Monday, May 19, 2014

Stesokur Entry 19: DFHack

So I've started using DFHack.

Because the interface wasn't confusing enough already.

Look: I'm not a programmer. I'm not even a writer. I studied philosophy, for Armok's sake. There's no way I can learn how to use this properly. So if I'm using DFHack ineffeciently, forgive me - there's no way I'm going to use this program to its fullest. I seriously considered just never using it at all, and letting it run in the background (I use the Lazy Newb Pack for things like Stonesense and Overseer; it automatically runs DFHack). I found a page full of commands that even an idiot like me can understand, though.

Well, some of them.

My game starting slowing to crawl, and I realized that it was because of all the goblin blood. Blood on every tile of every level - especially in my tower - being tracked all over the place by my disgusting dwarves. It was a lot for the game to remember, and it took its toll on my poor computer. There's a command for DFHack that cleans everything though: just type in clean all and hit enter and it scrubs the entire map of blood!

There's some issues I have with that. For one, it removes some of the cool bloodstains (like what was left from the battle with the killer croc). I could just spot clean everything by typing spotclean, but that only works under my cursor. Ain't nobody got time for that. I was also concerned that the landscape full of goblin blood, one of the key attributes that gave Stesokur Tower it's personality, would be missed.

Turns out I didn't have to worry about that.

Yeah, that concern quickly took care of itself.

Another problem arose when I built The Drop; the game had installed a maximum Z-level. Meaning, up to a certain altitude, I couldn't build any higher. I didn't like this, especially since my ultimate goal with this fort is to build a tower up into the clouds! There's a command for that called infiniteSky. All I need to do is type in that command, plus the number of Z-levels I want to add, and the game raises the invisible ceiling allotted to me. For The Drop I typed in infiniteSky 5, but I foresee Stesokur Tower going much, much higher.

That's it, though! I'm not using DFHack to cheat or anything. There's options to  make your dwarves build things instantly and teleport; no way am I doing something like that. No matter how easy it would make building Stesokur Tower. The difficulty is the point! And there's another command to remove all the bad thoughts in the fortress - to literally make tantrums a thing of the past. No way! If I didn't want to manage my moody dwarves, I'd just go and fucking play some Minecraft or something. 

Wait, I can set the game so patrol duty doesn't cause unhappy thoughts? Meaning I can make soldiers who enjoy training and marching every day? Which means I can finally have a highly-trained, happy military? And all I have to do is type tweak patrol-duty and hit enter? Well... that's not really cheating. I mean... maybe a little, but it's only cheating for one thing. In fact, by using this cheat, I'm essentially creating the option for some dwarves to prefer a life of career soldiering! That's not cheating, that's roleplaying.

And just look how happy those guys are!

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