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[Isngrim]

Hello, a few days ago my cousin and i got started talking about our favorite games,and after describing some of the !!FUN!! and !!SCIENCE!! that players get into,he has been asking to try dwarf fortress, but he has dyslexia as well as ADHD,any tips i can give him,or tilesets and the such that will help with his dyslexia (i was going to have him play with a tileset with as few actual letters as possible)

[Johann Canteloupe]

Hey bud,

Speaking from personal experience (I'm a dyspraxic, and whilst I don't believe I have ADHD my attention span could be described as pretty fucking atrocious) I found that generally I learned how to do it in bursts, giving up after a while then jumping back into it.

The first time I tried it was about 3-4 years ago, by the end of the day I had dug a one layer deep hole and had half my dwarves die of thirst. Such is the nature of fun. After a while though you tend to pick up an idea of how it works. It took me about three times of on-and-off playing it before I got comfortable enough with it to actually start playing and stick with it.

If he's anything like me, get him reading the wiki. It's individually amusing enough to keep hold of a short attention span with lots of things to flick through, and gives you a good mindset for the game.

I suppose ultimately if due to his ADHD/Dyslexia he can't stick with it, it's no biggie so not to worry about it, though I can totally appreciate what it's like having your condition get in the way of what you want to do. ¬¬


Cheers,

DK

[Salmeuk]

If you can get him to learn the key commands then he wouldn't have to struggle reading at least the basic menu. maybe if you were to write out a manual list of what key commands correspond to what actions that he could keep by his keyboard, you would help him with the basic confusions of this game.

You should watch him play and see what parts of the game he struggles with.

[Isngrim]

Thanks guys

[IRON_GAUNTLET]

Slapping a tile-set on the game can help, but if he wants to actually step into the realm of science and other devious adventures, he won't get around reading up on the wiki, plus UI navigation will be a lot harder for him and he might miss a lot of announcements. These are huge issues that you have to work around. I would find out if he really wants to stick to the game, before you commit to helping him out.

[omega_dwarf]

The way announcements are color-coded might help him with that.

[Isngrim]

The way announcements are color-coded might help him with that.

i was also going to have him try it with soundsense on so he'd have an idea of what the announcements are

[AceSV]

Most of the people I've met with dyslexia don't just fall apart when they are faced with words, they just analyze them differently.  He might just absorb it differently.  If reading is easy for you, you might rely on seeing "Mason's Workshop" but he might look at ; ░░[░ o and recognize that instead.  Or he might find it easier to remember hotkeys instead of reading the menus. 

I might have ADHD, I exhibit a lot of symptoms but I've never been officially tested, and I usually play Dwarf Fortress while watching television.  Neither DF or TV is sufficient to command my full attention, but I can snap back and forth between the two and feel engaged.  And if one or the other suddenly gets intense like a goblin invasion or a season finale, I can pause whichever one I'm not interested in at the moment. 

[Csponge]

Get him to watch one of the many youtube beginner tutorial df lp's.

5ippycup taught me df, though there are probably better, more current LP's out there. Here's a link 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g_SaPQpKbU&list=PLD1A3FE72C0DCAC66