User:Kydo

Who I Am

I am Kydo, a DF player who enjoys this website a lot and is interested in helping. Mostly with grammatical corrections. (If you see any issues on my page, please point them out to me. Everyone makes mistakes. That's why I'm here.) My real name is Jeff. Not that it matters. In rl, I'm an artist with two years of college under his belt... And no money to complete the rest of the degree. I'm a gamer, I play D&D and dabble in tabletop RPG design, I play videogames excessively, and it all tends to get in the way of my art, really. This is probably just another diversion, I suppose. Oh. And I'm a MAN. Let's make that clear.

I have a DA page if you wish to talk to me about art or what-not. Kydo

Dorf Pride

I've noticed something.

Knowing what Dwarf Fortress is gives you, like, ten nerd points. It's just an obscure thing you can say you know about, that other people have never heard of. But not only that, it's something you can really get INTO and tell all kinds of amazing stories about. It isn't like, "Have you ever heard of Invader Zim? It's funny and you should watch it." It's more like, "Have you heard of Dwarf Fortress? You haven't?! It's an awesome game! One time, I set up a base in an evil region full of undead wolves and[...]"

Being able to PLAY Dwarf Fortress, once the people around you know what it is, is like being crowned king of the low-level nerds. It can take hours just to learn the basic interface, plus all of the different workshops. many people who learn about Dwarf Fortress cannot play it to save their lives. Probably because they were all born too late to play any ascii games, and thus their gaming skills have a foundation sitting sort of in midair.

Being able to play Dwarf Fortress WELL is an even bigger compliment, once you're in the community. Everyone in the community can play it, but only some people really do a GOOD job of it. I, personally, am not very good at actually playing the game, so much as rooting out it's exact mechanics through experimentation.

Being recognized by your alias in the Dwarf Fortress community is like being crowned champion nerd for a day. If people say, "Aren't you the guy who made/found that thing that made us all shit our pants?" you're officially slightly awesome. At least for a little while.

Observations

Okay then! New release! Time to start my page over fresh, and write about all the weirdness I find! Yay! Once I've re-learned everything in the game, I'll get round to doing some actual projects and expanding the wiki again.

Stonesense

As expected, the BRILLIANT DF isometric visualizer... Doesn't yet work with the new release. So, when I stumbled into an enormous cavern system, which was extremely unpleasantly placed, and I found it's features almost incomprehensible, and tried to use the visualizer to understand it, well, it just didn't work. Looks like all it needs is a quick update to recognize the process, though.

U.G.L.Y. You ain't got no alibi

Anyone else noticed that almost every single dwarf is ugly? Like, horribly so? They're all gap-toothed, with hooked noses and sunken eye sockets, with weird scars... Ugh. I love the cultural styles, though. I chose the dwarvs who go around conquering everything and discovered that they preferred, very long, nicely combed beards and mustaches, with shaved bald heads. Even some of the women shave their heads. Neat!

Hunger and Thirst

Also, now we can over-work our dwarves. They'll mine away until they're about ready to collapse of starvation or thirst before they finally give in to it. Kinda' creepy. And not good for their mental states. Makes my tendency to make HUGE designations and focus on other things for a year sort of a bad thing.

Strangler Fail

Okay, remember how we used to be able to just grab something by the throat and starngle it to death in adventure mode? Yeah, that doesn't work any more. First, attacks it does on you will fuck up your grip, so you have to adjust it. If your wrestler skill isn't high enough, strangling literally does NOTHING, you just repeatedly adjust your grip.

Also, the wrestling menu is still ridiculous. What the hell is an "eye tooth" and how do I grab it with my left upper leg?!

Macemurder

Holy baloney it takes a long time to kill stuff in this game now! That cougar must have taken at least sixty hits to kill, and it only died from the blood loss! What will I do when wolves attack?!

Many MANY Large Roaches

OKAY! I just found a cavern! What's inside it? A swarm of roaches THREE LEVELS TALL. Literally. They move together. 3 z levels. The top levels have a black background, rather than white, so I think they think they're falling. Maybe they are? In any case, it's freaking me out.

You Have Struck Spam!

So, I dig into a cavern. What do I get? Three pages of announcements of all the exposed materials and stone layers. A few moments later, they strike another cavern, and of course, another couple pages of yellow announcements. Gets kinda' crazy. Also, every month it repeats ALL of the announcements for ALL of the materials I've uncovered. I wonder if it'll do that if I mined them all out...?

YAY A BUGFIX!

So, my dwarves can find stockpiles, and they nolonger stare blankly into space for a season!

YAY STONESENSE!

IT WORKS! I CAN SEE AGAIN! This makes everything SO much easier. And slower. But prettier!