[Povuholo]

So what is Dwarf Fortress?

Features

Dwarf Fortress is an ASCII game which is a great mix between Sim City, The Sims, Dungeon Master and a lot of alcohol.

You control a group of dwarves and dig out a fortress for yourself. You create beds and other things (mostly tons of barrels filled with alcohol) to keep your dwarves happy, crafts to trade with other civilizations, and weapons to protect your dwarves during goblin sieges. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

A good example of Dwarf Fortress madness is the legendary succession game Boatmurdered, hosted on the SomethingAwful forums. It is based on an older version of the game, but it's very entertaining to read so I highly recommend it if you want to see what the game is like.

Boatmurdered

The Boatmurdered Intro can probably explain the game better than I can.

As I said, ASCII. So this is what the game looks like by default. There are graphical tilesets available however. I recommend RantingRodent's Graphical Overhaul for a decent tileset. This is an old fortress of mine which also shows RR's tileset.


The world you play in is first randomly generated, with detailed landscapes and a rich history, which takes quite a lot of CPU power.

A random world

Just to demonstrate how big this is, for choosing your embark location you pick one tile on that.

Then you get this. That tile you picked is actually a whole region, where you once again choose one tile in. Then you get specific on the local map.

The depth of this game is amazing, especially considering that it is made by one guy (who works on it as a full time job because he can live off the donations) and it's still only an alpha version.

It's a difficult game, and the UI isn't exactly easy. 'Losing is fun' is the game's motto. You'll definitely want to use the My First Fortress tutorial for the first time. Even when following the tutorial I had no idea where I was going with it, but once you get through it you'll start to understand and the game is a lot of... fun. Of course dwarf fortress players usually use the word 'fun' for accidentally annihilating your fortress by flooding your fortress with magma.


There's also adventurer mode, which is more RPG-like. You control one dwarf/human/elf and you explore the world. If you've built and abandoned fortresses on this world before you can visit it with your adventurer too.

The combat is extremely detailed and crazy. The game takes all sorts of organs and bones into account during combat, and everything can be used as a weapon. Chop your opponents left arm off, pick it up and beat him to death with it. Cut off his head and throw it at his friends! Are both of your arms gone? Bite your opponent!



I started a new fortress recently. It's on top of a volcano, which is pretty nice. I made a channel around the surface entrance and filled it with magma. It protects me during goblin sieges and is also used to fuel my magma forge, so I don't have to waste wood on fuel. Unfortunately there are also a bunch of fire imps around. So far they've kept their distance, but I'm sure they'll come out eventually.

I'm far from an expert on this game, so I'm sure this fortress is going to fail at some point. I already accidentally caused a cave-in in my barracks and I almost flooded my sleeping quarters because of a well I had there.



I'm sure there are a few DF players around. Share your stories?

[The_Terminator]

Dwarf Fortress is a lot of fun. The Mike Mayday edition is a good bet if youre looking for something with graphics.

I don't have that many great stories from my games, and what I do are mostly tales of my stupidity. Such as the time I dug a big channel across the entrance of my fort and filled it with magma... but completely forgetting my farm and food stockpile was right beneath it. Suffice to say my fort didn't last long after that - those dwarfs who weren't starving were chronically depressed because about half my fort was killed in the magma

Then another time the human liaison was slaughtered by a pack of undead groundhogs on his way to my fort. The humans decided it was my fault, and promptly declared war on me. As I had no military, I had a lot of fun with that

[Povuholo]

Povuholo, on Sep 18 2009, 12:12 PM, said:

Unfortunately there are also a bunch of fire imps around. So far they've kept their distance, but I'm sure they'll come out eventually.

I'm far from an expert on this game, so I'm sure this fortress is going to fail at some point.

Told you so.

While everyone was gathering HUGE amounts of native copper ore from the many veins in the mountain (enough to last me forever, there's much more inside the fortress) a fire imp finally got out and started burning everything. I think it was happening for about a minute before I realized because I was busy doing stuff underground and it took a while before anyone died. Big WTF when I looked outside to see what killed my horse.

I'll see how much I can save.

From what I can see through the smoke it's only 1 fire imp, so hopefully my military guys can deal with it. Most are still unarmed though...

If this fortress fails and there's enough interest I might start some sort of 'lets play' thread, where I play and report what happens and anyone can request a dwarf to be named after him or come up with suggestions for the fortress.

[Povuholo]

Povuholo, on Sep 18 2009, 03:28 PM, said:

Told you so.

So here's what happened next.

I ordered the military out to kill the fire imp, but apparently drinking beer was more important so it took a while before those lazy bastards got out of the dining room. When they did, the fire imp was quickly killed. (the yellow corpse)

However our problems were far from over. The fires lit by that one imp are still spreading and there's no stopping them.

Indeed, the fire was not going to end until it reaches the end of the map. Luckily all of my dwarves had been ordered indoors, so everyone was saf-Oh poo!

With the fires still burning we got a visit from the human trading caravans. Luckily they came from the west, where the fire had already layed everything to ashes. They were safe. Lucky for me they brought a lot of wood, something which I think we'd have a shortage of in the near future otherwise!

The fire continues to spread until it reaches the edge of the mountain, where it finally starts to extinguish (good, those fires were killing my framerate).

Maybe this event will be drawn by the dwarf engraving the walls and floors at some point.

I got lucky, the only casualties were a donkey foal and a trained war dog and the creatures living in the woods (but fire/dragonflies survived). Could've been a lot worse. I think I'm going to seal off that volcano... And build a tower on top of it. Free heating!

[The_Terminator]

Use it to make a massive magma cannon for killing elves. Or kittens.

Quote

If this fortress fails and there's enough interest I might start some sort of 'lets play' thread, where I play and report what happens and anyone can request a dwarf to be named after him or come up with suggestions for the fortress.

I'd be up for that, for sure. In fact, if theres enough of us here who play, we could even do something like Boatmurdered, where we each take it in turns to play a season, before passing it onto the next person. Though with me playing, I doubt it would last too long...

[Povuholo]

The_Terminator, on Sep 29 2009, 01:15 AM, said:

Use it to make a massive magma cannon for killing elves. Or kittens.

Quote

If this fortress fails and there's enough interest I might start some sort of 'lets play' thread, where I play and report what happens and anyone can request a dwarf to be named after him or come up with suggestions for the fortress.

I'd be up for that, for sure. In fact, if theres enough of us here who play, we could even do something like Boatmurdered, where we each take it in turns to play a season, before passing it onto the next person. Though with me playing, I doubt it would last too long...

Yeah if there are enough people. Otherwise the two of us could do it and the forumers could just get a dwarf named after them.

Another Fire Imp attacked the fortress, and the whole damn place is on fire again. This time the military wasn't doing anything important so he was killed quickly. Ironically, the only dwarf who died was the one with the wood burner profession. edit: Scratch that, many dwarves are dying now in an attempt to get back to the fortress, including a champion! Miasma is already starting to spread through the halls. Tantrum spiral, anyone? It's a good thing I ordered lots of coffins not too long ago.

It happened quite soon after I started mining for copper ores again, this mountain is full of them. I already got 321 nuggets, and another 150 which I already turned into bars. I think that my furnace operator will be able to melt copper for the rest of his life! There's also some aluminum around, I have 30 of those.

I think that because pretty much the entire fortress population is constantly walking in and out to carry the copper ores it is alerting the imps.

My legendary engraver just made a drawing of the war dog burning to death from the first imp attack.

[katashy]

Well, after reading this thread, I decided to D/L Dwarf Fortress. Got all the files, got the tile re-tex and started up the game. It was just a black screen... I waited for ages and nothing happened. I'm kinda intrigued by this game, so can anyone help me get it working?

[Pushkatu]

This game beats me. I remember I downloaded it some time ago from Bethesda oficial forums. I had no idea was I was doing after half an hour of playing it. I just moved around ..!? I'm sure that if I do manage to understand it, I'll become addicted

[The_Terminator]

Dwarf Fortress is probably the most complicated game ever made. It is so complicated that, even though it has ascii graphics, you still need a powerful pc to run it properly once things get going. The graphics certainly don't make it any easier though.

Theres an excellent series of video tutorials on Youtube, here, but be warned, there are 43 videos in it, each 10 minutes long. Which comes to around 6 hours of video I believe, so I'd recommend not watching them all. If you have the time, I'd recommend watching the first 17-20, then just using the rest for reference (and fun).

The other thing to do, is to play in a window, and have the DF wiki open all the time when playing, and if theres anything you don't understand, search for it there. Its invaluable. There are also a few getting started guides onthere as well, which you might consider checking out.

And if you get stuck with anything, feel free to ask here, and I'll do my best to help.

[Povuholo]

So the update is taking quite a long time, but it shouldn't take very long anymore. April at the latest I'm guessing now.

I still intend to do the LetsPlay some time with the new version.