The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress (2011)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-of-dwarf-fortress.html

by 0wl3x • 9 years ago

334 226 9 years ago

nytimes.com

partycoder2• 9 years ago

Dwarf Fortress is incredibly hard to learn.

Gnomoria and Rim World might be simpler games to learn. However not as deep or complex.

jmcdiesel2• 9 years ago

I don't think "incredibly hard" is a good term.

In more development terms, to me, "incredibly hard" is embedded assembly programming (im probably not even using the right term for this) ...

The level of hard i would put DF at is "learning VIM"... which I think is apt, because 1) its a steep but rather short learning curve to get around, 2) over a while you naturally get better at navigating/commanding/etc and 3) there are plugins and "distributions" just like vim, to make it easier for a beginner, etc.

Now that I write this out, im thinking VIM is the perfect analog for DF :)

[NOTE] I'm a DF n00b. I have less than 5 hours playing. I'd say it took me about 30 minutes to "get it" though, and now I'm actually playing what I would consider "normally"

jackmott2• 9 years ago

It may be instructional that I think learning VIM and DF is harder than assembly programming?

eduren3• 9 years ago

I think vim/emacs is an apt comparison.

thefifthsetpin• 9 years ago

I like your analogy, but what's missing is that the vim interface is much (much!) more powerful than the DF interface.

Any number of DF players who are also UI designers (hey, there have gotta be a lot of 'em) could propose a dozen minor interface changes that would make DF feel more consistent, and easier to learn without even changing any of the mechanics of the game. You couldn't say that about vim. (Or, if you could, I'd love to hear your interface change proposals for vim!)

sixo• 9 years ago

This sounds right. And there's a reason more people don't use VIM, or play DF.

htns• 9 years ago

Agreed but it's quite fair in the context of modern gaming. A lesser game might even have a tech tree and a progression acting as a tutorial. "You have reached a population of 20! You can now build cabinets and statues!"

partycoder2• 9 years ago

Please do not get me wrong. Dwarf Fortress is a fantastic game.

The only thing I am saying is that the usability is complex with respect to what I am used to, in games.

It reminds me of using flight simulators. Many instruments and controls that you need to learn and understand.

jackmott2• 9 years ago

Because I am old now and am not as easily entertained by being in fantasy worlds all by myself any more, I can't handle it. But games like this that are either MMOs or small scale persistent worlds where you friends can join (like minecraft) are still really fun for me.. Building an amazing Dwarf Fortress would be much more fun if your buddies are in the world too.

imdsm10• 9 years ago

I disagree, respectfully, I think that the stop-start nature and complex workings of DF would mean that any sort of co-op would severely constrain the game, well at least with respect to fortress mode.

I suppose there could be an argument for taking adventurer mode and making it more like a MUD but I'm not really an AM person.

bedane• 9 years ago

You'll have to invest a couple of evenings reading the tutorials/installing the right stuff/setting up a playable world/getting lost in the awful menus/etc. before you get to have fun, but it is worth it!

datruth29• 9 years ago

Dwarf Fortress is an example of how a great idea can be held back by a horrible user experience. The UI is a nightmare, and the performance worsens as the game gets bigger.

I've recently started playing Rim World, which is essentially a Dwarf Fortress light. I'm enjoying it way more than I enjoyed Dwarf Fortress despite being a less complex (relatively speaking) game because it offers a FAR superior interface and presents it's mechanics in a friendlier way.

jmcdiesel2• 9 years ago

Perspective?

I find the DF UI, while minimal, to be great. Everything can be done on keyboard shortcuts... its more challenging initially, really easy as soon as it clicks... then the idea of doing it all with a mouse seems crazy

JaumeGreen• 9 years ago

The problem is not keyboard vs mouse.

IIRC (foggy memory, several years since I last played) there are several ways to move through lists, depending on which list you are. Military was a chaos. People recommend an external application for better review of your dwarves, as the main interface is clunky.

It's a great game, but the UI could be much better.

zeveb• 9 years ago

It's not either the traditional DF UI or a mouse-driven interface: other alternatives would be an improved keyboard-driven interface or an interface which uses both the keyboard and the mouse well (yes, I'm aware that technically DF does have some mouse interacton: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Mouse_control).

Dwarf Fortress is an amazing game with an incredible engine, but its UI is notoriously terrible, and IMHO deservedly so. But then, I've never managed to last very long, so perhaps there's something wrong with me.

chongli• 9 years ago

I find the DF UI, while minimal, to be great.

Do you use Dwarf Therapist?

zo12• 9 years ago

It's not even the UI, or the graphics. It's the fact that the game exists in some sort of "hobby" or forum limbo. That is why it's not more popular, and simply exists in a perpetual status of some sort of "geeky" reverence.

You search for it, and the main page for Dwarf Fortress is on a "bay12games" domain rather than its own. No one knows "Bay12Games", and it's been 10+ years since Dwarf Fortress was first released. The guy running this should get over it, and admit that the only reason he's got some sort of fame is because of a single game. He should focus on that, not "Bay 12 Games". That company doesn't even have its own Wiki page.

Then the page itself. Looks like it's made in the early 2000's and hasn't been updated since. I just, I don't even know where to start with this one.

Then the actual download for the game: "df_43_05_win.zip". No installer, no MSI, nothing. I opened it just now, and couldn't find any sort of "Instructions" file or manual, either. Not to mention that all the "nicely packaged" versions of Dwarf Fortress exist in random forum threads.

LoSboccacc2• 9 years ago

Gonna call this for the elitist bullshit it is.

I play, know the bindings etc, but the UI has enormous problems with consistency.

The older interface like the jewlery encrusting and labor assignent work in a completely different way than the less old interfaces like military management and hospitals, which are yet again inconsistem with the latest interfaces like libraries and taverns

Some room get built on the room menu, oter in the zone menu, both can have either modern or old menus to manage assignment and roles and while the whole thing is workable is far from being great, good, easy or even likeable.

eduren3• 9 years ago

I agree in a lot of cases. It's actually really interesting to watch development because you can see him incorporate less obtuse patterns in the new interfaces as the game has progressed. Some of the most headache inducing parts are the oldest and (from how he's described it) more brittle.

I frankly don't blame the guy for wanting to keep it closed source.

Sevrene• 9 years ago

Honestly I feel the opposite.

I agree Dwarf Fortress is quite hard to learn and the UI plays a large part of that as it's completely keyboard based and requires a lot of upfront effort to learn, but once you do you become much faster than you would otherwise (much like text editors).

People often complain about Dwarf Fortress's graphics in the same vain and breath as the UI, but I think these are parts of the charm and instead of being weaknesses they are leveraged as strengths.

For instance, the lack of fidelity of the game allows any new character to be added in 2 seconds, yet Rimworld needs a considerable amount of time and effort developing each texture. To an extent I think the 'horrible' user experience cannot be divorced from Dwarf Fortress. Losing is fun, after all.

I think what you consider a 'horrible' user experience cannot be divorced from what we know as Dwarf Fortress today. Losing is fun after all. I love Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress, but they occupy different spaces within a similar genre in my mind.

Sacho• 9 years ago

I agree about the UI, but the performance degradation is still a significant issue.

imdsm10• 9 years ago

I agree. I've played DF for probably about a decade now, and the UI isn't an issue. I know every keybind so I don't really need to go searching for it. Yes, to begin with, it is a bit of a struggle, but the wiki (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/) is probably the best game wiki out there.

Get past your dislike of the UI and you'll discover a game so rich it will outlast any other.

shultays• 9 years ago

People make tools that reads memory of DF to create better GUIs. Compare dwarf therapist to standard gui of DF to assigning jobs, it is just horrible.

I honestly kinda stopped playing after military gui is changed. The new system is unplayable. New conversation system is also very frustrating in adventure mode.

I just wish the game will be open source at some point and the things will be improved.

boomlinde• 9 years ago

I don't think that the criticism is that easily dismissible.

It's not so much that it's keyboard controlled (that's great for the reasons you mention) or that it's hard (that's ultimately part of its charm). It's that the interface is inconsistent with itself. A great example (from when I last spent any comsiderable time with it) is that different menus use different controls and mechanisms for selecting a menu item. Some have you type a single character, while others have you scroll through them with varying pairs of keys for no obvious reason. It's a natural result of organic growth and IMO outweighed by a great game, but the cognitive load of using the interface definitely isn't its charm for me.

Guvante2• 9 years ago

For instance, the lack of fidelity of the game allows any new character to be added in 2 seconds, yet Rimworld needs a considerable amount of time and effort developing each texture.

This is only true for tiny developers. If you have dedicated artists then you aren't gated in this way as you work in parallel.

dkersten2• 9 years ago

The problem for me is... I love simulation games (love Rimworld and Prison Architect for example) but the Dwarf Fortress learning curve is too much for me. I've attempted a number of times and learning it just was not fun for me at all. I want to enjoy good simulation games, but I don't have enough free time to force myself to play something that I don't enjoy until the point where I've learned it enough to enjoy it.

For instance, the lack of fidelity of the game allows any new character to be added in 2 seconds

I get this and actually completely agree. I loved MUD's back in the day because they could be so much more complex and detailed because they didn't have to worry about graphics and whatnot. Rimworld and such also can do a lot more than fancy 3D games for the exact same reasons, so there's definitely a spectrum.

But having said that, I still find the DF UX to be almost unapproachable. It could be low fidelity for the reasons you mention without being quite so hard to learn and internalise, but I get the impression that its just not a priority for the dev at all. Oh well, its their choice, but I feel a bit sad that I'm missing out on an otherwise amazing game.

stcredzero• 9 years ago

"In the same vein"

a3n2• 9 years ago

I agree Dwarf Fortress is quite hard to learn and the UI plays a large part of that as it's completely keyboard based and requires a lot of upfront effort to learn, but once you do you become much faster than you would otherwise (much like text editors).

Is there a VI interface?

jandrese• 9 years ago

I've wanted to love Dwarf Fortress, but the fans sometimes come across like Stockholm Syndrome victims when you mention the UI and UX.

I mean I came at the game from a long history of playing Roguelikes, so the ASCII graphics weren't an immediate turnoff, but figuring out how to do anything is just plain daunting.

Also, there is a big difference between most Roguelikes and DF on the graphics front. In Rogue you start in a small room with just yourself and maybe a treasure or a monster. New monster icons are introduced slowly so you can learn them at a reasonable pace. In Dwarf Fortress you are apparently expected to learn dozens of symbols right from the start in addition to figuring out what keybinds do what and trying to figure out what you are supposed to be doing or if the fact that there are dozens of different kinds of rocks is important yet or not.

If there was ever a game crying out for a hand holding tutorial it is Dwarf Fortress.

intended3• 9 years ago

Dwarf fortress is a great idea made possible by the winnowing effect of its UI.

I've found that this particular game has found its niche because of what it is.

The point of the creator is this: the game isnt even past pre-alpha. Lots of things will change, which a UI will only bog down.

So for example rimworld is still currently 2d. (will possibly change), but that a big change

DF plans to change the full world gen and design in the next arc - its a reasonable view.

andrewclunn• 9 years ago

This. The UI is the final step. Right now it's about experimentation and determining the ideal game mechanics. The obtuseness means that the most obsessive and hard core are your play testers. This is a bad UI as part of good game design for what the current goals for dwarf fortress are.

singularity2001• 9 years ago

it took an hour here just to get a half-ways readable font. after a while the game was completely destroyed by constant notifications. so I couldn't agree more with the horrible user experience.

pault2• 9 years ago

I have played both, and while I got bored of RW as soon as I got to the siege stage, I had to force myself to stop playing DF even though I still had about a dozen ideas for lava traps. YMMV.

Edit: I still have to stop myself from re-downloading dwarf fortress about once per week because there is so much left to explore. I just barely scratched the surface of power stations and automated rail systems. You could spend thousands of hours just designing traps to kill goblins. The fun is in the complexity. Perhaps you just did not get deep enough into the game. Now I have to talk myself out of downloading DF again. The sheer maniacal glee of knocking a dozen goblins off a narrow path (use a rail car attached to a pressure plate) into a pit and filling it with lava after spending hours setting it up just can't be described.

gagege• 9 years ago

To be fair, RimWorld is a much newer game than DF. It hasn't had nearly as much time to add features.

dri_ft3• 9 years ago

I think I agree. I'm up for complex keyboard interfaces and simple, ASCII-ish graphics - I play a lot of roguelikes - but something about Dwarf Fortress's interface still rubs me the wrong way. I do want graphics to be pretty, even if they're simple, and I do want controls to be elegant, even if they're keyboard-based.

The default tiles are ugly - unnecessarily ugly - and the keyboard controls don't seem great. (Like a sibling to this comment says, consistency has a lot to do with it, and not having to move your hands far around the keyboard is nice.) Then again, I admit I haven't spent that much time with it.

So I do find the interface offputting, but it's not because I want a flashy, dumbed-down one. And it's a bit frustrating whenever I see criticism of the Dwarf Fortress interface dismissed in those terms.

KirinDave• 9 years ago

I don't want to disparage Rimworld, it's great.

But the game pales in comparison to the beauty and replayability of Dwarf Fortress. I've been playing DF for 5 years and I still feel like a novice. Toss in modding and the game goes even further.

I understand your point of view, but I'm sad that amazing and well-designed games like Nethack and Dwarf Fortress don't get a fair shake because they're fixed width tile games. DF is a simulation game of stunning proportions.

erikb4• 9 years ago

Agreed. And at its current development I wouldn't be surprised if Rim World would reach just as much complexity as DF, of course always lacking a few years behind (more than a decade to begin with). But as you said, due to a better interface it's probably in the leading position.

eduren3• 9 years ago

Got to meet Tarn Adams a few years ago when I was into Dwarf Fortress and the community. Really cool guy, you can tell he loves what he does.

laurent123456• 9 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2793615

ythn• 9 years ago

Wow, the creator of Dwarf Fortress doesn't use version control? I don't even know what to say about that. It's like when I heard the creator of KeePass doesn't use version control either... why are people so resistant to VCS?

mikekchar4• 9 years ago

I've been trying to understand how the author of DF does development. My impression is that he doesn't really add features the way most of us add features. Instead he'll rewrite large portions of the game, or he'll write some stand alone test application and then integrate it into the mainline code. Apart from safety (I really hope he has backups), there probably isn't that much use in VCS because he intends to simply rewrite everything every time. He also does not like to have anyone touch his code. He allowed a few people to improve the performance of his display code once and has since sworn off it. While the performance improved as promised, he says that he can't understand any of the code and now never touches it again.

Not the way I would do my work, but when you are your own boss you get to do whatever you want ;-)

LoonyBalloony• 9 years ago

I'm glad for the repost. Going to try this game.

I understand the keyboard only controls, but man, seeing what is going on is a challenge. Yeah all the PC power is used for the emulation of the world and stuff, but how much power does it take to do 2d sprites these days?

Oh well, here I go losing again!

sshagent• 9 years ago

As someone who has wasted far too many hours in games, i believe that DF to be simply the best game ever made. The UI is rather horrific but something you can get used to. Admitedly it took so many efforts to figure out the game but that becomes half the 'fun'. Anyone wanting to play, find a lets play video (for the current version) and just follow along. Sounds silly, but thats how i finally got it.

wyldfire• 9 years ago

Semi-related: Don't Starve is a great indie game with a different theme but IMO similarly complex world simulation. [1] [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Starve

[2] http://store.steampowered.com/app/322330/

imdsm10• 9 years ago

I found DS to be too hands on. I like to be more elevated, with my pawns having some autonomy.

samstave7• 9 years ago

How are they pawns if they have autonomy ;-)

Declanomous2• 9 years ago

I love Don't Starve, but it doesn't even approach the complexity of Dwarf Fortress. I think the similarity is mostly thematic, both being pretty dark and having a techno-fantasy element.

SN764772• 9 years ago

I have enjoyed many, many hours with don's starve. The modern randomized, living world games are a lot of fun.

StyloBill• 9 years ago

Dwarf Fortress' complexity is far, far superior. It's not comparable.

Freaky• 9 years ago

More relevant, their latest game: https://www.kleientertainment.com/games/oxygen-not-included

System-driven space colony simulation, with a particular emphasis on maintaining breathable air.

samstave7• 9 years ago

space colony simulation, with a particular emphasis on maintaining breathable air.

Seems only logical...

chairmanwow2• 9 years ago

Dwarf Fortress was one of the first computer games that I really ever got into. I was a little 15 year old that had a shitty desktop computer that wasn't always connected to the internet and DF has provided me with many tens of hours of entertainment. I remember the depth and realism included in game caused me to want to learn to program myself. I wish the UI was better, but honestly I think the engagement with the keyboard in DF is it's strongest selling point. Every game action can literally be performed with the keyboard, and this means that I don't need to wait for the text on menus to mentally register, move a mouse, click. I can essentially type the commands at speed.

TLDR: DF is a great game that shaped my childhood and motivated me to become a programmer.

digi_owl6• 9 years ago

Every game action can literally be performed with the keyboard, and this means that I don't need to wait for the text on menus to mentally register, move a mouse, click. I can essentially type the commands at speed.

This is a sentiment that crops up again and again. In particular as long time users of a terminal ui (not necessarily CLI but using ASCII/ANSI to draw the interface, and keyboard for input) when they transition to a GUI replacement.

The thing about keyboards is that they are designed to be used without looking. Special keys have special shapes to make them stand out. Every key is in a fixed location. And certain ones are marked but a bump or similar to make them easy to find by touch and thus use as navigational aides.

Yes, mouse and touch screens make it easier and faster to localize and develop a UI. But we humans are quite capable of doing repetitive tasks with our hands without looking.

I think that in RTS and MMORPG circles there is a certain degree of disdain for "clickers". People that operate the game mostly via mouse. This because it is slower and thus limits how quickly they can react to in-game events.

macintux2• 9 years ago

And certain ones are marked but a bump or similar to make them easy to find by touch and thus use as navigational aides.

Completely off-topic, but there are two keyboard changes over time that absolutely drive me bonkers.

First, caps lock replacing control on the left, but that's not what prompted this post, but I'm still grumpy at Sun and Apple for surrendering to the idiot PC world on that.

Second, moving the bumps from "d" and "k" to "f" and "h". Pretty sure Apple also had that right originally.

When the bumps are supposed on the 2nd finger, you always feel them, even if your fingers are offset by 1. Feeling the bump on the wrong finger is great feedback to fix your hand position.

When the bumps are now in the 1st finger, if your fingers are offset by 1 you don't feel it at all, and it's much harder to notice the absence of something than it is to notice the presence of the bump on the wrong finger.

Bad designers, bad bad.

samstave7• 9 years ago

This is a sentiment that crops up again and again. In particular as long time users of a terminal ui (not necessarily CLI but using ASCII/ANSI to draw the interface, and keyboard for input) when they transition to a GUI replacement.

I used to play Bard's Tale when a kid and I had memorizedthe keyboard movements from town to various dungeons on the map, and would navigate the map without even looking as it was muscle-memory for where things were... I always loved that.

ghotli• 9 years ago

One of the central questions of our time may become whether or not it's ethical to turn off dwarf fortress.

spacehacker• 9 years ago

It is probably ethically no worse than any killing simulation (e.g. first-person shooters). Creatures in such games arguably do not have a rich and lasting experience of processing information as humans and many animals do, so it only has a small ethical importance. My moral intuition on this matter is that the real ethical questions begin with systems that perceive, learn and can experience pain/reward: http://petrl.org

proaralyst• 9 years ago

You may have missed the joke (such things are hard to judge by the medium of text). The parent was implying that the complexity of Dwarf Fortress will grow to the point of sentience of the dwarfs themselves.

xenotb• 9 years ago

Indeed, it is all about sentience. If we assume it's unconscious, which we probably can, then it's morally irrelevant in my opinion.

escape_goat• 9 years ago

It is probably, in a limited sense, ethical to suspend (save) the game, but not ethical to destroy the saved game file. When the game is off, the dwarves do not experience an interruption of continuity to their time. So on the face of it, there is no harm done to the dwarves if there is an existential interruption from the perspective of some external context.

However, the abstraction of the dwarven universe from the universe in which it is being simulated is hardly complete.

By suspending the game and keeping it in storage for several days, for instance, you are placing the dwarves at greater and greater risk that some external-universe course of events will prevent their universe from ever resuming. Furthermore, as the cycles of time which can occur in the universe ultimately face a limit with respect to the rate of the processor and the cycles of time available in the external universe, so in a very real sense you are causing a sort of existential damage to their universe.

This, in fact, raises the question of ethics with respect to the resources devoted to the simulation. Is it ethical to run dwarf fortress on a consumer-grade general purpose computing device? Should not the dwarven reality be given the strongest underpinnings we can provide it, with equivalent respect given between an internal universe subjective & sentient existence an external universe subjective & sentient existence? In fact, given our moral debt as the creators of the dwarven universe, do we not actually owe them more than we owe each other?

pixl97• 9 years ago

Heh, falling into the void of never executing again is a much better outcome than normally occurs when I'm playing. Such as building stairs and ramps in the wrong place.

flukus2• 9 years ago

I think I'd enjoy philosophy a lot more if it was always presented in dwarf fortress terms.

leoc• 9 years ago

The dwarves may simply wonder why Armok chooses to prolong their suffering.

jrpt• 9 years ago

How did Dwarf Fortress become popular?

dpcx• 9 years ago

I first saw it because someone made a calculator within their fortress. That interested me, but I don't know of any particular thing that made it popular with "the masses".

ss_justin• 9 years ago

A lot of it had to do with creatively told stories about the events in a playthrough, particularly with some succession games - games passed along to others after a set time elapses. The first one I'm aware of is Boatmurdered:

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Bloodline:Boatmurdere...

wmil2• 9 years ago

The complexity allows a lot of emergent gameplay.

For instance in one game a dragon attacked my fort. NBD. Everyone got inside and I was planning to catch it in a cage trap. Then use it as a decoration.

However there was a group of Human traders at my Trade Depot. They decided to run over and fight the dragon. Now the dragon is running around breathing fire. Which started a forest fire. Which destroyed my wooden bridges and doors.

Completely unscripted fun, just a result of the game simulation.

Also the game manages to make you hate goblins and elves through your interactions with them.

In evil regions eyeballs grow out of the ground, blinking at passing dwarves. However cattle will happily graze on them.

If you "delve too greedily and too deep" you'll unleash horrors of the underworld.

There's just a lot of neat stuff there.

jayrobin• 9 years ago

I never understood the appeal of Dwarf Fortress until a good few hours into my first game I had just finished following a detailed tutorial and was starting to get a hang of the interface. I decided to start work on my first big construction project - a deep pit to keep the regularly attacking trolls away and a gargantuan drawbridge to lead over it. It's probably child's play by any non-noob player's standards, but I was so proud of it. All of the noble dwarves came to the grand opening of the drawbridge - the mayor, the sheriff, the captain of the guard and all of the highest ranking military dwarves in their bright shining armor. They all stood at the base to witness the first lowering of the grand drawbridge. It was lowered and with a mighty crash, flattened the gathered nobles and military elite...Because I had placed it facing the wrong way.

The fortress didn't last too long after that. I tried my best to clean things up, making a nice new dining hall and brewery, but the remaining dwarves took it pretty hard - one of them ended up losing his mind while drunk and slaughtered most of the rest in the great dining hall, the rest died of disease because nobody wanted to clean up the mess. I was so proud of my towering (and first!) fortress, and I lost it all because of one stupid mistake, but it's definitely the most fun I've ever had losing a game.

flukus2• 9 years ago

To anyone that's a fan of these kinds of emergent stories, I'd recommend giving crusader kings a go too.

lawpoop• 9 years ago

I played NetHack for a long time and wanted something more. NetHack becomes pretty repetitious after a while. I tried various roguelikes and hit upon DF.

Also, I see Dwarf Fortress as the natural progression of programming games. As programmers, we always look to abstract away busywork. DF takes away the busywork of dungeon-building and hands it off to little applets.

Basically it became popular by word of mouth. I think the popularity of Minecraft led more people to hear about it, since Minecraft was said to be influenced by it. But as far as I know, it's always been a slow build, never went viral or became an overnight success.

kibwen• 9 years ago

One of the things that I find interesting about Dwarf Fortress is that (to use programming jargon) it's sort of a declarative game rather than an imperative game. In e.g. StarCraft you select an individual unit and demand that it move to a specific point on the map; in Dwarf Fortress you configure which dwarves are allowed to perform certain tasks, then you place a task in a queue, and some dwarf somewhere will (eventually (hopefully)) take care of it (until they get distracted by a party, or decide to go fishing, or get hungry and wander off to the dining hall, or fall asleep in a stockpile, or drop anything they're carrying and run screaming from the forgotten beast hurtling down the hallway at them). It's a fascinating difference in paradigm, and I wish more games would explore the idea of actors in the world being chaotic/free agents which will only somewhat prioritize your wishes.

TremendousJudge• 9 years ago

I remember a strategy game called Majesty that worked in a "declarative" way as well. You didn't order your units around, you could just place bounties on things and your soldiers would go out and kill/destroy them

digi_owl6• 9 years ago

I owned that game, but seems to have misplaced the discs it came on...

iUsedToCode• 9 years ago

yeah, i loved Majesty. You couldn't force anybody to do anything. That way it was more chaotic.

Many times you could have won quickly if only the units obeyed. But they didn't ;)

IgorPartola2• 9 years ago

It is available for iOS and Android I believe. Works great on mobile.

Fordrus• 9 years ago

I LOVED Majesty, getting high level wizards was my favorite thing, and could honestly be quite tricky considering how blatantly suicidal they often were. XD

The saddest part was encountering enemy units who had magic reflection.

dri_ft3• 9 years ago

Dungeon Keeper used to play quite a lot like this as well. It was an interesting aspect that set it apart from other strategy games that were around at the time.

digi_owl6• 9 years ago

Yep. You needed imps to dig out rooms, reinforce walls, and carry corpses (turned into zombies or something in the graveyard room) and loot (used to pay of your other monsters and cast spells, iirc) back to your dungeon.

You could do things like pick up imps to make them prioritize a task, or slap them to make the work faster (took a slice of health out of them though).

lijason• 9 years ago

Evil Genius is similar in spirit to Dungeon Keeper and a fantastic game as well.

disantlor• 9 years ago

Your comment made me think of neural nets. My knowledge is admittedly quite surface level but there seems to be an analogy to the emergent behavior of trained network. Also, I'm thinking about the recent (latest?) SimCity with it's much discussed ability to track each individual actor, which apparently became a computational crutch that limited the size of the cities you could build.

It seems like there are some interesting game mechanics possible (as you suggest) that could also benefit from the recent GPU enhancements for neural nets.

fleetfox• 9 years ago

Interesting point but it's not exclusive to Dwarf Fortress there is a whole category of this kind of (management, simulation) games from SimAnt to Football Manager.

samstave7• 9 years ago

Heh, we used to call some of these games "managing a spreadsheet" -- Specifically the "Masters of Orion" series

samstave7• 9 years ago

Have you ever played the game "Knights and Merchants" (1997) -- it was such a fun game, as you had your little serfs who had to do all the work, but you also had your little armies that you could fight another player with.

The AI was flawed, the serfs, once the population got to around 100 or so, would starve to death frequently as they couldnt figure out how to get to the inn to get food and drink...

It was especially fun and funny when playing against a friend in the same room, you've built your village to the point where youre able to raise an army to smite your foe - but the AI goes bonkers, the serfs start to die off and your economy is ruined to the point that even two soldiers can show up and raze your entire town...

Ill never forget the laughter we had at one's serf's death knell "HNUUGGGHHHH" as they die, and the giddy feeling you had if you could take them out with just a few soldiers.

http://www.knights.de/

Thiez• 9 years ago

There is a remake with an improved AI and online multiplayer! If you're interested: http://www.kamremake.com/ it's free, but you need to have the original game to play the remake (which you can buy on steam, if I recall correctly).

snikeris• 9 years ago

It's a fascinating difference in paradigm, and I wish more games would explore the idea of actors in the world being chaotic/free agents which will only somewhat prioritize your wishes.

Check out Banished.

willismichael• 9 years ago

I really wanted to love banished, and I did love it for a while, but I found that once you learn how to create a stable town, you can apply almost the exact same strategies in every single game played no matter what the land looks like, as well as every time you branch off to expand an existing town into a new piece of land.

The mods didn't really do anything for me either, I felt like they just increased complexity and unbalance without really adding challenge or fun.

I haven't ever actually played dwarf fortress, but from what I've read, the inherent unpredictability of the world, your dwarves, and other creatures seems like nothing that any other game can even dream of.

JoeDaDude• 9 years ago

Several of Peter Molyneaux's [1] games have a similar mechanic where you set conditions for independent agents to (hopefully) do what you need done (My experience was playing Populous II Trials of the Gods [2]). His most recent creation, Godus [3], also uses this scheme.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molyneux

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populous_II:_Trials_of_the_Oly...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godus

vidarh• 9 years ago

The first Populous game did that too. It's very simplistic in Populous, though - it's mostly about flattening terrain so they can build or calling them to battle and helping them by smiting your opponents in various ways, and their actions are similarly basic. Then again given the machines it ran on, it's not unsurprising.

khalilravanna• 9 years ago

Black and White stands as one of my favorite games of all time for this reason. I'd argue it was the pinnacle of this behavior as far as Molyneux's games go because of the creature. It had a sophisticated AI that enabled it to actually be taught what was good and what was bad through experience. If it ate a villager you smacked it around and it'd learn it shouldn't do that. If it helped water your crops then you'd rub its belly and it'd know to do more of that.

It was especially interesting because in order to train the creature what behavior was or wasn't desired you had to catch them in the act doing that thing. Since the creature was an independent actor who you could only influence, you had to rely on the randomness of the AI to do certain things so you could teach them what was good and what was bad. E.g. you can't teach it eating villagers is bad unless you catch them in the act and smack them around. Such a shame they almost completely did away with that teaching-through-doing part of creature-training in favor of simplifying down the creatures behaviors to basically sliders like "good vs bad" and "friendly vs aggressive" in BW2. Still waiting on a proper spiritual successor to BW1... what a brilliant game.

theptip2• 9 years ago

Was going to mention Dungeon Keeper in this thread, another one of Molyneux's masterpieces, and probably the most relevant comparison to Dwarf Fortress IMO.

Similarly to DF, you just allocate tiles to be excavated, and can paint allocations on rooms, but never issue direct orders to minions. (Though you can possess them and take a first-person perspective, which is an interesting twist).

btschaegg• 9 years ago

I'm missing Dungeon Keeper 1&2 on that list :)

The attempt to manage a dungeon and direct all your minions at a certain goal, compined with the idea to automate your defence (through traps and alarms) somehow evoked a similar joy to programming for me. It's especally ironic on how many misbehaviors of the creature agents I tried by locking (ha!) doors in front of them.

Also, the general game style (aesthetics, soundtrack and the narrator) remains unmatched to this day.

whatever_dude• 9 years ago

I think it's kind of a spectrum of emergent gameplay. There are games with more than that than others, depending on how detached your commands are from the actual action that is taken.

aero142• 9 years ago

There is a great and popular game called Rimworld[http://store.steampowered.com/app/294100/] that does this. It's a colony management game where the default mode is colonists acting according to priorities and rules you set. You can override if you want but you quickly realize this is only for rare situations. It's really a fun game and a much easier learning curve than Dwarf Fortress.

intended3• 9 years ago

Most games have a smaller learning curve than dwarf fortress.

That's also the point.

Dwarf fortress is actually a good study on community structuring via challenge based gating. Before the many tutorials, if you could hack df or aurora, you were a particular type of gamer, and the challenge itself was the fun.

I really wish people could know themselves through the game the way I got to.

taliesinb• 9 years ago

Yes. Over Christmas period I played 88 hours of RimWorld, says Steam. It is a degradingly addictive game. Edit: and I'm not a gamer.

y4mi3• 9 years ago

now that is an expensive 2d game. holy shit.

AimHere• 9 years ago

RimWorld is kindof a cross between a sci-fi variant of Dwarf Fortress and Prison Architect, whose art-style it ripped off wholesale, with the permission of Introversion. I figure Prison Architect is surely worthy of a mention in this thread. (http://www.introversion.co.uk/prisonarchitect/pc.html)

Like DF and Rimworld, PA has that 'imperative' style, where your prison staff are given instructions, but may have problems carrying them out. Also, with the real-life setting, it might help stimulate some thinking about the nature of the penal system and the prison-industrial complex, while, at the end of it, still being a fun game.

audleman• 9 years ago

I'll share an anecdote from my gamer bro in his early twenties. He likes Rimworld, but his complaint is that it's way too shallow compared to Dwarf Fortress. Here was his example:

"I decided to play a game of DwarfFortress in an evil biome. Only I didn't realize the weather was also evil. Within 30 minutes all of my Dwarves were dead from an acid rainfall, cause of death: drowning in their own puss."

kruhft• 9 years ago

Dungeon Keeper was like this as well, except, IIRC where you could cast a spell and go into first person mode with a specific character for some time.

lutorm2• 9 years ago

The Close Combat series is entirely based on this idea. You give commands to squads, but the individual soldiers respond to the conditions on the battlefield, the orders they have being but one part of that.

digi_owl6• 9 years ago

Yeah i remember that one. You could order a squad to move somewhere only to find them hunkering down behind a wall or something because they were afraid that some sniper was out there.

I think the map was even "deformable" in that if you ordered a tank to move somewhere it could break down walls and such to get there, walls that soldiers could have used as cover while moving around etc.

Note though that the graphics was top down 2D, so it was "cheap" to replace a standing wall tile with a broken one.

douche• 9 years ago

Close Combat is one of my favorite series ever. The morale and fatigue mechanics were some of the best I've ever seen. And the graphics were fantastic for the time, really excellent aerial photography-inspired hand-made maps and sprites.

There was nothing like setting up a textbook ambush, and then having your inexperienced gunner on an MG42 panic and run off when you gave the order to fire...

poisonarena• 9 years ago

I remember buying Close Combat a Bridge too far at Virgin Records many many years ago. All those bright red and blue tracer lines suppressing my units and launching fog. I remember how underwhelming the tanks felt sometimes

0xdeadbeefbabe• 9 years ago

Why not both? For example, the game of Risk where each battle is a game of Starcraft, and then Call of Duty at an even lower level. Maybe different players play the role of general or soldier etc.

zdkl• 9 years ago

With eve online to glue everything together.

setr2• 9 years ago

Empire Earth 3 tried that(grand strategy-like overworld, rts-like combat), but poorly executed.

The total war series is a better example, but the games range in quality

vtange• 9 years ago

The original Tropico game from the series somewhat felt like this, especially when it came to construction. Unless you were cheating, you could only declare where a building would be built - you had no power to instantly "plop" a building into existence - you had to then wait for your builder units to eat, sleep, get to the site and build.

It made you careful in where you place things. Placing an airport far from home? Good luck building that!

derefr• 9 years ago

Placing an airport far from home? Good luck building that!

Would you have to first build a road out there with public transit service stops, and then bootstrap an increasingly-large set of airport hotels for the work crew to stay at, before attempting the airport itself? If so, that sounds like my kind of game.

IgorPartola2• 9 years ago

Settlers is like that too! Oh the memories.

0xcoffee• 9 years ago

I recently went on a hunt to find a game similar to the old Settler series, and found a game called Banished, where you have manage a small town against the elements. I put 10 hours into it so far and really enjoy it, check it out if you haven't already.

SN764772• 9 years ago

I believe that we will see more games that have AI-ish systems. Randomization in games like Don't Starve is one of the mechanics that keeps the game going.

newobj• 9 years ago

Well, I certainly think the Sims did that, to tremendous success.

erikb4• 9 years ago

Actually in the year 2017 there are loads of games with this indirectness, even quite a few new ones. Google it and you'll find quite a few interesting ones. E.g. gnomoria, or prison architect.

otterpotter2• 9 years ago

This. There are plenty of games based on Dwarf Fortress and indirectness, though many of them seem to suffer from lack of depth.

DF is nearly endless in terms of new content and events; once you figure out a pattern for setting up your fortress and finally feel like you're winning, something new comes along that you didn't expect. Once that feeling of "anything could happen" is lost in a game, it's tough to continue.

Factorio is a good example of this. It satisfies the desire for challenge and survival like DF, but the challenge drops off drastically once you have a good setup.

It's tough to match the content of Dwarf Fortress for a game that hasn't been around for 15 years though.

hyperion2010• 9 years ago

I had hoped that this is what Spore was going to be like. I guess the good news is that I discovered Dwarf Fortress and thus have spent the rest of my gaming life quite happy. Remember kids losing is fun [0]!

0. http://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/4/40/FunComic.png

WillyOnWheels• 9 years ago

It's a fascinating difference in paradigm, and I wish more games would explore the idea of actors in the world being chaotic/free agents which will only somewhat prioritize your wishes.

Sounds like current config management software

sushid• 9 years ago

Sticking to your StarCraft example, the Total War series is a good example of a "declarative" game. You can initially start ordering your troops to engage costly battles, but as their morale falls, they'll be less committed to an engagement and may rout (fall back) without being told to do so.

JoshTriplett• 9 years ago

The main reason I've pointedly avoided trying Dwarf Fortress is that it feels like a game where you can get noticeably better results through micromanagement than through high-level management. (For instance, "something bad would happen to that dwarf, but I can avoid it by reassigning that dwarf to different tasks".)

rhlala2• 9 years ago

Thats an interesting point, I think DF is more macro than you seems to think, Micro is limited at dwarf profession (you can set profesions fixes, or by skill level)

Another great game was Banished, i tried when it just came out, It is still updated by developers?

joshvm• 9 years ago

Kingdom is a beautiful game which is declarative. You run around on your (asthmatic) horse marking where you want buildings and your peasant workforce struggles to build them. It works well, but the rules are almost too simple. "Winning" the game is easy, but if you make one single wrong decision e.g. marking a wall for rebuilding at the wrong time of day your entire fortress will collapse. I believe some issues were fixed in Kingdom: New Lands, but it was a bit of a stain on an otherwise lovely game. At least in DF, usually it's your fault when things get Fun.

For example, in Kingdom, you get more minions buy throwing gold to beggars. There are spawn points on either side of the map. Your fortress is symmetric and you can also pay for tools like bow/arrows or hammers. There's a tool collection point on either side of the centre. One rule you figure out in Kingdom is that minions pick up the first available tool they come across. That means that if you want archers, but you have a hammer waiting pickup (and your new recruits come from the wrong side of the map), you're going to get an engineer.

Watchtowers are automatically restaffed by your soldiers. Watchtowers cannot be destroyed. If you overextend and build towers too far away from your castle, then you'll enter a vicious circle where your new archers will immediately go to man the towers and die when the hoarde arrives. As the towers are always there, and you can't mark them for demolition, it's possible to get into a situation where you can't resupply faster than your men run to their deaths.

gbersac2• 9 years ago

Winning go and poker ? Easy, I'll believe in IA when it will be able to handle dwarf fortress !

dri_ft3• 9 years ago

Here's a question about Dwarf Fortress: I play a lot of roguelikes, which are a genre of similar games, insofar as they're relatively complex, keyboard-and-ASCII oriented games made by geeks for geeks. Like Dwarf Fortress, these tend to have accumulated a lot of developer-hours, and like Dwarf Fortress, these developer-hours tend to get channeled into adding complexity to the game rather than superficial polish, like graphics and interface.

But they vary in terms of their approach this complexity: some seem to always want to add more, seeing more complicatedness as always better, and end up feeling like they contain everything but the kitchen sink - complexity for complexity's sake. (Nethack, I'm looking at you.) Others add it only where it's justified by producing interesting gameplay decisions. (Brogue and Sil are rigorous about stripping out unneeded complexity and getting the maximum amount of subtlety and nuance from a stripped-back set of mechanics. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is more complex, but seems aware of the trade-offs around complexity, and is known for removing features as often as it adds them.)

Which of these camps does Dwarf Fortress fall into? There's a lot of complexity, features and mechanics there. Is it all justified, in terms of adding interest to gameplay? Or is just for complexity's sake?

pavel_lishin3• 9 years ago

Is it all justified, in terms of adding interest to gameplay? Or is just for complexity's sake?

I stopped paying attention to DF development around the time Toady One started focusing in depth on history and cultural generation - apparently nowadays, you can have temples, bards, all sorts of stuff that seems like it only impacts the Adventurer Mode, and will have some impact on Dwarf preferences, history, etc.

None of this strikes me as anything I need to know about when playing the Fortress mode of the game, and seems like just something that Toady enjoys working on.

But for all I know, there's someone out there who's going to love all of this stuff, and it's going to make gameplay much better for them.

Declanomous2• 9 years ago

I think Dwarf Fortress falls squarely on the Nethack side of things. The motto of Dwarf Fortress is 'Losing is !FUN!' (exclamation points on either side of an item indicating it is currently on fire, a common occurrence in DF.) The fun and the !FUN! in Dwarf Fortress is because of complexity, not in spite of it.

erikb4• 9 years ago

His expenses are low — $860 a month in rent, $750 a month to Zach for his help and a few hundred dollars for utilities and food

Uh. The US... sorry, but if you spend like $1600 before food that is not "low expenses". If you can get below $1300 WITH food then I'd say that's low. Some people have to live with much less than $1000/month altogether.

Trundle2• 9 years ago

$750 of that is an employee.

nylonstrung• 9 years ago

I cannot see why a PhD developing one of the most ambitious and complex video games in history for $20K a year is objectionable to you.

strainer• 9 years ago

This winter a player has documented seemingly the greatest game ever to be played out on Dwarf Fortess. A lyrically narrated 320 year Saga, culminating in the construction of a glass fortress... in Hell.

Archcrystal - 320 years in a fortress (w/spoilers read 37592 times)

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=156319.0

lmitchell• 9 years ago

Oh lord well there goes a good hour of my time.

I'm a sucker for a good DF story... :P

zach• 9 years ago

Just yesterday I was looking up how to recommend someone for a MacArthur grant specifically for the Adams brothers. Sadly, the nomination committee is anonymous and does not accept recommendations. It's a shame because this seems like the ideal case for their grant.

inetknght2• 9 years ago

I've never played Dwarf Fortress (something I hope to rectify in the nearish future). However, friends have told me that it's somewhat similar to Factorio, which is a game that I highly recommend programmers to play.

and0• 9 years ago

I finally cracked open Factorio again over this weekend and sunk way too many hours in. It's quite literally Engineering: The Game.

inetknght2• 9 years ago

I made the mistake of introducing some friends and team members to the game. Their productivity has gone to shit.

Of course, it's only a corollary that they now spend too much time playing Factorio. Their productivity was liable to go to shit anyway; I simply gave a purpose to it haha

cadu2• 9 years ago

How hard DF is compared to Nethack? I've ascended on Nethack and it is always a very tricky business... this game seems on a whole new level.

clarry2• 9 years ago

You can't win. That hard.

setr2• 9 years ago

Well for one, there's no victory condition. At best, its do so well that you try to see how well you can survive is the face of stupid decisions/goals

a3n2• 9 years ago

A very touching story about the two brothers. I especially enjoyed the idea that they send drawings and stories to donors. I hope they're still doing well.

I dl'd it and started it up. I'm now wondering what I'm looking at. Not being a gamer, I don't have the visual vocabulary or expectations, so I'm glad there's a wiki; the in-game manual doesn't fully work. EDIT: My reading comprehension is not fully functional, the manual works.

“Water’s not doing it for me these days,” he said. “I know it’s bad, but the sugar goes right into programming the game. If I don’t drink soda now, I get a headache and can’t do any work.”

I feel bad that he's sacrificing his health for our pleasure.

He’d enrolled at the University of Washington, ... Tarn moved into a string of “dingy one-bedrooms” with “bad moisture problems” — in one, he discovered a shelf fungus growing behind his couch.

I probably lived in one of those when I was at UW. It was a "World's Fair" apartment building, garden level, the only window facing north and looking up an outside stairwell into the alley. Google maps shows me that much of all that has been scraped and replaced.

mmanfrin• 9 years ago

Very strange timing -- I spent about an hour last night looking in to DF and other games since I like that type of 'emergent' or 'declarative' (as another comment here put it) gameplay.

Other games I have played of a similar vein: Rimworld (great), Prison Architect (great), Banished (great, needs mods to add more content), Planetbase (EA, good, light on content after 2~ hours).

Others I found were: Stonehearth, Gnomoria, Town, Kingdoms and Castles (not out yet), Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2 (kinda) / War for the Overworld (fan remake of DK, essentially).

ssunstruck• 9 years ago

Rimworld and Prison Architect are practically training for DF. Now that you know you like the style of gameplay you will probably love DF

Globz• 9 years ago

Only in DF you can talk about turtle reproduction....

here's a bug related to turtle pond going extinct :

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2780

"Since turtles were my only source of shells, which are ever so important for moods, I am keenly feeling their absence after a few years. I went ahead and modded my world so that hoofs and horns can be used also for shells, (which is actually very cool btw, its awesome to have an artifact decorated with Elk Bird horn.)

However, my ponds were filled with turtles early on, and I accumulated many shells that unfortunately rotted away. It seems like fish populations are regenerating, but turtles are not among those, and since I found that odd I decided to report it."

"Pond turtles lay eggs, which might contribute why they will only breed in off site statistics if that's any relevance.

DF structures used for dfhack only implies that eggs that are hatched go into certain classes, and entity ID is one of them for intelligent species (crow men eggs layed and hatched on site belong to you etc., underground egg laying races have been in constant decline since they were added because of this until recently)

Egg layers have always had a hard time repopulating due to dependency on a object to breed which limited and stagnated them in world gen (made easier by spontaneous population regeneration in world-gen recently). I cannot recollect if its possible to offer pet pond turtles nestboxes to use by pitting or pasturing enough of them in a contained area as a alternative or even if they have additional orientation/marriage barriers to overcome we are not aware of.

All gendered vermin breed (or apparently breed, they have the prequesite animal tags but its uncertain whether they become pregnant whilst in the game world before leaving for the site population tally and being replaced with a new generated creature in their momentary existances, or even if they do become pregnant at all with child/adult born states) hermaphrodital or non-gender typical vermin are usually accounted for by being virtually innumerable to compensate for no breeding on site. Technically if the female pond turtle could get off the map by dissapearing and being replaced whilst pregnant it could spawn additional turtles slowly.

Fish are very visible with ASCII symbols and can be seen in murky ponds and rivers for periods of time if a example is needed, if they are close together they are in the capacity to breed and keep the numbers up. Drop a sizable amount of caught vermin fish into a empty pool and it should sustain the fish in theory as they repopulate with compatible mates in that area.

Similar designs have been used with isolated cave spider rooms with wild vermin which appear to be self sustainable and harvested with burrowed animal trappers & web collectors. "

kuharich• 9 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2793615

rhlala2• 9 years ago

The DF adventure mod have a very very potencial, Imagine skyrim in 2d, multiply it by 1000 in terms of gameplay/content

The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress (2011)

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