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Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

bay12games.com

41–50 of 172 posts

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#41
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I'd definitely play it with that UI. I often wonder why games almost never have swappable (or even just scriptable) UI-s that could allow player to use shorthands through UI drudgery.

For many popular roguelike games different tilesets are common. Search for "dwarf fortress tileset".

I'd recommend installing the Lazy Newb Pack instead. It has all the tools and tileset you need preconfigured:

http://lazynewbpack.com/

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment, while interesting and helpful, would be enough to keep me away from DF forever. Game-breaking bugs? Ain't nobody got time for that. I already know about DF so I know I'm not interested in games like that, but man, I'm glad I never tried to pick it up.

I mean it's free and written by 2 people, you can only expect so much.

It's actually written entirely by one person; Zach is just an idea man.

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#43
post #24
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun to note DF is a massive voxel simulation that displays a 2D slice as ascii. There's some neat third party visualizers that can hook into it's memory to show more. http://i.imgur.com/PTj1QpL.jpg

Nitpick: It's not ASCII. It's simple 2D bitmaps. You can't play DF in a character console.

I believe it was originally displaying extended ASCII in a nCurses console, and switched to bitmaps with SDL. The majority of the world is still visualized by those character codes and two colors, but entities can be assigned arbitrary sprites http://i.imgur.com/zuMdqbv.jpg

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#44
If you'd like to learn to play the game, it's not easy. I've created a multipart video tutorial to help you sort of find your feet, learn a few of the keybinds, and get a checklist of things you need. It also talks about how to get better graphics and an isometric view.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBrdUj1adIBD-vgUodaax...

Enjoy all the fun. Dwarf Fortress is one of the only single player games that has held my attention consistently over the years. I suspect you might find it engaging as well.

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#45
post #32
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to recall a profile of the game and it's creators that said it's mostly by choice. Found it: they were offered 300K just to license the name. He has refused a programming job at a major developer (he asked that I keep its name off the record) and turned down a $300,000 offer from another company to license the Dwarf Fortress name, fearing that the proposed sum wouldn’t sufficiently offset the long-term donatio…

A one-off 300K isn't a lot for two people to live on if it would cut off their donation stream completely, and if you've been doing this for 10 years it may not be easy to find a job.

Serious question. Why would it not be easy?

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#46
post #8

For anyone who is thinking about giving it a spin for the first time, do yourself a favor and don't get this .01 version. Either wait for a few patches or download the far more stable and mature 0.40.24 ( http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/older_versions.html ) Dwarf Fortress is basically a perpetual beta with lots of major bugs as it is, but especially brand new major versions like this one usually have multiple game…

I remember the overpopulation of Mothmen. It was terror.

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#47
post #14
post #2

This is why text-based games are king. One dot release and we're seeing a mountain of new features. I've always dreamed of getting together a big budget to make a text adventure (e.g. Zork) of incredible scope, both in depth and "interactibility" -- a complex object typologies system, bring in learning chat bots for NPCs, and a system where users can add new objects, rooms and descriptions while they play, a complete…

> One dot release and we're seeing a mountain of new features. A "dot release" (who really cares about numbering schemes?) that took ten months and included a number of incremental and ultimately minor features--yes, they sound very cool, but having played it last night they don't change the way the game plays all that much. I like games like this quite a lot, but this is the same cheetodusting that makes people take…

>A "dot release" (who really cares about numbering schemes?)

DF numbers its releases differently than most software. The developers made a list of features ("core components") they would like to implement and the version number increases for each one finished.

So a "dot release" for DF means a significant new subsystem was added. v0.42.1 translates to 42 core components implemented, 1 minor release. The leading 0 means "less than 100 core components finished".

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#48
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick: It's not ASCII. It's simple 2D bitmaps. You can't play DF in a character console.

You can, actually. I'm pretty sure the text output mode should still work. I wouldn't recommend it, because it's noticeably slower than the SDL or OpenGL renderers, but you can .

I usually play it on a tty, partly because silly decisions, but also I can ssh into a my system that has it installed. I haven't seen a 'noticeable' slow down, but then again most of my forts barely make it to 80 dwarves.

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#50
post #20

I admire the forever project, and the dedication of the brothers. I've played the game way too much in the past, but I grew increasingly frustrated with the single threaded model combined with their disinterest in fixing it. Building an expansive fortress and number of dwarfs is a lot of fun (honestly, probably the most fun I've had with a game since Dungeon Keeper and Settlers way back) but then FPS starts dropping…

There's some mods out there that try and help with fps by simplifying certain systems in the game, such as reducing the amount of material and plant types, things like that. I know Masterwork mod does this.
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