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[Railick Stonemane]

Greets people. Believe it or not old Railick is going back to school. One of my first classes is sort of a refresher on using MS Office programs and writing papers. For the final project we had to make a 10 slide Power Point and write a 4 page paper. Below you will find the said 4 page paper which I wrote on Dwarf Fortress. (One of my slides for the power point recreates the final three way show down from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly using Dwarf Fortress sprites. This in an effort to get my class mates to see what I see when I play Dwarf Fortress, that being an incredibly detailed scene that goes beyond simple graphics)

I post this below in the hopes that you will read it and if possible give me some constructive editing tips. Catch errors, give ideas ect. It is meant to be 1000 words long and in this case is just long enough to fit in 4 pages plus the Bibliography on its own page making 5. Let me know what you think! Thanks for taking the time to read and I apologize ahead of time for my horrible hack writing

Dwarf Fortress: Strike the Earth

     Most people have something in their life that they are attracted to, something that other people may not totally understand. For some it may be a certain food that none of their friends enjoy eating, or a certain movie that no one else can stand. For some it is a computer game that is totally impenetrable and simultaneously extraordinarily rewarding. For some Dwarf Fortress is an unplayable mess, but to others it is a dream come true.

     In 2008 Scott Munro wrote, “Everything in the game is made using ASCII, meaning it initially looks like a confusing mess of numbers and blocks. However, once your eyes stop watering and you dig a little deeper, you'll uncover a wonderful and absorbing game.” In 2007 Julian Murdoch wrote, “For an experienced player, Dwarf Fortress' visual shorthand and arcane inputs are straight out of The Matrix.” For many when they first see Dwarf Fortress in action they see exactly what Neo saw in The Matrix, unintelligible garbage. Once you learn what each symbol means Dwarf Fortress will open up into an amazingly detailed game the likes of which cannot be found anywhere else.
   
     Dwarf Fortress is the creation, and the passion, of the Adams brothers. (Murdoch, 2007) Tarn and Zach Adams, at the age of 8 and 11 respectively, began writing games in 1987. Without the restrictions of corporate America to quash their creativity they created games which they enjoyed playing. According to Murdoch the brothers still spend three hours each night on the phone making up stories and figuring out how to make those stories come to life in Dwarf Fortress. Over the years Tarn, who programs Dwarf Fortress, has become known as Toady One, while Zach is known as Three Toe. (Adams, 2010)
   
     Dwarf Fortress has been funded by a combination of the brother’s own money and money donated by fans. This is reflected in the donate button which can be found on the games home page. (Adams, 2010) The game has taken many forms as Tarn Adams learned to code, moving from a totally two dimension game world into a fully three dimensional one. Many changes have taken place over these versions and many new features have been added. All the features Tarn intends to add to his game in the future are tracked on bay12games.com for all the public to see. Along with this he keeps a public development log so his fans can see exactly what he is working on at any given time. (Adams, 2010)
   
     There are several phases to playing Dwarf Fortress. When you first download the game from the creator’s website you have just that, the program. There is no world created yet and you cannot start playing until you tell Dwarf Fortress to create a new world for you. This is when one of the most impressive aspects of Dwarf Fortress takes place. From nothing the program will create an entire world just for you that will contain its own natural and cultural history. (Meeks, 2010)
   
     The world creation begins by molding a world from scratch, creating land masses, mountains, rivers, and oceans. The default setting will create a world with thousands of tiles to be explored, but this is not where world generation ends. At this point several civilizations are created at random and their history is played out over the course of a thousand years. People with randomly generated names rise and fall, great monsters appear and destroy cities; civilizations go to war and destroy each other. (Meeks, 2010) This all takes place before your virtual foot ever steps into the world, and all this created history is waiting for you to discover at your leisure.
   
     The end effect of world generation is that you have a planet full features and cultures that your adventures can take place in. Indeed one of the main modes of play is called adventure mode. This allows you to create an adventurer from scratch and explore the world as this person. (Gillen, 2006) Though the game itself is still in an Alpha stage this mode is rather playable, allowing you to trek across the entire planet and explore every cavern, city, and fortress. You can even go look at places you have created in Fortress mode, most likely finding whatever it was that destroyed your Fortress and caused it to be abandoned. (Harris, 2008)
   
     Finally you can play in Fortress mode, and this is where the real meat of the game is found. You begin this mode by choosing a location in your world, a location where you will create a new life for your dwarves. This is known as the embark screen, and here you can find details about the land you are looking at. This allows you to see everything from geology information (which is very important to a dwarf) to political situations. If two local civilizations are at war you will be able to see that here. (Adams, 2010)
   
     Once you have chosen the location for your new outpost you are also tasked with selecting the skills and starting equipment for the seven dwarves that you will take with you. From there it is up to you and the dwarves to make a new life at this location. The dwarves are totally autonomous and will go about their day without any guidance from you. They will eat, drink, and sleep as the mood strikes them. However if you want them to get anything useful done, you will  have to wield the user interface to give them jobs.
   
     Dwarf Fortress is only around thirty percent complete and as stated before is still in an alpha stage. (Harris, 2008) No one really knows if the game will ever be finished or if Tarn will simply continue to add features to the game until one day he tires of coding it and finds something else to do with this time. Until such a time his fans may continue to play, write about, and test the limits of Dwarf Fortress. At the same time Dwarf Fortress pushes them to their limits of imagination and ingenuity, driving players to come up with new and interesting ways to keep their drunken dwarves alive for another year.   

   

Bibliography

Adams, T. (2010, May 16). Dwarf Fortress. Retrieved May 16, 2010, from Bay12Games: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
Gillen, K. (2006, September 13). The State of Independence #5 . Retrieved May 16, 2010, from Eurogamer: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/a_independence5_pc
Harris, J. (2008, February 27). Interview: The Making Of Dwarf Fortress. Retrieved May 16, 2010, from Gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3549/interview_the_making_of_dwarf_.php?page=1
Meeks, E. (2010, May 11). Procedural Humanities - An Interview with Tarn Adams, Creator of Dwarf Fortress. Retrieved May 19, 2010, from HASTAC: http://www.hastac.org/blogs/elijahmeeks/procedural-humanities-interview-tarn-adams-creator-dwarf-fortress
Munro, S. (2008, May 23). WORTH PLAYING; Dwarf Fortress - PC Scott Munro's games round-up. Daily Record , p. 55.
Murdoch, J. (2007, July). Dwarf Fortress; All book, no cover. Games for Windows , p. 1.

[PTTG??]

Nice. Remember! Size 13.5 font- but don't get a BIG font- it should look small, while not being small... experiment. Don't forget to inch those margins in, but gently- don't make it too obvious.

Teachers like a consistent tone- this piece is pretty good. Take annother whack at the first couple sentences in the fourth paragraph. I'd go with "...combination of Tarn and Zach's own savings, and money donated by fans. Tarn responded to early fan demand by accepting Paypal donations; he currently gets about $3,000 {maybe toss in euros too} a month, but that's highly variable- he recently got $16,000 in a single month from excited fans in the wake of his latest update! {maybe mention if you donated yourself}.

[LoopyDood]

One mistake I've noticed: "The end effect of world generation is that you have a planet full [of?] features and cultures that your adventures can take place in."

[Capntastic]

Reading it, it doesn't seem really coherent.   The paragraphs are all really short, and you could literally re-arrange half of them with no real true change to the essay as a whole.  The (first and) second paragraph, for example, explains why people hate the game before explaining what the game is, you don't explain what ASCII is, etc.

Likewise, one thing that's weird, is that you cite Murdoch for the asserion of "Dwarf Fortress is the creation, and the passion, of the Adams brothers" which is pretty self evident.  You also cite Toady for him explaining his nickname.   It just comes off as weird, and makes it seem like you're really reaching for 'facts' to cite.

[Railick Stonemane]

On the citing part, that is kind of the point of the entire class. We are required to have at least 4 sources and to state facts from them only and not assume anyone knows anything. That is why I site some pretty obvious things and I agree with you it does sound strange. I could have written 8 pages without having to read a single article because I've grown up with Dwarf Fortress but that isn't good enough for my teacher lol

I will have to try to rewrtie the first two paragraphs to make it more obvious what dwarf fortress is and what ASCII is. Thanks for your advice Capntastic. Thanks for catching that mistake LoopyDood one of my biggest weaknesses as a writer is making stupid little mistakes like that and then missing them every time I go over the piece again, for some reason my mind just fills in the blanks I've left in the writing.
As far as the format PTTG it didn't really copy over from what I have in word very well. We have to write it in 12 point with 1 inch margins ect. I will take your advice on the fourth paragraph. I really wanted to mention the exact amounts of money but at the same time trying to keep the piece at 4 pages is a pain. Like I said above I think any of us could write 8 pages and still only scratch the surface of Dwarf Fortress.

[LoopyDood]

Thanks for catching that mistake LoopyDood one of my biggest weaknesses as a writer is making stupid little mistakes like that and then missing them every time I go over the piece again, for some reason my mind just fills in the blanks I've left in the writing.

That's actually a very common problem, and that's the reason you should always, always, always get somebody else to proofread any important writing you do. Good luck. 

[Railick Stonemane]

Thanks I've removed some of the odd cites (like citing Toady for his own nickname, I removed that entire part since it isn't important to what Dwarf Fortress is as a whole) I also moved that cite for Murdoch down to cite the behavior of Tarn and Zach and not so much that they created it.

To be honest I'm not very good at the whole citing thing, I'm not sure how often and what I need to cite, and the class itself did not make it very clear. He just told us HOW to cite and generally when, but not how often. I find myself wanting to cite every last fact in the piece just to make sure, but then I think it will look very odd with cites littering it like dwarf vomit on a sunny day ;P

I'm going to turn the paper in latter today, still sitting here at school working on it as much as I can. I'm not sure how to make it more coherent than it already is, but that is a draw back to reading your own writing. I know exactly what I'm trying to say so it seems very coherent when I read it

I'm hoping that the presentation will go over well. Most of the people in my class hardly play video games at all and I'm certain 100% of them have never heard of Dwarf Fortress. Will be a good chance to introduce some new people to one of my favorite hobbies. There are so many good little gems like Dwarf Fortress floating around out there that don't get he attention they deserve, but I could only write about one

In other news the final for my other class went great, I believe I got a 100% To be honest it was just a class about the basics of computers like how they work and what the specs of different pieces of hardware are, not very hard. It's freaking crazy going back to school after having been out for 10 years, I feel old and young at the same time. I envy people like Tarn and others who were able to go through school so directly, they make it seem very easy

Just to make myself clear I don't envy their money or their ability to go to school, I envy their will power and determination to actually apply themselves while at school and finish it. It is no small task to finish and get a BS or a masters ect.