Frame-by-Frame?

[Doubleforte]

Has anyone found out if we can advance single frames, like in classic? I couldn't find it in the keybinds, and it's essential for punching through heavy aquifers and piping magma.

[Castor Troy]

The patch just added this. I'm a new player. What does this mean? Why would you want it?

[Denesta]

Originally posted by Castor Troy:

The patch just added this. I'm a new player. What does this mean? Why would you want it?

You would want it for time sensitive things where you want to change orders and such on the frame right after something happens.

[TyCobb]

Originally posted by Castor Troy:

The patch just added this. I'm a new player. What does this mean? Why would you want it?

Combat goes extremely quickly. Just a single step could give you 5 or more battle logs to read. You have no time to react to anything if you're just running at full speed or want to see the battle actually play out.

[Andi]

Originally posted by Castor Troy:

The patch just added this. I'm a new player. What does this mean? Why would you want it?

As Doubleforte mentioned, it's important for piercing heavy aquifers. You need to catch the first frame after a tile has been dug out, to see if you actually reached the end of the aquifer. In this first frame there will not yet be any water in the freshly dug out tile, so the information if a the surrounding blocks are damp is still accurate.
Once there is water in the freshly dug-out tile, all surrounding tiles will be marked as damp, so you can no longer tell if they got damp because they are part of an aquifer, or because of the water in the dug-out tile.

[Castor Troy]

Awesome! Thanks for the replies. It makes sense now. I've got a LOT to learn lol.

[Lexyvil]

Originally posted by Doubleforte:

Has anyone found out if we can advance single frames, like in classic? I couldn't find it in the keybinds, and it's essential for punching through heavy aquifers and piping magma.

Wish granted! The update 4 hours ago brought back the "Period" in Fortress Mode to advance time by 1 frame (1 tick).

[StarRekt]

alt + and alt - speeds up and speeds down the game

[Kalvash]

FInally!

[Radsoc]

I don't remember, but was it possible to frame step while having the battle log open in normal DF? It's quite tedious to do frame steps and then reopen, closings logs (at least without known shortcuts).

[RefuseOrchestra]

Originally posted by Radsoc:

I don't remember, but was it possible to frame step while having the battle log open in normal DF? It's quite tedious to do frame steps and then reopen, closings logs (at least without known shortcuts).

I don't think you could have any menus open while the game was running.

[Kalvash]

Step-by-step with combat logs open would be nice. Maybe someone will make a mod for that.

[DragonZephyr]

Originally posted by Castor Troy:

The patch just added this. I'm a new player. What does this mean? Why would you want it?

There are so many reasons why you need to do this its kinda unreal.
1. Dwarf in combat needs to be told to run instead of fight when they discover an ambusher so you burrow them but they can't make it so you need to unburrow them. This can happen over 3 calc frames.
2. You are digging into aquifer and need to put up walls on the water leaking stone and your miner and builders cancel their jobs. However there is a single frame before they run away and they can still advance the construction even if they suspend the job, if the water drains there is no danger to the dwarf and you can frame by frame build the walls and just dig through the aquifer. If you cant go frame by frame it might take an ingame year to get through 2 layers of aquifer.

3. The speed at which mechanisms fire their linked objects from levers is dependent on their quality so you can't exactly know how long to wait for something to happen. You can figure this out by going frame by frame and make time based contraptions by experimenting. I am unsure if pressure plates do this but it would be sueful there too to make sure people get hit by the trap just in time.