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Anyone here play Dwarf Fortress? The new version came out this morning, I've been trying to get it but the site is going slow because of the sheer number of people downloading it. I'll just play NetHack for a while....

It's a pretty inspiring example of indie game development - made by one guy and his brother, and it's one of the most complicated games I've ever seen.

http://www.bay12games.com

AHHH My Eyes!!! MY EYES!!!

So is it the complexity that is inspiring, or the game itself, it's plot - please provide more info as to what it is that you like about it. See, we who do not usually play these games, just don't get it - and we don't want to try and get it unless it's really worth getting... if you know what I mean.

I played a little Legend of Green Dragon but that's about it as far as text based RPG's go, at least in the last decade. I actually got the worlds first commercial RPG game from the guy who wrote it, Roy Carnells Black Crystal. Graphics won't have been much better than those, as it used the Spectrum graphic text mode, very neat and handy way to get graphics and custom fonts into your games but a bit limited. So it's not like I'm new to text RPG's, I just don't see their true worth these days. Why would anyone play this instead of Oblivion?

If it's impressive that it was only made by one guy + bro, then we need to know why! - it doesn't look impressive, it looks like the kind of thing that could be done in no time.

Ah, LotGD was fun . Well, it isn't actually a text-based game, it's a genre called roguelike. It's also a top-down RTS that uses ASCII for its graphics.

The premise of the game is to make a dwarven "mountainhome". You get dwarves, and you order them around doing things like digging out rooms in the ground, forging stuff, growing food, whatever.

When I said "complicated", I meant that the game does a lot of things. It generates an entire world to play on (you don't actually play on the whole word at once, but it affects gameplay - local goblin civilizations might send sieges, for example). I'll

What I really like is the engineering aspect of it. I've built a retracting bridge over a pool of lava that's connected to pressure plates so when the goblins come, it drops them. You could build a giant head that spews magma on invaders. I've heard there are poisonous gases underground in the new version, I might have to harness those as a trap...this game is a total sandbox.

Also, it is free. Be warned that the newest release is still a bit buggy, though.

Van B is an ent


Well ye, when i went there to see i was pretty much confused but tell me more and i may take a look

[Edit] Read about it and it seems pretty cool, downloading nao

Guess this helps starting out http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=28477.0

Yeah, it is a game you aren't going to get very far in without a spending a good hour with a tutorial .

well, thanks, now iam blind: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
the backround hurts my eyes while i try to navigate i all became blurry after awhile.....

I've been following the game for a couple years and I'm a big fan. It has developed quite a cult following and the author is living off donations (that's right, DONATIONS) from his fans so he can continue to work on the game full-time. Can you imagine yourself inspiring enough people in the world to send you $ for something you give away freely? Not many can do that.

The game has a high learning curve, the keyboard interface takes a lot of getting used to and of course the graphics are not the greatest. Vanilla version has ASCII characters (just as a Rogue-like has had before it) but there are modded tilesets that people have made which work fine for most people who need that. But how good can graphics get with a 80x25 tiled playing field? Let's be realistic!

The game's premise is it sticks you in a persistent world where your autonomous dwarves will end up making stories for you to be a part of and experience. Google "Boatmurdered" and you'll see an example of how this works. You basically suggest actions for them to complete, like build a wall, dig a ditch, mine some ore, make a sword, etc. if they are sad or upset they won't really do much for you so part of the challenge is to keep them happy with nice living quarters, a good dining hall, and plenty of booze. Throw in the occasional event such as breaking into a demon pit, being seiged when you're not ready, or an arrival of a "mega-beast" such as a giant or a dragon who has already killed dozens of entities in the world and lived to boast about it, and you can imagine the types of problems you need to solve.

But the game is also a fantasy sand box, and if you are creative enough you can make your own fun. Spend 10 years having your dwarves build a giant tower made of Obsidian blocks and sacrifice goblin prisoners by dropping them off the top of it. Pump magma up into a giant stone bowl and flush it down a dry riverbed, melting a human seige force. The engineering components such as levers and switchplates are far enough along in functionality that clever people have made digital number displays and even binary adding machines. All powered by windmills and dozens of switches and levers.

You spend time solving problems like "how do I channel the water from the river underground to build a well, so my hurt dwarves can get a drink?". This might sound easy until you mess up something and it floods your entire fortress. To make a sword you have to mine out the ore, smelt it into a bar of metal, then make a sword out of it. Same with all the armor. To make food you must grow (or kill) it and process it somehow (clean/cook). Want an army of crossbow-dwarves? You must build archery targets and draft some dwarves into service (after you've cut down trees to make cross-bows and practice bolts with the wood). I won't even go into all the steps you need to take to make soap!

Of course I would play the older more stable version known as "40d" if I was to start out with it. This new version, after a year of adding things, is very buggy and it might get even more frustrating than it normally would. Once the major bugs are out it sounds like a lot better version.

The game is really exceptional and something you can't find anywhere else. For those who get hung up on the graphics and the interface, it is really their loss. But they can always go back to playing Dragon Age or the next fancy 3D RPG/RTS/Sims game, right?

That's a nice description, tiresius! You can tell someone who really knows about DF because they always mention Boatmurdered .

That's not the point, the graphics and interface are so bad that it impedes gameplay significantly. There's a difference between a game having crap graphics and one that doesn't even attempt to make some things bearable for the end user, I've tried to get into Dwarf Fortress twice now, even using the tile sets people have made, but it's still incredibly counter-intuitive to try and do anything unless you know all the shortcuts.

I've played other text games with pretty good graphical versions, such as Nethack or Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and they are both lots of fun despite the graphics still being pretty poor, because the game is still fairly easy to play. Dwarf fortress has about a million more things to do and without some aids it's an incredibly big chore to get into, I don't see why the author doesn't spend a day improving the graphics and user inputs, it would probably give him a much larger player base. But oh well!

Exactly.

It seems to be a very deep and interesting game, but there's no way I'm playing with ascii characters, I'm not bloody 6 years old and I don't use a Spectrum. The year is 2010, not 1984.

I don't even understand why someone would want to code for ascii displays, working out what ascii character does what - all for the sake of drawing a decent tile sheet. I'm sure people would help him improve the interface if he asked. A 80x25 character display affords 16x32 pixel tiles on most displays, not shabby at all - 1280x800, would look great with some careful pixel work.

Someone needs to introduce the developer to scrolling screens and actual graphics, then who knows where it could end up.

You guys should see some screenshots of the predecessor, it's not exactly a pretty sight either. Although at least you see what is what.

Being fair though, this happens with any game that's substantially complex - even well-presented ones.

e.g. Getting into the Civ games or Alpha Centauri is (initially) difficult. The visuals are pretty decent though

So, if I got AIDS, it'd be easier? Cool.