Complete reference guide for beginners and those who dont know how to use such an easy apps.

MacNewbie

Brief history of MacNewbie

MacNewbie is an easy utility. Such an easy so your grandma can manage it. However, if you arent familiar with some concepts of the game, itll be hard to understand some settings. This guide is for correcting spaces in your brain. This pack was invented by me, iXen, in April 2012. Cause there was LNP for Windows and nothing to do for Mac, I thought that Mac users (and I) needs some alternative. There was Mac version of Masterwork package, but MW is for experienced users. As for MacNewbie MacNewbie offers basics. The first version was terminal-mode ran within a .command file. It had formatted text output, links to init files and a graphics installer. The second version, named Blue, was given GUI and init editor. Third version, named Red, was first to ship in DMG package. Fourth version, Green, obtained DFHack. Fifth version, Yellow featured one-click expanding. You can install graphics and utilities in one click of mouse! And the current version, Cyan, features the brand new design a l brushed metal. I wish you good luck and stable work. And remember, losing is fun!

MacNewbies features
MacNewbie wouldnt be named MacNewbie if it wasnt for the newbs. Of course, experienced players can use it, too, but experienced players have no need reading so on.

MacNewbies main window consist of four buttons. Let me explain their actions. One for the init editor, another for the graphics installer, third one is for utilities launcher and the last one is for... you know why its here. If there is an update, MacNewbie will ask you about it. If you want to install, youre a man, if you dont want to MacNewbie will ask you again and again and again... Each button calls a window on click. Each window offers some functions to you. Lets talk about it.

Init editor
This window let you to customize Dwarf Fortress environment, e.g. you can skip intro or disable weather. You can set almost all of the init settings here. Init editor is the most complicated part of MacNewbie. It took me about 3 hours to make a good code for the first version which featured only SIX checkboxes. Now it consist of some boxes, text fields, buttons, sliders and so on. The settings you can see is the most referenced. There is no such functions as sky symbol or zooming speed. There is only most common settings. We will take a look on every setting, so, please get started to the excursion into the depths of the magical land of the init settings of the Dwarf Fortress which has made by... ehm, enough. Save group Save group features options which is connected
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with the world loading/saving (its obvious, I think). Autosave switch changing this will change or disable auto-saving interval. Seasonally is for three game months; yearly is for twelve. Auto-backup world will be saved into new folder while updating. Save on start world will be saved when you embark. Pause on save/load when game saves/loads, itll be paused. Embark group Embark group features few settings that affects the embark zone choosing procedure. Size changing this will change the default embark zone size; setting embark zone greater than you will set will cause warning in the game. Always warn game will warn you even when there are no potential difficulties. Limits group Limits group let you set your fortress population limits. Population limit is the upper number. Fortress population will not exceed this limit unless the population has already exceeded it. Child limit consist of two numbers. First one is the absolute maximum (child number will not exceed it); second one is the maximum percent of children (e.g. if set to 20, while the current population is 50, therell be no more than 10 children, what is 20%). Features group Features group let you enable/disable some technical aspects of the game, e.g. weather or temperature. Economy sometimes dwarves may turn living in fortress to be paid, and there may appear annoying piles of money. Turning this option off disables the paid living. Invaders if enabled, enemies can attack your fortress. If you disable it, youll lose a lot of FUN. Temperature disabling this will prevent boiling and freezing, what may increase FPS. But magmall be as destructive as before, but it will not fire nearby wood or flesh. Weather you will not know such things as snow and rain if you disable it. But disabling it will increase your FPS.
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 Cave-ins rocks will fall if enabled; rocks will not fall if disabled. Disabling it will reduce reality factor, but itll be easier to dig. Idlers this thing just shows/hides the number of nothing-doers in your fortress. Tiles group Tiles group let you change a bit the appearance of the game. Various Ground if disabled, ground floors will be marked only as dots instead of comas and apostrophes. Liquid Depth water will be shown as a number indicating its depth. Tiles group also contains the Colors button. Clicking on it will show up a dialogue with sixteen color cells. Clicking on them will let you change the colors, so you can use your own palette in the game instead of standard ASCII colors. Looks pretty cool, huh? I like it, too. Standard colors are too boring for me. FPS group If you are a maniac and you like to play with FPS, this section is for you. Show FPS if checked, FPS counter will appear in the upper left (in the format P (G). Physical cap represents the maximal actions per second (e.g. if dwarf does one step in 10 frames, and the cap is set to 50, his speed may be no more than 5 steps per second) Graphical cap represents how many graphical frames pass per one second. Window group This group is the least but not last. Intro if checked, youll see intro (thanks obviousness). Windowed if checked, game will launch in window (thanks again).

Sound group This group is last but not least. It let you control the sound. Enable sound if checked, youll hear sound. Volume slider try to guess what it does. This is all the options that the init editor let us change. If you want more, you can always change init files manually.

Graphics and Utilities

Pack wouldnt be a pack if there wouldnt nothing pre-packed. As for bonus, there are three graphic packs and four utilities. Windows that are responsible for both graphics and utilities are identical. They both consist of the list and the button. As for graphics, there are three packs pre-bundled: Maydays Pack, Ironhands Pack and Phoebuss Pack. All three packs are insanely great, but there is also Default pack if you dont like to play with graphics. As for utilities, there are four of them. Dwarf Therapist let you to assign jobs to dwarves easily (its the most important utility!), so you dont need to press v for hundred times. DF Designator is great if you like to build, not to manage. SoundSense adds sounds peew, poow, boom (note that you need to dowload soundpack)! And the bomb of the utilities DFHack. It will help you to fix Dwarf Fortress from odd things. You can add your own utilities and graphics. There are special item in the Apple Menu so you can do it in one click of mouse. To add graphics, select a folder (it must contain data and raw folders, and data must contain init and art folders, unless it wont install). To add an utility, just point to the .app, .exe, .jar or .sh file and it will be added to the list. If you want to delete utility/graphics or backup your saves, you can open MacNewbie folder. To delete graphics, just delete the MacNewbie Contents/Graphics/ <graphics name> folder. To delete an utility, delete its entry in MacNewbie Contents/Utilities/list.txt. If you want to back up your saves and update, access the Dwarf Fortress/data/save directory and copy all region folders you need. Then, after your update, just bring it back.

Technical information
MacNewbie is non-commercial project. Please support it with the thanks :) This is our forum page. This is the fifth version so far, but there may be problems. For example, DF Designator and SoundSense uses the different version of Java what may cause some warnings (maybe they will not work at the same time). DFHack uses Wine and is also not very stable now. If SoundSense does not launch:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Proceed to http://jdk7.java.net/macportpreview/ Download Java and install it. In Applications/Utilities, choose Java Preferences. Drag OpenJDK 7 entry to the top of the list. Install the sound pack from here and put it to the packs folder in SS directory.

If you want to see changelog, here it is:

version 0.6 - Cyan for 0.34.10 - May 22, 2012 - Slight redesign - 0.34.10 support version 0.5 - Yellow for 0.34.07 - May 9, 2012 - Added much more init settings - Added PDF manual - Added graphics/utilities installer - Added link to the MacNewbie folder version 0.4 - Green for 0.34.07 - April 26, 2012 - Added DFHack - Added color editor - Added autosave setting to init editor - Improved Launchpad deletion utility - Moved temp files folder - Fixed bug with auto-updating raws - Fixed bug with init settings update - Fixed Snow Leo compatibility issue version 0.3 - Red for 0.34.07 - April 16, 2012 - Added more init settings - Added autoupdate - Now in DMG - Minor improvements version 0.2 - Blue for 0.34.07 - April 14, 2012 - Added GUI - Added auto-update raws - Added user-friendly init editor - Fixed: graphics pack name validation lack - Fixed: last line in list.txt must be empty version 0.1a - Colorless for 0.34.07 - April 9, 2012 - Very first version.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR DOWNLOAD!

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