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Author Topic: Dwarf Fortress featured in the New Yorker  (Read 1815 times)

Trif

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Dwarf Fortress featured in the New Yorker
« on: April 12, 2013, 11:52:44 am »

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/04/simcitys-evil-twin.html

It's an article about the MoMA's video game exhibition with a very nice comparison between SimCity and Dwarf Fortress.
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vjek

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Re: Dwarf Fortress featured in the New Yorker
« Reply #1 on: April 12, 2013, 12:23:44 pm »

Great article, imho.  Well written and reasonably accurate considering the source and audience. 

EBannion

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Re: Dwarf Fortress featured in the New Yorker
« Reply #2 on: April 12, 2013, 01:28:47 pm »

Wow, what a well-written and considered article.

I'm both pleasantly surprised and somewhat shocked.
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King Mir

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Re: Dwarf Fortress featured in the New Yorker
« Reply #3 on: April 12, 2013, 03:19:00 pm »

Seems like the MoMA exhibit is giving Toady a lot of media coverage.  :)

Backfill

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Re: Dwarf Fortress featured in the New Yorker
« Reply #4 on: April 12, 2013, 11:24:08 pm »

I thought the article was great. The author of the article was terribly pretentious, but it, idk, the author treated the game and Toady One seriously and I think gave DF real respect by putting it in such a haute couture light.

Out of all the articles I've read on DF, I think this one article really nails it down. The bit contrasting it against Simcity this bit in particular

Quote
As in SimCity, there is no real way to win the game. Instead of a series of comfortable equilibria, however, a game of Dwarf Fortress tends harshly, inevitably, toward ruin. The colony is overrun by invaders, or succumbs to disease, starvation, blood-feuds, or madness; a dragon takes up residence in the dining-hall, slaughtering every dwarf but one, who waits out the winter sealed in his room; a vast lava trap, constructed to deal with these threats, malfunctions, killing everybody; and so on. It is played alone, but its brutality, complexity, and unpredictability give its players a need for community—an urge to bear witness, to commiserate, to trade tips for using kittens as poison-detectors. Elaborate written accounts of Dwarf Fortress games, sometimes incorporating art or even animation, have become popular Internet reading material, perhaps more popular than playing the game itself.

This guy gets it, at least a little bit.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2013, 11:30:21 pm by Backfill »
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Cruxador

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Re: Dwarf Fortress featured in the New Yorker
« Reply #5 on: April 13, 2013, 05:33:03 am »

The author of the article was terribly pretentious
I didn't get that from this at all. The only stylistic issue I saw was the use 'd "baroque" - the first instance seems a bit of an odd word choice, but the second is purely misuse, especially coming on the heels of the same word being used questionably just a few paragraphs earlier.
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Itnetlolor

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Re: Dwarf Fortress featured in the New Yorker
« Reply #6 on: April 13, 2013, 11:36:14 am »

In honor of New York honoring Toady so much for his creation (I noticed a fair amount of attention coming from there from these articles to that exhibit that featured him as well), is anyone up to making a Manhattan Megaproject?

Phrasing aside, we're not making a Dwarven Nuke, but instead a scale replica of New York. Bonus points if you use an Earth World generation, and build the city on the island itself (mind the aquifers, especially when building the metro), complete with a statue of liberty as well.

Just an idea to toss out there. And to make the skyline possible, be sure to have several additional open space layers in worldgen. Bonus points if you can mimic the architecture inside the buildings.

EDIT:
Just in case the megaproject takes up more space than previously foreseen (even if it's region-sized embarks), then I suppose it would be easier to visualize it when Isoworld is updated to view detailed embark squares, relative to the world map. Some tweaking (like Speed:0) may be needed to accomplish this, especially when the FPS slows to an utter crawl.
« Last Edit: April 13, 2013, 11:42:54 am by Itnetlolor »
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vjek

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Re: Dwarf Fortress featured in the New Yorker
« Reply #7 on: April 13, 2013, 01:44:16 pm »

Hmm... if you did new york/manhattan from 14th street on the south edge, 110th on the north, you could do it in one embark, I think.

Every 10th road as a visible street in the embark would only require 10 main streets, 12 main avenues

A 3x2 embark is 144 tiles horizontal and 96 vertical, so I guess each embark tile in the finder is 3x3 x 16 areas.
Leaving enough for the east & hudson rivers, and a minimum building size of 5x5, that means...

you'd need something like 80 tiles for e/w streets and roads and 96 tiles for n/w avenues and roads.

I think the whole thing could be reasonably well represented in a 4x4 embark.  a 3x3 might be possible, but there wouldn't be much room on the edges for water.

Or, to make it really easy, you could to this area...
or maybe half that?
« Last Edit: April 13, 2013, 01:46:13 pm by vjek »
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PDF urist master

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Re: Dwarf Fortress featured in the New Yorker
« Reply #8 on: April 14, 2013, 07:43:01 am »



Phrasing aside, we're not making a Dwarven Nuke, but instead a scale replica of New York.



a dwarfven nuke sounds way more fun though
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Dwarf Fortress featured in the New Yorker
« Reply #9 on: April 14, 2013, 04:05:57 pm »

It feels odd to review a review, but it stayed true to the whole base of both games in a beautiful way. 4/5

Baccar Wozat

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Re: Dwarf Fortress featured in the New Yorker
« Reply #10 on: April 15, 2013, 09:49:29 pm »

The author of the article was terribly pretentious
Um, it's the New Yorker. Everything in it is pretentious.
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