OT: Dwarf Fortress

Endoperez · #1 August 23rd, 2006, 02:43 PM

Imagine Dungeon Keeper. Now imagine that the imps were dwarves. Finally, imagine that you only had imps, and everything else you met would try to kill your imps.

That's Dwarf Fortress. There are other small differences, like the fact that you can't slap your lazy minions with a virtual hand to make them work faster. You can drown them, though, or lock them in their rooms.

The game is hard, unforgiving and probably unwinnable. Fortunately, losing is fun.

The game is almost revolutionary in the things it has already incorporated. It already generates geographical and political worlds with bit of history and populates them, generates areas based on rainfall, temperature etc, has a bodyparts system which allows for some gory descriptions, has information that's mostly unnecessary (to make steel: mine hematite, smelt it with charcoal made from wood, smelt iron bar with some limestone and charcoal into pig iron, smelt another iron bar with the pig iron and piece of limestone and two pieces of charcoal for a steel bar - or die before you find anything but galena, silver ore), forces you to get food, water and lodging for your dwarves but sends in nobles whose demands make the other dwarves insane (and penniless and starving) just when you started to like them... Insanity includes berserking. Nobles whose demands AREN'T fulfilled go insane and kill the working dwarves (at least those of them who the Sheriff hasn't thrown in jail for ignoring a noble's orders).

It is still in Alpha, and as said, even if you can't win it, you can enjoy it. The game runs on Windows, and can run on Linux under Wine (at least). Unfortunately, Macs aren't supported yet.

The game itself:
http://bay12games.com/dwarves/screen..._building.html

Some screenshots:
Geographical map of the world. WARNING, 700+ kt.
http://bay12games.com/dwarves/screens/world_map1.PNG

Here the seven dwarves are getting ready for their journey.
http://bay12games.com/dwarves/screen...e_journey.html

The beginning: a wagon and the dwarves standing in heavily-forested mountainside:
http://bay12games.com/dwarves/screen..._at_cliff.html

Here the area just outside the cliff is already cleared of trees, the first few building are up and stone stockpile is already filling up. Carpenter is on his way inside, and his trusty but useless-as-of-yet mule following him. Inside, a rudimentary meeting hall has already been constructed and a well has been mined to its center; north of the hall are the first few quarters reserved for the dwarves, while there's a small room fit for industry in the east, as well as some dark stone (jet, onyx or obsidian) to be mined and used for crafts to trade for food before the winter comes.
http://bay12games.com/dwarves/screen..._building.html

Oh, and the game uses extended ASCII graphics. That's a good thing. I wouldn't like to see HOW, exactly, my hunter who ran out of bolts managed to severe that poor fox's left hind paw from its body, or how long the animal suffered when he forgot the animal existed. Or how, exactly, an extremely strong Legendary Engraver unskilled in the art of Wrestling managed to severe the head of a berserking Craftsdwarf. Or what an obsidian crown menacing with spikes of Tin and decorated by pictures of rats in Opal looks like. Not to mention the Flint trumpets!

P.S.
There's a reason for me not posting this before Dom3 had gone gold. This is quite addictive. I'm not sure if this particular addiction one wears down before October, but that's not necessarily a bad things, is it?

tibbs · #2 August 23rd, 2006, 02:54 PM

This looks like a nice game to play at work when there is no work to do.

quantum_mechani · #3 August 23rd, 2006, 03:36 PM

You know, it's funny, I just happened to stumble upon this exact game yesterday...

It's quite addictive, but people who think the dominions interface is arcane should be forewarned- you haven't seen anything yet.

Endoperez · #4 August 23rd, 2006, 04:25 PM

Quote:

quantum_mechani said:
You know, it's funny, I just happened to stumble upon this exact game yesterday...

It's quite addictive, but people who think the dominions interface is arcane should be forewarned- you haven't seen anything yet.

Information about it has spread like a wildfire. Few weeks ago, it was unknown. Now it's been mentioned on some big forums, many smaller ones, and few big sites. The creator is in a bit of trouble... He can't read through all the posts in his forum, as an example. I think he now gets more posts in few hours than he used to get in a week.

Kristoffer O · #5 August 23rd, 2006, 04:31 PM

JO is currently occupying one of Illwinter's computers hacking away in the deeps of the earth

Agrajag · #6 August 23rd, 2006, 06:06 PM

Dungeon Keeper with no evil minions?
Where's the fun in that?

And while I'm all for old (and old looking) games, when you go all the way to ASCII, you've gone too far for me.

PhilD · #7 August 23rd, 2006, 06:26 PM

I guess that's what you get for trying Alpha releases, but the absence of a tutorial or even a manual file that you can read to get you through the first few minutes of the game tends to put me off. Too bad - the game seems to have a lot of stuff included, but that much (apparent?) complexity and no help dealing with it...

Endoperez · #8 August 23rd, 2006, 07:10 PM

Quote:

Kristoffer O said:
JO is currently occupying one of Illwinter's computers hacking away in the deeps of the earth

Ha! There, have a taste of your own medicine! The taste of addiction, the heat of a computer that has been on for too long - now you know what you've forced us to endure! (and enjoy, but that's beside the point)

Quote:

Agrajag said:
Dungeon Keeper with no evil minions?
Where's the fun in that?

And while I'm all for old (and old looking) games, when you go all the way to ASCII, you've gone too far for me.

The dwarves mightn't start as evil, but they sure go nuts fast... At least that's what I get from reading the forums. My first fort is still running for some reason, even with all the really strange decision I made.

ASCII can be hard, and it's especially confusing for this game. It has so much stuff that it'd need a huge tileset - the characters just make the game almost playable. Proper graphics might come in once the alpha has matured into a full-grown game, but that'll take years. At least.

Quote:

PhilD said:
I guess that's what you get for trying Alpha releases, but the absence of a tutorial or even a manual file that you can read to get you through the first few minutes of the game tends to put me off. Too bad - the game seems to have a lot of stuff included, but that much (apparent?) complexity and no help dealing with it...

It does have a simple manual that gets you started - but for some reason, it starts from * instead of ?. For me, at least. I think it uses the US keyboard layout or something, because < and > work from my ; and : .

Amos · #9 August 24th, 2006, 12:04 AM

Its too bad he canceled "Slaves to Armok: God of Blood". I was following that game from the beginning.

PhilD · #10 August 24th, 2006, 05:24 AM

Quote:

It does have a simple manual that gets you started - but for some reason, it starts from * instead of ?. For me, at least. I think it uses the US keyboard layout or something, because < and > work from my ; and : .

I'm using a US keyboard myself, so the ? key does work. But the ingame help has several problems for me - first, it's not exactly fun to read it on screen (I tend to print anything that I intend to really read), and second, it's not organized too well.

The Wiki, though, might provide some help. I'll try to see how it goes.