+Player's Perspective I can totally send one, but... I still can't figure out how to send people messages through UA-cam, lol. Let me know a good way to contact you and I'll do it. I might also have to consider putting a transcript in the description if anyone else asks in the future!
One time my friend was going to demolish an unpopulated fortress that fell, but a fisherman that had gone mad killed all the children that went through the wall and ate them. Then he sent two warrior dwarves to deal with him; sadly, one of them perished. The only weapon that man used was a sock.
That's all well and good when you're talking about one guy making a game on his own, but normal dev teams have lots of people that do different things, and coders generally aren't also artists
+Lazypackmule Dwarf fortress simply couldnt run on anything with high fidelity graphics. The simulation alone already brings high end machines to their knees. Not to mention that you would need a way to visualize all the procgenned stuff, which would mean proceduural models and animations.
Imagine the engravings on the walls after the tragedy "This is an engraving of Urist Mcdwarf, Urist Mcdwarf is surrounded by dwarfs, Urist Mcdwarf's feet are rotten, Urist is screaming, the dwarfes are screaming"
I'm recounting this story from memory, I had a Dwarf Fortress Playthrough on my channel, Axeanguish was the name of the fort. It was settled on a half evil biome. Very early on in the fort, before I could have time to build many mood buff things for the dwarves, one of my Female dwarves who had recently just given birth and was carrying her newborn had a mental break and started throwing a tantrum. Throwing items in her anger. including her baby she was carrying, killing him on impact. This caused her to go into a FELL mood. the bad mood equivalent of a Fey mood. And she started to construct a Fell artifact, made from bone, but not just any bones, specifically with the bones from the corpse of her newly dead baby. The finished product was an artifact Dwarven Bone Spike Ball Trap. I ended putting that bone spike trap in the room of that Mother Dwarf. Not because a bone spike trap is of any real effectiveness, but more to commemorate such a strange circumstance that lead to the creation of such a grim artifact.
I've been playing Angband for some years (let's say 10) on and off, and have invested more than a couple of literal years (measured in minutes) in MUDs since the 90s. Started playing DF literally yesterday. This is a fantastic video for anyone interested in gaming at any level. Awesome work.
A rather funny story I have about one of my first fortresses. Essentially, my fortress was in it's youth and my primary source of food at the time was several fisherman fishing in the river above land. At some stage, a estranged human made their way onto my plot of land and bit one of the fisherman. Luckily, he left soon after and I thought nothing of it. However, that night, a were giraffe attacked my fort, from the inside, biting a ton of dwarves. I hadn't noticed on time, and after the beast was slain by my make shift militia, everyone went about their business again... Till the next night, suddenly the number of were-beasts grew, and to my horror, I realized, at-least half the population was infected, and soon the whole population was infected. Every night in that fortress's life a battle royal of were giraffes fought one another, just to wake up from their lunacy and begin work again. Needless to say, eventually they all died and I had to move on from the strange fortress of were beasts.
My first adventure mode guy was named Killman BladeBlades The Blade of Blades. First thing i did was kill a man, drink his blood and eat one of his fingers in front of his friends, throw a coin at one of them then slice into their arm after they got aggressive. They surrendered and I named the place PainfulDeath of Blades. then i got brutally murdered by bogeymen.
not really, unless you're near a village you can run half an hour irl until the first crack of light assuming your character won't get tired, witch it will, tho if you got a legendary fighter you can simply just kill like 5 of em and the crackling fades away
Popped up under "what is dwarf fortress" and all I found was "how to play dwarf fortress" videos. Thanks for giving the big picture and explaining the game as a *concept* - it was what I was looking for and you explained that so well. :) It's a super interesting piece of game design. I think I have to check it out. Thanks again!
Dwarf fortress is genius as it contains two extremes in story telling: Not only does it have the extreme of random chaos, where everything organically comes out in real time, but it also has the cold calculating and rigid script-writing extreme of story-telling. What I mean by the second part is basically everything within the fort is determined by the way you "script" the fortress, the way you lay it out, every meticious detail and aspect of the materials and layout must be consciously put in. You actively build the set and setting the narrative takes place in. There is this great harmony with chaos and order in the game, the chaos of the game and your own artisanship weave the narrative together. Most games involve tradeoff with these two ends of the spectrum, or forego one. But Dwarf fortress is the result of active participation of Chaos and pure rationality and free will blended together to make something beautiful in the experience. What happens is this produces "flow": Thought without thought. You get to completely immerse yourself in the nature of the game without having to think, yet you are putting every ounce of mental energy into decisions based off what the game is giving you. It's a beautiful state of mind to be in.
The most tragic part of your story is that if your mist machine's walkway had a floor made of grates instead of standard tiles it would've drained the deadly blood instead of spreading it. I had a similar issue...twice. Once with a standard beast with deadly blood I thought nothing of at the time...until My cats started randomly vomitting profusely and then dying, and soldiers I accidentally had walking bearfoot started getting paralyzed and dying of asphyxiation. Fortunately it didn't end the fort but DANG I wish there was a way to [d]esignate cleaning. The 2nd disease incident was much much more severe. Which is to be expected considering I had breached hell. Demon's were pouring in from the underworld forcing me to wall off my cavern. I tried locking one up between gates, a big stinky slime monster, and putting it through a menacing spike gauntlet but this proved to be wildly ineffective. Eventually I decided that maybe if we fight these demons one at a time we can reclaim (some) of the caverns. So I let this sentient pile of garbage into the beast arena I had established and sent my entire military to have at it. It was a fairly dramatic fight but we came out on top....kinda...sorta...not really. Every body part that came into contact with the beast or THE AIR AROUND IT became necrotic. Needless to say, I retired that fort.
I've had a fort that had over 200 dwarves (With mods of course) but I never cheated with it or anything it lived for years and years and years it felt amazing to have such a successful fort with when I got my first legendary swords dwarf I was amazed and over time I got even more dwarves with legendary skilled dwarves and everything went so well. The sad part is I had some sort of virus on my computer some how then I had to reformat my hard drive losing all of that progress, I even got my first adamantine items and all of it gone... I guess I'll just have to create another, but the point is I love how this game is so much more unique than any other game, how with an imagination you can create stories that are amazing in any sense. I love this aspect of the game regardless of the graphics, it's kind of like just reading a book with a higher form of viewing. Even the ascii gives more visualization than a normal book would. It's just amazing in my point of view.
"so, is dwarf fortress a roguelike? Dunno, but lets talk about other stuff for 30 minutes" Now seriously, nice video! I thought something was funny but I forgot what it was and I'm too lazy to look it up so I can't tell you.
I came hear to hear your input on dwarf fortress... and i stayed for the story of gemspears. Very good video, I'll be recommending it to my friend who is growing an interest in DF. They said to me "The more you talk about this game the more depth it has"... i would like to say to this person; "You have no fucking idea"
This is still one of my favorite videos of all time on youtube, I haven't watched it in a while. Glad you're back! I'm hoping you make some more DF videos some time
I had a beast blood problem too. I create a hospital that force them to walk through a stream to clean them. Most of the non-infected dwarves were just doing hospital care. I think the fortress recovered sort of...
DF was one half Dungeon Keeper with roguelike elements in Fort mode, and one half open-world roguelike in Adventure mode. They both had fairly simple gamey structures, Fort mode having a very structured increase in difficulty and set of challenges, with the interior river, then the magma, then the adamantine (end game). Then the adventure mode was simply, go to town, ask for target, kill target, repeat, also visit your old fortress. Now though, the fort mode and adventure mode have become a lot more open, and with the increasing interplay between the two modes, the game is truly becoming a fantasy world simulator, escaping out of any known genre, while having roots in several.
You have the voice of an old man. That, and your storytelling style, lends itself very well into bringing the narrative of Gemspears to life, imbuing it with pride, horror, melancholy and nostalgia.
I'm assuming the voice of an old man is a good thing! It'll make me more like my hero, Garrison Keillor. My radio show would be Prairie Mountainhome Companion
That was really awesome! You make some great points about the storytelling aspect of the game, and that bit about Gemspears was glorious! A story like that has definite potential in attracting new players.
I always seem to just have my dorfs starve early on. Interestingly in my most recent game i seem to have already become a tourist trap for buddist dorfs in trying to provide shrines for my dorfs.
I love dwarf fortress. I don't hate the interface. I do think that the interface could be laid out in menus at the top and it would make it vastly more accessible without diminishing anything. I love keyboard shortcuts, but I'm a unix admin who uses emacs. That means I think the interface could be made better with more shortcuts and less sub-menus but I can appreciate the need for menus for new users and less often used elements of the game.
The interface is definitely easy to use once you understand it. It's just the biggest obstacle hindering new players, I think. At first glance it doesn't seem to make much sense, but once you know how to use it, it's all really convenient.
I've tried to get two people to play this game. Only two people, people whom I respect as intelligent and have a dark sense of humor; both of them gamers. Neither one has paid any attention to the game. They both complained about the interface and the graphics. I gave both of them a graphics package, and it did no good. The game would definitely benefit from a top menu option that reads "Nice graphics? Y/N" and automatically loads whatever graphics pack that Toady likes. As for the myself... I would really like the mouse to be more consistent when it can be used as a tool to select targets. That's about it. The rest is really nice and it took me only a week to figure out the basic mane system by itself. I still have trouble with mine carts, and I've set up many functioning systems, as just an example; but it's really just a learning curve that once overcome turns out to be really brilliant by itself.
Hey man I understand that you are in a pretty bad situation right now and I just want to give you my condolences. But I also want to say that you should make more Dwarf Fortress videos in the style of your storytelling video of gem Spears and also the story of the vampire and the Minotaur. If you make videos and make a patreon account hopefully it can help your situation and also give the people of UA-cam great content from you to enjoy hopefully everything works out with what's going on with your life situation right now and I hope to see some more videos in the Dwarf Fortress way from you.
I had a similar case with werechameleons. At fist I send dwarfes, who were bitten, to the atomsmasher, but I must have missed some... I tried to sort out the infected again, but some slipped through again. The final solution was walling off the hospital after the next fullmoon accident. My fortress lost a third of its poulation in these times. What a thrill! :D But there are funny stories, too: When a swordsdwarf and his pet bunny defeated a giantess, for example. Dwarf Fortress is truly a wonderful game.
Dwarf Fortresses Controls are actually a bit similar to the controls of an RTS and many other games in a way, many games use hotkeys where you press a key or combination of keys to execute certain actions or build stuff, this is typically used in high level play while a casual player is content with just clicking. Dwarf Fortress forces this high level playstyle on you because it knows you'll be playing the game faster by learning. Most of the letters chosen for the hotkeys are associated with the action as well D for designations, P for piles, B for buildings.
im surprised when you said "poeple who dont play dwarf fortress are annoying" you didnt mention... *playing dwarf fortress* "hey, your mining and you made a workshop? Is that game kind of like minecraft" that statement crushed my soul
Might come out from just casually explaining what's going on. Maybe they took an interest, since you're friends, and apparently you're interested in something, so they're curious about what has your attention.
i clearly understand that is in fact what happened, and i even said that day that, "no, and also im overreacting here" still is a bit soul crushing though
heh, i have had the exact same problem with rimworld. "i dont like 2d games" i do fully plan on playing dwarf fortress when i have time. im guessing it will consume my life even more than rimworld did. the emergent gameplay is why i love rimworld - i had a doctor whose son was dieing of plague, so he cut his sons heart out to transplant into and save another colonist
The beauty of developing FOR dwarf fortress is it is the essence of graphical minimalism. It is hard to think of an easier way to convey something's exterior than by assigning a color and an ASCII character. No modeling, or texturing, or animating in any real sense. From there on out, all the remains is plotting function and making things talk. I imagine the way the game is constructed, it's incredibly open ended for how it accesses and plugs in function, which you don't need to be a genius to do, but it'll sure as hell speed things up and eliminate as much drafting and trial and error. With one major field left to truly hunt down for development, making quick leaps and bounds probably isn't the most inconceivable thing. Indeed, the Dev's most genius stroke may very well have been setting the bar for himself extremely low to start, but very high at its potential. That much is nothing short of a cunning move.
Just reached Mountainhome for the first time. It was my first fort in the Steam version in an ideal fortress location. All the goblins are on the continents surrounding the main continent, so I only have to worry about sieges if I start wars with my neighbors. My fortress is nestled on the north side of a mountain valley, and two other larger dwarvish civilizations sit to my east and west around the exits of the mountain valley. Not sure why the tutorial choose to place my fort so far away from my civilization's capital, but now that the queen has moved in I'm going to set my new goal on conquering the mountain valley. Turn the game into Crusader Kings / Total War, and see if I can dominate the dwarves around me or have fun trying. The game is seriously addictive now that I understand it's systems and can easily navigate it's menus with the new UI. I've played it off and on before, but my fortresses wouldn't make it that far, usually because I got preoccupied with life or ran up against things I wasn't willing to learn yet.
This was a good video and I absolutely love me some DF sometimes (even though I am a total noob - haven't done a lot of things in it yet, not even a lot of combat!). Though I would argue the value in personal stories that only one person experiences. I feel like the infinite nature of these stories kinda cheapens each one's value. Sure, it's an unmatched feeling to experience something truly unique as it's happening, but it'll be a story that exists for very few people. There's definitely some value in stories that absolutely everyone who wants to can experience in about the same way, and just because books and movies do that already and videogames can do it differently doesn't mean videogames doing pre-scripted stories is something that doesn't utilize the medium to its full potential or whatever. A LOT of games with a story set in stone would never work as a movie or a book.
A lot of those are probably on the wiki. But the thing is, there are lots of "fixed" animals and monsters like goblins, trolls, dragons, minotaurs, and then there are randomized creatures, like forgotten beasts which are random amalgamations of animal parts, and titans which can be composed of all kinds of materials, and even "were-" creatures, which start out as an intelligent species like a dwarf or human and transform into a random animal. But there's a pretty comprehensive list here: dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Creature
A great watch, sir. Beast rot sounds horrible. Those poor dwarfs. :( I've been playing mainly Adventurer Mode, but I think I'll give Fortress Mode a try after watching your video.
I showed my brother dwarf fortress once and he looked at it like it was the shit Neo sees at the end of the first Matrix, lol. even with the tilesets. fuck, i miss playing DF.
Your example of watching a movie is quite accurate but I'd say it's like trying to watch star wars and when the text wall comes the friend says I want to watch a movie not read it. But I must admit I never gotten far in my tries. I love the idea and features of the game but same as minecraft I play a while leave it for a few days and next time I start all over. Meaning I never get to far into the game.
Sorry, one addendum, bringing up the Gold Box games made me wonder, would you consider those roguelikes? Some of them utilize a pseudo overhead perspective and have turn based movement, etc?
Thanks for that rather deep insight. I would love to have more games with depth like this but the struggle of learning everything from a wiki or consulting guides etc. and the rather harsh UI are keeping me from trying it.
It took me two days to understand how to use the games controls however understanding the function of other things, that took me a good while longer. On the whooe though it didn't take me long to understand how to play. Kind of. I still have issues with understanding smith craft but I think that bas to do with laziness more than anything else.
How would classify Fortress mode through a mode to be 1 dwarf, I'm curious with how you would classify that with how you classify roguelikes. While yes you need a mod to do it, it's still there.
Dwarf fortress is just one of those awesome games I can't really play. I dunno if it's autism or what, but once my population gets to be around thirty or so and my fort gets to be about the size to accommodate them things just start to get overwhelming and mentally taxing. I love hearing other players' stories about their fortresses though.
William Carlson I don't have an official diagnosis, but a friend who has it sat me down one day and talked about it with me and told me why he felt I might be too. I thought about it for a few months, did some of my own research. I have a feeling I might be. Dunno for 100% though.
I've never used the lazy newb pack myself, so I don't know exactly how good it is. I use a tileset, but one that keeps the ascii icons, just makes them square instead of rectangular. The main reason I don't use a graphical tileset is just so that it's easier to share screenshots on forums and stuff. Weirdly, I find that I sometimes have a harder time telling what things are when I see screenshots with a graphical tileset than when I look at an ascii screenshot.
It is interesting that my definition of roguelike is so much more different lol. I tried to formulate it only to realize that it is kind of intuitive for me (generally speaking any game with procedural generated map and items [exceptions apply] and inability to reload saves is a roguelike for me). I guess I will have to give a second thought. I really like df for what it is and what exciting storytelling opportunities it presents. However, after end of y1 I struggle to come up with projects to do and just end up waiting for action. Once action starts my game ends as I did not prepare well enough (partially because I am lazy to learn all the names of parts of armor which you have to make so my soldiers have partial armor [I would love to use excuse that they are barbarians but thats not true or they are the weakest barbarians ever]). I also encountered a weird feeling of grinding as to build a hospital you need soap, to have soap you need workshop, to create soap you need x resource. I feel really sad that this kind of things get in a way of loving this game as when df is fun for me than it is real fun. I have not enjoyed something as much as df in a while. All in all its kind of me ruining fun for myself or not being ready for so much complexity.
He means similar to rogue (1980) not the modern 'rogue-lite/like' spinoff genre which is just like permadeath, randomized, replability focused, combat based games
I just encountered these videos now, and I must say, I love this guy already. The whole recent couple of years and this explosion of games all calling themselves "roguelikes" always got on my nerves. When in fact, Spelunky, Isacc, FTL, Gungeon, etc are not roguelikes, they don't even come close. I've always shared this thought on how most videos stories should come through player action and not pre scripted things some writers created, pages of lore and especially not from fancy cinematics. Heck, I just go on YT to watch video game cinematics now, cause I can't be bothered playing through a game for em. They're more engaging that way anyway. Of course, I got a C in Visual Game Design at Uni. (Though it was just a filler subject, I knew it'd be shit) cause my teacher disagrees with my point of view. 'That won't sell.' Heh. And like some guy below said :P Dwarf Fortress and CataclysmDDA forever
Ok, serious question. I really find this game interesting and I really want to try this game out, but what's the minimum IQ requirement in order to enjoy the game? Because I fear I don't have enough power in my noggin to even comprehend this masterpiece.
Do you have reading comprehension skills on par with a 10 year old? Do you know how to use a wiki? If you answered yes to both of these questions you can play dwarf fort.
I don't mind the graphics of the UI, but the controls... Good God the controls of this game. I'd like to get into Dwarf Fortress, I really do but I just can't get used to the awful control scheme.
Having lots of text or cinematics in a game does not make it an interactive book or movie. Those story moments are simply to support the gameplay involved. In dwarf fortress, the kinds of stories that you get out of it are simply a result of the open ended gameplay, while linear games generally need more linear and developed stories.
But it does have shitty graphics, I cant tell what going on where or when. It would also be a huge bonus to him. Lots of people like me are turned off because of shitty graphics and bad UI.
+Kaptem The graphics aren't shitty if you feel it's climate. The game's aproach on describing what's going on is different, but not worse. It's less friendly for easy entertainment, but much more capable of complexity. The first Slaves to Armok (DF's prequel) had flashy 3D graphics, but Toady cancelled it because it slowed down the process of adding the fun elements to the game. Also, some people like reading.
+Kaptem If you download thinks like Lazy's Newb Pack it comes with little patches and UI fixes for the fortress mode and many many texture packs, so it can look like tileset roguelikes like CataclysmDDA.
+Piotr Apostel Okay... I looked at the first slave to armok. Thats not what im talking about, back then I stated it wrong, im looking for accesiblity, not good graphics, the first slave to armok then is not what im talking about. The graphics need more readable, not more detailed, same with the UI, make it easier to use and have overviews when you hover over something, make it more accesible.
anyone wanna suggest a good forttress-play of this game I could watch? perferrably recent I know there are lots of them but im just looking for a good place to start to understand the game (not to play....just to watch) surely there are examples of especially good runs of the game right?
proper procedural story is the grail of vgames. It will be the bees knees. the cats ass. Imagine such story in minecraft for eg. DF is a step in this direction.
While I agree that storytelling like that of Dwarf Fortress has its place. I don't necessarily agree that more games should take cues from it. User created narratives have problems of their own, the biggest, in my opinion, being the reliance on the user for a driving force or motivation. Will certain users take advantage? Of course. Can it be wildly popular? Absolutely. But a more directed experience has bonuses as well, and unfortunately, this is the crux of the situation. Other than a handful of examples, user created narrative and directed narrative are mutually exclusive. Even out of the examples, a lot are older games, like the TSR Gold Box games. A recent example that does a decent effort at striking a balance, again in my opinion, is Dragon's Dogma, but even that has limited room for user created narrative. Wow, I didn't expect this post to be so long, anyway, good video.
+Damien27 This game does seem to have some good ideas for helping players create stories, giving some autonomy to the dwarves and generating names and nicknames takes a bit of the pressure off the player to rationalize everything going on and make up forced characters. The system of leveling based on actions in RPG's (like Oblivion) is another way to help players create organic character progressions instead of sitting there trying to decide on a prescribed type to be.
+Damien27 I think a good point is that you don't see user created narration in a lot of games nowadays, basically all the big triple A titles are story/cinematic driven and doesn't UNFOLD because of things you do - yes, some games do, some good examples would be the games that make you choose an action, but they're so restricted and (even though they aren't described that way) linear. Dragon Age and Divinity does it really well, but compared to the downfall of Gemspear? A beast with blood that makes you rot? Which was carried by water from an artificial waterfall? It's really incredible. That's a genius set of game mechanics that allow a story to unfold based on random things and how the player interacts with the game.
I've had it recommended by a few people, but I have a tough time getting into anything with a subscription fee. And it does seem pretty intimidating for a new player, but then again, DF was really intimidating to get into as well, and now I can play it just fine.
The Trooth Exactly, the sub fee is honestly not a thing for me because I have played other subscription based MMOs in the past like WoW and never really had a problem with it. There is a free trial if you ever wanted to try it out, I would highly recommend outsourcing as soon as you can though. Outside of high-security space team-work is essential.
"losing is fun", This is my #1 game, such a shame this game doesn't get an award because it has A LOT more than the triple A title games out there, I only don't like the UI of the game but beside that no complains, I mean there are some bugs but...meh
'The unconventional controls question game mechanics overall and are part of the charm' Pretensious nonsense. The UI is undefendably shit. I love dwarf Fortress, but let's not bullshit away it's gaping flaws. It's an unfinished game, it's okay that the UI is bad, but, it is a bad UI. It is not impressive and it does not challenge norms. It's unfinished. The damage system is fantastic. Though as realistic as it tries to be, there are still often funny results. Whilst hunting deer I gutted one and then threw it's guts at another deer, killing the second one. Also lost my dagger and ended up punching a deer until it collapsed barely breathing. I beat it for like an in-game day never killing it because no matter how many very painful abdominable blows I dealt it, none were considered lethal. And that's not so realistic. The swelling and internal bleeding should've killed it, but it just remained unable to stand up or be concious instead. Meanwhile chopping off a foot can insta-kill for some things, from blood loss I guess. And it seems like blood is HP. Until you get the blood out, you're doing no actual HP damage to them. Kinda felt lame to realise it was really a game of stabbing the foot and then fleeing and letting it bleed out. Throwing arrows by hand into it as it limps at you. From cool to silly so fast.
It's really unfair to compare Dwarf Fortress to other games saying that its updates have more content. All there is to do to update Dwarf Fortress is code the items in, in other games you need 3d artists, animators, programmers, sound effects. So yeah, the guy behind Dwarf Fortress is an amazing programmer, but he's not a "magician" either, like you said in your video. There's absolutely no way Dwarf Fortress could have been controlled like Sim City and Age of Empire since you have almost no mouse input in the game, so I have no idea what your point was. The only reason the controls are so different is because it's an ASCII game, which means almost all you have as an input is the keyboard. Yes, the game is awesome. Yes, it has a shitload of features, but the reason why it has so many features is because all it needs is code (a lot of it).
Nordkiinach "You get procedural 'art' as well... pal... You also get procedural animations, programs and sound effects...." I'm not your pal, buddy. Also, I'm not sure what your point is? You think I don't know that there are procedural anims + art? That was not my point at all. My point is that those are WAY harder and take a LOT more time to implement in a game than a procedurally generated world in ASCII. "So when you 'THINK' of it, you actually have no point in what you are saying except that you are indirectly exposing that you are jealous of Dwarf Fortress' Developers." No, YOU want me to have no point because you got triggered by my comment, there's a difference. I'm not jealous, I actually admire their work. What they did is truely amazing. But comparing them to other devs is not fair at all, because they are doing completely different things. Also, I know you liked your own comment, you're not fooling anyone.
I do think that the shitty UI is a bad thing about the game. There is no way around it, it is counter-intuitive and saying it "has its charm" is just you trying to convince yourself it was worth studying it. The people who play DF are like a cult convincing each the game is better than it actually is, it is an ok game and i do play it often. I would consider it lesser than many of its "clones" such as RimWorld fro example. Dwarf fortress opened a genre, it has its respect in my book. Its like "the Beatles" to rock music. The game UI becomes tolerable after you get passed the first 30 hours and become familiar with it, but it is not good in any way. Dwarf fortress is an experiment of ideas and programming,which is interesting to take part in. It is mostly a good experiment, but like all good experiments sometimes is blows up in your face before you know what happened. I remember feeling cheated when i lost my first couple forts, I had no idea why i lost them and the game gave me no indications that im doing something wrong. Those ARE things that can be taken care of, the game gives no effort to indicate priorities to the player or hint what to look after. The developers simply don't care for even leaning a hand to anyone who isn't 100% familiar with the entire mechanic
A fluid, streamlined UI would affect the development rate, and potential depth of the game. Any game this deep is going to have a clunky UI, as there are just so many specific entities and actions that any sort of menu and submenu system that was navigated by anything other than key macros would take forever to use.
who cares about who populates the game, its a singleplayer. Also I do not agree about the streamlined UI as something that would affect development. As a developer, in the long run, its easier and more comfortable to work with stremlined ui's, atleast with uis that make sense
I totally agree about the issue of indications to the player, you sometimes just do not understand what's happenning, or not quick enough. on the other hand, the keyboard based ui is awesome in many ways. when I play age of empires 2 or cities skylines, i really like to use keyboards shortcuts since you gain a lot of time. but it also is a real pain for other simple tasks, like looking at something, browsing through huge lists of objects without a mouse, that's just ridiculous. so yeah, the UI is a bad thing about the game but it's not all bad. It's just stupid that the developper does not give the communiy the ability to mod completely the interface, and he keeps working on new features. that way we could have beautiful menus, organized data while keeping the shortcuts like they are now.
Is it possible for me to get a transcript of the story of gemspears? I have collection of sorts. If not that's alright I'll transcribe it myself.
I have a transcript I can send to you. I'll see if I can send the message through youtube somehow
If you'd like I have an email you can send it to. Nothing sinister, I promise. aspvip999@gmail dot com
+The Trooth Could I also have a transcript, please.
+Player's Perspective I can totally send one, but... I still can't figure out how to send people messages through UA-cam, lol. Let me know a good way to contact you and I'll do it. I might also have to consider putting a transcript in the description if anyone else asks in the future!
+The Trooth Well if you want you can send them to my gmail bnsiscool@gmail.com
Keep up the good work.
One time my friend was going to demolish an unpopulated fortress that fell, but a fisherman that had gone mad killed all the children that went through the wall and ate them. Then he sent two warrior dwarves to deal with him; sadly, one of them perished. The only weapon that man used was a sock.
Dwarf Fortress is the best example of what happens and what you can do when you say "fuck graphics" and focus on features instead.
That's all well and good when you're talking about one guy making a game on his own, but normal dev teams have lots of people that do different things, and coders generally aren't also artists
+Lazypackmule Dwarf fortress simply couldnt run on anything with high fidelity graphics. The simulation alone already brings high end machines to their knees. Not to mention that you would need a way to visualize all the procgenned stuff, which would mean proceduural models and animations.
Imagine the engravings on the walls after the tragedy "This is an engraving of Urist Mcdwarf, Urist Mcdwarf is surrounded by dwarfs, Urist Mcdwarf's feet are rotten, Urist is screaming, the dwarfes are screaming"
I'm off to carve a bone figurine of that in adventure mode, bye!
I'm recounting this story from memory, I had a Dwarf Fortress Playthrough on my channel, Axeanguish was the name of the fort. It was settled on a half evil biome. Very early on in the fort, before I could have time to build many mood buff things for the dwarves, one of my Female dwarves who had recently just given birth and was carrying her newborn had a mental break and started throwing a tantrum. Throwing items in her anger. including her baby she was carrying, killing him on impact.
This caused her to go into a FELL mood. the bad mood equivalent of a Fey mood. And she started to construct a Fell artifact, made from bone, but not just any bones, specifically with the bones from the corpse of her newly dead baby. The finished product was an artifact Dwarven Bone Spike Ball Trap.
I ended putting that bone spike trap in the room of that Mother Dwarf. Not because a bone spike trap is of any real effectiveness, but more to commemorate such a strange circumstance that lead to the creation of such a grim artifact.
I've been playing Angband for some years (let's say 10) on and off, and have invested more than a couple of literal years (measured in minutes) in MUDs since the 90s. Started playing DF literally yesterday.
This is a fantastic video for anyone interested in gaming at any level. Awesome work.
A rather funny story I have about one of my first fortresses. Essentially, my fortress was in it's youth and my primary source of food at the time was several fisherman fishing in the river above land. At some stage, a estranged human made their way onto my plot of land and bit one of the fisherman. Luckily, he left soon after and I thought nothing of it. However, that night, a were giraffe attacked my fort, from the inside, biting a ton of dwarves. I hadn't noticed on time, and after the beast was slain by my make shift militia, everyone went about their business again... Till the next night, suddenly the number of were-beasts grew, and to my horror, I realized, at-least half the population was infected, and soon the whole population was infected. Every night in that fortress's life a battle royal of were giraffes fought one another, just to wake up from their lunacy and begin work again. Needless to say, eventually they all died and I had to move on from the strange fortress of were beasts.
My first adventure mode guy was named Killman BladeBlades The Blade of Blades. First thing i did was kill a man, drink his blood and eat one of his fingers in front of his friends, throw a coin at one of them then slice into their arm after they got aggressive. They surrendered and I named the place PainfulDeath of Blades. then i got brutally murdered by bogeymen.
in fact the same experience gets every new adv mode player
not really, unless you're near a village you can run half an hour irl until the first crack of light assuming your character won't get tired, witch it will, tho if you got a legendary fighter you can simply just kill like 5 of em and the crackling fades away
I've had a few characters who ended up able to kill boogeymen all night long (or just finish off enough of the them that they left ahead of time)
A fun fact is that boogeymen are actually smaller then kobolds
Popped up under "what is dwarf fortress" and all I found was "how to play dwarf fortress" videos.
Thanks for giving the big picture and explaining the game as a *concept* - it was what I was looking for and you explained that so well. :)
It's a super interesting piece of game design. I think I have to check it out. Thanks again!
+Niclas Jensen I can't agree more, I will share this video whenever I need this masterpiece explained.
Dwarf fortress is genius as it contains two extremes in story telling: Not only does it have the extreme of random chaos, where everything organically comes out in real time, but it also has the cold calculating and rigid script-writing extreme of story-telling.
What I mean by the second part is basically everything within the fort is determined by the way you "script" the fortress, the way you lay it out, every meticious detail and aspect of the materials and layout must be consciously put in. You actively build the set and setting the narrative takes place in.
There is this great harmony with chaos and order in the game, the chaos of the game and your own artisanship weave the narrative together. Most games involve tradeoff with these two ends of the spectrum, or forego one. But Dwarf fortress is the result of active participation of Chaos and pure rationality and free will blended together to make something beautiful in the experience.
What happens is this produces "flow": Thought without thought. You get to completely immerse yourself in the nature of the game without having to think, yet you are putting every ounce of mental energy into decisions based off what the game is giving you. It's a beautiful state of mind to be in.
i got into such state while playing anno 1404 or 2070. its an very relaxing state.
9:34 "Let me tell you the story of gem spears". He said, high on smokeleaf...
dwarf fortress is it's on genre
True.
you completely nailed it man. Variety, freedom and randomness make Dwarf Fortress the legendary game it is.
The most tragic part of your story is that if your mist machine's walkway had a floor made of grates instead of standard tiles it would've drained the deadly blood instead of spreading it.
I had a similar issue...twice. Once with a standard beast with deadly blood I thought nothing of at the time...until My cats started randomly vomitting profusely and then dying, and soldiers I accidentally had walking bearfoot started getting paralyzed and dying of asphyxiation. Fortunately it didn't end the fort but DANG I wish there was a way to [d]esignate cleaning.
The 2nd disease incident was much much more severe. Which is to be expected considering I had breached hell. Demon's were pouring in from the underworld forcing me to wall off my cavern. I tried locking one up between gates, a big stinky slime monster, and putting it through a menacing spike gauntlet but this proved to be wildly ineffective. Eventually I decided that maybe if we fight these demons one at a time we can reclaim (some) of the caverns. So I let this sentient pile of garbage into the beast arena I had established and sent my entire military to have at it. It was a fairly dramatic fight but we came out on top....kinda...sorta...not really. Every body part that came into contact with the beast or THE AIR AROUND IT became necrotic. Needless to say, I retired that fort.
I've had a fort that had over 200 dwarves (With mods of course) but I never cheated with it or anything it lived for years and years and years it felt amazing to have such a successful fort with when I got my first legendary swords dwarf I was amazed and over time I got even more dwarves with legendary skilled dwarves and everything went so well. The sad part is I had some sort of virus on my computer some how then I had to reformat my hard drive losing all of that progress, I even got my first adamantine items and all of it gone... I guess I'll just have to create another, but the point is I love how this game is so much more unique than any other game, how with an imagination you can create stories that are amazing in any sense. I love this aspect of the game regardless of the graphics, it's kind of like just reading a book with a higher form of viewing. Even the ascii gives more visualization than a normal book would. It's just amazing in my point of view.
Also I mean years in game XD
"so, is dwarf fortress a roguelike? Dunno, but lets talk about other stuff for 30 minutes"
Now seriously, nice video! I thought something was funny but I forgot what it was and I'm too lazy to look it up so I can't tell you.
I came hear to hear your input on dwarf fortress... and i stayed for the story of gemspears. Very good video, I'll be recommending it to my friend who is growing an interest in DF. They said to me "The more you talk about this game the more depth it has"... i would like to say to this person; "You have no fucking idea"
Wow thank you for sharing this. That was an incredible story. You are, sir, a very good narrator :)
This is still one of my favorite videos of all time on youtube, I haven't watched it in a while. Glad you're back! I'm hoping you make some more DF videos some time
I had a beast blood problem too. I create a hospital that force them to walk through a stream to clean them. Most of the non-infected dwarves were just doing hospital care. I think the fortress recovered sort of...
DF was one half Dungeon Keeper with roguelike elements in Fort mode, and one half open-world roguelike in Adventure mode. They both had fairly simple gamey structures, Fort mode having a very structured increase in difficulty and set of challenges, with the interior river, then the magma, then the adamantine (end game). Then the adventure mode was simply, go to town, ask for target, kill target, repeat, also visit your old fortress.
Now though, the fort mode and adventure mode have become a lot more open, and with the increasing interplay between the two modes, the game is truly becoming a fantasy world simulator, escaping out of any known genre, while having roots in several.
The part where you send dwarves on salvage missions to the ruins which is actually the old kingdom is pretty dope lmao
I can't tell you the number of times I've tried to use ukhm in other games and got frustrated when they don't work :P
You have the voice of an old man. That, and your storytelling style, lends itself very well into bringing the narrative of Gemspears to life, imbuing it with pride, horror, melancholy and nostalgia.
I'm assuming the voice of an old man is a good thing! It'll make me more like my hero, Garrison Keillor. My radio show would be Prairie Mountainhome Companion
"Nick Cage plays Dwarf Fortress"
That was really awesome! You make some great points about the storytelling aspect of the game, and that bit about Gemspears was glorious! A story like that has definite potential in attracting new players.
I always seem to just have my dorfs starve early on. Interestingly in my most recent game i seem to have already become a tourist trap for buddist dorfs in trying to provide shrines for my dorfs.
The default start has some food but it doesn't last long, it's usually good to grow mushrooms and start stilling booze as soon as you start up :)
I love dwarf fortress. I don't hate the interface. I do think that the interface could be laid out in menus at the top and it would make it vastly more accessible without diminishing anything. I love keyboard shortcuts, but I'm a unix admin who uses emacs. That means I think the interface could be made better with more shortcuts and less sub-menus but I can appreciate the need for menus for new users and less often used elements of the game.
The interface is definitely easy to use once you understand it. It's just the biggest obstacle hindering new players, I think. At first glance it doesn't seem to make much sense, but once you know how to use it, it's all really convenient.
DF and Cataclysm DDA the best games evah.
I've tried to get two people to play this game. Only two people, people whom I respect as intelligent and have a dark sense of humor; both of them gamers. Neither one has paid any attention to the game. They both complained about the interface and the graphics. I gave both of them a graphics package, and it did no good.
The game would definitely benefit from a top menu option that reads "Nice graphics? Y/N" and automatically loads whatever graphics pack that Toady likes.
As for the myself... I would really like the mouse to be more consistent when it can be used as a tool to select targets. That's about it. The rest is really nice and it took me only a week to figure out the basic mane system by itself. I still have trouble with mine carts, and I've set up many functioning systems, as just an example; but it's really just a learning curve that once overcome turns out to be really brilliant by itself.
> People not realising that you can have a menu interface while also keeping all the shortcuts for once you start to know what you're doing.
Hey man I understand that you are in a pretty bad situation right now and I just want to give you my condolences. But I also want to say that you should make more Dwarf Fortress videos in the style of your storytelling video of gem Spears and also the story of the vampire and the Minotaur. If you make videos and make a patreon account hopefully it can help your situation and also give the people of UA-cam great content from you to enjoy hopefully everything works out with what's going on with your life situation right now and I hope to see some more videos in the Dwarf Fortress way from you.
such a haunting story its like somthing out of bloodborne
gives me goosbumps
Deadly blood forgotten beasts are scarier than any web slinging flying 30ft skeletal hawk ones by far
Change my mind
Never saw DF Ocean waves before... beautiful.
I had a similar case with werechameleons. At fist I send dwarfes, who were bitten, to the atomsmasher, but I must have missed some... I tried to sort out the infected again, but some slipped through again. The final solution was walling off the hospital after the next fullmoon accident. My fortress lost a third of its poulation in these times. What a thrill! :D
But there are funny stories, too: When a swordsdwarf and his pet bunny defeated a giantess, for example. Dwarf Fortress is truly a wonderful game.
what a chilling story! Just goes to show what Dwarf Fortress can create! This is more complex than any other game I can think of could generate.
Dwarf Fortresses Controls are actually a bit similar to the controls of an RTS and many other games in a way, many games use hotkeys where you press a key or combination of keys to execute certain actions or build stuff, this is typically used in high level play while a casual player is content with just clicking. Dwarf Fortress forces this high level playstyle on you because it knows you'll be playing the game faster by learning. Most of the letters chosen for the hotkeys are associated with the action as well D for designations, P for piles, B for buildings.
Thank you. I'm stealing your story for a D&D game now. :)
More stories!!
This is the video I show people who are interested in dwarf fortress but don't know if they really wanna try
Do more story shares.
im surprised when you said "poeple who dont play dwarf fortress are annoying" you didnt mention...
*playing dwarf fortress*
"hey, your mining and you made a workshop? Is that game kind of like minecraft"
that statement crushed my soul
Might come out from just casually explaining what's going on. Maybe they took an interest, since you're friends, and apparently you're interested in something, so they're curious about what has your attention.
i clearly understand that is in fact what happened, and i even said that day that, "no, and also im overreacting here" still is a bit soul crushing though
+DeDeaD564 i have a horrible habit of saying what im doing at all times, my mistake
heh, i have had the exact same problem with rimworld. "i dont like 2d games"
i do fully plan on playing dwarf fortress when i have time. im guessing it will consume my life even more than rimworld did.
the emergent gameplay is why i love rimworld - i had a doctor whose son was dieing of plague, so he cut his sons heart out to transplant into and save another colonist
The beauty of developing FOR dwarf fortress is it is the essence of graphical minimalism. It is hard to think of an easier way to convey something's exterior than by assigning a color and an ASCII character.
No modeling, or texturing, or animating in any real sense. From there on out, all the remains is plotting function and making things talk. I imagine the way the game is constructed, it's incredibly open ended for how it accesses and plugs in function, which you don't need to be a genius to do, but it'll sure as hell speed things up and eliminate as much drafting and trial and error.
With one major field left to truly hunt down for development, making quick leaps and bounds probably isn't the most inconceivable thing. Indeed, the Dev's most genius stroke may very well have been setting the bar for himself extremely low to start, but very high at its potential. That much is nothing short of a cunning move.
Very wise words and interesting story. :-)
Obviously you should continue your DF stories!
caves of qud is the up and comer
also, loved the video so much man
There are two types of people in this world: Those who play Dwarf Fortress, and those who don't
Just reached Mountainhome for the first time. It was my first fort in the Steam version in an ideal fortress location. All the goblins are on the continents surrounding the main continent, so I only have to worry about sieges if I start wars with my neighbors. My fortress is nestled on the north side of a mountain valley, and two other larger dwarvish civilizations sit to my east and west around the exits of the mountain valley. Not sure why the tutorial choose to place my fort so far away from my civilization's capital, but now that the queen has moved in I'm going to set my new goal on conquering the mountain valley. Turn the game into Crusader Kings / Total War, and see if I can dominate the dwarves around me or have fun trying. The game is seriously addictive now that I understand it's systems and can easily navigate it's menus with the new UI. I've played it off and on before, but my fortresses wouldn't make it that far, usually because I got preoccupied with life or ran up against things I wasn't willing to learn yet.
great video, great story, and a great narration from a great game, kudos to you and the developers alike.
This was a good video and I absolutely love me some DF sometimes (even though I am a total noob - haven't done a lot of things in it yet, not even a lot of combat!). Though I would argue the value in personal stories that only one person experiences. I feel like the infinite nature of these stories kinda cheapens each one's value. Sure, it's an unmatched feeling to experience something truly unique as it's happening, but it'll be a story that exists for very few people. There's definitely some value in stories that absolutely everyone who wants to can experience in about the same way, and just because books and movies do that already and videogames can do it differently doesn't mean videogames doing pre-scripted stories is something that doesn't utilize the medium to its full potential or whatever. A LOT of games with a story set in stone would never work as a movie or a book.
I love this story. I admittedly cheat using DFhack and raw editing when I play, but it's always fun when my fortress collapses inevitably.
Cool story. Is there a list of different types of monsters you can face in Dwarf Fortress like goblin kings, dragons, Lene's, etc?
A lot of those are probably on the wiki. But the thing is, there are lots of "fixed" animals and monsters like goblins, trolls, dragons, minotaurs, and then there are randomized creatures, like forgotten beasts which are random amalgamations of animal parts, and titans which can be composed of all kinds of materials, and even "were-" creatures, which start out as an intelligent species like a dwarf or human and transform into a random animal.
But there's a pretty comprehensive list here: dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Creature
I learned how to play by clicking every button and see what happens I use the wiki only after I try to do it by myself
are you running a colour palette mod it looks pretty what Is it?
This is one of those games that I wanna play while tripping on magical mushrooms.
DF stories sounds nice.
And the work which has become a genre unto itself shall be called: Dwarf Fortress.
Just wanted you to know that at least one person caught your reference.
DwarfLike
A great watch, sir. Beast rot sounds horrible. Those poor dwarfs. :( I've been playing mainly Adventurer Mode, but I think I'll give Fortress Mode a try after watching your video.
I showed my brother dwarf fortress once and he looked at it like it was the shit Neo sees at the end of the first Matrix, lol.
even with the tilesets.
fuck, i miss playing DF.
awesome, thanks for the story man
Your example of watching a movie is quite accurate but I'd say it's like trying to watch star wars and when the text wall comes the friend says I want to watch a movie not read it.
But I must admit I never gotten far in my tries. I love the idea and features of the game but same as minecraft I play a while leave it for a few days and next time I start all over. Meaning I never get to far into the game.
Sorry, one addendum, bringing up the Gold Box games made me wonder, would you consider those roguelikes? Some of them utilize a pseudo overhead perspective and have turn based movement, etc?
Thanks for that rather deep insight. I would love to have more games with depth like this but the struggle of learning everything from a wiki or consulting guides etc. and the rather harsh UI are keeping me from trying it.
It took me two days to understand how to use the games controls however understanding the function of other things, that took me a good while longer. On the whooe though it didn't take me long to understand how to play. Kind of. I still have issues with understanding smith craft but I think that bas to do with laziness more than anything else.
How would classify Fortress mode through a mode to be 1 dwarf, I'm curious with how you would classify that with how you classify roguelikes. While yes you need a mod to do it, it's still there.
Now you must wash the blood by flooding all of Gemspears! Divert a river into the old fort!
Thats a very nice summary
OMG this is cooler than tolkien's Moria!
Can i use this as DnD setting for an adventure?
Fantastic video!
This game is beautiful.
Dwarf fortress is just one of those awesome games I can't really play. I dunno if it's autism or what, but once my population gets to be around thirty or so and my fort gets to be about the size to accommodate them things just start to get overwhelming and mentally taxing. I love hearing other players' stories about their fortresses though.
William Carlson I don't have an official diagnosis, but a friend who has it sat me down one day and talked about it with me and told me why he felt I might be too. I thought about it for a few months, did some of my own research. I have a feeling I might be. Dunno for 100% though.
Ask your parents for a diagnosis and find out. Finding out always helps.
William Carlson I'd rather not. My parents and I aren't on the best of terms and they'll exploit any weakness they can find.
***** I appreciate it.
Thats why you should use third party programs to mediate the complexity like DwarfTherapist
Which do you like more vanilla or lazy newb pack? I just got the pack after vanilla so I can get a graphics pack but idk which is better...
I've never used the lazy newb pack myself, so I don't know exactly how good it is. I use a tileset, but one that keeps the ascii icons, just makes them square instead of rectangular. The main reason I don't use a graphical tileset is just so that it's easier to share screenshots on forums and stuff. Weirdly, I find that I sometimes have a harder time telling what things are when I see screenshots with a graphical tileset than when I look at an ascii screenshot.
What graphics pack do you use?
The one I used most recently was called Wanderlust. But I'm pretty sure the one I used in this video doesn't exist on the newest version of DF.
XD DF is very much like D&D. you must have imagination, and willingness to fail to really enjoy it.
its not about winning... its about the experience
1:20 - 2:14
Very good.
It is interesting that my definition of roguelike is so much more different lol. I tried to formulate it only to realize that it is kind of intuitive for me (generally speaking any game with procedural generated map and items [exceptions apply] and inability to reload saves is a roguelike for me). I guess I will have to give a second thought.
I really like df for what it is and what exciting storytelling opportunities it presents. However, after end of y1 I struggle to come up with projects to do and just end up waiting for action. Once action starts my game ends as I did not prepare well enough (partially because I am lazy to learn all the names of parts of armor which you have to make so my soldiers have partial armor [I would love to use excuse that they are barbarians but thats not true or they are the weakest barbarians ever]). I also encountered a weird feeling of grinding as to build a hospital you need soap, to have soap you need workshop, to create soap you need x resource. I feel really sad that this kind of things get in a way of loving this game as when df is fun for me than it is real fun. I have not enjoyed something as much as df in a while.
All in all its kind of me ruining fun for myself or not being ready for so much complexity.
He means similar to rogue (1980) not the modern 'rogue-lite/like' spinoff genre which is just like permadeath, randomized, replability focused, combat based games
God sake this game is cool as hell
I just encountered these videos now, and I must say, I love this guy already.
The whole recent couple of years and this explosion of games all calling themselves "roguelikes" always got on my nerves. When in fact, Spelunky, Isacc, FTL, Gungeon, etc are not roguelikes, they don't even come close.
I've always shared this thought on how most videos stories should come through player action and not pre scripted things some writers created, pages of lore and especially not from fancy cinematics.
Heck, I just go on YT to watch video game cinematics now, cause I can't be bothered playing through a game for em. They're more engaging that way anyway.
Of course, I got a C in Visual Game Design at Uni. (Though it was just a filler subject, I knew it'd be shit) cause my teacher disagrees with my point of view. 'That won't sell.' Heh.
And like some guy below said :P Dwarf Fortress and CataclysmDDA forever
great video
Frustration for you : DF needs to be able to display multiple items at the same time on one tile. :D
Ok, serious question. I really find this game interesting and I really want to try this game out, but what's the minimum IQ requirement in order to enjoy the game? Because I fear I don't have enough power in my noggin to even comprehend this masterpiece.
Do you have reading comprehension skills on par with a 10 year old? Do you know how to use a wiki? If you answered yes to both of these questions you can play dwarf fort.
I don't mind the graphics of the UI, but the controls... Good God the controls of this game. I'd like to get into Dwarf Fortress, I really do but I just can't get used to the awful control scheme.
Wow!
Having lots of text or cinematics in a game does not make it an interactive book or movie. Those story moments are simply to support the gameplay involved. In dwarf fortress, the kinds of stories that you get out of it are simply a result of the open ended gameplay, while linear games generally need more linear and developed stories.
Nove anos! 9 a anos. Impressionante
Hah, I had a lava pump, fun times
I launched it and I started it and it was so amazing and I've been going back to it for years but I never get really far
But it does have shitty graphics, I cant tell what going on where or when.
It would also be a huge bonus to him.
Lots of people like me are turned off because of shitty graphics and bad UI.
+Kaptem The graphics aren't shitty if you feel it's climate.
The game's aproach on describing what's going on is different, but not worse. It's less friendly for easy entertainment, but much more capable of complexity.
The first Slaves to Armok (DF's prequel) had flashy 3D graphics, but Toady cancelled it because it slowed down the process of adding the fun elements to the game.
Also, some people like reading.
+Kaptem If you download thinks like Lazy's Newb Pack it comes with little patches and UI fixes for the fortress mode and many many texture packs, so it can look like tileset roguelikes like CataclysmDDA.
+Piotr Apostel Okay...
I looked at the first slave to armok.
Thats not what im talking about, back then I stated it wrong, im looking for accesiblity, not good graphics, the first slave to armok then is not what im talking about.
The graphics need more readable, not more detailed, same with the UI, make it easier to use and have overviews when you hover over something, make it more accesible.
+Kaptem fuck off casual
use twbt(dfhack) and a tileset
anyone wanna suggest a good forttress-play of this game I could watch? perferrably recent
I know there are lots of them but im just looking for a good place to start to understand the game (not to play....just to watch)
surely there are examples of especially good runs of the game right?
most triple a devs should feel ashamed by what this dude has done by himself
Agreed, especially considering DF is free and AAA games cost $70+
proper procedural story is the grail of vgames. It will be the bees knees. the cats ass. Imagine such story in minecraft for eg. DF is a step in this direction.
While I agree that storytelling like that of Dwarf Fortress has its place. I don't necessarily agree that more games should take cues from it. User created narratives have problems of their own, the biggest, in my opinion, being the reliance on the user for a driving force or motivation. Will certain users take advantage? Of course. Can it be wildly popular? Absolutely. But a more directed experience has bonuses as well, and unfortunately, this is the crux of the situation. Other than a handful of examples, user created narrative and directed narrative are mutually exclusive. Even out of the examples, a lot are older games, like the TSR Gold Box games. A recent example that does a decent effort at striking a balance, again in my opinion, is Dragon's Dogma, but even that has limited room for user created narrative. Wow, I didn't expect this post to be so long, anyway, good video.
+Damien27 This game does seem to have some good ideas for helping players create stories, giving some autonomy to the dwarves and generating names and nicknames takes a bit of the pressure off the player to rationalize everything going on and make up forced characters. The system of leveling based on actions in RPG's (like Oblivion) is another way to help players create organic character progressions instead of sitting there trying to decide on a prescribed type to be.
+Damien27 I think a good point is that you don't see user created narration in a lot of games nowadays, basically all the big triple A titles are story/cinematic driven and doesn't UNFOLD because of things you do - yes, some games do, some good examples would be the games that make you choose an action, but they're so restricted and (even though they aren't described that way) linear.
Dragon Age and Divinity does it really well, but compared to the downfall of Gemspear? A beast with blood that makes you rot? Which was carried by water from an artificial waterfall?
It's really incredible. That's a genius set of game mechanics that allow a story to unfold based on random things and how the player interacts with the game.
It's Tarn and his brother Zach. Not just Tarn like you state in the intro.
If you enjoy deep mechanics and unique and player made situations and stories, you should really give Eve Online a shot.
I've had it recommended by a few people, but I have a tough time getting into anything with a subscription fee. And it does seem pretty intimidating for a new player, but then again, DF was really intimidating to get into as well, and now I can play it just fine.
The Trooth Exactly, the sub fee is honestly not a thing for me because I have played other subscription based MMOs in the past like WoW and never really had a problem with it. There is a free trial if you ever wanted to try it out, I would highly recommend outsourcing as soon as you can though. Outside of high-security space team-work is essential.
The Trooth Now that theres no subscription, will you consider trying it?
"losing is fun", This is my #1 game, such a shame this game doesn't get an award because it has A LOT more than the triple A title games out there, I only don't like the UI of the game but beside that no complains, I mean there are some bugs but...meh
>A fortress of 20 years
AHHAHAHAHAHAHA GOOD JOKE M8.
Implying a fort can last that long without FPS death.
Ingame yes it can...it actually a lot longer than that if you take care of the cats.
yeah, I had a 20 year fortress go on because it litterally never got any immigrants
One guy got a fortress that's more than 350 years.
And you can clear things up with dfhack, use boost, mods, etc
Limit dwarfs to a number your processor can handle and thats it.
Set a population cap with the config files. Casu-el.
'The unconventional controls question game mechanics overall and are part of the charm'
Pretensious nonsense. The UI is undefendably shit. I love dwarf Fortress, but let's not bullshit away it's gaping flaws. It's an unfinished game, it's okay that the UI is bad, but, it is a bad UI. It is not impressive and it does not challenge norms. It's unfinished.
The damage system is fantastic. Though as realistic as it tries to be, there are still often funny results. Whilst hunting deer I gutted one and then threw it's guts at another deer, killing the second one. Also lost my dagger and ended up punching a deer until it collapsed barely breathing. I beat it for like an in-game day never killing it because no matter how many very painful abdominable blows I dealt it, none were considered lethal. And that's not so realistic. The swelling and internal bleeding should've killed it, but it just remained unable to stand up or be concious instead. Meanwhile chopping off a foot can insta-kill for some things, from blood loss I guess. And it seems like blood is HP. Until you get the blood out, you're doing no actual HP damage to them. Kinda felt lame to realise it was really a game of stabbing the foot and then fleeing and letting it bleed out. Throwing arrows by hand into it as it limps at you. From cool to silly so fast.
This video
You sound like you're gonna fall asleep any time now.
It's really unfair to compare Dwarf Fortress to other games saying that its updates have more content. All there is to do to update Dwarf Fortress is code the items in, in other games you need 3d artists, animators, programmers, sound effects. So yeah, the guy behind Dwarf Fortress is an amazing programmer, but he's not a "magician" either, like you said in your video.
There's absolutely no way Dwarf Fortress could have been controlled like Sim City and Age of Empire since you have almost no mouse input in the game, so I have no idea what your point was. The only reason the controls are so different is because it's an ASCII game, which means almost all you have as an input is the keyboard.
Yes, the game is awesome. Yes, it has a shitload of features, but the reason why it has so many features is because all it needs is code (a lot of it).
as there is df hack you can have mouse control
+Sicarius Flamus ... Yes, that was exactly my point, thanks?
Sicarius Flamus no problem! It happens :)
Nordkiinach "You get procedural 'art' as well... pal...
You also get procedural animations, programs and sound effects...."
I'm not your pal, buddy. Also, I'm not sure what your point is? You think I don't know that there are procedural anims + art? That was not my point at all. My point is that those are WAY harder and take a LOT more time to implement in a game than a procedurally generated world in ASCII.
"So when you 'THINK' of it, you actually have no point in what you are saying except that you are indirectly exposing that you are jealous of Dwarf Fortress' Developers."
No, YOU want me to have no point because you got triggered by my comment, there's a difference. I'm not jealous, I actually admire their work. What they did is truely amazing. But comparing them to other devs is not fair at all, because they are doing completely different things.
Also, I know you liked your own comment, you're not fooling anyone.
+Nordkiinach My bad then, I thought you did. Also, is my comment that misleading? You're the second guy that think I'm actually bashing the devs lol.
I do think that the shitty UI is a bad thing about the game. There is no way around it, it is counter-intuitive and saying it "has its charm" is just you trying to convince yourself it was worth studying it.
The people who play DF are like a cult convincing each the game is better than it actually is, it is an ok game and i do play it often. I would consider it lesser than many of its "clones" such as RimWorld fro example. Dwarf fortress opened a genre, it has its respect in my book. Its like "the Beatles" to rock music.
The game UI becomes tolerable after you get passed the first 30 hours and become familiar with it, but it is not good in any way. Dwarf fortress is an experiment of ideas and programming,which is interesting to take part in. It is mostly a good experiment, but like all good experiments sometimes is blows up in your face before you know what happened.
I remember feeling cheated when i lost my first couple forts, I had no idea why i lost them and the game gave me no indications that im doing something wrong. Those ARE things that can be taken care of, the game gives no effort to indicate priorities to the player or hint what to look after. The developers simply don't care for even leaning a hand to anyone who isn't 100% familiar with the entire mechanic
A fluid, streamlined UI would affect the development rate, and potential depth of the game. Any game this deep is going to have a clunky UI, as there are just so many specific entities and actions that any sort of menu and submenu system that was navigated by anything other than key macros would take forever to use.
the ui is a good thing as no kids would populate it
who cares about who populates the game, its a singleplayer.
Also I do not agree about the streamlined UI as something that would affect development. As a developer, in the long run, its easier and more comfortable to work with stremlined ui's, atleast with uis that make sense
I totally agree about the issue of indications to the player, you sometimes just do not understand what's happenning, or not quick enough.
on the other hand, the keyboard based ui is awesome in many ways. when I play age of empires 2 or cities skylines, i really like to use keyboards shortcuts since you gain a lot of time.
but it also is a real pain for other simple tasks, like looking at something, browsing through huge lists of objects without a mouse, that's just ridiculous.
so yeah, the UI is a bad thing about the game but it's not all bad. It's just stupid that the developper does not give the communiy the ability to mod completely the interface, and he keeps working on new features. that way we could have beautiful menus, organized data while keeping the shortcuts like they are now.
Im a new DF player, and 20 hours in i love the UI. It feels like 3d modeling in blender, shortcuts for everything. Its super fast and intuitive.
It is not a roguelike. Why would it be a roguelike?