40d Talk:Quickstart guide

So, this page is kinda pointless as it stands. It doesn't really provide anything that isn't on the far superior Your first fortress guide, yet we still link to it from the front page.
I'm thinking of taking it in a different direction entirely and providing a ready-made save, maybe one month in, to use as a tutorial. This gets new players past the fiddly min-maxing of the embark screen and provides the essentials, so they can get right to work learning the interface. --Walliard 21:14, 10 December 2008 (EST)

That's a good idea, but ... are you thinking of doing it, or doing it? Cause if you don't I will. On that note, does anyone have any suggestions for what to put in the saved game? My thoughts:

• Bedrooms complete
• Dining hall setup
• All dwarves idle in meeting hall
  • Miners just about to dig out a new passage
  • Other dwarves about to bring food to a new stockpile
• ???
• Profit

--Juckto 20:41, 11 December 2008 (EST)

I have some thoughts. Since it would be a "tutorial", maybe showing the different layouts of bedrooms from sleeping holes to 2x2,3x3 "lung" chambers (8 bedrooms, 2 rows, connecting to one hallway), and others. Same with dining halls. Make one dining hall with the "chair, table, chair" grid 3x3 (+end chairs), and another with an actual dining HALL (one table per chair). Maybe have an artificial waterfall pre-made using screwpumps to show how to carry water up levels, or de-salting water.

Dwarf fort has a LOT of cool tricks in it that you only learn from stealing other's ideas. Maybe the "quickstart" guide could be more like the optional tutorial that new users can see to get their feet wet first! Kenji 03 05:04, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Catsplosion advisable?

Why are we giving the absolute and utter newbies the seeds of a catsplosion with no cages etc to let them solve the problem? By the time they learn what to do about it, they might already be too late to stop it, and flaming out of the -quickstart tutorial- of a game is possibly one of the most depressing things a newbie can do. I strongly suggest upping a save without two cats. --LucienSadi 02:56, 14 December 2008 (EST)

I could do that, but sticking it in a cage instead would be a lot simpler for me. Would that be sufficient? --Juckto 03:52, 14 December 2008 (EST)

Sure, just tag on a warning as well (if you haven't done so already) --LucienSadi 07:07, 16 December 2008 (EST)

Images

They aren't worse than ugly, but they are ugly (and large). If there's ever any chance to redo the images, we've got to make sure they follow Rule I, which means that they should be the unstretched, unblurred default tileset, and that they should be .pngs.

...I'm pretty sure that's the standard 800x600 tileset. It looks neither stretched nor blurred to me. They should be made .pngs, but that didn't sound like your only problem. --Squirrelloid 14:39, 16 December 2008 (EST)

I think "standard tileset" may need clarifying. See DwarfFortressWiki_talk:Community_Portal#I.

Examples of images:

• Image:Tunnel_in_local_view.png
  • is blurred
  • uses the default/standard tileset
  • is not stretched
  • is a .png
• Image:Qs02.JPG
  • is not blurred
  • uses the default/standard tileset
  • is stretched
  • is not a .png
• Image:Human_roads.png
  • is blurred
  • does not use the default/standard tileset
  • is stretched
  • is a .png

Note that the default "800x600" tileset under the default settings is stretched by 2x vertically if you don't alter grid size/use blackspace.

Sorry for the long list. --Savok 17:11, 16 December 2008 (EST)

Since blackspace is set to NO by default, I think that makes 'stretched' the default for the 800x600 tileset, or rather, I would consider it 'stretched' to have something other than a 2:1 h:w ratio with the 800x600 tileset because that's different than what the game does by default and so is stretched relative to the default settings. I will agree that non-default tilesets are bad, and that blurriness is bad, but we should show people what they would expect to see in the game if they don't touch the .ini file. --Squirrelloid 17:34, 16 December 2008 (EST)

Squirreloid is correct, I took the screenshots in full-screen "stretched" mode because I thought that that is what a new player would be seeing. -- juckto 18:20, 16 December 2008 (EST)~

My general stance on images in general is that they be:

• Understandable to whomever views them -- this means standard tileset in most cases, though a custom symbol here and there is okay as long as it isn't important to the actual thing being illustrated. It also means standard color set, generally. I have my doubts about stretched/resized fonts being hard to understand unless they are outright distorted.
• As small, byte-wise, as possible. Ideally, this means well-compressed 256-color pngs, and not double-sized (something I have been guilty of) or the like. However, as long as you upload in some lossless format (png or gif), others can optimize the actual file.

--Maximus 16:09, 17 December 2008 (EST)

and init.txt

Also, it may help to include the init folder as well. --Savok 10:36, 16 December 2008 (EST)

What does adding the init folder achieve? --juckto 14:42, 16 December 2008 (EST)

Adding the init folder would help if you've changed init settings. You don't talk about that in the article, and boy can init settings be important. --Savok 17:11, 16 December 2008 (EST)

Yes I have changed my init settings, but I don't see how any of the changes I've made would make any real difference to a new player playing this quickstart game. -- juckto 18:20, 16 December 2008 (EST)~

savegame seems to be bugged

Missing Creature Body Definition: CAT_MOUTH

get spouted on me every time I try to load the savegame.

on 28.181.40d and a recently installed DF

The above unsigned comment was added by Loatroll.

This is because the dumbass who made the savegame didn't use the default raws like they were supposed to. I've removed the link. --GreyMaria 13:37, 19 January 2009 (EST)

rather, the guy used what looks like a bugfixed raw (based off the fact that it's a modified cat mouth - which was probably added for the sake of avoiding the "cat cancels show item to owner - too injured" messages. Toady One probably has this fixed on his end.) the person is probably NOT a dumbass, it's just that the default raws are buggy with respect to cats, and just about everyone that reports that bug gets redirected to the sticky on the forums. --Zeta 19:06, 19 January 2009 (EST)

But using savegames that use modified raws is against common sense, especially in a newbie guide. --GreyMaria 21:35, 19 January 2009 (EST)

2 "Daniel"s?

Just read over the page, and noticed that there are two dwarves named "Daniel." Is this a good idea? Since you gave them english-sounding names, why didn't you make them unique?

bah humbug. They're meant to be unique. I'll check the save file tonight and see if the error is repeated there, and fix as necessary. -- Juckto 21:50, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Disappearing images

I started reading this page a few hours ago, and the images File:Qs02.JPG and File:Qs03.jpg came up fine. I came back to study it some more, and they're now redlinked. Have they been removed pending the rework described above? It would be useful if they could be restored until their replacements are in place and linked in. Hv 23:22, 4 October 2009 (UTC)