[HN Gopher] 2006: Dwarf Fortress
___________________________________________________________________
2006: Dwarf Fortress
Author : JohnHammersley
Score : 269 points
Date : 2021-09-23 11:44 UTC (11 hours ago)
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| wisienkas wrote:
| Dwarf Fortress is an inspiration to drive upon for any other
| simulation like games.
|
| The depth of this game is truly incredible. I'd imagine if it
| could exists for a port to nintendo switch
| gowld wrote:
| Is there a self-playing/idle mode in Dwarf Fortress?
|
| Where you set some initial conditions and then watch the world
| evolve without having to take care of it?
| ranger207 wrote:
| I saw this post on reddit[0] the other day which uses something
| called df-ai[1]
|
| [0]
| https://old.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/pqp9p2/dwarf...
| [1] https://github.com/BenLubar/df-ai
| Crespyl wrote:
| There isn't exactly any truly "self playing" mode, but you can
| always set up a fortress and then just see how long it runs
| before falling apart. The dwarves all have their own needs that
| they'll try to deal with on their own, and you can assign
| standing orders for things like farms and food production, as
| well as guard schedules and patrol routes for basic defenses.
|
| There's also the worldgen process which is probably the
| closest, but doesn't really let you inspect anything while it's
| happening. The "legends" gamemode lets you explore the history
| of the world after it's been established, and there's some 3rd
| party tools to make exploring the maps and timelines a little
| easier.
| Tepix wrote:
| What's the situation regarding Dwarf fortress and Macs with the
| Apple M1 silicon? Last time i checked it didn't work (crashed
| during world generation) after Apple released macOS 11.1.
|
| I sure would like to give it a try!
| sprkwd wrote:
| yup it works.
|
| Here's a post:
| http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=158322.msg701...
|
| Direct link: http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=12202
| cupofjoakim wrote:
| Dwarf Fortress is amazing. It's not for me, but I strongly feel
| that it's the most fascinating game out there. I'm happy it's out
| there and I hope the newly refreshed UI in the steam version lets
| others be as fascinated by it as I have. May it inspire a future
| generation of game makers!
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| There are a few games inspired in Dwarf Fortress, such as
| Gnomeria and Rimworld, for audiences that are a more casual.
|
| Dwarf Fortress is hard to master.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Rimworld made me forget all my DF keyboard menu commands. From
| 2009 I had mastered DF keyboard shortcuts like a total maniac.
|
| But then I discovered Rimworld, I bought it when it wasn't even
| on Steam yet so the author e-mailed the download link to you.
| But I stopped playing when they introduced a bunch of royalty,
| ESP and religion. Now I'm waiting for the new DF UI in Steam
| because I wouldn't want to re-learn all the shortcuts.
| untech wrote:
| Well, "Royalty" adds quite interesting magic system, and
| "Ideology" adds belief systems, which are fun and are not
| required to be religious. You can have transhumanist female
| supremacists, who require their men to go around naked and
| really like weed parties.
|
| Anyway, Royalty and Ideology are DLCs, so you can totally
| play without them.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| The DLCs are welcome additions because once you complete
| the tech tree and spaceship, you were forced to start over.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Minecraft was inspired in part by Dwarf Fortress as well.
| dadro wrote:
| Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead also comes to mind.
| https://cataclysmdda.org/
| qudat wrote:
| It's funny because I also feel like Rimworld is a really
| difficult game to play, but it's a blast once you get the hang
| of it.
| jtms wrote:
| Rimworld is an absolute masterpiece. As a long time DF player I
| highly, highly recommend Rimworld!
| overcast wrote:
| The obligatory greatest bug report ever. Dwarf Fortress developer
| gets in depth about it. So great. The complexity of this game is
| mind boggling.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAhHkJQ3KgY
| TOMDM wrote:
| I knew what this would be before I clicked and still ended up
| watching the whole story again.
|
| I think it makes up the crux of what makes Dwarf Fort great.
|
| You don't need two massive hideously complex systems, when
| hundreds of smaller ones that all interact are so much more
| satisfying.
|
| Dwarf Fortress seems to do both though, many large systems with
| hundreds of smaller interactions that build up to the whole.
|
| I really look forward to seeing where it ends up in a few
| decades.
| triceratops wrote:
| I've tried playing DF a couple of times but gave up because it's
| too hard. Even though I couldn't "get" it, I'm glad it exists.
| hughrlomas wrote:
| The upcoming steam release may help it be more accessible, you
| could retry then if you still have any interest.
| samvher wrote:
| I've tried playing DF a couple of times but gave up because I
| couldn't figure out the install/launch process. One day I will
| persevere.
| MetallicCloud wrote:
| The easiest way is to get a Lazy Newb Pack https://www.dwarff
| ortresswiki.org/index.php/Utility:Lazy_New...
| db48x wrote:
| Really? You just unzip the thing somewhere, then run the
| program. No install necessary.
| TobTobXX wrote:
| Nah, the custom SDL versions messes everything up.
| lapsis_beeftech wrote:
| This is surprising to hear since SDL has never been an
| issue for me and I have been playing every version as
| soon as they are released for many years. Is it something
| that affects the Mac version (which I have never tried)?
| kibwen wrote:
| _> The heights to which that complexity has now reached are
| evidenced by two famous bugs: one involved too low a melting
| point for the fat layer of dwarven skin, and the other saw cats
| getting wildly drunk from licking their paws after walking over
| tavern floors sticky with spilled beer._
|
| These are the ones that always get mentioned, but over the game's
| whole history there are too many great bugs to name. One infamous
| one that I recall from the early days had to do with the
| lethality of carp. You see, Dwarf Fortress features character
| progression. Your dwarves have not just skills (armorsmith,
| record keeper, surgeon, conversationalist, cheese maker, etc.),
| but also basic stats: strength, agility, toughness. The way that
| you increase your stats is by exercising your skills. And of
| course every entity in the world is simulated in the same way,
| because why wouldn't it be? So what made carp so dangerous? Well,
| every game tick every carp on the map had to make a swim check to
| stay afloat... and swimming is a skill! So shortly after loading
| a map for the first time, your carp will have leveled up into
| legendarily tough, fast, and strong terrors. And because world
| generation often populates maps with tiny disconnected pools, and
| then places carp in those pools, the carp AI considered itself
| perpetually _cornered_ , making them extremely aggressive! Thus
| the result is that any dwarf walking adjacent to a pool (which
| they often will of their own accord, to drink or (ironically)
| fish) will find themselves being bitten by a hulking super-carp
| and _wrestled_ beneath the surface of the water to drown.
|
| So what do you do against this existential threat? Well, you wait
| for the first winter, at which point the map freezes over and all
| the carp asphyxiate. Fun!
| coremoff wrote:
| don't know how it was fixed in DF, however that feels like a
| problem that was "solved" in DND; if you try and move via a
| medium for which you don't have a natural speed, you make a
| check - if you have a natural speed you don't need to make the
| check. Thus characters don't need to make "walking" checks, but
| they do have to make "climb" checks. Similarly fish have a swim
| speed, so they never have to make swim checks. In the event
| that your ability is impeded in some way (e.g. grease on a
| ladder) then you might have to make a check against your
| (normally not-tested) skill, which would be high for your
| natural movement modes.
| BeefySwain wrote:
| This is not in 5E, right?
| triggercut wrote:
| Thankyou! So many playthroughs full of messages about fighting
| carp suddenly all make sense!
| Octopodes wrote:
| That was fixed ages ago, but still exists as a running inside
| joke.
| AndrewOMartin wrote:
| Another case of "The Simpsons predicted it" ;)
|
| "No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around,
| the gorillas simply freeze to death."
|
| https://comb.io/lthy2e
| Paul_S wrote:
| I love Dwarf Fortress but I don't understand the criteria for
| inclusion of games after 1990. Almost all the titles previous to
| that are more or less industry milestones but after that the
| choice become more and more aribtrary and obscure.
| klondike_klive wrote:
| One thing I've never seen asked or answered is whether the name
| Bay 12 is a reference to the film Aliens - when Ripley picks up a
| crate with the loader and asks Apone "where do you want it?" he
| laughs and says "Bay twelve, please." Surely too obscure to be a
| coincidence?
| roenxi wrote:
| It is important, when contemplating Dwarf Fortress, to realise a
| couple of things.
|
| Firstly, and most obviously, the game is clearly some sort of
| work of art. The exact nature of the art is a bit difficult to
| pin down - certainly isn't an exercise in graphics and the plot
| is inconsistent between playthroughs - but nevertheless.
|
| The second thing to observe is it appears to be a life's work. A
| lifetime has not actually passed, but still there is a
| singleminded dedication here that is unusual.
|
| Thirdly, it is impossible for this sort of art to be a true
| lifetimes work because computers havn't been powerful enough to
| do this sort of thing for the full 50 years it takes to dedicate
| a life to one thing. Furthermore, not enough people have been
| exposed to computers yet.
|
| If humanity survives to 2121, there are going to be some amazing
| games. Gamemakers like Tarn, possible multiple generations of
| gamemakers, polishing these things will have some remarkable
| outcomes. I am glad to be around now at the birth of computing,
| but it is all too easy to envy the people who will be young in
| the 22nd century.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > If humanity survives to 2121, there are going to be some
| amazing games. Gamemakers like Tarn, possible multiple
| generations of gamemakers, polishing these things will have
| some remarkable outcomes. I am glad to be around now at the
| birth of computing, but it is all too easy to envy the people
| who will be young in the 22nd century.
|
| I too share your optimism, and I feel fortunate to be alive in
| this period (and who knows, maybe in 2121), however at the same
| time I feel like Dwarf Fortress is unique in its complexity; I
| feel like its complexity and attention to detail requires a
| mind unlike anyone else's, like the singular geniuses of the
| scientific communities that came out with breakthrough
| discoveries and incredibly complicated maths.
|
| I find it hard to imagine DF but even deeper. But that might be
| my lack of imagination. I for one am happy to wait and see and
| be proven wrong.
| BBC-vs-neolibs wrote:
| An easy thought is the same complexity there is (ever
| increasing) but with all objects being implemented in an
| "atoms" style, so that everything is actually made of
| molecules. Like Minecraft, but more granular.
|
| It could even have its own (simplified) chemistry with actual
| Laws of Nature.
| GLGirty wrote:
| Do you think software is a medium that can create one-person
| (or small team) masterworks in any form but games? Candidates
| that come to my mind are lisp, unix, and visicalc. I wonder if
| the nature of software means that craft code is destined to
| fossilize.
|
| > If humanity survives to 2121, there are going to be some
| amazing games.
|
| My great grandkids can enjoy that if they survive antibiotic
| resistant microbes and the water wars.
| jameshart wrote:
| TeX, certainly. Specialized fields have their own little
| masterworks (Leland Smith's SCORE perhaps?) - but these are
| maybe more analogous to the great works of Victorian
| engineering like the Brooklyn Bridge or the SS Great Britain
| than they resemble a symphony or a great painting.
| dafoex wrote:
| Art feels like the wrong word here. Art, to my mind, is
| impressive but ultimately gathers dust on a shelf. DF on the
| other hand is a complex machine that simulates whole worlds,
| and produces a different result each time you run it, and
| varies those results even more as you continue to interact.
|
| Its a living world that grows and evolves with you, and shows
| its technical prowess not through anything as mundane as
| graphics, but instead through the very beating heart that makes
| it such an interesting machine. It demonstrates the author's
| skill, determination, and ongoing mastery of their craft. Dwarf
| Fortress is a masterpiece, but to call it simply art doesn't do
| it justice.
|
| Losing is fun.
| sshagent wrote:
| Nicely put. DF is simply the best game I've ever played, and
| I've been hooked by many from many genres. The stories told
| within are insane.
|
| I only play it every couple of years when the desire catches
| me, yet still patreon to DF. This is what games should be.
|
| Obviously an insane barrier of entry, took me a few goes to
| 'get it' and even now i barely get it despite playing many
| varingly 'fun' forts. I watched many youtube lets plays to make
| different aspects be learnt.
|
| Its a beautiful piece of art for sure.
| standardUser wrote:
| I'm no stranger to involved and complicated games (Crusader
| Kings, Kerbal Space Program, as examples) but the Dwarf
| Fortress interface appeared to me to be some sort of
| elaborate ruse designed to test my patience, or to simply
| mock me. I'm glad the folks who have the patience to navigate
| those menus and decipher those "graphics" have rewarding
| experiences, but I'll wait for the Steam version with actual
| graphics, and god-willing a UI that isn't optimized to waste
| my time, before I give it another go.
| ajuc wrote:
| There are mods and external tools that add normal graphics
| (top-down, isometric, even full 3d) and simplify
| micromanagement. It's not that bad if you use Lazy Newb
| Pack that has DF and most of these utils preconfigured.
|
| But yes, it isn't very accessible.
| laumars wrote:
| There's plenty of graphical versions of DF. You're not
| stuck with the console version if you dont like it. I'm
| fact there is a graphical version on Steam already
| standardUser wrote:
| I tried some of those, but in the end it was the
| interface that caused me to quit. As for Steam, that
| version is not released yet:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/
| outworlder wrote:
| The interface is arcane at times. For the most part, it is
| logically laid out and you can become proficient at it.
|
| Except the godforsaken jobs interface. But that seems to be
| a hard problem, because even with Dwarf Therapist I would
| struggle with the hordes of migrants.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think to understand the UI you've got to have grown up
| with vim or emacs where offering a wide range of features
| via rather shallow keyboard interactions to enable power
| users. I wouldn't say that nested menu driven interactions
| are entirely suitable - and I think that the first time you
| go through it helps immensely to have a tutorial open that
| will lead you through some basic things (designate chopping
| some trees for lumber - for instance). I also think that
| people who have been with it longer have a leg up here
| since the UI has slowly accumulated more complexity over
| time - the military interface and trade interfaces in
| particular are pretty hard to grok.
|
| That all said - I would say that DF doesn't fall into a
| trap very common in modern games: it never lies to you in
| the UI for simplicity, it is clear about what it's doing
| and most of the errors are relatively clear to comprehend.
| Some of these have been accumulated over time (i.e.
| damp/warm stone warnings) but generally when a feature is
| added that feature gets consistently signaled in all the UI
| portions that need it and information is sanely repeated. A
| good example is lava-safe metals which are pretty clearly
| highlighted in areas where it might be relevant (i.e.
| building a floodgate and switch mechanisms).
|
| I've frequently heard talk that cell-shading adds artistic
| flair or bloom allows better tooling around creating bright
| scenes - but the immensely obvious and clear style that DF
| achieves brings precisely what it needs to bring to the
| table. Ascii graphics make that game clearly legible while
| still allowing the imagination to roam and beautiful
| structures to be created - making a multi-z-level dining
| hall with balconies adding extra floor space around the
| roaring fire in the middle of the hall with dwarves dancing
| merrily around it... that is quite possible in DF - it's
| just not going to look like a triple-A game.
| MrMember wrote:
| The devlogs they've done showing off the new UI for the
| Steam version makes it look really promising. The keyboard
| interface is inconsistent and a complete mess in some cases
| and they're making a lot of that mouse driven.
| intended wrote:
| I kinda liked the earlier version of the game, before guides
| and tools made it easier to get into.
|
| This is not a dig on guides, its instead an appreciation for
| what the game taught me - the idea that losing could be fun.
|
| Before that I would always play in a manner that guaranteed
| success, re-loading if something went wrong.
|
| With DF it was either something going spectacularly wrong, or
| utter boredom when I decided to play safe.
| ZetaZero wrote:
| > This is not a dig on guides, its instead an appreciation
| for what the game taught me - the idea that losing could be
| fun.
|
| I disagree. Losing a game because of undocumented behavior
| or bugs has never been fun for me.
|
| Sid Meier - "A game is a series of interesting choices."
| mnw21cam wrote:
| Typically in DF, you lose because of a hilarious sequence
| of events that overwhelms your fortress' capacity to
| cope, not through undocumented behaviour and bugs.
| Filligree wrote:
| > Typically in DF, you lose because of a hilarious
| sequence of events that overwhelms your fortress'
| capacity to cope, not through undocumented behaviour and
| bugs.
|
| You also never really _lose_. It 's always possible to
| reclaim an old fortress -- losing doesn't cause existence
| failure, it causes a nonfunctional fortress.
|
| If you abandon/retire instead of having everyone die, you
| may be able to find it in Adventure mode and meet some of
| your dwarves. Or you can kill the forgotten beast that
| destroyed it, then retire the adventurer and send in a
| reclamation party...
| munk-a wrote:
| I strongly agree with this - before I realized that plump
| helmets are an absolute necessity for an early fortress
| (you have a lot more freedom now - but for a while not
| immediately building a plump helmet farm would be a
| really bad decision) I really struggled to have fun -
| once you've got a general idea of which decisions aren't
| totally stupid then you reach the interesting choices.
|
| I think that with a proper tutorial there'd be a much
| more immediately interesting set of choices. I would say
| though that Civilization has always had obviously bad
| choices that aren't clear to new players - most games
| take this approach where the player is given a lot of
| obvious choices to feel good about rejecting. The
| difference is that in most games these choices are rather
| artificially created and clearly signaled because they're
| obviously wrong (Sorry - are you sure you wanted to
| create that Barbarian with 18 WIS and CHA and 3 STR and
| CON?) - in dwarf fortress it's harder to detect those
| terrible choices due to having pretty much every option
| open to you as soon as you start a new game (except a few
| gated features like Law and Nobility).
|
| That all said - maybe you could make a fortress work
| where you set up a pottery commune and don't actually set
| up any agriculture - just try and rely entirely on trade
| to feed your dwarves.
| TuringTest wrote:
| Different strokes for different folks. Though not every
| game benefits from having to discover its basic rules by
| trial and error, there _is_ some appeal to it exploring
| the unknown when the game is designed around it. Scape
| rooms are a game genre, after all.
| intended wrote:
| Well Sid Meier is right, and the term interesting is
| broader than just simply knowing the state of the board
| at all times.
|
| DF proved it for me. Essentially there's a meta pattern
| in human behavior to avoid uncertainty. This robs you of
| the fun that can be had by embracing chance and risk.
|
| Plus the "bug" I encountered was spawning near a magma
| vent and a yellow "i" chucking a fire ball at my
| stockpile.
|
| If DF fulfills it's goals, I doubt anyone can predict all
| the interactions.
| db48x wrote:
| That's not what "losing is fun" really means. Winning and
| losing in Dwarf Fortress is not like most other games. In
| most games, having everyone in your fortress die would be
| a loss, it wouldn't be much fun, and you would have to
| start the level over. In Dwarf Fortress, by contrast,
| this can be counted as a win as long as there was a good
| story to it, or if you learned something new about the
| game.
|
| I'll give you an example of a fort that I lost. I had dug
| down into one of the cavern layers beneath the world and
| set up shop. I started walling off a good-sized area down
| there, making it safe from fliers and swimmers. I built
| walls across a lake that would keep them out but still
| let in fresh water, and hopefully cave fish. At the edge
| of the lake next to a courtyard surrounded by stalagmites
| I built a simple little well house to supply the fortress
| should the booze ever run out.
|
| Naturally, all this activity attracted attention, and
| forgotten beasts attacked the fort. I had a rag-tag
| militia with whatever weapons I happened to have on hand
| and some armor go out and attack the first one just
| outside the walls, not far from the well house. They
| fought hard, and managed to take down the beast with only
| a few casualties, who were soon carried back to the
| hospital.
|
| I then directed my butcher to carve up the carcass; this
| thing was huge and it would likely feed the entire fort
| for six months or more. He duly dragged the carcass past
| the well house, across the courtyard, into the stairwell,
| and up a few levels to the main body of the fortress.
|
| All was going well a few months later when I noticed the
| blood.
|
| There was blood in the hallways, and blood in the
| courtyard, and blood in the well house. There were
| dwarves running around cleaning the blood, but it never
| seemed to go away for long. You would expect there to be
| some blood after the fight, and there was. But even
| dragging the carcass of a huge forgotten beast wouldn't
| leave a trail of blood down a hallway; in Dwarf Fortress
| a dead creature can no longer bleed. Even the meat you
| get from it doesn't have blood in it any more. So where
| was it all coming from?
|
| I inspected some bloody areas, and found that it was
| dwarf blood. Indeed, Dwarf Fortress keeps track of this
| because the details matter; for every contaminant that
| comes from a creature it knows _which_ creature it came
| from. It wasn't just dwarf blood, it was blood from
| specific dwarves! I started looking through my dwarves to
| find the ones that were bleeding.
|
| All of them had rotten feet.
|
| The skin, fat, and muscle layers of their feet were all
| rotting. Everywhere they walked they were leaving bloody
| footprints and smears of blood. They would go to the well
| house and try to clean themselves. They would try to
| clean the floors, and get it on themselves again, and on
| the clean floors. Any dwarf that got that blood on their
| skin was getting some kind of infection (or "syndrome" as
| the game calls them) that caused their flesh to rot.
| Animals and pets had gotten it too. Cats follow their
| dwarves around, so they were stepping in the same pools
| of blood and had rotten flesh on their paws.
|
| And that's when I remembered, the description of the
| forgotten beast said that it had "poisoned blood".
| Forgotten beasts are randomly generated. The game picks a
| body plan from all the creatures it knows about, randomly
| changes details such as material, size, and color, adds
| interesting features, and then sets them loose in the
| world to harass your fortresses. Poisoned blood is an
| especially interesting feature because the poison itself
| is randomized. The game generates a suite of randomized
| syndromes (on top of the non-randomized syndromes used by
| various venomous creatures, etc), then uses those
| syndromes in various nasty ways throughout the game. This
| syndrome apparently caused flesh to rot. When the
| forgotten beast bled from its wounds during the fight, it
| got on the ground and on the armor of the fighters. From
| there it spread, until it was everywhere.
|
| I might have forgotten that beast's randomly-generated
| name, but I'll never forget the story. Thus I won, even
| though the fortress was lost.
|
| In fact, the fun doesn't necessarily stop when you lose a
| fortress, because you can always start another fortress
| in the same world. Since it's the same world, it has the
| same threats. In particular, it has the same syndromes.
| There's a good chance that any fortress in that world
| would see this kind of threat again, even if that one
| forgotten beast was dead. Hopefully I would have been
| able to deal with it better.
| ZetaZero wrote:
| > I'll give you an example of a fort that I lost....
|
| Sure, this is a great example of "Losing is Fun".
|
| Here is my example. Note this is 10+ years ago, so some
| of the details are hazy, and this was my first or second
| fortress. I carve out an area for an underground farm,
| then designate the area for Farming. Something about
| "needing irrigated farmland" first, but the game doesn't
| tell me how I can issue an irrigation command.
|
| Apparently, after checking the Wiki, the dwarfs won't
| irrigate squares they stand in. I need to carve out a
| room above my farm, designate a pond, task dwarfs to fill
| the pond, then channel water down to my farm. By the time
| I figured all this out, my dwarfs all starved.
|
| Losing several times because I didn't read the wiki was
| not fun. I never got the chance to build a fort, where an
| "interesting story" had a chance to take place. To get to
| that point, I felt I would have to put some 30+ hours
| into the game just to learn the basic undocumented steps
| needed to build a functioning fort. There was too much
| "work" to get to the potential fun parts.
|
| The steep learning curve, the terribly inconsistent UI,
| and Toady's lack of desire to do anything to improve
| these issues, pushed me to spend my fun time elsewhere. I
| plan on looking at the Steam release to see if anything
| has changed.
| db48x wrote:
| True, though you might have tried putting a farm on dirt,
| like a normal person ;)
|
| My point is that this is not what people mean when they
| say that "losing is fun". They mean that the traditional
| losing scenarios are not a loss in Dwarf Fortress. This
| doesn't mean that the author has spent time smoothing out
| all of the interactions so that they are obvious or
| tutorialized the way a AAA game would be.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _the idea that losing could be fun._
|
| Then I think you will love Darkest Dungeon, FTL, and Into
| The Breach, and specially Sunless Sea, where you _need_ to
| die so your next character can inherit something of your
| choice from the previous character, making each successive
| run a bit easier.
| imdsm wrote:
| I've played since 2006 and while I don't find much time these
| days, I return to it every few years to scratch an itch. I
| played a lot of ADOM in the old days, and naturally jumped
| onto DF when it appeared. With tilesets, things became
| easier, and then with Dwarf Therapist, easier too. Then we
| got packs like the "Lazy Newb" pack, and with Steam coming
| too, it'll become even more accessible to folks.
|
| The depth of what can be achieved is what amazes me as an
| engineer. I can build cisterns to hold water, underground
| reservoirs, a series of mechanisms to refill the water, and
| to move it to consumption points, through the use of labelled
| levers, but be sure to smooth the stone, lest you get dusty
| water. Have some drain away to create mist in a common area,
| everyone loves mist. And another floodgate to create a
| defensive section, should invaders breach the entrance.
|
| This is but one such area that can be brought about through
| the mechanics of the game, not to mention swimming practise
| in 1/2 depth water (7 is fully deep) and more.
|
| A truly wonderful game, and I'm honoured to have a crayon
| drawing from them, to have been like yourself a part of its
| history. Strike the earth!
| ruste wrote:
| I play with moderate regularity and have actually never
| used Dwarf Therapist. (I still regularly consult the wiki
| though.) The turning point for me that made the game a lot
| more fun was realizing I could modify the config to set a
| population cap. If you only every allow 10-20 dwarves you
| never feel like you're rushing to meet everyones needs and
| handle new members of your fort all while keeping everyone
| happy. You can focus on the story and relationships
| unfolding while meeting every dwarfs individual needs.
| Suddenly the game is fun again. I also enjoy playing small
| forts and never breaching into the caverns below. Without
| the caverns performance stays high. That's mostly a
| limitation of my computer though.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| so factorio, rimworld, etc..
| harywilke wrote:
| Those are mere gateway drugs.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| if those are toys compared to this, i have to try this
| game. they did always feel like toys.
| jl6 wrote:
| It's a rare and beautiful thing indeed. NetHack is the other
| obvious comparison, but my impression is that development has
| happened in bursts of activity rather than as a continuous
| effort.
|
| Some MUDs have this kind of longitudinal development - like the
| Discworld MUD or LambdaMOO.
|
| And of course the AAA commercial MMORPGs with huge budgets and
| cattle users that get milked $14.99/month. Though I suspect
| those are unsustainable in the long run.
| marttt wrote:
| > If humanity survives to 2121, there are going to be some
| amazing games.
|
| This would make a great Ask HN: which computer games of today
| might be remembered in 100 years? Or: which genres have the
| best chances for a 100+ year lifespan.
|
| I think I realized just now that we really do live in a time
| where games as cultural artefacts are stepping into the shoes
| of books. Wow.
|
| I've never been much of a gamer, but, uh, who knows, maybe my
| grand-grand-whatever-children of 2100 would also enjoy the
| first parts of Leisure Suit Larry? [1] It did tackle universal
| human problems, after all.
|
| 1:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_Suit_Larry_in_the_Land...
| ajuc wrote:
| > If humanity survives to 2121, there are going to be some
| amazing games
|
| Check out nethack if you want to see what a few decades of
| development can do to a simple game.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _I am glad to be around now at the birth of computing_
|
| That was like 40-50 years ago, along with birth of games,
| including many innovative ones from that era which have still
| yet to be remade. We just recently lost one of the last
| pioneers of this frontier, Sir Clive Sinclair. RIP
| queuebert wrote:
| In 2121, NetHack will be approaching a 4.0 release candidate.
| indigochill wrote:
| Although I'm usually a bazaar man when it comes to talking
| about the Cathedral and Bazaar, in theory there can be some
| awesome cathedrals, too. A digital equivalent to La Sagrada
| Familia, if you will.
|
| On the other hand, digital cathedrals are theoretically
| vulnerable to operating systems changes in a way physical
| cathedrals don't have to wrestle with as much (I guess maybe
| changing building code could be the closest analog?)
| pimterry wrote:
| > A digital equivalent to La Sagrada Familia, if you will.
|
| > On the other hand, digital cathedrals are theoretically
| vulnerable to operating systems changes in a way physical
| cathedrals don't have to wrestle with as much (I guess maybe
| changing building code could be the closest analog?)
|
| Sagrada Familia actually does have analogous problems.
|
| When they started ~130 years ago, there was little in the way
| of planning regulation. In 2019 they had to go back and file
| for formal planning permits & licenses, and pay 4.6 million
| in taxes and fees to do so so that they could continue
| construction, more than a century after starting:
| https://www.barcelona.cat/infobarcelona/en/tema/urban-
| planni...
|
| They also have an ongoing battle because during that 130
| years of construction, somebody went and built a city block
| in the place where the original designs put the front door:
| https://elpais.com/espana/catalunya/2020-03-05/barcelona-
| qui... [Spanish]
| bitwize wrote:
| I worked (technically still work) with a fellow who was a
| real long term thinker, and kept bringing up La Sagrada
| Familia. He kept saying "I just want to build a software
| equivalent."
|
| I showed him the demo 8088MPH, which took seven years to
| complete. He said, "Okay, that's the software equivalent of
| La Sagrada Familia".
| ajvs wrote:
| Can't wait for it's Steam release, the new UI looks awesome.
| edem wrote:
| I wanted to write a comment with this exact same text!
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| Just an FYI for anyone who might be thinking of getting into the
| game.
|
| It took me about 6 weeks playing along with the wiki to "git gud"
| enough to have a mostly stable fort. I used tilesets for eye
| candy and eventually moved to some of the memory hacking tools
| like dwarf therapist for a better management UI.
|
| YMMV but if you are thinking "gosh it's too complicated for me"
| just be patient with it and don't be afraid to read the vast
| amount of documentation around the game.
|
| DF is an extremely rewarding mindf*ck. It's probably the only
| game now that I can get so immersed that I blow past my bedtime
| and spend the next day, fatigued, thinking of what to try in game
| next.
| srcreigh wrote:
| I first tried DF a few weeks ago. I tend to avoid wikis for
| games (Factorio, RuneScape, Minecraft, Valheim) since it can
| "ruin the fun".
|
| Can you comment on the experience of reading the wiki and still
| having fun? Does the wiki have spoilers? Is the game just too
| complex to spoil with any amount of reading about it?
| Paul_S wrote:
| It's not an adventure game - the wiki will not spoil it for
| you. It just gives you the tools. The fun is in using these
| and you are guaranteed to face a unique set of issues in your
| playtrhough.
| riksucks wrote:
| The fact that dwarf fortress generates lores and story, makes me
| feel like I need to try out this game. But it always seems hard
| to get into
| oefnak wrote:
| You could also wait for the steam version, which will have a
| much more intuitive UI.
| eropple wrote:
| Consider trying Rimworld--it's a more approachable (and in
| turn, shallower, though not as shallow as you'd expect) riff on
| the "story generator"/ant-farm approach to game design.
| tokai wrote:
| You can go through and read the lore of a world without having
| to play.
| annowiki wrote:
| Speaking of this, I've yet to play the game for more than
| five minutes, but there are some great YouTubers that let you
| get into the game through lets play without having to master
| it: https://www.youtube.com/user/kruggsmash
| beaconstudios wrote:
| if you install one of the "lazy newb pack" mods (this is the
| typical recommendation:
| http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=126076.0) and
| watch a tutorial or two on how to use the interface, it's
| actually quite intuitive. Its interface is similar to vim in
| many ways.
| riksucks wrote:
| ah if its similar to vim, then I might give it a try, thank
| you so much beacon. Sometimes I feel like that these are
| essential things in nerd culture lol, and I dont feel
| cultured enough because I dont know these. But yeah lemme
| fire this up and try
| AaronM wrote:
| Id suggest reading a tutorial on the DFHack Workflow
| plugin. It makes the game much easier as you can just
| automate jobs for the dwarfs so you don't forget to do
| things like brew alcohol.
| traspler wrote:
| I really, really love all the retold stories people experienced
| while playing the game (embelished or not), two of my favourite:
|
| Bronzemurder - https://dfstories.com/bronzemurder/
|
| Bravemule's Matul Remrit - https://www.bravemule.com/matulremrit
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