The Making Of Dwarf Fortress

[Prime Junta]

Perhaps some kind of absolute beginners guide to DF would be in order, for the rpgwatchers? I could help making/writing it. If not a full blown article/feature perhaps just a post in the forums? It should include thing like...

I thought of submitting a short "And now, for something completely different" style piece for the Watch on DF, but didn't get around to writing it. Still, it is arguably a RPG, what with adventure mode and all, so perhaps this place *should* cover it...?

As to the absolute beginner's guides, IMO there's a lot about DF out there already, and the Watch isn't the right place for it. I'd submit it to the DF wiki.

I love this thing so much that I even concidered making a donation to the author.
But perhaps I could be of help by getting more people to play the game.

I'm sure he'd appreciate a donation, too -- he does live off this, after all. I sent him thirty bucks, and will send more if he keeps working on it.

 

[Prime Junta]

PJ: Wouldn't it be cool to stea... uh... seize items from the elven caravan?
Damn treehuggers won't buy my lovingly crafted bone items anyway.
What do I care if they declare one or two wars on me? Or twelve...

I prefer "expropriate."

 

[Guest]

I think this is a game that well belongs within the domain of rpgwatch and should be covered better.

DF wiki is a very nice place, but submitting something there would really not help in getting new players to the game. A nice, brief and well written article like the one i discussed above would make things for new potentially interested players much much easier and, I believe, bring many new players to the game. I think rpgwatch has a lot of readers that would be interested if they only knew about this game.

 

[Arhu]

I thought of submitting a short "And now, for something completely different" style piece for the Watch on DF

Please do! Regardless of how RPGish it is (and I don't know anything about it other than what's been written in some threads here on the forums), you guys make it sound oh so interesting!

 

[Guest]

Please do! Regardless of how RPGish it is (and I don't know anything about it other than what's been written in some threads here on the forums), you guys make it sound oh so interesting!

I agree. I could help you in some way, if you like.

 

[Guest]

Some stuff from the games official website:

"Dwarf Fortress started October 2002"
So the guy has been coding/designing this game for 6 years now?
I did wonder how could someone possibly create something so complex and detailed...

Also, take a look here:
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_now.html

It goes to show that the guy is working on the game pretty much full time every day !

Impressive.

 

[Prime Junta]

I actually started on the article, twice, but the thing is that I really don't know what the hell I could say about it. This isn't an easy game to approach, define, categorize, or generally dissect, and it's also not easy to explain why it is as awesome as it is.

Looked at one way, DF is Sims in a fantasy world with really ugly graphics, an abstruse user interface, plus some interesting geology. But somehow that fails to capture its awesomeness.

What about it do you find so awesome?

 

[Guest]

- So many different things to do.
- Great oldschool feel.
- You get to laugh. A lot. Sometimes unbelievably silly things happen
- So much true randomness.
- Modeling of things like water and weather and rotting and insanity make the game much more interesting.
- Each session is completely different.
- many details and small even insignificant things.
- very much complexity and challenge.
- never running out of things to do, never boring.
- No ending.
- No way to "beat" the game.
- Keyboard driven interface. (as you said earlier, it's great when you learn it)
- No "right" way to play it. Tons and tons of possibilities.
- You're never actually forced or railroaded to do something.
- the gameplay is so diverse and up to the player to such extent that it's almost like... expressing yourself or creating art.
- You can do and try stuff, even if it makes no sense whatsoever, you can do it. no artificial limits or rules to what you can or cannot do.
- Very refreshing to play a game that has been made so that the attention has been focused on creating a diverse, deep and complex game without spending all the time and effort on things like "how to make the game easy to play and learn" or "how to make the game look nice"

- And most of all: This game is the perfect antithesis of modern big budget multiplatform crap that most games released today are. All those things that I hate in modern games are done in opposite way with DF.

This stuff makes you feel so happy and makes you believe that as long as individuals can freely create software - great games can and will be made no matter what the big companies do or do not do. I have already started to get some vague thoughts about opening up my programming books and starting another game programming project.. I already have a finished game project (but very very simple) under my belt that I created with C++ and SDL few years back.

I don't usually like management games. I never understood "the sims" games (one of the most boring games I've ever played). Still, there's something in this game that makes it so special. TBH I don't even see it as a management/builder type of game. there's so much more.

If I'd have to compare it to a single commercially released game.. I'd say it's most like Evil Genius. Don't know if you played it but it has some similarities. but then again... it's nothing like DF

This game is a 5meg download. And I've had more fun with it than most of the 5gig games I've played recently.

Dwarf Fortress is an incredibly good game.

 

[Guest]

I took a nice screenshot from my dwarves having a party in the meeting halls deep within the underground fortress. Attached.

 

[Prime Junta]

I think I just realized what Dwarf Fortress is like, and why it's so incredibly cool.

It's just like a big damn box of Legos. You can put them together any way you like, and make anything you want.

Speaking of, I wonder if it would be possible to build a perpetual motion machine? Set up a water wheel that runs a pump that pumps water up to a reservoir, which then cascades down to run the water wheel. Add more water wheels to power whatever you want to power. Wanna give it a try?

 

[dyze]

Speaking of, I wonder if it would be possible to build a perpetual motion machine? Set up a water wheel that runs a pump that pumps water up to a reservoir, which then cascades down to run the water wheel. Add more water wheels to power whatever you want to power. Wanna give it a try?

yeah, this is totally possible. check the wiki if you want spoilers

 

[Guest]

Speaking of, I wonder if it would be possible to build a perpetual motion machine? Set up a water wheel that runs a pump that pumps water up to a reservoir, which then cascades down to run the water wheel. Add more water wheels to power whatever you want to power. Wanna give it a try?

What would I want to power in such a manner? I haven't needed to build any kind of wheels for anything yet

 

[magerette]

I prefer "expropriate."

My favorite is the Abbie Hoffman-esque "liberate."

Would love to see that article, btw. Seems like this might be a total opposite to your "about something" type of game.

 

[Guest]

I ran out of wood a while a go. So I organized a wood-hauling raid to the outside world and opened up the doors and gates to my fortress. I sent some woodcutters and wood haulers out and also designated a squad of three soldiers to patrol the area in case of trouble. Just as I opened the gates and my dwarves entered the outside world a kobold thief decided to make a go for it. Obviosly my three soldiers started beating it. At first it became unconscious and after a while it was dead.

I then started to take a closer look at my soldiers to see what was their condition.
They were all unharmed but then I decided to take a look at their inventories....
In case of the first soldier it read something like this (among other things):
" blood spatter (nose), blood smear (left eye), vomit spatter (right ear)"

That really cracked me up.

 

[Guest]

What if something unfortunate would happen to the elven caravan?
Let's say some regrettable accident involving floodgates?

EDIT: I'm performing an experiment. The elven caraven went into a "trading" room that I've created. When they went in I built a floodgate on the corridor leading there. Let's see what happens after a while..

EDIT2: "elf merchant is stricken by melancholy!"
"donkey has gone stark raving mad!"


EDIT3: Well.. it sure took long. But they finally died.

 

[Prime Junta]

When d'you reckon you're about ready for that "let's play" session? Sounds like you're doing fairly elaborate stuff already, what with that cruelty to animals and stuff...

 

[Guest]

Well, I've just gotten my first bunch of nobles around here demanding me stuff and materials that I don't even know what they are. I've got a decent command of the basics but once the population hits 50 I'm screwed. I'm trying to manage cause I'm really liking the fortress that I built this time. I N A C C E S S I B L E.

Could you describe these sessions you talked about earlier in more detail.
You want to.. what? Take turns in managing the fortress by sending the save files to one another? or what?

 

[Prime Junta]

That's the idea. We could put the save games on a server somewhere (I've got one we could use, FWIW). Each turn would last a year -- "Spring has come" will end the turn. During the turn, anything goes short of completely destroying the fortress (e.g. drowning it in water or magma, or getting all mission-critical dwarves killed.)

And... we post about it on a thread here, in-character.

 

[Guest]

Haha! I started reading the "Let's Play Dwarf Fortress: Boatmurdered" thing
and I really hope my insane laughter has not awoken the queen cause she has an early morning tomorrow. Unbeliveable stuff. My stomach hurts for laughing so much.

Now I get it. Yeah. Sure. If we're gonna do something similar here I absolutely want to be a part of it.

Just one thing: It'd be really nice if the spirit of this undertaking would be such that if, for example, someone would do something that from a serious persons' point of view makes absolutely no sense - it would just be considered as fun, not as hindering progress. What I mean by this is that I'm the exact opposite of the so called "power-gamer". I don't play games to maximize numbers or try to be efficient. I play for fun, plain and simple. Now, obviosly intentionally destroying the fortress would not be fun, it would be ending the fun. I'm trying to say that I hope the game could be about trying and experimenting and having helluva time. This way even those with less experience (like me) could participate without worrying about if he/she is playing "good enough" and from my point of view this would be more fun even if I were a DF guru.

From what I've read your posts I'd think you'd be ok with this.
Do you think that more people would like to participate or is it just the two of us? Let's do the posting at least here in an rpgwatch thread, yes?
So any participants would have to be rpgwatch members or willing to become ones. But I guess that we dont need to set the participants in stone before beginning, right? I mean there's nothing to stop someone from joining in the middle of the action... but on the other hand it would be nice if everyone would be there right from the beginning.

 

[Guest]

Also - In character? You mean like this:

"We've set out for the mine, led by the Miner's Guild representative. The man claims to have led several successful expeditions, so taking his advice we've set out with a skeleton crew; just one miner, one lumberjack, a pair of farmers, and some craftsmen. He suggested plenty of meat and -- my favorite -- booze, as well as some seeds and a few dogs and cats. He swears the dogs will pay for themselves a dozen times over in warding off larger wildlife, while the cats will make indoor life more comfortable and pest-free. I thought he muttered something about their taste as well, but I'm sure I misheard..."
(from http://fromearth.net/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/chapter1-2.html)

So it would be like a log book of the "leading" dwarf and we assume his role in turns? EDIT: No, it would have to be like an immaterial "overseer" of sorts, the leading dwarf could die - obviously. The overseers could be different persons to make things a bit easier.

The experience would be much enhanced with images... screenshots..
Do you think that your server could host an image or two?
The screenshots I made using the printscreen button and irfanview are 30Kb a pop, but it could easily be even lower than that. I think that the rpgwatchers would not appreciate a flood of DF screenshot attachments

My DF save folder does eat up 23megs though... I assume they're always something like this.

EDIT: Read some more boatmuder. :lol: Did the game generate that name btw? We abso-phucking-lutely need screenshots, man!