Or did the graphics scare you?
I love that game thought I haven't played as of late. I am waiting for the next update which should be a doozie.
Yea, the game is really great, you just need to 'break' through the graphics and interface in order to enjoy it. The way the game looks will scare off the average person and you'll need to be very patient in order to learn the game
But the rewards...the sweet rewards
Never played it or heard of it. Short recap?
my god...... just googled it.
Its a dwarven ant farm game with a fractally generated world complete with realistic geological layers, multi civilization history, an archive of thousands of historical figures and zombie elephants. Its really much more than that but you get the gist of it.
The first thing anyone has to do is get used to the interface. Once you can see the Matrix you will never look back.
@Tamren
would you recommend going for the straight old-school version or the added graphics one? (hopefully you know what I mean.) Are there any problems caused by the "improved" graphics?? (apart from the shame of being a graphics whore of course)
I played it for a while. It rocks; I just wish there was a way to easily control the environment, like maybe summon a few elephants to attack or something . It can get boring if nothing interesting occurs.
I would suggest the recent versions over the classic 2d version. The gameplay is a bit more complex but the older versions are so horribly bug ridden I don't think its worth it. Very few of the common bugs were gamebreaking but you would run into a lot of strange things. Like farmers planting chairs.
Having finally decided to conquer the learning curve (which should be called a learning cliff...) after reading this post triggered my earlier interest, IMO you should definitely go with one of the "improved" graphics versions. To me, it made making sense of the visuals signficantly easier.
There are two graphic "sets" that you can use/replace. The first is the "font set" of ASCII characters that the game uses to draw the environment. The second is the set for actual game characters. Replacing the second doesn't cause any issues.
Replacing the first might, since a spot in the font might be used for both a letter of the alphabet and to represent something else in game. I'm using a font set called Guybrush_square_16x16.bmp in a 1280x400 window, and it's working quite well. There are a couple oddities here and there, but nothing close to game breaking (like a "pine tree" icon for the up arrow in scrolling lists).
I would reccomend learning without a sprite based tileset. As I once explained it ASCII is great a condensing information. If you see a red smily face, you will eventually just *know* that it represents a dwarf mechanic. With sprites, every time you try to identify a mechanic among many dwarves you end up squinting around trying to find the one with the red coat. As mentioned above sprites and tilesets tend to run into strange problems. This is due to overlap, some of the characters used in the game double for the text used in the various menus.
Also are you nuts? The learning curve is not a cliff, it is riding a flaming bear paladin on a ballistic arc up and over the moon. Landing in a pool of acic on... Ayers rock or something. The launch is daunting but once you get over the hump you will enjoy the sheer awesome.
Be aware however that things will always crash and burn in the beginning. Don't let it put you off because losing is the main method of learning.
Did you say bear?
*enter Luckmann*
Well it was either that or a cow. I once got into a very strange conversation in a dream where someone argued that you can't fill a cow with awesome. The reason being the cow is already full of milk, adding awesome would make the cow explode.
..... Yeah, it was a very strange dream.
Strange?
That makes perfect sense!
Dwarf fortress is imho one of the best free games I have ever played, and with a tad of modding, one of the best games I have ever played. Though graphics really do not mean much to me. I can understand how someone would hate it with the insane learning curve and ASCI graphics.
To each his own on the sprites vs ASCII, but you are spot-on with the curve The Dwarf Fortress Wiki is indispensable.
I actually haven't had a failure fortress yet, but that seems to be because farming Plump Helmets is a super effecient method for food economy (food, drink and seeds to grow more food!) and no one has bothered raiding me in force. Hell, my only military losses so far were two dwarf recruits that I was training up with wrestling that suffocated each other
Now if I could get them to stop having so many damn parties without continually freeing the dining room.
Dwarf Fortress is the kind of game where you can never be completely sure that farmers planting chairs is a bug until you read about it in the patch notes.
I have to admit I've confronted the opening interface very briefly twice in the past and walked away with my hands in the air admitting defeat. I'm confident I'll break down and download it again sometime and try it again however.
In the meantime, I'm a very big fan of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. You should give it a try if you want the old-school graphics but with simpler controls.
Got curious from this thread...I checked this out. Yes, it is pretty incredible! I can live with the graphics, but the interface is kind of tough too.
Its funny because the creater is totally up front about how the interface could be better but he places fixing the interface near the end of the task completion list. If you read the mission statement/planning pages you will see that the game will be "complete" sometime after humanity discovers immortality.
I played it a few months back for about 15 minutes and quit with such a huge disappointment in myself; I just couldn't translate the abstract graphics in my mind.
A few days ago I gave it another whirl but also grabbed a graphic pack and suddenly everything became clear. Oh, those are trees, that's a miner dwarf, that's a kobold, that's a mushroom, etc, etc.
As soon as I was able to understand what I was looking at then I spent the next 15 hours straight figuring out the controls and gameplay mechanics (and it was FUN to learn). I am in love with the game and it just totally blows those million dollar projects out of the water with the depth and detail of gameplay.
I can play the game now without the graphics pack thankfully so I don't have to rely on them. Anyone remotely interested in the concept of the game but turned off by the graphics (or lack thereof), it's totally worth it to figure out. And once you do, the amount of entertainment you can get out of Dwarf Fortress far outstrips the majority of games with a $50+ price tag attached to it. Can't stress that enough... if you like the concept, it's worth it to figure out. Awesome game.
('-')y
The more I read about this game, the more I'm blown away. Dwarf Fortress is a reminder that gameplay is so much more important than $30 million graphics and Hollywood voice actors and orchestral soundtracks. If only more games were this engrossing.I'd like to get a group of videogame devs together and ask them to discuss one thing: how would you design a graphic set for Dwarf Fortress, or is ASCII really the most effective way of transmitting information?
Us players have already had this discussion many times. The answer? Its not.
ASCII is horrible at transmitting information. If you see a picture of a dragon then you can look at it and classify it as a dragon. What do you get with ASCII? A big green "D". We have no idea what kind of dragon it is and what it looks like, just that a dragon is there ready and waiting to eat your face.
Learning to read ASCII graphics is almost a rite of passage. It is like learning to read a second language that has no written or vocal component. If you don't just *get* it then you will have no hope of understanding what it means. Forget teaching the concept of colour to a blind man. This is more like trying to teach him the concept of shadows.
However you can look at this in a different light. ASCII is far and away the best medium for condensing information. All you you need indicate that a dragon is there is that same green D. You don't need a fancy picture with things like perspective and scale to tell you what the dragon is and where it stands. As with very few other mediums, ASCII can communicate volumes based simply of the shape of symbols and thier colour. It doesn't even require words. It takes fewer characters to display "six dragons on a grass field" than it takes to write out that sentence.
Wut?
Did someone say BEAR?
Bleh, just downloaded it again and tried my best to adapt. Actually had very little trouble interpreting the ASCII graphics, but that's probably from my days of mudding.
Honestly, I'm just lost at the endless pages of options you're presented with when just trying to change one thing about anything. Let's say I want to change a dwarf's current job. I press the key listed and I get presented with about 10000 different options, 7500 of which are all variations on the same task.
Game seems to be overflowing with depth, but I think I'm going to keep insta-drowning until the game codes in some water wings.
Might I recommend Dwarf Foreman?
Heh, good suggestion if I muster the courage to try again. Thanks.
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