Given that it's an ASCII game, all gameplay reduces to editing text at some level. Unless you use a tileset.
It's not ASCII, it's a graphical tileset that was simply made using a Code Page 437 font because Toady didn't feel like making real graphics, except for adding beards to the happy faces. There is absolutely no difference between "ASCII" and a graphical set aside from the actual content of the bitmaps.
I recently began to describe DF to a new girlfriend who seemed surprisingly interested in the premise. She was a bit put off by some of the topics (for obvious reasons) and suggested that we refer to the dwarves as "bunnies" since that would be cuter.
So, I continued to describe the activities of my "bunnies" which led to the topic of combat and the tendency for body parts to go flying. Suddenly, she decided that they were clearly demon bunnies a la Monty Python & the Holy Grail.
This, of course, led to the topic of HFS, to which she responded by declaring the denizens of that foul realm to be juggalos. I honestly couldn't think of anything more detestable. For ever after, HFS will be known as the Dark Carnival, home to the Great Milenko and his Faygo-guzzling, misanthropic horde.
P.S. I will now have to take every opportunity to breach said realm in order to obliterate the juggalo menace.
I suddenly have a new urge to create a "Bunnies and Burrows" mod for DF. Protect your burrow from the horrific badger horde!
I just went and read the wiki on Quorn, Its a great idea, but it lakes nutritional value by itself, its an ok thing to add to your diet (maybe if its not made by a crappy corp and you have a variety of sources to choose from), but plain Quorn that's not manipulated and grown in vitamins is not sustaining all by itself (just like rabbit meat is not enough nutritionally by itself). It is a bad dietary replacement (by it self). If they made different strains and different companies sold competing products with different nutritional levels, it would be ok maybe. I still hesitate to let small groups of individuals dictate my dietary intake of vitamins and other nutrients.
Kelps is nice (nearly perfect), nature designed that, and designed it very well. So is Spirulina and other algea's and such. Add a few more things to that list and were moving forward.
Quorn is fungal cardbored with added artificial flavoring and vitamins. What I read about it makes me think of cornsyrup from GMO corn. Not gonna keep you alive or fit. I'de also like to point out that the company that makes it even adds egg albumin to it... that's totally cheating. Might as well just get the egg albumin plain.
Yup, I prefer free-range chickens producing eggs in my back yard to the crappy shit with thin shells and sterilization by gamma radiation.
There is enough biomass on the earth to feed everyone without any agriculture at all if we all just lived in perfectly set up parks, and mega Arcologies. Look up food forests and stuff. But we have kept people in research experiments alive and healthy for a long time on algae alone. It's what we'd use if we sent people on a deep space mission. Quorn would make a great additive to give it some texture and mix in with algae based dishes. Better then soy probably lol... (btw soy is horribly inefficient if your gonna grow it for what were talking about). I am no expert though, feel free to tell me I'm stupid and I won't argue further.
I guess the real issue is once you've decided on the "food" your going to use to deliver the nutrients, were do you get the nutrients from? Is it a closed system? Is there attrition of nutrients? Who decides what nutrients to use? To solve that problem you need a heterogeneous and diverse food production system. (which Ironically is how I run my forts food production, I try not to overspecialize in any one area).
Not a fan of mycoprotiens, are we?
Anyway, its only purpose is to be a cheap source of proteins and B12, it replaces the dietary function of meat, while being capable of being grown in hydroponics to replace the need for animals like cows and grazing land. So it's basically what spacemen will eat instead of meat when they have to go carrying hydroponics tanks with them to Mars or something.
It's not meant to be nutritionally balanced, it's just a protein supplement to go with the other vegetarian diet stuff. So yeah, tofu/soy is basically what it's competing against. Of course, they'd have to stop "cheating" on the egg whites for that to happen.
Of course, there's also the whole exciting prospect of how they're now learning how to use stem cells so that we can literally just grow a single giant chicken muscle in a tank and keep carving it off so that we can have hydroponic chicken meat that feels no pain and doesn't die when you keep slicing it up.
I remember in "The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten", that was presented as one of the 100 philosophical questions in the book - is a meat product made from a creature that doesn't die, doesn't feel pain, and wants you to eat it fine for vegetarian consumption? (Even uses a "Restaurant At the End of the Universe" quote as the lead-in.)
Anyway, "enough food for everyone" is just a matter of how much "everyone" we are talking about. Carrying capacity of the planet is currently set at around 12 billion, and that's
if we all go vegan. We can still eat meat, though, if we cap pop growth to 9 billion or so, however.
And hey, don't worry, I'm fairly sure the places in the most trouble (I'm looking at you Southern Asia) are gonna just go out in a nuclear fireball when the water shortages start. No worries there.
Oh, and for funsies, I actually did an
algaculture section in the Improved Farming thread. It also include black smoker vents and hydroculture, which is like a lower-tech version of hydroponics where you use fish in the water to poop more fertilizer for the plants that grow on rafts.
And yeah, the whole point of the Improved Farming thread was to make players set up closed loop ecosystems for their nutrients. Conservation of Matter. Except, you know, when you use decaying goblin corpses or magma irrigation for extra nutrient sources.