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How Two Seattle-Area Brothers Made Dwarf Fortress

301 points by robinhoodexe 10y ago

cryptoz 10y ago
I guess this is the article that makes me realize I'm out of touch. I was super excited to see what kind of small castle they built, how they did it with just two people, and I also had lots of legal questions about building castles. Oh well, this looks neat too! Edit: was expecting something like this, for those of you now interested in home-castle-building-stories: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2280764/Farmer-told-MUST-pull-castle-built-secretly-haystacks-loses-year-planning-row.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2280764/Farmer-told-...
- honua 10y ago
  This is what I thought it'd be, too, only I mis-read fortress as forest and thought about a really cool park-like area with tiny trees.
robohamburger 10y ago
Some other interesting articles form the past: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-of-dwarf-fortress.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-of... http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131954/interview_the_making_of_dwarf_.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131954/interview_the_m... I have played quite a bit of the game and it is amazing despite its insane and sometimes frustrating UI.
alyandon 10y ago
I've had so many hours of entertainment playing Dwarf Fortress I usually donate $10-$20 every major release. Well worth it if you can get past the UI.
overcast 10y ago
I had no idea that this game is essentially their life's work. Playing that looks like the equivalent of reading raw Matrix code.
- Filligree 10y ago
  I don't see code, anymore. I just see dwarves, goblins... cats... But really, the graphics aren't that bad. No worse than any other roguelike.
  - overcast 10y ago
    Suppose so. Have you seen Caves of Qud? That's a good middle ground.
  - writeslowly 10y ago
    I was actually pretty impressed by Dwarf Fortress's use of the extended ASCII set (or whatever the technical name is). Most of the non-creature symbols were easy enough to guess based on appearances.
    - kd0amg 10y ago
      And for animals, it's mostly the first letter of the animal's name, colored like the animal, and upper- or lower-case based on the animal's size.
    - pbtflakes 10y ago
      The stock character set is modified code page 437. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437
  - blakeyrat 10y ago
    My first roguelike was Mission: Thunderbolt, on Mac Classic. Even back in 1992 it was hugely easier to play than Dwarf Fortress is now. And, IMO, way more fun.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
  I don't find the graphics to be too much of an issue, and there are tilesets and whatnot you can use to replace the ASCII with something a little more friendly. However, it's the UI itself that presents the real barrier to entry. Absolutely nothing is obvious or intuitive, so every single thing must be learned via wikis, tutorials, etc. Worse yet, it's not at all clear what is possible without exhaustively looking though all the menus. Crucial functionality is buried all around the UI, and many veteran players will simply concede that other programs are needed to manage the dwarves; the UI simply isn't up to the task for anything but a trivial fortress. Contrast this to a game like Angband which shares the funky UI and ASCII interface, but is still perfectly functional. And I certainly understand why it's like this; making an effective UI would be a significant challenge and distract from making the game itself, a monumental task. Still, they could release something like a DF API that lets others write UIs to access/play the game. Tarn has said he's considered this, but thinks it's too much work: > I've thought about it. It seems like it would take a lot of work to maintain. I ditched the crappy 3D graphics of Armok 1, and adding features is so much faster now. This seems similar. There are lots and lots and lots of data structures, and the API would not be a simple thing, and it wouldn't be something I could just do once and then forget about. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1avszc/im_tarn_adams_of_bay_12_games_cocreator_of_dwarf/c919tmo https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1avszc/im_tarn_adams_... FWIW, DFHack is basically capable of this, but it's not something you can build on too much. Perhaps when (if) the game is feature complete, they'll release an API and open source UIs will flourish.
chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
Tarn's dissertation "Flat Chains in Banach Spaces" is truly awesome, if you have enough domain knowledge to understand what it's talking about. I love those guys.
- Impl0x 10y ago
  I enjoy math, but I'm nowhere near experienced enough to follow that paper. There wouldn't happen to be an annotated version or some kind of summary of it, would there? I've always wanted to know what it was about.
  - chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
    He tries to explain it at the end of this interview: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_8_transcript.html http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_8_transcript.html
faide 10y ago
I find the UI of Dwarf Fortress completely impenetrable, but am fascinated by the level of depth and granularity in the systems underlying the game. If anyone is interested in the game, I recommend grabbing the Lazy Newb Pack[0] which comes with a few utilities that will make your experience slightly less infuriating. [0] http://lazynewbpack.com/ http://lazynewbpack.com/
- lettergram 10y ago
  I played a few maps with some UI mods. Overall, I kind of like the experience because it reminds me of reading code in the matrix...
  - faide 10y ago
    I do prefer the classic graphics for the same reason. I cannot, however, play without things like Dwarf Therapist anymore though.
- trentmb 10y ago
  Much like Eve, I prefer to read about others exploits than try and have my own.
  - mfoy_ 10y ago
    Funny thing about Eve is that once you start playing it you realize it's... actually pretty "normal". It's like the Australian Outback, you hear so many terrifying stories that you just assume every single thing in that place wants to kill you, but plenty of things live there. Just like in Eve, your life in space will be pretty standard fare 99% of the time, even moving out to nullsec can be actually quite a... dare I say, mundane affair. But it's that 1%... oh man, that 1%. The feuds, the rivalries, the deception, the betrayal. It's almost like CCP are playing a cosmic version of Dwarf Fortress and the capsuleers are their dwarves.
    - jameskegel 10y ago
      But who is Goon Swarm?
Olscore 10y ago
If you like Dwarf Fortress, you might like a game called: Factorio
- Deinumite 10y ago
  That game sucked up a ton of my time. Still waiting for the next patch. It is really interesting and I almost feel like I am writing code at some points, having the machines automate themselves. I haven't even started playing with the circuits yet which allows you to do even more programming.
  - BenoitP 10y ago
    > I almost feel like I am writing code at some points I have this theory that the game designer(s?) actually took some pages from a multithreaded programming book and turned them into a game. A kind of meta-game. Items are messages, transport belts are buffers with blocking writes, factories are actors, scheduling is roundrobin with preemption. Flying robots are a metaphor for references. Everything is as a pull model, and you can see the backpressure progating up the chain. I'd love to see the implementation. I bet there is no modeling, everything directly mapped to some core programming primitive.
    - fennecfoxen 10y ago
      > I bet there is no modeling, everything directly mapped to some core programming primitive. Yes, I'm sure the game's flying robots are implemented as a simple pointer and nothing else, no additional data to model for a name or any animation or where it comes from or where it goes to or anything like that at all.
- kiba 10y ago
  I played both. They're nothing alike at all.
  - Bognar 10y ago
    They're nothing alike, but I find they scratch a very similar itch.
Jordrok 10y ago
Dwarf Fortress is truly an inspiring project, not only because of how amazingly fun and engrossing the game is if you can get into it (granted, it's not for everyone), but also because of the sheer amount of dedication and love that is put into it by Tarn and Zach Adams.
- lloyd-christmas 10y ago
  Along with the community. They donate $60k per year which is incredibly impressive given its size.
  - patio11 10y ago
    I'm torn between "That's better than the $30k it was the last time we discussed this years ago, which was itself better than $0" and "If one produces something as staggeringly joy-bringing as Dwarf Fortress, one can fairly easily avoid being a starving artist by applying single-digit hours of worksmanlike execution on monetization."
    - lloyd-christmas 10y ago
      This has been their performance: 2015: $60603.43 2014: $66765.31 2013: $48999.11 2012: $57854.88 2011: $42294.19 2010: $54501.15 2009: $32516.44 2008: $32318.46 2007: $19052.28 That's pretty damn good for such a cult game. I'm not sure there's really any better way to monetize it than rely on donations.
      - patio11 10y ago
        I'm going to give a very boring answer with regards to monetization strategy: they should sell licenses to Dwarf Fortress, or Dwarf Fortress Supporter Edition, which is distinguished from DF Vanilla by saying that it's the supporter edition and maybe some cosmetic change somewhere. I would price it at $19, where it would be towards the top-end of indie games on Steam; by the standards of people who enjoy Dwarf Fortress, Dwarf Fortress ROFLstomps the depth and quality of any other $19 entertainment option. I would then immediately solicit inclusion in a Humble Bundle, in the expectation that Humble Bundle would leap at the chance. One could envision a rougelike or Df-alike bundle; I anticipate that Humble Bundle would give DF top billing in whatever deal was negotiated. I would model that Humble Bundle as doing > $800k in sales, of which DF's take would be > ~$80k. Throw in "and we'll use Humble as our exclusive e-commerce provider for 12 months" since I think it is fairly clear that the authors don't want to be in the e-commerce business; that gives Humble ~10% of their gross revenue for next year. Stage 3 of the master plan: get the game onto Steam. This might require $X,000 worth of production-ready art and video assets to satisfy Steam's requirements; $X,000 will not be a material amount of money to Dwarf Fortress, LLC. The above unsolicited opinions are coming from a place of love for small software businesses generally and Dwarf Fortress in particular. Strike the earth.
epaga 10y ago
Dwarf Fortress is a truly unique game and really worth putting in the effort to learn simply due to the stories it generates as you play - and it is amazing how the stories emerge from the ASCII symbols. Here's an example of a story that happened to me. https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/1mb0cw/the_sad_story_of_m%C3%B4som/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/1mb0cw/the_s... Note: this story is in NO way embellished by me. Everything described there was actually fully simulated within the game.
- mfoy_ 10y ago
  I remember reading that story ages ago! Poor Mosom. Reading this article and all these comments makes me want to get back into DF. I just hope I remember how to play. :p
- vessenes 10y ago
  Oh, I laughed out-loud (in a horrified way.) Thank you. My favorite horrible moment playing dwarf fortress came one day when one of my dwarves was unable to find a required bit of silk to finish the artifact she had swimming in her head. She went crazy, presumably from the frustration, and took it out on a dwarf near her in a dining room. Soon thereafter my happy fort of approximately 100 dwarves was down to 10 or 12 dwarves, only 2 unwounded. There were bodies everywhere. Blood was tracking through the fortress. Dwarves were wandering around, then seeing bodies, vomiting, going crazy, attacking each-other. It was terrible. Long story short, we ended up with two battle-scarred, insane but deadened dwarves and a beautiful fortress for them to share. Cleaning the bodies out took both of them a couple of years. They'd haul for a while, stop to vomit, then keep hauling. Every so often at first immigrants would show up, and the entire group would go crazy looking at the carnage, and we'd be back down to my two dwarves. I was trying to imagine what they might want or feel after all that, and decided it was likely they would have fixated on something, so they pulled all the gold and gems into a little room and made a throne room. The tougher dwarf was detailed to clean and haul bodies and bones, the other one just sat in his throne room, brooding. Finally the tougher one died; he had some sort of minor injury I hadn't noticed, and we were down to one. I can't remember exactly what happened, but I think that one was on his way to clean something up as the sole surviver, got too close to the river, and that, as they say was that. He drowned horribly, mercifully. I occasionally think about the two dwarves just cleaning up the castle, slowly going insane, and when I do, I appreciate Toady's work, and I laugh. Then I feel guilty.
curiousgal 10y ago
I always play Dwarf Fortress when I am waiting in the airport and there's always someone near me who thinks I'm "computer hacking".
- cpeterso 10y ago
  Given the long-play nature of the game, would a mobile version of the game work for more casual play-and-pause?
  - bradford 10y ago
    I highly doubt it. The interaction required by the user wouldn't suit a mobile game very well. Additionally, the game is CPU intensive and would, as is, drain the battery very quickly. I imagine both these issues would mean a massive refactoring in order to bring it to mobile.
    - tamana 10y ago
      Playing via telnet to a remote server is the best chance.
      - klez 10y ago
        It seems it uses OpenGL[0], so to play via telnet (or, better, ssh) you'd still need to rewrite at least the UI part of the game. Or use VNC... [0] http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=20395.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=20395.0
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- VonGuard 10y ago
  Whoa, how do you play without a numeric keypad. I can't even begin to play without it due to muscle memory...
  - 10y ago
Natsu 10y ago
> The brothers find most of their data online, but it is only because of Dwarf Fortress that you can find the density of saguaro cactus wood on the Internet. When Tarn and Zach couldn’t find the number, a fan ordered cactus wood from a dealer, empirically determined the density using liquid displacement tests, and relayed back the results, which ended up in the game. I suspect this author reads HN :) If anyone was curious, the thread where Saguaro wood's solid density was determined can be found here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=80022.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=80022.0 > NEW: The guesstimate of 300 kg/m^3 for Saguaro density in the V2 raws was probably wrong. I have a 6g piece of Saguaro wood with a volume of approximately 14 cm^3, which indicates that the density of Saguaro wood is approximately 430 kg/m^3. This number appears very reasonable when compared to all the other densities I have researched. I have more ~1 ft pieces of Saguaro rib wood than I know what to do with right now and I'm more than willing to ship them to people willing to do further research on the matter, or those who wish to duplicate my experiments. In fact, there are two approximately 1" saguaro wood cubes sitting on my desk directly in front of me at this very moment.
cpeterso 10y ago
Given the game's huge following, they should pledge to open source the code before they die so the saga can continue. :) If they don't make money from direct sales, why not open source the game now?
- aab0 10y ago
  Given their age, it's unlikely they'd both die at the same time and be unable to open source it. Unless they dig in the wrong place in their backyard, I suppose.
- tamana 10y ago
  They are extremely protective and jealous of DF. Maybe when they retire, or escrown in their will
- hrnnnnnn 10y ago
  I think they have pledged to release the code when they die.
- Derpdiherp 10y ago
  To be honest I think Tarn isn't wanting to release the source for a couple of reasons: A - He wants complete control of the direction that the game is heading, B - He's not proud of the source code, from interviews and such and the length of the project I think it's rather a mess, and due to the fact that the game gets new features all the time, it's not getting refactored any time soon. In a way it's a shame - the dwarf fortress community has been fighting "FPS death" of fortresses, when the simulation of all the stuff on your fortress reaches the point where the game crawls along so slowly it's unplayable. And this happens sooner than you'd think. People have been pushing to get the game multithreaded for years but unfortunately it's just not happening. Yet on the other hand I respect Tarns decision to want complete control over the direction of the game - yet there are already mods out there that completely change that anyway.
- vessenes 10y ago
  A copy of their source code is supposedly on file with the Library of Congress, but I can't find proof of this as I search right now.
khalilravanna 10y ago
Truly awe-inspiring and inspirational work. Over a decade spent working on that one game. A bit over two years ago I started working on my own similar type of game (a Dwarf-Fortress-like or DF-like if you will) and it's given me so much appreciation for the insanity that is game development. The sheer amount of time it takes to build out a system with so much depth is incredible. I've probably been working an average of 8-10 hours a week for 2 years and I have but a fraction of the functionality. Dwarf Fortress stands as a bastion of inspiration I can look to any time I feel like quitting.
mundo 10y ago
If this piques your interest and you have a few hours to kill, you might enjoy reading the Roomcarnage saga: http://imgur.com/a/xhQHE/layout/horizontal#0 http://imgur.com/a/xhQHE/layout/horizontal#0 Briefly, it's a very experienced DF player trying to conquer a frozen volcano who has written up his exploits in narrative form. Fun read and will give you a good idea of what DF is allabout.
- ajacksified 10y ago
  Or, much earlier in Dwarf Fortress's history is possibly the most famous DF story, the epic saga of Boatmurdered: http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Introduction/ http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Introductio...
phil248 10y ago
I'm a dedicated gamer who has found countless hours of enjoyment from games like Minecraft and Crusader Kings 2. But in my attempts to play Dwarf Fortress, I felt like I was being trolled. Like the entire thing was some 'in' joke and by spending hours attempting to figure out the UI, I was the butt of said joke. I find time to play games like CK2 despite the poor UI and serious time commitments, but I'm a grown man with a job and I don't have time to play a game with what is quite possibly the worst UI in gaming history.
- waiseristy 10y ago
  The game is damn near impossible to play in its stock form. Look up the Lazy Newb pack and give it a try. The learning curve still is quite tough, but it's a real fun challenge.
- flashman 10y ago
  I have tried the game multiple times but have not had the patience to stick with it. I am glad that it exists, though. I want to live in the kind of world where two brothers are happy to devote the majority of their life to a project like this. Maybe it's the same impulse that drove the Voynich manuscript's creation.
  - Natsu 10y ago
    I think it's best to play it when you have something you want to do, build or prove and to read about others playing it when you want a story. I haven't really played the game itself for a while now, but I still love reading the stories of others playing in it.
  - Derpdiherp 10y ago
    Although they're out of date now, captain duck's tutorials on youtube demystify the entire thing a great deal. And most of the core concepts haven't changed much since he made the tutorials. Believe it or not once you "get" the interface it's really not all that bad. There's one or two incredibly annoying intracacies - but get the lazy newb pack with dwarf therapist and you'll be in for an easier time.
- 10y ago
csneeky 10y ago
GANDALF
csneeky 10y ago
Gandalf
exratione 10y ago
So: Dwarf Fortress in a forest with an aquifer down in the soil. It takes a year to build a wooden hall large enough for most of the workshops, on one side of the river, while on the other side digging out a collapse to drop soil into the acquifer. A lovely wooden bridge and wooden tile road is the meeting area to keep the dwarves happy while they have no stone. The dwarf with the only pickaxe falls into the watery pit under the collapse and drowns. I have to wait half a year to trade for another while the dwarves live on fish and berries in their hall. They are haunted by the ghost of the miner, as there is no stone for for a engraved slab in the graveyard. Cherry blossoms litter the ground, and blow into the half-finished excavation. A crafter is possessed and wants stone, the one thing we don't have. What little the drwarves traded for had to go to other uses. A great pile of wooden crafts is building up. Just as well there are no elven neighbors. The crafter becomes melancholy, and wanders about the fisherdwarves, watching them. Sometimes he stands in the middle of the river. After trading a new pick, the next miner knocks out the remaining support, and the collapse happens. But, alas, the aquifer is two levels thick! Only one level is smushed dry with the collapsed soil. We trade for rock, build a new structure in the now open watery pit. Two dwarves fall in that season during the construction, adding more drowned victims and wailing ghosts. The construction of stone walls in the pit is knocked down at the cost of yet another dwarf - yet it isn't enough to breach the aquifer. Woe. The pit is now littered with rock and bodies and materials. There is only one other thing to do; build a stack of wooden pumps, stairs, landings down into the pit, and an aquaduct to the river. Pump it dry and send in dwarfs to build walls and lock away the water. All of this and still not at the point of the exercise - to raise a great hollow tower of stone over the river and a deep pit of stairs beneath, and tear down the hall of wood for charcoal. So it continues.
andrepd 10y ago
The article repeatedly stresses how "influential" DF was, and it bothers me a bit. Dwarf Fortress is one of the greatest achievements in video game history because of its unparalleled complexity, but it's pretty much a niche game. It wasn't, I think, very influential at all. There are many adjectives we can use to describe this work. Monumental springs to mind. But not influential.
- cma 10y ago
  It influenced Minecraft.
  - kbart 10y ago
    Sims as well.
  - andrepd 10y ago
    Did it? How so? It has almost no mechanics in common apart from procedural terrain generation.
    - gullwings13 10y ago
      http://notch.tumblr.com/post/113252305/credits-due http://notch.tumblr.com/post/113252305/credits-due
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- hrnnnnnn 10y ago
  To be influential, something has to be popular or at least known about amongst creators. From my experience in game development, almost everyone I worked with knew about Dwarf Fortress, and a good chunk of them had played it at least once. Similarly, musicians like Frank Zappa and Swans exert a larger influence (because musicians like them) than their popularity would suggest.
- intended 10y ago
  Off the top of my head the following games are directly influenced by it 1) Minecraft - Thence terraria and other similar 2d platformers 1.1) Minecraft clones, and several more voxel manipulation games 2) Prison Architect and Gnomoria --- And this is influence drawn from the 2008 arc of the project. The next part of the project should involve the creation of the plane of existence - where Adams has said that he will be drawing on multiple different forms of mythology to create magic systems and creation myths. His last talk showed how <Cosmic Egg> + <Chaos> gave <birth> to <First ones> <Cosmic Egg> <Cracked> and gave rise to the earth and ocean. etc. etc - Until you have playable races. ANd thats just a minor portion of the recent changes - all of which will go on to inspire and influence other games (or put people off entirely, with DF you never know)
owk247 10y ago
Man I really like playing DF I just can't get myself installing X(quartz) for it on OSX so right now I am lacking a machine to run it on.
- Filligree 10y ago
  It should be possible to run without X. Set print-mode to text, it's supposed to work in a terminal. I'm not sure if that code works on OS X, but if it doesn't, you can still run it on a server. The interface won't be perfect, though, and you'll need to remap some keybindings.
qznc 10y ago
(inspired by the other Elite thread) Is there something like a Dwarf Fortress in Space? I know about FTL, but there you have too much control over the crew. Like FTL but with Dwarf Fortress like gameplay. "And then my ship got invaded by alien mind slugs and everybody want insane" or "The mourning captain shut himself up in the bridge and shortly afterwards we flew into a sun" or "We transported a herd of alien-cows which resulted in a stempede through the canteen".
- talmand 10y ago
  Sometimes I really wish the FTL crew did have some semblance of intelligence. It's so easy to miss a small detail that leads to the death of a crew member simply because they can't be bothered to go through a door to save themselves. I currently think of the game as a ship AI simulator. You, the player, are the AI of the ship. The crew members, upon boarding the ship, are injected with some form of mind-control tech that provides total obedience. Therefore, the crew have no free will. They will do whatever you command, even if it'll lead to their deaths. A bonus to support the theory is the mind-control module you can get installed on your ship. This module takes control over an enemy crew member by hacking into that ship's mind-control tech.
- firezemissiles 10y ago
  Space Station 13. It's a free multiplayer game with a lot of intricacy, bad UI, and story generation.
res0nat0r 10y ago
Anyone read The O'Reilly book about this and can comment on it? I've been wanting to try this game but really don't want to spend the overhead time just digging through learning on my own. http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Dwarf-Fortress-complex/dp/1449314945 http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Dwarf-Fortress-complex...
bespoke_engnr 10y ago
Just spent a bit of time working around some problems to get Dwarf Fortress and the Lazy Newb Pack installed on Ubuntu 16.04. It's a bit more complicated than running it on Windows, but still works just fine: https://tutorialinux.com/install-dwarf-fortress-ubuntu-16-04/ https://tutorialinux.com/install-dwarf-fortress-ubuntu-16-04... Enjoy! If I had a nickel for every time I've said that...

301 points by robinhoodexe 10y ago

I guess this is the article that makes me realize I'm out of touch. I was super excited to see what kind of small castle they built, how they did it with just two people, and I also had lots of legal questions about building castles. Oh well, this looks neat too! Edit: was expecting something like this, for those of you now interested in home-castle-building-stories: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2280764/Farmer-told-MUST-pull-castle-built-secretly-haystacks-loses-year-planning-row.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2280764/Farmer-told-...

honua 10y ago
This is what I thought it'd be, too, only I mis-read fortress as forest and thought about a really cool park-like area with tiny trees.

robohamburger 10y ago

Some other interesting articles form the past: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-of-dwarf-fortress.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-of... http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131954/interview_the_making_of_dwarf_.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131954/interview_the_m... I have played quite a bit of the game and it is amazing despite its insane and sometimes frustrating UI.

alyandon 10y ago

I've had so many hours of entertainment playing Dwarf Fortress I usually donate $10-$20 every major release. Well worth it if you can get past the UI.

overcast 10y ago

I had no idea that this game is essentially their life's work. Playing that looks like the equivalent of reading raw Matrix code.

Filligree 10y ago
I don't see code, anymore. I just see dwarves, goblins... cats... But really, the graphics aren't that bad. No worse than any other roguelike.
- overcast 10y ago
  Suppose so. Have you seen Caves of Qud? That's a good middle ground.
- writeslowly 10y ago
  I was actually pretty impressed by Dwarf Fortress's use of the extended ASCII set (or whatever the technical name is). Most of the non-creature symbols were easy enough to guess based on appearances.
  - kd0amg 10y ago
    And for animals, it's mostly the first letter of the animal's name, colored like the animal, and upper- or lower-case based on the animal's size.
  - pbtflakes 10y ago
    The stock character set is modified code page 437. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437
- blakeyrat 10y ago
  My first roguelike was Mission: Thunderbolt, on Mac Classic. Even back in 1992 it was hugely easier to play than Dwarf Fortress is now. And, IMO, way more fun.
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
I don't find the graphics to be too much of an issue, and there are tilesets and whatnot you can use to replace the ASCII with something a little more friendly. However, it's the UI itself that presents the real barrier to entry. Absolutely nothing is obvious or intuitive, so every single thing must be learned via wikis, tutorials, etc. Worse yet, it's not at all clear what is possible without exhaustively looking though all the menus. Crucial functionality is buried all around the UI, and many veteran players will simply concede that other programs are needed to manage the dwarves; the UI simply isn't up to the task for anything but a trivial fortress. Contrast this to a game like Angband which shares the funky UI and ASCII interface, but is still perfectly functional. And I certainly understand why it's like this; making an effective UI would be a significant challenge and distract from making the game itself, a monumental task. Still, they could release something like a DF API that lets others write UIs to access/play the game. Tarn has said he's considered this, but thinks it's too much work: > I've thought about it. It seems like it would take a lot of work to maintain. I ditched the crappy 3D graphics of Armok 1, and adding features is so much faster now. This seems similar. There are lots and lots and lots of data structures, and the API would not be a simple thing, and it wouldn't be something I could just do once and then forget about. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1avszc/im_tarn_adams_of_bay_12_games_cocreator_of_dwarf/c919tmo https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1avszc/im_tarn_adams_... FWIW, DFHack is basically capable of this, but it's not something you can build on too much. Perhaps when (if) the game is feature complete, they'll release an API and open source UIs will flourish.

chrisdbaldwin 10y ago

Tarn's dissertation "Flat Chains in Banach Spaces" is truly awesome, if you have enough domain knowledge to understand what it's talking about. I love those guys.

Impl0x 10y ago
I enjoy math, but I'm nowhere near experienced enough to follow that paper. There wouldn't happen to be an annotated version or some kind of summary of it, would there? I've always wanted to know what it was about.
- chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
  He tries to explain it at the end of this interview: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_8_transcript.html http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_8_transcript.html

faide 10y ago

I find the UI of Dwarf Fortress completely impenetrable, but am fascinated by the level of depth and granularity in the systems underlying the game. If anyone is interested in the game, I recommend grabbing the Lazy Newb Pack[0] which comes with a few utilities that will make your experience slightly less infuriating. [0] http://lazynewbpack.com/ http://lazynewbpack.com/

lettergram 10y ago
I played a few maps with some UI mods. Overall, I kind of like the experience because it reminds me of reading code in the matrix...
- faide 10y ago
  I do prefer the classic graphics for the same reason. I cannot, however, play without things like Dwarf Therapist anymore though.
trentmb 10y ago
Much like Eve, I prefer to read about others exploits than try and have my own.
- mfoy_ 10y ago
  Funny thing about Eve is that once you start playing it you realize it's... actually pretty "normal". It's like the Australian Outback, you hear so many terrifying stories that you just assume every single thing in that place wants to kill you, but plenty of things live there. Just like in Eve, your life in space will be pretty standard fare 99% of the time, even moving out to nullsec can be actually quite a... dare I say, mundane affair. But it's that 1%... oh man, that 1%. The feuds, the rivalries, the deception, the betrayal. It's almost like CCP are playing a cosmic version of Dwarf Fortress and the capsuleers are their dwarves.
  - jameskegel 10y ago
    But who is Goon Swarm?

Olscore 10y ago

If you like Dwarf Fortress, you might like a game called: Factorio

Deinumite 10y ago
That game sucked up a ton of my time. Still waiting for the next patch. It is really interesting and I almost feel like I am writing code at some points, having the machines automate themselves. I haven't even started playing with the circuits yet which allows you to do even more programming.
- BenoitP 10y ago
  > I almost feel like I am writing code at some points I have this theory that the game designer(s?) actually took some pages from a multithreaded programming book and turned them into a game. A kind of meta-game. Items are messages, transport belts are buffers with blocking writes, factories are actors, scheduling is roundrobin with preemption. Flying robots are a metaphor for references. Everything is as a pull model, and you can see the backpressure progating up the chain. I'd love to see the implementation. I bet there is no modeling, everything directly mapped to some core programming primitive.
  - fennecfoxen 10y ago
    > I bet there is no modeling, everything directly mapped to some core programming primitive. Yes, I'm sure the game's flying robots are implemented as a simple pointer and nothing else, no additional data to model for a name or any animation or where it comes from or where it goes to or anything like that at all.
kiba 10y ago
I played both. They're nothing alike at all.
- Bognar 10y ago
  They're nothing alike, but I find they scratch a very similar itch.

Jordrok 10y ago

Dwarf Fortress is truly an inspiring project, not only because of how amazingly fun and engrossing the game is if you can get into it (granted, it's not for everyone), but also because of the sheer amount of dedication and love that is put into it by Tarn and Zach Adams.

lloyd-christmas 10y ago
Along with the community. They donate $60k per year which is incredibly impressive given its size.
- patio11 10y ago
  I'm torn between "That's better than the $30k it was the last time we discussed this years ago, which was itself better than $0" and "If one produces something as staggeringly joy-bringing as Dwarf Fortress, one can fairly easily avoid being a starving artist by applying single-digit hours of worksmanlike execution on monetization."
  - lloyd-christmas 10y ago
    This has been their performance: 2015: $60603.43 2014: $66765.31 2013: $48999.11 2012: $57854.88 2011: $42294.19 2010: $54501.15 2009: $32516.44 2008: $32318.46 2007: $19052.28 That's pretty damn good for such a cult game. I'm not sure there's really any better way to monetize it than rely on donations.
    - patio11 10y ago
      I'm going to give a very boring answer with regards to monetization strategy: they should sell licenses to Dwarf Fortress, or Dwarf Fortress Supporter Edition, which is distinguished from DF Vanilla by saying that it's the supporter edition and maybe some cosmetic change somewhere. I would price it at $19, where it would be towards the top-end of indie games on Steam; by the standards of people who enjoy Dwarf Fortress, Dwarf Fortress ROFLstomps the depth and quality of any other $19 entertainment option. I would then immediately solicit inclusion in a Humble Bundle, in the expectation that Humble Bundle would leap at the chance. One could envision a rougelike or Df-alike bundle; I anticipate that Humble Bundle would give DF top billing in whatever deal was negotiated. I would model that Humble Bundle as doing > $800k in sales, of which DF's take would be > ~$80k. Throw in "and we'll use Humble as our exclusive e-commerce provider for 12 months" since I think it is fairly clear that the authors don't want to be in the e-commerce business; that gives Humble ~10% of their gross revenue for next year. Stage 3 of the master plan: get the game onto Steam. This might require $X,000 worth of production-ready art and video assets to satisfy Steam's requirements; $X,000 will not be a material amount of money to Dwarf Fortress, LLC. The above unsolicited opinions are coming from a place of love for small software businesses generally and Dwarf Fortress in particular. Strike the earth.

epaga 10y ago

Dwarf Fortress is a truly unique game and really worth putting in the effort to learn simply due to the stories it generates as you play - and it is amazing how the stories emerge from the ASCII symbols. Here's an example of a story that happened to me. https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/1mb0cw/the_sad_story_of_m%C3%B4som/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/1mb0cw/the_s... Note: this story is in NO way embellished by me. Everything described there was actually fully simulated within the game.

mfoy_ 10y ago
I remember reading that story ages ago! Poor Mosom. Reading this article and all these comments makes me want to get back into DF. I just hope I remember how to play. :p
vessenes 10y ago
Oh, I laughed out-loud (in a horrified way.) Thank you. My favorite horrible moment playing dwarf fortress came one day when one of my dwarves was unable to find a required bit of silk to finish the artifact she had swimming in her head. She went crazy, presumably from the frustration, and took it out on a dwarf near her in a dining room. Soon thereafter my happy fort of approximately 100 dwarves was down to 10 or 12 dwarves, only 2 unwounded. There were bodies everywhere. Blood was tracking through the fortress. Dwarves were wandering around, then seeing bodies, vomiting, going crazy, attacking each-other. It was terrible. Long story short, we ended up with two battle-scarred, insane but deadened dwarves and a beautiful fortress for them to share. Cleaning the bodies out took both of them a couple of years. They'd haul for a while, stop to vomit, then keep hauling. Every so often at first immigrants would show up, and the entire group would go crazy looking at the carnage, and we'd be back down to my two dwarves. I was trying to imagine what they might want or feel after all that, and decided it was likely they would have fixated on something, so they pulled all the gold and gems into a little room and made a throne room. The tougher dwarf was detailed to clean and haul bodies and bones, the other one just sat in his throne room, brooding. Finally the tougher one died; he had some sort of minor injury I hadn't noticed, and we were down to one. I can't remember exactly what happened, but I think that one was on his way to clean something up as the sole surviver, got too close to the river, and that, as they say was that. He drowned horribly, mercifully. I occasionally think about the two dwarves just cleaning up the castle, slowly going insane, and when I do, I appreciate Toady's work, and I laugh. Then I feel guilty.

curiousgal 10y ago

I always play Dwarf Fortress when I am waiting in the airport and there's always someone near me who thinks I'm "computer hacking".

cpeterso 10y ago
Given the long-play nature of the game, would a mobile version of the game work for more casual play-and-pause?
- bradford 10y ago
  I highly doubt it. The interaction required by the user wouldn't suit a mobile game very well. Additionally, the game is CPU intensive and would, as is, drain the battery very quickly. I imagine both these issues would mean a massive refactoring in order to bring it to mobile.
  - tamana 10y ago
    Playing via telnet to a remote server is the best chance.
    - klez 10y ago
      It seems it uses OpenGL[0], so to play via telnet (or, better, ssh) you'd still need to rewrite at least the UI part of the game. Or use VNC... [0] http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=20395.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=20395.0
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
VonGuard 10y ago
Whoa, how do you play without a numeric keypad. I can't even begin to play without it due to muscle memory...
- 10y ago

Natsu 10y ago

> The brothers find most of their data online, but it is only because of Dwarf Fortress that you can find the density of saguaro cactus wood on the Internet. When Tarn and Zach couldn’t find the number, a fan ordered cactus wood from a dealer, empirically determined the density using liquid displacement tests, and relayed back the results, which ended up in the game. I suspect this author reads HN :) If anyone was curious, the thread where Saguaro wood's solid density was determined can be found here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=80022.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=80022.0 > NEW: The guesstimate of 300 kg/m^3 for Saguaro density in the V2 raws was probably wrong. I have a 6g piece of Saguaro wood with a volume of approximately 14 cm^3, which indicates that the density of Saguaro wood is approximately 430 kg/m^3. This number appears very reasonable when compared to all the other densities I have researched. I have more ~1 ft pieces of Saguaro rib wood than I know what to do with right now and I'm more than willing to ship them to people willing to do further research on the matter, or those who wish to duplicate my experiments. In fact, there are two approximately 1" saguaro wood cubes sitting on my desk directly in front of me at this very moment.

cpeterso 10y ago

Given the game's huge following, they should pledge to open source the code before they die so the saga can continue. :) If they don't make money from direct sales, why not open source the game now?

aab0 10y ago
Given their age, it's unlikely they'd both die at the same time and be unable to open source it. Unless they dig in the wrong place in their backyard, I suppose.
tamana 10y ago
They are extremely protective and jealous of DF. Maybe when they retire, or escrown in their will
hrnnnnnn 10y ago
I think they have pledged to release the code when they die.
Derpdiherp 10y ago
To be honest I think Tarn isn't wanting to release the source for a couple of reasons: A - He wants complete control of the direction that the game is heading, B - He's not proud of the source code, from interviews and such and the length of the project I think it's rather a mess, and due to the fact that the game gets new features all the time, it's not getting refactored any time soon. In a way it's a shame - the dwarf fortress community has been fighting "FPS death" of fortresses, when the simulation of all the stuff on your fortress reaches the point where the game crawls along so slowly it's unplayable. And this happens sooner than you'd think. People have been pushing to get the game multithreaded for years but unfortunately it's just not happening. Yet on the other hand I respect Tarns decision to want complete control over the direction of the game - yet there are already mods out there that completely change that anyway.
vessenes 10y ago
A copy of their source code is supposedly on file with the Library of Congress, but I can't find proof of this as I search right now.

khalilravanna 10y ago

Truly awe-inspiring and inspirational work. Over a decade spent working on that one game. A bit over two years ago I started working on my own similar type of game (a Dwarf-Fortress-like or DF-like if you will) and it's given me so much appreciation for the insanity that is game development. The sheer amount of time it takes to build out a system with so much depth is incredible. I've probably been working an average of 8-10 hours a week for 2 years and I have but a fraction of the functionality. Dwarf Fortress stands as a bastion of inspiration I can look to any time I feel like quitting.

mundo 10y ago

If this piques your interest and you have a few hours to kill, you might enjoy reading the Roomcarnage saga: http://imgur.com/a/xhQHE/layout/horizontal#0 http://imgur.com/a/xhQHE/layout/horizontal#0 Briefly, it's a very experienced DF player trying to conquer a frozen volcano who has written up his exploits in narrative form. Fun read and will give you a good idea of what DF is allabout.

ajacksified 10y ago
Or, much earlier in Dwarf Fortress's history is possibly the most famous DF story, the epic saga of Boatmurdered: http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Introduction/ http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Introductio...

phil248 10y ago

I'm a dedicated gamer who has found countless hours of enjoyment from games like Minecraft and Crusader Kings 2. But in my attempts to play Dwarf Fortress, I felt like I was being trolled. Like the entire thing was some 'in' joke and by spending hours attempting to figure out the UI, I was the butt of said joke. I find time to play games like CK2 despite the poor UI and serious time commitments, but I'm a grown man with a job and I don't have time to play a game with what is quite possibly the worst UI in gaming history.

waiseristy 10y ago
The game is damn near impossible to play in its stock form. Look up the Lazy Newb pack and give it a try. The learning curve still is quite tough, but it's a real fun challenge.
flashman 10y ago
I have tried the game multiple times but have not had the patience to stick with it. I am glad that it exists, though. I want to live in the kind of world where two brothers are happy to devote the majority of their life to a project like this. Maybe it's the same impulse that drove the Voynich manuscript's creation.
- Natsu 10y ago
  I think it's best to play it when you have something you want to do, build or prove and to read about others playing it when you want a story. I haven't really played the game itself for a while now, but I still love reading the stories of others playing in it.
- Derpdiherp 10y ago
  Although they're out of date now, captain duck's tutorials on youtube demystify the entire thing a great deal. And most of the core concepts haven't changed much since he made the tutorials. Believe it or not once you "get" the interface it's really not all that bad. There's one or two incredibly annoying intracacies - but get the lazy newb pack with dwarf therapist and you'll be in for an easier time.
10y ago

csneeky 10y ago

GANDALF

csneeky 10y ago

Gandalf

exratione 10y ago

So: Dwarf Fortress in a forest with an aquifer down in the soil. It takes a year to build a wooden hall large enough for most of the workshops, on one side of the river, while on the other side digging out a collapse to drop soil into the acquifer. A lovely wooden bridge and wooden tile road is the meeting area to keep the dwarves happy while they have no stone. The dwarf with the only pickaxe falls into the watery pit under the collapse and drowns. I have to wait half a year to trade for another while the dwarves live on fish and berries in their hall. They are haunted by the ghost of the miner, as there is no stone for for a engraved slab in the graveyard. Cherry blossoms litter the ground, and blow into the half-finished excavation. A crafter is possessed and wants stone, the one thing we don't have. What little the drwarves traded for had to go to other uses. A great pile of wooden crafts is building up. Just as well there are no elven neighbors. The crafter becomes melancholy, and wanders about the fisherdwarves, watching them. Sometimes he stands in the middle of the river. After trading a new pick, the next miner knocks out the remaining support, and the collapse happens. But, alas, the aquifer is two levels thick! Only one level is smushed dry with the collapsed soil. We trade for rock, build a new structure in the now open watery pit. Two dwarves fall in that season during the construction, adding more drowned victims and wailing ghosts. The construction of stone walls in the pit is knocked down at the cost of yet another dwarf - yet it isn't enough to breach the aquifer. Woe. The pit is now littered with rock and bodies and materials. There is only one other thing to do; build a stack of wooden pumps, stairs, landings down into the pit, and an aquaduct to the river. Pump it dry and send in dwarfs to build walls and lock away the water. All of this and still not at the point of the exercise - to raise a great hollow tower of stone over the river and a deep pit of stairs beneath, and tear down the hall of wood for charcoal. So it continues.

andrepd 10y ago

The article repeatedly stresses how "influential" DF was, and it bothers me a bit. Dwarf Fortress is one of the greatest achievements in video game history because of its unparalleled complexity, but it's pretty much a niche game. It wasn't, I think, very influential at all. There are many adjectives we can use to describe this work. Monumental springs to mind. But not influential.

cma 10y ago
It influenced Minecraft.
- kbart 10y ago
  Sims as well.
- andrepd 10y ago
  Did it? How so? It has almost no mechanics in common apart from procedural terrain generation.
  - gullwings13 10y ago
    http://notch.tumblr.com/post/113252305/credits-due http://notch.tumblr.com/post/113252305/credits-due
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
hrnnnnnn 10y ago
To be influential, something has to be popular or at least known about amongst creators. From my experience in game development, almost everyone I worked with knew about Dwarf Fortress, and a good chunk of them had played it at least once. Similarly, musicians like Frank Zappa and Swans exert a larger influence (because musicians like them) than their popularity would suggest.
intended 10y ago
Off the top of my head the following games are directly influenced by it 1) Minecraft - Thence terraria and other similar 2d platformers 1.1) Minecraft clones, and several more voxel manipulation games 2) Prison Architect and Gnomoria --- And this is influence drawn from the 2008 arc of the project. The next part of the project should involve the creation of the plane of existence - where Adams has said that he will be drawing on multiple different forms of mythology to create magic systems and creation myths. His last talk showed how <Cosmic Egg> + <Chaos> gave <birth> to <First ones> <Cosmic Egg> <Cracked> and gave rise to the earth and ocean. etc. etc - Until you have playable races. ANd thats just a minor portion of the recent changes - all of which will go on to inspire and influence other games (or put people off entirely, with DF you never know)

owk247 10y ago

Man I really like playing DF I just can't get myself installing X(quartz) for it on OSX so right now I am lacking a machine to run it on.

Filligree 10y ago
It should be possible to run without X. Set print-mode to text, it's supposed to work in a terminal. I'm not sure if that code works on OS X, but if it doesn't, you can still run it on a server. The interface won't be perfect, though, and you'll need to remap some keybindings.

qznc 10y ago

(inspired by the other Elite thread) Is there something like a Dwarf Fortress in Space? I know about FTL, but there you have too much control over the crew. Like FTL but with Dwarf Fortress like gameplay. "And then my ship got invaded by alien mind slugs and everybody want insane" or "The mourning captain shut himself up in the bridge and shortly afterwards we flew into a sun" or "We transported a herd of alien-cows which resulted in a stempede through the canteen".

talmand 10y ago
Sometimes I really wish the FTL crew did have some semblance of intelligence. It's so easy to miss a small detail that leads to the death of a crew member simply because they can't be bothered to go through a door to save themselves. I currently think of the game as a ship AI simulator. You, the player, are the AI of the ship. The crew members, upon boarding the ship, are injected with some form of mind-control tech that provides total obedience. Therefore, the crew have no free will. They will do whatever you command, even if it'll lead to their deaths. A bonus to support the theory is the mind-control module you can get installed on your ship. This module takes control over an enemy crew member by hacking into that ship's mind-control tech.
firezemissiles 10y ago
Space Station 13. It's a free multiplayer game with a lot of intricacy, bad UI, and story generation.

res0nat0r 10y ago

Anyone read The O'Reilly book about this and can comment on it? I've been wanting to try this game but really don't want to spend the overhead time just digging through learning on my own. http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Dwarf-Fortress-complex/dp/1449314945 http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Dwarf-Fortress-complex...

bespoke_engnr 10y ago

Just spent a bit of time working around some problems to get Dwarf Fortress and the Lazy Newb Pack installed on Ubuntu 16.04. It's a bit more complicated than running it on Windows, but still works just fine: https://tutorialinux.com/install-dwarf-fortress-ubuntu-16-04/ https://tutorialinux.com/install-dwarf-fortress-ubuntu-16-04... Enjoy! If I had a nickel for every time I've said that...