Borrowing from Dwarf Fortress

So, I’ve been reading a few DF stories and such, and have been thinking about it in relation to Stonehearth. Specifically, what features from DF would be cool to, ah, improve ( :slight_smile: ) for SH…

  1. World history: When you make a game of DF, you can specify the age of the world etc, and the game essentially plays itself for a while whilst it is generated. Thus, your poor dwarves enter a world where there already exist dragons with personalised histories from exterminating procedurally-generated, off-screen NPC civilisations, settlements & characters.

  2. Stupidly high max stats: In DF, you are superhuman (well, super-dwarven) when you get, say, Strength=5, or Toughness=5, etc. But it’s possible, if you stay alive, to go much, much higher than that. Allowing this would make for quite a bit of fun when it comes to legendary characters in our settlements.

  3. Diplomacy & trade: With off-screen NPC settlements, I mean. Fairly self-explanatory.

A final idea, related somewhat to this. Now, in regular Stonehearth, the plan is for the world to be essentially endless and procedurally generated, rather like Minecraft. However… what about… well, let’s call it Campaign Mode. In Campaign Mode, you create a world like normal, but one which is of a fixed size, and with fairly realistic terrain distribution (ie, no polar regions at the equator). You then plop your settlers down somewhere on this world, much like you do when making a world in DF (although in DF, the game picks your settlement location for you, and doesn’t let you stray beyond that area).

Stonehearth could then save the game in such a way that you can either return to your same settlement - or start a new one on the same world, and even visit your old one. The point here is to allow for a lot more immersion and world-building, which is rather more limited on maps without any limits to them.

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Definitely something that needs to be in Stonehearth. I don’t see why more games don’t have it.

My mind instantly went to Mer Burlyhands after reading this.

Perhaps the caravans could be your basic way of Diplomacy and Trade? So instead of just caravans that bring people, You would have some that brought supplies/goods or diplomats from far away lands

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Love this idea!

Ultimately it’d be even cooler if it didn’t have to be off-screen.

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I agree, Being able to march soldiers into another person’s city if diplomacy fails is something that should be added

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I can just imagine a city falling to some horrible apocalypse like zombies or a demon portal and if you create a new ciy to close you will suffer constant raids.

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There’s a lot of ideas to be borrowed from Df butit remains to be seen whether or not the more insane ones like world history can be implemented.

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In the name of @SteveAdamo, first of his name, I say to you but one word.

Mods.

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This seems like an OK idea. It’s certainly seems interesting, but could you explain it a bit better?

So, you’re saying that if this idea is implemented, our settlements have the potential to have a superhuman living inside of it? Well, as long as it isn’t overpowered, I’m fine with it.

Like what @Newf said. Mer Burlyhands

Well, I think that diplomacy and trade will be available to on screen settlements, too. A good example of this is the lagomorph clan. It was also mentioned that you’ll be able to buy and trade with travelling caravans.

A brilliant idea. This will allow you to have an endless land to allow your settlement to expand to however long you want it to. This will also allow for more content, like dungeons, temples, ruins, goblin camps, lagomorph settlements, and much, much more.


But, at the same time, we should not copy of Dwarf Fortress completely. We need to have more creative ideas of out own, so that Stonehearth too will be a spectacular game, like Dwarf Fortress. I’d hate to see Stonehearth become nothing more than a #D Dwarf Fortress clone.

@Elderon, not every good idea has to be a mod.

Mods should not be mandatory to have an interesting and fun time playing the game.

Of course not, i just think that implementing all of this plus the actual game might just be to much for one team to handle.

The idea is for the game to be very fun and enjoyable whilst mods are there to improve and change the game in the direction of the players chosen path.

It would be OP but you would be leveling up a character to a level that feels like it would be OP. He is basically saying that they should not put in a level cap for settlers or anything that would stop a character leveling up.

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Well, in that sense would you normally call it OP? Usually when I hear the term used, it means that it’s more powerful than it’s supposed to be, for balance reasons. If you invest a lot in becoming very strong, then it can still be balanced because you invested so much. In that sense, @EpicDwarf may have meant that it shouldn’t be too easy/quick to become very strong in that sense, such that it breaks balanced gameplay. Just a thought. I think pretty much we all already agree, anyway, so this is mostly a question of definitions :slight_smile:

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Okay, so you make a new map in DF, like you would in any game. You decide to let it run for, say, 100 years, before you actually start playing. The game runs for said 100 years, then you pop your dwarves down on the ground and start playing properly.

One day, a dragon attacks. You look at his character bio…

Gobbledegook, “The Pain in the Arse”
-In 32, Gobbledegook lost an eye to the swordself Airyfairy Wannabelegolas.
-In 34, Gobbledegook wiped out the human settlement of Genericville.
-In 55, Gobbledegook…

Well, you get the picture. Anyway, the point is that Mr Wannabelegolas exists in game (unless he died :stuck_out_tongue: ), you can visit the ruins of Genericville (and maybe some survivors), etc. When you created the game and had it run itself for 100 years, this is what the game was doing.

In practical terms, it adds nothing except long loading times to the game, because running through several in-game centuries for a whole world is no joke. But for reasons of immersion and roleplaying (and let’s-playing etc), it adds a colossal amount.

Eh, it might well be OP. Have a read of the Headshoots story, or the Captain Ironblood one. By the end of those, the top soldiers in both were truly godlike. On the other hand, being godlike in DF doesn’t really help if you get hit by a fireball etc, or have a tantrum spiral and go on a rampage :wink: .

Yeah, my thinking with off-screen ones though is that it doesn’t require the devs to tell the AI how to create a settlement, or create templates to use for them, etc. Naturally, I’d much prefer on-screen ones though :slight_smile: .

The opposite, actually :stuck_out_tongue: . The idea in campaign mode is that, unlike normal mode, the world is of limited size - go far enough west and you end up in the east, like you do in real life. Normal mode is (as the devs have said) basically unlimited in size/scope etc - you can just keep growing and growing as you explore more of the endless map.

If nothing else, I think Stonehearth is going to be easier / more forgiving, and be a hell of a lot cuter too :smiley: . Also, no mermaid farming :stuck_out_tongue: .

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No forced reproduction bone harvesting baby mermaid grinders?

Gah!Foiled again!

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The thing with leting the game play itself is that some races may be killed of beffore it even starts. I remember one story where the goblins where all killed in a series of wars when humans and elves forged an alliance to kill them all.

I mean this in the most epic and hilarius way.

I might add that due to this the player never got raided by them.

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Eh,the chances of this actually happening is close to nil,and even in the off chance this happens,well, it just adds more to the gameplay,right?

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Yes, that is the point. The something this ludicrus actualy can happen just adds to the replay abilety of the game.

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Yeah. I’d love to see what the dev team think about something like this (DLC? Post-release update? Something for modders to do instead?), because I imagine that successfully imitating DF’s world generation stuff would be a big job. Still, going to live in hope :slight_smile: .

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