If you've followed @nerdstalgic (and if you haven't, shame on you, naughty readers) you know that I've been beard deep in dwarf shenanigans this week. I fully intended on picking Europa Universalis 4 back up to put in some playtime before other shinies arrive next week, but alas, the dwarfs had other plans. I had a pretty amusing (re:unfortunate) set of events (re:a shitstorm) that I plan on describing at the end of this post because it's a rather long tale and that way if you have no interest you can just tune it out without fear of missing any of my juicy words. Ha.
So, unless you've been living under a rock (or in a fallout shelter) you probably heard that Fallout 4 is finally coming in the fall. Ah yes, the game we have been eagerly awaiting. Patiently dealing with false leaks and misinformation tobe rewarded with our prize. Remember, remember the 10th of November, because that's when it hits the streets, folks. This time the game is going to be set in Boston and I'm eager to see how the landscape compares to Fallout 3, which was set in Washington D.C. Certainly, I expect the game to look better graphically, but short of Bostonian landmarks, what will make this bombed out metro area look different? I've been pleased to hear that the crafting system is going to be much deeper. Supposedly every lootable item in the game will have some sort of crafting purpose, which is both a blessing and a curse for me. You see, I have a problem with in game hoarding. Horrible, I know, but when I know that something might be of potential use to myself or an ally I desperately cling to it. Here's to hoping there is some sort of swanky storage system in game. You'll be able to construct and deconstruct buildings in the game and build your own base. Maybe I'll just build an underground vault and wait out the game. Like, whoa.
They've also said that the main character will be completely voiced and that the interactions with other characters will feature much more fleshed out options, a la Mass Effect. This excites me a fair deal, because in other fallout games I'd usually talk to a character once and then potentially never interact with them again. Waste. The idea of having a more living experience with the setting sounds great. The game engine that they will be running is different than the previous Fallout games. This time they will be using a modified version of the engine that Bethesda used for Skyrim. So, for those of you following at home, we have loads of crafting, in depth dialogue options, and Skyrim style exploration. Minecraft + Mass Effect + Skyrim = ? The game seems very ambitious in scope and I look forward to seeing if it will meet the absurdly high expectations that the Fallout brand carries with it or crumble under the weight of promising too much and under delivering. Let's hope for the former.
DWARF FORTRESS ALERT! IF YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT DF, ABANDON HOPE NOW!
Stay awhile, and listen!
So, I had a bit of an "adventure" the other night while playing Dwarf Fortress. By adventure, I mean that I spent an hour dealing with a problem in my fortress. As I had mentioned in my previous DF post, lycanthropy is a real threat to a dwarven civilization of any size. All it takes is a mere scratch from someone who is under the effects of a full moon and that being will turn on the next full moon. In game, this means that the affected creature will heal fully on the full moon, go beserk, shred any clothing they are wearing (think Bruce Banner), and attack any living thing they can get their hands on. Their strength is a multiplicative factor of the strength of their base form, so a were-human is vastly more dangerous than a were-weasel. I could be wrong on that point, and if someone knows otherwise, please let me know in the comments!
Anyways, I had recently started a new fortress. Things had already taken a small sour turn in the form of thieving kea birds. They like shiny things (or really, just anything they can wrap a talon around), so they stole a bar of coke, (the fuel, not the drug, although a coked up kea would be a few orders of magnitude worse. They could probably loot my whole fortress in about five seconds.) a training axe, and a copper pick. I hurriedly assigned the remainder of my supplies to be brought into the fortress and the keas contented themselves with flying around and stealing logs.A few more seasons went by, but progress was slow. One season, I attracted no migrants. This slowed down my ability to create a functioning militia to deal with outside threats. Then, danger struck. A were-possum-human sheriff attacked my fort. Now, if you are unfamiliar with the game, that looks like a bunch of ridiculousness, so let me explain. It was a human who was bitten by a were possum. After this happened, they probably killed everyone else in their settlement and took to wandering around the created game world. As you are playing in your fortress, the world around you is also evolving. It's very neat. Back to the story, I had no military. I realized that my only hope to save my people was to hide them under my fortress. So, I told all of the people to go to the deepest level of the fortress, in hopes that he wouldn't find his way down to us before he reverted back to human form. I also made the decision to leave my animals in their pasture in front of the entrance to my fortress. Call it a peace offering, a distraction, or just a buffet, more time munching my critters is less time eating my dwarfs. Largely, my plan worked. I had a fisherdwarf get caught outside fishing and was killed immediately. The plus side was that he had distracted the were human far enough away from my fort that he didn't seem to interested in coming back. After he reverted, I gave chase with some dwarfs armed with copper picks, but to no end. He escaped.
Finally, I was able to scrape together a few tough dwarfs along with some of the dregs of dwarf society to create my first militia unit. I built them a barracks and set them to training immediately. Time passed and everything was going fairly well until my game suddenly paused and I got a pop up informing me of the return of the were human. Unfortunately, this time we didn't detect him until he was basically standing right above the cave mouth entrance to my fortress. I ordered all civilian dwarfs to run inside and sent my rookie militia out in hopes they could deal with the problem. They met just outside of the mouth of my fortress and a fierce battle ensued. I could tell that things weren't going as well as I had hoped from the sizable amount of blood splatters hitting the ground all around the site of the melee. After they finished off the monster, I opened up that health screen to see the damage to my dwarfs. My worst fears were confirmed. Two dwarfs were listed as being cut open, a sure sign that they would turn on the next full moon. Two others had body parts that were smashed open, which wasn't as certain an indicator. I also had a black rabbit that was bleeding heavily for some reason, but showing no signs of wounds. I quickly took action, and carved out two quarantine rooms with the intention of confining the two sure bets and the rabbit together and putting the two question marks in the other room. I could've carved out a third room and further segregated the other two that I wasn't sure about in an attempt to further triage any potential damage, but the days were slipping by quickly.
The dwarfs wouldn't move out of their hospital beds.
 |
| Yep, it's about that time |
Regardless of everything I tried to get them out of their beds, they absolutely refused to move. Perhaps their injuries limited them from movement, or perhaps it's just the coding of the game to confine sick dwarfs to their beds until they are better. I was running out of time, so I decided to forbid passage on the hospital door and wall it off. I was able to "pasture" the rabbit inside of one of the rooms, effectively locking it into place, but when I sent a dwarf to wall it in, he walled himself in...with the rabbit. Frantically, and while cursing quietly, lest I woke up my slumbering wife, I ordered another hole dug in the wall. After the hole was dug and the dwarf safely exited the room, I again ordered for a wall to be built to entomb the rabbit. As the last piece of the wall went into place, to my horror, the same dwarf from earlier scurried into the room and the dwarf who constructed the wall finished it from the inside, again. aoisdfoisndoian !
Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
Flush with thoughts of a were rabbit with huge pointy teeth killing two dwarfs, I ordered another hole dug, then ordered a door built. I then forbid passage on the door and built a wall on the other side of the door. Problem solved. Now, there was naught to do but wait. Obsidian 28th, I remember the day well. In the hospital room, the two that I was sure were infected transformed into hulking, rabid versions of themselves and proceeded to butcher the other two dwarfs. Indeed, they had not been infected during their initial exposure, but were still doomed to death. After killing the two innocents, one of the monsters died of blood loss, leaving one were-possum-human-axedwarf straddling a hospital bed. I waited a few more days until he reverted and then ordered my militia to attack him, only they wouldn't. To prevent certain things from happening in game, you aren't allowed to attack dwarfs when they aren't in were form. Sigh.
I knew I needed to bring in the big guns to deal with this problem, plus, I was out of patience. We needed a dwarven atom smasher!
Now, as this blog post has grown quite long, I've decided to segment it. I'll post the finale to all these shenanigans in the next few days. (Likely, Sunday)
No comments:
Post a Comment