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The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress (2011)
- partycoder 10y agoDwarf Fortress is incredibly hard to learn. Gnomoria and Rim World might be simpler games to learn. However not as deep or complex.
- jmcdiesel 10y agoI don't think "incredibly hard" is a good term. In more development terms, to me, "incredibly hard" is embedded assembly programming (im probably not even using the right term for this) ... The level of hard i would put DF at is "learning VIM"... which I think is apt, because 1) its a steep but rather short learning curve to get around, 2) over a while you naturally get better at navigating/commanding/etc and 3) there are plugins and "distributions" just like vim, to make it easier for a beginner, etc. Now that I write this out, im thinking VIM is the perfect analog for DF :) [NOTE] I'm a DF n00b. I have less than 5 hours playing. I'd say it took me about 30 minutes to "get it" though, and now I'm actually playing what I would consider "normally"
- jackmott 10y agoIt may be instructional that I think learning VIM and DF is harder than assembly programming? =)
- eduren 10y agoI think vim/emacs is an apt comparison.
- thefifthsetpin 10y agoI like your analogy, but what's missing is that the vim interface is much (much!) more powerful than the DF interface. Any number of DF players who are also UI designers (hey, there have gotta be a lot of 'em) could propose a dozen minor interface changes that would make DF feel more consistent, and easier to learn without even changing any of the mechanics of the game. You couldn't say that about vim. (Or, if you could, I'd love to hear your interface change proposals for vim!)
- LanceH 10y agoMove the default movement keys to the home position -- shift them right by one. Right now I have to choose between shifting my hand off the home position or my index finger doing double duty. JKL; is very comfortable to move around with.
- dagenleg 10y agoBut that's totally possible with a slight change in .vimrc. I would argue that since you can change it in .vimrc your proposed rebinding is still part of the vim "interface".
- sixo 10y agoThis sounds right. And there's a reason more people don't use VIM, or play DF.
- imdsm 10y agoIndeed, the high barrier of entry, but for those of us who have entered, we enjoy a very privileged membership that just keeps on giving. I'm a ten year veteran, and have helped many other "hardcore" gamers to get into it, but none of them have stuck with it, citing difficulty. It's a shame, as it has more to give than any other game.
- htns 10y agoAgreed but it's quite fair in the context of modern gaming. A lesser game might even have a tech tree and a progression acting as a tutorial. "You have reached a population of 20! You can now build cabinets and statues!"
- partycoder 10y agoPlease do not get me wrong. Dwarf Fortress is a fantastic game. The only thing I am saying is that the usability is complex with respect to what I am used to, in games. It reminds me of using flight simulators. Many instruments and controls that you need to learn and understand.
- jackmott 10y agoBecause I am old now and am not as easily entertained by being in fantasy worlds all by myself any more, I can't handle it. But games like this that are either MMOs or small scale persistent worlds where you friends can join (like minecraft) are still really fun for me.. Building an amazing Dwarf Fortress would be much more fun if your buddies are in the world too.
- imdsm 10y agoI disagree, respectfully, I think that the stop-start nature and complex workings of DF would mean that any sort of co-op would severely constrain the game, well at least with respect to fortress mode. I suppose there could be an argument for taking adventurer mode and making it more like a MUD but I'm not really an AM person.
- technofiend 10y agoI would love to play a DF equivalent on a dyson ring. The cooperative elements would be for ring maintenance - keeping the station-keeping thrusters in good health, keeping the trams between territories running, whatever. The balance of the world play could certainly be enough for anyone even dividing the ring up into per-player planet-sized chunks.
- bedane 10y agoYou'll have to invest a couple of evenings reading the tutorials/installing the right stuff/setting up a playable world/getting lost in the awful menus/etc. before you get to have fun, but it is worth it!
- datruth29 10y agoDwarf 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. 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.
- jmcdiesel 10y agoPerspective? I find the DF UI, while minimal, to be great. Everything can be done on keyboard shortcuts... its more challenging initially, really easy as soon as it clicks... then the idea of doing it all with a mouse seems crazy
- JaumeGreen 10y agoThe problem is not keyboard vs mouse. IIRC (foggy memory, several years since I last played) there are several ways to move through lists, depending on which list you are. Military was a chaos. People recommend an external application for better review of your dwarves, as the main interface is clunky. It's a great game, but the UI could be much better.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- imdsm 10y agoUtilities is part of the game ecosystem though. Dwarf Therapist is great, but after 30 dwarfs it becomes better to enable autolabor. To be fair, I'd like to see RimWorld* manage 200+ pawns. * Not to say I dislike RimWorld, in fact it is my favour dwarflike.
- vacri 10y agoOh, the agony of the military system. It has a learning curve all of its own. RimWorld is great, but it just feels so much more sparse than DF - you only have a handful of folks. Graphics are nice (and the Prison Architect style is nice as well) and the way to assign orders is much needed (identical to a DF community add-on), but when it comes to Building Your Thang, it's just not a bustling community working against the odds. It's interesting that so many things are based off what DF lacks (basic graphics, ui-friendliness) but don't implement the heart of DF (complexity), which is admittedly hard and was built up in DF over the course of years.
- eduren 10y agoGot to meet Tarn Adams a few years ago when I was into Dwarf Fortress and the community. Really cool guy, you can tell he loves what he does.
- laurent123456 10y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2793615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2793615
- ythn 10y agoWow, the creator of Dwarf Fortress doesn't use version control? I don't even know what to say about that. It's like when I heard the creator of KeePass doesn't use version control either... why are people so resistant to VCS?
- mikekchar 10y agoI've been trying to understand how the author of DF does development. My impression is that he doesn't really add features the way most of us add features. Instead he'll rewrite large portions of the game, or he'll write some stand alone test application and then integrate it into the mainline code. Apart from safety (I really hope he has backups), there probably isn't that much use in VCS because he intends to simply rewrite everything every time. He also does not like to have anyone touch his code. He allowed a few people to improve the performance of his display code once and has since sworn off it. While the performance improved as promised, he says that he can't understand any of the code and now never touches it again. Not the way I would do my work, but when you are your own boss you get to do whatever you want ;-)
- gbersac 10y agoI heard once that he is burning the code on discs once in a while.
- LoonyBalloony 10y agoI'm glad for the repost. Going to try this game. I understand the keyboard only controls, but man, seeing what is going on is a challenge. Yeah all the PC power is used for the emulation of the world and stuff, but how much power does it take to do 2d sprites these days? Oh well, here I go losing again!
- sshagent 10y agoAs 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.
- wyldfire 10y agoSemi-related: Don't Starve is a great indie game with a different theme but IMO similarly complex world simulation. [1] [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Starve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Starve [2] http://store.steampowered.com/app/322330/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/322330/
- imdsm 10y agoI found DS to be too hands on. I like to be more elevated, with my pawns having some autonomy.
- samstave 10y agoHow are they pawns if they have autonomy ;-)
- Declanomous 10y agoI love Don't Starve, but it doesn't even approach the complexity of Dwarf Fortress. I think the similarity is mostly thematic, both being pretty dark and having a techno-fantasy element.
- SN76477 10y agoI have enjoyed many, many hours with don's starve. The modern randomized, living world games are a lot of fun.
- StyloBill 10y agoDwarf Fortress' complexity is far, far superior. It's not comparable.
- Freaky 10y agoMore relevant, their latest game: https://www.kleientertainment.com/games/oxygen-not-included https://www.kleientertainment.com/games/oxygen-not-included System-driven space colony simulation, with a particular emphasis on maintaining breathable air.
- 10y ago
- chairmanwow 10y agoDwarf 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. TLDR: DF is a great game that shaped my childhood and motivated me to become a programmer.
- digi_owl 10y ago> 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. This is a sentiment that crops up again and again. In particular as long time users of a terminal ui (not necessarily CLI but using ASCII/ANSI to draw the interface, and keyboard for input) when they transition to a GUI replacement. The thing about keyboards is that they are designed to be used without looking. Special keys have special shapes to make them stand out. Every key is in a fixed location. And certain ones are marked but a bump or similar to make them easy to find by touch and thus use as navigational aides. Yes, mouse and touch screens make it easier and faster to localize and develop a UI. But we humans are quite capable of doing repetitive tasks with our hands without looking. I think that in RTS and MMORPG circles there is a certain degree of disdain for "clickers". People that operate the game mostly via mouse. This because it is slower and thus limits how quickly they can react to in-game events.
- macintux 10y ago> And certain ones are marked but a bump or similar to make them easy to find by touch and thus use as navigational aides. Completely off-topic, but there are two keyboard changes over time that absolutely drive me bonkers. First, caps lock replacing control on the left, but that's not what prompted this post, but I'm still grumpy at Sun and Apple for surrendering to the idiot PC world on that. Second, moving the bumps from "d" and "k" to "f" and "h". Pretty sure Apple also had that right originally. When the bumps are supposed on the 2nd finger, you always feel them, even if your fingers are offset by 1. Feeling the bump on the wrong finger is great feedback to fix your hand position. When the bumps are now in the 1st finger, if your fingers are offset by 1 you don't feel it at all, and it's much harder to notice the absence of something than it is to notice the presence of the bump on the wrong finger. Bad designers, bad bad.
- ghotli 10y agoOne of the central questions of our time may become whether or not it's ethical to turn off dwarf fortress.
- spacehacker 10y agoIt is probably ethically no worse than any killing simulation (e.g. first-person shooters). Creatures in such games arguably do not have a rich and lasting experience of processing information as humans and many animals do, so it only has a small ethical importance. My moral intuition on this matter is that the real ethical questions begin with systems that perceive, learn and can experience pain/reward: http://petrl.org http://petrl.org
- proaralyst 10y agoYou may have missed the joke (such things are hard to judge by the medium of text). The parent was implying that the complexity of Dwarf Fortress will grow to the point of sentience of the dwarfs themselves.
- xenotb 10y agoIndeed, it is all about sentience. If we assume it's unconscious, which we probably can, then it's morally irrelevant in my opinion.
- escape_goat 10y agoIt is probably, in a limited sense, ethical to suspend (save) the game, but not ethical to destroy the saved game file. When the game is off, the dwarves do not experience an interruption of continuity to their time. So on the face of it, there is no harm done to the dwarves if there is an existential interruption from the perspective of some external context. However, the abstraction of the dwarven universe from the universe in which it is being simulated is hardly complete. By suspending the game and keeping it in storage for several days, for instance, you are placing the dwarves at greater and greater risk that some external-universe course of events will prevent their universe from ever resuming. Furthermore, as the cycles of time which can occur in the universe ultimately face a limit with respect to the rate of the processor and the cycles of time available in the external universe, so in a very real sense you are causing a sort of existential damage to their universe. This, in fact, raises the question of ethics with respect to the resources devoted to the simulation. Is it ethical to run dwarf fortress on a consumer-grade general purpose computing device? Should not the dwarven reality be given the strongest underpinnings we can provide it, with equivalent respect given between an internal universe subjective & sentient existence an external universe subjective & sentient existence? In fact, given our moral debt as the creators of the dwarven universe, do we not actually owe them more than we owe each other?
- jrpt 10y agoHow did Dwarf Fortress become popular?
- dpcx 10y agoI first saw it because someone made a calculator within their fortress. That interested me, but I don't know of any particular thing that made it popular with "the masses".
- ss_justin 10y agoA lot of it had to do with creatively told stories about the events in a playthrough, particularly with some succession games - games passed along to others after a set time elapses. The first one I'm aware of is Boatmurdered: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Bloodline:Boatmurdered http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Bloodline:Boatmurdere...
- wmil 10y agoThe complexity allows a lot of emergent gameplay. For instance in one game a dragon attacked my fort. NBD. Everyone got inside and I was planning to catch it in a cage trap. Then use it as a decoration. However there was a group of Human traders at my Trade Depot. They decided to run over and fight the dragon. Now the dragon is running around breathing fire. Which started a forest fire. Which destroyed my wooden bridges and doors. Completely unscripted fun, just a result of the game simulation. Also the game manages to make you hate goblins and elves through your interactions with them. In evil regions eyeballs grow out of the ground, blinking at passing dwarves. However cattle will happily graze on them. If you "delve too greedily and too deep" you'll unleash horrors of the underworld. There's just a lot of neat stuff there.
- jayrobin 10y agoI never understood the appeal of Dwarf Fortress until a good few hours into my first game I had just finished following a detailed tutorial and was starting to get a hang of the interface. I decided to start work on my first big construction project - a deep pit to keep the regularly attacking trolls away and a gargantuan drawbridge to lead over it. It's probably child's play by any non-noob player's standards, but I was so proud of it. All of the noble dwarves came to the grand opening of the drawbridge - the mayor, the sheriff, the captain of the guard and all of the highest ranking military dwarves in their bright shining armor. They all stood at the base to witness the first lowering of the grand drawbridge. It was lowered and with a mighty crash, flattened the gathered nobles and military elite...Because I had placed it facing the wrong way. The fortress didn't last too long after that. I tried my best to clean things up, making a nice new dining hall and brewery, but the remaining dwarves took it pretty hard - one of them ended up losing his mind while drunk and slaughtered most of the rest in the great dining hall, the rest died of disease because nobody wanted to clean up the mess. I was so proud of my towering (and first!) fortress, and I lost it all because of one stupid mistake, but it's definitely the most fun I've ever had losing a game.
- kibwen 10y agoOne 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.
- TremendousJudge 10y agoI remember a strategy game called Majesty that worked in a "declarative" way as well. You didn't order your units around, you could just place bounties on things and your soldiers would go out and kill/destroy them
- digi_owl 10y agoI owned that game, but seems to have misplaced the discs it came on...
- beaconstudios 10y agothis one? https://www.gog.com/game/majesty_gold_hd https://www.gog.com/game/majesty_gold_hd
- PepeGomez 10y agoThere's a HD version on Steam.
- pc86 10y agoOkay
- 10y ago
- dri_ft 10y agoHere'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. 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.) 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?
- pavel_lishin 10y ago> Is it all justified, in terms of adding interest to gameplay? Or is just for complexity's sake? I stopped paying attention to DF development around the time Toady One started focusing in depth on history and cultural generation - apparently nowadays, you can have temples, bards, all sorts of stuff that seems like it only impacts the Adventurer Mode, and will have some impact on Dwarf preferences, history, etc. None of this strikes me as anything I need to know about when playing the Fortress mode of the game, and seems like just something that Toady enjoys working on. But for all I know, there's someone out there who's going to love all of this stuff, and it's going to make gameplay much better for them.
- Declanomous 10y agoI think Dwarf Fortress falls squarely on the Nethack side of things. The motto of Dwarf Fortress is 'Losing is !FUN!' (exclamation points on either side of an item indicating it is currently on fire, a common occurrence in DF.) The fun and the !FUN! in Dwarf Fortress is because of complexity, not in spite of it.
- gbersac 10y agoWinning go and poker ? Easy, I'll believe in IA when it will be able to handle dwarf fortress !
- erikb 10y ago> 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 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.
- Trundle 10y ago$750 of that is an employee.
- nylonstrung 10y agoI cannot see why a PhD developing one of the most ambitious and complex video games in history for $20K a year is objectionable to you.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- strainer 10y agoThis 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. Archcrystal - 320 years in a fortress (w/spoilers read 37592 times) http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=156319.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=156319.0
- lmitchell 10y agoOh lord well there goes a good hour of my time. I'm a sucker for a good DF story... :P
- zach 10y agoJust 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.
- inetknght 10y agoI'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.
- and0 10y agoI finally cracked open Factorio again over this weekend and sunk way too many hours in. It's quite literally Engineering: The Game.
- inetknght 10y agoI made the mistake of introducing some friends and team members to the game. Their productivity has gone to shit. Of course, it's only a corollary that they now spend too much time playing Factorio. Their productivity was liable to go to shit anyway; I simply gave a purpose to it haha
- cadu2 10y agoHow hard DF is compared to Nethack? I've ascended on Nethack and it is always a very tricky business... this game seems on a whole new level.
- a3n 10y agoA 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. 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. > “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.” I feel bad that he's sacrificing his health for our pleasure. > 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. 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.
- mmanfrin 10y agoVery 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. 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). 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).
- ssunstruck 10y agoRimworld and Prison Architect are practically training for DF. Now that you know you like the style of gameplay you will probably love DF
- Globz 10y agoOnly in DF you can talk about turtle reproduction.... here's a bug related to turtle pond going extinct : http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2780 http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2780 "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.) 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." "Pond turtles lay eggs, which might contribute why they will only breed in off site statistics if that's any relevance. 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) 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. 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. 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. 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. "
- kuharich 10y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2793615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2793615
- rhlala 10y agoThe DF adventure mod have a very very potencial, Imagine skyrim in 2d, multiply it by 1000 in terms of gameplay/content
- mtimjones 10y agoAnyone can write "code", but to design, write and maintain code that is large and complex is a specialty. This game has interesting emergent behavior that arises from complex systems that it's built from. It's impressive just from that standpoint.