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The game looks pretty light on graphics... can't I try it out somewhere online from my browser? edit: some quick googling led me to this: https://www.rollapp.c

The game looks pretty light on graphics... can't I try it out somewhere online from my browser? edit: some quick googling led me to this: https://www.rollapp.com/app/dwarffortress https://www.rollapp.com/app/dwarffortress Looks like you can't save but at least I can get a quick idea of how it feels like

Bognar 11y ago
It's light on graphics, but not on processing power. There's an immense amount of calculation and simulation going on.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- bduerst 11y ago
  Each cycle calculates ridiculously detailed things like the temperature of the rear left femur of a water buffalo passing through.
  - shostack 11y ago
    Is that an exaggerated example or an actual thing that happens?
    - mercer 11y ago
      They simulate the dwarves' individual teeth.. (not sure about water buffalo femurs though, but I wouldn't be surprised)
    - db48x 11y ago
      No, it's not exaggerated. It doesn't actually go so far as to call it a femur, but it does indeed keep track of the temperature of the left rear upper leg bone, as far as it is distinct from the temperature of the left rear upper leg's muscle, fat, skin or hair layers. After all, if the water buffalo were to stray into the path of a dragon's fiery breath, or a stream of molten lava, then it's vital that it be able to tell you whether the hair has burnt, the fat has melted, etc. You can turn off temperature in the config file if it takes too much cpu time though, in which case everything just has an assumed temperature, with no heat flowing around to change it.
      - shostack 11y ago
        Pardon me while I pick my jaw off the floor. I had heard stories about the random instances of absolutely obsessive attention to detail when modeling the physics/chemistry of things in the game, but did not expect anything like that. Out of curiosity, how do details about these things become known if the code is not open sourced? Is it in official documentation somewhere? Is there any sort of list of these ridiculous examples of awesomeness?
        bduerst 11y ago
        Through a combination of playing, reading bug explanations, and modding the game through the raw text files, which define everything from what types of organs a creature has to the different types of cheese that can be made from it's milk. Since the learning curve is high, the best way to start understanding it is to first learn how to play. From there you can start tinkering with the available mechanics.
        db48x 11y ago
        This aspect of it is fairly easy to observe from inside the game; the Health screen goes on for three pages of possible symptoms, diagnoses, treatments, etc. This is just an overview, arranged like a spreadsheet with a row for each dwarf (and their pets and livestock) and a column for each symptom and so on. It also tracks nerves and blood flow in a generalized way; any strike which penetrates or cuts the tissue layers has a chance of damaging the nerves in that body part. Nerve damage may or may not heal with the rest of the wound, and that will cause chronic infirmity or paralysis. Blood loss can cause dizziness or loss of consciousness, etc. The combat logs are quite thorough, and after your first combat (which includes hunting and sparring) you'll quickly see how each actor is choosing from a "menu" of possibilities that varies from moment to moment. If one combatant loses a hand, they won't be able to strike with it, and nobody else will be able to target it with an attack. If you then play the Adventurer mode, which is part of the same game but played as an individual character's perspective, you can see those menus reified as actual menus for you to choose from. Some of them are generic: you can swing your sword with or without targeting a specific body part. Others are much more specific. If your weapon gets stuck inside your opponent, you have the option of twisting it to cause pain (and probably more nerve damage). In one game I played I fought a megabeast which had some kind of contaminated blood. My dwarves won the fight, but tracked the blood all over my fortress. I had them cleaning it up, but couldn't keep on top of it; eventually it was everywhere. A while later I noticed that a significant fraction of my dwarves and animals had rotting wounds on their feet... The development log (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html) and the game data files (which are all just text) also supply a lot of information, but they're not required reading; all of these details are pretty visible in the game. This is one of the things that makes the game so rewarding. Even when you lose a fort you can figure out what happened, and you can figure out how to avoid it or solve it next time.
tptacek 11y ago
If you ever wanted to see what an ASCII game with framerate issues would be like, install a copy of DF and load up a big fortress.
- personjerry 11y ago
  This is misleading because in DF usually when talking about frame rates we refer to how fast the game's cycles are progressing (and this can get slow), while your reference to graphics implies frame rate in terms of graphical computation. The game could redraw at 60 fps all the time, it just wouldn't have anything to update until it was done calculations, and that is the bottleneck here.
  - undersuit 11y ago
    Why is it misleading? Not every instance of slowdown in a 3d game is because the graphics are too intensive to maintain the framerate, there are instances of insufficient CPU time.
chadzawistowski 11y ago
Watch some lets-play videos perhaps?

Bognar 11y ago

It's light on graphics, but not on processing power. There's an immense amount of calculation and simulation going on.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
bduerst 11y ago
Each cycle calculates ridiculously detailed things like the temperature of the rear left femur of a water buffalo passing through.
- shostack 11y ago
  Is that an exaggerated example or an actual thing that happens?
  - mercer 11y ago
    They simulate the dwarves' individual teeth.. (not sure about water buffalo femurs though, but I wouldn't be surprised)
  - db48x 11y ago
    No, it's not exaggerated. It doesn't actually go so far as to call it a femur, but it does indeed keep track of the temperature of the left rear upper leg bone, as far as it is distinct from the temperature of the left rear upper leg's muscle, fat, skin or hair layers. After all, if the water buffalo were to stray into the path of a dragon's fiery breath, or a stream of molten lava, then it's vital that it be able to tell you whether the hair has burnt, the fat has melted, etc. You can turn off temperature in the config file if it takes too much cpu time though, in which case everything just has an assumed temperature, with no heat flowing around to change it.
    - shostack 11y ago
      Pardon me while I pick my jaw off the floor. I had heard stories about the random instances of absolutely obsessive attention to detail when modeling the physics/chemistry of things in the game, but did not expect anything like that. Out of curiosity, how do details about these things become known if the code is not open sourced? Is it in official documentation somewhere? Is there any sort of list of these ridiculous examples of awesomeness?
      - bduerst 11y ago
        Through a combination of playing, reading bug explanations, and modding the game through the raw text files, which define everything from what types of organs a creature has to the different types of cheese that can be made from it's milk. Since the learning curve is high, the best way to start understanding it is to first learn how to play. From there you can start tinkering with the available mechanics.
      - db48x 11y ago
        This aspect of it is fairly easy to observe from inside the game; the Health screen goes on for three pages of possible symptoms, diagnoses, treatments, etc. This is just an overview, arranged like a spreadsheet with a row for each dwarf (and their pets and livestock) and a column for each symptom and so on. It also tracks nerves and blood flow in a generalized way; any strike which penetrates or cuts the tissue layers has a chance of damaging the nerves in that body part. Nerve damage may or may not heal with the rest of the wound, and that will cause chronic infirmity or paralysis. Blood loss can cause dizziness or loss of consciousness, etc. The combat logs are quite thorough, and after your first combat (which includes hunting and sparring) you'll quickly see how each actor is choosing from a "menu" of possibilities that varies from moment to moment. If one combatant loses a hand, they won't be able to strike with it, and nobody else will be able to target it with an attack. If you then play the Adventurer mode, which is part of the same game but played as an individual character's perspective, you can see those menus reified as actual menus for you to choose from. Some of them are generic: you can swing your sword with or without targeting a specific body part. Others are much more specific. If your weapon gets stuck inside your opponent, you have the option of twisting it to cause pain (and probably more nerve damage). In one game I played I fought a megabeast which had some kind of contaminated blood. My dwarves won the fight, but tracked the blood all over my fortress. I had them cleaning it up, but couldn't keep on top of it; eventually it was everywhere. A while later I noticed that a significant fraction of my dwarves and animals had rotting wounds on their feet... The development log (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html) and the game data files (which are all just text) also supply a lot of information, but they're not required reading; all of these details are pretty visible in the game. This is one of the things that makes the game so rewarding. Even when you lose a fort you can figure out what happened, and you can figure out how to avoid it or solve it next time.

tptacek 11y ago

If you ever wanted to see what an ASCII game with framerate issues would be like, install a copy of DF and load up a big fortress.

personjerry 11y ago
This is misleading because in DF usually when talking about frame rates we refer to how fast the game's cycles are progressing (and this can get slow), while your reference to graphics implies frame rate in terms of graphical computation. The game could redraw at 60 fps all the time, it just wouldn't have anything to update until it was done calculations, and that is the bottleneck here.
- undersuit 11y ago
  Why is it misleading? Not every instance of slowdown in a 3d game is because the graphics are too intensive to maintain the framerate, there are instances of insufficient CPU time.

chadzawistowski 11y ago

Watch some lets-play videos perhaps?