iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

baffled and reeling from this encounter on the road

Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

if you just want to see the best part skip to the Death of Faust section. If I can put my players into a situation that replicates even a fraction of how that feels I would be ecstatic.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

putting on my niche interest hat and presenting to you this take on Dr Faustus by composer Alfred Schnittke which I like quite a lot youtu.be/EsqGQLs0gB0

youtu.be

Alfred Schnittke - Faust Cantata [Eng. Captions]

YouTube video by Interplanar Echoes

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Finished procgen plants. The hardest part was actually choosing the color/tile combinations which seems easily but there's no right answer, you gotta mix and match a palette that looks nice, its like fashion. Here's the results. Lichen, fungi, and a stalk of living metal in a little clearing.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Insanely excited for the DF magic release but its also so intimidating. My workload is going to double. That's why I'm powering through on the Long Night (in its beta branch) because I gotta get all my ducks in a row before The Big One hits. Ideas I've kept on the backburner for years are happening.

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Reposted by Squamous

Kruggsmash @kruggsmash.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Long Night stuff #animation

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

That's one of the conceits of the mod. Evolve the right way and you can turn the tables, move up a trophic level. Its like becoming one of those Xianxia cultivators but also an Armored Core.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Quite fond of this small hidden pool. Could be delicious fish in there. Could be a whole entire ghoul. You don't know. If it is the latter though, it would know you're there.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

down into the decayed sectors. Metal superstructure so eroded and corroded it almost looks like natural rock. Domes aren't doming yet but you can see the shape of them in that circle at the bottom. i'll get there.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

what people fail to realize about Jack Vance's The Dying Earth series is that he writes comedies, actually.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

A wretched little beast clawed at my shield so its wired-in personal defense turret snapped to face it and bored a hole in its brain.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

because i must keep melee combat relevant

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I have a strong urge to collect them like rare bugs and put them in a chat together to see what happens

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Tragic that I am an ASCII purist because I keep getting all these cool women with anime PFPs and no mutual friends or servers in my discord DMs asking me to download their art portfolios and hire them. Smh,... the price of fame ig

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

the cool thing about dwarf fortress poisons working on the same logic as mood altering effects and vision-based witchery is that by combining all of this I can make cognitohazardous phenomena real.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Hothouse is a novel where humanity has become small and green 2 thousand million years in the future, earth has ceased orbiting and a gigantic banyan tree covers the world. Plants are animals and bugs are huge. People know like 20 words total. I recommend it.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

something is loudly scream-bleating and rummaging outside my window which could mean nothing

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

what if i procedurally generated every plant. What's the harm. I need to if I want my new textile system to work. No problems ever with procgen every plant. Surely not. Quick in and out adventure.

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Reposted by Squamous

💙Lunarose💜 @moon-and-rose.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Getting used to Dwarf Fortress ASCII more than a decade ago did something virtuous to my brain and I think more people should experience it, yet it's rather hard to justify.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

and how it would look in fortress mode

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I am plotting I am up to schemes and activities

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The thing they dont tell you about worldbuilding is that the hardest part is actually coming up with believable culinary plants that don't immediately ape existing ones while still giving people an idea of what they look or taste like.

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Reposted by Squamous

Kruggsmash @kruggsmash.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Short Forts: The Power of Bone Today, we're having a look at that oh-so-forgettable material that lies within us all- Bone! What will happen when dwarves fight wars with bone? When they trade with bone? Well, we'll find out soon- no bones about it! #dwarffortress youtu.be/nnEyRwFY50M?...

youtu.be

Short Forts: The Power of Bone

YouTube video by Kruggsmash

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Did my first karaoke, im officially a well adjusted human being

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

more people should play scrungly little ttrpgs and video games on itch.io so many of them are free and good. Just search by genre and let your heart be your guide

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

the Midgley situation is insane

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Deep in the weeds. Theoretically there is a way to implement dynamic multi-species civilizations in Dwarf Fortress but I'm hitting a barrier at the very end. I still think it might be possible but there's very little documentation. Working on other stuff too but this is a fun side project.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Went down a rabbit hole, shared last names will be a thing next update, at least for historical figures. Matrilineal for the Long Night, because its practical. Except for engineered organisms. Then you get your creator's last name.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

also realizing now i should probably tune that language to make less silly outputs.

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Reposted by Squamous

greaver @clownsaint.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

TRENCH DOGS is out on youtube! It's a feel good story, in a way

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

also i mistyped when i said the old community "stayed with it", I mean they stayed in the bay12 ecosystem and free version, and do not interact much with the steam community, and the steam community doesn't really trawl through the old forums for ancient wisdom (which is fair!) but you get the idea

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

anyway i am just shouting into the void but for real i hope one day total conversions come back into fashion. I'd help people with it if they needed but I dunno where I'd even start. I hope I can at least serve as an example of what's possible so others realize they can do it too.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

GMing in the tabletop sense. Less hard videogamey rules, more freedom. You set up the hexcrawl, encounter table, playable races and classes, give it all a vibe, let the party loose. Everyone has their own spin they can give it, focusing on different aspects of the game to evoke different feelings.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I think it will get better over time but I wish I could do something to speed it along, I think this aspect of dwarf fortress is languishing and I'd love to see more people try their hand at making their own worlds, even simpler and more restrained ones. It's almost like GMing by proxy.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

but also the steam release, a lot of the old knowledge and community seem to have stayed with it, while new modders are 1. having to figure the rules out from the wiki and first principles 2. want to use graphics which is heavily limiting in scope, time, and money if you want to make something big

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

ultimately even what i do is still heavily dependent on a hardcoded substrate but a few years ago I couldn't even make procgen creatures. As more features become available and moddable the Long Night will diverge more and more from the vanilla game in ways I can't predict.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

im going to rant about this actually. my insane take is that it has the potential to be an adaptable engine on par with, say RPGmaker. But instead of turn-based RPGs for world simulations. As its NPCs become more intelligent and more native lua is exposed you could make whole new games with it

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I think it is genuinely insane how moddable Dwarf Fortress is. I have made it into a scifi megastructure with modern gunplay and functional power armor. Imagine if you wanted to simulate the fantasy 1700s with musket lines blasting demons. Very doable. More people should try it.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

One of my long-term desires is to fully realize haunted houses in dwarf fortress. I want a derelict building in a village to have an abysmal presence that a psychically sensitive character can sense and avoid but john normal walks in and ends up flensed by The Scary Getter. I can do this I know it.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Still working, just deep in the weeds of bugtesting. Want to get procgen armors out soonish. (linked image is not final for chestplates, just a sample).

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

My cat's iconic behavior is that if she wants to be held and I'm busy she wheezes and honks in a really concerning way. I have never seen another animal do this.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

This is the result of a bundle of scripts of mine intended to simulate proper predator behaviors, so seeing it outside of deliberately testing for it was cool.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

I couldn't capture it in action but something neat happened. As I was wandering, a pair of horrible horse-sized feral posthumans leapt into view. Instead of killing me, they killed something nearer to them, then fled with the corpses, like real predators. Would be a harrowing experience. Near miss.

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Squamous @squamousmodsman.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

example in action. In this shadowy area, covered in ruins, i hear something moving and don't know what it is. I might be able to hunt it, or it might be hunting me. With the limited information available, I have to make a call, and risk exposing myself to something dangerous.

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