will ease into the entire process with a chronicle of my first v0.31.19 fort instead. Naturally a newly generated world was necessary for this project.

The world gen parameters that were produced from my selections under "Create New World!"

[WORLD_GEN]
    [TITLE:CREATE WORLD NOW = 555155]
    [SEED:1000012205]
    [HISTORY_SEED:1543671375]
    [NAME_SEED:3851569142]
    [CREATURE_SEED:2313768212]
    [DIM:257:257]
    [EMBARK_POINTS:1274]
    [END_YEAR:1050]
    [BEAST_END_YEAR:1050:-1]
    [REVEAL_ALL_HISTORY:1]
    [CULL_HISTORICAL_FIGURES:0]
    [ELEVATION:1:400:1600:1600]
    [RAINFALL:0:100:400:400]
    [TEMPERATURE:25:75:400:400]
    [DRAINAGE:0:100:400:400]
    [VOLCANISM:0:100:400:400]
    [SAVAGERY:0:100:400:400]
    [ELEVATION_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
    [RAIN_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
    [DRAINAGE_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
    [TEMPERATURE_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
    [SAVAGERY_FREQUENCY:3:1:2:3:4:5]
    [VOLCANISM_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
    [MEGABEAST_CAP:150]
    [SEMIMEGABEAST_CAP:300]
    [TITAN_NUMBER:66]
    [TITAN_ATTACK_TRIGGER:80:0:100000]
    [DEMON_NUMBER:52]
    [NIGHT_CREATURE_NUMBER:52]
    [GOOD_SQ_COUNTS:24:244:0]
    [EVIL_SQ_COUNTS:24:244:0]
    [PEAK_NUMBER_MIN:12]
    [PARTIAL_OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:0]
    [COMPLETE_OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:4]
    [VOLCANO_MIN:4]
    [REGION_COUNTS:SWAMP:252:1:1]
    [REGION_COUNTS:DESERT:252:1:1]
    [REGION_COUNTS:FOREST:1008:3:2]
    [REGION_COUNTS:MOUNTAINS:2016:2:2]
    [REGION_COUNTS:OCEAN:2016:1:1]
    [REGION_COUNTS:GLACIER:63:0:0]
    [REGION_COUNTS:TUNDRA:126:0:0]
    [REGION_COUNTS:GRASSLAND:2016:3:2]
    [REGION_COUNTS:HILLS:2016:3:2]
    [EROSION_CYCLE_COUNT:250]
    [RIVER_MINS:100:100]
    [PERIODICALLY_ERODE_EXTREMES:1]
    [OROGRAPHIC_PRECIPITATION:1]
    [SUBREGION_MAX:3500]
    [CAVERN_LAYER_COUNT:3]
    [CAVERN_LAYER_OPENNESS_MIN:0]
    [CAVERN_LAYER_OPENNESS_MAX:100]
    [CAVERN_LAYER_PASSAGE_DENSITY_MIN:0]
    [CAVERN_LAYER_PASSAGE_DENSITY_MAX:100]
    [CAVERN_LAYER_WATER_MIN:0]
    [CAVERN_LAYER_WATER_MAX:100]
    [HAVE_BOTTOM_LAYER_1:1]
    [HAVE_BOTTOM_LAYER_2:1]
    [LEVELS_ABOVE_GROUND:15]
    [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_1:5]
    [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_2:1]
    [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_3:1]
    [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_4:1]
    [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_5:2]
    [LEVELS_AT_BOTTOM:1]
    [CAVE_MIN_SIZE:5]
    [CAVE_MAX_SIZE:25]
    [MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:80]
    [NON_MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:120]
    [ALL_CAVES_VISIBLE:0]
    [SHOW_EMBARK_TUNNEL:2]
    [TOTAL_CIV_NUMBER:160]
    [TOTAL_CIV_POPULATION:15000]
    [SITE_CAP:375]
    [PLAYABLE_CIVILIZATION_REQUIRED:1]
    [ELEVATION_RANGES:33000:4032:2016]
    [RAIN_RANGES:2016:4032:2016]
    [DRAINAGE_RANGES:2016:4032:2016]
    [SAVAGERY_RANGES:0:8256:16512]
    [VOLCANISM_RANGES:2016:4032:2016]

Here is the map of Ospazsmata: The Windy Realms

I will make another post once I have selected a suitably Fun site.

Death Knell of Warhammer Online

WAR is shutting down two more of its US/NA servers shortly, transferring any remaining characters to one of the last two servers in that region. Just two servers left... how far WAR has fallen, neh? I really do feel a bit sorry for those folk who have actually enjoyed playing WAR as it has existed... especially having to suffer through so many server transfers, one after another. Some folks have lost their chosen character names repeatedly... not fun I imagine.

This recent news does make me wonder when, if ever, the plug will be pulled on this project. Is the game even making enough money to sustain the servers that will be left running? Hard to say, such figures are not typically available to the public at large. It is a real shame that much of the promise of WAR was never realized; much of it cut and left on the development floor never to see the light of day.

My biggest longterm grievance with WAR is the removal and cessation of development of the other four racial capital cities. Without those the war effort in WAR was changed dramatically from three independent warfronts to a single warfront. This caused a lot of problems, with folk hopping from one racial pairing to another (leaving no thought of fort & keep defense) to sack undefended areas. It also lead to massive congestion at the Tier 4 end-zone fortresses as well.

If the other capitals had been implemented as originally designed, these problems may have never existed. Combining them together as they did certainly did lead to players clustering together more, which caused massive problems of course. The game was designed from the beginning to have people more spread out... so I really must wonder at the sheer stupidity to make such a sweeping design decision and to not have gone back and re-worked the other aspects of the game that were so dependent upon this facet.

As I doubt any kind of funding exists to re-built WAR to fix all the varied problems. Heck, folk are still complaining about PQ's that are horribly bugged... that were reported as problems back in Beta!

WAR is dead. May Warhammer 40k: Dark Millennium Online not suffer the same fate.

Dwarf Fortress: It takes Skill

Dwarf Fortress is lots of Fun. Sometimes one has unusual amounts of Fun. For example it is always a lot of Fun when the Clowns honk their noses at you and invite you down to the Circus. Wheee.

&

More God Games Please!

I have long been a big fan of god games. Populous, Powermonger, Black & White, various Civ-type games (Stronghold! Dwarf Fortress! etc.) heck one could even list Actraiser in there. Alas there is a definite dearth of additional games of this type coming out in the near future. To the best of my knowledge, the only one on the horizon is From Dust.

The Black and White games had a certain charm of course, but they were sorely lacking in terrain modification and editing; something I consider to be a staple of god games. Throwing villagers (and feeding them to your creature) is all fun of course, but I really wished I could have altered the terrain of the levels I played upon.

The Fable series of games has a similar feel IMO. With Fable 3 allowing one to become king, I wonder if Divinity is in the future of this series?

Really looking forward to From Dust; especially as terrain editing is the big feature. Hopefully it will be out sometime later this year, or early next.

Movie Rant: The Rite only made $14,789,393 & Movie Food at AMC

Caught a showing of The Rite over the weekend. Good. Very good in fact. I was darn surprised thus to find that it only took in ~$14,789,393.00 over the weekend box office. Was the movie not advertised well or something? I would think a lot of folk would like to see a movie with Anthony Hopkins that is about demonic possession.

That being said, I highly recommend this movie to anyone who likes... well that sort of movie. It's good. Worth full movie price IMO.

On the subject of movie theaters... one of these days more mainstream theaters (I'm looking at you AMC!) will come to realize that they need to improve the quality of their food. Popcorn full of kernels and shells that get stuck in one's teeth, hot-dogs floating on a lake of grease within their hot-dog holders. Yuck.

Dark Musings: WoW & the Old Gods

I quit WoW quite a long time ago, back before the Burning Crusade expansion to be precise. I did try BC briefly to check out the new areas, but only gave it a couple of months. However certain things I find very interesting have drawn me back into WoW with the release of Cataclysm.

While some may contend (and I can certainly agree) that many aspects of the game have grown easier and more casual with time; the relative level of dark & nasty stuff in-game has increased quite a bit. Sure folks got a taste of some of this stuff with the opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj a while back, but the Lovecraftian inclusions have never been so high in-game as they are right now.

Being a fan of eldrich & cosmic horrors, I was naturally very keen to check this content out for myself... and so I am! Hah!

Of course at this rate I may end up trying WAR again... another game I said I would never go back to. Time will tell.