40d:Known bugs and issues

Bugfix log for 0.27.169.33a:

10/31/2007: Fixed problem with work quota validations not being saved, fixed various typos, fixed problem with count promotion, made damp stone warning do diagonals, fixed lag from creatures passing each other, fixed problem with smelter metal counts, added fuel notification for smelter, fixed problem with caravan weight calculations involving seeds and animal corpses, fixed problem with walls turning into soil upon being carved into fortifications, tweaked embark warnings, fixed problem with building material temperature checks, fixed problem with cookable raw fish not being recognized once they are brought to the kitchen, handled water table designation on dig, made main layer stones default to unrestricted even if they are economic, fixed problem with blinking designations, automatically freed broker from depot upon merchant departure, added wooden blocks, fixed various forge jobs, fixed problem with creatures not taking fall damage from hitting the bottom of the playable area
10/30/2007: Fixed embark screen abort crash bug, got rid of some duplicate entity links, fixed handling of abandoned fortress migrant entry links and corresponding reclaim crash, fixed displayed affiliation of previous settlers, stopped previous settlers from being in ambush, fixed well crash bug, fixed broken smelter jobs, changed how hidden tiles are displayed, fixed accumulated midmap cleaner
10/29/2007: Fixed spelling of negotiator

Miners Stuck

My Miners, after they mind a floor down and then started mining to the left, stopped and tried to move the boulders that were left behind but when they did they couldn't find their way. What I did was I mined to the right a little then I made two ramps right next to each other, on the lower level, and then I mined to the left. Some stone was present and so my miners tried to move it to the stock pile but they couldn't find the way back to the surface. They were stuck in an infinite loop of not finding there path.

Floating Dwarves and etc

Certain situations can occur that will break pathfinding on a dwarf and leave him stranded in the air. Building a stairs to his location doesn't seem to help.

Floating Boulders

If you dig an up ramp to a tile with boulders, then remove the up ramp, the boulders may end up floating in midair.

If you get this you can build a floor underneath the boulder (on the higher level of course) and it fixes the problem.

Perfect Swimming

"Brook" tiles are treated as floor instead of the open space they're supposed to be. Dwarves, animals, even--that's right--wagons can travel over rivers. (was this fixed on 0.27.169.33a?)

This isn't a bug. There's just no good way to represent a shallow river with the current depth system. Think of the water tiles below the brook as being an aquifer of sorts. Solid ground, but containing water.--McFrugal 01:37, 2 November 2007 (EDT)

Rewalling Quirks

Diagonal rewalling is silently pathblocked.
Rewalling from the top of a ramp is apparently silently pathblocked.
Walls made by rewalling start out smoothed, but cannot be engraved.

Optimal pathfinding

When digging an area from two ends (ie. farm from outside river and inside hallway) dwarves sometimes choose to start digging from the other end, causing them to run back and forth, digging just one rock at a time in worst case.

It is also common for digging/item placement to start with the tile to the right of the dwarf, even if the path is closer using another direction. Keep this in mind when placing floodgates or digging out areas where you could paint yourself in a corner.

The Most Dangerous Game

If you have two or more miners digging a channel, they will try to dig it under each other's feet, sending their fellows plummeting into the hole. (If you only designate channels on un-mined squares, this won't happen, as the dwarves seem to mine both levels' tiles out at the same time)

Even a single miner digging a channel can get into trouble. Miners may "paint themselves into a corner" and end up surrounded by channel tiles, unable to remove the last channel tile under their own feet.

Related but not really: If you ask a dwarf to remove a floor you've built, he will -stand on it- while removing it. Problematic if, say, it's over a hundred-yard cliff, but still a good way to get the sand down covering the floor at the magma forge 6 levels down.

Infinite Blood

For some reason, blood is constantly 'growing'. Blood from an accident in the centre of the village (wooden buildings) seems to be spreading further and further without dissapearing. --Plasma 20:23, 31 October 2007 (EDT)

Don't you know? Your dwarves are building a shrine to Armok. -EarthquakeDamage 11:10, 2 November 2007 (EDT)

related: not that mine's disappearing, but my fortress has a cleaning jobspam related to the blood - "such and such cancels job - can't find path x23490872340982734098273409283", just like empty archer traps in old-school df. any help? or do I have to abuse traffic designations (and my main hut) to get rid of the damned stuff?

For both problems, try designating a single dwarf to cleaning jobs only. Let me know if that helps, because I had similar problems but the blood was dealt with eventually and cleaned. Schm0 11:58, 11 November 2007 (EST)

Wipe Your Feet

Possibly related to the above issue, mud can be tracked through your fortress by dwarves stepping over it. The tracked mud is treated like fresh mud, and will thus take a very long time to dry. Dwarves stepping over this new mud will then track it elsewhere, causing the mud to eventually take over your fortress. Dwarves stepping onto a bridge will stop tracking mud around, so it may be possible to stop the spread of mud by building a bridge outside of the muddy area.

Hole in a Wall

If a dwarf removes a floor that's on top of a wall, the dwarf will get stuck, and the Visualisation reveals that the floor tile of that wall is completely missing. --Plasma 20:23, 31 October 2007 (EDT)

We All Fall Down

If a dwarf goes to remove a floor, he removes it while standing on it, and will subsequently fall down if there's no ground underneath. --Plasma 20:23, 31 October 2007 (EDT)

This also occurs when removing staircases. --JT 20:26, 31 October 2007 (EDT)

Fatal Crash (Fixed?)

The first fortress I tried to create resulted in the program's hard crash right after the disembarkment screen. I has manually selected the location (sorry I don't remember it's features) and equipment. I swapped out the anvil for a LOT of items: extra barrels, food, crossbows and bolts. I also swapped the copper pick out for a steel pick. The fortress was not created in the files. I think it also refused to save the world map, but that might be user error. The next default fortress worked fine. HeckRuler 15:27, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

This bug was PROBABLY fixed in 0.27.169.33a, but could use rechecking

Weight Issues

Are steel bolts supposed to weigh 10 units each? It makes a quiver of 25 three times as heavy as the crossbow HeckRuler 17:09, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

Startup - Civilization Selection

When you are choosing you starting location, if you move the starting zone on the local (leftmost) map, cycle to the Civ Selection tab (rightmost), and change Civ, the area selected on the left will default to original location and size.

Rylen 23:21, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

Theft in Adventure Mode

In the 2D version, you had to actually reach the edge of the map to lay permanent claim to your five-fingered discounts, which was fine. In the 3D version, the area maps are seamless, but the game still seems to think you have to touch a seam before you can own your five-fingered discounts, which very obviously causes problems for would-be thieves and other sorts who would just like to enjoy their newfound treasures in peace. Note that it is *not* a bug that you have to walk over to things you purchase in shops and pick them up yourself, despite the behavior being different in just about every other game out there (for those who know not what I mean, other games magically transport that new sword right into your backpack after your purchase, and sometimes even right into your hands). --BDR 08:41, 2 November 2007 (EDT)

Ducky Go Down The Hoooole

Wells crash the game now and then.

Despite the changelog, this bug was NOT fixed completely in 0.27.169.33a Verified by 2 people on DF forums.

I had a crash on my well the moment a dwarf hit it up for water when the stream under had frozen or reduced height, unsure. --arr

Multiple Mayors

You can end up with multiple mayors in your fortress: One from the expedition leader, and one elected later when the population gets high enough. These positions should probably be seperate jobs, or the elected one should replace the original mayor/leader, and he/she should become 'mayor emeritus' or something.

From what I have seen there is only 'one' active Mayor (whoever is on the noble screen as having the job) but the dwarves retain the title when they are removed from office. I have 6 mayors running around but only one (the current one) does the mayor's work. It's confusing as hell --Gorfob 22:35, 8 November 2007 (EST)

Love Conquers All

A chained animal, when they spot their original trainer, will break free of their chains and go to greet him/her. Hence chaining animals is practically useless.

Magma Flow

Magma will not flow UP stairs. It will flow DOWN them just fine. Update: Toady mentioned this has to do with magma using the 'chunky' fluid flow, which does not respect pressure.

Sew plant fiber image crash

Ordering plant fiber image in Clothier's Shop reliably crashes the game.

Fixed, according to the dev blog.--Mylon 17:36, 13 November 2007 (EST)

Trading crash

Sometimes offering a trade to traders the game crashes. Sometimes looking at the inventory of traders using the view units screen crashes the game.

Outpost liason

The npc dwarf that arrives the first autumn never leaves for me. He eventually gets hungry and goes rampage. Although the expedition leader has no other tasks, he seems to not be able to fully complete the meeting with the liason. I discussed this in the irc channel and it seems to be some wierd bug.

The liason is following the expedition leader around trying to talk to him. Atleast in my game, whenever the exp.leader has a idle moment, part of the meeting takes place until he has idled enough times to finish the meeting completely. (edit by: Uberubert)

Apparently it sometimes happens even if the liason finishes the meeting. Best answer I've seen is that the liason forgets how to use stairs after the meeting, so maybe try to keep your noble's office or other meeting place on the "ground floor." (edit by: Rabid Llama)

I had a meeting place outdoors and this still happened. It doesn't matter where the meeting takes place. Assuming you can get the meeting to actually occur - which takes some work - if it doesn't properly conclude, the liason will be stuck. (edit by: Captain Failmore)

Oh, also, for the meeting to even take place or properly conclude, your broker has to have ALL OTHER LABOR turned off. Leave their labors off until the meeting concludes in full. (That is, you've been 'shown the documents' twice and the liaison wishes you well before leaving.) If you let the meeting conclude in full without assigning labor to your broker (who may and probably will wander about aimlessly for some time while the meeting is taking place for reasons I don't know) the liaison WILL leave.

A Time To Wait

Sieges completely do not work, and goblins will just mill around aimlessly at the edge of the map waiting for your dwarves to come and kill them. Toady has said something about the AI for sieges being broken.

Buff Swimmers

All creatures get stat boosts by training up skills. This is normal. Aquatic creatures can train swimming simply by being on the map. This leads to some very buff carp or lizardmen or other creatures if they've been in water for a significant amount of time.

According to the dev blog, this has been fixed.

Sticky Keys

Sometimes when you are scrolling on the map the keys will seem to stick, and you will keep scrolling forever. This happens when you release a key out of the order in which it was pressed.

Example:

8
Shift+8
Shift
No key pressed.

After holding the above keys you will continue going up until you press the following or Alt+Tab.

Shift+8
Shift
8

This will clear out the pressed key flag in the game.

I've found if you merely press the direction key of the scrolling on the numpad this scrolling stops. No need to fiddle with the shift or in what order the shift key is pressed.--Mylon 17:35, 13 November 2007 (EST)

That won't work if you were using shift to accelerate your move speed. You have to tap the key with shift pressed to clear out the shift+key then press just key to clear it out as well.--Ikkonoishi 21:38, 13 November 2007 (EST)

Thawing stairs

I have a brook that freezes in the winter. Awesome. I dug a down-stairs down into it and started diggin about in the ice. When the thaw came, the ice broke up and the flow resumed, but the stairs remained. Unfortunetly, this is on the old version .32a HeckRuler 17:44, 15 November 2007 (EST)