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[muleet]

When I speak of Dwarf Fortress to someone that doesn't know it yet, I sometimes want to show him a video so he can see its appearance and content. But most videos on youtube are long lets play with a lots of moment that does not give a good idea of what the game really is and what it allows to do, since the player may stay a lot of time in menus, in dwarf therapist for example. And I know Tarn and Zach clearly don't have time to make a trailer.
So I was thinking that in the big community of Dwarf Fortress there could be people that can make a trailer to give a good idea of what the game is, to anyone. Such a trailer should show the considerable amount of game mechanics presents in the game, for example the subtility of the representations of bodies and mind of creatures in the game, the types of stone and alcohol, the fluids mechanics, the procedural generations of entire world, or even the spiral tantrum, etc. That trailer could also show what is coming to the game, so it could be a "Dwarf Fortress 1.0 trailer". That leaves a lots of questions and since I am not a video maker, and I only played several hundred of hours to Dwarf Fortress I don't feel able to answer those questions.
So what do you guys think about this idea ?

[NJW2000]

Something like this would be a great project, though I don't have much to bring to the table, with no experience in music, video editing or art. I do however have thoughts.

A trailer would really be improved by some of the 3D and isometric visualisers like ArmokVision and Stonesense. I imagine a lot of community artists could be persuaded to allow their creations to be used - see the Forgotten Beast Art Contest threads, for example. Brief excerpts from tales would also be good - even single lines from things like Boatmurdered, TLCM, Silentthunders, etc could be pretty evocative of the DF vibe if picked well.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Something like this would be a great project, though I don't have much to bring to the table, with no experience in music, video editing or art. I do however have thoughts.

A trailer would really be improved by some of the 3D and isometric visualisers like ArmokVision and Stonesense. I imagine a lot of community artists could be persuaded to allow their creations to be used - see the Forgotten Beast Art Contest threads, for example. Brief excerpts from tales would also be good - even single lines from things like Boatmurdered, TLCM, Silentthunders, etc could be pretty evocative of the DF vibe if picked well.

Fanart would be great, quotes from boatmurdered and such, sure, and tilesets would help, especially the official one.

But use of visualisers which you can't actually play the game with in any meaningful sense would just be dishonest. It's about introducing the game to new people, right? Not fooling them into paying for something that doesn't work the way they think it does.

There are still people who think you can play the game entirely with Stonesense.

[Bumber]

But use of visualisers which you can't actually play the game with in any meaningful sense would just be dishonest. It's about introducing the game to new people, right? Not fooling them into paying for something that doesn't work the way they think it does.

I would think this would be a trailer for the free version. For the paid one, Kitfox Games should probably be doing it.

As far as honesty, you could put "3rd Party Viewer" over the visualizer, and show it side-by-side with the actual game window.

[Shonai_Dweller]

But use of visualisers which you can't actually play the game with in any meaningful sense would just be dishonest. It's about introducing the game to new people, right? Not fooling them into paying for something that doesn't work the way they think it does.

I would think this would be a trailer for the free version. For the paid one, Kitfox Games should probably be doing it.

As far as honesty, you could put "3rd Party Viewer" over the visualizer, and show it side-by-side with the actual game window.

Depends how long your trailer is. "And there are mods in which you can do this" is nice. But likely to drag on and on and on and is no longer a trailer. "Welcome to Dwarf Fortress!" and then show screenshots of Stonesense and Armok Vision isn't a trailer.

And, what? You're building interest in Dwarf Fortress at a time it's about to go on sale. Of course you're contributing to sales.

[muleet]

In order to say the most amount of things in the least amount of time, a trailer should have a narrative aspect I think, and tell its own story, through which the content of the game would be told. The trailer of Factorio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR01YdFtWFI was a masterpiece in this regard.
I think the start of the trailer should be the start of everything in Dwarf Fortress : the generation of a world. Ideally we see different possibilities of generated worlds : some have huge continents, others are made of island, and then we see other differences in topography or temperature. We see jungles, volcanoes, the formation of lakes, etc. All that in maybe 10-15 seconds.
Finally we stop on a specific world, and we see the civilizations starting to appear, to expand, etc. The name of the civilization appears on the screen and several events are displayed, we see the birth of specific characters. The age of the world is displayed, just as it is when you are generating a world. We see those civilizations trade, work, make societies, kingdoms and then wars. There would be dwarves, humans, goblins, elves, etc. All that in... 20 seconds maybe ?
After like 300 years, the counter of years stops, the screen make a zoom on specific regions to give information about them, their differencies etc (like "Oh ! This region has an aquifer !") and the screen stops on one of them, and it then shows the creation of a fortress. All that in 15 seconds i guess.
Then we sees the different identities of seven dwarves, their personalities, pasts, (ideally one of them is the descendant of a character named a few seconds ago, at the creation of the world) goals, and obviously their work. For the rest of the trailer, the game mechanics would be shown through them, their childrens, the migrants, etc. The seven first dwarves would make simple, great, and terrible things : one catches a fish, another plants some plump helmets, another kills a goblin, another becomes a mad noble etc. Many important mods may appear during all that, like dwarf therapist.

Could that be a good start ? I don't know if it would be possible to show the other modes, adventure/legends/object testing area, during that trailer. Maybe the adventure mode deserves its own trailer !

[Shonai_Dweller]

If you can fit all the modes into a trailer, I think that'd be better than separating it. People still think of Adventurer as some other game that they don't play as opposed to one part of the glorious whole.

Create the World > Explore the World > Build a Mighty Fortress would be nice. And would be closer to the long-term vision of a more seamless game.

[muleet]

The trailer could show the end of the fortress during the trailer (ending through a goblin siege, a flood of lava and a spiral tantrum etc), and then the player surrender, the main menu is shown and we go to the same world through the adventure mode ! In one of the civilization named earlier in the trailer. Some references to what happened in the fortress could be made (especially in order to show that it's a living and persistent world : the same beings can be met, the same goblins of the same civilization, the same dragons, the relatives of the dwarves from the fortress that were still in the rest of the world, etc).

[Shonai_Dweller]

The trailer could show the end of the fortress during the trailer (ending through a goblin siege, a flood of lava and a spiral tantrum etc), and then the player surrender, the main menu is shown and we go to the same world through the adventure mode ! In one of the civilization named earlier in the trailer. Some references to what happened in the fortress could be made (especially in order to show that it's a living and persistent world : the same beings can be met, the same goblins of the same civilization, the same dragons, the relatives of the dwarves from the fortress that were still in the rest of the world, etc).

Or even in flashback. An adventurer discovers a ruined fortress with bats and rats and stuff while he examine the engravings and gets flashbacks of the downfall of the dwarves. Losing is Fun as the clowns close in on the adventurer...

It's a roguelike! It's a fortress simulator! It's an entire world and it's history! It brings across what the game is more than "oh look, another Rimworld clone..." (Joking).

[scourge728]

ptw
EDIT: It might be nice to mention in the trailer that it's the inspiration for minecraft and rimworld among other things

[Bumber]

ptw
EDIT: It might be nice to mention in the trailer that it's the inspiration for minecraft and rimworld among other things

It's an inspiration for Minecraft. Infiniminer was the main one.

Edit: It's mentioned on the Steam store page if you click "Read More":

The original inspiration for RimWorld, Prison Architect, Minecraft and more.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Whenever I see, "this film/game/book inspired all these famous works", I go check out them instead. When I'm up for a bit of ancient history investigation I might look at the original.

Ooh. Elite. That was an inspirational classic. Play it now? Nah...

If that's how you want to see Dwarf Fortress, "Relic of the Past", then fine. But I happen to think it's a damn good game by itself without being a history lesson. There's enough "May as well play Rimworld, it's exactly the same but with a UI that makes sense" nonsense spread around constantly.

Better off focussing on what the game is. What's great about it. What stories come from it. How detailed it gets. How ridiculously fun it can be once you've figured it out...

Also, embrace the "it's not finished aspect". In continual development. Long-term support guaranteed. Game constantly evolving. There's plenty of ways to spin it as a positive.

[Sabin Stargem]

Maybe you guys can recruit Kruggsmash to make a story or to narrate, and maybe do a remake of his tutorial with Steam Fortress?

The Quest of a Lifetime:  A Dwarf Fortress Holiday Special
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxbEPgcpXZg&index=9&list=PLXX7Rp0iXj0ncBqzeE73WLQHay0dBhUDT&t=0s

[Shonai_Dweller]

Maybe you guys can recruit Kruggsmash to make a story or to narrate, and maybe do a remake of his tutorial with Steam Fortress?

The Quest of a Lifetime:  A Dwarf Fortress Holiday Special
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxbEPgcpXZg&index=9&list=PLXX7Rp0iXj0ncBqzeE73WLQHay0dBhUDT&t=0s

Oh yes . Great call! At least commission a few pictures from him. 

[bloop_bleep]

Kruggsmash already did a concise and useful game tutorial for Dwarf Fortress, IIRC.