8 ms·

Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates

502 points by Tomte 1mo ago

monospacegames 1mo ago
It's been a while since I last played DF and I'm surprised to see that both this article and the video are a bit light on details, IIRC they used to showcase upcoming updates a lot more. Digging a bit more it looks like the magic system will be built around deities, spheres of influence [1], and workshops/professions centered around magic leading to procedurally generated spells. I'm really excited to see how it'll turn out. [1] https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Sphere https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Sphere
- Sharlin 1mo ago
  This seems more like a teaser trailer. I presume more information is forthcoming.
  - flurb 1mo ago
    They have a history of at least trying to be transparent, especially in their Future of the Fortress posts[0]. Emphasize on trying to, as they're not exactly great at sticking to plans, though that certainly improved with the Kitfox partnership. [0]: https://bay12games.com/dwarves/ https://bay12games.com/dwarves/
Mobius01 1mo ago
I wish nothing but success to Tarn and Zach, it’s great that releasing on Steam and adding a friendlier UI helped the game reach new audiences. It’s the proverbial time black hole.
- frollogaston 1mo ago
  Weirdly the ASCII art was what drew me in the most. Once accustomed to it, feels like The Matrix where they're reading the world.
  - DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
    as someone who grew up playing ascii games I was pretty excited about the graphical update. there is a novelty to ascii, but its a barrier to entry and major eye strain.
  - sooheon 1mo ago
    Same, the ASCII interface is an eternal classic to me, the updated graphics try harder and achieve less (just my opinion).
  - gambiting 1mo ago
    I have the same feeling playing Caves of Qud.
    - nikitau 1mo ago
      Qud is a gem of a game, same publisher too! I get what you are saying, and it's use of ASCII plus ASCII-like graphics makes the experience a lot friendlier imo.
  - nonethewiser 1mo ago
    Love DF, havent played the steam version. The menus and lack of native ui controls for some things (dfhack) were by far the biggest problem, not the ascii. I get that the ascii is noisy and a matter of taste - not disputing that - but there were much bigger UX problems.
    - oortoo 1mo ago
      Steam version is much worse than the fan UI options that were already available, sadly. Its also why I explain why DF really failed to take off after the Steam release. It's nowhere near the best, or even best looking, way to play the game.
      - OkayPhysicist 1mo ago
        I pretty strongly disagree. I can see some preferring some fan art style over the official one, even if I don't. But the official gui having support for rendering all the various critters, and factoring in clothing, multi-level, etc, really made the Steam version's graphics vastly better than anything else that was available at the time.
- UltraSane 1mo ago
  In a documentary about them putting Dwarf Fortress on Steam Tarn talked about how he had to split the $7 million first payment from Steam with his brother and it turned out the easiest way was to just use the bank app.
  - zhynn 1mo ago
    You are thinking of the NoClip documentary! It is fantastic and well worth your time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwLSgaYPKA0&list=PL-THgg8QnvU5xvhtFe7orgcnfIqFq_qVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwLSgaYPKA0&list=PL-THgg8Qnv...
    - metalliqaz 1mo ago
      NoClip does a great job. I also recommend their Prey/Arcane documentary.
      - polytely 1mo ago
        Yeah I love all their Arkane stuff, and the two Half Life docs they did under their whitelabel company Secret Tape company for Valve. And of course the big Disco Elysium series. It is actually their 10th anniversary in September, so if you like their work I would highly recommend their patreon to make sure they can do another 10 years. Their discord is actually one of my favourite places on the internet to talk about games because everyone in there has such great taste and is knowledgeable about the actual production process of games. They also have a second channel/patreon now called noclip_2 which is focused on underground/indie games which has been a constant source of joy for me, all the best games I've played in the past year I've discovered via their videos or their discord. Just great vibes all around. Edit: almost forgot, they are also running a project to digitize old videogame tapes so if you want to see old interviews with carmack or footage from E3 in really nice quality they have a YouTube channel for that too https://youtube.com/@nocliparchive https://youtube.com/@nocliparchive
  - polytely 1mo ago
    The noclip documentary series for any other readers who might be interested 1. The Origins of Dwarf Fortress: https://youtu.be/MxV24so-dw8 https://youtu.be/MxV24so-dw8 2. How Dwarf Fortress Evolved over 16 Years of Development: https://youtu.be/PiNeDarPzeI https://youtu.be/PiNeDarPzeI 3. How Dwarf Fortress Coming to Steam Changed Everything: https://youtu.be/TX65XCk2-6U https://youtu.be/TX65XCk2-6U anecdote about the money starts @ 18:40 4. Life After the Success of Dwarf Fortress: https://youtu.be/I5zgBXp4e8A https://youtu.be/I5zgBXp4e8A
- Our_Benefactors 1mo ago
  “Friendlier” and still one of the worst UIs available. It’s nearly impenetrable and the game has no tutorial to speak of, no on-ramps for new players, and is probably the most overrated game I’ve ever had the displeasure of playing. I’m convinced from articles about dwarf fortress that it’s a game that few actually play and enjoy, but like talking about as if it’s fun. The promise of dwarf fortress is far more interesting than the actual gameplay. EDIT: To people who are rebutting this by saying “it’s just not for you” - that’s entirely my point. Few people enjoy it. I am the majority opinion here.
  - Catloafdev 1mo ago
    Yep, the game is difficult to get into, it's not for everyone. The game is great, though. You are in the "I have no idea what's going on" phase.
    - Our_Benefactors 1mo ago
      It’s the games job to create an on ramp to understanding. It’s not mine to spend 200 hours grasping every concept before I can play “the real game”, that’s just shitty game design.
      - Catloafdev 1mo ago
        You're totally allowed to have that opinion. Time is valuable. It does have a tutorial nowadays, but it's still not easy. Not everyone _wants_ to learn Dwarf Fortress, and that's fine - it's not for everyone. But I'm just providing context that, for those of us that have learned, it is a great game.
      - all2 1mo ago
        This depends largely on your expectation for what a 'game' should be. Puzzle boxes, for example, have zero on ramp, and yet many many people enjoy them, enjoy the struggle of discovery. Arguably the edges of mathematics and science are inhabited by similar people, living where the rules are ill defined, where there is much to be discovered rather than pre-digested and spoon fed. I have little patience for games that don't spoon feed, so I get where you're coming from. I watched my brother play DF and decided I didn't want to spend my time like that, trying to parse ascii, trying to figure out how all the things interacted. I also don't like puzzle boxes that much. To each their own.
- postalrat 1mo ago
  Makes me think how would an AI interface to a game like dwarf fortress play out. Where you tell it what you want like some sort of dwarven ruler.
  - Planktonne 1mo ago
    The point of DF, to a large extent, is precise control and detail. It's the opposite of the approach taken by AI games that want to generalise based on simple prompts.
    - pavel_lishin 1mo ago
      > The point of DF, to a large extent, is precise control and detail. I don't know, it's basically Minecraft with Lemmings. You control a lot, but at the end, the AI comparison might be somewhat apt - you tell the dwarves what to do, and they mostly do it. When they're not struck by a strange mood, or when they're not too depressed to work, or when they're not being eaten by a Forgotten Beast (beware its deadly dust!)
      - Planktonne 1mo ago
        I take your point, but those are also all things you can control and manage, albeit indirectly.
    - DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
      to each their own, but that is the least interesting part of DF for me. I like the narrative element and enjoy delegating random shit and seeing what happens.
    - ux266478 1mo ago
      I would pose that's a matter of holding it wrong. Like, integrating generative AI as a prompt to an API endpoint exposed to the user is one of the worst, most naive and bland ways to use it as a game subsystem that I can think of. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of problems with trying to use generative AI as a subsystem for a game, problems which exist at a conceptual level. But all the games I've seen that integrate AI as a subsystem don't even come remotely close to hitting that ceiling. I think it's ultimately up to the fact that an interesting usage of generative AI requires a level of technical competency and theory that's well beyond that of the layman. The people making games that utilize AI generally seem to lack the chops to make a good game or do interesting things with AI. The people with the chops and manhours to make a good game with AI: - Don't want the backlash of having a generative model in their game, because no matter the context that's a lot of very bad press for something that's very difficult and time consuming to implement. - See the immediate problems and difficulty that arise from a decently integrated concept and execution, and even without the bad press, understand that the juice isn't worth the squeeze. That it's always going to be an immensely stupid gimmick in the end, one that's trying way too hard. That won't stop us from having 10,000 pieces of shovelware getting churned out that have the worst, most uninspired integrations imaginable mind you. We clearly already have those. For those that could do something better with the tech, there's too many good reasons to not touch it.
- colechristensen 1mo ago
  I had the muscle memory for the full keyboard control on pre-steam releases and the loss of some complete keyboard controls and things just changing made it so I never really got into the Steam release, which was pretty disappointing. I get it though.
  - OkayPhysicist 1mo ago
    I'm in a similar, but less extreme boat. The new interface has its perks, especially in terms of discoverability, but for tasks that need to be done repeatedly (request 10 beds be made before you have a manager, for example), you really miss the ability to rock some chords.
  - Agentlien 1mo ago
    It took me some time to remap the muscle memory but it felt so worth it. The Steam version is not just a new AI, it introduced a lot of gameplay changes which really improved the underlying systems a lot.
    - fc417fc802 1mo ago
      Does the non-steam version not receive the same gameplay updates? I had been under the impression that the only difference was the UI.
      - colechristensen 1mo ago
        The non-steam version also had its controls significantly changed
      - db48x 1mo ago
        The version available for free on their website is the same exact program as the one you purchase on Steam. It simply includes a different set of graphics for the UI. These graphics are designed to look as if they are made up of text characters, but in reality they are still just sprites. The sprites that come with the version you buy from Steam are designed to look like a normal but stylized gui.
- oortoo 1mo ago
  Dwarf Fortress's Steam UI is by far, my least favorite thing about the game. Does anyone else agree? After playing with the Lazy Newb's Pack and other similar tools for years, I found the Steam version to be a maaaaasive downgrade. The mouse was tied to the framerate, everything felt sluggish and hard to control. It really irks me because I had been telling everyone for years to play this game, and finally it gets an "official" release and I found it to be... the worst version of the game I'd tried yet. Maybe its improved since I last tried it. But it would be hard to outdo what the fans had done with the UI, IMO. Even features like seasonal color schemes felt almost vital to me. Not to mention customizing your own preferred sprites... I almost wish Tarn and Zach had kept to building core gameplay and let the fans handle the UI, with some sort of official team-up to bring it to Steam. I'd recommended Lazy Newb Pack to almost anyone but I don't think I'd recommend the Steam version, at least the version I tried.
  - tripleee 1mo ago
    I don't mind the UI so much but my biggest issue is they got rid of the keyboard controls. I really wish they'd put some actual effort into the graphics of the game. Even some minimal animations would be nice.
    - drudolph914 1mo ago
      I actually think this type of suggestion/thinking is not good for the game. the mystique of dwarf fortress is that it's a game that plays in your imagination, not on the screen. the point of the ascii visuals is to give a player enough context to understand the state of the world, but it's intentionally obtuse so fun arrises from your brain having to color in all the details. any suggestion that tries to add more polish to the graphics brings you farther away from where the fun lives
      - tripleee 1mo ago
        Going to have to agree to disagree here. Graphical polish would make it much more enjoyable for me, and I spent enough time with the ascii version back in the day to get used to it. Good thing is they can and do have both styles.
polytely 1mo ago
It's so exciting, I've heard about them doing magic for a decade, and now it is actually approaching.
- DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
  same, I'm going to break the hell out of this update
yuchi 1mo ago
I’ve been tinkering with a game engine where magic is made of first principles for a very long time. Cannot wait to see the gameplay and mechanics here!
- DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
  i've been doing something similar and decided to stick with godot. have you found yourself constrained with engine boilerplate or do you feel like you are making good progress on the magic system?
  - yuchi 1mo ago
    Only working on the magic system itself, unfortunately making the game around the mechanics is not something I enjoy, so I have been implementing different approaches with some minimal debugging UI. Did not reach the need for an actual game engine
8note 1mo ago
What ive generally heard is that this is more of a refactor and base functionality improvement, rather than building out all the actual magic systems to start with. 2-10 updates in the future will have much more fleshed out magic
- duttish 1mo ago
  OPs post made me curious about jumping in, how often do they release updates? If I'm going to wait for this and the next one.
  - DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
    this game will be updated until the creators die, its a passion project and is a genre defining masterpiece if you are into procedurally generated narrative driven world sims.
  - OkayPhysicist 1mo ago
    Historically, they did a big update every year or two. Since the Steam release, they've sped up significantly, with medium sized updates every 2-3 months.
davoneus 1mo ago
The only game I've I've supported where I ended up buying licenses for friends and family. Lot of respect for them and their game.
flurb 1mo ago
I'm still pissed about the fact that they essentially gave the finger to everyone who has been long-term supporters - when they added the G to their UI, they essentially scrapped the old. In favor of a mouse-driven design, they dropped the old, keyboard-driven UI. Long-term supporters, in this case, means people paying, and not insubstantial amounts either - before they partnered with Kitfox, they used to publish how much they were receiving. Tens of thousands of $ a month, mind you. For monthly contributions at that level for many, many years I would expect at least a nod - instead they straight-up told everyone they'd abandon keyboard users, a decision later recanted. That said, Dwarf Fortress holds a special place in my heart. Only regret I have is that I didn't track how many hours I put in. In excess of 10k, I'm sure.
- nottorp 1mo ago
  They also dropped the Mac version. They complain there are few Mac players on Steam. Well, I'm not going to buy it if it doesn't run on the desktop OS [1] i use most, duh. [1] My Linux boxes are headless. And the windows boxes I have to RDP into them. That may work for a game with a beginning and and end via Steam streaming or something, but not for a forever game you just keep around.
  - bigyabai 1mo ago
    The game runs fine in Proton, including with dfhack. You can probably get it working on your Mac with a tiny bit of Crossover/Wine/GPTK tweaking.
    - hamdingers 1mo ago
      That's missing the point. There were official native MacOS builds and now there aren't. Can't be too mad about it though, it was free back then too.
      - bigyabai 1mo ago
        macOS has changed a lot more than Windows or Linux did in the last decade. It's hardly Tarn's fault, here.
pwillia7 1mo ago
Does any other game have true procedural generated magic systems like DF talks about? I have always been curious how and if they'll pull it off and if it will just end up being all pretty much the same
- DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
  yes, there are several games exploring this idea on steam.
  - philipov 1mo ago
    Could you name a few of the best ones?
    - DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
      Noita is the first that comes to mind. Some others that I have in my library are magicraft, fictorum, and spell chain. I'm messing around with these ideas myself, reminds me of the old days of crafting broken spells in morrowind.
      - oortoo 1mo ago
        Noita isn't really on the level that DF describes. Noita randomizes wands and allows you to make custom spells by leveraging different qualities, but its not procedurally generating the rules of magic themselves. The rules are locked in from the start.
    - llagerlof 1mo ago
      Magicmaker is pretty solid.
lyu07282 1mo ago
They can make a simulation of magic based on the fabric of a procedural universe work, but even they failed to make a simulation of economics work. Fantasy magic makes more sense than modern economic theory.
- ygouzerh 1mo ago
  For this one, I loved playing Dofus when I was younger. It was (hopefully still) a quite popular french turn-by-turn 2D MMORPG. The main goal is PoE or PvP, but actually I ended up fully playing for the economy. You can get a job with its own leveling system, like a farmer, cutting crops, collaborate with a baker who will make you a cut so that he can get baker xp, and then sell the bread in an auction based local marketplace for player to buy and heal. You can as well just arbitrage: buy something cheaper in one town, and sell it in an another where it was more popular. I ended up with a tone of paper notes, just calculating the margin of different product, e.g jewellery, so that I can buy the materials, calculating the risk of loss during the building process, partner with someone for some materials, and then finding where to sell the end product
  - OkayPhysicist 1mo ago
    You might really enjoy Caravaneer 2 (the original was a flash game, RIP, but the sequel requires no knowledge of the original). Whole game is traveling around a wasteland, hauling trade goods between towns that have their own industries, and thus varying supply and demand for various goods.
- db48x 1mo ago
  It’s not that economics is hard to understand, it’s that it requires the participants to reason about their actions. First problem was the coins. To buy something the dwarves had to haul the coins to the seller, one at a time of course. And then when given change they had to haul the change back to their room. One at a time. And the merchant had to haul their new coins, one at a time, to their room. But that was an easy problem compared to the real difficulty. The other problem was balancing incomes with expenses. Everything was just assigned arbitrary numbers, and those numbers were fixed. So in one player’s fort they were building a huge mega construction out of glass blocks and so the glassmakers become wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice simply because so many glass blocks needed to be created. But the weaponsmith was only ever asked to create ten battleaxes for the single squad of military dwarves so he went broke. After all, everyone had to rent a room and eat. Prices need to depend on scarcity and the need to eat as much as on the labor needed to create an individual item. The weaponsmith might have earned more income for a sword than the glassmaker did for a glass block, but that didn’t help him in the long run.
gverrilla 1mo ago
I was passionate about this game (gui version), until my fps dropped to 1 (unplayable) and I found no fix.
- db48x 1mo ago
  Try the game again, the performance has improved significantly. One major problem that was affecting most players were the line–of–sight calculations. Every person and animal in the game has an opinion of every other, and can get mood changes simply from seeing people (or animals) that they like or dislike. And that opinion is both based on the history of interactions between them as well as other factors like consanguinity. So every time someone moves the game has to check who they can see, and for every person (or animal) that they can see it has to check to see if they are related, and if so to what degree. Guests, invaders, monsters, zombies, ghosts, sneaks, villains, etc all have their effects. The fundamental O(n²) behavior remains, but caching has greatly improved performance for typical forts. They also improved cache locality and refined the exact set of conditions that affect mood. They also parallelized this specific part of the code, though I believe you have to enable that in the options. You can also improve performance by making changes to your fort. Primary amongst these is simply to reduce the number of people and animals on the map. Don’t keep 50 sheep and 100 cats and 100 dogs and so on. Cut those numbers severely. In the mean time use cages. Caged animals in small rooms behind closed doors don’t see very many people in any given frame, so the cost goes down. Plus you can sell the cages with the animals in them, which is nicer than simply butchering all of your puppies and kittens. Kick out some of the guests too. If you have public taverns, libraries, and/or temples with guests in them then either close them down or make them smaller. Focus on quality over quantity. (Actually for taverns and I guess temples I still recommend having a large room with a big square area with a nice floor and no furniture so that everyone can dance. If you haven’t seem them dance then you have been missing out!) You can also consider changing the layout of your fortress. I don’t recommend going too far down this road, but even small changes can have large effects. Long corridors full of people are the most expensive, so try breaking line of sight using doors or corners. Put things on different floors instead of along a single long corridor. Naturally some players experimented with zig–zag corridors so that nobody can see more than a tile or two in any direction, which works, but of course that results in completely alien fortresses that feel terrible to the player.
coolfox 1mo ago
I remember finding this game back in the summer before 8th grade. right after the z-axis was added. talk about a spirtual wakening. I remember printing off the wiki and reading it in my science class. This game is probably the main reason I became an engineer honestly.
ike_sh 1mo ago
My dwarves are already drowning in complexity; this update will ensure total legendary chaos. My weekend plans just evaporated.
aplummer 1mo ago
This thread really inspired me to never release anything for free for decades.
- thunderfork 1mo ago
  You have to look to the people for whom those decades brought joy, and realize how grandly that outnumbers complaints... and if you find yourself blessed enough to be in that position does the road, then "reading HN" is a problem that solves itself ;)
- AngryData 1mo ago
  Why? Dwarf Fortress only exists because it was given away for free for decades, bringing in tens of thousands of dollars in donations, and eventually leading to a fandom popular enough to bring others onboard with the project to produce a GUI and paid steam release version. If something you build brings in a lot of critique, it is likely something of great value. Because something that doesn't have value won't bring much critique at all.
  - izacus 1mo ago
    Tens of thousands dollars of donations over decades is a very small amount of money even outside US.
    - olmo23 1mo ago
      The premium version of Dwarf Fortress made over $7.2 million in its first month alone.
      - aqme28 1mo ago
        "first month" is really obscuring the decade or beforehand. That's 20 years of development before the premium version launched
        Sander_Marechal 1mo ago
haul_up 1mo ago
The idea of procedurally generated magic systems sounds insane. My fortress will be a glorious magical mess.
Ellis_dev 1mo ago
As if my fortress wasn't chaotic enough. Guess I'll be learning a whole new system to exploit.
niemandhier 1mo ago
I always thought dwarf fortress would be a great simulation backbone for some kind of LLM driven story telling system. Something that keeps the world consistent while the user experiences a generated adventure
totetsu 1mo ago
It’s 2011, you’re laying awake after midnight and can’t quite seem to switch off. You put on the latest episode of DFTalk and listen to Toadie1 and Rainseeker talking about their road map for the magic release but first they’ll have to do night creatures and armies and a completely redo the whole world gen, and you gently fall asleep to Tarn’s classic guitar melody.
- krige 1mo ago
  That guitar stays with you. I haven't played DF in forever but I can still conjure up lengthy chunks of it from memory.
  - jaggederest 1mo ago
    Like Matt Uelmen's work in Diablo and Diablo 2... I haven't played the original in probably 25 years and I can still hear the Tristram soundtrack
- DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
  I cant wait for Kruggsmash to do a couple videos using this magic system.
- jmorenoamor 1mo ago
  You made me feel good, looks like we shared those moments. Have a hugh and a beer mate.
ropable 1mo ago
Welp, time for my annual Dwarf Fortress binge.
rao-v 1mo ago
Nostalgic for when Dwarf Fortress was 2D and had an ending (if you dug too deep a catastrophic monster emerged as I recall)
- lobf 1mo ago
  Both of these are still true.
  - rao-v 1mo ago
    DF isn't 2D anymore! Back in the day it was literally dig down and dig left right, no Z axis.
jdw64 1mo ago
loosing is fun
bariswheel 1mo ago
Super neat. So instead of just randomizing a map and generating random geography like Minecraft, it's going to randomize the fundamental rules of the universe. Brave new world!!
deadbabe 1mo ago
It was a long road but it must be nice being able to just spend your time working on one game that so many people love for a living.
Glitcher255 1mo ago
Dwarf fortress, rimworld, spacestation13... The autist's repertoire.
- tripleee 1mo ago
  Also popular with this crowd: factorio, oxygen not included
shadowtree 1mo ago
Is anyone attempting to use DF as a backend to run a next gen 3D UI on top of it? Given new AI tooling, what seemed unsurmountable before is getting into reach. DF the world system and core engine.
- oortoo 1mo ago
  [dead]
buredoranna 1mo ago
One of the greatest stories of all time, is the story of "Boatmurdered". A long read, but makes me laugh every time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boatmurdered https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boatmurdered https://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Introduction/ https://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Introducti...
- azath92 1mo ago
  Some of the effort that folks have put into recording their dwarf fortress experiences, and captureing that special something that emerges out of the game is wonderful. I humbly also submit the illustrated stories of Bronzemurder and Oilfurnace https://www.olddog.games/Oilfurnace https://www.olddog.games/Oilfurnace https://www.olddog.games/Bronzemurder https://www.olddog.games/Bronzemurder and the story of Glasedcoast https://glazedcoast.neocities.org/ https://glazedcoast.neocities.org/ Love to hear of more. Even if im not actively playing, i always love a read.

502 points by Tomte 1mo ago

It's been a while since I last played DF and I'm surprised to see that both this article and the video are a bit light on details, IIRC they used to showcase upcoming updates a lot more. Digging a bit more it looks like the magic system will be built around deities, spheres of influence [1], and workshops/professions centered around magic leading to procedurally generated spells. I'm really excited to see how it'll turn out. [1] https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Sphere https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Sphere

Sharlin 1mo ago
This seems more like a teaser trailer. I presume more information is forthcoming.
- flurb 1mo ago
  They have a history of at least trying to be transparent, especially in their Future of the Fortress posts[0]. Emphasize on trying to, as they're not exactly great at sticking to plans, though that certainly improved with the Kitfox partnership. [0]: https://bay12games.com/dwarves/ https://bay12games.com/dwarves/

Mobius01 1mo ago

I wish nothing but success to Tarn and Zach, it’s great that releasing on Steam and adding a friendlier UI helped the game reach new audiences. It’s the proverbial time black hole.

frollogaston 1mo ago
Weirdly the ASCII art was what drew me in the most. Once accustomed to it, feels like The Matrix where they're reading the world.
- DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
  as someone who grew up playing ascii games I was pretty excited about the graphical update. there is a novelty to ascii, but its a barrier to entry and major eye strain.
- sooheon 1mo ago
  Same, the ASCII interface is an eternal classic to me, the updated graphics try harder and achieve less (just my opinion).
- gambiting 1mo ago
  I have the same feeling playing Caves of Qud.
  - nikitau 1mo ago
    Qud is a gem of a game, same publisher too! I get what you are saying, and it's use of ASCII plus ASCII-like graphics makes the experience a lot friendlier imo.
- nonethewiser 1mo ago
  Love DF, havent played the steam version. The menus and lack of native ui controls for some things (dfhack) were by far the biggest problem, not the ascii. I get that the ascii is noisy and a matter of taste - not disputing that - but there were much bigger UX problems.
  - oortoo 1mo ago
    Steam version is much worse than the fan UI options that were already available, sadly. Its also why I explain why DF really failed to take off after the Steam release. It's nowhere near the best, or even best looking, way to play the game.
    - OkayPhysicist 1mo ago
      I pretty strongly disagree. I can see some preferring some fan art style over the official one, even if I don't. But the official gui having support for rendering all the various critters, and factoring in clothing, multi-level, etc, really made the Steam version's graphics vastly better than anything else that was available at the time.
UltraSane 1mo ago
In a documentary about them putting Dwarf Fortress on Steam Tarn talked about how he had to split the $7 million first payment from Steam with his brother and it turned out the easiest way was to just use the bank app.
- zhynn 1mo ago
  You are thinking of the NoClip documentary! It is fantastic and well worth your time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwLSgaYPKA0&list=PL-THgg8QnvU5xvhtFe7orgcnfIqFq_qVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwLSgaYPKA0&list=PL-THgg8Qnv...
  - metalliqaz 1mo ago
    NoClip does a great job. I also recommend their Prey/Arcane documentary.
    - polytely 1mo ago
      Yeah I love all their Arkane stuff, and the two Half Life docs they did under their whitelabel company Secret Tape company for Valve. And of course the big Disco Elysium series. It is actually their 10th anniversary in September, so if you like their work I would highly recommend their patreon to make sure they can do another 10 years. Their discord is actually one of my favourite places on the internet to talk about games because everyone in there has such great taste and is knowledgeable about the actual production process of games. They also have a second channel/patreon now called noclip_2 which is focused on underground/indie games which has been a constant source of joy for me, all the best games I've played in the past year I've discovered via their videos or their discord. Just great vibes all around. Edit: almost forgot, they are also running a project to digitize old videogame tapes so if you want to see old interviews with carmack or footage from E3 in really nice quality they have a YouTube channel for that too https://youtube.com/@nocliparchive https://youtube.com/@nocliparchive
- polytely 1mo ago
  The noclip documentary series for any other readers who might be interested 1. The Origins of Dwarf Fortress: https://youtu.be/MxV24so-dw8 https://youtu.be/MxV24so-dw8 2. How Dwarf Fortress Evolved over 16 Years of Development: https://youtu.be/PiNeDarPzeI https://youtu.be/PiNeDarPzeI 3. How Dwarf Fortress Coming to Steam Changed Everything: https://youtu.be/TX65XCk2-6U https://youtu.be/TX65XCk2-6U anecdote about the money starts @ 18:40 4. Life After the Success of Dwarf Fortress: https://youtu.be/I5zgBXp4e8A https://youtu.be/I5zgBXp4e8A
Our_Benefactors 1mo ago
“Friendlier” and still one of the worst UIs available. It’s nearly impenetrable and the game has no tutorial to speak of, no on-ramps for new players, and is probably the most overrated game I’ve ever had the displeasure of playing. I’m convinced from articles about dwarf fortress that it’s a game that few actually play and enjoy, but like talking about as if it’s fun. The promise of dwarf fortress is far more interesting than the actual gameplay. EDIT: To people who are rebutting this by saying “it’s just not for you” - that’s entirely my point. Few people enjoy it. I am the majority opinion here.
- Catloafdev 1mo ago
  Yep, the game is difficult to get into, it's not for everyone. The game is great, though. You are in the "I have no idea what's going on" phase.
  - Our_Benefactors 1mo ago
    It’s the games job to create an on ramp to understanding. It’s not mine to spend 200 hours grasping every concept before I can play “the real game”, that’s just shitty game design.
    - Catloafdev 1mo ago
      You're totally allowed to have that opinion. Time is valuable. It does have a tutorial nowadays, but it's still not easy. Not everyone _wants_ to learn Dwarf Fortress, and that's fine - it's not for everyone. But I'm just providing context that, for those of us that have learned, it is a great game.
    - all2 1mo ago
      This depends largely on your expectation for what a 'game' should be. Puzzle boxes, for example, have zero on ramp, and yet many many people enjoy them, enjoy the struggle of discovery. Arguably the edges of mathematics and science are inhabited by similar people, living where the rules are ill defined, where there is much to be discovered rather than pre-digested and spoon fed. I have little patience for games that don't spoon feed, so I get where you're coming from. I watched my brother play DF and decided I didn't want to spend my time like that, trying to parse ascii, trying to figure out how all the things interacted. I also don't like puzzle boxes that much. To each their own.
postalrat 1mo ago
Makes me think how would an AI interface to a game like dwarf fortress play out. Where you tell it what you want like some sort of dwarven ruler.
- Planktonne 1mo ago
  The point of DF, to a large extent, is precise control and detail. It's the opposite of the approach taken by AI games that want to generalise based on simple prompts.
  - pavel_lishin 1mo ago
    > The point of DF, to a large extent, is precise control and detail. I don't know, it's basically Minecraft with Lemmings. You control a lot, but at the end, the AI comparison might be somewhat apt - you tell the dwarves what to do, and they mostly do it. When they're not struck by a strange mood, or when they're not too depressed to work, or when they're not being eaten by a Forgotten Beast (beware its deadly dust!)
    - Planktonne 1mo ago
      I take your point, but those are also all things you can control and manage, albeit indirectly.
  - DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
    to each their own, but that is the least interesting part of DF for me. I like the narrative element and enjoy delegating random shit and seeing what happens.
  - ux266478 1mo ago
    I would pose that's a matter of holding it wrong. Like, integrating generative AI as a prompt to an API endpoint exposed to the user is one of the worst, most naive and bland ways to use it as a game subsystem that I can think of. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of problems with trying to use generative AI as a subsystem for a game, problems which exist at a conceptual level. But all the games I've seen that integrate AI as a subsystem don't even come remotely close to hitting that ceiling. I think it's ultimately up to the fact that an interesting usage of generative AI requires a level of technical competency and theory that's well beyond that of the layman. The people making games that utilize AI generally seem to lack the chops to make a good game or do interesting things with AI. The people with the chops and manhours to make a good game with AI: - Don't want the backlash of having a generative model in their game, because no matter the context that's a lot of very bad press for something that's very difficult and time consuming to implement. - See the immediate problems and difficulty that arise from a decently integrated concept and execution, and even without the bad press, understand that the juice isn't worth the squeeze. That it's always going to be an immensely stupid gimmick in the end, one that's trying way too hard. That won't stop us from having 10,000 pieces of shovelware getting churned out that have the worst, most uninspired integrations imaginable mind you. We clearly already have those. For those that could do something better with the tech, there's too many good reasons to not touch it.
colechristensen 1mo ago
I had the muscle memory for the full keyboard control on pre-steam releases and the loss of some complete keyboard controls and things just changing made it so I never really got into the Steam release, which was pretty disappointing. I get it though.
- OkayPhysicist 1mo ago
  I'm in a similar, but less extreme boat. The new interface has its perks, especially in terms of discoverability, but for tasks that need to be done repeatedly (request 10 beds be made before you have a manager, for example), you really miss the ability to rock some chords.
- Agentlien 1mo ago
  It took me some time to remap the muscle memory but it felt so worth it. The Steam version is not just a new AI, it introduced a lot of gameplay changes which really improved the underlying systems a lot.
  - fc417fc802 1mo ago
    Does the non-steam version not receive the same gameplay updates? I had been under the impression that the only difference was the UI.
    - colechristensen 1mo ago
      The non-steam version also had its controls significantly changed
    - db48x 1mo ago
      The version available for free on their website is the same exact program as the one you purchase on Steam. It simply includes a different set of graphics for the UI. These graphics are designed to look as if they are made up of text characters, but in reality they are still just sprites. The sprites that come with the version you buy from Steam are designed to look like a normal but stylized gui.
oortoo 1mo ago
Dwarf Fortress's Steam UI is by far, my least favorite thing about the game. Does anyone else agree? After playing with the Lazy Newb's Pack and other similar tools for years, I found the Steam version to be a maaaaasive downgrade. The mouse was tied to the framerate, everything felt sluggish and hard to control. It really irks me because I had been telling everyone for years to play this game, and finally it gets an "official" release and I found it to be... the worst version of the game I'd tried yet. Maybe its improved since I last tried it. But it would be hard to outdo what the fans had done with the UI, IMO. Even features like seasonal color schemes felt almost vital to me. Not to mention customizing your own preferred sprites... I almost wish Tarn and Zach had kept to building core gameplay and let the fans handle the UI, with some sort of official team-up to bring it to Steam. I'd recommended Lazy Newb Pack to almost anyone but I don't think I'd recommend the Steam version, at least the version I tried.
- tripleee 1mo ago
  I don't mind the UI so much but my biggest issue is they got rid of the keyboard controls. I really wish they'd put some actual effort into the graphics of the game. Even some minimal animations would be nice.
  - drudolph914 1mo ago
    I actually think this type of suggestion/thinking is not good for the game. the mystique of dwarf fortress is that it's a game that plays in your imagination, not on the screen. the point of the ascii visuals is to give a player enough context to understand the state of the world, but it's intentionally obtuse so fun arrises from your brain having to color in all the details. any suggestion that tries to add more polish to the graphics brings you farther away from where the fun lives
    - tripleee 1mo ago
      Going to have to agree to disagree here. Graphical polish would make it much more enjoyable for me, and I spent enough time with the ascii version back in the day to get used to it. Good thing is they can and do have both styles.

polytely 1mo ago

It's so exciting, I've heard about them doing magic for a decade, and now it is actually approaching.

DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
same, I'm going to break the hell out of this update

yuchi 1mo ago

I’ve been tinkering with a game engine where magic is made of first principles for a very long time. Cannot wait to see the gameplay and mechanics here!

DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
i've been doing something similar and decided to stick with godot. have you found yourself constrained with engine boilerplate or do you feel like you are making good progress on the magic system?
- yuchi 1mo ago
  Only working on the magic system itself, unfortunately making the game around the mechanics is not something I enjoy, so I have been implementing different approaches with some minimal debugging UI. Did not reach the need for an actual game engine

8note 1mo ago

What ive generally heard is that this is more of a refactor and base functionality improvement, rather than building out all the actual magic systems to start with. 2-10 updates in the future will have much more fleshed out magic

duttish 1mo ago
OPs post made me curious about jumping in, how often do they release updates? If I'm going to wait for this and the next one.
- DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
  this game will be updated until the creators die, its a passion project and is a genre defining masterpiece if you are into procedurally generated narrative driven world sims.
- OkayPhysicist 1mo ago
  Historically, they did a big update every year or two. Since the Steam release, they've sped up significantly, with medium sized updates every 2-3 months.

davoneus 1mo ago

The only game I've I've supported where I ended up buying licenses for friends and family. Lot of respect for them and their game.

flurb 1mo ago

I'm still pissed about the fact that they essentially gave the finger to everyone who has been long-term supporters - when they added the G to their UI, they essentially scrapped the old. In favor of a mouse-driven design, they dropped the old, keyboard-driven UI. Long-term supporters, in this case, means people paying, and not insubstantial amounts either - before they partnered with Kitfox, they used to publish how much they were receiving. Tens of thousands of $ a month, mind you. For monthly contributions at that level for many, many years I would expect at least a nod - instead they straight-up told everyone they'd abandon keyboard users, a decision later recanted. That said, Dwarf Fortress holds a special place in my heart. Only regret I have is that I didn't track how many hours I put in. In excess of 10k, I'm sure.

nottorp 1mo ago
They also dropped the Mac version. They complain there are few Mac players on Steam. Well, I'm not going to buy it if it doesn't run on the desktop OS [1] i use most, duh. [1] My Linux boxes are headless. And the windows boxes I have to RDP into them. That may work for a game with a beginning and and end via Steam streaming or something, but not for a forever game you just keep around.
- bigyabai 1mo ago
  The game runs fine in Proton, including with dfhack. You can probably get it working on your Mac with a tiny bit of Crossover/Wine/GPTK tweaking.
  - hamdingers 1mo ago
    That's missing the point. There were official native MacOS builds and now there aren't. Can't be too mad about it though, it was free back then too.
    - bigyabai 1mo ago
      macOS has changed a lot more than Windows or Linux did in the last decade. It's hardly Tarn's fault, here.

pwillia7 1mo ago

Does any other game have true procedural generated magic systems like DF talks about? I have always been curious how and if they'll pull it off and if it will just end up being all pretty much the same

DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
yes, there are several games exploring this idea on steam.
- philipov 1mo ago
  Could you name a few of the best ones?
  - DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
    Noita is the first that comes to mind. Some others that I have in my library are magicraft, fictorum, and spell chain. I'm messing around with these ideas myself, reminds me of the old days of crafting broken spells in morrowind.
    - oortoo 1mo ago
      Noita isn't really on the level that DF describes. Noita randomizes wands and allows you to make custom spells by leveraging different qualities, but its not procedurally generating the rules of magic themselves. The rules are locked in from the start.
  - llagerlof 1mo ago
    Magicmaker is pretty solid.

lyu07282 1mo ago

They can make a simulation of magic based on the fabric of a procedural universe work, but even they failed to make a simulation of economics work. Fantasy magic makes more sense than modern economic theory.

ygouzerh 1mo ago
For this one, I loved playing Dofus when I was younger. It was (hopefully still) a quite popular french turn-by-turn 2D MMORPG. The main goal is PoE or PvP, but actually I ended up fully playing for the economy. You can get a job with its own leveling system, like a farmer, cutting crops, collaborate with a baker who will make you a cut so that he can get baker xp, and then sell the bread in an auction based local marketplace for player to buy and heal. You can as well just arbitrage: buy something cheaper in one town, and sell it in an another where it was more popular. I ended up with a tone of paper notes, just calculating the margin of different product, e.g jewellery, so that I can buy the materials, calculating the risk of loss during the building process, partner with someone for some materials, and then finding where to sell the end product
- OkayPhysicist 1mo ago
  You might really enjoy Caravaneer 2 (the original was a flash game, RIP, but the sequel requires no knowledge of the original). Whole game is traveling around a wasteland, hauling trade goods between towns that have their own industries, and thus varying supply and demand for various goods.
db48x 1mo ago
It’s not that economics is hard to understand, it’s that it requires the participants to reason about their actions. First problem was the coins. To buy something the dwarves had to haul the coins to the seller, one at a time of course. And then when given change they had to haul the change back to their room. One at a time. And the merchant had to haul their new coins, one at a time, to their room. But that was an easy problem compared to the real difficulty. The other problem was balancing incomes with expenses. Everything was just assigned arbitrary numbers, and those numbers were fixed. So in one player’s fort they were building a huge mega construction out of glass blocks and so the glassmakers become wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice simply because so many glass blocks needed to be created. But the weaponsmith was only ever asked to create ten battleaxes for the single squad of military dwarves so he went broke. After all, everyone had to rent a room and eat. Prices need to depend on scarcity and the need to eat as much as on the labor needed to create an individual item. The weaponsmith might have earned more income for a sword than the glassmaker did for a glass block, but that didn’t help him in the long run.

gverrilla 1mo ago

I was passionate about this game (gui version), until my fps dropped to 1 (unplayable) and I found no fix.

db48x 1mo ago
Try the game again, the performance has improved significantly. One major problem that was affecting most players were the line–of–sight calculations. Every person and animal in the game has an opinion of every other, and can get mood changes simply from seeing people (or animals) that they like or dislike. And that opinion is both based on the history of interactions between them as well as other factors like consanguinity. So every time someone moves the game has to check who they can see, and for every person (or animal) that they can see it has to check to see if they are related, and if so to what degree. Guests, invaders, monsters, zombies, ghosts, sneaks, villains, etc all have their effects. The fundamental O(n²) behavior remains, but caching has greatly improved performance for typical forts. They also improved cache locality and refined the exact set of conditions that affect mood. They also parallelized this specific part of the code, though I believe you have to enable that in the options. You can also improve performance by making changes to your fort. Primary amongst these is simply to reduce the number of people and animals on the map. Don’t keep 50 sheep and 100 cats and 100 dogs and so on. Cut those numbers severely. In the mean time use cages. Caged animals in small rooms behind closed doors don’t see very many people in any given frame, so the cost goes down. Plus you can sell the cages with the animals in them, which is nicer than simply butchering all of your puppies and kittens. Kick out some of the guests too. If you have public taverns, libraries, and/or temples with guests in them then either close them down or make them smaller. Focus on quality over quantity. (Actually for taverns and I guess temples I still recommend having a large room with a big square area with a nice floor and no furniture so that everyone can dance. If you haven’t seem them dance then you have been missing out!) You can also consider changing the layout of your fortress. I don’t recommend going too far down this road, but even small changes can have large effects. Long corridors full of people are the most expensive, so try breaking line of sight using doors or corners. Put things on different floors instead of along a single long corridor. Naturally some players experimented with zig–zag corridors so that nobody can see more than a tile or two in any direction, which works, but of course that results in completely alien fortresses that feel terrible to the player.

coolfox 1mo ago

I remember finding this game back in the summer before 8th grade. right after the z-axis was added. talk about a spirtual wakening. I remember printing off the wiki and reading it in my science class. This game is probably the main reason I became an engineer honestly.

ike_sh 1mo ago

My dwarves are already drowning in complexity; this update will ensure total legendary chaos. My weekend plans just evaporated.

aplummer 1mo ago

This thread really inspired me to never release anything for free for decades.

thunderfork 1mo ago
You have to look to the people for whom those decades brought joy, and realize how grandly that outnumbers complaints... and if you find yourself blessed enough to be in that position does the road, then "reading HN" is a problem that solves itself ;)
AngryData 1mo ago
Why? Dwarf Fortress only exists because it was given away for free for decades, bringing in tens of thousands of dollars in donations, and eventually leading to a fandom popular enough to bring others onboard with the project to produce a GUI and paid steam release version. If something you build brings in a lot of critique, it is likely something of great value. Because something that doesn't have value won't bring much critique at all.
- izacus 1mo ago
  Tens of thousands dollars of donations over decades is a very small amount of money even outside US.
  - olmo23 1mo ago
    The premium version of Dwarf Fortress made over $7.2 million in its first month alone.
    - aqme28 1mo ago
      "first month" is really obscuring the decade or beforehand. That's 20 years of development before the premium version launched
      - Sander_Marechal 1mo ago

haul_up 1mo ago

The idea of procedurally generated magic systems sounds insane. My fortress will be a glorious magical mess.

Ellis_dev 1mo ago

As if my fortress wasn't chaotic enough. Guess I'll be learning a whole new system to exploit.

niemandhier 1mo ago

I always thought dwarf fortress would be a great simulation backbone for some kind of LLM driven story telling system. Something that keeps the world consistent while the user experiences a generated adventure

totetsu 1mo ago

It’s 2011, you’re laying awake after midnight and can’t quite seem to switch off. You put on the latest episode of DFTalk and listen to Toadie1 and Rainseeker talking about their road map for the magic release but first they’ll have to do night creatures and armies and a completely redo the whole world gen, and you gently fall asleep to Tarn’s classic guitar melody.

krige 1mo ago
That guitar stays with you. I haven't played DF in forever but I can still conjure up lengthy chunks of it from memory.
- jaggederest 1mo ago
  Like Matt Uelmen's work in Diablo and Diablo 2... I haven't played the original in probably 25 years and I can still hear the Tristram soundtrack
DarmokTanagra 1mo ago
I cant wait for Kruggsmash to do a couple videos using this magic system.
jmorenoamor 1mo ago
You made me feel good, looks like we shared those moments. Have a hugh and a beer mate.

ropable 1mo ago

Welp, time for my annual Dwarf Fortress binge.

rao-v 1mo ago

Nostalgic for when Dwarf Fortress was 2D and had an ending (if you dug too deep a catastrophic monster emerged as I recall)

lobf 1mo ago
Both of these are still true.
- rao-v 1mo ago
  DF isn't 2D anymore! Back in the day it was literally dig down and dig left right, no Z axis.

jdw64 1mo ago

loosing is fun

bariswheel 1mo ago

Super neat. So instead of just randomizing a map and generating random geography like Minecraft, it's going to randomize the fundamental rules of the universe. Brave new world!!

deadbabe 1mo ago

It was a long road but it must be nice being able to just spend your time working on one game that so many people love for a living.

Glitcher255 1mo ago

Dwarf fortress, rimworld, spacestation13... The autist's repertoire.

tripleee 1mo ago
Also popular with this crowd: factorio, oxygen not included

shadowtree 1mo ago

Is anyone attempting to use DF as a backend to run a next gen 3D UI on top of it? Given new AI tooling, what seemed unsurmountable before is getting into reach. DF the world system and core engine.

oortoo 1mo ago
[dead]

buredoranna 1mo ago

One of the greatest stories of all time, is the story of "Boatmurdered". A long read, but makes me laugh every time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boatmurdered https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boatmurdered https://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Introduction/ https://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Introducti...

azath92 1mo ago
Some of the effort that folks have put into recording their dwarf fortress experiences, and captureing that special something that emerges out of the game is wonderful. I humbly also submit the illustrated stories of Bronzemurder and Oilfurnace https://www.olddog.games/Oilfurnace https://www.olddog.games/Oilfurnace https://www.olddog.games/Bronzemurder https://www.olddog.games/Bronzemurder and the story of Glasedcoast https://glazedcoast.neocities.org/ https://glazedcoast.neocities.org/ Love to hear of more. Even if im not actively playing, i always love a read.