22 ms·

Dwarf Fortress’ graphical upgrade provides a new way into a wildly wonky game

747 points by danso 4y ago

incomingpain 4y ago
It's out! $38
- swozey 4y ago
  I'm not sure where they're getting the number but 23 minutes left according to https://www.twitch.tv/gremlinformayor https://www.twitch.tv/gremlinformayor
- sph 4y ago
  Less than an hour, it says on Steam.
  - incomingpain 4y ago
    Been saying less than an hour for more than an hour for me.
- Tomte 4y ago
  30 Euros.
- deelowe 4y ago
  It's showing $29.99 for me.
  - nicolas_t 4y ago
    $16.44 for me in south east asia. I love regional pricing.
- senectus1 4y ago
  AU$44
sph 4y ago
Oh man, I can't wait. I got burned out with RimWorld recently (it's cool but it's not fun for me; I have been following and supporting the project since Early Access) and I've waited for accessible Dwarf Fortress for ages. I enjoy ASCII games (Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead [1] is surprisingly easy to get into in ASCII mode), but the obtuse UI of Dwarf Fortress was a little too much effort to learn. I hope the Adams brothers get some well-earned financial stability with this incredible endeavour. They are some old-school software craftsmen, devoted to the art of excellent game design for the sake of it, money be damned. And I can't wait for the next Kruggsmash [2] series, now with actual, beautiful sprites to pair with his beautiful drawings. EDIT: Kruggsmash is currently streaming his first look at this new version! https://youtu.be/sByxI7UX5-g https://youtu.be/sByxI7UX5-g -- 1: https://cataclysmdda.org/ https://cataclysmdda.org/ 2: https://youtube.com/@kruggsmash https://youtube.com/@kruggsmash
- vanderZwan 4y ago
  I wonder if CaptnDuck will stream something. I remember both enjoying his tutorial videos back in the day, as well as being utterly convinced them that I need not ever bother with actually trying to play Dwarf Fortress myself https://www.youtube.com/user/captnduck https://www.youtube.com/user/captnduck
- tribaal 4y ago
  That's it, I just got a mail from Steam, it's been released right now! https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    TAKE MY MONEY FASTER PLEASE
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Be sure to add the soundtrack so they can take more ;)
grenoire 4y ago
In terms of usability, I still just find Dwarf Fortress to be a decade behind Rimworld. The fact that we had to use Dwarf Therapist for years... Rimworld just has it all on the screen within four clicks, with clear indications on how to resolve issues like mood modifiers. Dwarf Fortress in all its complexity, embraces fuzziness in how things work, and focuses on a bit of a higher-level focus (fortresses reach many more dwarves than a Rimworld colony). However, this complexity makes the game a lot less accessible too. I hope the UI changes help bring ease of use and clarity!
- mlindner 4y ago
  I've tried Rimworld a couple times and it always came off as just bland, flat, and uninteresting compared to Dwarf Fortress. Once you played it a bit you could see "through" the game and into the random number generation beneath it. Also I didn't like the sci-fi aspect personally as I like fantasy more. Perhaps it's gotten better in the few intervening years since I last tried it.
  - LoveMortuus 4y ago
    I love fantasy too! Do you know if any games that are like RimWorld but fantasy? I saw Amazing Cultivation Simulation but you need a master's degree to play that, at least that's how it felt to me...
    - philipov 4y ago
      > like RimWorld but fantasy? Dwarf Fortress ;)
      - LoveMortuus 4y ago
        The problem is/was the learning curve. And of course the UI. I really hope the Steam version is done well and not just one of those graphics packs that you can install on Dwarf Fortress.
        4y ago
danso 4y ago
I've put hundreds of hours into Rimworld and tried to get back into it recently. The DLC are pretty good and the mod community is just superb. But after putting a few hours into any colony, what ends up killing the vibe for me is the inevitable realization that the game is basically just a random challenge generator — e.g. as your colony becomes prosperous, a bunch of seeming arbitrary disasters are thrown your way. I wish there were a way to have the game be more like an emergent simulation, but maybe it requires the complexity of DF for it to feel right.
- nicopappl 4y ago
  I know I shouldn't recommend it because it is extremely addictive, but try Oxygen Not Included. To me it is like Rimworld, but without the feeling of arbitrary nonsense sometimes literally falling on your colonists' head. There is a lot of challenges, and all of them are natural consequences of the simulation. It's much more "emergent simulation" although since the simulation is much more focused on physics than humans, it might feel a bit too technical.
  - forgetfulness 4y ago
    Oxygen Not Included is a ton of fun, the thing that makes me abandon my playthroughs is that, after learning so much of fake-plumbing, fake-hvac and fake-electrical installation mechanics, embarking on ever more ambitious projects that demand more planning and player-labor (harnessing that natural gas vent!) feels like a bit of a waste of time. It's so much of a job that I feel like I could be preparing to be an actual HVAC technician in real life with the amount of time and effort spent into keeping gases flowing through pipes at the right temperature in a simulation.
    - imtringued 4y ago
      Do you really think a video game is comparable to a 40 hour work week?
      - forgetfulness 4y ago
hutattedonmyarm 4y ago
I made the mistake of starting both, God Of War and a new Factorio run in the last few days, despite knowing that DF is coming out, along with the Portal update and the Witcher 3 update. I might not be the smarted person on here
- Rayhem 4y ago
  Wait wait wait, portal update?? What's that about?
  - sph 4y ago
    Holy shit, I guess we were both living under a rock! Looks like there's been a graphical update with raytracing support
    - Tepix 4y ago
      Not yet, it's coming this week however.
  - ct0 4y ago
    https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012840/Portal_with_RTX/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012840/Portal_with_RTX/
    - vanderZwan 4y ago
      Is it weird that I'm more impressed by the graphical update to Dwarf Fortress? It feels like a much bigger deal somehow
      - whywhywhywhy 4y ago
        It is a significantly harder task making DF accessible than tweaking the shaders on Portal.
        4y ago
dccoolgai 4y ago
I've played it probably more than any other game over the last 10 years. I'm really just buying it out of a sense of decency to pay back the guys who made it. I know I should have donated before, but I just didn't have time to figure it out. I may not even play it, just buying it to help those guys out.
- bombcar 4y ago
  For those interested in directly supporting Tarn and Zach you can find details here (Paypal/Patreon): http://www.bay12games.com/support.html http://www.bay12games.com/support.html
lemoncookiechip 4y ago
Less than an hour to go, I can't wait to get my hands on it.
philipov 4y ago
Mature Content Description: "Alcohol consumption is required for a dwarven fortress to run smoothly, as described in text."
Tomte 4y ago
I've tried DF ages ago, but it was simply too hard for me. I never really got into digging a fortress, already the first few minutes bounced me off. Even read a DF book. No help. I just bought it on Steam. Probably I will never play it, but it's one of those purchases that are… aspirational. I'd like to be a person who plays DF. I know it's stupid. But graphics and better onboarding are a real argument for me. What tipped me finally over the edge towards buying was the background about the creator's health problems. I like that he's doing DF single-mindedly and I can afford the game without thinking twice.
- dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
  > I'd like to be a person who plays DF. I know it's stupid Not stupid. The feeling of mastering a properly hard game is a good reason to try it. I've used the same "strategy" for most technically challenging games: play in long stretches, trying to make any kind of progress. Have the wiki open and read it any time you are confused. Just keep trying to do _something_. Eventually it will either click and you'll have a bunch of fun, or you'll tire out. If you tire out, just don't play the game again for a couple days, or whenever you regain your energy. Once it clicks once, it will instantly start being fun. The interesting part is that the click happens multiple times with challenging games. I've been playing EVE for more than a year now and the combat system _still_ gives me huge revelations. Same with DF, once you learn how to get your fortress rolling you can very quickly learn to build a fully defensible mega castle. Then the next click is realizing that makes the game boring and allowing some danger by fulfilling self placed challenges. edit: I just bought it and played it for a bit -- the updated graphics/UI are a great improvement! Obviously bit hard to judge but now there's proper icons indicating common actions (mine, cut trees), a tutorial.. give it a try!
  - RupertEisenhart 4y ago
    Let me confirm the long stretches thing. I learned DF by setting aside two weeks and playing ~16 hours a day. Was a piece of cake. It's not the kind of game you can pick up with an hour here or there.
rocket_surgeron 4y ago
And the soundtrack is fantastic. https://youtu.be/Ekq3TDPznGI https://youtu.be/Ekq3TDPznGI
causality0 4y ago
I wonder if it's mod-friendly. All the sprites drawn to be looking to the lower left while moving right is much more distracting than I expected.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It's enabled on the workshop but IIRC tileset changes may have to come in a bit later.
  - causality0 4y ago
    It seems like such a bizarre decision to not draw them facing "outward" if they're not going to change appearance based on direction of movement.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      I suspect much of it comes from the original ASCII for a dwarf: @ Which kinda looks like it's facing right ... (depending on the font)
mikrl 4y ago
Last time I played DF I would just compulsively keep going until 1-3 AM despite having to go to work the next day. I had had a normal sleep schedule before that bout, and was otherwise a functional and responsible adult. I’ve been waiting for this release for ages, but I do not think it’s going to do my mental health any favours Hah
- iKlsR 4y ago
  Launching the same day my Steam Deck arrives, Christmas came early.
  - B0073D 4y ago
    Oh my lord, DF on the Steam Deck? Let us know how it goes!
nkrisc 4y ago
I never made it past reading about Dwarf Fortress. I’d like to try it, but I simply do not have the time or patience to learn what looked like a very arcane UI and gameplay. I’m really hoping this graphical update will lower the barrier to entry for me.
TheBigSalad 4y ago
Does anyone know why it took so long for this game to get graphics?
- bombcar 4y ago
  The Tarn attempted to make a graphical game (he and his brother have always had The Game™ in their minds, and have approached it various times) and it was a complete wash; Tarn didn't know enough about graphics to do that part, and considered it as a distraction. That was Slaves to Armok I - which is why DF's official title is Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress. He chose to skip all the graphics entirely, use ASCII to render the simulation, and focus on the "story-telling simulation" instead. And though he added support for tile sets and some rendering, that's mainly how it worked since. It's taken about 2+ years for this Steam release to happen, and that's with a lot of support; during those years DF has basically been "stalled" and not much new has happened in the simulation. This has to be a bit disappointing to Tarn, as that's what he enjoys most.
- throw_me_5555 4y ago
  It had optional graphical tilesets for a decade or so, this release is more about overhauling whole GUI. Some stuff was just plain annoying like having to manually create bedrooms from furniture. Some stuff was fixed by DF-hack project, for more sensible experience.
YesBox 4y ago
For those who like this type of game, I'm working on a city builder heavily inspired by Dwarf Fortress. Demand will be much more granular than traditional city builders (e.g. specific business/service needs and building the appropriate buildings for them). You'll be able to see the interior of buildings and design the buildings as you please, save them as blueprints, and be able to plop down duplicates. You can find progress updates on: https://www.reddit.com/r/Archapolis/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Archapolis/ Or a few video logs at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUYLstskSLNcSkFg1giTBtQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUYLstskSLNcSkFg1giTBtQ
pelasaco 4y ago
"this is our life's work and we are never gonna stop": https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/
hacknewslogin 4y ago
I just got an email from steam, it's now available for purchase! $29.99. I can't wait to go home and add it to my wishlist and buy it in three or four years. And then maybe play it!
- hacknewslogin 4y ago
  Plot twist, a friend just bought it for me. Now to see how playable it is on a steamdeck.
  - jason-phillips 4y ago
    Not bad, apparently https://steamcommunity.com/app/975370/discussions/0/3709307511569354934/ https://steamcommunity.com/app/975370/discussions/0/37093075...
fullstop 4y ago
If there was ever a title which needed a native Linux build, this is it. ProtonDB does not list compatibility yet, have any of you tried?
- tstrimple 4y ago
  Proton fails to launch. I was able to get it running in Lutris with the caffe runner in a couple minutes though.
  - fullstop 4y ago
    Thanks! I'll look into Lutris.
    - tstrimple 4y ago
      It's a bit annoying to setup initially. Caffe is the default runner for Bottles and plays more games out of the box than any other runner I've tested. However I hate the Bottles interface so I downloaded the Caffe runner separately. https://github.com/bottlesdevs/wine/releases/tag/caffe-7.20 https://github.com/bottlesdevs/wine/releases/tag/caffe-7.20 Then you can drop that into the default folder in Lutris and choose it as the runner. Lutris also integrates with Steam so it'll see your entire steam library and you can choose a different wine runner and wine options on a per-game basis.
- eljost 4y ago
  Works fine w/ steam and "Proton Experimental" under "Linux 5.10.154-1-MANJARO #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Nov 10 20:51:28 UTC 2022 x86_64 GNU/Linux". I had to install the package "sdl_ttf" though; without it, the game just hung at the inital screen that says "Loading".
  - dvzk 4y ago
    If this update is like the old version, it has bundled dependencies on glibc and SDL 1.2. You can overwrite the outdated glibc libraries with symlinks to the system glibc. SDL, SDL_image, and SDL_ttf can be relinked to sdl12-compat, which implements the SDL1.2 ABI using the maintained SDL2 libraries. (edit: I forgot this is a Windows-only release, so maybe disregard this.)
SCLeo 4y ago
Is there a way to play Dwarf Fortress that involves less losing? (maybe mods or some settings?) I know the slogan is "losing is fun", but to me it really isn't. In RimWorld, you can install some slightly (read: extremely) overpowered turret mods, plus a moderate amount of save scumming, I can make my colony last pretty much forever (until I am bored hundreds of hours later). Are there techniques enabling similar playstyles with Dwarf Fortress?
- Filligree 4y ago
  To name some: - Fill a tunnel with traps. - Embark in a location with no enemies. But maybe instead with undead. - Set up a lava chamber above your entrance hall, and a remotely triggered floodgate… - Close the doors on your enemies, and have archers on walls above them. - Create a “danger room”, make an OP army. There’s no shortage of ways to survive, once you dig into a few of the tools.
  - erik_seaberg 4y ago
    Early on (maybe before you get to a stone layer) you want your entrance to have something tougher than a door. A tunnel leading to stairs up and a floor hatch is good, or be ready to wall off the tunnel by stockpiling blocks nearby.
- theonemind 4y ago
  What's the "winning" condition? I've barely played, but I gather that even the most successful fortress ends up with all of the dwarves dead eventually. I think you just have to set your own goals. Maybe you want to get a population of 1000 before death, or maybe you want a fortress to last 100 years. If you're not very good, then your goals can be very small, and get larger. To mix some metaphors, the house always wins, but can you make par for the course, or "justify your seed" (to use the tennis term I picked up from Infinite Jest)?
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    It's an open ended sandbox so there's no dedicated "you win" condition, but becoming a mountainhome is the narrative end goal.
winReInstall 4y ago
These "open source games" are the most brutal attack ont the gaming industry imagineable, eating the most rare ressource ever. Playtime and players. Minecraft already took a huge chunk out of the industry. Which they then tried to solve by encoperating this and selling additions. Now another game appears, that offers endless replay ability with fascinating stuff. If the onslought would be kept up, all those monetization schemes could collapse over time, by virtue of simply being boring compared to what the "indy" dev scene has to offer. One starts to wonder, what could happen if a concentrated efforst started churning out ever better world generators and "deep" games, allowing others non "deep" players to join the world just as "action" heroes or adventurers.
- totetsu 4y ago
  DF source is only open in that museum where it’s on display. And it appeared a very long time ago. This comment is so almost wrong it seems like GPT
- escapecharacter 4y ago
  In what sense do you mean “open source”?
  - willismichael 4y ago
    I'm baffled by this usage of "open source" ... neither Dwarf Fortress nor Minecraft are open source.
  - ImprobableTruth 4y ago
    I think they just mean indie rather than open source.
    - winReInstall 4y ago
      Yeah, sorry, the border betweeen indy and open source comunities are very blurry. Often times games released on steams might be even available in less polished versions on github or just stolen gpl versions of them, that nobody persecutes. Its really not that clear of a distinctions as it used to be.
Zardoz84 4y ago
Wow! They really improved the UI. I find really nice that now you not need to use DwarfTerapist to handle it. And the new game that I just begin (it's yet early summer) and I got a siege of zombie elfs. and I don't have any defense... funny times!
- robocat 4y ago
  - batman-farts 4y ago
    Thank you for your advice! Might you have any idea when I will be able to use ShartGPT, so that I can restyle my written English to seem as though I am having a sudden, uncontrolled bowel movement while writing?
    - bcrosby95 4y ago
      Hey, I take a lot of time and effort controlling my diet to achieve this (while knocking years off my lifespan). I won't have any low effort shart writing around here.
  - MagicMoonlight 4y ago
    I am humbled by the level of snark you have achieved
    - robocat 4y ago
      Strangely enough, I was only trying to be helpful, yet clearly I failed spectacularly enough to be flagged. Firstly, I think that most people subliminally discount the content of a comment if the writer has poor English language skills. ChatGPT mostly produces correct English (better than many people I know), even if the style is boring. Using ChatGPT as a teaching aide makes perfect sense to me. Edit: I find it interesting that the replies are so negatively snarky. Now I have to doubt myself: was I was subconsciously being snarky? How do I become more helpful? How do I discourage selecting for snarky replies? One non-judgemental and helpful resource I will use will be to ask for help from ChatGPT, ironically enough, as soon as it returns from being presently offline!
AdamH12113 4y ago
I a fair bit of time playing Dwarf Fortress a year or two ago. Once I grasped that I wasn't supposed to directly tell the dwarves what to do, I started picking up the mechanics much more quickly. The depth of the simulation is amazing, but it's not particularly legible unless you spend a lot of time manually poring over descriptive text in menus. DFHack and its various plug-ins[1] (especially labormanager) and Dwarf Therapist greatly ease the management process and can help avoid confusion when your dwarves just won't do what you want. It's still a lot of fun to play around with for a while. I would love to see what could be done with a larger development team working on it, but I suppose it would be hard to keep the concept focused. [1] https://docs.dfhack.org/en/0.47.05-r2/docs/Plugins.html https://docs.dfhack.org/en/0.47.05-r2/docs/Plugins.html
arglebargle123 4y ago
Speaking of RimWorld - is the engine extensible enough to implement the dwarf fortress ruleset? That's the graphical upgrade I really want.
- deliriumchn 4y ago
  to some extent, but it will be a very small extent lol DF is too complex in terms of world simulation (dwarfes have actual organs/limbs etc, liquids have different behavior)
  - plopz 4y ago
    Also rimworld is 2d and df is 3d
  - throw_me_5555 4y ago
    Limbs/organs are bad example since that is actually implemented in vanilla RimWorld, including organ trading.
    - db48x 4y ago
      It’s an odd comparison: both DF and RimWorld are more complex than each other here :) RimWorld simulates organs in a more complete way than Dwarf Fortress does, and lets you surgically remove and replace those organs. That’s pretty cool, and a lot fun. Each part has hit points, and each can be lost in combat. A character without body parts suffers from infirmities or death, depending on how critical the part is. A character who is missing a leg can still function, but moves around more slowly. RimWorld tracks similar information about the body parts of animals and robots, which makes combat against them a lot of fun. Herbivores run away from pain, and robots still have organs like cameras and chemical reactors that can be destroyed to incapacitate them. Dwarf Fortress simulates body parts in a more complete way than RimWorld does. Each body part (limb, torso, head, etc), has hair, skin, fat, muscle, and bone layers each with their own properties. These parts also have sensory and motor nerves as well as blood vessels. DF keeps track of the color of the skin and hair, the depth of the fat and muscle (and those are related to the Dwarf’s stats), and what type of damage each layer has taken (bruises, cuts, tears, etc). Damage to some layers can heal naturally, be surgically treated, get infected, leave a scar, etc. Others, like nerves, often won’t heal. This sometimes leaves characters unable to use body parts that they haven’t completely lost. It keeps track of some organs, such as the brain and the gonads, but not others like stomachs, hearts, lungs, etc. Surgical options are much more limited, as befits the setting. You can clean a wound (with or without soap), set bones, suture cuts and tears, and use casts or traction tables to immobilize broken limbs. A character who is missing a leg cannot walk normally, but the game will try its hardest to allow them some mobility using other parts, or you can give them crutches. Like RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress tracks the overall body plan for all species in the game (thousands upon thousands of them), as well as the unique information about each individual. Dwarf Fortress gains many of the same combat and storytelling benefits as RimWorld from its in–depth simulation. Dwarf Fortress goes a step beyond RimWorld though, when it comes to Forgotten Beasts and the Undead. Forgotten Beasts are horrific monsters left over from the chaotic creation of the world. They have _randomized_ body plans. Sometimes they will be a combination of two or more creatures, like a giant feathered iguana with bat wings and a fiery breath. Other times they will be a standard body plan (such as a colossal troll) made from an unusual substance (such as quartz, or fire, or iron). And it knows the material properties of quartz and fire and iron, and it can simulate how your weapons will do against them! The Undead are a similar kind of fun. These are ordinary creatures (such as your own fallen dwarves) who have been reanimated by arcane forces. The Undead of course do not feel pain, do not need blood or intact nerves to use their body parts, and ignore all damage. And remember how a crippled character will still try to crawl if they are missing a leg? You don’t know fear until your dwarves are being chased by an undead skull that is pushing itself along by its eyebrows, biting anything that comes near. Your old nightmares will fade into irrelevance once one of your dwarves butchers a cow and the bloody skin and hair are reanimated to terrorize the innocent.
xcubic 4y ago
This seems to be for windows only. Can it be run on mac?
- bombcar 4y ago
  Supposedly Mac and Linux will be coming later. The "original" DF of course supports both.
- mempko 4y ago
  It works flawlessly for me on linux using proton. Just select properties on the game and force compatibility to have it use proton.
  - coldpie 4y ago
    No Proton on Mac :) I would guess it works well in CrossOver for Mac, but I haven't tried it.
thegeekpirate 4y ago
I've been sitting in the main menu for roughly an hour now just listening to the phenomenal music!
artemonster 4y ago
Dwarf Fortress is Emacs of games. Would have taken over the world by now if it was not made by some strange nerds that have their own subjective beauty standards that absolutely no one shares.
- taftster 4y ago
  But would it have taken over the world, if not made by some strange nerds?? I think Dwarf Fortress would not had been successful, in terms of depth/richness of gameplay, had the nerds "sold out" too soon. The beauty of DF is the subjective standards you refer. DF would have just been yet-another-world-generated-game.
theptip 4y ago
I’m probably not going to play this, because I don’t want to sink hundreds of hours into it (again). But it’s an instant release-day Steam buy for me; these guys are legends, and deserve some cash and recognition for their original work on DF, and also for what looks to be a well-executed graphical overhaul. “Better UI” was the #1 DF feature for as long as I played it; it will be interesting to see how many more players they get in this incarnation.
- troon-lover 4y ago
  [dead]
trhr 4y ago
It's about time. I've been waiting to give these people my money for a decade.
derefr 4y ago
There's a certain ugliness that graphical-tile-based skins of over roguelikes and other TUI-iconography games have, that you don't tend to see with graphical-tile-based games that were designed to be such — i.e. where the tiles and the tileset are a compression mechanism for scenes originally conceptualized without tiles. I'm quite sad to say that — at least judging from the screenshots here — DF's graphical skin here seems to share that "thin graphical skin over a TUI game" look. What I'm talking about here is best exemplified by looking at this image: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/df4-1440x810.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/df4-1... . There are two types of snow tile (full snow, and patchy snow) here, surrounded by grass tiles. The full-snow tiles are connected, RPG-Maker "9-cell brush-texture"-wise, as if they're little dug-out ponds full of snow. The patchy snow tiles are all individual, with no ability to blend into one-another, and so end up looking like a bunch of individual objects on a clear grid — like ore deposits in a rock face in Runescape. Neither of these (square-grid connected runs, or non-tesselatable one-tile blocks of varying intensity) is a good choice for depicting snow on grass. A graphical designer who wanted to portray the scene of "a field patchy with snow" in a tile-based game engine, would not create these particular visual elements as the primitives to depict said scene. These primitives are instead only used here because they are the ones that can have a 1:1 mapping with particular underlying DF TUI tiles. I feel like it would be quite practical, if you were building something like this from the ground up, to write an algorithm to extract from DF's raw tile data here, an "elevation map" of snowiness (heck, maybe it's already a pass available internally in the engine, before it gets quantized out as tiles!); to do some smoothing over said snowiness-map; and then to have grass/dirt/sand/etc tiles consume said "snowiness map" as a shader pass over their textures. (I know that all this terrain is deformable. So what? Regenerating a 2D snowiness-map over a slightly-past-the-viewport crop of the tile data [i.e. a very low-res sample grid] would take less time than pressing the key to dig a hole. It could be done every frame, even.) And you could do all sorts of other things like that — e.g. have the lava in https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/df1-1440x810.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/df1-1... be a flowing mass of liquid rather than a bunch of particular static grid tiles. I feel like the only reason the developers of these graphical adaptations of TUI games don't do this, is because they are trying — at least partially — to serve the part of the existing player-base who prefers the TUI version of the game; rather than focusing solely on the part of the player-base who doesn't like TUIs but plays the game despite that, and the untapped market of people who aren't playing the game because of how ugly and gridlike it is. (And if you're wondering, this sort of higher-level adaptation doesn't have to be to the detriment of gameplay. "The grid" just becomes a UX feature, an extra lens and maybe an always-on fade around the player and/or the cursor, rather than something evident in the design of the levels. Compare e.g. Sim City 2000 [evident grid] with SC3000 or SC4 [UX-layer grid] for what I mean here.)
LoveMortuus 4y ago
I know this will probably get downvoted into oblivion, but still, I can't be the only one... I've tried the graphically updated DF, and honestly it doesn't feel like much of an improvement, it just feels like DF with a graphics pack and not an impressive one. Like yeah, it's good that there's mouse support and clickable menus, but they feel like they were an afterthought, like they're not yet finished. I don't know, maybe it's my fault for expecting too much from it, but I was legit hoping for a UI and UX experience equivalent or at least close to that of RimWorld or Amazing Cultivation Simulator. I hope that It'll improve as time passes or that the community will develop something amazing.
coletonodonnell 4y ago
Although not exactly like Dwarf Fortress, I've been playing Songs of Syx[1] recently and it's incredibly good. It is made by a single developer and it is super fun. It's more of an Empire building game, and it checks a lot of the boxes I want out of these sorts of games. I can see it becoming even more impressive and as time goes on. Demo is unlimited and free, it's just 3-6 months behind the paid version with features, so if you like it definitely support the dev. [1] https://songsofsyx.com/ https://songsofsyx.com/
- TrevorJ 4y ago
  Yesss! I haven't learned how to play the game nearly as much as I want but it's so unique in it's scope.
- sleight42 4y ago
  Well, crap. Like I need yet another bad habit. Thanks?
INTPenis 4y ago
I waited for it and as soon as it came out I went offline. I played DF a lot around 09-11. I knew all the commands by heart, experienced so many fun situations that it absolutely holds a special place in my heart. Then life happened, I didn't play it for a long time and after that trying to get back into it just felt like such a time sink. Played rimworld more during this time. But now it's back and I am not disappointed. I would have payed 70 euro for this no problem. Also I'm so happy Toady and Three are getting some money out of all this. At least I hope they are.
- hrnnnnnn 4y ago
  They're going to rake it in. I heard it's been the most wishlisted game on Steam for a while now.
  - INTPenis 4y ago
    Oh snap, I had no idea. I assumed it was still kinda sub-culture nerdy. I'm so happy.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - AustinDev 4y ago
      It’s been the top seller all day on steam. I dunno if it has the possibility to be for the month because I think we’ve got a couple other super high profile games coming out before month close.
discardedrefuse 4y ago
Looks like the initial ProtonDB reports from Linux players is looking promising! https://www.protondb.com/app/975370 https://www.protondb.com/app/975370
- mempko 4y ago
  I bought it and tried it on my linux box. Proton works perfectly from what I can tell. No issues that I have seen yet!
guerrilla 4y ago
I feel like this[1] should be the theme song of that game. Never played it myself, I hear it's epic hard but this song plays in my head every time I hear the name. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34CZjsEI1yU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34CZjsEI1yU
shanebellone 4y ago
I've never played DF and likely won't enjoy it. I'll still buy it because independent developers like this deserve our support. You can see the passion on their faces. That excites me. That deserves reward.
cptnapalm 4y ago
Still remember my last game from years ago. Concentric moats of lava with long drawbridges that raised to the outer side rather than inner. Goblin invasion. Waited till all of them were on the draw bridges. Raised the drawbridges and laughed as the goblins were catapulted away from my fortress, either into the lava or completely out of the local map.
birracerveza 4y ago
Awesome game, awesome update.
LunaSea 4y ago
Does anyone know of a book or other long form resource about how world generation works in Dwarf Fortress or procedural generation in general?
- otikik 4y ago
  "Procedural Generation in Game Design" was edited by Tarn Adams (df author) and Tanya Short. https://www.routledge.com/Procedural-Generation-in-Game-Design/Short-Adams/p/book/9781498799195 https://www.routledge.com/Procedural-Generation-in-Game-Desi...
  - LunaSea 4y ago
    I've seen this book before but as far as I know it's not a technical one no?
    - otikik 4y ago
      I have not read I myself.
Kim_Bruning 4y ago
I must strongly recommend against this game. Specifically, do not buy it if you have a programmer personality. Definitely do not buy it if you were planning to get any work done in the next week(s). If you choose to disregard this warning: At least buy it when you definitely have the free time, and don't mind losing a lot of sleep. ;-)
- danuker 4y ago
  Thankfully the end of year holidays are coming.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Game is too hard for me to figure out, so I bought it and got my 12 year old into playing it today. Then he can teach it to me. Such is the way of the Generations.
aldarion 4y ago
I'm happy about this, though I might give the original Dwarf Fortress a shot again - I tried playing it (the original) before, but I simply couldn't make sense of what was going on on the screen.
boriscal 4y ago
For anyone on classic DF, I've been running a fork of this visualizer: https://github.com/DFHack/stonesense https://github.com/DFHack/stonesense
DubiousPusher 4y ago
Look man, I've already got a real basement I'm worried about flooding.
totetsu 4y ago
I wish they'd bring back the DFTalk Podcast. That was the best thing to fall asleep to.

747 points by danso 4y ago

incomingpain 4y ago

It's out! $38

swozey 4y ago
I'm not sure where they're getting the number but 23 minutes left according to https://www.twitch.tv/gremlinformayor https://www.twitch.tv/gremlinformayor
sph 4y ago
Less than an hour, it says on Steam.
- incomingpain 4y ago
  Been saying less than an hour for more than an hour for me.
Tomte 4y ago
30 Euros.
deelowe 4y ago
It's showing $29.99 for me.
- nicolas_t 4y ago
  $16.44 for me in south east asia. I love regional pricing.
senectus1 4y ago
AU$44

sph 4y ago

Oh man, I can't wait. I got burned out with RimWorld recently (it's cool but it's not fun for me; I have been following and supporting the project since Early Access) and I've waited for accessible Dwarf Fortress for ages. I enjoy ASCII games (Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead [1] is surprisingly easy to get into in ASCII mode), but the obtuse UI of Dwarf Fortress was a little too much effort to learn. I hope the Adams brothers get some well-earned financial stability with this incredible endeavour. They are some old-school software craftsmen, devoted to the art of excellent game design for the sake of it, money be damned. And I can't wait for the next Kruggsmash [2] series, now with actual, beautiful sprites to pair with his beautiful drawings. EDIT: Kruggsmash is currently streaming his first look at this new version! https://youtu.be/sByxI7UX5-g https://youtu.be/sByxI7UX5-g -- 1: https://cataclysmdda.org/ https://cataclysmdda.org/ 2: https://youtube.com/@kruggsmash https://youtube.com/@kruggsmash

vanderZwan 4y ago
I wonder if CaptnDuck will stream something. I remember both enjoying his tutorial videos back in the day, as well as being utterly convinced them that I need not ever bother with actually trying to play Dwarf Fortress myself https://www.youtube.com/user/captnduck https://www.youtube.com/user/captnduck
tribaal 4y ago
That's it, I just got a mail from Steam, it's been released right now! https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  TAKE MY MONEY FASTER PLEASE
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Be sure to add the soundtrack so they can take more ;)

grenoire 4y ago

In terms of usability, I still just find Dwarf Fortress to be a decade behind Rimworld. The fact that we had to use Dwarf Therapist for years... Rimworld just has it all on the screen within four clicks, with clear indications on how to resolve issues like mood modifiers. Dwarf Fortress in all its complexity, embraces fuzziness in how things work, and focuses on a bit of a higher-level focus (fortresses reach many more dwarves than a Rimworld colony). However, this complexity makes the game a lot less accessible too. I hope the UI changes help bring ease of use and clarity!

mlindner 4y ago
I've tried Rimworld a couple times and it always came off as just bland, flat, and uninteresting compared to Dwarf Fortress. Once you played it a bit you could see "through" the game and into the random number generation beneath it. Also I didn't like the sci-fi aspect personally as I like fantasy more. Perhaps it's gotten better in the few intervening years since I last tried it.
- LoveMortuus 4y ago
  I love fantasy too! Do you know if any games that are like RimWorld but fantasy? I saw Amazing Cultivation Simulation but you need a master's degree to play that, at least that's how it felt to me...
  - philipov 4y ago
    > like RimWorld but fantasy? Dwarf Fortress ;)
    - LoveMortuus 4y ago
      The problem is/was the learning curve. And of course the UI. I really hope the Steam version is done well and not just one of those graphics packs that you can install on Dwarf Fortress.
      - 4y ago

danso 4y ago

I've put hundreds of hours into Rimworld and tried to get back into it recently. The DLC are pretty good and the mod community is just superb. But after putting a few hours into any colony, what ends up killing the vibe for me is the inevitable realization that the game is basically just a random challenge generator — e.g. as your colony becomes prosperous, a bunch of seeming arbitrary disasters are thrown your way. I wish there were a way to have the game be more like an emergent simulation, but maybe it requires the complexity of DF for it to feel right.

nicopappl 4y ago
I know I shouldn't recommend it because it is extremely addictive, but try Oxygen Not Included. To me it is like Rimworld, but without the feeling of arbitrary nonsense sometimes literally falling on your colonists' head. There is a lot of challenges, and all of them are natural consequences of the simulation. It's much more "emergent simulation" although since the simulation is much more focused on physics than humans, it might feel a bit too technical.
- forgetfulness 4y ago
  Oxygen Not Included is a ton of fun, the thing that makes me abandon my playthroughs is that, after learning so much of fake-plumbing, fake-hvac and fake-electrical installation mechanics, embarking on ever more ambitious projects that demand more planning and player-labor (harnessing that natural gas vent!) feels like a bit of a waste of time. It's so much of a job that I feel like I could be preparing to be an actual HVAC technician in real life with the amount of time and effort spent into keeping gases flowing through pipes at the right temperature in a simulation.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    Do you really think a video game is comparable to a 40 hour work week?
    - forgetfulness 4y ago

hutattedonmyarm 4y ago

I made the mistake of starting both, God Of War and a new Factorio run in the last few days, despite knowing that DF is coming out, along with the Portal update and the Witcher 3 update. I might not be the smarted person on here

Rayhem 4y ago
Wait wait wait, portal update?? What's that about?
- sph 4y ago
  Holy shit, I guess we were both living under a rock! Looks like there's been a graphical update with raytracing support
  - Tepix 4y ago
    Not yet, it's coming this week however.
- ct0 4y ago
  https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012840/Portal_with_RTX/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012840/Portal_with_RTX/
  - vanderZwan 4y ago
    Is it weird that I'm more impressed by the graphical update to Dwarf Fortress? It feels like a much bigger deal somehow
    - whywhywhywhy 4y ago
      It is a significantly harder task making DF accessible than tweaking the shaders on Portal.
      - 4y ago

dccoolgai 4y ago

I've played it probably more than any other game over the last 10 years. I'm really just buying it out of a sense of decency to pay back the guys who made it. I know I should have donated before, but I just didn't have time to figure it out. I may not even play it, just buying it to help those guys out.

bombcar 4y ago
For those interested in directly supporting Tarn and Zach you can find details here (Paypal/Patreon): http://www.bay12games.com/support.html http://www.bay12games.com/support.html

lemoncookiechip 4y ago

Less than an hour to go, I can't wait to get my hands on it.

philipov 4y ago

Mature Content Description: "Alcohol consumption is required for a dwarven fortress to run smoothly, as described in text."

Tomte 4y ago

I've tried DF ages ago, but it was simply too hard for me. I never really got into digging a fortress, already the first few minutes bounced me off. Even read a DF book. No help. I just bought it on Steam. Probably I will never play it, but it's one of those purchases that are… aspirational. I'd like to be a person who plays DF. I know it's stupid. But graphics and better onboarding are a real argument for me. What tipped me finally over the edge towards buying was the background about the creator's health problems. I like that he's doing DF single-mindedly and I can afford the game without thinking twice.

dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
> I'd like to be a person who plays DF. I know it's stupid Not stupid. The feeling of mastering a properly hard game is a good reason to try it. I've used the same "strategy" for most technically challenging games: play in long stretches, trying to make any kind of progress. Have the wiki open and read it any time you are confused. Just keep trying to do _something_. Eventually it will either click and you'll have a bunch of fun, or you'll tire out. If you tire out, just don't play the game again for a couple days, or whenever you regain your energy. Once it clicks once, it will instantly start being fun. The interesting part is that the click happens multiple times with challenging games. I've been playing EVE for more than a year now and the combat system _still_ gives me huge revelations. Same with DF, once you learn how to get your fortress rolling you can very quickly learn to build a fully defensible mega castle. Then the next click is realizing that makes the game boring and allowing some danger by fulfilling self placed challenges. edit: I just bought it and played it for a bit -- the updated graphics/UI are a great improvement! Obviously bit hard to judge but now there's proper icons indicating common actions (mine, cut trees), a tutorial.. give it a try!
- RupertEisenhart 4y ago
  Let me confirm the long stretches thing. I learned DF by setting aside two weeks and playing ~16 hours a day. Was a piece of cake. It's not the kind of game you can pick up with an hour here or there.

rocket_surgeron 4y ago

And the soundtrack is fantastic. https://youtu.be/Ekq3TDPznGI https://youtu.be/Ekq3TDPznGI

causality0 4y ago

I wonder if it's mod-friendly. All the sprites drawn to be looking to the lower left while moving right is much more distracting than I expected.

bombcar 4y ago
It's enabled on the workshop but IIRC tileset changes may have to come in a bit later.
- causality0 4y ago
  It seems like such a bizarre decision to not draw them facing "outward" if they're not going to change appearance based on direction of movement.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    I suspect much of it comes from the original ASCII for a dwarf: @ Which kinda looks like it's facing right ... (depending on the font)

mikrl 4y ago

Last time I played DF I would just compulsively keep going until 1-3 AM despite having to go to work the next day. I had had a normal sleep schedule before that bout, and was otherwise a functional and responsible adult. I’ve been waiting for this release for ages, but I do not think it’s going to do my mental health any favours Hah

iKlsR 4y ago
Launching the same day my Steam Deck arrives, Christmas came early.
- B0073D 4y ago
  Oh my lord, DF on the Steam Deck? Let us know how it goes!

nkrisc 4y ago

I never made it past reading about Dwarf Fortress. I’d like to try it, but I simply do not have the time or patience to learn what looked like a very arcane UI and gameplay. I’m really hoping this graphical update will lower the barrier to entry for me.

TheBigSalad 4y ago

Does anyone know why it took so long for this game to get graphics?

bombcar 4y ago
The Tarn attempted to make a graphical game (he and his brother have always had The Game™ in their minds, and have approached it various times) and it was a complete wash; Tarn didn't know enough about graphics to do that part, and considered it as a distraction. That was Slaves to Armok I - which is why DF's official title is Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress. He chose to skip all the graphics entirely, use ASCII to render the simulation, and focus on the "story-telling simulation" instead. And though he added support for tile sets and some rendering, that's mainly how it worked since. It's taken about 2+ years for this Steam release to happen, and that's with a lot of support; during those years DF has basically been "stalled" and not much new has happened in the simulation. This has to be a bit disappointing to Tarn, as that's what he enjoys most.
throw_me_5555 4y ago
It had optional graphical tilesets for a decade or so, this release is more about overhauling whole GUI. Some stuff was just plain annoying like having to manually create bedrooms from furniture. Some stuff was fixed by DF-hack project, for more sensible experience.

YesBox 4y ago

For those who like this type of game, I'm working on a city builder heavily inspired by Dwarf Fortress. Demand will be much more granular than traditional city builders (e.g. specific business/service needs and building the appropriate buildings for them). You'll be able to see the interior of buildings and design the buildings as you please, save them as blueprints, and be able to plop down duplicates. You can find progress updates on: https://www.reddit.com/r/Archapolis/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Archapolis/ Or a few video logs at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUYLstskSLNcSkFg1giTBtQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUYLstskSLNcSkFg1giTBtQ

pelasaco 4y ago

"this is our life's work and we are never gonna stop": https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/

hacknewslogin 4y ago

I just got an email from steam, it's now available for purchase! $29.99. I can't wait to go home and add it to my wishlist and buy it in three or four years. And then maybe play it!

hacknewslogin 4y ago
Plot twist, a friend just bought it for me. Now to see how playable it is on a steamdeck.
- jason-phillips 4y ago
  Not bad, apparently https://steamcommunity.com/app/975370/discussions/0/3709307511569354934/ https://steamcommunity.com/app/975370/discussions/0/37093075...

fullstop 4y ago

If there was ever a title which needed a native Linux build, this is it. ProtonDB does not list compatibility yet, have any of you tried?

tstrimple 4y ago
Proton fails to launch. I was able to get it running in Lutris with the caffe runner in a couple minutes though.
- fullstop 4y ago
  Thanks! I'll look into Lutris.
  - tstrimple 4y ago
    It's a bit annoying to setup initially. Caffe is the default runner for Bottles and plays more games out of the box than any other runner I've tested. However I hate the Bottles interface so I downloaded the Caffe runner separately. https://github.com/bottlesdevs/wine/releases/tag/caffe-7.20 https://github.com/bottlesdevs/wine/releases/tag/caffe-7.20 Then you can drop that into the default folder in Lutris and choose it as the runner. Lutris also integrates with Steam so it'll see your entire steam library and you can choose a different wine runner and wine options on a per-game basis.
eljost 4y ago
Works fine w/ steam and "Proton Experimental" under "Linux 5.10.154-1-MANJARO #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Nov 10 20:51:28 UTC 2022 x86_64 GNU/Linux". I had to install the package "sdl_ttf" though; without it, the game just hung at the inital screen that says "Loading".
- dvzk 4y ago
  If this update is like the old version, it has bundled dependencies on glibc and SDL 1.2. You can overwrite the outdated glibc libraries with symlinks to the system glibc. SDL, SDL_image, and SDL_ttf can be relinked to sdl12-compat, which implements the SDL1.2 ABI using the maintained SDL2 libraries. (edit: I forgot this is a Windows-only release, so maybe disregard this.)

SCLeo 4y ago

Is there a way to play Dwarf Fortress that involves less losing? (maybe mods or some settings?) I know the slogan is "losing is fun", but to me it really isn't. In RimWorld, you can install some slightly (read: extremely) overpowered turret mods, plus a moderate amount of save scumming, I can make my colony last pretty much forever (until I am bored hundreds of hours later). Are there techniques enabling similar playstyles with Dwarf Fortress?

Filligree 4y ago
To name some: - Fill a tunnel with traps. - Embark in a location with no enemies. But maybe instead with undead. - Set up a lava chamber above your entrance hall, and a remotely triggered floodgate… - Close the doors on your enemies, and have archers on walls above them. - Create a “danger room”, make an OP army. There’s no shortage of ways to survive, once you dig into a few of the tools.
- erik_seaberg 4y ago
  Early on (maybe before you get to a stone layer) you want your entrance to have something tougher than a door. A tunnel leading to stairs up and a floor hatch is good, or be ready to wall off the tunnel by stockpiling blocks nearby.
theonemind 4y ago
What's the "winning" condition? I've barely played, but I gather that even the most successful fortress ends up with all of the dwarves dead eventually. I think you just have to set your own goals. Maybe you want to get a population of 1000 before death, or maybe you want a fortress to last 100 years. If you're not very good, then your goals can be very small, and get larger. To mix some metaphors, the house always wins, but can you make par for the course, or "justify your seed" (to use the tennis term I picked up from Infinite Jest)?
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  It's an open ended sandbox so there's no dedicated "you win" condition, but becoming a mountainhome is the narrative end goal.

winReInstall 4y ago

These "open source games" are the most brutal attack ont the gaming industry imagineable, eating the most rare ressource ever. Playtime and players. Minecraft already took a huge chunk out of the industry. Which they then tried to solve by encoperating this and selling additions. Now another game appears, that offers endless replay ability with fascinating stuff. If the onslought would be kept up, all those monetization schemes could collapse over time, by virtue of simply being boring compared to what the "indy" dev scene has to offer. One starts to wonder, what could happen if a concentrated efforst started churning out ever better world generators and "deep" games, allowing others non "deep" players to join the world just as "action" heroes or adventurers.

totetsu 4y ago
DF source is only open in that museum where it’s on display. And it appeared a very long time ago. This comment is so almost wrong it seems like GPT
escapecharacter 4y ago
In what sense do you mean “open source”?
- willismichael 4y ago
  I'm baffled by this usage of "open source" ... neither Dwarf Fortress nor Minecraft are open source.
- ImprobableTruth 4y ago
  I think they just mean indie rather than open source.
  - winReInstall 4y ago
    Yeah, sorry, the border betweeen indy and open source comunities are very blurry. Often times games released on steams might be even available in less polished versions on github or just stolen gpl versions of them, that nobody persecutes. Its really not that clear of a distinctions as it used to be.

Zardoz84 4y ago

Wow! They really improved the UI. I find really nice that now you not need to use DwarfTerapist to handle it. And the new game that I just begin (it's yet early summer) and I got a siege of zombie elfs. and I don't have any defense... funny times!

robocat 4y ago
- batman-farts 4y ago
  Thank you for your advice! Might you have any idea when I will be able to use ShartGPT, so that I can restyle my written English to seem as though I am having a sudden, uncontrolled bowel movement while writing?
  - bcrosby95 4y ago
    Hey, I take a lot of time and effort controlling my diet to achieve this (while knocking years off my lifespan). I won't have any low effort shart writing around here.
- MagicMoonlight 4y ago
  I am humbled by the level of snark you have achieved
  - robocat 4y ago
    Strangely enough, I was only trying to be helpful, yet clearly I failed spectacularly enough to be flagged. Firstly, I think that most people subliminally discount the content of a comment if the writer has poor English language skills. ChatGPT mostly produces correct English (better than many people I know), even if the style is boring. Using ChatGPT as a teaching aide makes perfect sense to me. Edit: I find it interesting that the replies are so negatively snarky. Now I have to doubt myself: was I was subconsciously being snarky? How do I become more helpful? How do I discourage selecting for snarky replies? One non-judgemental and helpful resource I will use will be to ask for help from ChatGPT, ironically enough, as soon as it returns from being presently offline!

AdamH12113 4y ago

I a fair bit of time playing Dwarf Fortress a year or two ago. Once I grasped that I wasn't supposed to directly tell the dwarves what to do, I started picking up the mechanics much more quickly. The depth of the simulation is amazing, but it's not particularly legible unless you spend a lot of time manually poring over descriptive text in menus. DFHack and its various plug-ins[1] (especially labormanager) and Dwarf Therapist greatly ease the management process and can help avoid confusion when your dwarves just won't do what you want. It's still a lot of fun to play around with for a while. I would love to see what could be done with a larger development team working on it, but I suppose it would be hard to keep the concept focused. [1] https://docs.dfhack.org/en/0.47.05-r2/docs/Plugins.html https://docs.dfhack.org/en/0.47.05-r2/docs/Plugins.html

arglebargle123 4y ago

Speaking of RimWorld - is the engine extensible enough to implement the dwarf fortress ruleset? That's the graphical upgrade I really want.

deliriumchn 4y ago
to some extent, but it will be a very small extent lol DF is too complex in terms of world simulation (dwarfes have actual organs/limbs etc, liquids have different behavior)
- plopz 4y ago
  Also rimworld is 2d and df is 3d
- throw_me_5555 4y ago
  Limbs/organs are bad example since that is actually implemented in vanilla RimWorld, including organ trading.
  - db48x 4y ago
    It’s an odd comparison: both DF and RimWorld are more complex than each other here :) RimWorld simulates organs in a more complete way than Dwarf Fortress does, and lets you surgically remove and replace those organs. That’s pretty cool, and a lot fun. Each part has hit points, and each can be lost in combat. A character without body parts suffers from infirmities or death, depending on how critical the part is. A character who is missing a leg can still function, but moves around more slowly. RimWorld tracks similar information about the body parts of animals and robots, which makes combat against them a lot of fun. Herbivores run away from pain, and robots still have organs like cameras and chemical reactors that can be destroyed to incapacitate them. Dwarf Fortress simulates body parts in a more complete way than RimWorld does. Each body part (limb, torso, head, etc), has hair, skin, fat, muscle, and bone layers each with their own properties. These parts also have sensory and motor nerves as well as blood vessels. DF keeps track of the color of the skin and hair, the depth of the fat and muscle (and those are related to the Dwarf’s stats), and what type of damage each layer has taken (bruises, cuts, tears, etc). Damage to some layers can heal naturally, be surgically treated, get infected, leave a scar, etc. Others, like nerves, often won’t heal. This sometimes leaves characters unable to use body parts that they haven’t completely lost. It keeps track of some organs, such as the brain and the gonads, but not others like stomachs, hearts, lungs, etc. Surgical options are much more limited, as befits the setting. You can clean a wound (with or without soap), set bones, suture cuts and tears, and use casts or traction tables to immobilize broken limbs. A character who is missing a leg cannot walk normally, but the game will try its hardest to allow them some mobility using other parts, or you can give them crutches. Like RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress tracks the overall body plan for all species in the game (thousands upon thousands of them), as well as the unique information about each individual. Dwarf Fortress gains many of the same combat and storytelling benefits as RimWorld from its in–depth simulation. Dwarf Fortress goes a step beyond RimWorld though, when it comes to Forgotten Beasts and the Undead. Forgotten Beasts are horrific monsters left over from the chaotic creation of the world. They have _randomized_ body plans. Sometimes they will be a combination of two or more creatures, like a giant feathered iguana with bat wings and a fiery breath. Other times they will be a standard body plan (such as a colossal troll) made from an unusual substance (such as quartz, or fire, or iron). And it knows the material properties of quartz and fire and iron, and it can simulate how your weapons will do against them! The Undead are a similar kind of fun. These are ordinary creatures (such as your own fallen dwarves) who have been reanimated by arcane forces. The Undead of course do not feel pain, do not need blood or intact nerves to use their body parts, and ignore all damage. And remember how a crippled character will still try to crawl if they are missing a leg? You don’t know fear until your dwarves are being chased by an undead skull that is pushing itself along by its eyebrows, biting anything that comes near. Your old nightmares will fade into irrelevance once one of your dwarves butchers a cow and the bloody skin and hair are reanimated to terrorize the innocent.

xcubic 4y ago

This seems to be for windows only. Can it be run on mac?

bombcar 4y ago
Supposedly Mac and Linux will be coming later. The "original" DF of course supports both.
mempko 4y ago
It works flawlessly for me on linux using proton. Just select properties on the game and force compatibility to have it use proton.
- coldpie 4y ago
  No Proton on Mac :) I would guess it works well in CrossOver for Mac, but I haven't tried it.

thegeekpirate 4y ago

I've been sitting in the main menu for roughly an hour now just listening to the phenomenal music!

artemonster 4y ago

Dwarf Fortress is Emacs of games. Would have taken over the world by now if it was not made by some strange nerds that have their own subjective beauty standards that absolutely no one shares.

taftster 4y ago
But would it have taken over the world, if not made by some strange nerds?? I think Dwarf Fortress would not had been successful, in terms of depth/richness of gameplay, had the nerds "sold out" too soon. The beauty of DF is the subjective standards you refer. DF would have just been yet-another-world-generated-game.

theptip 4y ago

I’m probably not going to play this, because I don’t want to sink hundreds of hours into it (again). But it’s an instant release-day Steam buy for me; these guys are legends, and deserve some cash and recognition for their original work on DF, and also for what looks to be a well-executed graphical overhaul. “Better UI” was the #1 DF feature for as long as I played it; it will be interesting to see how many more players they get in this incarnation.

troon-lover 4y ago
[dead]

trhr 4y ago

It's about time. I've been waiting to give these people my money for a decade.

derefr 4y ago

There's a certain ugliness that graphical-tile-based skins of over roguelikes and other TUI-iconography games have, that you don't tend to see with graphical-tile-based games that were designed to be such — i.e. where the tiles and the tileset are a compression mechanism for scenes originally conceptualized without tiles. I'm quite sad to say that — at least judging from the screenshots here — DF's graphical skin here seems to share that "thin graphical skin over a TUI game" look. What I'm talking about here is best exemplified by looking at this image: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/df4-1440x810.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/df4-1... . There are two types of snow tile (full snow, and patchy snow) here, surrounded by grass tiles. The full-snow tiles are connected, RPG-Maker "9-cell brush-texture"-wise, as if they're little dug-out ponds full of snow. The patchy snow tiles are all individual, with no ability to blend into one-another, and so end up looking like a bunch of individual objects on a clear grid — like ore deposits in a rock face in Runescape. Neither of these (square-grid connected runs, or non-tesselatable one-tile blocks of varying intensity) is a good choice for depicting snow on grass. A graphical designer who wanted to portray the scene of "a field patchy with snow" in a tile-based game engine, would not create these particular visual elements as the primitives to depict said scene. These primitives are instead only used here because they are the ones that can have a 1:1 mapping with particular underlying DF TUI tiles. I feel like it would be quite practical, if you were building something like this from the ground up, to write an algorithm to extract from DF's raw tile data here, an "elevation map" of snowiness (heck, maybe it's already a pass available internally in the engine, before it gets quantized out as tiles!); to do some smoothing over said snowiness-map; and then to have grass/dirt/sand/etc tiles consume said "snowiness map" as a shader pass over their textures. (I know that all this terrain is deformable. So what? Regenerating a 2D snowiness-map over a slightly-past-the-viewport crop of the tile data [i.e. a very low-res sample grid] would take less time than pressing the key to dig a hole. It could be done every frame, even.) And you could do all sorts of other things like that — e.g. have the lava in https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/df1-1440x810.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/df1-1... be a flowing mass of liquid rather than a bunch of particular static grid tiles. I feel like the only reason the developers of these graphical adaptations of TUI games don't do this, is because they are trying — at least partially — to serve the part of the existing player-base who prefers the TUI version of the game; rather than focusing solely on the part of the player-base who doesn't like TUIs but plays the game despite that, and the untapped market of people who aren't playing the game because of how ugly and gridlike it is. (And if you're wondering, this sort of higher-level adaptation doesn't have to be to the detriment of gameplay. "The grid" just becomes a UX feature, an extra lens and maybe an always-on fade around the player and/or the cursor, rather than something evident in the design of the levels. Compare e.g. Sim City 2000 [evident grid] with SC3000 or SC4 [UX-layer grid] for what I mean here.)

LoveMortuus 4y ago

I know this will probably get downvoted into oblivion, but still, I can't be the only one... I've tried the graphically updated DF, and honestly it doesn't feel like much of an improvement, it just feels like DF with a graphics pack and not an impressive one. Like yeah, it's good that there's mouse support and clickable menus, but they feel like they were an afterthought, like they're not yet finished. I don't know, maybe it's my fault for expecting too much from it, but I was legit hoping for a UI and UX experience equivalent or at least close to that of RimWorld or Amazing Cultivation Simulator. I hope that It'll improve as time passes or that the community will develop something amazing.

coletonodonnell 4y ago

Although not exactly like Dwarf Fortress, I've been playing Songs of Syx[1] recently and it's incredibly good. It is made by a single developer and it is super fun. It's more of an Empire building game, and it checks a lot of the boxes I want out of these sorts of games. I can see it becoming even more impressive and as time goes on. Demo is unlimited and free, it's just 3-6 months behind the paid version with features, so if you like it definitely support the dev. [1] https://songsofsyx.com/ https://songsofsyx.com/

TrevorJ 4y ago
Yesss! I haven't learned how to play the game nearly as much as I want but it's so unique in it's scope.
sleight42 4y ago
Well, crap. Like I need yet another bad habit. Thanks?

INTPenis 4y ago

I waited for it and as soon as it came out I went offline. I played DF a lot around 09-11. I knew all the commands by heart, experienced so many fun situations that it absolutely holds a special place in my heart. Then life happened, I didn't play it for a long time and after that trying to get back into it just felt like such a time sink. Played rimworld more during this time. But now it's back and I am not disappointed. I would have payed 70 euro for this no problem. Also I'm so happy Toady and Three are getting some money out of all this. At least I hope they are.

hrnnnnnn 4y ago
They're going to rake it in. I heard it's been the most wishlisted game on Steam for a while now.
- INTPenis 4y ago
  Oh snap, I had no idea. I assumed it was still kinda sub-culture nerdy. I'm so happy.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - AustinDev 4y ago
    It’s been the top seller all day on steam. I dunno if it has the possibility to be for the month because I think we’ve got a couple other super high profile games coming out before month close.

discardedrefuse 4y ago

Looks like the initial ProtonDB reports from Linux players is looking promising! https://www.protondb.com/app/975370 https://www.protondb.com/app/975370

mempko 4y ago
I bought it and tried it on my linux box. Proton works perfectly from what I can tell. No issues that I have seen yet!

guerrilla 4y ago

I feel like this[1] should be the theme song of that game. Never played it myself, I hear it's epic hard but this song plays in my head every time I hear the name. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34CZjsEI1yU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34CZjsEI1yU

shanebellone 4y ago

I've never played DF and likely won't enjoy it. I'll still buy it because independent developers like this deserve our support. You can see the passion on their faces. That excites me. That deserves reward.

cptnapalm 4y ago

Still remember my last game from years ago. Concentric moats of lava with long drawbridges that raised to the outer side rather than inner. Goblin invasion. Waited till all of them were on the draw bridges. Raised the drawbridges and laughed as the goblins were catapulted away from my fortress, either into the lava or completely out of the local map.

birracerveza 4y ago

Awesome game, awesome update.

LunaSea 4y ago

Does anyone know of a book or other long form resource about how world generation works in Dwarf Fortress or procedural generation in general?

otikik 4y ago
"Procedural Generation in Game Design" was edited by Tarn Adams (df author) and Tanya Short. https://www.routledge.com/Procedural-Generation-in-Game-Design/Short-Adams/p/book/9781498799195 https://www.routledge.com/Procedural-Generation-in-Game-Desi...
- LunaSea 4y ago
  I've seen this book before but as far as I know it's not a technical one no?
  - otikik 4y ago
    I have not read I myself.

Kim_Bruning 4y ago

I must strongly recommend against this game. Specifically, do not buy it if you have a programmer personality. Definitely do not buy it if you were planning to get any work done in the next week(s). If you choose to disregard this warning: At least buy it when you definitely have the free time, and don't mind losing a lot of sleep. ;-)

danuker 4y ago
Thankfully the end of year holidays are coming.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

Game is too hard for me to figure out, so I bought it and got my 12 year old into playing it today. Then he can teach it to me. Such is the way of the Generations.

aldarion 4y ago

I'm happy about this, though I might give the original Dwarf Fortress a shot again - I tried playing it (the original) before, but I simply couldn't make sense of what was going on on the screen.

boriscal 4y ago

For anyone on classic DF, I've been running a fork of this visualizer: https://github.com/DFHack/stonesense https://github.com/DFHack/stonesense

DubiousPusher 4y ago

Look man, I've already got a real basement I'm worried about flooding.

totetsu 4y ago

I wish they'd bring back the DFTalk Podcast. That was the best thing to fall asleep to.