Thursday, August 28, 2008

in case anyone cares


Yay! Kittens! Now I won't have to buy another cat!

It's autumn now, no immigrants yet. Built a depot, moving some stone into stockpiles because I'm tired of everyone tripping over it. Also my slacker-dwarves will look for any excuse to get out of a job, so it's nice for everyone to have some hauling to do. Good healthy excercise, makes everyone a bit tougher.

You're gonna spend the night...

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Strike the earth!

So as I may have mentioned, I tried out Dwarf Fortress.

The graphics are in ascii, the interface is confusing, the complexity is ridiculous.

It appeals to me immensely.

After generating my first world, I set out to create my new fortress, which several minutes hitting "Random" finally resulted in "Dragondoor" I considered "Stablefortress" when it came up, but I didn't feel it would be honest.

To start the game, you select your starting location off of the world map, then pick some dwarves:
buy them some stuff:

Usual assortment. Picks for digging, plenty of lumber because there's no trees where I'm going, some mushroom "seeds", plenty of booze for the hardworkers, and...

*inhale*

mule meat, horse meat, donkey meat, cat meat, dog meat, perch, turtle, fox meat, racoon meat, deer meat, rainbow trout, groundhog meat (I needed two of these for some reason), rhesus macaque meat, mountain goat meat (again, x2), hoary marmot meat, char, and salfin molly.

There's actually a reason for this amazingly unappetizing survey of low-grade animal flesh(I could eat some perch right now, though). One barrel holds 10 pieces of meat. If you buy at least one of something, the merchant "throws in" the barrel to carry it, and doesn't do the sensible thing and pile all your game in together. Therefore you buy one each of anything which costs only 2 plat.

I can only imagine that this involves repeated visits, buying one piece of meat, leaving the store, putting on a fake mustache, returning, buying another piece of meat, repeat until you're wearing about 20 mustaches.

Our intrepid (and gamey-smelling) wagonload of small bearded men arrives. The land is cold, unfamiliar, and I think I saw some antmen.

And this just has to stop.

We begin digging in:
Our little dogs and cats wander around as the digging begins.

The X on the far right of my little tunnel is a stairwell, and my wagon didn't actually vomit, those are barrels of booze, bags of seed, and lots and lots of lumber.

A stray kitten bleeds to death. :'( Wasn't really sure why.



We dig out, begin working on farming land. On the right you'll see the stairwell. That goes up to the level above. Not sure how many Z-levels (as the third dimension is called in this game) are supported, but I'm told it's well over 100. Probably 256, if I know how coders think. The engine keeps track of everything on every level, whether or not you can see it.

That's powerful, complex, and this little ascii game DRAGS on my pentium III laptop. For this game I switched over to running it on the p4 in the office and playing it over VNC (watching the little dwarves jump around the screen wildly as the screen refreshed. this got better in 256 colors (which you may notice from the later screenshots.

When I saved and quit I was having some problems..

My dwarves weren't really in trouble, but all the animals we brought have been lost to antmen attack (I think I have a cat left, but that's not enough to have kittens unless she's already pregnant)

They don't seem to pose any threat to my dwarves, I'm thinking I'm going to try to make some animal traps and cages, catch the little bastards.

It's a deep game, too deep in some ways. The interface is a pain, but there are compensations. If nothing else, reading the official forums over at bay12.

"I accidentally dislodged a single tile at ground level while trimming the hill around the fortress entrance, and it punched through a lava moat, a gem stockpile and a bone stockpile before coming to a halt in someone's bedroom. The bedroom's owner, a planter, was in bed at the time, and he got up and walked to the door just in time to get a coating of lava, gems, bones and scorched legendary miner chunks." -NCarter

dig dig dig dig

Nagblogging--

Didja watch the fine 45 minutes of content on that embedded hulu video?

Why the hell not?

I don't blame you if you didn't spend the time reading about Boatmurdered

Someone who read through all of that might be accused of being strange.

Someone who finally pushed past the ascii graphics and terrible interface to play some Dwarf Fortress might have some screenshots to post later today.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Real NPH

Not from concentrate!

Friday, August 22, 2008

Hope I was right...

On my way home today, I saw a man standing by the side of the road with a begging sign.

He needed money to get home, a job fell through. His kids were in the van.

I didn't stop. I couldn't keep myself from thinking that he was most likely a scammer. It disgusted me that he'd be using his kids in that way.

I stopped for gas, and a young man asked me for money, he was stranded, needed money to get home. He pointed to his girlfriend, who had tears in her eyes. He commented on how his credit cards were maxed out, so they were no use.

I told him that I wouldn't be giving him any money, because I couldn't tell who was a scammer. He said that he would rather give someone the benefit of the doubt than take the risk of refusing help to someone who really needed it.

On my way home, I was thinking about the anatomy of the scam. Both were fundamentally the same...

1. The person tried to make themselves look as something other than a common beggar, by giving the impression this is a "one-time" request, something borne out of desperation.

2. The person tried to make you feel sympathy for someone in their care. A girlfriend, or three young children.

I could have why there was no-one at home, no friends, no relatives, who could send them money to get home. The answers would have just been a lie.

I really hate not being able to help someone who appears to be in genuine need. But there's just no damn way to tell.

It's also damn curious how on a sunny friday afternoon, prime party weather the day before a major concert at green river gorge, people are in need of money to "get home"

it's a gas..

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

How I've been spending my three extra hours..

Working on housecleaning...
Preparing for trips wherever
Recovering from trips wherever,

And today, sick as a dog.

And it's not a reaction to reading about Boatmurder.

Fat stupid hobbits..

Friday, August 15, 2008

Keeping with the serious tone of Clone Wars

It's a republic starfighter with an "Emo Anakin" bobblehead.

That is all I have to say about that.

Friday, August 8, 2008

The mighty i850

Macguyvered, apparently.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

I found this hilarious

Before getting drunk tonight. No guarantees what I might moblog this evening...

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Yes, this is a photo-driven "phoned-in" blog entry

I can stop any time I want.

Yes, that's a raccoon head with binoculars inside. It's blinding me with science!