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[Ryuujin]

Hi there everyone. I'm playing Dwarf Fortress since 2008 (or 2009?) so DF is part of my life since, like, forever. Although I've never created an account here (which is to be honest because of my poor english) I'm a real fan of Toady's masterpiece.
Anyway, I was on national fantasy festival this weekend - this was my first one on a national scale - and there was just every single fandom which ever existed in Poland; of course there was tons of star wars fans, homestuck, naruto, dragon-ball etc. - even these not well-known ones like discworld.

And this makes me think: "what about DF? Now, it's 15 years or so since the first version came out, and there are still enough of people playing it to maintain Toady's work. In Poland, there HAS to be a lot of people playing it who I would want to talk with!".
Obviously I know that there was a polish dwarfy forum that started something like 5 years ago... but it had ~50 subjects and ~5 users from that time and seemed to had been dead for a loooong time before I visited it.

So... are any polish players reading this? Wanna chat? Wanna play together? Wanna hug?! LET'S GET MARRIED TODA- ekhm... just let me know by writing here or by PM. We can make nice team together, perhaps making something bigger in future like adventure multiplayer mod or something like that.

[BlitzDungeoneer]

I am Polish, if that counts for anything.
I live in Ireland right now, though, have for most of my life, so probably not what you're looking for.
Your English looks nice enough, though, not sure what you're talking about with the 'poor English' thing.

[Kezeal]

Wanna play together?

I'm not Polish, but that question intrigued me. Can you play this game with other players?

[BlitzDungeoneer]

Wanna play together?

I'm not Polish, but that question intrigued me. Can you play this game with other players?

Excluding community fortresses, I don't believe so, no.

[dwarobaki]

I'm here, but I'm married already

[Eldin00]

Wanna play together?

I'm not Polish, but that question intrigued me. Can you play this game with other players?

Excluding community fortresses, I don't believe so, no.

"DF multi-player" takes 2 basic forms. The community fortress, where a group of people make suggestions or discuss what to do, but only one person is actually at the controls. And the succession fortress, where people take turns being at the controls.

As to the original topic, I am not Polish. But these forums seem to attract posters from all over the world, so I'd be surprised if the OP is the only person in Poland who reads these forums.

[Tarqiup Inua]

Interesting question. Let me compare to the Czech Republic.
EDIT: It is also Slovak forum so it goes for Slovakian Republic as well, I believe

Few years back there were attempts to make a stable community on one of the Czech forums whose other half was shared by Minecraft enthusiasts, and it didn't exactly work out. From time to time someone would ask about strange behaviour of the game and that was, some time later, explained as a bug or mistake on the part of player - all this on a small forum where responses took some time.

If I were to pick a single most popular thread on those forums back then, it was Czech Let's Play dwarf fortress, where viewers could actually understand, what was going on on the screen. Even with the basic knowledge like that, the people there were unable to progress in the game any further, because they wouldn't be able to dig through wiki, through bug reports and through forum. I have yet to see a Czech community fortress. I attempted something like it with my friend, but the stars weren't aligned.

Dwarf fortress is a complex game in English language - many Czechs don't know English well enough to be able to cope with the level of complexity. This is not Starcraft where you learn the keyboard shortcuts and what every unit does simply by playing it for a while.

Dwarf fortress has its own niche market, so to speak. It's players are specific sort of people. If you can't speak the language, you won't find big enough community that can provide you with necessary background needed to play the game, which is major part of the DF experience. You won't get to take part in community game, you won't get to take part in !!SCIENCE!!.

Mind - I like the complexity, myself. Nowhere else have I learned so much about geology as in this game, or the English equivalents of animal names, but along with the language barrier it can be a problem for some.

[Detharon]

I'm from Poland. You might want to look here if you're looking for fellow DF players. It's not overflowing with activity, but it's better than nothing I guess.

Even though I consider myself fluent in English, DF used to surprise me from to time with its uncommon stones, plants and animals. But what's most important, this is a text based game, so I cannot figure out what is happening by merely looking at the image, as there's no image, just text. I have to understand what's written in the description. If something has not been described I have to browse wiki, which is also in English. Playing DF is like reading a book, and in order to read a book, you need to know the language it's written in.

The second thing that turns away people from DF is its obscurity. Not complexity, because it's not necessary to understand the game mechanics completely to enjoy the game. For example, combat system in DF is quite complex, but you don't have to be a wizard to know that steel sword will be better than iron one, which in turn will be better than copper one, etc. On the other hand, some trivial tasks like equipping your military might cause some serious issues, because the game is buggy, and the obscure interface makes such easy tasks even harder.

Or lets say that you want to find a dwarf with the highest swordsmanship skill. Again, this is not something complex, but DF doesn't provide an easy way to do that. Current DF targets people that are persistent enough to cope with the bugs and constantly look for workarounds, which is pretty much impossible without browsing the wiki and forums. So, after all, we're back again to ability to understand English, which is crucial for DF.

[BlitzDungeoneer]

I'm from Poland. You might want to look here if you're looking for fellow DF players. It's not overflowing with activity, but it's better than nothing I guess.

Even though I consider myself fluent in English, DF used to surprise me from to time with its uncommon stones, plants and animals. But what's most important, this is a text based game, so I cannot figure out what is happening by merely looking at the image, as there's no image, just text. I have to understand what's written in the description. If something has not been described I have to browse wiki, which is also in English. Playing DF is like reading a book, and in order to read a book, you need to know the language it's written in.

The second thing that turns away people from DF is its obscurity. Not complexity, because it's not necessary to understand the game mechanics completely to enjoy the game. For example, combat system in DF is quite complex, but you don't have to be a wizard to know that steel sword will be better than iron one, which in turn will be better than copper one, etc. On the other hand, some trivial tasks like equipping your military might cause some serious issues, because the game is buggy, and the obscure interface makes such easy tasks even harder.

Or lets say that you want to find a dwarf with the highest swordsmanship skill. Again, this is not something complex, but DF doesn't provide an easy way to do that. Current DF targets people that are persistent enough to cope with the bugs and constantly look for workarounds, which is pretty much impossible without browsing the wiki and forums. So, after all, we're back again to ability to understand English, which is crucial for DF.

Fixed that link for ya.

[Cruxador]

Wanna play together?

I'm not Polish, but that question intrigued me. Can you play this game with other players?

Excluding community fortresses, I don't believe so, no.

"DF multi-player" takes 2 basic forms. The community fortress, where a group of people make suggestions or discuss what to do, but only one person is actually at the controls. And the succession fortress, where people take turns being at the controls.

As to the original topic, I am not Polish. But these forums seem to attract posters from all over the world, so I'd be surprised if the OP is the only person in Poland who reads these forums.

There's also several actual multiplayer utilities, including web-based options, that allow you to do a fort together and watch each other, with a chatroom and you can hand off control of the fort to each other (or seize it if the one with control is AFK) and share a fort that way, though it's still not possible to control things directly at the same time.

[Detharon]

(...)

Fixed that link for ya.

Oops, I used img tag instead of url

[Diamond]

"DF multi-player" takes 2 basic forms. The community fortress, where a group of people make suggestions or discuss what to do, but only one person is actually at the controls. And the succession fortress, where people take turns being at the controls.

And then there is DFTerm. Few years ago we in Russian DF community had a lot of fun with it, though it has few problems and needs to be tweaked to work with latest version.

[SanDiego]

Interesting question. Let me compare to the Czech Republic.
EDIT: It is also Slovak forum so it goes for Slovakian Republic as well, I believe

Few years back there were attempts to make a stable community on one of the Czech forums whose other half was shared by Minecraft enthusiasts, and it didn't exactly work out. From time to time someone would ask about strange behaviour of the game and that was, some time later, explained as a bug or mistake on the part of player - all this on a small forum where responses took some time.

If I were to pick a single most popular thread on those forums back then, it was Czech Let's Play dwarf fortress, where viewers could actually understand, what was going on on the screen. Even with the basic knowledge like that, the people there were unable to progress in the game any further, because they wouldn't be able to dig through wiki, through bug reports and through forum. I have yet to see a Czech community fortress. I attempted something like it with my friend, but the stars weren't aligned.

Dwarf fortress is a complex game in English language - many Czechs don't know English well enough to be able to cope with the level of complexity. This is not Starcraft where you learn the keyboard shortcuts and what every unit does simply by playing it for a while.

Dwarf fortress has its own niche market, so to speak. It's players are specific sort of people. If you can't speak the language, you won't find big enough community that can provide you with necessary background needed to play the game, which is major part of the DF experience. You won't get to take part in community game, you won't get to take part in !!SCIENCE!!.

Mind - I like the complexity, myself. Nowhere else have I learned so much about geology as in this game, or the English equivalents of animal names, but along with the language barrier it can be a problem for some.

Yup, I and few others tried to get it rolling, but there wasn't enough people to make it work.

[Cruxador]

"DF multi-player" takes 2 basic forms. The community fortress, where a group of people make suggestions or discuss what to do, but only one person is actually at the controls. And the succession fortress, where people take turns being at the controls.

And then there is DFTerm. Few years ago we in Russian DF community had a lot of fun with it, though it has few problems and needs to be tweaked to work with latest version.

There's better options than DFterm2.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Utilities#Remote_playing_tools
Hell, even DFterm3 is an older and less updated option. I believe the new hotness is webfort, but other people may have other opinions.

[Eldin00]

"DF multi-player" takes 2 basic forms. The community fortress, where a group of people make suggestions or discuss what to do, but only one person is actually at the controls. And the succession fortress, where people take turns being at the controls.

And then there is DFTerm. Few years ago we in Russian DF community had a lot of fun with it, though it has few problems and needs to be tweaked to work with latest version.

DFTerm (and similar things like webfort) essentially just provide a convenient way to do what are essentially succession forts without having to pass a save around.