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Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

258 points by llambda 14y ago

DrStalker 14y ago
Dwarf fortress is difficult for two reasons 1: Unintuitive interface. It takes some time just to learn how to do basic things and find the information you need. 2: Complexity. Once you know every possible command you can give you need to figure out what to do. It's hard to get into but immensely rewarding and satisfying once you do, with some amazingly detailed epic stories coming to life.
- warmwaffles 14y ago
  My brother plays this constantly, any pointers where I can start playing?
  - lost-theory 14y ago
    Following the Captnduck tutorials [1] and using the Lazy Newb pack [2] got me pretty far. [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHVZtRdtPdo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHVZtRdtPdo [2]: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59026.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59026.0
    - the_french 14y ago
      If you are on mac you can use MacNewbiw instead of the LNB: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=106790.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=106790.0
  - Calamitous 14y ago
    O'Reilly has a book for this: "Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress" http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920022565.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920022565.do Looks good so far, although I'm not more than a chapter into it yet.
  - kzrdude 14y ago
    ask your brother :-)
  - intended 14y ago
    You could also move to the reddit forums for DF, they tend to be more newbie frequented, but you could always just lurk in the vintaged Bay12forums.
- ineedtosleep 14y ago
  It's hard to get into, but if you deal with vim/emacs/etc on a normal basis, the learning curve shouldn't be a big deal (unless you don't have time for it). The game is just like vim/emacs in that you don't know what you don't know and you're likely going to learn piecemeal. If you looked through a couple tutorials and said "Hey I think I get the hang of it now" and start cracking at your first mountain, you'll quickly realize that you have no idea how to craft, deal with rooms, plant stuff, etc. As far as the graphical elements of the interface goes, there's a number of tilesets to use[1] which make the game exponentially more enjoyable. Also, there's a fellow on YouTube by the name of captnduck[2] and, aside from the official wiki, he's probably been the most helpful source for me when it comes to DF. I suggest taking a look at a video or two from him if DF interests you. [1] http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/117975/dwarf-fortress-hate-the-ascii-graphics-want-to-de-ugly-your-fort-heres-how http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/117975/dwarf-fortr... [2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL06686270DA5FF439 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL06686270DA5FF439
  - gchpaco 14y ago
    I'm not sure that DF's learning curve is really comparable to vi. Maybe TECO. Almost everybody's first fort dies because they didn't set plant orders or ran out of booze or something similar. Next, forts die because you got enough wealth to spawn an ambush and you are totally unprepared. There's a litany of failure conditions that can shut you down hard and once they've begun it is very difficult to impossible to reverse; tantrum spirals are the most obvious but for example you might find out that you needed to plant food some time ago, or that aquifers are full of Fun and Exciting and cause interesting problems for your nascent fort. I mean as a veteran I'm pretty good at avoiding these and getting into the late game but I can't even remember what they all are. It reminds me in some ways of the old HGTTG text game, where if you didn't take exactly the right steps at the start of the game you would be irreversibly fucked two hours later with no warning. Except I think that was due to malicious intent, and DF's complexity is some combination of developer indifference / incompetence (Toady is quite good but obviously UI design is not something he's really enthralled by) and Stockholm syndrome on the part of the player base. Some folks won't play without Dwarf Therapist, I absolutely require dfhack's workflow plugin to not go insane, etc. This is not really a good situation, but there's just one of Toady and the community is startlingly loyal, probably helped by the sheer addictive quality of the game once you get going; he can be excused, to some degree, a focus on new, novel things before the total UI revamp needed.
6ren 14y ago
The game dwarf fortress most reminds me of is git.
- laureny 14y ago
  Ah, that's actually a pretty good analogy! Very powerful once you get to know it, but with a baffling interface.
laureny 14y ago
I think the author of the article made a critical mistake by not installing a friendly set of tiles (e.g. Lazy Newb Pack). There is really no drawback, all it will do is get you to enjoy the game faster.
csense 14y ago
The author's problems all have solutions: You need to dig stairs to be able to go up and down levels. You need to dig an "up stair", and then a "down stair" below it. Or you can dig "up/down stairs" which combine both functions into the same square. The lack of stone is probably due to embarking in an area that has clay, soil, or sand layers on top. If you tunnel down a few levels, you should find stone. If you have an axe (which is one of the default starting items if you didn't customize them), you can (D)esignate (T)reecutting areas to chop down trees and build things out of wood (assuming you're in an area that features trees).
- alex_c 14y ago
  The author's problems all have solutions Well, no, those are symptoms, not problems. The problem, as explained by the author, is the sheer improbability of discovering how to play Dwarf Fortress by trial and error. (I say that as a big fan of the game... I've put in a few dozen hours over the years, which I feel is just barely enough to put me at the high end of "beginner").
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Is that a problem? Chess is inscrutable via trial and error too.
    - alex_c 14y ago
      Not sure I agree... give me the most basic computer chess program and 15 minutes, and I'll have (most of) the rules figured out. And that's assuming no tutorials or hints such as highlighting legal moves. Getting good at it is a different matter entirely, but figuring out how to play is relatively simple.
      - aqme28 14y ago
        Some of the weird-but-essential moves such as castling and en passant will not be apparent to you even after hours of playing like that.
brianberns 14y ago
IMHO, NetHack is the king of clunky, quasi-graphical-but-really-text-based games. In many ways, it is probably the greatest computer game of all time. Is Dwarf Fortress in the same league?
- flatline 14y ago
  DF is like a simulated fantasy world that runs in real-time. It is a combination of strategy, sandbox, and roguelike. Similar at first appearance to other roguelikes, but a very different playing experience. I am a fairly avid NetHack player and I have spent a lot of time playing DF as well, so there is definitely a common appeal. They are both incredibly challenging, and just learning to play them makes you feel like you've accomplished something. Edit: there is also an "adventurer" mode in DF, which is a straight-up roguelike, where you can go and, for example, explore old fortresses you built. It is fun, but last time I played, it was still very rough and most of the focus had gone into the fortress-building side of things. I know that Toady spent a lot of time building a more dynamic roguelike experience a year or so ago.
  - intended 14y ago
    Dear lord the patch notes for the upcoming adventure mode upgrade are staggering. He's adding in climbing, trees and walkable/climbable branches, reaction moments - so you could be running and shooting - conversation systems that let you begin insurrections (not scripted but proceduraly handled)...Non-lethal combat! His patch notes read like wish lists for entire genres of games. Whatever people may say about the interface, they are missing out.
- jere 14y ago
  If you think NetHack is the greatest computer game of all time, may I suggest Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup? Supposedly, it was modeled after NH, but in attempt to fix several of its problems: http://crawl.develz.org/other/manual.html#n-philosophy-pas-de-faq http://crawl.develz.org/other/manual.html#n-philosophy-pas-d...
  - StavrosK 14y ago
starpilot 14y ago
Great explanation of DF's bodily combat damage modeling: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/95316-complex-damage-model-considerable-for-dayz-no-suggestion/ http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/95316-complex-dama... > DF's damage system is just as complex and oftentimes difficult to keep track of as the rest of the game. Instead of simple health points or separate body parts DF simulates each individual by the sum of it's parts. This starts at the single parts of a body, then adds layers of tissue, muscle and fat to each part, connects all parts by joints and finally stuffs a share of vital and nonvital organs into the whole thing. Every part of this construct has several states it can be it, reaching from healthy over bruised, torn, mangled, nonfunctional, broken and missing... > How does that play out in the actual game? Depending on what kind of injury a creature suffers it tracks the damage to individual body part and the results of it. Slashing damage will cut through tissue, muscle and fat, might even separate body parts, blunt damage will pass through protective clothing and only bruise upper layers, but shatter bones and joints mercilessly. Piercing damage will effortlessly penetrate all layers and has a high chance to damage. A dwarf is graphically represented by a smiley face, so you can't see any of this happen. All of it is conveyed by descriptive text. It's also recommended to pick up a freshman textbook on geology to understand the game's many types of rocks, which is apparently pretty realistic following Tarn's personal interest in geology/mineralogy. The depth of this "game" is breathtaking. The only thing I can think of comparable might be high-fidelity but consumer grade flight simulators like X-Plane, or those put out by Russian developer DCS (e.g. http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/series/black_shark/#22728 http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/series/black_shark/... )
- drakeandrews 14y ago
  > Ulric McDwarf has torn his brain > Ulric McDwarf has broken his spleen Ah, Dwarf Fortress. How I love you. Wait, no, the other one. Hate. Definitely hate.
  - DeepDuh 14y ago
    I know, right. 'feelings' - sometimes a difficult concept to grasp after too much Fortran 90 or something similar.
gosu 14y ago
I actually got bored towards the end of my first game of DF because it was too easy. The interface adds a lot of illusory difficulty, but that's not an issue for people used to reading manuals. On the other hand, when you're not wrestling with the system, there's not much fair challenge. When your underground fortress is filled to the brim with traps and completely self sufficient, no one is ever going to touch you unless you handicap yourself. Once I had my base built out the way I wanted it, there wasn't much left for me to do. Kind of reminds me of how Minecraft feels once you've built a satisfying shelter, but I think that Minecraft's music and FPS perspective can motivate people to keep playing for the sake of creativity. With DF: sure, it's fun to imagine my fortress and all, but then I might as well move away from the keyboard and just do the whole thing in my imagination.
- jmillikin 14y ago
  If you ever find your Dwarf Fortress game to be too boring, keep digging deeper. There are many sources of entertainment located far underground.
  - Kutta 14y ago
    I must mention that actual gameplay challenges (aside from megaprojects) do diminish considerably even when taking the "deeper stuff" into account. I once did a speedrun for wiping out hell; it took about 4 hours. There are many unbalanced game mechanics that make it possible and also pretty easy.
- spacemanaki 14y ago
  If it's too easy, dig deeper.
- oscilloscope 14y ago
  The fact that DF makes you want to get away from your keyboard and use your imagination is perhaps its most incredible feature.
- bloaf 14y ago
  There are some broken aspects to the game: that cage traps can catch just about everything and that all walls are impenetrable to invaders are two of the most obvious. If you abuse these, it is not hard to make the game too easy. You can always just embark in more challenging areas so that you don't have the luxury of preparing a nice impenetrable fort for your first wave of hostiles...
spacemanaki 14y ago
> There are instructions within the game, and without in the form > of wikis and forums, but I wanted to begin at the most basic > level, if only to come at the game from a recently trendy (if > controversial) design paradigm on discoverability that's flowed > from mobile apps to many new indie games: "if you see a UI > walkthrough, they blew it". Some of the author's other points are valid, and DF definitely has some (just some!?) problems with the UI (my personal nitpick is that there are multiple ways to draw rectangles) but I get the impression that she set things up planning to fail. Not R-ingTFM isn't really a reasonable way to review this game. DF doesn't have a team of people behind it, and there's no UX designer to figure out how to make things beautiful and intuitive. On the other hand, the game is free, and the developers have supposedly turned down at least one relatively large buyout offer in order to keep working on their dream on their own terms. It's cliche, but you get out of DF what you put into it. If poring over fan-made wikis, taking notes of all your findings, winning tiny victories like successfully getting your first workshop running, and losing in spectacular fashion only to retell your loss to friends doesn't sound fun, maybe stick to Skyrim.
- fennecfoxen 14y ago
  "Not R-ingTFM isn't really a reasonable way to review this game." This. If the author had spent half as much time bothering to do research as he did coming up with florid expressions about how this screen was like a bunch of "Greek symbols" impervious to the casual glance, then the reviewer may have had more fun Fun.
  - trentlott 14y ago
    It's almost as though you're saying one has to put effort and motivation to derive pleasure from something! Spoonfeeding is the way of the future, and anything else is second-rate design.
danso 14y ago
I'm really glad that this game came out after I was an adult with a full-time job. Otherwise, I would not have the excuse to not dive into it and inevitably be sucked in. As it is, I can walk away, justifying that I just don't have time to figure the game out. I liked DF when trying it out, but I think I enjoy just reading about it more.
- HelloMcFly 14y ago
  Given the current UI, you'd have all the excuse you need. I gave it an honest shot but I just can't get too invested in a game that requires a few hours of reading wikis and watching YouTube.
  - zalzane 14y ago
    This image is pretty relevant. http://i.imgur.com/omJfhlt.jpg http://i.imgur.com/omJfhlt.jpg If you walked into dwarf fortress fully knowledgeable about the UI and game mechanics, you'd have a relatively dull experience with very few surprises. Being such an expansive game, you don't need to know every single command or hotkey just to get a fortress started. The fun lies in not knowing what you're doing, encountering something unexpected, then adapting to that unexpected situation, either by learning something else about the game, or applying your previous knowledge in a creative fashion. Remember that people don't write stories and comics about dwarf fortress because they knew exactly how to handle every hurdle the game threw in their direction.
    - petercooper 14y ago
      That's what I loved about Minecraft for the first few months too. People keep whining about putting the "recipes" in game and making it easier, but the whole process of researching, looking up YouTube videos, reading the wiki, etc, was what made it fun because it felt like you were learning something useful, despite just being a game.
  - intended 14y ago
    Playing DF, is roughly analogous to reading the Illiad, or a similarly complex work of Literature. Now DF isn't the Illiad of the gaming world, yet. But the experience of parsing it, generally ends up expanding your perspective of what games should be, and how they should be played. Its pretty much the serious gamer's game.
jebblue 14y ago
It uses ascii symbols?
- intended 14y ago
  Yup, the game author's first effort Arm0k God of blood (or something on those lines) had a GUI and graphics. After being disappointed with how that worked out, he decided instead to work on a world generator and fantasy story creator. Since entire sections of game aren't in yet, and can only be expected hopefully by 2020, the idea of making an unified interface along with having graphics was dropped. This has led to several happy and unhappy coincidences. Firstly the constant griping about how its hard to understand, both from a UI and a graphics perspective. Secondly its created a great/stellar/benchmark setting gaming community, because its difficulty has acted as an inherent gating/filtering mechanism.
- devcpp 14y ago
  It's not actually ASCII, there are many more characters used. It is however "ASCII art", in that the characters are used to graphically represent places and objects.
- praptak 14y ago
  Not really ASCII. One of the 8-bit character sets that have smiley faces, border-drawing characters and similar stuff. Check it out here: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Tileset_repository http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Tileset_repository
- DanBC 14y ago
  ...and it uses text in an annoying way. It renders the text in OpenGL, which is one of the reasons why a 'text mode' game is so resource intensive.
  - Deestan 14y ago
    > It renders the text in OpenGL, which is one of the reasons why a 'text mode' game is so resource intensive. No, that is not really resource intensive. The massive simulation behind the graphics is resource intensive.
dpeck 14y ago
DF is a fantastic game, and one worth taking some time to explore if you have a weekend to burn when friends and family are out of town, or you're just feeling like being a shut in. It is an excellent example of a "forever project" and one that has gained some quite a fanbase, but as you get deeper in, you will be frustrated by some things. The game is designed by 2 brothers, and coded completely by one of them. This has led to a game with immense scope, and tons of features, but with most of them lacking polish. Its also led to performance problems, as adding new features is vastly more important than optimizing existing ones. The game is single threaded, outside of some of the gui, and processors aren't really getting any faster. Eventually you'll get frustrated and kill your fortress due to FPS slowdown. This could happen from your fort growing to a large number of dwarfs, or you playing too much with things that flow (lava, water), etc. There have been quite a few offers by fans of the game to help with the code, but Toady One is adamant about keeping the source closed and being the only developer. So play, enjoy, and be impressed with what one guy and a lot of Mountain Dew can accomplish, but be aware that you're playing in what is essentially someones (amazing) lifetime art project. PS: Dwarf Therapist and DfHack make the game much more playable and get around a lot of the interface quirks. If you're going to get started playing I'd recommend them.
intended 14y ago
In the recent threads on armor and armor piercing on the Bay12forums, the game calculates and checks for fracture stress and impact stress when crossbow bolts impact armor. So for example the game will test to see if the impact_yield, and further research in the threads below reach conclusions such as : " the IY (impact_yield) deflection mechanism is related to armor density, armor thickness, bolt size, bolt impact yield, bolt contact area, and the difference between mail and plate at larger contact areas." Armor density takes from armor material - Iron/Steel/, as does impact_yield. Here is the thread where the initial !!Science!! on whether bolt weight made an impact on their lethality - [Dwarven Research: The Effect of Bolt Weight on Crossbow Performance](http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=115683.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=115683.0) The results were converted on reddit into a LaTeX PDF, which is excellent reading - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2891221/DF%20study.pdf http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2891221/DF%20study.pdf This led to the follow up: A Comparison Study on the Eﬀectiveness of Bolts vs Armors LaTeX - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2891221/DF%20study%202.pdf http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2891221/DF%20study%202.pdf Thread - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116151.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116151.0 The underlying algorithm for impact_yield deflection on page 11 was: " Algorithm: 1. The projectile is hitting the creature on a body part protected by a piece of rigid armor (i.e. bolt hits steel breastplate). 2. Multiply the armor's LAYER_SIZE by the projectile's CONTACT_AREA, and round the result down to the nearest 100. The exception is that you round up to 100 instead of rounding down to zero if the result was less than 100 (i.e. 20x2=40 -> 100). 3. IMPACT_YIELD = (800/157) * ARMOR_SOLID_DENSITY * (step #2 result) / PROJECTILE_SIZE " And thats to test if a bolt deflects on impact with armor. Penetration causing severing of tissue, blunt damage causing bruising are also possible depending on the Armor vs Bolt combination. And this is a minor sub part of the game which most people don't see.
- chris_mahan 14y ago
  This means, essentially, that the strategist can't build an Excel model of the game and win that way, the way many games are played and won. Excel would blow up...
  - intended 14y ago
hayksaakian 14y ago
This is very beta/alpha an should be treated as such. The dev is focused on depth of gameplay before all else.
nnq 14y ago
I never played DF, but... wouldn't his be way cooler and maybe motivate more people into learning it if it was a MMO?
- gchpaco 14y ago
  Good god isn't it addictive enough?! More realistically there are things you can do in DF like bathe the world in lava or crack the Maximum Fun Chamber that would be kind of obnoxious for your neighbors. A bit like playing Minecraft with IC2 and accidentally leveling half your neighbor's house because your nuclear reactor melted down. Just because you are even worse off does not make people any happier about it.
  - mesozoic 14y ago
    But losing is fun. And if it were an MMO then the motto could change to Losing is fun for everyone!
shocks 14y ago
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=57557.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=57557.0 Here is a nice tileset that can make the game far more approachable. :)
barbs 14y ago
Ahhhh Dwarf Fortress...I really wish I had the patience to overcome the insane learning curve, but I barely have enough patience to learn Civilization ><. Some of the stories people have created with the game are incredible. My favourite site for this is http://dfstories.com/ http://dfstories.com/ Also, the New York Times article linked in the above article is quite insightful I found: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-of-dwarf-fortress.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-of...
jokermatt999 14y ago
I've noticed a lot of people in this topic complaining about graphics/UI. I'll give you that the UI does need an overall badly, but there's a reason for the graphics: the sheer complexity of the game, and the fact that his last game's development stalled because of graphics. In the "sheer complexity" department, imagine trying to depict any of the following well graphically: randomly generated artifacts made of random materials, the ridiculously intricate damage models, and completely randomly generated titans (which do start with a base creature, but have random materials/bodyparts galore). While you could just do essentially what he does for the ASCII and have one symbol that represents all these, he doesn't seem to want to go this route. Which is insane, but hey, insane seems to be the normal for DF development. The second part is that his last game died partly from his trying to implement graphics too early. Notice how the full title is "Dwarf Fortress: Slaves to Armok"? Armok was the game before this. Similar in overly ambitious scope, but with an early 3d style graphics. However, for some reason or another, it became to difficult to support its development after graphics, and it collapsed under its own weight. Hence the switch to ASCII: he could continue implementing hundreds of features without as much regard for performance or implementation. It's easy to add in dozens of new creatures, random titans, genetics and randomized traits when you don't have to actually worry about representing it. I highly suggest reading his devblog (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html) just as inspiration for what one crazy ambitious man can do. As for why he doesn't enlist more help, make it open source, etc, the answer is even simpler: this game is his bread and butter and both he and his brother live off the donations. Yes, part of it is that he wants to maintain control of the project, but if a program was literally the sole means of supporting you and your sibling, I think you'd be wary of giving away its code too. He has said it will likely be open sourced when he dies however.
- kunil 14y ago
  It is not just the ASCII. He could write a more useful GUI. With buttons and better mouse control, it would be much appealing for the crowds.
  - sclangdon 14y ago
    Writing better mouse control isn't fun. If he were to start writing such things, I bet he'd either scrap them anyway or just get bored of writing DF all-together. The "boring" tasks are purposefully programmed to the minimum requirement so he can spend more time on the interesting tasks, to ensure his motivation stays high. Admittedly, he could just outsource the GUI stuff, but for better or worse, he clearly wants to keep the code close to his chest.
pvaldes 14y ago
Falcon's eye, I miss you...
- stuhacking 14y ago
  It's called "Vulture's Eye" these days and I think it's still in development... http://www.darkarts.co.za/vulture http://www.darkarts.co.za/vulture
smogzer 14y ago
The creators of DF could partner with some game studio to create a nice GUI for playing, or create an API that could allow for beter interfaces to evolve, the tilesets are great, but custom tutorials would be awesome. I tried playing DF once but was overwhelmed with the information and didn't try again, and i used to play nethack and adom. I also recommend ADOM for those who like nethack and redrogue that is a roguelike meets platformer, very nice !
jgj 14y ago
For a Dwarf-Fortress-like experience with a much more friendly UI and reasonable learning curve, try Gnomoria (http://gnomoria.com http://gnomoria.com) The developer is awesome and releases an update (mostly) every week. It made it through Steam Greenlight but hasn't been released there yet. It is well worth the 8 bucks. As a person who hates repeating himself, my biggest problem with DF and its difficulty curve was that I often would make a small mistake early in the game, like expand too fast or forget to close off an entrance to a cavern, and have to start all over, and repeat the same X steps to get a basic civilization going, which gets tiresome. Gnomoria is no different, but it is much more forgiving in the early going and leads to fewer short-order restarts. Also, graphics!
pbhjpbhj 14y ago
It looks like a SIMS variant played in "ASCII".
simonebrunozzi 14y ago
What would be the best way to play DF on a not-so-powerful machine? It seems that rendering the ASCII art is a serious CPU dwell...
- mesozoic 14y ago
  It's not the art rendering it's the massive amount of calculations about dwarf feelings and cat mating the simulation is doing underneath that make it slow.
edem 14y ago
I really like this article. The phrasing is so good that I can imagine myself sitting at the computer and staring at the weird ASCII characters.
ctdonath 14y ago
Succinct explanation of Dwarf Fortress as fun: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110522180205/vsrecommendedgames/images/a/a5/Dwarf_Fortress_fun.png http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110522180205/vsrecom...
mesozoic 14y ago
If you play Dwarf Fortress without side help under the presumption that a games UI that isn't immediately obvious is bad then "you're gonna have a bad time." Not that I'm defending DF UI because it is horrendous but the game underneath is magnificent and there are many external resources to help one dig down far enough to get to that magnificence.
jessaustin 14y ago
I played DF quite a bit a few years ago. Sometime later I read Reamde, by Neal Stephenson: http://www.amazon.com/Reamde-A-Novel-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0062191497 http://www.amazon.com/Reamde-A-Novel-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0062... I only just realized, reading the comments here, how much the description of the game in Reamde is patterned after DF, with simulations of geological and even planetary processes driving mundane scenery and resource distribution. Although of course in the novel it's a MMORPG because that's cooler. b^)

258 points by llambda 14y ago

Dwarf fortress is difficult for two reasons 1: Unintuitive interface. It takes some time just to learn how to do basic things and find the information you need. 2: Complexity. Once you know every possible command you can give you need to figure out what to do. It's hard to get into but immensely rewarding and satisfying once you do, with some amazingly detailed epic stories coming to life.

warmwaffles 14y ago
My brother plays this constantly, any pointers where I can start playing?
- lost-theory 14y ago
  Following the Captnduck tutorials [1] and using the Lazy Newb pack [2] got me pretty far. [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHVZtRdtPdo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHVZtRdtPdo [2]: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59026.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59026.0
  - the_french 14y ago
    If you are on mac you can use MacNewbiw instead of the LNB: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=106790.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=106790.0
- Calamitous 14y ago
  O'Reilly has a book for this: "Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress" http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920022565.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920022565.do Looks good so far, although I'm not more than a chapter into it yet.
- kzrdude 14y ago
  ask your brother :-)
- intended 14y ago
  You could also move to the reddit forums for DF, they tend to be more newbie frequented, but you could always just lurk in the vintaged Bay12forums.
ineedtosleep 14y ago
It's hard to get into, but if you deal with vim/emacs/etc on a normal basis, the learning curve shouldn't be a big deal (unless you don't have time for it). The game is just like vim/emacs in that you don't know what you don't know and you're likely going to learn piecemeal. If you looked through a couple tutorials and said "Hey I think I get the hang of it now" and start cracking at your first mountain, you'll quickly realize that you have no idea how to craft, deal with rooms, plant stuff, etc. As far as the graphical elements of the interface goes, there's a number of tilesets to use[1] which make the game exponentially more enjoyable. Also, there's a fellow on YouTube by the name of captnduck[2] and, aside from the official wiki, he's probably been the most helpful source for me when it comes to DF. I suggest taking a look at a video or two from him if DF interests you. [1] http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/117975/dwarf-fortress-hate-the-ascii-graphics-want-to-de-ugly-your-fort-heres-how http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/117975/dwarf-fortr... [2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL06686270DA5FF439 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL06686270DA5FF439
- gchpaco 14y ago
  I'm not sure that DF's learning curve is really comparable to vi. Maybe TECO. Almost everybody's first fort dies because they didn't set plant orders or ran out of booze or something similar. Next, forts die because you got enough wealth to spawn an ambush and you are totally unprepared. There's a litany of failure conditions that can shut you down hard and once they've begun it is very difficult to impossible to reverse; tantrum spirals are the most obvious but for example you might find out that you needed to plant food some time ago, or that aquifers are full of Fun and Exciting and cause interesting problems for your nascent fort. I mean as a veteran I'm pretty good at avoiding these and getting into the late game but I can't even remember what they all are. It reminds me in some ways of the old HGTTG text game, where if you didn't take exactly the right steps at the start of the game you would be irreversibly fucked two hours later with no warning. Except I think that was due to malicious intent, and DF's complexity is some combination of developer indifference / incompetence (Toady is quite good but obviously UI design is not something he's really enthralled by) and Stockholm syndrome on the part of the player base. Some folks won't play without Dwarf Therapist, I absolutely require dfhack's workflow plugin to not go insane, etc. This is not really a good situation, but there's just one of Toady and the community is startlingly loyal, probably helped by the sheer addictive quality of the game once you get going; he can be excused, to some degree, a focus on new, novel things before the total UI revamp needed.

6ren 14y ago

The game dwarf fortress most reminds me of is git.

laureny 14y ago
Ah, that's actually a pretty good analogy! Very powerful once you get to know it, but with a baffling interface.

laureny 14y ago

I think the author of the article made a critical mistake by not installing a friendly set of tiles (e.g. Lazy Newb Pack). There is really no drawback, all it will do is get you to enjoy the game faster.

csense 14y ago

The author's problems all have solutions: You need to dig stairs to be able to go up and down levels. You need to dig an "up stair", and then a "down stair" below it. Or you can dig "up/down stairs" which combine both functions into the same square. The lack of stone is probably due to embarking in an area that has clay, soil, or sand layers on top. If you tunnel down a few levels, you should find stone. If you have an axe (which is one of the default starting items if you didn't customize them), you can (D)esignate (T)reecutting areas to chop down trees and build things out of wood (assuming you're in an area that features trees).

alex_c 14y ago
The author's problems all have solutions Well, no, those are symptoms, not problems. The problem, as explained by the author, is the sheer improbability of discovering how to play Dwarf Fortress by trial and error. (I say that as a big fan of the game... I've put in a few dozen hours over the years, which I feel is just barely enough to put me at the high end of "beginner").
- Evbn 14y ago
  Is that a problem? Chess is inscrutable via trial and error too.
  - alex_c 14y ago
    Not sure I agree... give me the most basic computer chess program and 15 minutes, and I'll have (most of) the rules figured out. And that's assuming no tutorials or hints such as highlighting legal moves. Getting good at it is a different matter entirely, but figuring out how to play is relatively simple.
    - aqme28 14y ago
      Some of the weird-but-essential moves such as castling and en passant will not be apparent to you even after hours of playing like that.

brianberns 14y ago

IMHO, NetHack is the king of clunky, quasi-graphical-but-really-text-based games. In many ways, it is probably the greatest computer game of all time. Is Dwarf Fortress in the same league?

flatline 14y ago
DF is like a simulated fantasy world that runs in real-time. It is a combination of strategy, sandbox, and roguelike. Similar at first appearance to other roguelikes, but a very different playing experience. I am a fairly avid NetHack player and I have spent a lot of time playing DF as well, so there is definitely a common appeal. They are both incredibly challenging, and just learning to play them makes you feel like you've accomplished something. Edit: there is also an "adventurer" mode in DF, which is a straight-up roguelike, where you can go and, for example, explore old fortresses you built. It is fun, but last time I played, it was still very rough and most of the focus had gone into the fortress-building side of things. I know that Toady spent a lot of time building a more dynamic roguelike experience a year or so ago.
- intended 14y ago
  Dear lord the patch notes for the upcoming adventure mode upgrade are staggering. He's adding in climbing, trees and walkable/climbable branches, reaction moments - so you could be running and shooting - conversation systems that let you begin insurrections (not scripted but proceduraly handled)...Non-lethal combat! His patch notes read like wish lists for entire genres of games. Whatever people may say about the interface, they are missing out.
jere 14y ago
If you think NetHack is the greatest computer game of all time, may I suggest Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup? Supposedly, it was modeled after NH, but in attempt to fix several of its problems: http://crawl.develz.org/other/manual.html#n-philosophy-pas-de-faq http://crawl.develz.org/other/manual.html#n-philosophy-pas-d...
- StavrosK 14y ago

starpilot 14y ago

Great explanation of DF's bodily combat damage modeling: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/95316-complex-damage-model-considerable-for-dayz-no-suggestion/ http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/95316-complex-dama... > DF's damage system is just as complex and oftentimes difficult to keep track of as the rest of the game. Instead of simple health points or separate body parts DF simulates each individual by the sum of it's parts. This starts at the single parts of a body, then adds layers of tissue, muscle and fat to each part, connects all parts by joints and finally stuffs a share of vital and nonvital organs into the whole thing. Every part of this construct has several states it can be it, reaching from healthy over bruised, torn, mangled, nonfunctional, broken and missing... > How does that play out in the actual game? Depending on what kind of injury a creature suffers it tracks the damage to individual body part and the results of it. Slashing damage will cut through tissue, muscle and fat, might even separate body parts, blunt damage will pass through protective clothing and only bruise upper layers, but shatter bones and joints mercilessly. Piercing damage will effortlessly penetrate all layers and has a high chance to damage. A dwarf is graphically represented by a smiley face, so you can't see any of this happen. All of it is conveyed by descriptive text. It's also recommended to pick up a freshman textbook on geology to understand the game's many types of rocks, which is apparently pretty realistic following Tarn's personal interest in geology/mineralogy. The depth of this "game" is breathtaking. The only thing I can think of comparable might be high-fidelity but consumer grade flight simulators like X-Plane, or those put out by Russian developer DCS (e.g. http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/series/black_shark/#22728 http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/series/black_shark/... )

drakeandrews 14y ago
> Ulric McDwarf has torn his brain > Ulric McDwarf has broken his spleen Ah, Dwarf Fortress. How I love you. Wait, no, the other one. Hate. Definitely hate.
- DeepDuh 14y ago
  I know, right. 'feelings' - sometimes a difficult concept to grasp after too much Fortran 90 or something similar.

gosu 14y ago

I actually got bored towards the end of my first game of DF because it was too easy. The interface adds a lot of illusory difficulty, but that's not an issue for people used to reading manuals. On the other hand, when you're not wrestling with the system, there's not much fair challenge. When your underground fortress is filled to the brim with traps and completely self sufficient, no one is ever going to touch you unless you handicap yourself. Once I had my base built out the way I wanted it, there wasn't much left for me to do. Kind of reminds me of how Minecraft feels once you've built a satisfying shelter, but I think that Minecraft's music and FPS perspective can motivate people to keep playing for the sake of creativity. With DF: sure, it's fun to imagine my fortress and all, but then I might as well move away from the keyboard and just do the whole thing in my imagination.

jmillikin 14y ago
If you ever find your Dwarf Fortress game to be too boring, keep digging deeper. There are many sources of entertainment located far underground.
- Kutta 14y ago
  I must mention that actual gameplay challenges (aside from megaprojects) do diminish considerably even when taking the "deeper stuff" into account. I once did a speedrun for wiping out hell; it took about 4 hours. There are many unbalanced game mechanics that make it possible and also pretty easy.
spacemanaki 14y ago
If it's too easy, dig deeper.
oscilloscope 14y ago
The fact that DF makes you want to get away from your keyboard and use your imagination is perhaps its most incredible feature.
bloaf 14y ago
There are some broken aspects to the game: that cage traps can catch just about everything and that all walls are impenetrable to invaders are two of the most obvious. If you abuse these, it is not hard to make the game too easy. You can always just embark in more challenging areas so that you don't have the luxury of preparing a nice impenetrable fort for your first wave of hostiles...

spacemanaki 14y ago

> There are instructions within the game, and without in the form > of wikis and forums, but I wanted to begin at the most basic > level, if only to come at the game from a recently trendy (if > controversial) design paradigm on discoverability that's flowed > from mobile apps to many new indie games: "if you see a UI > walkthrough, they blew it". Some of the author's other points are valid, and DF definitely has some (just some!?) problems with the UI (my personal nitpick is that there are multiple ways to draw rectangles) but I get the impression that she set things up planning to fail. Not R-ingTFM isn't really a reasonable way to review this game. DF doesn't have a team of people behind it, and there's no UX designer to figure out how to make things beautiful and intuitive. On the other hand, the game is free, and the developers have supposedly turned down at least one relatively large buyout offer in order to keep working on their dream on their own terms. It's cliche, but you get out of DF what you put into it. If poring over fan-made wikis, taking notes of all your findings, winning tiny victories like successfully getting your first workshop running, and losing in spectacular fashion only to retell your loss to friends doesn't sound fun, maybe stick to Skyrim.

fennecfoxen 14y ago
"Not R-ingTFM isn't really a reasonable way to review this game." This. If the author had spent half as much time bothering to do research as he did coming up with florid expressions about how this screen was like a bunch of "Greek symbols" impervious to the casual glance, then the reviewer may have had more fun Fun.
- trentlott 14y ago
  It's almost as though you're saying one has to put effort and motivation to derive pleasure from something! Spoonfeeding is the way of the future, and anything else is second-rate design.

danso 14y ago

I'm really glad that this game came out after I was an adult with a full-time job. Otherwise, I would not have the excuse to not dive into it and inevitably be sucked in. As it is, I can walk away, justifying that I just don't have time to figure the game out. I liked DF when trying it out, but I think I enjoy just reading about it more.

HelloMcFly 14y ago
Given the current UI, you'd have all the excuse you need. I gave it an honest shot but I just can't get too invested in a game that requires a few hours of reading wikis and watching YouTube.
- zalzane 14y ago
  This image is pretty relevant. http://i.imgur.com/omJfhlt.jpg http://i.imgur.com/omJfhlt.jpg If you walked into dwarf fortress fully knowledgeable about the UI and game mechanics, you'd have a relatively dull experience with very few surprises. Being such an expansive game, you don't need to know every single command or hotkey just to get a fortress started. The fun lies in not knowing what you're doing, encountering something unexpected, then adapting to that unexpected situation, either by learning something else about the game, or applying your previous knowledge in a creative fashion. Remember that people don't write stories and comics about dwarf fortress because they knew exactly how to handle every hurdle the game threw in their direction.
  - petercooper 14y ago
    That's what I loved about Minecraft for the first few months too. People keep whining about putting the "recipes" in game and making it easier, but the whole process of researching, looking up YouTube videos, reading the wiki, etc, was what made it fun because it felt like you were learning something useful, despite just being a game.
- intended 14y ago
  Playing DF, is roughly analogous to reading the Illiad, or a similarly complex work of Literature. Now DF isn't the Illiad of the gaming world, yet. But the experience of parsing it, generally ends up expanding your perspective of what games should be, and how they should be played. Its pretty much the serious gamer's game.

jebblue 14y ago

It uses ascii symbols?

intended 14y ago
Yup, the game author's first effort Arm0k God of blood (or something on those lines) had a GUI and graphics. After being disappointed with how that worked out, he decided instead to work on a world generator and fantasy story creator. Since entire sections of game aren't in yet, and can only be expected hopefully by 2020, the idea of making an unified interface along with having graphics was dropped. This has led to several happy and unhappy coincidences. Firstly the constant griping about how its hard to understand, both from a UI and a graphics perspective. Secondly its created a great/stellar/benchmark setting gaming community, because its difficulty has acted as an inherent gating/filtering mechanism.
devcpp 14y ago
It's not actually ASCII, there are many more characters used. It is however "ASCII art", in that the characters are used to graphically represent places and objects.
praptak 14y ago
Not really ASCII. One of the 8-bit character sets that have smiley faces, border-drawing characters and similar stuff. Check it out here: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Tileset_repository http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Tileset_repository
DanBC 14y ago
...and it uses text in an annoying way. It renders the text in OpenGL, which is one of the reasons why a 'text mode' game is so resource intensive.
- Deestan 14y ago
  > It renders the text in OpenGL, which is one of the reasons why a 'text mode' game is so resource intensive. No, that is not really resource intensive. The massive simulation behind the graphics is resource intensive.

dpeck 14y ago

DF is a fantastic game, and one worth taking some time to explore if you have a weekend to burn when friends and family are out of town, or you're just feeling like being a shut in. It is an excellent example of a "forever project" and one that has gained some quite a fanbase, but as you get deeper in, you will be frustrated by some things. The game is designed by 2 brothers, and coded completely by one of them. This has led to a game with immense scope, and tons of features, but with most of them lacking polish. Its also led to performance problems, as adding new features is vastly more important than optimizing existing ones. The game is single threaded, outside of some of the gui, and processors aren't really getting any faster. Eventually you'll get frustrated and kill your fortress due to FPS slowdown. This could happen from your fort growing to a large number of dwarfs, or you playing too much with things that flow (lava, water), etc. There have been quite a few offers by fans of the game to help with the code, but Toady One is adamant about keeping the source closed and being the only developer. So play, enjoy, and be impressed with what one guy and a lot of Mountain Dew can accomplish, but be aware that you're playing in what is essentially someones (amazing) lifetime art project. PS: Dwarf Therapist and DfHack make the game much more playable and get around a lot of the interface quirks. If you're going to get started playing I'd recommend them.

intended 14y ago

In the recent threads on armor and armor piercing on the Bay12forums, the game calculates and checks for fracture stress and impact stress when crossbow bolts impact armor. So for example the game will test to see if the impact_yield, and further research in the threads below reach conclusions such as : " the IY (impact_yield) deflection mechanism is related to armor density, armor thickness, bolt size, bolt impact yield, bolt contact area, and the difference between mail and plate at larger contact areas." Armor density takes from armor material - Iron/Steel/, as does impact_yield. Here is the thread where the initial !!Science!! on whether bolt weight made an impact on their lethality - [Dwarven Research: The Effect of Bolt Weight on Crossbow Performance](http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=115683.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=115683.0) The results were converted on reddit into a LaTeX PDF, which is excellent reading - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2891221/DF%20study.pdf http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2891221/DF%20study.pdf This led to the follow up: A Comparison Study on the Eﬀectiveness of Bolts vs Armors LaTeX - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2891221/DF%20study%202.pdf http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2891221/DF%20study%202.pdf Thread - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116151.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116151.0 The underlying algorithm for impact_yield deflection on page 11 was: " Algorithm: 1. The projectile is hitting the creature on a body part protected by a piece of rigid armor (i.e. bolt hits steel breastplate). 2. Multiply the armor's LAYER_SIZE by the projectile's CONTACT_AREA, and round the result down to the nearest 100. The exception is that you round up to 100 instead of rounding down to zero if the result was less than 100 (i.e. 20x2=40 -> 100). 3. IMPACT_YIELD = (800/157) * ARMOR_SOLID_DENSITY * (step #2 result) / PROJECTILE_SIZE " And thats to test if a bolt deflects on impact with armor. Penetration causing severing of tissue, blunt damage causing bruising are also possible depending on the Armor vs Bolt combination. And this is a minor sub part of the game which most people don't see.

chris_mahan 14y ago
This means, essentially, that the strategist can't build an Excel model of the game and win that way, the way many games are played and won. Excel would blow up...
- intended 14y ago

hayksaakian 14y ago

This is very beta/alpha an should be treated as such. The dev is focused on depth of gameplay before all else.

nnq 14y ago

I never played DF, but... wouldn't his be way cooler and maybe motivate more people into learning it if it was a MMO?

gchpaco 14y ago
Good god isn't it addictive enough?! More realistically there are things you can do in DF like bathe the world in lava or crack the Maximum Fun Chamber that would be kind of obnoxious for your neighbors. A bit like playing Minecraft with IC2 and accidentally leveling half your neighbor's house because your nuclear reactor melted down. Just because you are even worse off does not make people any happier about it.
- mesozoic 14y ago
  But losing is fun. And if it were an MMO then the motto could change to Losing is fun for everyone!

shocks 14y ago

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=57557.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=57557.0 Here is a nice tileset that can make the game far more approachable. :)

barbs 14y ago

Ahhhh Dwarf Fortress...I really wish I had the patience to overcome the insane learning curve, but I barely have enough patience to learn Civilization ><. Some of the stories people have created with the game are incredible. My favourite site for this is http://dfstories.com/ http://dfstories.com/ Also, the New York Times article linked in the above article is quite insightful I found: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-of-dwarf-fortress.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-of...

jokermatt999 14y ago

I've noticed a lot of people in this topic complaining about graphics/UI. I'll give you that the UI does need an overall badly, but there's a reason for the graphics: the sheer complexity of the game, and the fact that his last game's development stalled because of graphics. In the "sheer complexity" department, imagine trying to depict any of the following well graphically: randomly generated artifacts made of random materials, the ridiculously intricate damage models, and completely randomly generated titans (which do start with a base creature, but have random materials/bodyparts galore). While you could just do essentially what he does for the ASCII and have one symbol that represents all these, he doesn't seem to want to go this route. Which is insane, but hey, insane seems to be the normal for DF development. The second part is that his last game died partly from his trying to implement graphics too early. Notice how the full title is "Dwarf Fortress: Slaves to Armok"? Armok was the game before this. Similar in overly ambitious scope, but with an early 3d style graphics. However, for some reason or another, it became to difficult to support its development after graphics, and it collapsed under its own weight. Hence the switch to ASCII: he could continue implementing hundreds of features without as much regard for performance or implementation. It's easy to add in dozens of new creatures, random titans, genetics and randomized traits when you don't have to actually worry about representing it. I highly suggest reading his devblog (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html) just as inspiration for what one crazy ambitious man can do. As for why he doesn't enlist more help, make it open source, etc, the answer is even simpler: this game is his bread and butter and both he and his brother live off the donations. Yes, part of it is that he wants to maintain control of the project, but if a program was literally the sole means of supporting you and your sibling, I think you'd be wary of giving away its code too. He has said it will likely be open sourced when he dies however.

kunil 14y ago
It is not just the ASCII. He could write a more useful GUI. With buttons and better mouse control, it would be much appealing for the crowds.
- sclangdon 14y ago
  Writing better mouse control isn't fun. If he were to start writing such things, I bet he'd either scrap them anyway or just get bored of writing DF all-together. The "boring" tasks are purposefully programmed to the minimum requirement so he can spend more time on the interesting tasks, to ensure his motivation stays high. Admittedly, he could just outsource the GUI stuff, but for better or worse, he clearly wants to keep the code close to his chest.

pvaldes 14y ago

Falcon's eye, I miss you...

stuhacking 14y ago
It's called "Vulture's Eye" these days and I think it's still in development... http://www.darkarts.co.za/vulture http://www.darkarts.co.za/vulture

smogzer 14y ago

The creators of DF could partner with some game studio to create a nice GUI for playing, or create an API that could allow for beter interfaces to evolve, the tilesets are great, but custom tutorials would be awesome. I tried playing DF once but was overwhelmed with the information and didn't try again, and i used to play nethack and adom. I also recommend ADOM for those who like nethack and redrogue that is a roguelike meets platformer, very nice !

jgj 14y ago

For a Dwarf-Fortress-like experience with a much more friendly UI and reasonable learning curve, try Gnomoria (http://gnomoria.com http://gnomoria.com) The developer is awesome and releases an update (mostly) every week. It made it through Steam Greenlight but hasn't been released there yet. It is well worth the 8 bucks. As a person who hates repeating himself, my biggest problem with DF and its difficulty curve was that I often would make a small mistake early in the game, like expand too fast or forget to close off an entrance to a cavern, and have to start all over, and repeat the same X steps to get a basic civilization going, which gets tiresome. Gnomoria is no different, but it is much more forgiving in the early going and leads to fewer short-order restarts. Also, graphics!

pbhjpbhj 14y ago

It looks like a SIMS variant played in "ASCII".

simonebrunozzi 14y ago

What would be the best way to play DF on a not-so-powerful machine? It seems that rendering the ASCII art is a serious CPU dwell...

mesozoic 14y ago
It's not the art rendering it's the massive amount of calculations about dwarf feelings and cat mating the simulation is doing underneath that make it slow.

edem 14y ago

I really like this article. The phrasing is so good that I can imagine myself sitting at the computer and staring at the weird ASCII characters.

ctdonath 14y ago

Succinct explanation of Dwarf Fortress as fun: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110522180205/vsrecommendedgames/images/a/a5/Dwarf_Fortress_fun.png http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110522180205/vsrecom...

mesozoic 14y ago

If you play Dwarf Fortress without side help under the presumption that a games UI that isn't immediately obvious is bad then "you're gonna have a bad time." Not that I'm defending DF UI because it is horrendous but the game underneath is magnificent and there are many external resources to help one dig down far enough to get to that magnificence.

jessaustin 14y ago

I played DF quite a bit a few years ago. Sometime later I read Reamde, by Neal Stephenson: http://www.amazon.com/Reamde-A-Novel-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0062191497 http://www.amazon.com/Reamde-A-Novel-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0062... I only just realized, reading the comments here, how much the description of the game in Reamde is patterned after DF, with simulations of geological and even planetary processes driving mundane scenery and resource distribution. Although of course in the novel it's a MMORPG because that's cooler. b^)