Based on feedback from the poll on the forums about switching from Peaceful to Normal, this patch adds some options to adjust difficulty. There are some presets and also an advanced options window to adjust each option individually.
There are two options for adjusting how ore veins are generated.
Metal Depth – Picking “Shallow” will generate higher tiers of metal at depths closer to the surface, while “Deep” means you will have to dig deeper before finding the next tier of metal.
Metal Amount – “Scarce” generates less total ore veins, while “Abundant” generates more.
The next three options adjust how enemies spawn.
Enemy Strength – This scales the calculated strength which is based off Kingdom Worth or depth. A strength higher than 1 means, stronger enemies will spawn for the same Kingdom Worth or depth than normal and a number less than 1 means weaker enemies will spawn.
Attack Rate – This scales how often enemies spawn. A higher number will spawn enemies sooner while a lower number gives more time between attacks.
Attack Size – This scales the number of enemies that spawn.
The next option additionally increases enemy strength over time. This combines with the strength calculated from Kingdom Worth or depth.
The next few options for difficulty allow turning different enemy types on or off. You can turn off all underground enemies, or just mants or whatever here.
This patch also adds some sliders for adjusting terrain generation. For the next few examples, every world was generated on a Standard size Kingdom with a seed of 0. The pictures are also zoomed out further than normal with all hidden cells visible to give a better idea of the changes.
Here is the terrain with defaults:
The first slider adjusts the height of hills. Sliding it all the way to the left will always be a completely flat map and all the way to the right will create taller hills than normal. You’ll also notice how the layers of stone are effected by the changes.
The next slider changes the frequency of one of the noise functions used. Moving the slider to the left has the effect of widening hills and valleys and to the right makes narrow valleys with many hills close together. Here are the examples with this slider at each extreme:
The last slider changes the octave which has the effect of making the landscape more smooth or bumpy. Here is the result of each extreme:
Here are some more combinations. If you go to the extreme on multiple sliders, you could possibly end up with some hard or impossible to play on maps.
Whoa. This is a major change. Cheers.
Great job! (applause) For now the only thing I’m really waiting for is release on Steam. Hm… but maybe you’ll add some new raw features and then there’ll be new improvements and fixes to wait for ;D
Wow love this one (applause).
Wow. Awesome, thanks for the hard work! =D
Awesome!
Although i rather would see an update in path-finding (getting those dorfs stuck is easier then one might think)
(some updates on Nobles and logical resource positions would be nice and vital too)
Anyhow, I want to congratulate you one this awesome game already. And the rate of your updates is really amazing, keep it up!
It’s not dwarf fortress (yet), but to be even comparable to that game is a huge accomplishment!
This has to be the most anticipated wait for an update I’ve ever had! Looking forward to the days ahead to see what you’ve cooked up!