One of the things that I find interesting about Dwarf Fortress is that (to use programming jargon) it's sort of a declarative game rather than an imperative game. In e.g. StarCraft you select an individual unit and demand that it move to a specific point on the map; in Dwarf Fortress you configure which dwarves are allowed to perform certain tasks, then you place a task in a queue, and some dwarf somewhere will (eventually (hopefully)) take care of it (until they get distracted by a party, or decide to go fishing, or get hungry and wander off to the dining hall, or fall asleep in a stockpile, or drop anything they're carrying and run screaming from the forgotten beast hurtling down the hallway at them). It's a fascinating difference in paradigm, and I wish more games would explore the idea of actors in the world being chaotic/free agents which will only somewhat prioritize your wishes.
Dwarf Fortress is an example of how a great idea can be held back by a horrible user experience. The UI is a nightmare, and the performance worsens as the game gets bigger.<p>I've recently started playing Rim World, which is essentially a Dwarf Fortress light. I'm enjoying it way more than I enjoyed Dwarf Fortress despite being a less complex (relatively speaking) game because it offers a FAR superior interface and presents it's mechanics in a friendlier way.
Dwarf Fortress was one of the first computer games that I really ever got into. I was a little 15 year old that had a shitty desktop computer that wasn't always connected to the internet and DF has provided me with many tens of hours of entertainment. I remember the depth and realism included in game caused me to want to learn to program myself. I wish the UI was better, but honestly I think the engagement with the keyboard in DF is it's strongest selling point. Every game action can literally be performed with the keyboard, and this means that I don't need to wait for the text on menus to mentally register, move a mouse, click. I can essentially type the commands at speed.<p>TLDR: DF is a great game that shaped my childhood and motivated me to become a programmer.
As someone who has wasted far too many hours in games, i believe that DF to be simply the best game ever made. The UI is rather horrific but something you can get used to. Admitedly it took so many efforts to figure out the game but that becomes half the 'fun'.
Anyone wanting to play, find a lets play video (for the current version) and just follow along. Sounds silly, but thats how i finally got it.
This winter a player has documented seemingly the greatest game ever to be played out on Dwarf Fortess. A lyrically narrated 320 year Saga, culminating in the construction of a glass fortress... in Hell.<p>Archcrystal - 320 years in a fortress (w/spoilers read 37592 times)<p><a href="http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=156319.0" rel="nofollow">http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=156319.0</a>
A very touching story about the two brothers. I especially enjoyed the idea that they send drawings and stories to donors. I hope they're still doing well.<p>I dl'd it and started it up. I'm now wondering what I'm looking at. Not being a gamer, I don't have the visual vocabulary or expectations, so I'm glad there's a wiki; the in-game manual doesn't fully work. EDIT: My reading comprehension is not fully functional, the manual works.<p>> “Water’s not doing it for me these days,” he said. “I know it’s bad, but the sugar goes right into programming the game. If I don’t drink soda now, I get a headache and can’t do any work.”<p>I feel bad that he's sacrificing his health for our pleasure.<p>> He’d enrolled at the University of Washington, ... Tarn moved into a string of “dingy one-bedrooms” with “bad moisture problems” — in one, he discovered a shelf fungus growing behind his couch.<p>I probably lived in one of those when I was at UW. It was a "World's Fair" apartment building, garden level, the only window facing north and looking up an outside stairwell into the alley. Google maps shows me that much of all that has been scraped and replaced.
Very strange timing -- I spent about an hour last night looking in to DF and other games since I like that type of 'emergent' or 'declarative' (as another comment here put it) gameplay.<p>Other games I have played of a similar vein: Rimworld (great), Prison Architect (great), Banished (great, needs mods to add more content), Planetbase (EA, good, light on content after 2~ hours).<p>Others I found were: Stonehearth, Gnomoria, Town, Kingdoms and Castles (not out yet), Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2 (kinda) / War for the Overworld (fan remake of DK, essentially).
I've never played Dwarf Fortress (something I hope to rectify in the nearish future). However, friends have told me that it's somewhat similar to Factorio, which is a game that I highly recommend programmers to play.
Here's a question about Dwarf Fortress: I play a lot of roguelikes, which are a genre of similar games, insofar as they're relatively complex, keyboard-and-ASCII oriented games made by geeks for geeks. Like Dwarf Fortress, these tend to have accumulated a lot of developer-hours, and like Dwarf Fortress, these developer-hours tend to get channeled into adding complexity to the game rather than superficial polish, like graphics and interface.<p>But they vary in terms of their approach this complexity: some seem to always want to add more, seeing more complicatedness as always better, and end up feeling like they contain everything but the kitchen sink - complexity for complexity's sake. (Nethack, I'm looking at you.) Others add it only where it's justified by producing interesting gameplay decisions. (Brogue and Sil are rigorous about stripping out unneeded complexity and getting the maximum amount of subtlety and nuance from a stripped-back set of mechanics. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is more complex, but seems aware of the trade-offs around complexity, and is known for removing features as often as it adds them.)<p>Which of these camps does Dwarf Fortress fall into? There's a lot of complexity, features and mechanics there. Is it all justified, in terms of adding interest to gameplay? Or is just for complexity's sake?
Semi-related: Don't Starve is a great indie game with a different theme but IMO similarly complex world simulation. [1] [2]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Starve" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Starve</a><p>[2] <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/322330/" rel="nofollow">http://store.steampowered.com/app/322330/</a>
> His expenses are low — $860 a month in rent, $750 a month to Zach for his help and a few hundred dollars for utilities and food<p>Uh. The US... sorry, but if you spend like $1600 before food that is not "low expenses". If you can get below $1300 WITH food then I'd say that's low. Some people have to live with much less than $1000/month altogether.
Just yesterday I was looking up how to recommend someone for a MacArthur grant specifically for the Adams brothers. Sadly, the nomination committee is anonymous and does not accept recommendations. It's a shame because this seems like the ideal case for their grant.
Only in DF you can talk about turtle reproduction....<p>here's a bug related to turtle pond going extinct :<p><a href="http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2780" rel="nofollow">http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2780</a><p>"Since turtles were my only source of shells, which are ever so important for moods, I am keenly feeling their absence after a few years. I went ahead and modded my world so that hoofs and horns can be used also for shells, (which is actually very cool btw, its awesome to have an artifact decorated with Elk Bird horn.)<p>However, my ponds were filled with turtles early on, and I accumulated many shells that unfortunately rotted away. It seems like fish populations are regenerating, but turtles are not among those, and since I found that odd I decided to report it."<p>"Pond turtles lay eggs, which might contribute why they will only breed in off site statistics if that's any relevance.<p>DF structures used for dfhack only implies that eggs that are hatched go into certain classes, and entity ID is one of them for intelligent species (crow men eggs layed and hatched on site belong to you etc., underground egg laying races have been in constant decline since they were added because of this until recently)<p>Egg layers have always had a hard time repopulating due to dependency on a object to breed which limited and stagnated them in world gen (made easier by spontaneous population regeneration in world-gen recently). I cannot recollect if its possible to offer pet pond turtles nestboxes to use by pitting or pasturing enough of them in a contained area as a alternative or even if they have additional orientation/marriage barriers to overcome we are not aware of.<p>All gendered vermin breed (or apparently breed, they have the prequesite animal tags but its uncertain whether they become pregnant whilst in the game world before leaving for the site population tally and being replaced with a new generated creature in their momentary existances, or even if they do become pregnant at all with child/adult born states) hermaphrodital or non-gender typical vermin are usually accounted for by being virtually innumerable to compensate for no breeding on site. Technically if the female pond turtle could get off the map by dissapearing and being replaced whilst pregnant it could spawn additional turtles slowly.<p>Fish are very visible with ASCII symbols and can be seen in murky ponds and rivers for periods of time if a example is needed, if they are close together they are in the capacity to breed and keep the numbers up. Drop a sizable amount of caught vermin fish into a empty pool and it should sustain the fish in theory as they repopulate with compatible mates in that area.<p>Similar designs have been used with isolated cave spider rooms with wild vermin which appear to be self sustainable and harvested with burrowed animal trappers & web collectors. "