So I did a bunch of typo editing. Bear in mind that this is plain text, so the formatting is up to you.
Dwarf Fortress Explained
a medium-length pamphlet about miserable dwarves and a sublime game.
What is Dwarf Fortress?
Dwarf Fortress is more than one game: You do not 'play' it, what you play is a world. The game - for you - begins when you generate the world in which you play. Its geography, its nations, and even its creatures are created before your eyes. What you get is your own experience: the world you play in is truly unique, the stories you see unfold did not, and will not, happen for any other player.
The Story of Zega Lukikonu, a human girl: Zega was born in the year 30, the only child of Guki and Gili. She spent her childhood at a hamlet in the village of Pricebaker, where she was married to Emtha Sensualsparkles from the village of Bluenesslure at the age of 12. They both ran away to the wilderness, only to be ambushed. Zega was killed by the giantess Islas Nutscourage at the age of 13. Her husband, Emtha, wandered the wilderness and was killed by the giant Aran Bristledrives years later when he was 69 years old. She was avenged eventually: her murderer, Islas, was eventually killed by the human Setoc in the carverns of Purgedmine, in the year 127. Setoc, the giant slayer, lost his right foot during the fight. He eventually gave up adventuring, settled down and died of old age. His son, Uda, became the high-priest of the Temple Of Bodices, and his daughter Iki moved out of the city to become a farmer...
Quite a simple story, something you could read about in a b-grade fantasy novel. Maybe it’s the background for a minor side character? What makes it real is the fact that you can actually meet those people. Take a trip to the relevant town as an adventurer and have a chat with Uda. Maybe you can construct a mighty dwarven fortress and provoke a war with humans. Once they come to siege you, maybe Iki will be there, nervous and afraid of dying in a battle far away from her farm and children.
... Oh, and the giant Aran was killed in the year 173 by the dwarf Müthkat, so both Emtha and Zega eventually got avenged. Müthkat lost his left eye during the confrontation, but she still wanders the wilderness while her husband Uda stays at home, taking care of their two sons.
Everyone you meet has a personal history, was born somewhere to someone. Maybe they have lost a close friend or loved one to a monster you can now defeat. Or perhaps they’ve already had their revenge. You, as player can impact this greatly. Embark on a bloody rampage through the human capital as an adventurer and see their kingdom crumble to pieces. Build a new capital of the dwarves in a suitable location and see their empire prosper.
You want a dwarf? There's your goddamn dwarf. You want better graphics? Screw you. Dwarves can do lots of stuff. Like digging. Can you dig? Hell no. Play Dwarf Fortress. –Retrieved from tvtropes, Oh, so this is the one spot that I have notes on: I am pretty sure this was originally created by an anonymous source from /TG/ on 4chan, actually
The game contains an incredible amount of detail attached to everything. From this, complex behaviour comes to life. Worlds that can breathe. Worlds you can influence. Worlds of your own personal Epics and Legends.
The illustrated epic of Bronzemurder, a fortress.
As soon as she could raise a hammer at the age of twelve, Tholtig had joined her parents and grandparents on the battlefield. The dwarves had no choice, for their losses were so great that they needed every pair of hammer-wielding arms they could find. By the time she ascended the throne in 121, she had slain 48 elves and a Cyclops, but the amount of dwarves left capable of wielding a weapon numbered less than ten. Nonetheless, she led them to victory in her first assault against the elves, but it was a Pyrrhic victory that saw the deaths of two of her children, including her eldest son. -The Hall of Legends, The Legend of Tholtig Cryptbrain
I have seen the legendary artefact Abbokem created, and its creator Archacted being upset by its theft few months later. The pursuit of Tlakala, who miraclously escaped through a rain of crossbow bolts. Someone, somewhere could find a necklace made of rocksalt that does not dissolve in water. Does this sound like gibberish? It is because it happened only to me. No other player could have experience it.
An example of a generated world.
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So, how can I actually play it?
Game has two modes. Dwarf Fortess mode, which is basically a city-builder type strategy game. You embark with group of dwarves and your goal is to build a fortress. Fight off goblins, create wealth, build a dam. Have fun.
It’s like playing god with sentient Legos. -They Got Leader
How do you go about that? Generally, you start farming to produce food, cut down trees and build log cabins or dig rooms in stone to give dwarves place to live in. As you would expect from a fledgling village. Maybe produce some crafts and trade them away. If you are successful, you will attract migrants and your numbers will grow. Soon you will have enough manpower to start an industry (industry of, say, harvesting mermaids for their bones) and a military. But beware, for goblins will learn of your location and start trying to take your wealth by force.
It is important to note that you have nearly complete freedom in what you build. Making giant, water-powered Babage-like computers out of stones and gears is possible and a popular pass-time.
The thing is, your units are not just anonymous blank faces. They have likes, dislikes. They form relationships and if you are not careful, they can become quite unhappy. This often has disastrous (fun) results. The dwarf that had his wife killed by elves and had to spend years sleeping on the ground in the rain because you did not bother making a room for him... Well, that dwarf can just flip out and actually kill someone who he thinks is responsible. Or maybe he will be the quiet type and just get depressed and stop eating ... and starve to death.
Ast Sozadmebzuth seems to be quite happy for a dwarfess with 7 children who just lost her husband. But then again, she can handle stress.
That still does not give you an image of the gameplay. There is this ugly secret. The game is played mostly by keyboard and it does not have a fancy, Crysis-like graphics engine.
This is one way people look at their fortress– you can’t play with this view, but it can display your fort in 3D. Also, notice the magma. Magma is a very important solution to many, many problems. When in doubt, use magma.
The game also does not look like this when you play– much like the above, this is another optional graphics solution. In this picture, you can see a player-constructed dam of quite colossal proportions: 30 metres tall. But it still does not show us how game actually looks ...
... this is much closer. In fact, you can actually play the game like this. In this screenshot, you can see dwarves in their dining hall, with barrels of food stored nearby, and then bedrooms.
This one is pretty close. It depicts stables with horses & cows, a butchers shop and a kitchen. As you can see, the game is quite customizable: the Default graphics might be ascii, but it is quite easy to change it to something else.
So, how the hell does it look? Well, it is played in text mode. Ascii. With a keyboard. Well, look at it this way, no graphics team can really keep up with the game engine features and level of detail. It turns out that just using glyphs and ascii symbols is way to go – essentially, describe what happens to the player and let him ‘see’ it. It is like playing a book in some regards(Hence, those stories).
This is how it looks. This is a grassy plain with few trees. Oh, and some dead goblins and dwarves, along with the associated pools of blood and the solitary survivor (teal smiley).
Are you still with us, now that you know the truth? Do not worry, it is actually quite easy to learn, just watch a tutorial. Maybe read a tutorial. If you still have questions, read the wiki.
Also, understand that not mentioning the epic of Boatmurdered is a crime. I can only hope I mentioned it early enough to prevent my hammering. Remember, not reading it is also a crime!
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There’s another way to play!
It is called adventurer mode. It is basically a RPG, you take control of an adventurer and you do whatever you want. Light trees on fire? Kill dragons? Die horribly to Giant Cave Spiders? Be a sick psycho and kick children?
I set out into the world, and promptly took a disliking to elves. Every little _ moving about seemed to be a group of anywhere up to six of them. For who knows how long I ambushed and killed every elf I could find. While I was doing this I took an interest in finding out how much damage you really could do to an elf, given enough time. Every damn elf I came across in the wild eventually found himself alone in the forest with my human wrestler, as I broke every damn bone in its body. This took several game days, you understand, but in the end I found that if you waited until they woke up after fainting, you could get away with giving them a massive amount of red wounds, yellow what wouldn't go red, gouge out eyes, and generally be a complete asshole. Long as you take it slow when they bleed, you too can become a psycho elf killer. -Zorgn
I will not say more, really. You have to watch a video to see what it is all about. I suck at explaining adventurer mode, sorry!
Are you more hungry than thirsty? Next time, remember to fill your waterskin and buy some food before setting out into the wilderness.
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Oh yes, and one thing about the game designer
You might be interested in how this game is made. Well, it is the work of a single author. Someone decided to write a game that he wants to play, did it and actually is determined to finish it. In a sense, this makes the game far more impressive than those produced by giant corporations with millions of dollars behind them.
And of course, there are grand plans. Basically, the goal is to put into place the mechanics that will allow various stories to actually happen in game naturally (that is, completely unscripted in any way.). Just consider this feature list of one release.
The first issue was tackling the sever problem with skeletons. The issue here is that when a skeleton is created, it strips away all of their rottable tissues, but that leaves the head completely empty (things like the skull are sub-parts), and this means the skull is essentially floating separate from the spine (which is also floating). Handling it correctly is a bit of project, so I just stuck the slightest bit of totally rotten muscle on them for now to hang things together. The only downside here is that you'll occasionally see muscles in the combat text for skeletons. It all raises the question of exactly how the bones are moving and supporting their weight in the first place, which I suppose will start to be answered when I get to the curse entry -Development log
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But again, there is a modding community, right?
Right! Of course there is modding. What kind of sandbox game would it be if there were no mods? From Fallout to Elder Scrolls, there are many interesting small additions as well as total conversions. Since making new graphics for new content is not really an issue, modders can be pretty wild in what they create.
A giant that just asks to be fiddled with. What about creating a Cyclops by removing an eye?
The game is built so that modding is quite easy. Most of the data files are in plain text format, easily editable. They contain pretty much everything you might want to change: new civilizations, minerals, items, buildings, beasts...
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A vile force of darkness has arrived!
Petr 'Zwei' Prokop
I'm a bit anal about grammar, sorry. I can't claim that it's perfect (and it's in Canadian english now, too, sorry), but hopefully it'll help.
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Topic: Must-see df related stuff? (Read 4145 times)