[HN Gopher] Dwarf Fortress - randomly generated, persistent fant... ___________________________________________________________________ Dwarf Fortress - randomly generated, persistent fantasy world Author : loa_in_ Score : 395 points Date : 2022-11-22 20:45 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.bay12games.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.bay12games.com) | jrm4 wrote: | Decided to read the whole thing. For some reason the very last | line where they make sure that you know that they have the color | black included, twice, is hilarious to me. | | There's probably some reason for it though? Anyone know? | shrx wrote: | I think they just want to point out that black is one of the | available 16 colors, meaning that there are just 15 colors not | counting black. | mtrpcic wrote: | I'm always fascinated by Dwarf Fortress whenever I cross paths | with it, particularly from a technical architecture point of | view. How did they architect the history simulation? How do they | efficiently update everything on each tick? What is the game loop | like? | | If anyone has any resources or links to articles, either | definitive from the DW developer, or conjecture based on | exploration and research, I'd love to learn more about how DF | works. | knoebber wrote: | > How do they efficiently update everything on each tick? | | The player is responsible for some aspects of keeping their | game running efficiently. | | See: | https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Maximizing_fr... | thoughtFrame wrote: | There's another game like that that surprised me: Amazing | Cultivation Simulator. I got this video ( | https://youtube.com/watch?v=wJxM3POU92w ) recommended on | youtube and I watched it start to end with my jaw dropping more | every time a new mechanic was described. Before that I had | thought that big systemic games were stuff like Zelda Breath of | the Wild, Minecraft or Dward Fortress. But this simulator game | is one I'd like to see the code of | praptak wrote: | Last time I checked they didn't do it particularly efficiently | and avoiding "FPS death" was an important part of the lore: cap | the number of dwarves, avoid flowing water, wall off unused | parts of the mine to reduce costs of pathfinding, add | pathfinding weights to tiles, etc. | | There's not much published about the internals because the | creators keep it to themselves. | WastingMyTime89 wrote: | Cats are the death of fortress. Dwarf fortress is an | incredible game but you are right that it's actually amusing | the amount of weird things you know you should avoid or | manage as a regular player. | jonchurch_ wrote: | One of the creators (Tarn, specifically) does interviews fairly | often, talking about the game and progress. | | Here's a video telling a very famous story about tracking down | a bug that involved alcoholic cats | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAhHkJQ3KgY | | There was also a recent article about Dwarf Fortress published | to the Stack Overflow blog | https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/31/700000-lines-of-code-2... | | Edit: There's really a decent amount of stuff out there, | they've been making the game for almost 20 years now. So here | is a talk that tries to explain DF to an audience, and does | talk a little about the simulation. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykLm2o_cX9w | | I adore DF and am one of those folks who enjoys playing, not | just watching videos on youtube. If you do want to give it a | go, make sure you find an "Intro to DF" type video and follow | it. It's a big learning curve but I love the game so much, and | knowing the story of it's creation over time makes me love it | even more. It is truly a labor of love by two brothers who have | chosen to make it their life's work. | professoretc wrote: | I read the SO blog post and thought it was a pretty cool | coincidence that Adams was talking about SplitMix64 when I | had just recently given a talk about it. Then I scrolled down | and saw the video _of my talk_. | nonethewiser wrote: | that's amazing. congrats | ilyt wrote: | > If you do want to give it a go, make sure you find an | "Intro to DF" type video and follow it. | | Honestly if someone don't mind spending few bucks waiting for | Steam release and incoming slew of tutorials might be a | better option. | | And if you do mind, well,free ascii version will eventually | get the new UI too | tstrimple wrote: | The level of detail in Dwarf Fortress is amazing. Just take a | look at this bug report: | https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=9195 | | TLDR: Code was added that allowed substances to accumulate on | fur. Cats lick their fur to clean themselves. Due to the | calculation used for intoxication and body weight, cats kept | getting lethally drunk from walking through spilled beer and | licking it off of their feet. | | This level of detail leads to tons of emergent game play and | stories. | lstodd wrote: | Haha lol. I maybe still have a screenshot of a Forgotten Beast | killing himself by kicking up a dead cat's tooth (the cat was | killed by some previous FB) (and the tooth deals a fatality). | | The level of detail is amazing. | ilyt wrote: | Yeah there were pretty interesting edge cases with | calculations. Like, for example, there is still [1] a bug for | a whip doing unreasonable amount of damage in some cases | because armour penetration logic was pretty much | strength/area = penetration power. | | And because whip hit only with tiny end, it pretty much went | thru any armour | | https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2712 | bombcar wrote: | It's worth studying some of the more famous bug reports as | they're perfect examples of emergent issues that can arise in | complex situations. | chx wrote: | That's like the legendary carps bug. | | > fish and all other creatures are coded similar to Dwarfs for | level progression, so training a skill not only improves the | skill but also the relevant physical stats. Well, Carps have | swimming as a skill. And they are always swimming. So within | minutes of spawning every carp was a dwarf-sized mass of angry | muscle and razor sharp teeth. | Daunk wrote: | I'm so happy seeing DF reach a larger audience with the Steam | release, it's been such a joy to experiment with over the years, | and I feel like Zach and Tarn deserve a lot more recognition. | | Here's my personal DF tileset - https://github.com/Hezkore/dwarf- | fortress-assets | lstodd wrote: | What is more spectacular than even the Dwarf Fortress itself (and | it is), are the C++ reverse-engineering tools developed in Common | Lisp back in 2010-s. DFHack and Dwarf Therapist were rebased on | top of them. | jrm4 wrote: | It's weird to read a line that feels like typical overhyped | advertising copy next to a Steam game but that you realize is | probably 100% accurate? | | Namely "The deepest, most intricate simulation of a world that's | ever been created?" | praptak wrote: | This deep and intricate world is inhabited by dumbest, most | stubborn dwarves who throw players into depth of frustration, | despair and a solid dose of hilarity. | LAC-Tech wrote: | I was really keen on the idea of adventure mode, after watching a | fantastic lets play of it [0]. | | But when I got there I didn't really know what to do inside the | sandbox. | | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDX5hmtjqtw | specproc wrote: | Has anyone actually played this? Like, really played it. I've | tried a couple of times and never got that far. I'm in awe from | one perspective, but not entirely sure what of, from another. | ink_13 wrote: | Yes. Once it clicked it was so engrossing I found I could think | of nothing else. Focusing on work was difficult. Dwarf | Therapist became indispensable. I knew all of my dwarfs by | name, and I had a plan for all of them. My focus became all | consuming. I built a windowed tower that could only be | comprehensible if you grokked the Z-layer system. I was very | close to having a moat filled with lava. In the end, I dug too | deep. | | I don't allow myself to play DF any more. It's just too good. | tptacek wrote: | Yes. It's one of those things I have to keep uninstalled or | it'll randomly suck me back in. AMA. | hristov wrote: | Yes. It is not really that hard, if you consider how they have | probably the best wiki of any computer game and a lot of high | quality helper programs. If you alt-tab between dwarf fortress, | the wiki and dwarf therapist, it is totally doable. And once | you play a couple of games you start to get the internal logic | of DF and becomes kind of fun. | ilyt wrote: | Steam version with better UI and graphics released 6th December | | I did "actually played it", think the biggest thing I did was a | lava cannon that flooded the area aboveground when invasion | game, that was "interesting" build... | | Having to relearn everything on interface stopped me from | picking it up again, and from what I watched new UI look so | much more user friendly | robomc wrote: | Nearly a decade ago I played it a bit over a couple of months. | I'd guess 30 hours or so (which is a lot for me, I'm a gaming | dabbler, aside from the civ and fromsoft games). It was pretty | playable IMO, and would really pull you in, just tedious to | navigate the menus. | | I eventually got kind of tired of investing so much effort into | a fortress that would just randomly fall apart. People say | that's part of the fun but I dunno... I found that aspect a bit | annoying. It also ran really poorly for me in late game and | that kind of put me off too. | | Great concept, the ascii is less of a problem than you'd think, | but overall just a bit too much effort to keep wanting to come | back for more. | praptak wrote: | I can get to 80-100 dwarves without huge problems but then I | usually get bored with the micromanagement. | | DF is not hard if you follow the quickstart guide. | rpastuszak wrote: | Fantasy World is a _bit_ of an understatement. It 's one of the | toughest and deepest simulations one can find. | helf wrote: | I've played DF off an on for ~15 years. Love it always get an | upvote. | Loughla wrote: | I go back to read boatmurdered at least once a year just for | the chuckles (and the reminiscing about SA forums back in the | day). | | Then I play DF for a month or so and remember just how | intricate and IMPOSSIBLE it is to understand completely. | | What an amazing game. | [deleted] | Ancalagon wrote: | I really need to get into this. But on the other hand, if I start | playing I have a feeling I might not stop. | ilyt wrote: | It's actually not bad game to have running on second screen and | just poke at it from time to time as your dwarves are working | and building stuff. Kinda perfect "podcast game" | namuol wrote: | Frontend UX developer perspective on DF: The ascii interface is | actually fine and mostly a superficial complaint. The real | problem is just how hard the many interfaces are to navigate and | learn, and how unconventional their designs are. If I could pick | one thing for the UI team to focus on: DF needs a "command | palette" to help find/learn all of the game's many functions. | bombcar wrote: | The Steam version has a much-cleaned up UI including things | like normalizing menu items, commands, etc. | | I agree that it isn't actually that bad, and there is (was?) a | form of logic to it and it eventually became second nature. | Buttons840 wrote: | Will those improvements make it to non-Steam versions? I'm | kind of bummed the Steam version is Windows only (according | to Steam at least). | chmod775 wrote: | At release. A Mac and Linux release is planned for later. | | > [..] We also have the Classic ASCII mode to support, and | we are also working on Mac and Linux builds. | | https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/975370/view/3099043 | 8... | mlatu wrote: | "once you get into it its actually quite easy to navigate in" | is something i would have said back when i played, at least ten | years ago though | namuol wrote: | I agree, but pretty much every UI has its own learning curve | to get over, and taken together it's just overwhelming to get | started with. Curious to see how the tutorial system in the | premium version helps address this. I'm cautiously hopeful | but still doubt I will have the time to properly run a | fortress. Maybe we'll see the premium version lead to a jump | in DF as a spectator sport given the much richer graphics | library. | coder-3 wrote: | Time is what's been preventing me from getting into DF. Do | I need to spend a significant amount of time on this game | to get a good experience? Could I get away with, say, one | hour once in a while? I'd probably need to invest time | upfront to learn the basics though. | sdenton4 wrote: | It's genuinely terrible. I played enough to 'get it' at one | point, then walked away for six months. When I came back had | forgotten how to navigate the menus and just gave up, as it | didn't seem worth it. Different kinds of branching per menu, | different idioms for hotkey letters per menu.... just a mess. | MiddleEndian wrote: | I've always played with the help of Dwarf Therapist, a second | program that helps you manage everything spreadsheet-style. | Buttons840 wrote: | Last time I played I used Dwarf Therapist, and it definitely | helps with min-maxing, but I've been thinking maybe min- | maxing isn't the right way to play this game and I should | just be happy with the in-game interface? | hinkley wrote: | So we have spreadsheets in space (Eve Online) and now | spreadsheets underground... | bombcar wrote: | One of the things I love is that you can generate a world, play a | fortress, eventually lose (it's fun!(tm)) and then start another | fortress in the same world, _and your new fortress will have | references to your old one_ - in the carvings, legends, etc. | hinkley wrote: | Kruggsmash likes to play necromancers, and then has to fight | necromancers two games later. What goes around comes around. | ilyt wrote: | More than that. Artifact can be stolen from your fortress then | you can go in adventure mode to track it down and steal it | back. Well the "track down" part would probably be done in | legends mode coz it would be hard to scour the whole world to | find a single artifact but still | Shared404 wrote: | One thing I want to jump into is the Adventurer mode! Nothing | quite like the idea of building (and losing) several | fortresses, and then going through them to explore as the "new | generation". Haven't played DF yet, but it's very much on my | list. | mttyng wrote: | Is that what Adventure Mode is? I've been playing DF off-and- | on since 2013(ish), but I've never tried adventure mode. | bombcar wrote: | Adventure mode is more like a 'standard' RPG-style | adventure, similar to nethack but entirely generated. https | ://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Adventurer_mo... | | It doesn't have as much polish as Fortress mode, but it can | be quite fun if you like the nethack style of "die early, | die awesome, die often". | bombcar wrote: | Even if you don't actually play, _Legends_ mode alone can be | interesting. | | https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Legends | xnx wrote: | I want to get into this, but the randomly generated nature has | always been an (irrational?) turn-off. I guess I want more | editorial choice in the level design. | MiddleEndian wrote: | On top of what bombcar mentioned, you also get to choose your | embark spot within your tuned world. | bombcar wrote: | And you can post a world on the forums and ask people for a | "good embark spot" and they'll find different ones for you. | | It's amusing what people consider "necessities" and | "absolutely not" in embark spots; some people will never | touch an aquifer, others it's not even something to look at. | bombcar wrote: | You do control a large number of aspects of world generation, | which can be used to "tune" the game from very easy to | impossibly difficult. | | And once you have parameters you like, you can try different | seeds. | | https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:World_generat... | | https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Advanced_worl... | | Also, people will post seeds and world parameters for "good | worlds" they've found: | https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Worldgen_exam... | ilyt wrote: | The better UI(and paid) version drops on Steam 6th of December. | Probably the best time to give it a shot. | | And it is not "just" randomly generated. For example, the | rivers flow where there are rocky paths in the terrain | | Rocky paths are there because during worldgen game simulated | erosion. | | Erosion is made by simulated rainfall | | Simulated rainfall depends in winds and location of a given | terrain. | | And only at the start of that chain there is "random | generation". | | > I guess I want more editorial choice in the level design. | | Then tell your dwarves to build what you want, you can make | pretty grand scale things in it. | brown wrote: | Not sure why Dwarf Fortress is on the front page, but I will | always upvote. | | If you're intimidated by ASCII visuals, consider wishlisting the | graphics release, scheduled for Dec 6, 2022: | https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/ | schlauerfox wrote: | The technical complexity got me through a really tough time | where I could hide in the world, ascii only on a pavilion | convertible laptop. Good times, impenetrable gameplay. | ilyt wrote: | The Steam version OP mentioned fixes that | PhasmaFelis wrote: | Is the UI getting an overhaul as well? I could probably deal | with the ASCII, but I'm picky about UI design, and what I've | heard about the interface sounds like it would make me have a | tantrum and smash my menacing rhyolite cave sock. | jibe wrote: | They've revamped the UI. Here is a dev blog post with an | early screenshot from 2021. | | https://steamcommunity.com/games/975370/announcements/detail. | .. | tptacek wrote: | Careful what you wish for. Some of the Dwarf Fortress | endorphins are a product of the horrible user interface; | asking for a more intuitive interface (at times) is like | asking for an easier Soulsborne boss. Ask enough times and | you have Horizon Forbidden West instead of Bloodborne. | bombcar wrote: | The old UI is like a well-worn sock for me, fits perfectly | and I know where the holes are. | | But yes, the new version has an entirely redone UI to greatly | organize and simplify things. | | The updates here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/975370 go | into more details - there's even a tutorial! | jrm4 wrote: | Whoooaaa. | | So, this has been a game that's always fascinated me, though | when trying to play myself I nope out within minutes. | | On one hand, graphics might get me there -- and yet, even to | me, it feels kinda wrong :) | rococode wrote: | As a Rimworld lover who couldn't quite get past the ASCII in | Dwarf Fortress, I'm super excited for the upcoming release! | Rimworld has been a blast and I've heard the two games have | many similarities (with Rimworld maybe being a slightly more | approachable game that's a bit shallower). | tstrimple wrote: | I love ribworld as well! It's my most played game by far at | this point. The mod ecosystem is simply outstanding. That | being said, it doesn't even attempt to be the simulation | engine that Dwarf Fortress does. It feels like DF is a | simulation engine first, with emergent game play almost as a | side effect. As much as I like DF, that simulation first | development process can be felt during almost every | interaction in the game. It's not so bad once you've | committed everything to muscle memory, but the learning curve | is no joke. | | https://i.stack.imgur.com/iECXl.jpg | bombcar wrote: | The new version is going to fix some of that; the | normalization of menus, etc, will go a long way to "making | it feel more game-like". | krisroadruck wrote: | if you like these games you might also like Oxygen Not | Included. It's side-on view instead of top down, but is | another excellent little ant farm to sink a couple thousand | hours into. Sort of a Rimworld meets Factorio type vibe. | ericbarrett wrote: | > is another excellent little ant farm | | I call ONI my "dollhouse." | | It's such a sleeper compared to similar games. The art | and sound effects really elevate it. Klei has such a | unique art style and it's really shown off. Also has a | much more interesting "survival" curve than most; you'll | be presented with many _many_ hours of challenges trying | to get a sustainable base, without cheap tricks like | ever-escalating interruptions based on quantitative | progress (looking at you, Rimworld.) | intelVISA wrote: | You'll definitely love DF then, I believe the Steam release | is soon and includes some nice QoL improvements like a | tileset and mouse UX. | munk-a wrote: | If you can stomach the adjustment period for ASCII I'd really | recommend it. I think it does something a lot of modern games | miss out on - it encourages imagination first. The | information given to the player is extremely dense and easy | to parse once you've adjusted and you're giving your brain a | chance to try and play inside your own head. I've built a | glorious six floor tavern (slowly) with engravings on every | surface - even those not reachable by pathing, why? because I | had an image of a tavern floor full of rowdy miners with | opera boxes circling the room above them for dwarves of a | more refined taste... in the end it's just a box you need to | floor scroll to see on the screen but the carved pillars in | the middle of the room - the enclaves for dwarves to, in | hushed voices, discuss just how beautiful gold is - and the | grand skylight in the middle of the ceiling casting a rainbow | of different colored light on the ground below... that's | awesome. | | Dwarf fortress is the first thing since MUDing that's really | scratched the imagination itch in quite that way and, as | someone who has worked in game development themselves, I | think it's something that is only possible if you keep to the | lowest tech. If you use words or abstract symbols then each | player will fill in the details themselves, usually in their | head but sometimes in artwork (see Kruggsmash as an | approachable example here[1]) which can be extremely | fulfilling. | | I hope to see the non-ASCII version work as a gateway drug to | get more people into the imagination of what they're | building. And I hope this didn't come off as ranty or | judgemental - each person enjoys games in different ways... | but low detail art has a way of really spurring the | imagination on! | | 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojT99rDmq5M | omoikane wrote: | I agree with the "encourages imagination" argument, and | also that ASCII modes might be more practical. I have | played Nethack in ASCII mode and tried a few graphical | variants, and always returned to the ASCII version because | it's easier to tell the enemies apart and easier to see | what's going on. | bombcar wrote: | This is the key for me - DF is like Sim City or other | building games (including Minecraft) - you have to be able | to create your _own_ goals. Sure, you can keep trying more | and more difficult embark locations, but after awhile you | 'll have DF down well enough that you can survive | 'indefinitely' on underground farms behind impenetrable | walls. | | So you begin to do other things, mega projects are a common | one. | kgwxd wrote: | I played Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead in ASCII long before I | even looked at screenshots of the tiles. Worse than getting | stuck with Ben Affleck in the movie of a book you loved. | The Jabberwocky was in the screen shot I saw, the | description gave such a spooky mental image, but now all I | see in my head is the 8-bit swamp monster thingy, like | something from the original Castlevania. | dwringer wrote: | My favorite thing about the engravings (and statues and | similar art) is that not only is it based on real dwarves, | gods, etc. from the current game world, but you can | commission pieces about specific dwarves and the artisans | will commemorate battles or other milestone events that | involved them. | | In one of the last times I played, some invader had broken | through my defenses and killed a couple of highly respected | dwarves (one of whom was a skilled fighter), but finally | came face to face with a young girl dwarf who confronted | him in one of the dining halls and, though she lost a leg, | managed to kill him (eventually recovering to grow up to be | a skilled craftsdwarf). I had a some statues made of her, | and most of them came out depicting the heroic deed in | different levels of detail (so of course the best one was | put up in that dining hall). | | There's also a sort-of-exploit related to this, where if | there's a stranger in your fortress whom you suspect of | having a nefarious background, you can commission artwork | of them and sometimes it will reveal malicious traits about | them if you examine it. The artists always seem to have | perfect knowledge of their subjects. | ilyt wrote: | Clearly we need to feed DF generated descriptions to AI and | generate tilesets for that /s | | ASCII version will get the new UI Soon(tm) | | Personally I don't think the new look they're going with | will be problem with imagination for me - the new look adds | just enough detail that you can spot dwarf by their look | alone but there is still plenty of space to imagine how | exactly the described things look | hinkley wrote: | I watched about 30 hours of Kruggsmash's narrations of his | Dwarf Fortress runs on Youtube, hoping it would 'sell' me on | DF. What happened instead is that I played way more Rimworld | and Oxygen Not Included than I had been playing. | | Most days I preferred ONI due having to go way out of your | way to commit war crimes, whereas in Rimworld it's just | clicking a couple buttons. | bergenty wrote: | Same, ended up intensely playing rimworld for a month | before it got too repetitive for me and I stopped. | ilyt wrote: | Here is new UI with someone new to DF and developer guiding | them: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLN8cOcTjdo& | sdenton4 wrote: | Does the framerate still decline steadily to zero as you expand | your fortress? | andremedeiros wrote: | Thank you for reminding me, I've been meaning to wishlist this | for a while. Excited they finally have a release date set! | etempleton wrote: | I am excited for the graphics release as I have always been | fascinated by Dwarf Fortress, but do not think I have the | patience to learn how to parse the ASCII visuals. | kennu wrote: | Nice to see there is a release date now! Wishlisted quite a | while ago already, when no date was set. | RektBoy wrote: | ASCII is not a problem, since there is ton of graphics packs. | | But controls, controls are ridiculous. I can't just enjoy it. | And I play very hard games, indie games, Ultima Online which | you need to script own things to play properly. But DF is | another beast. | jessfyi wrote: | The version being released on steam also includes extensive | UX/UI updates, OP just left that out. | ilyt wrote: | The graphics version also did MASSIVE pass on every control. | | Like, instead of going "select bed, make bedroom, repeat 40 | times", you can just make rooms, put beds, doors, etc, then | just select whole area and it will make a bedroom out of each | of those rooms. | | camera controls are normal WASD now, most of the things can | be done with mouse, there are tabs on panels and hyperlinks | in legend browser and thousand other little things. | | It will be coming eventually to free ASCII version too | PeterisP wrote: | The Lazy Newb Pack (and other third-party options) has been an | easy way to get cute graphics for Dwarf Fortress for many, many | years now. | signalToNose wrote: | But the UI has all joy and ease of Emacs | bombcar wrote: | But it has the power and learning curve of Emacs, too! | ilyt wrote: | The commenter above did mention the new UI is coming this | december. | | Long story short it got upgraded from Emacs to IntelliJ | IDEA. | tptacek wrote: | The ease is like 80% of the joy. | agiacalone wrote: | Love the ASCII version, but totally buying to support the devs. | mjamesaustin wrote: | Just a heads up, if you purchase on itch.io rather than | Steam, the devs receive a larger share of the revenue. | (Though obviously it's not integrated into Steam, if you | prefer that.) | | https://kitfoxgames.itch.io/dwarf-fortress | Daunk wrote: | Noted. I will buy it on both itch.io and Steam then. | munk-a wrote: | Considering I've given them a few bucks a month for a | decade and a bit now which doesn't even come close to the | value I've gotten that is a great idea. | deelowe wrote: | As soon as I learned why Tarn needed to put out a paid | release on Steam, I committed to purchasing even if I never | play it. | MikeTheGreat wrote: | You can't just leave a comment like that and walk away from | it. :) | | Why did Tarn need to put out a paid release? | | (I think I know / I kinda remember, but hey - there's no | better place to tell us why we should be helping a fellow | geek) | nonethewiser wrote: | As I recall he had some medical issues to pay for. The | other brother didnt have insurance nor a regular | income... just his split of the DF donation money. | | It bring up a lot of criticism of healthcare in the US | which I don't quite understand. Yes, healthcare is | expensive in the US, especially without insurance. It has | been for a while, so dont be surprised when not having a | regular income nor insurance puts you in a bad spot. It | was poor planning as much as it is expensive healthcare. | | It basically amounts to one day realizing "oh shit, | $35,000/year and no health insurance isn't enough money. | This is the fault of the United States." | munk-a wrote: | Very briefly as a counter example - these folks made a | thing that thousands maybe tens of thousands of people | treasure. They've worked on it as a passion project and | when ill luck befell them they had to scramble to secure | funds. Yes, we live in a capitalist system but supporting | neat art like this and exploratory projects is a societal | investment that the US has stiffly refused to make. The | more we provide social safety nets the more folks will be | free to do experimental and artistic work and give us | gems like dwarf fortress. | | This isn't the fault of the United States - the US has | made a choice in how the game works and they weren't | playing by the rules laid out for them to follow. The | expected course was for them to work in some job that | robs them of their free time to produce a work of this | caliber and if they had done so they'd be just fine... | and we wouldn't have dwarf fortress. | deelowe wrote: | https://gamerant.com/dwarf-fortress-interview-new-age- | health... | bombcar wrote: | A hospital/illness scare made them realize they have | nothing setup for illness/insurance and need a more | secure source of income. | | It's probably true that if word got out that Tarn or Zack | needed medical care, the donations would flow like water, | but it's understandable wanting to prepare. | ilyt wrote: | American healthcare system | [deleted] | mminer237 wrote: | You can also just donate directly: | http://www.bay12games.com/support.html | | They used to personally make a crayon drawing for each person | who donated. They stopped in 2020, but I made sure to get one | of the final ones before then: | http://www.bay12games.com/support.html | | My $10 was a small price to pay for all the hours of fun I | got. (I'll surely buy the Steam version too though.) | pearjuice wrote: | I've tried playing and actually getting into this game a few | times (including installing tile packs, walkthrough saves and | what not), but the game mechanics are obtuse and have such a high | learning curve that frustration is easier found than any sense of | enjoyment. For a game focused on being so meticulous and extra- | vagant in its mechanics, it's sad that enjoying it or "having | fun" seems something completely out of reach with hours of | gameplay, reading third-party wikis and starter guides. | jiggawatts wrote: | The thing that gets me about Dwarf Fortress is that it's a 64-bit | text-mode game. | | As a grey-haired developer who got excited about "DOS Extenders" | that allowed 32-bit mode, seeing a text-mode game written as a | native 64-bit application is bizarrely anachronistic. | | I get a similar feeling from text-mode GUI frameworks for Rust, | which allow multi-threading and 64-bit but are essentially clones | of Borland Turbo Vision, where you had to be mindful to keep | lists smaller than 64KB: https://github.com/gyscos/cursive | babuskov wrote: | You might find Rogue Bit interesting: | | https://store.steampowered.com/app/949790/Rogue_Bit/ | | It's a modern game about hacking internals of an 8-bit computer | by walking a single bit through it's memory. | | Visually it looks like an ASCII roguelike game, but it's | actually a niche puzzle game for people who like machine | language, assembly and computer internals. | ilyt wrote: | Not for long | | https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/ | | Graphical+UI/controls rewrite in few weeks! | stolen_biscuit wrote: | Both versions will be supported :) "Classic" DF isn't going | anywhere | PointyFluff wrote: | this. | | not the lame knock-off that is rimworld. | Kiro wrote: | What made you randomly post Dwarf Fortress now with this | undescriptive and confusing title? Very peculiar. | loa_in_ wrote: | Titles need to be short, and relevant to the content. I took | words straight from the Features section. | | Now, because with all the talk about AI agents I was thinking | about the environments, and that's when I remembered this. It | very much can be inspiring, even if it's not strictly relevant | technology-wise. | Kiro wrote: | I understand but I don't think the title is very | representative of the game. Regardless, Dwarf Fortress gets | posted here a lot so I definitely think it's relevant: | https://hn.algolia.com/?q=dwarf+fortress | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: | The story of Boatmurdered[0] has given me a good go-to seed for | other games with procedural generation. It's well worth the read | if you have an afternoon. | | [0] https://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/ | jameshart wrote: | Boatmurdered is representative of a very old version of the | game. | | For more modern DF storytelling I would encourage you to check | out Kruggsmash on YouTube, in particular his Scorchfountain | series: | https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXX7Rp0iXj0l998LmVC6xIRHj... | | Krugg gives due reverence to the generated descriptions of his | dwarves and their world and incorporates them into his emergent | storytelling and illustration in a very elegant way. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-22 23:00 UTC)