Dwarf Fortress stole my soul

[TheFlame52]

I was just browsing the off-topic forums one afternoon about a month ago. Then I came across a reference and link to Bronzemurdered, an illustrated story of Dwarf Fortress. *doom knell* I quickly read through every story on the DF wiki. I then moved on to the Hall of Legends, a list of epic stories on the DF forums. I read Boatmurdered, Headshoots, and Syrupleaf, along with 5 or 6 more. Then I understood the game well enough to start playing it. I downloaded the game and Dwarf Therapist. I watched a few videos to understand the controls. I preached of the game to my friends. At this point my soul was long gone. I had never played Minecraft nor watched any videos or checked forum topics since my discovery of DF. I still haven't. I am still figuring out how to play the game, and having tons of fun screwing up. This is the first time I have seen these forums since that fateful day. Losing is too much Fun.

[Ulfengaard]

Dwarf Fortress is an incredible game, and it has been my gateway into roguelikes. I've really enjoyed all the detail Toady has put into DF, and I think that my yearning for complexity is only really sated by that game and BTW. The depth is just... amazing, and it allows for emergent gameplay like I've never seen before.

[danielngtiger]

Dwarf Fortress has a sort of special feeling that no other game really has. DF is just so detailed, almost to the point of ridiculousness sometimes, and emergent gameplay is huge. The community is amazing and really quite special and unique as well, which always helps a game. The times I've been reading the DF wiki and just completely crack up laughing probably number more than 100. Toady's dedication is pretty amazing too, working day in, day out on Dwarf Fortress and funding it completely through donations, is just amazing. He has plans for development that could reasonably continue out 10 years, and I'm fairly sure that much of it will be carried out. I'm not always in the mood to play it, but DF will always hold a very special place in my heart.

[Wookieguy]

Is there any resource that you would recommend for getting someone acquainted with the game, and to get someone in love with playing it? I played it before, but the controls got way to cumbersome after a certain point. I really, really wanted something to either fix the issues, or show me what I am doing wrong. Due to Minecrafty stuff at the time, I just abandoned the whole thing all together.

Anyone have some ideas for getting me to enjoy DF again?

[FlowerChild]

Lazy newb pack. Search the other threads in this forum for more info.

[Mason11987]

I love DF, although I haven't played in a while. I actually built a program for getting more organized and intersting info from the legends mode called world viewer a while back, the world DF generate are just so interesting but it's not really accessible to most people. I'm waiting for the next version to come out before I invest some more time in re-learning all the new features though.

[Wookieguy]

Lazy newb pack. Search the other threads in this forum for more info.

Ah, memories are coming back now. I remember that I had some trouble installing that. To try again!

[ExpHP]

I love DF to pieces, and it pretty much stole me away from Minecraft for two months this late summer. But it suffers from one of those issues that plagues Minecraft: There's a very small dev team, and they'd rather work on adding new content than fixing old bugs and exploits that have pretty much become part of the game. My dwarves still like to deplete my entire cloth stockpile to fill a hospital, and every now and then, a trader that supposedly left months ago goes insane at the edge of the map.

I second using the Lazy Newb Pack. And do select a texture pack, unless you plan to train your eyes to spot a brown "k" amidst a sea of brown punctuation.

And as for figuring out what the heck you're doing early-game, I recommend this walkthrough, but go slow with it! If you read ahead, you'll miss out on all the Fun! Besides, even just the bare necessities of survival are a bit much to learn all in your first fortress.

P.S. I've gone through about 12 fortresses so far, and I still don't bother with the trading system.

[tedium]

funny to see dwarf fortress described as it is in this thread... i come from the other direction, growing up on fairly mindless roguelikes where your measure of success felt personalized and static, and didn't really effect the world around you. i think that's why i've always feared dwarf fortress. i tried it once, and interpreted the level of power that seemed obtainable over the world as a really big hill that while i had the ambition to climb, i couldn't dedicate the required priorities for. dwarf fortress is like mount everest. you can play survival rpg roguelikes like minecraft and call yourself a 'mountaineer' but if you want to play dwarf fortress and truly conquer it, you need to be able to dedicate at least a few months full time of your life and possibly a decent bit of capital (sticking with the metaphor), and then you're still at the mercy of the weather. i wish i'd discovered it when i was fifteen and finally sick of The Settlers 2 ;)

[Katalliaan]

The roguelike part of DF never interested me add much as the management part of it. I suppose that it comes from playing games like the " Tycoon" series (rollercoaster and zoo), and is why I've also been enjoying Prison Architect.

[Stormweaver]

Bah, I was hoping I'd hold out till the next update before I played again.

...I failed.

[kaos78414]

hehe, yeah I recently decided to take the plunge into DF.

My most recent fort had an interesting beginning* I think:

So I have this dwarf named Steve. That's going to be relevant later in the story, so keep Steve in mind. He's just a lowly carpenter, not much going on there.

I've been having my dwarfs mine down for awhile now, looking for flux stone so we can get started in steel production. I have a hardly trained, lazy 8-dwarf militia, and I want to better arm them for whatever is to come. It's been 1.5 years and goblins have yet to show up, but I know they will soon.

But then: we strike an underground cavern. At first, I don't think much of it. I just put an order in to send one of my dwarfs - Leon, I call him - down to collect some webs. He does like he's told. Good dwarf.

But after a while, this ugly beast with spines who is actually MADE of flux stone, despite the fact that I can't find any anywhere, shows up. Leon manages to escape while my militia comes to intervene. But this forgotten beast is one hell of an opponent, and he immediately destroys 3 dwarfs barely breaking a sweat. I quickly draft up 5 random dwarfs to make it a full 10.

That was a good idea, too, as this damn beast has spewed webs everywhere, and he is making quick work of the 5 remaining, while they're stuck in the mess of webs. Luckily, he did this in a narrow corridor, and he doesn't seem interested in any of my civilian dwarfs, who for some reason have come down to watch this massacre.

Eventually, the militia bested him because of the advantage in the corridor, but not before he slashed 5 more of them to death. And I didn't notice until it was too late, but one of them must of brought their pet puppy with them, because his mangled corpse was found in the aftermath.

So by now you're probably wondering where Steve is in all of this. Well, as it turns out, I didn't pay much attention to who I was drafting in all the mayhem. I managed to draft, Steve, along with his mother and father. Steve is depressed now - so I asked him why he was so upset. Apparently, both his mother and father died, right in front of him. And to add insult to injury, he probably watched the puppy die, too.

But, he was the one who landed the killing blow.

I think this is the beginning of Steve's legacy.

*EDIT

[PatriotBob]

DF's fortress mode is just amazing. I've heard FC state that he prefers to worry about game play rather than game graphics, and I completely agree with him in the regard. But... if Dwarf Fortress had anything better in the way of graphics, UI, etc...

I mean wow, that game would keep me entertained for near the rest of my life...

[FlowerChild]

DF's fortress mode is just amazing. I've heard FC state that he prefers to worry about game play rather than game graphics, and I completely agree with him in the regard. But... if Dwarf Fortress had anything better in the way of graphics, UI, etc...

I mean wow, that game would keep me entertained for near the rest of my life...

Oh, I'm not at all a fan of the ASCII graphics or UI of DF man. Hence why I've been looking at Towns as of late.

It isn't even a fraction as deep as DF at present, but the UI makes it a much more pleasant experience overall.

[nukularpower]

DF is a great game, especially with a decent graphics pack and the Soundsense from the Lazy Newb pack. But it does tend to get pretty easy once you know how to set up, while the new(ish) evil zone stuff is far too ridiculous to appeal to me to try and beat it. Wish there was more middle ground there.

Still looking forward to diving back into it (at least for a couple days) once the new release comes out, though.

[Mr_Hosed]

Fun little romp, but I gotta agree with a few other's, the UI is just a joke.

I learned to play Rogue likes with, well, Rogue; on an 8086 in DOS. I don't mind ASCII games, but DF's UI is completely and utterly non-sensical. What's worse, you play the damn thing long enough and you actually do manage to make good use of it so the Fan boys refuse to admit that it's non-sensical and noone bothers to improve it :(

I'm a usability guy by trade so it finally actually drove me away. That, and there's no sense of progression in the technology or weaponry so if you end up in a peaceful location eventually you just abandon the fort because there's nothing interesting going on.

[PatriotBob]

DF's fortress mode is just amazing. I've heard FC state that he prefers to worry about game play rather than game graphics, and I completely agree with him in the regard. But... if Dwarf Fortress had anything better in the way of graphics, UI, etc...

I mean wow, that game would keep me entertained for near the rest of my life...

Oh, I'm not at all a fan of the ASCII graphics or UI of DF man. Hence why I've been looking at Towns as of late.

It isn't even a fraction as deep as DF at present, but the UI makes it a much more pleasant experience overall.

That was really my point. I'll argue that gameplay > graphics any day of the week. But DF using it more as an excuse to not improve it is kinda thin because of just how arcane the UI is.
I found it terribly entertaining when I notice that DF uses OpenGL and a sprite sheet... 3d acceleration and modern graphics at your finger tips... draw tiled grid of ASCII. But I suppose at this point the rendering is likely tightly coupled with the rest of the engine so overhauling the render to make something better is probably daunting/terrifying.

There's only so much one toady can do.