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[itisnotlogical]

Minecraft was inspired of Dwarf Fortress

I never really saw this. Both are games with simplistic graphics about doing very vaguely similar things, but then you could say the same about Half-Life and Quake. Don't get me wrong, I love the hell out of both Minecraft and DF, but Minecraft was inspired by DF like Halo was inspired by Super Mario Brothers.

In Minecraft, you are a single character forced to survive and thrive in a randomly generated world. You build structures out of simple 3'x3'x3' blocks as well as a variety of more special blocks, like glass, doors and redstone circuits. Death results in instantly respawning back in your bed or at your spawn point. While the metagame can become complex (redstone circuits, mob farming schemes), it's generally simple enough for anybody to access. Graphics are cartoony and combat is light hack-and-slash fun.

Dwarf Fortress is a highly complex simulation. The game strives to be as realistic as possible, down to tracking individual tissues and bones. Blood splatters and severed limbs abound, with graphic descriptions of destroyed organs and smashed skulls. Managing your dwarves is so complex that multiple pages on the wiki are needed to sort it out for beginners. Stockpiles, workshops, mining, military, trade and the emotional state of your dwarves are all things you need to keep track of. An entire history is generated along with your world, detailing the complete lives of every NPC, wars, masterpieces, fortresses, and forgotten beasts.

I'm not saying anything bad about either game, I play them both to death any chance I get. But I don't really see how Minecraft was inspired by DF, other than it's a game about building things in a randomly-generated world. And half of that applies to Diablo II, too.

[The Darkling Wolf]

Notch explicitly mentioned DF as one of his inspirations

One can be inspired by something and create something nothing alike as a result.

[goblolo]

I don't really see how Minecraft was inspired by DF

Minecraft was inspired by DF on the early stage of development. Later Notch decided that Infiniminer-like game will be much more interesting.

[AutomataKittay]

Just because you're inspired by something doesn't means that you'll set out to copy what you're inspired by. There're lots of games inspired by earlier generations of games, but they're none alike, unless they're supposed to be part of a series.

A lot of people will say that they're inspired by Tolkien's writing into doing fantasy, but would any of it be anything like what he wrote?

Minecraft's most basic structure does looks inspired by DF, or really by any other blocky building games, and it's 'depth' underground could as well be a callback to how deeply and greedily you can dig, but that's just my guess of the translated over inspiration.

[WaffleEggnog]

I see how they can be the same. Minecraft is really just first person adventure mode minus NPC's plus building. I mean, if you think of a 1 block jump as a a slope, or a 2 blocks as a z-level, then it really is nearly the same, in my opinion.

If Notch wernt so lazy, he could have added much more aspects of DF aswell that would have suited Minecraft quite well, like combat. Not DF combat, but better then spamming left-click, or complex world generation like in DF (if you think about it, it could have been easily pulled off in Minecraft, as its really just 3D DF).

[GreatWyrmGold]

Both involve the creation of a whole world and allow the player to make absurdly complex devices in lieu of an actual goal. Also,

Notch explicitly mentioned DF as one of his inspirations

Pretty good argument there.

[Leatra]

When Minecraft was new, it was easier to call it DF-inspired.

[Sizik]

They both have two fluids, water and magma, and when they mix, you get obsidian.

[JimmyBobJr]

The way i look at it DF and Minecraft are incredibly similar - in the way that most games are.
Lets break down what Minecraft - And Dwarf Fortress - is.

I play minecraft in a specific way; I make a world, and then i build a story in that world. Im a shipwreck survivor. Im a time traveler gone wrong. Im a location scout for a future Castle-Building team that never arrives. Im a exiled dwarf digging out an existince in a hostile world full of monsters. And, most recently, in a multiplayer foray, im a Neighbouring Priest in a suit (In the Vein of Flanders from the simpsons) who collects taxes (By Force) from the other citizens of the world: A 27-times divorced Orphanage owner, Her Husband (For the 27th time!) and their Adopted Man-Child who previously burnt down the Church, The Forest, a Swamp, His Parents house and Himself.

That Exiled dwarf finds a village and finds a community to trade and live with, finding reasons to keep living. That Location-Scout takes it upon himself to build that castle in order to make a safe haven for the caravans that the kingdom relies on. That Priest gets the Wife, Husband and Manchild to build that new cathedral (Out of Stone) further making the world greater, only to kill himself in boredom after the church is complete.

I go into the world; Generated progressively and randomly. Thats all it does. But I... I make the story.

Im not the only one to do such things; Look at all the adventure maps and Youtube Channels - Look at the Yogscast. People who make livings from just being in a world they create. They created a world in which a powerful monster seeks to destroy, while a Spaceman and a Dwarf fight futilely against him. They make friends, and enemies, they discover lost secrets and ancient tombs. They lie, they joke, they cry, they get scared and they even die. But the Thing is - They do it. Not Notch. He Didnt put that story there.

But i ask you, Bay12, is that different from Dwarf Fortress? From Toady?

What about Boarmurdered? Did we not create a world around that one simple fortress? A Hole in the ground that happened to have elepants nearby? We have Saknis, we have Caacme, Tholtig Cryptbrain and so much more. We have little stories. We all do when playing Dwarf Fortress.
We have those forts that 7 dwarves set out to make in order to colonise that island. That fort that is a frontier defence. That Fort that may be the last stand for a falling civilization. The City that will outshine everything else for hundreds of years. The Death Pits. The Hell Holes. The Glass Towers. The Pyramids. The Lost Temples. Fallout-Esque Vaults. Kobold Caves. Volcano Doom Lairs.

I embark with my seven lost merchants; Unskilled dwarves lost in a stinking bog, out of food and drink. The only solution is to Dig down and hope to be rescued. But when they strike rich veins of silver and gold, they end up wanting to stay, becoming proud of their new home, and becoming rich through hard, honest Dwarven work. I have the Seven Dwarves that are the final refugees from a fallen civilization, lost and scared, with only a single unarmed militiamen for protection from the harsh wilds and invading humans. Do they hold? Do they rebuild? What becomes of them? Where do they go from there? What happens when the Militiaman is crippled by a Lion while out hunting for the only food they can get their hands on? Will The last two females be able to repopulate the world with Dwarves? Will the Farmers finally grow a successful crop of Plump Helmets before the last of them starve?
How about the time when the Vampire arrived in the fortress, quickly killing two dwarves without leaving any trace? Can the militia find this dwarf in time, before another murder is committed... Only for it to be revealed that it was the Fortress Guard Captain who was the vampire all along? What about that time when a Goblin ambush arrived, leaving three dwarves trapped outside the fortress with no hope of survival? Do you remember how one of those dwarves - only just a young dwarf of 17 - enraged and charged the goblin invaders, leaving enough time for the other two to escape to safety, only for one of the survivors going berserk at the thought of the militia not going to save the heroic young dwarf?

We don't make Fortresses in Dwarf Fortresses. We Make Stories.

I think this is where Notch found his inspiration.

[Muz]

The early Minecraft was actually a lot like DF was at that time. Both were games where you dig rooms inside terrain.

Minecraft added stuff like mobs only later on; the early stuff was just digging out rooms and making buildings and megastructures.

[The Darkling Wolf]

-snip-

*Applause*

[sudgy]

While the games aren't similar, that doesn't mean it wasn't inspired by it.  Although one thing I don't like is when you compare Dwarf Fortress to Minecraft (as in, trying to see which one is better)...

[GreatWyrmGold]

You can compare stuff without suggesting that one is better than the other.

[katana]

They both have two fluids, water and magma, and when they mix, you get obsidian.

I'm wondering how common this is. I know it's not correct in real life, so where did this concept of magma+water = obsidian come from?

[Rumrusher]

It's mostly because he said so on his Tigsource Devlog. Also it's more Infiniminer for digging and 3d, Dwarf fortress adventure mode for basic roaming and updates Sadly he kinda drifted off both after awhile.
wait infiniminer =Team Fortress + mining, Dwarf fortress= roguelike + Fortress defense, then that means Minecraft = (Team)Fortress + Fortress (Defense)