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unmerged(323382)

Zeal Game dev
Jun 1, 2011
93
0
Hi,
First of all, thanks to everyone that have signed up for the beta, glad to see that you are interested. The sign up isn't closed yet so if anyone missed the announcement, here is the link.
Now for this weeks topic I think I'll go through the basic needs of any given dwarf in a bit more detail than earlier. Some of these things might have been covered partly in the forums, but some things have changed since then.

Hunger
In the game of dwarves, you eat or you die. There is no middle ground. Sorry about that, couldn't resist.
What I meant to say was that the food is one of the key challenges the player will encounter while playing. Food is the most crucial need for all dwarves, they will starve unless fed.
So in order to keep you dwarves alive, you need to always keep food in stock and have a steady supply of food coming in. The best and most secure way to gather food, is to find fertile soil and plant crops.
However that is a slow and costly process, you could lighten the load of your farms, by raiding enemy encampments. When you find an event room and have defeated its inhabitants. You are free to take their stuff. Especially early on in a settlement the extra boost of resources could really help.

However the Dwarves won't die instantaneously, when they first grow hungry, they'll only head to a table if they are idling. After some time they'll start ignoring your orders and do whatever they can to get food. And only after that will they actually die of hunger.

Energy
Dwarves also need sleep, as long as a dwarf is tired he'll work slower and eventually pass out on the ground. However this is easily taken care of by building beds. Better beds grants more energy to your dwarves and lets them work longer without the need to return and rest.
Energy might not seem a important system compared to food, but left unchecked your the lack of energy in your settlement will slow down you work efficiency witch might be just as deadly as starvation.

Happiness
Happiness is the measurement of your success a happy settlement will truly prosper. While a unhappy settlement will wither and die.
The settlement gain happiness mainly from two sources;

Buildings: Almost every object you build, have a happiness value that will increase how much happiness you gain. Building cheep objects such as decorations is a good way to increase your happiness quickly

Incidents: Happiness is also affected by things that happens in you settlement. For instance when a dwarf starves to death, all your dwarves get sad. There are both good and bad incidents.

Your dwarves put a strain upon you happiness. The more dwarves you have the higher happiness they demand. So you need to keep building and work on keeping your dwarves happy while playing. The punishment for having a low happiness is quite sever, first your dwarves will stop working and eventually they'll leave you settlement for ever.

So that are the dwarves basic needs, there are still some surprises in left in the systems but it would be hard to explain them without going into the actual math. And with that I leave you for this week and I'll get back to you later, have a good time.

//Thorwaldsson
 
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And if you send me that beta key I could be making my dwarves happier right now! ;) Thanks for putting this up, always an enjoyable to read a little bit more about the game.
 
Sounds like a mix of the Sims and DwarfFortress. Alcohol is conspicuously absent though, is it simply a sub-type of food?

Also it sounds like happiness from public buildings/decorations is pooled and compared to the total population, effectively all dwarves share these happy-points without any actual direct interactions? Your description dwarves putting 'stress' on happiness reminds me a bit of the 'power' level in a Command&Conquer game ware their is an aggregate finite supply and a aggregate finite consumption of power. What would prevent us from just making huge sealed-off "happy-vaults" which no dwarf actually ever goes too, yet which telepathically make everyone happy?

Is their any kind of 'Mazlows Hierarchy of needs' involved with the happiness system, can exhausted, starving dwarves, surrounded by death still be made max-happy by saturation-decoration?
 
sounds fantastic!

Hope I get into the beta ;)
 
Will there be quality levels of food? What about other ways of gaining energy besides sleeping, perhaps certain foods can increase energy for short periods
 
If i signed up for the beta, how long will it take for me to get notified that im in the beta or not? Mainly i really want to get into the beta because A Game of Dwarves looks absolutely amazing and im excited to be a test subject for a cool game like this. And will we be notified through email or the forums?