Dwarf Fortress

[nasher168]

For those who don't know, Dwarf Fortress is basically a sort of ultra-realistic rts (although you can pause and micro-manage things if you like) in which you basically establish a city (usually carved into hills or mountains) populated by dwarves. There is no ultimate goal and chances are you will eventually lose. The game is extremely realistic, simulating everything from water and lava physics, cave-ins, the mental characteristics of individual dwarves and even things like flesh density, the extent of wounds and armour durability etc in combat.

I downloaded it yesterday (from here, if you're interested). I can't honestly claim to have much idea what I'm doing. The learning curve is extremely steep. I couldn't make any sense of the ascii interface, so I got a texture pack pretty quickly. Now I'm just using tutorials to try and get started. But even then, I'm not doing very well. I have worked out how to dig a basic hole in the ground and have made a number of chambers, but when I tried to build a carpenters' workshop, I apparently didn't have sufficient resources. I don't actually know where to look to see where resources are kept.

 

[Welshidiot]

You're not exactly selling this, Nash......."I've discovered this impossibly hard game, that I'm terrible at....You guys should really try it, it's great!!" :lol:

 

[nasher168]

:lol:
Yeah, well I hear it's fun once you know how to play it, anyway.

 

[Undeath]

You're not exactly selling this, Nash......."I've discovered this impossibly hard game, that I'm terrible at....You guys should really try it, it's great!!" :lol:

The game arguably does an even worse job of selling itself. The motto of the game is "Losing is fun", and even the wiki uses the term "fun" as a synonym for the destruction of your fortress.

I've tried to get into this game multiple times over the years, but I never really managed to get the hang of it. I feel that once you start getting more than your initial dwarves, the game becomes mind-bogglingly complex and hard to keep track of. The fact that the game is still under development has also been a bit of a barrier - amongst other things, the addition of the z-axis has really added more complexity than I feel comfortable with.

I really should give it another go though...

 

[DepricatedZero]

Dwarf Fortress is amazing

Think of Minecraft as a semi-realistic RTS. Rather than just running around building up your fortress though you have to also manage defense, sleeping quarters, workshops, housing, food, trade, you name it - for your Dwarves. You don't even get to control any of them, you just get to assign jobs and see how they perform - and they have different personalities, proficiencies, goals, etc and will get distracted by those. It's hard as Fffffffuuuuuuuuuuck but totally a fun game.

The game itself is a top-down 2d roguelike render(I've heard that there are plans to change that, but just rumor) of a 3d world. You navigate on 3 axes(left right, up down, in out) Even with such simple 'graphics' though I've seen the game eat my processor because of the sheer amount of shit that goes on in it (Granted this was a fortress that lived on to about 9 months). There are renderers that you can load your game into which will draw the world in 3d blocks. Pics will be from that

For inspiration, I present FlareChannel, the most epic Dwarf Fortress I've ever witnessed.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=43679.0 (warning, link is image heavy)

And a highlight from the above link

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

What texture packs are you people using? The ASCII graphics are horrific

And that 3d renderer, what's its name?

 

[nasher168]

I was struggling to work out what on Earth was going on, so I downloaded a program called the Lazy Newb Pack which came with a texture pack.

 

[DepricatedZero]

I use the same thing nasher does actually

the renderer above, I don't know, those pictures were taken by the guy who created the FlareChannel Fortress