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[Cardinal]

I'm sure this is an odd and somewhat pretentious first post, but bear with me.  I'm an academic who works on what's known as humanities digital media for a major university (There's a hint in my username).  I've always been a fan of rogue-like games and Dwarf Fortress is currently the ur-Roguelike.  What's most interesting to me about this game is the interdependency that resembles a real society.  Now, for the sake of gameplay and entertainment, it's been dressed up with absurdist humor, and I love it, but I wonder if anyone has given thought to creating something that seriously reflects early civilization.  I mean, Dwarf Fortress already deals with socio-environmental interaction (Heck, it has biomes!) and its treatment of the necessities of self-sustaining culture/society are tantalizingly complex.

This isn't simply a pie-in-the-sky question, either.  A crumby civilization mod based on Canadian history just won a quarter-million dollar grant, and a host of less interesting and complex humanities based projects have been raking in the money.  The idea of social simulators and social models has been gaining currency and something that more resembled historical reality but ran like DF may be the way to go in that area.

So, I wonder, has anyone given any thoughts to a realistic DF?  Anybody here with more than a passing interest in anthropology and history?  Something like this doesn't necessarily have to be fun (That's the joy of external funding) but it would help.  How could you make managing an early bronze-age culture fun?  What would we do without goblins?

Anyway, I've been thinking about this for a while and figured it was bound time for me to post something on here and see what you guys think.

[Foxbyte]

Realistic DF  Well, Toady is working on adding more and more realism. Just check out the development notes if you don't believe me.

Anthropology and history  DF right now sort of has its own history, so I would assume that at least some folk here have interests in it. While the diplomatic model right now is sort of slim, there are plans to make it an elaborate gem-studded monster with treaties and alliances and such... I think.

Bronze-age culture I modded Kobolds in my game to be Aztek styled. No using tunnels; just quarries, lots of obsidian and wood weapons. There aren't many tools in the game [Axes for woodcutting, picks for mining, swords/spears and other weapons for iron/leather harvesting] but I hope that changes in the near future. You can't mod in custom professions right now, but in the future you should be able to mod Dwarf Fortress to simulate any time-frame ever. Kind of.

Without goblins Orcs. Or declare war on a neighbour. I hear soon we'll be able to actually send military forces out into the world and invade others in Fortress mode. That would be keen.

Anyhow. DF is anything you want it to be, though right now it being in an Alpha state a lot of that is going to come from personal challenges and user modification.

[Squirrelloid]

As awesome as a mod which implemented a realistic 'just forming an agrarian society' premise for DF would be, and guiding it in developing over time, its not currently possible.

(1) You'd need to mod a bunch of things that you can't currently.

(2) Toady One has not and will not release the code base.  (It doesn't matter what his reasons are, though he's stated them, its his decision and that's that).

(3) I would be hesitant to create or encourage the creation of competition for DF by trying to develop a similar engine independently.  I mean, sure, someone could do that, but its not a very nice way to show appreciation to Toady One for developing the game.

I suppose the ideal would be someone convincing Toady One to license the code base (in return for a share of whatever grant money could be roped into making of this civilization engine) - that would fairly reimburse Toady for his work, and keep the code his property.  Of course, I imagine there's some sticky legal issues on ownership here, and some sticky academic issues on the code not being available for public scrutiny.

[Mephansteras]

I'd say simply wait and mod DF as it gets both more realistic and allows more options. Even with just the changes in this release, you could probably do quite a bit.

For example, simply make several civs that all use humans as creatures and you can have contention between humans instead of dwarves/goblins/whatever. Since a human civ won't really go down much you won't have to worry about digging too deep and the rest of the monsters and non-realistic stuff in DF is easy to mod out.

[Kishmond]

Toady has said that the ultimate goal is to create a "fantasy-world simulation".

And you know what's the great part about the absurdist humor? It was never meant to be there.

[Kilo24]

I think that with mods a decent substitute might eventually be possible.  It won't be very good until Toady gets the diplomacy and personalities up to spec, and the dialogue will likely be lacking.  But it will be the best base to work from for an existing game, since it'll be the only game that ties in so many systems together.

I'm willing to guess that Toady will let it and other mods be supported to a decent extent based on what he's done already.

[Soldats]

(2) Toady One has not and will not release the code base.  (It doesn't matter what his reasons are, though he's stated them, its his decision and that's that).

Whoa Whoa there, correct me if I am wrong but I seem to remember the great Toad mentioning at some point that he would open source the code most likely after he has stopped developing it ( I think he mentioned gpl in there some wheres too) Though that isn't any time soon my understanding is that it will eventually be opened up. ( I'm thinking 5 to 10 years in the future)

[Fieari]

He said there are two conditions for him to release the source:

1) If he dies, the source will be released posthumously-- except if he is murdered for the purpose of releasing the source.

2) If he gets bored of DF and decides to stop developing it himself, he will release it.

No other conditions.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I'm sure Toady could find it in his heart to share his code for grant monies.

Of course, DF has gradually become much more mod friendly over time anyway... for example in the next release we'll be getting custom workshops and definable castes.

Slowing down the pace of the game, reducing farming productivity, all sorts of stuff could be pretty interesting.  It would be incredibly easy for an embark to fail if farming is difficult and subject to random events.  A civilization without cats (or something) could suffer severe problems with long term food storage if vermin were active enough. Lots of possibilities if petty crime were ever implemented... hmmmm

[Capntastic]

I'm pretty sure Rogue or whatever came before it would be the Ur-roguelike.

[Cardinal]

I think there's some definite scholarly value in DF even as it functions now.  Most academics studying games think that games are only Guitar Hero, Quake or Super Mario, so to see a functioning artificial life simulator like this, that tracks history and builds a world--well, it provides an amazing testbed for representation of complex social realities in gameplay.

I didn't mean to give the impression that I was militating for the developer to release the code or support a realistic project, I just wanted to get a sense of what people thought about that kind of concept.  If you guys don't mind, I'd love to hear what is so appealing about a game where you spend a significant amount of time doing "mundane" administrative work.  Also, the fact that you're wrangling unruly dwarves is distinct from the control of a single avatar a la Grand Theft Auto or a more traditionally considered videogame.  I've got my own answers, of course, but I'm not nearly as experienced playing this game as you guys are, and just reading some AARs about various forts and adventures is absolutely engrossing.

Conversely, anyone who's interested in boning up on the academic state of games studies should take a look at the various 'Person' anthologies (First Person, Second Person and Third Person) which are collections of games studies papers on role-playing, mythic narrative (There are even papers on Call of Cthulhu) and various interactive media.

Sorry to be so stuffy, and please don't think that I'm here to tell anyone how to do anything, I'm just extremely curious about not only the game and its mechanics, but the community that has blossomed from it.

[Soldats]

To quote a wikipedia article

Emergent gameplay refers to complex situations in a video game that emerge from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics.

NO game comes even CLOSE to what DF can do in that respect.

[Timst]

Well, I think Dwarf Fortress could provide some basic education about :

- Ecology / meteorology : The world generator create forests, lakes, rivers and deserts based upon things like precipitation, cloud shadow or eroding. The whole process is coherent and based on real-world data.
- Geology : The different kind of stones in DF are based on real-world stones and ore (not taking into account the adamantine, of course), and the system of layers is also quite realistic.
- Economy : Job management, input / output of resources, external trade, wages, a pretty good recreation of some industries (weaponry, food, and some others)... avoiding unemployment is a pretty complex task in dwarf fortress, for instance.
- Politics : There's some notion of social classes (skilled dwarves vs unskilled ones), and the noble thing. You also have to satisfy the population if you want to avoid troubles (even if it's less violent and more self-destructive that the human counterpart).
- Architecture and room design : It's not that easy to figure out how to optimize commute time, or the design of the public dining rooms or corridors to avoid crowding, etc.
- Also, tactics : Even if it's going to be totally revamped by the next update (but then it'll be better probably), you currently have to prepare carefully for each battle, by choosing the right spot for each unit, escape routes, elevation, ammunition...
- ...

There's probably more thing that you can learn or practice by playing DF, but these are some that spring to mind.

[snuflufagus]

Cardinal, it's not mundane administrative work, it's about possessing power over other entities; power that gives us the kind of options our mundane real world lives do not.  When the fortress matures and takes on a life of its own (or the FPS craps out), that's usually about when I lose interest and quit.

As for early societal evolution, I'm not sure you could model that with DF directly.  Most real world societal change has been in a monkey see, monkey do fashion, with actual innovation being relegated to fairly isolated events.  In DF, you might see increasing societal complexity as the population increases, but the society being modeled is already a mature civilization establishing a frontier town that is destined (barring disaster or intentional tyranny) to the same level of development.  Societal evolution from family units to tribal units to kingdoms to empires is probably something better modeled by worldgen, but will be tainted by a form of intelligent design that we modern humans know that empires tend to stomp tribes.

What is more interesting about DF is the kind of cultural development (monkey see, monkey do) that goes on amongst DF players.  We start barely being able to feed seven dwarves through a winter to eyeing each others megaprojects, populating our videogaming tool boxes with new ideas of how to go about things and how to establish our greatness, although this is perhaps inevitable given a sandbox of epic magnitude and the nature of humanity.

As interesting as it is, the main problem I see with modeling the evolution of anything is the same as how some psychologists go about doing experiments - they "know" the answer already and then design an experiment that can ONLY prove that answer.  In our case, whatever evolutionary path we model will only look legitimate if it winds up at the present.

[atomfullerene]

I'm a PhD in biology, so I'm familiar with the same world of academia...grants, papers, esoterica, ect.  I definitely agree dwarf fortress has potential for  examining SOMETHING, although exactly what I'd need to think more about (it's not exactly my field).  I will say the game does emergent properties very well, and the latest dev note releases suggest world generation is about to get a whole lot more interesting. 

As a simulator, the game does seem to be more complex than some of the things used in the biological sciences at least.  It's just not tailored toward modeling any particular system. 

I'm kind of rambling at this point, but a couple more things I wanted to mention.  First, this game with an, eg, bronze age mod could be great for getting people interested in anthropology.  I remember playing sim life (anyone remember that?), and that encouraging me in my biological interests. 

I guess my favorite thing about dwarf fortress can be summed up in the phrase "dwarven science."  The details of the game engine are not explicitly laid out in most cases, and there are so many different things which can interact, so players mess around to see, for example, how far a bridge throws things under different circumstances, how pumps made of different materials interact with lava, how things are carried by flows, ect.  Fortress mode actually lets you construct experiments to test things, because it is such a big sandbox.