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Dwarf Fortress - Addiction in ASCII

Forum Index > General Games
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BobMcJohnson
Profile Blog Joined October 2010
France2916 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-09-23 14:46:42
June 02 2014 13:49 GMT
#1
[image loading]


Dwarf Fortress is maybe one of the most complex video games ever, but if you can get past the user interface and the initial learning curve, it's also one of the most fun, deep and rewarding ones.

[image loading]


Gameplay

World Generation
The game is a full fantasy world simulator: You start by generating a world randomly. The game creates a map with landmasses, seas, rivers, forests, mountains, different climates depending on lattitude, everything. It then starts simulating the history of the world. Civilizations rise and fall and wage wars against each others, historical figures are born, some die, some become heroes, etc.

Once the generation ends, you can start actually playing one of the two main game modes the game offers:

Dwarf Fortress Mode
This mode is the "standard" mode, you pick a location on the world map and embark with 7 dwarves with the mission to found a fortress. You have to design your fortress and manage all its aspects, from food production to military defense. Eventually you fortress will attract migrants and grow, you'll get attacked by goblins, merchants will come to trade etc.

All the different workshops you can build can produce an endless list of things from primary materials like wood/stone/metal ore/plants etc. that you can in turn combine to create an infinity of items to create complex systems and mechanisms.
Defense systems fortifications, drawbridges, traps? Sure you can. But you can also pour magma onto the invaders! or throw minecarts at them!
You can create irrigation systems for your farms. You can sheer sheeps and goats to produce wool or make thread out of plants to create cloth, but you can also tame giant cave spider to create a silk farm.

Possibilities are endless.

Adventure Mode
Adventure Mode is pretty much a standard open-world roguelike where you create a character (not necessarily a dwarf) and explore the world, fight off creatures, hire mercenaries, complete quests etc.
One fun thing to do is to explore the ruins of your fallen fortresses. I haven't played much in adventure mode though so I can't say much more about it.

Legends Mode
There is also a third mode called Legends Mode, which allows you to explore the history of the generated world, with its historical figures and events.

[image loading]


Getting started
Dwarf Fortress is a complex game and you probably wont get very far without a tutorial. The Quickstart Guide on the wiki is a good starting point.

The rest of the wiki is very well made (it has 1835 articles!!), and remains extremely useful even after hundreds of hours of play.

Downloading the game
I'd recommend to download and use PeridexisErrant's Starter Pack.
This pack regroups the latest version of the game (0.40.13) and various fan-made utilities including the indispensable Dwarf Therapist, a program that allows to manage the professions and tasks of your dwarves (which is really messy in the default game UI).
The pack also includes multiple graphic packs which allows to replace the default ASCII graphics with easier-on-the-eyes drawings.

Previous Version: DF 0.40 is now reaching a mostly stable state after numerous bugfix releases and you should probably use it. That said, If you wish you can still get v0.34.11 here as there may be some mods/utilities that have not been ported to 0.40 (most important ones have been though).

[image loading]


Cool/Useful Links
  • The official website
  • The official forums
  • The wiki (This one is probably the single most important link !!)
  • Boatmurdered - A legendary let's play of a succession fort from the Something Awful forums. The read is quite long but it's well worth it and incredibly funny, probably the best Dwarf Fortress story ever. It's quite old and as such uses an old Dwarf fortress version where the game was taking place on a single z-level.


[image loading]


Dwarf Fortress is a game developped by Tarn Adams and designed by him and his brother Zach. They started working on it in 2002 and the first version has beed released in 2006. The game is in perpetual developpement and the last version (0.40) has been just been released after two years of developpement!
Since 2007, Tarn works full time on the game so if you enjoy it please support them!


+ Show Spoiler [Old OP by Zeto] +
What's Dwarf Fortress?

Dwarf Fortress is a unique game -- seriously -- there's no other game like it. It's been in development since 2002. It comes close to being something like Sim City and an RPG in one, but... no. It's a funny, violent, and just plain FUN game.

There are two modes in DF. The first is "Dwarf Mode" where the "objective" if you can call it that is, by using the dwarves you settle with, build a fortress for them to survive the winter and beyond; and eventually attract more dwarves to work.

There are a plethora of items, required and not for you to build, and seperate items that you put together into different configurations to make something big. You can make irrigation systems for farming, bridges, set up defenses to fight off goblin raids, make prisons, a throne room, a town hall. Really, the list is endless. There is just so much detail the guys working on this put into the game.

Then there's "Adventure Mode" where you basically just micro one of your dwarves and explore your fortress or the world outside. To be honest, I haven't played in this mode very much. For now, it's mainly about Dwarf Mode.

That sounds fun. Where do I get it?

Here! Please note that this is a new version that came out after almost 11 months of daily game development. There might be some lag and some bugs, but they fix them quickly.

WTF? this has ASCII graphics!

To be accurate, it's a tileset, not exactly ASCII. Yes, the graphics aren't pretty, but bear in mind that almost all of the effort put into this game has gone into gameplay code.

There are options! If you really just cannot stand the dafault tileset, one of these might be more to your liking.

How to I do x?

The DF wiki is here. Again, note that since this is a whole new version of the game, the wiki is constantly being updated.

Trust me, just this once. Learning the hotkeys and basic gameplay is tough at first, but it's worth it. Give it a chance and I'm sure you'll have a tremendous amount of fun playing this.

If you have specific questions, or just want to hear from other Dwarf lords, there's an irc channel. irc.synirc.com #df

Other useful links!

Graphical Tilesets

Pregenerated worlds
(Place in data/save folder)

NEW! In-depth tutorial for beginners!
Romanes eunt domus
Equinox_kr
Profile Blog Joined December 2006
United States7395 Posts
November 02 2007 00:58 GMT
#2
Oh shit sounds nice!

I'll definitely give it a try
^-^
Gokey
Profile Joined November 2006
United States2722 Posts
November 02 2007 02:06 GMT
#3
sure, graphics aren't everything, but christ...

anyway, i think that skinning the game shouldn't be that hard, right? if the game mechanics are so solid as you say, then this could be something great in the future
Zeto
Profile Joined January 2005
United States2290 Posts
Last Edited: 2007-11-02 02:19:02
November 02 2007 02:17 GMT
#4
On November 02 2007 11:06 Gokey wrote:
sure, graphics aren't everything, but christ...

anyway, i think that skinning the game shouldn't be that hard, right? if the game mechanics are so solid as you say, then this could be something great in the future


I just knew this would be one of the first posts. Believe me, you just get used to it. Before DF, I hadn't played a game with these kinds of graphics. Anyway, there were graphical tilesets for the old version (pixel-art dwarves instead of a happy face, etc etc) but this game will never really have great graphics.

edit: It's a great game now! I don't think you get it. This will never really come out of beta. Look at the list of things they plan on adding in the development section, it would take years to "finish" making this game.
hay hay mayé, todos los negros tomamos maté!
Zeto
Profile Joined January 2005
United States2290 Posts
Last Edited: 2007-11-02 02:25:47
November 02 2007 02:24 GMT
#5
Found the graphical tilesets. AGAIN remember DF was just updated, so these might not work.

Oh wait, the very top one seems to be working (it was just updated a couple days ago). Just read the wiki/instructions in the pack, there are some new monsters he has to make art for, and you have to do a bit of modding in the DF folder to get it to work.

http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Graphics_sets
hay hay mayé, todos los negros tomamos maté!
Zeto
Profile Joined January 2005
United States2290 Posts
November 02 2007 02:44 GMT
#6
Pregenerated worlds here if you don't want to spend 30 minutes - an hour generating your own. Put them in the data/save folder, make it if its not there.
hay hay mayé, todos los negros tomamos maté!
Zeto
Profile Joined January 2005
United States2290 Posts
November 07 2007 04:36 GMT
#7
Trying to revive this damn thread, I'm sure there are TL.neters that would love playing this and probably just haven't seen this thread yet.

Updated the first post with a very in-depth tutorial for beginners.
hay hay mayé, todos los negros tomamos maté!
PoP
Profile Blog Joined October 2002
France15446 Posts
November 07 2007 06:50 GMT
#8
Ah, thanks for that tutorial. That's exactly what I needed. 1st time I tried I gave up after 15 mins because I couldn't understand shit, so that's gonna be handy.
Administrator
wonkman
Profile Joined March 2008
United States520 Posts
Last Edited: 2009-08-02 02:21:28
August 02 2009 02:17 GMT
#9
Bumping for the greatness of this game.

If you have not tried to play this yet TRY it, fun stuff, really steep learning curve.. but if you go by a tutorial it is quite simple to play ^.^

Also the graphics are terrible and there are different tilesets and what not to help it along the best one i believe is http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/df.php the one from that website ^.^

Pyrrhuloxia
Profile Blog Joined May 2008
United States6700 Posts
August 02 2009 02:21 GMT
#10
This is the best tutorial, imo:

http://afteractionreporter.com/2009/02/09/the-complete-and-utter-newby-tutorial-for-dwarf-fortress-part-1-wtf/

It actually gives you a save file to load and then explains where to go from there so that you can start off and not have a random event doom you before you can even get started.
wonkman
Profile Joined March 2008
United States520 Posts
August 02 2009 02:22 GMT
#11
On August 02 2009 11:21 Pyrrhuloxia wrote:
This is the best tutorial, imo:

http://afteractionreporter.com/2009/02/09/the-complete-and-utter-newby-tutorial-for-dwarf-fortress-part-1-wtf/

It actually gives you a save file to load and then explains where to go from there so that you can start off and not have a random event doom you before you can even get started.

But random events give the player a sense of WTF i didn't expect this to happen! and lead them down the path of self destruction!
TheYango
Profile Joined September 2008
United States47024 Posts
August 02 2009 02:26 GMT
#12
On August 02 2009 11:21 Pyrrhuloxia wrote:
This is the best tutorial, imo:

http://afteractionreporter.com/2009/02/09/the-complete-and-utter-newby-tutorial-for-dwarf-fortress-part-1-wtf/

It actually gives you a save file to load and then explains where to go from there so that you can start off and not have a random event doom you before you can even get started.

I preferred the video tutorials on Youtube. Sure, there's randomness and the fact that you can't follow the tutorial, but IMO getting the basic idea from the tutorial and figuring out the steps in between is better than having it walk you all the way through.
Moderator
Pyrrhuloxia
Profile Blog Joined May 2008
United States6700 Posts
Last Edited: 2009-08-02 03:04:12
August 02 2009 03:03 GMT
#13
On August 02 2009 11:26 TheYango wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 02 2009 11:21 Pyrrhuloxia wrote:
This is the best tutorial, imo:

http://afteractionreporter.com/2009/02/09/the-complete-and-utter-newby-tutorial-for-dwarf-fortress-part-1-wtf/

It actually gives you a save file to load and then explains where to go from there so that you can start off and not have a random event doom you before you can even get started.

I preferred the video tutorials on Youtube. Sure, there's randomness and the fact that you can't follow the tutorial, but IMO getting the basic idea from the tutorial and figuring out the steps in between is better than having it walk you all the way through.

Yeah, I liked being walked through it so I didn't get lost in all the indecipherable symbols. You can have random doom fun in any game after the first.
RLTY
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
United States965 Posts
August 04 2009 04:46 GMT
#14
The concept behind the game is excellent, but the interface + graphics are pisspoor. A previous forum I was on had a pass-it-around going on where X would play and then pass it on and create a great story around it. It kinda died out after a while because the presentation is just impossiblely hard to draw in anyone new.
Iankill
Profile Blog Joined February 2008
Canada109 Posts
August 11 2009 12:27 GMT
#15
The concept behind the game is excellent, but the interface + graphics are pisspoor. A previous forum I was on had a pass-it-around going on where X would play and then pass it on and create a great story around it. It kinda died out after a while because the presentation is just impossiblely hard to draw in anyone new.

Yeah the game can take awhile to get into because of the graphics and interface but once you do its a very fun game. I also made a thread about someone would play and pass it on but it'll die out because no one seems interested. Also this
is the most "successful" and funnyest succession games.
CrimsonWall
Profile Joined September 2010
United States27 Posts
February 04 2011 22:49 GMT
#16
I took a break from laddering zerg to practice my macro.
I found this game and haven't laddered in a month!

Why is this so addicting? I hate the game but I can't stop playing, lol!

I spend days building my fortress ... everything is going fine and then elves decide to ambush me and cause massive amounts of FUN.
Haemonculus
Profile Blog Joined November 2004
United States6980 Posts
February 04 2011 22:55 GMT
#17
Well you have to play it in ASCII. There's way too much information to decode in Dwarf Fortress. You get used to it... I mean i don't even see the ASCII anymore... all I see is "Dwarf", "goblin", "CARP", etc
I admire your commitment to being *very* oily
ain
Profile Joined July 2010
Germany786 Posts
February 04 2011 23:25 GMT
#18
I only recently noticed that Dungeon Keeper was totally a rip-off of this.
Sounds like an awesome game but I wouldnt want to put my time in it.
Shockk
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Germany2269 Posts
February 04 2011 23:34 GMT
#19
On February 05 2011 08:25 ain wrote:
I only recently noticed that Dungeon Keeper was totally a rip-off of this.
Sounds like an awesome game but I wouldnt want to put my time in it.


Except that Dungeon Keeper came out 1997 and Dwarf Fortress was first released 2006.
ain
Profile Joined July 2010
Germany786 Posts
February 04 2011 23:47 GMT
#20
On February 05 2011 08:34 Shockk wrote:
Show nested quote +
On February 05 2011 08:25 ain wrote:
I only recently noticed that Dungeon Keeper was totally a rip-off of this.
Sounds like an awesome game but I wouldnt want to put my time in it.


Except that Dungeon Keeper came out 1997 and Dwarf Fortress was first released 2006.


Hahah I guess I figured since it was all in ASCII it mustve been much older. Well guess this is ripped-off of Dungeon Keeper then!
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