Last version I played before was v0.28.181.40d in 2010.

Just downloaded the latest release (v0.34.07 from March 30th 2012) and jumped right in only to have one of my most valuable starting items stolen shortly after setting up camp!

{"name":"605895","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/1\/816251863f33b4b7004b45576697a7df.png","w":1277,"h":640,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/1\/816251863f33b4b7004b45576697a7df"}

Looking forward to seeing how the game has improved since 2010.
Before I started, I modified the 16x16 curses font I used last time (added beards to the dwarf characters similar to those in the charsets which are included in the game).

{"name":"605894","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/0\/6\/06cd09ee8a034e2f15d39b4476be5779.png","w":256,"h":256,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/0\/6\/06cd09ee8a034e2f15d39b4476be5779"}

I might go back to it at some point iff they've improved the interface. And I don't even mean the pseudo-ASCII graphics (but I'm not a fan of those either), but rather the inconsistent keyboard commands.

I've been playing it a lot the las couple of weeks (never played it before though), and was surprised of how complex it is, and how it tries to resemble real life in a lot of things.

The only gripe I have so far is that I cannot get the dwarves to supply the hospital with soap once it is produced...

So far I'm enjoying the game immensely. So far I've got a very basic fortress carved out consisting of a dormitory / meeting hall. A couple of workshops and a farm + still. My dwarves aren't starving to death or dehydrating and I've somehow managed to attract two immigrants.

I'm thinking my next step is going to be getting a military up and running. I brought a couple of war dogs with me (and before long they had puppies!) but I'm pretty sure I'm going to need at least a few axedwarves and marksdwarves.

I dunno, maybe I'll start working on the great hall and bedrooms first though... That should give me a chance to build up a nice pool of immigrants so my core dwarves won't get pulled from their duties (mining, farming, brewing).

Apparently Toady One is testing minecarts:

I can't wait to start experimenting with these!

Edit: Also I'm at work so no pics until I get home.

Still there.

I started a new playthrough the other week... there are quite a few new features that have been added over the past year or two. It's enjoyable (although I'm currently being frustrated due to forgetting to pack an anvil) and am starting to figure out how the new military system works. Haven't been attacked yet (thank Armok) but soon I'll have an automatic defence system in place in case my military dwarves fail.

I'll post pictures once I get home too.

I think you can redefine those, specially if you use the Lazy Newb Pack.

BTW, does anyone have any tips to avoid having large waves of migrants? I sometimes get waves of 40 dwarves, which is a bit painful to adapt at times since the stills need to produce much more.

I've looked into this as well, even though my first wave only brought 2 migrants . From what I can tell the best way to do this is edit the .ini file (or use the Lazy Newb Pack ... (which just edits the .ini file anyways)) and set the population cap to something like 20. That way your first wave will probably bring you up to 20 dwarves total. Then you can up the cap to 30 or 40, wait for the next wave, up it again... and so on and so forth.

Ok, here's my current fortress (I think 2ish years in):

{"name":"605900","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/d\/5d67cb75a3aa09c1b670512e4c95d2f5.png","w":1296,"h":848,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/d\/5d67cb75a3aa09c1b670512e4c95d2f5"}

No green stuff outside because it's winter. I seem to have a puppy problem too...

EDIT:

Well, wow. 5 minutes after taking that picture I get attacked by a Titan. I closed all the access bridges except the one behind the trapdoors, thinking that I'd just trap the Titan until I have some real weapons. Unfortunately, my fortress defence had a critical flaw... a ramp below one of the bridges provided access to my main meeting hall through a water filled tunnel!

What ensued was quite a bit of wooden axe slapping and dog biting. That was going nowhere for awhile until some hunters showed up and did some real damage. I believe the Titan ended up bleeding to death. Casualties: two dogs lost (bled to death), one dwarf gained (born to one of the soldiers during the battle). Some highlights:

The Titan's description and damage from first quarter of the battle:

{"name":"605901","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/c\/ec8c34720db557ac5d1b72a7f1777ff8.png","w":1610,"h":228,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/c\/ec8c34720db557ac5d1b72a7f1777ff8"}

The most awesome part of the battle, imo:
{"name":"605902","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/a\/9\/a9c58e27353a9e9adf5ee874130a8155.png","w":970,"h":345,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/a\/9\/a9c58e27353a9e9adf5ee874130a8155"}

The interface is still pretty clunky but usable (and on the plus side it didn't get worse).

You could probably just put a dedicated soap stockpile inside or near the hospital and they'll use it from there then.

Consider yourself lucky that you only got two. I keep getting huge streams of immigrants (population is at 107 dwarves already after a couple of hours) and I can barely keep up with the booze production. Had to quickly hammer out four carpenter workshops and two stills nonstop producing barrels and booze to prevent disaster.

Luckily it does not seem necessary to have one early on as you can defend with bone/wood bolts and crossbows (or some floodable entrance hall) and then later on the caravans sometimes sell them (you as a DF veteran probably already know that).

Having trouble keeping up with providing for them as well. I thought about creating an additional burrow to where I'd have send them all to drown them but then I reconsidered and put them all to good use.

XD XD XD

I'm playing in a pretty calm environment and haven't been attacked yet and the second, maybe even third winter is already coming. I already formed and trained a military unit of 10 crossbow dwarves and I'm building a floodable entrance hall for extra security. The plan is to assign all dwarves to the 'inner fortress' burrow on an attack and then pull a lever to drown the attackers. I've used this type of defense successfully in the last version.

Lost a possessed weaponsmith who later went berzerk. He couldn't do much damage though because when I realized he couldn't get what he needed I ordered the other ones to wall him in so he eventually starved to death.
{"name":"605903","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/4\/5468bffe75e90087be177cec3c50954d.png","w":633,"h":304,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/4\/5468bffe75e90087be177cec3c50954d"}

Completely forgot about him for a while and later discovered an interesting new fragrance when I opened up the walls around the forge.
{"name":"605904","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/0\/c0ee0571db60181c981e77293946aa9a.png","w":414,"h":247,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/0\/c0ee0571db60181c981e77293946aa9a"}

Not sure what I am looking at in those screen shots.

Nerd candy.

Well, here goes a few screenshots of my current fort:

Fort entrance:
{"name":"605909","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/b\/4\/b4428ecf98f6d5b0964e7dc81ed9b3e9.png","w":1440,"h":878,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/b\/4\/b4428ecf98f6d5b0964e7dc81ed9b3e9"}

Meeting hall:
{"name":"605910","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/f\/dfa5ddc483ec98e527056b5934d77637.png","w":410,"h":449,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/f\/dfa5ddc483ec98e527056b5934d77637"}

Industries:
{"name":"605914","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/a\/8\/a8448f83e4649a73afc225487c95c429.png","w":473,"h":585,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/a\/8\/a8448f83e4649a73afc225487c95c429"}

Current stocks:
{"name":"605913","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/6\/6\/6695172c8b9a6bf497b7cce62b420192.png","w":995,"h":292,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/6\/6\/6695172c8b9a6bf497b7cce62b420192"}

Cemetery & Jail chains:

Crazy Photon, your fortress looks so neat and orderly it makes me want to restart mine from scratch.

Maybe I will be forced to do that anyway since I still get more immigrants than I can provide for. Food and drink counts were very low a few times already and I expected the dwarves to go crazy over the lack of alcohol but every time when failure was imminent a caravan arrived and I could trade useless (but valuable) quartzite stonecraft items for food and plants for the distillery.

I'm pretty sure you don't really want to know but I'll explain anyway:
Dwarf Fortress shows the representation of the 3D world in a 2D top down view one z-layer at a time.

{"name":"605903","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/4\/5468bffe75e90087be177cec3c50954d.png","w":633,"h":304,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/4\/5468bffe75e90087be177cec3c50954d"}

In this screenshot you see a large workshop room of my fortress with stairs leading down in each corner. In the center is a shaft coming from the layer above leading to the layer below.

By pulling a certain lever, water is allowed to flow into the room below to make the ground muddy (for underground farming).

The long room to the right is sealed off with a stone door for now (I plan to have an underground sweet water source there and maybe even a spot for fishing). The small room to the left is part of a staircase connecting various layers of my fortress.

The workshops (3x3 tiles each) in the room from top left to bottom right are: Kitchen, Fishery, Craftsdwarf's Workshop, Masonry, Farmer's Workshop, Distillery, Leather Works, Metal Smiths Forge (walled in with the dwarf going berserk).

In the other screenshot, the dark magenta cloud is a miasma caused by the rotting corpse of the dead weaponsmith.

append:
Found my last fortress "Wheelcried" which I abandoned in 2010.

How many z layers can you have, more than 1 would blow my mind in it's ability to watch and track things.

Just found out I still have DF on Ubuntu. One of these days I may play it again, but for now the dust will just keep collecting on it.

Oh don't worry, you'll probably get murdered by a Forgotten Beast or something sooner or later.

Easily over a hundred. I prefer to confine my fortress to a few layers though for the same reason.

So I ordered some anvils from my liason, and the next fall the caravan finally arrived. Then, as the wagons are approaching my fortress, I get attacked by an army of goblins... it worked out in the end though, as some of the wagons were abandoned by the merchants giving me tonnes of free goods, including two anvils.

Unfortunately I still haven't found a weapon-grade metal source... so now I need to wait until the next fall for them to bring some iron/steel .

I've found it to be a lot more difficult to locate good metals in DF 2012 versus DF 2010. Could just be bad luck, but I don't recall being so unlucky so often before .

Someone should try embarking in a zone marked as "terrifying."

"The Minotaur Kosmz† Kudoolang Rukkustran has come! A giant humanoid monster with the head of a bull." <- Happened earlier today while one of Dwarven Children was busy punching a Gem Cutter and bruising his muscles and bones through his armor.

That Minotaur was an uninvited guest to the party and also came too early while the floodable entrance hall defense system was not fully in place yet.

Many a good dwarf and quite a few members of the unsuspecting livestock community bravely lost their lives on the surface trying to distract Kudoolang so the miners and mechanics could finish digging the flooding channel and hooking up the gate mechanism...

{"name":"605922","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/3\/3\/331142a604c5d8794eea05cc4c0cc2e2.png","w":753,"h":606,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/3\/3\/331142a604c5d8794eea05cc4c0cc2e2"}

...just in time before the Minotaur forced the hatch entrance open and clubbed his way down the main stairs and into the foyer where he seemed to have fun smearing dwarven blood onto the walls.

"To the lever!" the dwarves screamed and shortly after an earthly scraping noise which Kudoolang had never heard before, the water came rushing in and he drowned.

{"name":"605919","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/4\/8444f07e46869acbd9bd08c7a34adcfa.png","w":748,"h":603,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/4\/8444f07e46869acbd9bd08c7a34adcfa"}

It was time for the dwarves to start digging out burial chambers and also to drain the water from the entrance hall as the automatic draining system could not be finished in time before that bullheaded monster attacked.

After the fallen heroes of the battle against Kudoolang were honorably buried the dwarves drowned their sorrows with alcohol... until a band of goblins attacked...

{"name":"605921","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/9\/d\/9d337471650ada6b549a0bbc7039d08d.png","w":750,"h":608,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/9\/d\/9d337471650ada6b549a0bbc7039d08d"}

...who were eventually killed off by the "wooden crossbows with bone bolts" militia consisting of peasants, fishermen and farmers wearing leather armor. Some died. More burial chambers needed to be dug out.

A year or so later Alebirds is stronger than ever. There is enough booze for every dwarf to get drunk as dwarf can be and an overabundance of food has made their bellies round and their children many: Dwarves are being born left and right everywhere!

{"name":"605920","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/4\/4\/441c28c7d9bb5bbb80d94dd6d69f083a.png","w":1280,"h":379,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/4\/4\/441c28c7d9bb5bbb80d94dd6d69f083a"}

I haven't found any metal yet either nor any gems or other valuable treasures. Not even different types of stone... it's all quartzite here. At least that means my fortress gets to have a unified look in each and every corner, hall and floor.

So I thought I was doing pretty well. I had a series of rooms burrowed out, moved all my goods inside, was harvesting wood and plants ... I even had a farm and a still set up (and actually working). Then a trade caravan shows up. Awesome I think, this is the first I've actually survived stuck it out long enough. I should mention that before I embarked I carefully chose my starting dwarves and was certain one of them was a skilled appraiser. So having read the wiki about the trading workflow I summon my 'broker' to the depot. Then I wait. And wait. While I'm waiting I begin designating my eventual meeting hall (that will replace my makeshift hall) and designate a bunch of rooms for my hardworking dwarves. While my miners are busy toiling away carving out a massive volume of rock I check back to the depot. No broker! "What in Armok's name is he doing?" says I. So I look at my list of units and find my appraiser. Sure enough he's in the makeshift hall happily swilling wine like there's no tomorrow. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why the hell he was wasn't getting off his arse to strike up some hot deals for our fledgling fortress. I looked at him with Dwarf Therapist ... sure enough he has the skill, he's got no other jobs ... and he's just sitting there drinking and sleeping.

Well, the caravan left without me being able to buy anything. Shortly thereafter a bison and a donkey died of starvation... I can't help but feel like I'm somehow responsible for that... Although I have no idea what I was supposed to do. My dwarves aren't starving, couldn't the animals eat what my dwarves are eating? .

After the caravan left a lightbulb went off in my head... I never appointed my appraiser as a 'broker' in the Nobles thingy. Now my fortress (potentially) has to scrape by for another year without much needed goods.

Also, I got another wave of immigrants bringing my total population up to 18. I read somewhere that when the population breaks 20 'fey moods' start happening.

I'd take some fancy snapshots but I can't figure out how to move the export image map since I don't have a numberpad on my laptop.

It looks quite intriguing to me, but I just can't find the time to get into it... Also, I want a text-only version so I can run it in GNU screen on my VPS. Just as I do with Adom, though I also don't have the time to learn how to play that...

So I just continue to pwn n00bs in Counter-Strike's GunGame mod.

One day I will break down and buy that on Steam. One day.

I would be surprised if there isn't a text-only mode out there... This seems pretty neat: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Utility:Dfterm2 As neat as it is, I don't know if it would help you... and it would probably add yet another thing to figure out while trying to play DF. Still though, I think it would be awesome to have a multiplayer dwarf fortress succession fort.

As to learning how to play... I really don't have time to learn how to play properly either. I find I've been spending far too much time perusing /r/dwarffortress and dwarffortresswiki.org at work.

Need to define a pasture zone.

I just take screenshots.

Got attacked by like 20 mounted goblins and trolls. Good thing I had that trap door bridge thing in place, my fortress would have been surely wiped out without it in place. Some got past the traps and did manage to kill some dwarfs. Occasionally ambushers also killed a few... somehow I got two ghosts to happen, but I managed to placate them easily.

In terms of my fails... I somehow didn't have enough clothing for my dwarves, so when the babies started growing up, they had nothing to wear and got very, very angry at that. Even after I gave them all shirts and pants they continued to be angry... while tantruming one of them picked up something (an axe perhaps), threw it and killed a farmer. I think they all died out due to madness now though...

Also managed drain a murky pool into my main meeting hall by accident... glad it wasn't a river.

At some point I revealed an underground cavern... a few forgotten beasts spawned there. Luckily there is no path from there to my actual fortress, so I am safe for now.

Even if you assign him, sometimes dwarves just need long breaks where they sleep/drink and party so one trick to get him to go to the depot is to define a burrow around it and assign the broker to that burrow.

As SiegeLord said, just take regular screenshots. In Windows (if you play in windowed mode) you can just press ALT+PrintScreen to copy the active window into the clipboard. You can then paste and save it in your favorite image manipulation programme.

The export image(s) map function is most useful only in combination with the map compressor and the DF Map Archive.

Take a look Dfterm2.

That happened to me once when I didn't know how to properly route a surface river a few z-levels down. Not all dwarves drowned in their own bedrooms in that fortress but those who managed to survive were unable (due to lazy and unambitious leadership on my part) to recover from the consequences of that disaster.

append (7h later):
Nooooooo! I just lost seven hours of progress to a crash. Everything was running very well and population was up to 199. Then the game crashed in a goblin ambush while I was fumbling about in the military menu.

After the crash I loaded the last save (from this morning)... and then abandoned the fortress. I'll rather start a fresh one now because I don't feel like re-doing everything I had done in those seven hours just to arrive at the same state again.

It would have been much more fun and rewarding to see the fortress fail due to disaster or war but a simple game crash? pffft, lame.

Before I continue with a new fortress I will enable seasonal auto-saving though (I don't know why I forgot that, maybe I thought this was ON by default?).

I haven't played Dwarf Fortress since DF2010 came out: the interface had changed so much that I would have to relearn the game (note that it hadn't improved in anyway, it had just changed) and it was so full of bugs and broken features that the release was basically unplayable.
So what got the highest priority after the release? Adding more backstory generation crap nobody cares about.

I think I looked into that the last time DF came up on the forums. I'll have to look again, but I suspect there was something wrong with it. If nothing else, I suspect it would be difficult to find a usable terminal font.

FTFY.

Why did you just rot13 his post? You really have some weird fetish with that.

I should make a website offering a service to employers to search the internet for rot'd incriminating text .

Ok my new fortress failed pretty early on. I embarked in a cold area which would not necessarily have been a problem but then my proficient miner died in a landslide accident while cutting off a big chunk of mountain.

The noob who took over the pick and continued his work managed to finish the job but caused another landslide in which my rangerdwarf got injured severely. The only good thing the landslide caused was uncovering some grass.

Then I couldn't find any water (it was all frozen) to quench the injured rangerdwarf's thirst and the dwarves don't seem to feed booze (of which I took plenty) to the injured.

I tried to melt the ice but could not find anything to do that. The remaining five dwarves had to abandon this short expedition. The fisherdwarf would have been useless anyway with all the ice.

{"name":"605924","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/b\/a\/bab5a4122ccc4c85e1dde621232b8536.png","w":699,"h":656,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/b\/a\/bab5a4122ccc4c85e1dde621232b8536"}

IIRC I had not played any version prior to v0.28.181.40d so I think I never knew the old interface. The latest version still has a lot of bugs and I doubt it will ever be completely free of them but so far I had only one showstopper (the aforementioned crash where I lost 7 hours of progress) in three days and a couple of minor missing string bugs.

Despite bugs and clunky interface I still think it's one of the best games ever made. Never played the adventurer mode much though, just building fortresses and making silly mistakes or being surprised by the games' complexity. There always seems to be something new to discover and I'm neglecting other more important (RL stuff) things due to this game.

Nobody does. But guess which mode gets the most dev attention?

Psh, I sometimes do . The combat system is incredibly detailed and it's generally fun to play.

Anyway, here's a shot of my fortress:

{"name":"605925","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/d\/ddc55f8b2277dfcd6d7329d5f5a94e8c.png","w":1122,"h":898,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/d\/ddc55f8b2277dfcd6d7329d5f5a94e8c"}

In the upper-left corner you'll note a ballista... it'll be used to try to hit invaders that get past the trap bridges (activated by the purple touchplate in the bottom middle) and the weapon traps (line of red things on the middle left). The daughter of the ballista operator had the brilliant idea to stand in front of the ballista while the dad was using it... she survived with all her limbs broken and her lower spine severed: she'll never walk again. I really don't know a good workabout for this (aside from not using ballistae for training).

The status screen:

{"name":"605926","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/6\/1660cd29a3764170cb0e5a7432890257.png","w":1369,"h":389,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/6\/1660cd29a3764170cb0e5a7432890257"}

The enormous amount of imports probably come from the abandoned caravan wagon (dwarves haven't sent me another caravan for years now... I guess they're upset that they lost so many goods and lives last time they were around...).

Use PRINT_MODE:TEXT in DFs init.txt. That way you can play it from an iPad with an ssh client, for instance.

I just updated my DF under Ubuntu, but as of right now I have no plans to play it. My experience playing games is 2D/3D graphic based and not really done any ASCII game so the learning curve is a lot more steep for me than most of the other players.

It's alive! \o/ ...In a desktop Fedora install. I imagine it will be a bit more work to get it running in a headless Debian VPS.

Append:

Well, I don't have sound working even in Fedora. I need to figure out what libraries I'm missing for OpenAL.

Maybe just make sure no one is standing in front of the ballista when firing it?
You could probably achieve that by sealing off the corridor with doors and hatches and then forbid passage prior to shooting.

Though that would require a lot of micromanagement so the better idea would probably be to have a separate ballista for training which shoots into a dead end corridor which has no pathable access to the remaining fortress:

(edit: monospaced text seems to be not working correctly in chrome, same problem when using code tagsnvm, had a wrong font set in the preferences)
side view:
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB z0 blocks
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF z0 floor
* / L :) ==->     practice corridor (unreachable by dwarves)   B z1 blocks
FF FFFFFFFFFF--------------------------------------------------F z1 floor
BB\          ammo retrieval corridor (z level below ballista)  B z2 blocks 
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF z2 floor
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB z3 blocks

B block, F block floor
* access to rest of the fortress
/ down stairs
L lever
:) siege engine operator
==-> ballista
----- retractable bridge(s) operated by lever
\ up stairs

Ammunition from training shots could be retrieved by retracting the bridge(s) upon which the ammo should fall down to the corridor below where the haulers can then pick it up safely.

There are no sound effects just background music which in-game consists of some approximataly four minute long loop of varying guitar play. The music is pretty nice though and oddly enough does not feel all that much repetitive.

So if you can't get the music to play just put the respective .ogg file from the /data/sound folder into a favorite music player near you while playing. ^^

Unfortunately the square where the child stood was is inside the ballista building itself (it's the front middle square, where the arrowhead is). I tried restricting traffic, but that clearly didn't work. I could try using burrows, but that seems like too much work. Anyway, she recovered (I believe she crawls around now) thanks to my doctors. The setup you describe is essentially what I have (the far blocks is actually a raiseable bridge that can be lowered when the hallway needs to be cleansed).

Got attacked by an enormous army of goblins again, this time led by a human general who was accompanied by a macelord and a spearlord. My trapbridges and the weapon traps made relatively short work of them... I'd have no casualties at all if some dwarves didn't decide to go fetch equipment outside, running head on into the invading armies. Military dwarves are quite a pain to use in this version, they complain too much, easily get unhappy from friends and war animals dying etc. I'll do my best not to use them too much, they are too useless. One unfortunate after-effect of this invasion was that they shot up most of my farm animals which were grazing in a walled-in pen. The enemy archers shot over the walls because I built the pen too close to a hill... I moved the pen after the siege was over.

An interesting happened later that year... a werelizard showed up, got shot at by a hunter, turned into a human (becoming friendly in the process) and ran away. Everything went better than expected.

I think I'll be thinking of building a magma trap soon: the spikes are pretty bloody, but I think goblins on fire might be even more fun.

That music track is only 4 minutes long? Neat. I like the music, it doesn't add much to the game though.

There's a separate utility called Soundsense that adds more sounds (such as battle sounds) to the game. I've heard that it works by monitoring the log for events that it has sounds associated with. I've never used it myself, I heard it's pretty fiddly to get working. I find my imagination does a good enough job anyways

I started a new fort (unintentionally) last night. When I fired up MacNewb to start playing it told me there was an update (to MacNewb) and asked if I would like to update. Apparently the update wiped out my previous save... bummer. Oh well, at least with the new fort I won't make the same mistakes.

Oh and it turns out the reason my broker still didn't show up at the trade depot (even after making him a noble) was that he was too busy hauling rocks to my dump. After removing him from all hauling labours with Dwarf Therapist he showed up at the depot well after the Elven caravan departed. For some reason the dialog was still triggered even though the elves were gone though.

I managed to get it full screen on my virtual console (256x72). \o/ I had to disable the intro movie for it to work though (thanks SiegeLord!). Now to learn how to play it... What's the best way to start?

Append:

Spoke too soon. It seems it doesn't use the full console dimensions anywhere that it matters. It seems to know the screen dimensions, but it doesn't actually utilize them during map generation or gameplay.

My farm animals did not need raiders to kill them, they constantly fought each other for dominance over the pen until I separated them into several individual pens testing different animal types for friendly compatibility. ^^
Good to know about those archers though... I shall build a stone roof/floor over my pen.

Pssshht, Elves! Who wants to trade with those beardless pesky pinehugging pointed ears anyway? (Trade negotiations with them fail frequently if you offer them anything made of wood, including the bins containing your stone/other crafts.)

Before anything else, edit the d_init.txt and enable autosaving (to prevent loss of hours of gameplay to the rare crash. Also edit the init.txt (read the comments in there) to correctly set up the resolution. The game won't use more than the default number of lines for most menues but it does utilize the additional space inside the actual game window later (where you see the local area, your dwarves, trees and stuff).

Work your way through the quick start guide on the wiki and keep the wiki open at all times on the side so you can read up on stuff when you're stuck or you're wondering about production chains and item requirements, dwarf status icons, messages, etc.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Quickstart_guide

If you want to have some real fun (*) though you just jump right in and try to figure everything out on your own. Fail early, fail often, learn, next time make it better and bigger!

(*)

---

I'll post stories and screens of my current fortress later.

Ah, so I spoke too soon again. Well that's one less thing to worry about then.

One annoyance is that I'm playing from a virtual console, but I'm not very good with text-based browsers yet, so I prefer to use Firefox. It means that I am stuck having to type [Ctrl+]Alt+n to switch back and forth between the game and wiki. I wish I could just hit the Windows key to toggle back and forth between my most recent two consoles.

Just work towards implementing this very simple flowchart and you'll be fine!
{"name":"FlowchartDF.png","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/1\/e14584f0d70ee90a01d6787345c59b5f.png","w":1201,"h":1445,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/1\/e14584f0d70ee90a01d6787345c59b5f"}

Success! I managed to get Dwarf Fortress running on my server! Wasn't all that difficult either. Now if I could just figure out how to play...

Append:

Can't you just play in a terminal window in x?

Stories will have to wait (hurrying to catch some sleep) but here are all of the annotated z-levels of my current fortress.

Some areas are still heavy work in progress and I plan to eventually move fully underground so all the garbage on the surface will be cleaned at some point.

level 0:
{"name":"605928","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/5\/f545eb6db59ded3bfcfbfea7ce56dc76.png","w":1275,"h":894,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/5\/f545eb6db59ded3bfcfbfea7ce56dc76"}

level 1:
{"name":"605929","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/e\/ee20cb00068d6108dc1d86baadf51467.png","w":1275,"h":894,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/e\/ee20cb00068d6108dc1d86baadf51467"}

level 2:
{"name":"605930","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/5\/1553011308d12fbe7b32ec5833fc8d19.png","w":1275,"h":894,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/5\/1553011308d12fbe7b32ec5833fc8d19"}

level 3:
{"name":"605931","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/6\/c\/6ce57d4d0236ebe3277676eddb6df218.png","w":1275,"h":894,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/6\/c\/6ce57d4d0236ebe3277676eddb6df218"}

level 4:
{"name":"605932","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/c\/8cff4471d3d0fa22d3fc2e4ed1e4bffe.png","w":1275,"h":894,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/c\/8cff4471d3d0fa22d3fc2e4ed1e4bffe"}

level 5:
{"name":"605933","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/3\/73cc0373a48439c22feff6e23115a6ca.png","w":1275,"h":894,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/3\/73cc0373a48439c22feff6e23115a6ca"}

level 6:
{"name":"605934","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/c\/fc6d649c09caa51c55455a94a0bf8802.png","w":1275,"h":894,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/c\/fc6d649c09caa51c55455a94a0bf8802"}

status:
{"name":"605935","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/6\/c62f88ed8c2ff92daa6988f76d312482.png","w":1275,"h":265,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/6\/c62f88ed8c2ff92daa6988f76d312482"}

Todo next is to finish the hospital, assign and dig out noble quarters, build additional production chains, finish the grand hall and move cluttered items from one big into smaller well sorted stockpiles then start digging for valuable stuff.

Haven't found any magma yet.

My eyes are so strained right now. I better quit while I'm ahead. Well, at least I've gotten over the initial hurdle and have somewhat figured out how to play. I still can't really do anything real, and haven't figured out how to do some things I want to do, but it's going decently well so far.

I could, but I prefer to "tough it out" in a virtual console. For one thing, it lets me know that I can. For another, it discourages me from reaching for a mouse. Also, I'm used to switching to consoles AKA applications with Alt+n. I think there is a GUI way to switch to a particular window in both GNOME and Windows, but I can never remember and instinctively reach for my mouse instead.

It's so organized and beautiful.

It does, works wonderfully! With Lazy Newb Pack it's very easy to set up, just point to the log file and it's set. I also tried a linux version a while ago and there was almoat no difference.

There's also StoneSense, which gives an isometric 3D view of the fort, in real time. It even uses Allegro as well.

Well, the last siege was quite disastrous. I was in a middle of a major construction outside, there was a caravan shuffling through my gates and as part of the construction there was an extra entrance to my fortress that was not blocked off. My marksdwarves were basically wiped out because they decided to be heroes and fight 20 goblins head on. A whole bunch of dwarves decided that the best way to run away from goblins was to run into them. Some insisted on picking up items outside the fortress (I'm reasonably sure those items were outside their burrow), got injured and then passed out on my traps (unconscious dwarves trigger your own traps). While blocking off the aforementioned entrance, the dwarf in question decided to stand on the wrong side of the wall while building it.

Now I have no military to speak of... some useful dwarves are gone and a whole bunch of dwarves are tantruming. I'm upping my population max and letting some more dwarves in >_<.

In that case, you can't be Siege Lord anymore!

In principle my fortress still stands, and most of the invaders are dead in the spiky pit... so it's just a victory that was a bit more costly than usual .

Well so much for playing DF under Ubuntu. Told it to upgrade from 11.10 to 12.04, but the boot fails now.

Things were going well in my fortress and there has not been any big siege yet only small bands of thieves which had all been quickly dealt with by my two crossbow squads.

The dwarves are currently having some big civilian problems though. It all started with a dwarven child dehydrating and then dying of thirst ( right in the middle of the grand dining hall with plenty of booze and food nearby! ).

The leader (me) thought "hmm... ok must have been a retarded one...(probably a rare incident)". The child was placed in one of the many empty coffins and the crypt sealed of with a door (I do that so I can always tell whether a coffin is already in use without examining it).

This was only the beginning of what turns out to be a long series of child deaths in the fortress. They all dehydrate or start going mad/insane, run berserk, destroy furniture and constructions and then get slain by the adult dwarves.

More and more children keep dying (more than 20 have already died) and it's causing a cascade of unhappiness throughout the whole fortress (many witness the dehydration of children... I wonder why none of the adults near them ever do anything to prevent it).

I quickly defined a burrow in my main food storage and confined all dwarves to that burrow for some time to check up on them to figure out what was wrong (and also hoping they'd stop dehydrating if they'd stand right on top of the booze) and hoping they'd cheer each other up a bit.

I could not find anything wrong with the unhappy children, except many of them complained about a lack of shirts and shoes... so I quickly starting producing large quantities of shoes/shirts/leggings/robes and whatnot.

Oddly enough, many of them also complained about a lack of chairs (although there are easily over 100 chairs in the grand hall) so I also started producing more chairs and putting a chair in each bedroom as well.

Many dwarves are still very unhappy about their dead children/siblings/relatives and friends. On top of that, almost all of them are outrageous over the conviction of two dead langurs ( hehe, what can I say, I thought without witnesses there was no way to find the real convicts for two murder crimes so why not just convict some stupid animals so the cases could be closed? :X ).

Population is over 200 already and yet immigrants keep coming in (I though 200 was the default cap?). I only hope the overall unhappiness will end soon.

All those coffins... they were meant for fallen warriors and old dwarves who earned their resting place in a long life of hardship for the wealth of the fortress and now all they hold is children who never had a chance to contribute anything to the glorious community of "Metalriddled".

I really wonder though why the adults don't take better care of their children as there are still well over 60 children in the fortress and they keep pumping out new ones. Must be un-educated dwarves who think with their wieners first. Must find other sources of entertainment for them.

So far my first fortress is still standing, but the population is going bonkers. I'm at about 38 dwarfs right now, and it seems every 200 ms one of them throws a tantrum. One of them laughed strangely, then "claimed" a workshop, and is now busy building a mysterious thing... I assume it will kill everyone, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see. I've been mostly experimenting with things in game instead of following the guide to the T so it's no surprise that things are in chaos.

I started playing yesterday. It's a lot of fun!

My fort:

{"name":"605936","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/3\/6\/369d57d4b5d22e44399136259bb1308f.png","w":788,"h":772,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/3\/6\/369d57d4b5d22e44399136259bb1308f"}
{"name":"605937","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/6\/865feaf0f5b38ebf171c59078f5b50c0.png","w":766,"h":650,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/6\/865feaf0f5b38ebf171c59078f5b50c0"}
{"name":"605938","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/a\/faa65bbd0e8a46531b63e420c3baa1cf.png","w":720,"h":624,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/a\/faa65bbd0e8a46531b63e420c3baa1cf"}

It's not much to look at, and I only have 16 dwarves, but no one has starved or otherwise died yet \o/

I've been working on it for about 4 hours. It's my 2nd fort.

{"name":"605944","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/2\/d\/2d9c19f96821f04d5c9e2fc03d5a7704.png","w":1468,"h":817,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/2\/d\/2d9c19f96821f04d5c9e2fc03d5a7704"}

Here's my main (and only entrance) to my current fortress. You can see my plump helmet farm and still which usually does a good job of satiating the dwarves hunger and thirst... except when I run out of barrels to put food and drink in. I'm thinking I may just make a few bins ... is there a way to restrict what can be placed in bins? In the upper left you can see the start of a large sandy room. This was the temporary stock room / meeting hall. I eventually plan to use it as a barracks / training area.

{"name":"605945","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/f\/8fc06741e2291e164b5f75cb28cede7f.png","w":1554,"h":901,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/f\/8fc06741e2291e164b5f75cb28cede7f"}
Here is my main stockpile area. As you can see I really need to get making bins to put stuff in. That stone in the upper right corner is my dwarven black hole garbage compactor. To the left of the stock room is the workshop area (same size as the stockroom).

{"name":"605946","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/5\/85dd0e21b8cd8385f9fd30501c192cfb.png","w":1554,"h":901,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/5\/85dd0e21b8cd8385f9fd30501c192cfb"}
Here you see my main hall and bedrooms. The bedrooms extend further north, there's two columns of 3x3 bedrooms... 20 rooms per columns. I'm in the process of hauling all that stone (mostly chalk) to the junk pile. For some reason my dwarves aren't hauling the lignite that you see lying all over the place to the bar/coal stockpile.

I believe I have close to fifty dwarves and a heck of a lot of children. My main carpenter got a mood and sequestered himself in the Carpenter's workshop. He went stark raving mad shortly after which was kind of frustrating because I wasn't aware that he was lacking any materials ... is there a way to determine that?

I also can't help but feel like I'm being a bit overly ambitious with those ginormous rooms...

Highlight the workshop and you'll be given (confusing) hints at what is needed (you can look them up in the wiki if you want).

So the fallout from that siege continues. I finally killed all the goblins in the spike pit and set my dwarves loose on picking up stuff the goblins dropped... all that without turning off the spikes coming up and down from the floor! Well, that resulted in probably 10 dwarves severely injured, and 4-5 dead on the spot. Some died in the hospital because it was overwhelmed... my main well somehow got it's bucket full so a bunch died from thirst... now everybody is tantruming and smashing up farms... probably half my population is unhappy or worse! It's probably nightmarish to live in my fortress.

I did start on the construction of the waterwheels that will power the magma trap... and I got some new immigrants! I'm sure they'll enjoy their stay, because in all likelihood they'll be dead soon.

Check their thoughts and preferences to see what they are mad about. If you don't cater to the needs of your dwarves they will all go mad eventually and start fights with each other. (v: view unit -> move cursor over dwarf -> z: status -> Enter: thoughts and preferences).

Usually they just create valuable artifacts when that happens unless they can't get the building materials they need. If a dwarf keeps sitting in a claimed workshop and never starts the mysterious construction check the building status (q) to see what they want and try to acquire that asap. If you can't acquire it... say goodbye to that dwarf and make sure somehow that he can't hurt anyone else because sooner or later he/she'll go berserk.

I always like the calm beginning phase of a fortress. A small micro-manageable number of dwarves, a few neat and cozy quarters... sooner or later population always explodes and along with that come all the big challenges (but that's what makes the game fun!).

Not sure about it but in the building settings (q) of an already built stockpile it is possibly to set a number of barrels/bins... maybe this will put empty barrels and bins as a reserve on that stockpile and for the goods therein. Haven't tried this myself yet.

The lignite itself is in the stone category so you need a stone stockpile for that. You can smelt the lignite at a smelter to make coke.

Yes but in Dwarf Fortress, all the dwarves should ever need is alcohol, except for wounded dwarves in the hospital who need to be fed water(in buckets) by other dwarves.

Just in case though I spent an hour(could have been two) yesterday to build an underground water reservoir spanning a couple of z levels which filters the stagnant water from the river to clean drinking water:
(shift+click to view full image)
{"name":"605951","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/a\/faf38b591c5971461fc5a5725c819bcb.png","w":3136,"h":1792,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/a\/faf38b591c5971461fc5a5725c819bcb"}

In other news, I'm still struggling to get/make enough clothes for the children. I should reconsider just killing them all to solve the problem because I'm really tired of having to rebuild all the chairs and tables they keep smashing in the grand hall.
They also keep destroying the bridge in my entrance hall (stopped counting after the fifth rebuild). That bridge is a vital part of the drowning defense plan as it locks up the enemies in the foyer while at the same time flooding it.

I know the feeling. It's fun to imagine a dark underground fortress full of crazy dwarves though who are all out to survive/kill each other. Excellent b-movie material!

If I can't solve the problems of my fortress soon, I will call them all inside, pull the foyer flooding trigger to trap them in their own misery and then enjoy watching the erupting chaos and madness... I could try surgically killing only the unhappy dwarves and children though hoping the remainder of the population would recover. Would be difficult though because I'd have to wipe out entire families and make sure there are no witnesses to prevent further unhappiness from spreading.

Had to break down and install Ubuntu 12.04 to fix the issue of not installing the first time. So now I'll have to re-install DF and everything else (lucky me!).

5 minutes don't pass after I start playing again and I'm under yet another siege! Two dwarves died this time due to being outside... a whole bunch of ogres and others got past my traps and trapbridges (ogres can't fall into them since bridges won't retract under them) but were taken care of by my axe and marksdwarves without too much trouble. My only suturer got injured and needs sutures himself... so I made my surgeon a suturer too (hopefully my dwarves don't mind being sutured by a complete newbie). Built a second well because the first one kept getting out of commission...

Here are some pictures.

My main fortress floor. Note all the dropped items of the invaders all over the place, as well as their blood on the walls :

{"name":"605953","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/b\/7\/b7086f60cbffc0539c0afe2cb64a16dc.png","w":1008,"h":724,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/b\/7\/b7086f60cbffc0539c0afe2cb64a16dc"}

A picture of the spike pit (more blood for the blood god)... my refuse piles are full, so the goblin corpses are rotting down below...
{"name":"605954","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/f\/ff24255524fef66f8dd6c304056d99c0.png","w":589,"h":220,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/f\/ff24255524fef66f8dd6c304056d99c0"}

And here are my tombs...
{"name":"605955","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/a\/5a7ab1582bcc2faaf0d28a22b2a99cfe.png","w":494,"h":342,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/a\/5a7ab1582bcc2faaf0d28a22b2a99cfe"}

With a steady stream of invaders (and a dedicated farm plot to pig tails) it seems not too much of an issue now. One cosmetic problem I found is that dwarves discard their old clothing in their bedrooms... I wish there was a way to get them to throw it away (I'll end up making them dump it if I find no better solution).

I was already wondering what all the garbage in their rooms was but never bothered to check, thinking maybe they just don't have enough chests and cabinets to store their belongings.

I've been under heavy siege as well lately. First it was just 10 goblins or so which were all easily drowned in the foyer.

First Invasion
Then some time later an evil force of 109 (onehundredandnine) creatures arrived: jabberwarriors, goblins, trolls, cave crawlers and olms iirc. I could drown a few of them but could not wait for all of them to stand in my entrance hall because then they would have broken the doors (For a moment I thought about using the unclothed unhappy children as a meat shield... that would have stalled the invaders in the entrance a bit and afterwards there should have been enough clothes for the survivors so it would have been a win-win situation for everyone(except the ones who are dead but there's no sense crying over every mistake ) not to mention the beautifully avantgarde crimson paint job which would have come for free with that).

we're going underground!
With the foyer flooded to the ceiling with water though, the remaining enemy forces had no way of entering my fortress but just to be sure I quickly walled off the main doors behind the wet grave of the first bunch and decided to move underground.

A grand plan was forged though to eventually reclaim the surface so I started drafting every useless dwarf and dug out a few archery ranges for secret underground training.

The other dwarves passed the time underground by smoothing the stone in a good chunk of the whole fortress, brewing lots of booze, partying in the grand hall, making more clothes for the children (who seem to be satisfied for now) and producing truckloads of bone bolts.

To my surprise the invaders just left after some time!

we're going to the surface...
So... the wall behind the main doors was removed, the entrance hall drained and the dwarves could enjoy fresh air again after what seemed like an eternity (yet a joyful one) underground.

The peace didn't last long though: just as they were about to chop some trees to restock the underground wood supplies another invasion force of about 90 creatures arrived. Lots of goblins and trolls.

Second Invasion
...or so we thought: back to the underground!
The trolls started dismantling the draining floodgates in the entrance hall and thus tearing a hole into the reusable defense mechanism plan. So without hesitation the dwarves had to pull the lever again and again the fortress was sealed off and again a wall was raised behind the main gates and the dwarves prepared themselves to stay underground for another joyful eternity this time knowing that the enemy would probably just leave again after a while.

Some of the hunters seemed unwilling to wait though and made their way to the roof over the pastures and managed to shoot two passing trolls from there .

The others continued smoothing stone in the living areas. A few dwarves didn't manage to make it back in time underground and had to stay outside and they were all hunted down by the invaders. With their bodies out of reach, the other dwarves were unable to bury them properly so at some point the fortress was haunted by a couple of dwarven ghosts.

Sometimes the dwarves found other dead dwarves whose bodies were completely drained of blood. Later some dwarf reported a murder case and accused another dwarf who turned out to be a vampire!

and back to the surface
So they had a lot of fun underground again until the second invasion army left and they could try to get back to the surface again.

Lasting Peace?
Since the last big invasion things calmed down and even the caravans took up their trade routes again though they passed my fortress at first as the trade depot along with everything else on the surface which wasn't protected behind walls was destroyed by the invaders.

After a while even more immigrants kept streaming in despite the lurking danger.

The dwarves are currently using the time of peace to stock up on wood and doing some major landscaping project on the surface, straightening out the mountainsides, removing ramps and planning to build an epic wall and a moat around the fortress surface level.

The first project after returning to the surface for the second time was to improve the flooding and draining facilities in the entrance though, so invaders would not be able to destroy it anymore.

some pictures:
The first bunch of goblins at the gates curiously examining the statues and attempting to destroy or steal them (couldn't tell).
{"name":"605962","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/3\/1393709a387752e78a614144fad579f9.png","w":572,"h":728,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/3\/1393709a387752e78a614144fad579f9"}

Cleaning up after drowning those first goblins. The unhappy dwarves in this image are the children who still didn't have enough clothes at that point.
{"name":"605960","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/f\/8f7255035c3f35a13ce7319473f17071.png","w":568,"h":693,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/f\/8f7255035c3f35a13ce7319473f17071"}

A cleaning accident (dwarves kept the doors open too long) caused some water from the entrance hall to spill all the way down into the forge level coloring the walls red with goblin blood (why do drowned goblins bleed anyway? maybe the force of the incoming water was so strong that some of them got smashed into the walls and statues...).
{"name":"605961","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/8\/184cfeaf90010906ce5aeb1f816ec30e.png","w":631,"h":625,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/8\/184cfeaf90010906ce5aeb1f816ec30e"}

Some enemies being killed in one of the bigger sieges. Nothing like hearing the melodic gurgling sound of drowning foes in the morning.
{"name":"605968","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/6\/b\/6beda02478c1f32775db4fe7d80ab01b.png","w":503,"h":678,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/6\/b\/6beda02478c1f32775db4fe7d80ab01b"}

Underground archery ranges (built during the first big siege for the 'reclaim surface at some point' plan before I knew the invaders would just leave eventually).
{"name":"605958","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/3\/f\/3ff46c92ba14aceba41f48211d09d3a1.png","w":767,"h":841,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/3\/f\/3ff46c92ba14aceba41f48211d09d3a1"}

Goblins of the second invasion force who hunted down one of the miners who could not run back underground in time.
{"name":"605964","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/4\/5\/45049346e6904dd4dfcb8953fe281af3.png","w":532,"h":522,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/4\/5\/45049346e6904dd4dfcb8953fe281af3"}

The improved/fortified drowning/draining entrance hall system. Also draining is a lot faster now to increase the group drowning frequency.
{"name":"605965","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/d\/ed69ec36e9297c6b8b739e4034457b59.png","w":828,"h":849,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/d\/ed69ec36e9297c6b8b739e4034457b59"}

The diligent landscaping workforce, busy straightening out another cliff.
{"name":"605967","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/b\/8\/b88a3c4ca5be0ee5e6782549ce293714.png","w":739,"h":883,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/b\/8\/b88a3c4ca5be0ee5e6782549ce293714"}

Some of the invader corpses.
{"name":"605966","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/f\/cf7d8d796834a062e3ebf7dc0632766c.png","w":927,"h":672,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/f\/cf7d8d796834a062e3ebf7dc0632766c"}

The dark history of the fortress is documented by the huge burial dungeon. At least they're not just full of children anymore but now also hold dead warriors and many a busy civilian who worked himself to death for the greater good...
{"name":"605959","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/8\/e881a76177b1e2947deabe1e4b0cd374.png","w":847,"h":784,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/8\/e881a76177b1e2947deabe1e4b0cd374"}

...some of those civilians managed to survive the countless landscaping/landslide accidents and are now being treated in the hospital.
{"name":"605963","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/4\/c\/4c91d71d11c173ae8c3fa2c4734ac28a.png","w":955,"h":733,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/4\/c\/4c91d71d11c173ae8c3fa2c4734ac28a"}

This just shows that not every dwarf is a good miner but what else are you gonna do if you have countless unemployed dwarves sitting around doing nothing?
Right, handing out large numbers of freshly forged copper picks and going on an epic landscaping trip with fishers, farmers and peasants is about the only reasonable thing to do.

I'm sure the many by-standing babies and children who bled to death after caveins caused by their ambitious amateur miner parents are happy to have made that sacrifice knowing it was for the future wealth and everlasting strength of the fortress. It's also an honor to die for the blood god.

Worked on my magma trap today... tapped the volcano, but the miner didn't get away in time and got burned to ashes. I wish there was a safer way to breach the magma walls... (I'll see if I can get a miner who's fast on his feet to do it next time... hah). I also hit a snag in that it's actually may be a problem to create enough magma-safe pumps... I don't have enough nether-cap wood, and my magma-safe metals are few and far between.

I'm curious if they plan to add 2D graphics to DF at some point. Can't remember the game, but I vaguely remember an ASCII game that started out ASCII and then was turned to 2D after they had everything in place. I know someone tried to make it 2D but last I tried that viewer it looked horrible, more so than the text (of course it may just be my computer is challenged.

I think that graphics would ruin it. As it is, I find it lame to see people using graphical tilesets in this thread. The finite details don't matter so much and being able to see them precisely would be a useless distraction. It's the bigger picture that ultimately matters. It's not so bad to figure things out considering that you can pause the game and look around whenever you want. Besides, your imagination is much more powerful than your GPU.

I do not mind the use of graphics and alternate character sets. My reason for not using them is just because I tend to want to play any game the way it was intended to be played by the developer(s).

The charset I'm using is also a modified one (Marble Dice's 16x16 remake of the original 8x8 charset which I further modified a bit (the two dwarf chars)).

The problem with alternate charsets for this game is that the game does not fully support them yet so there will always be a compromise between shapes and forms and what they represent in the game.

The problem (if you want to call it that (it does not actually matter at all for the gameplay)) is that in DF the visual representation of any in-game object can be one of many things: a symbol, an abbreviation, a character used as a shape or form which abstracts the real thing it represents or even a low resolution texture. The same character may be used by the game for many different things and often you can tell what it is by the additional color information but equally often not even that will be sufficient (which is why the game allows you to inspect any tile any time to receive more information in written form).

This is also why symbolism and abbreviation works best for most objects while in a graphic set it would be preferred if each object would be represented by a picture of the thing it represents. However as the game uses a fixed number of characters which is far lower than the number of unique objects, this can not be achieved at this point in development (not without using mods/hacks/third party visualizers).

So using a charset which keeps the symbolic look of each character works best in DF because a symbol can always represent many more different things than a picture of any individual thing could (e.g. a circle can be millstone, a well, a wheel, a cheese, a ring and whatnot whereas a picture of a ring can always just represent a ring and nothing else).

That being said, I can't wait to finish my current landscaping and surface wall project to see how it looks in a visualizer like Stonesense or in a 3D visualizer (forgot the name but I think there was at least one of them around somewhere).

Yeah I think my next embark I'm going to ditch the graphics packs.

I'm pretty sure learning to play DF with ASCII is like learning to drive a standard. It might have a steeper learning curve, but at the end of the day you'll be able to drive standards and automatics (or in DF's case understand ASCII tiles, or graphic tiles )

On the subject of graphics (those that replace dwarves/animals/goblins/etc. with sprites); After getting used to the "ASCII" graphics of the old 2D versions from before graphics were introduced, I now find the graphics to be grating. I know what a dwarf does by its color which is the same the color of the job, whereas deciphering a tiny sprite is annoying and the extra fluff is not sufficient imo to cover for that.

As for using a different tileset with special representations for objects (like ropes), I again find them to be more confusing than the original, especially those that replace the letters of the alphabet and you get someone named fik<bucket>d.

I don't mind using a slightly modified tileset that keeps the original symbols but in a more easily readable font and size, which is why I use this tileset but with dwarves modified to the "original" icons. (it is also one of the few 12x12 tilesets which I find to be a preferable size)

Anyway, this thread motivated my to resume playing again, so maybe I'll have some boring dwarfcraft updates for y'all as well

No, you misunderstood. I don't mean a mod that adds graphics. I mean I'm curious if the dev team will end up getting everything in place and then go back and change to 2D graphics. It is driving me nuts, there was an ASCII game back in early 2000s where the dev team did it in ASCII, but once they had it done they went back and changed the code enough to make it 2D rather than ASCII. I just don't remember what the game was now as I played it and beat it (after they went 2D though).

"Getting everything in place"? Have you seen the todo list? They will never get it done, and therefore they will never add graphics. The dev team is very much in the gameplay above graphics department.

The only reason I use graphics sets is for the dwarves. I really find it hard to memorize the color->profession mapping without extra help. I'd use ASCII graphics for everything else, but it's really hard to have custom dwarves without custom graphics.

EDIT:

Not as much of a problem now, since you can use a different font for text and for graphics these days.

Thanks to this thread, I downloaded it today and tried to start playing... not really doing well so far as I still need to grasp the basics.

I tried it once and failed horribly. I need some sort of Dwarf Fortress Guide For Five-Year-Olds or something ...

Don't you mean Three-Year-Olds?

Ok, I tried switching to a plain tileset... here's what it looks like now :

{"name":"605970","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/0\/9\/093a06e7a0a96f4172f570ae4973b49b.png","w":1006,"h":944,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/0\/9\/093a06e7a0a96f4172f570ae4973b49b"}

So much stuff happened in my fortress over the past two days that I can't keep up with writing about it.

Several big sieges.

Played around with other (more blood!) ways of defending instead of just drowning everything: That lead to many dead dwarves(military in an open battle does not seem very efficient). Population has been going up and down between 160 and 220 .

Currently a Fire Titan of some sort is stuck in my fortress. It fell down one of the flooding channel shafts and destroyed the flood gate behind it. Luckily though the water can not enter my fortress because the Fire Titan evaporates it all.
He has been taking a shower there for several seasons now.

I tried building a wall behind the fortification which prevents the Titan from entering but the dwarves kept abandoning it due to interruptions from the Titan. Basically this means my entrance hall is now useless and I will have to dig a new one. My dwarves are safe though as they are completely walled in at the moment.

Even if the Titan dies eventually (which it probably will not) the entrance hall would forever flood because of the flood gate it destroyed. The only way to fix it would be to temporarily dry out the whole river... hm... maybe I'll even try that.

{"name":"605973","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/a\/1\/a125ca0e14151563360d3eab872ac034.png","w":1207,"h":840,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/a\/1\/a125ca0e14151563360d3eab872ac034"}

Do you not have a channel that connects your water reservoir to the river? You could block it and do something... I'd try to keep the titan alive and then use it as the resident of the pit of death that I'd drop enemies in... either as a defensive mechanism or just for fun from cages.

In my fortress I finally completed a working prototype of my magma trap... one issue I found is that it just doesn't drain of magma fast enough. I was thinking of setting goblins on fire but not actually melting their items... I may have to scrap that idea and just let the magma flow. In terms of my dwarf devenders... I built a danger room and got some axe and hammerlords. Can't wait to try them on some goblins.

My fortress became a barony too... no more changing mayors!

EDIT:

So, my fortress got attacked again (while a vampire cavefishman diplomat was visiting o_O) and I got to test out my magma trap! Or... rather... Hot Magma Fat Decimator™ 7000: The one step weight loss solution that will literally melt off the fat from your body, giving you the thin figure you deserve. Take this ogre for example:

{"name":"605976","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/4\/d49a09d1d0dc6d0f0b757598ccd11388.png","w":1332,"h":159,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/4\/d49a09d1d0dc6d0f0b757598ccd11388"}

Clearly not a winner of the life's lottery! She definitely needs to lose some weight. We signed her up for a FREE trial treatment in the Hot Magma Fat Decimator™ 7000 and here are the effects:

{"name":"605977","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/6\/a\/6a8156e86cd7101039d8abd01ebabbf5.png","w":1344,"h":304,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/6\/a\/6a8156e86cd7101039d8abd01ebabbf5"}

Much better! Now she can go out and dismember dwarven children without feeling self-conscious about her body.

Consult your doctor before using Hot Magma Fat Decimator™ 7000. Side effects may include:

If you clear up those side effects, I'll buy it!

Unfortunately not. The channel for the water reservoir is independent from the channels leading to the entrance hall (where the Titan is stuck).

There is a huge design flaw in all of my channels too: in all of them I only blocked the target end to my fortress with floodgates but never the source end near the river so I can't make any changes to the channels now unless I cut off the river (not sure how to do that yet but I'll try building and collapsing a tower over it first).

Using the Titan as an executor is an excellent idea!

While reworking my magma trap today, some doofus dwarf decided to remove the grate from under my baroness, who promptly fell into the Fat Decimator... so now my fortress is not a barony anymore. Easy come, easy go... that's how things are in Dwarf Fortress.

Damn you all for making me go back to this game.

On a side note, Mayday modified his graphics pack slightly (it's now a lot cleaner than it was before).

{"name":"605985","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/a\/fa52746b86ebc07ccec769995f71e77c.jpg","w":1740,"h":1040,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/a\/fa52746b86ebc07ccec769995f71e77c"}

So after trying and failing to get Stonesense installed on my Ubuntu, I tried it out on Windows instead to great success!

Here's a shot of my fortress entrance with the windmills that power a water mist generator:
{"name":"605991","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/a\/8a9d02daa78980ce87e675cc6a92a069.png","w":1212,"h":802,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/a\/8a9d02daa78980ce87e675cc6a92a069"}
It's early spring now, so some pools are still frozen.

Here's a shot of my FatDecimator. Most recently it claimed the lives of two of my military dwarves when I accidentally closed a bridge on top of them:
{"name":"605992","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/5\/159d4fcfc6c633a318cc4b73c519e28b.png","w":1212,"h":802,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/5\/159d4fcfc6c633a318cc4b73c519e28b"}
The snaky corridor is the one that gets flooded by magma. The pumps to the right of it pump magma in and out. The waterwheels towards the upper left power the entire thing. I used to power them directly from the river, but it was frozen half the year, so I moved them to an internal water source.

Here's a shot of the river, with my abortive plan to keep it unfrozen during the winter. I routed some magma under it to create a giant magma pool (you can see a cross section of it on the bottom right):
{"name":"605993","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/2\/721b74d04506e79afae6e8b17431ea75.png","w":1212,"h":802,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/2\/721b74d04506e79afae6e8b17431ea75"}
The shallow magma in the middle was a magma accident where I accidentally flooded a part of my fortress with magma... no lives were lost, but I did lose a bunch of wood.

I'd play the game if it looked like that (and had a normal GUI). I'd even buy it.