The New York Times once again shows up other mainstream press in an
awesome article about the open source, ASCII-rendered game
Dwarf Fortress:
Dwarf Fortress is barely a blip on the mainstream radar, but it’s an object of intense cult adoration. Its various versions have been downloaded in the neighborhood of a million times, although the number of players who have persisted past an initial attempt is doubtless much smaller. As with popular simulation games like the Sims series, in which players control households, or the Facebook fad FarmVille, where they tend crops, players in Dwarf Fortress are responsible for the cultivation and management of a virtual ecosystem — in this case, a colony of dwarves trying to build a thriving fortress in a randomly generated world. Unlike those games, though, Dwarf Fortress unfolds as a series of staggeringly elaborate challenges and devastating setbacks that lead, no matter how well one plays, to eventual ruin. The goal, in the game’s main mode, is to build as much and as imaginatively as possible before some calamity — stampeding elephants, famine, vampire dwarves — wipes you out for good.
Now that Minecraft has reminded everyone that fun games aren't always about the flashiest high-definition graphics, you might want to check out this free game - it's an
8MB download.
Posted 02:12pm 23/7/11
Posted 02:12pm 23/7/11
I just bought 'Dungeons of Dredmor' on steam for $5. I tested a torrent version first and loved it. Its like Neverwinter Nights (turn based RPG with skills you choose during character creation) but faster and more fun IMO. Plus permadeath (can turn off if desired) makes the game much more interesting when death is a real fear. I've lost 7 heroes to death in the space of a few hours and keep coming back for more.
Posted 02:34pm 23/7/11
Last time I played I basically had to watch a 20 part set of YouTube tutorials to figure out what the f*** to do.
Posted 02:42pm 23/7/11
Are they just being obstinate?
Posted 02:50pm 23/7/11
Posted 02:59pm 23/7/11
Posted 03:04pm 23/7/11
ahh i still remember that $800 phone bill. What a brat of a kid i was ;)
Posted 03:13pm 23/7/11
edit: Going to need to spend some serious time learning how this works, makes no sense at all to me.
last edited by CHUB at 15:13:01 23/Jul/11
Posted 04:47pm 23/7/11
http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/df.php
Posted 04:58pm 23/7/11
Posted 08:14pm 23/7/11
Posted 10:20pm 23/7/11
Lava water falls where fun, pit traps, flood rooms and so on.
There are graphics packs available and I STRONGLY recommend installing them, check out the Dwarf Fortress Wiki for instructions.
Ironhand tile set is probably one the best and has instructions to set up easily enough.
What stops me going back at the moment is that the game comes to a point where you have effectively mastered it. No army can penetrate your Fortress and you have all the food you'll ever need totally protected in the fortress.
Extremely satisfying to build working traps/water pump systems/perm-a-farms/redirecting lava flows/well flowing economy and so on.
I'm always checking back because the developer keeps adding all sort of stuff, seemingly at random. Of particular interest is building the AI to counter your fortress defenses a bit better, moat crossing equipment, tunneling and so forth. Also the ability to build armies to conquer neighboring towns and cities.
I'd personally really like to see Mindcraft have the functionality of dwarf fortress and the UI for dwarf fortress is the most gumby, cumbersome and daunting UI I've ever had to use in any game ever, and probably will remain so until I die it is that needlessly complicated.
Posted 11:57pm 23/7/11
Posted 12:45am 24/7/11
It's not hard to pick up, so give it a bit of a try before you try out a graphic set and spoil yourself - it's far less cluttered and much more efficient for easy recognition.
You'll find that interface isn't much of an issue especially once you discover the different viewing and interation mode keys and what they do ( k, q, v, d, t). That's really the biggest hurdle in learning the basics of playing the game. I've not played that much really and now I press tab and turn off all the interface as I've memorized most of the hotkeys. The game's not as hard as it looks!
Posted 09:01am 24/7/11
As for the ASCII, I've played enough nethack and ADOM (love ADOM) and all their friends to have a very fond spot in my heart for ASCII games. DF works better with the graphics packs IMO.
O also, I'm not sure if he has fixed it or not yet, but the game may run better if you force it to run on only 1 core and use your other cores for everything else. The game eats CPU's when you start getting to the coin stage.
Posted 02:59pm 24/7/11
For anyone just starting, I've found these 2 guides the most useful,
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Quickstart_guide
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Bentgirder
Posted 08:25pm 25/7/11
Are they like Minecraft texture packs where you constantly need to keep them updated when new things are added to the game or are they relatively static?
This is the game with a tutorial video on the basics weighing in at 2 hrs and 33 minutes...
Posted 08:49pm 25/7/11
Plump Helmets are win.