Dwarf Fortress: Episode 1
By mingmong | November 4, 2007
As all the DF players out there know, a new version was recently released, adding a much vaunted extra (vertical) dimension. This finally persuaded me to try this game, having listened to players’ exploits and watched forum accounts of it entirely from the sidelines before. And here we are today, in a place affectionately known as Fort Arid. This is my fourth attempt at a successful fortress, but don’t tell the dwarfs that.
We pick up this tale as springtime appears on the horizon after a long and hard, but not particularly cold (we’re in a desert, you see) winter. Thus, the fortress has already been established, and is ticking away quite nicely. My seven dwarfs are sorely pressed to accomplish all the tasks they are set, and eagerly await the day when immigrants will be spotted approaching our fortress, to give them a well earned break and allow them to specialise in doing whatever it is that they love. For one such dwarf, that is making crossbows out of bone. We don’t talk to him much.
First things first - the fort in its current state.
First off, those things outside, stone and wood. These are my stockpiles. When people cut down trees, or mine stuff, the result is taken here. Around this you can see all these yellow lines. This is the terrain. What this tells me is that outside is sand - basically, a desert. As you walk in you immediately see two of our most important workshops. The first one builds stuff out of all that stone, the second gets us pissed. Continuing down this corridor takes us to our other workshops, with fairly self explanatory functions. Note the dwarf (coloured yellow) preparing fish.
Everything in here is fairly obvious. The storage room is for more valuable goods that I don’t want to keep outside, such as the produce of the workshops, and food. Again, you can see Mr yellow.
Those arrows indicate stairs. LET’S GO DOWN THEM. Note: another dwarf. The red chap.
Right, some explaining. You’ll note that the colour of the wall is different further up. It is yellow. That is because it is a compacted kind of sand. This is good, because it means I can farm on it without requiring some convoluted irrigation system. The darker area indicates my farm. Those purple things are Plump Helmets, ripe for harvesting. Mmm, plump.
First things first - I have more than enough food, and lots of alcohol. Time to get some GUNS.
Well, not really, crossbows. Close enough, though.
I’m building my military wing - it will join onto my Bowyer, and contain an ammo and weapons stockpile, some targets for training with said weapons, and a butchery, because for the timebeing the crossbows are going to be used for hunting.
The Craftsmith makes arrows, the Bowyer crossbows. Dwarfs are too short for proper bows, but it’s best if you don’t bring that up in conversation.
So what’s next? Well, immigrants, for one. They shall arrive soon, and will all require jobs. Then there’s the customary exploratory mining to try to find a chasm/magma flow/underground river, which will almost certainly result in the death of at least one miner and possibly the entire fortress. And as the game goes on there will be goblin raids, displeased gods, and kobolds. Lots of kobolds.
Topics: Gaming | 4 Comments »
The Sekrit/Prey’s World Server
By Mechstra | October 12, 2007
In collaboration with the fine folks at Prey’s World, we now have our very own 24-man server for running electric games on. Aren’t these exciting times? It is currently running Team Fortress 2 and inter-forum grudge matches where baseball bats, flying syringes, and curiously lax filing systems prevail. Go to it, and do not wait upon the order of your going.
SERVER NAME:The Sekrit and PW Sausage Factory
CURRENT GAME:TEAM FORTRESS 2
IP:217.163.25.127:27015
PASSWORD:g4ylulz
Topics: Gaming, Announcements | 6 Comments »
Plans
By mingmong | October 11, 2007
So there’s been a big change. Certainly not the pithy banner certain Sekrit denizens were convinced we were building up to. But where we are at the minute is certainly not the culmination of everything we’ve got planned. Such as (and not in any order) :
- A proper banner. The current one is only intended to be a placeholder. This will be the first thing to be done. However, I’d like to keep it fairly simple. Probably just with a nice font in a colour that goes well with the skin mentioned below. Of course, if anyone feels inclined to make some super-awesomo ten hour photoshop job, then be my guest. You know where to find me.
- A skin to go along with the banner. This will take a bit longer, but will be worth it.
- An expansion past the forum. The blog is a start - I’ll be sending out feelers for things like games servers over the next few weeks. cHeal has already echoed thoughts I’ve been having about the idea of a news, reviews and stuff section. That’s something I’m going to look into over the next few days.
Anyway. In closing, I’d just like to encourage everyone to keep checking this blog. I’ll hopefully be doing fairly regular pieces, and I’ll prod the other admins into doing it as well.
Toodles!
Topics: Announcements | 5 Comments »
Sekrit : Episode Three
By admin | September 22, 2007
Welcome to the Sekrit blog, home to updates, boring things and, occasionally, events. With the moving of Sekrit to a spangly new location, replete with an acre of the Internets of our very own, we’ve opened this up as a more flexible way of keeping people up to date about the goings-on of the forum (and the rest). It’s a blog. There are links, you can leave little comment-y things, and occasionally new things appear here.
Looking for the forum? Click here.
Topics: Announcements | 4 Comments »