The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress • Hacker News Board

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#11

Post by dpritchett » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 5:35 PM UTC

Don't miss the chance to read through the "Boatmurdered" Dwarf Fortress succession campaign:

Perhaps most fascinating are the stories that fans share online, recounting their dwarven travails in detailed and sometimes illustrated narratives. In a 2006 saga, called Boatmurdered, fans passed around a single fortress — one player would save a game, send the file to another player and so on, relay-race style — while documenting its colorful descent into oblivion. (After a vicious elephant attack: “A single untrained marksdwarf stands ready to defend the crossing, but I doubt he’ll be enough.”) Boatmurdered spread across gaming sites and made the front page of MetaFilter, a popular blog. “That did a lot to make people aware we existed,” Tarn says.

http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#12

Post by eru » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 5:46 PM UTC

joshklein wrote: post #8

For those of you who are seeing this for the first time and have any love for games like Minecraft, Civilization, etc... please take the time to break through the very steep learning curve to give this game a fair shake. It is truly a work of art. Please note that the Wiki helps make the game playable: http://df.magmawiki.com/

You might benefit from having played Nethack first. At least the culture shock will be a smaller.

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#13

Post by jgfoot » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 5:50 PM UTC

Very interesting: "Tarn sees his work in stridently ethical terms. He calls games like Angry Birds or Bejeweled, which ensnare players in addictive loops of frustration and gratification under the pretense that skill is required to win, 'abusive' -- a common diagnosis among those who get hooked on the games, but a surprising one from a game designer, ostensibly charged with doing the hooking. 'Many popular games tap into something in a person that is compulsive, like hoarding,' he said, 'the need to make progress with points or collect things. You sit there saying yeah-yeah-yeah and then you wake up and say, What the hell was I doing? You can call that kind of game fun, but only if you call compulsive gambling fun.' He added: 'I used to value the ability to turn the user into your slave. I don’t anymore.'"

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#14

Post by cjzhang » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 6:04 PM UTC

klbarry wrote: post #7

Dwarf Fortress is an outstanding game with features not available anywhere else, and I would highly recommend it. The background music, which the creator also composed and performed, is very soothing, as well.

Mostly I play it because I like chaining tame hydras in front of the bridge that leads into my trading post.

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#15

Post by efnx » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 6:10 PM UTC

joshu wrote: post #9

pohl wrote: post #2

My teenage son - who, raised right, grew up on Nethack - absolutely loves this game, and will occasionally stay up all night and be found still feverishly working on some elaborate construction in the morning. From what I have seen, it is ASCII crack. edit: I guess it's modified code-page-437 crack: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437 edit again: This article really is a very interesting story behind the devel…

freakishly, the game actually uses opengl to display the grid of character sprites...

haha! that's awesome.

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#16

Post by MrFoof » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 6:18 PM UTC

dpritchett wrote: post #11

Don't miss the chance to read through the "Boatmurdered" Dwarf Fortress succession campaign: Perhaps most fascinating are the stories that fans share online, recounting their dwarven travails in detailed and sometimes illustrated narratives. In a 2006 saga, called Boatmurdered, fans passed around a single fortress — one player would save a game, send the file to another player and so on, relay-race style — while docu…

In addition, might I also suggest the illustrations done by Tim Denee.

* Bronzemurder: http://www.timdenee.com/bronzemurder.html

* Oilfurnace: http://www.timdenee.com/oilfurnace.html

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#17

Post by flatline » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 6:29 PM UTC

exratione wrote: post #6

bcl wrote: post #4

Here's the game's homepage - http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ This looks very cool, and there are versions for Linux/OSX/Win

You're better off with your first experience being the mayday set that uses tiled graphics: http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/df.php Here's the wiki, which has some quickstart guides: http://df.magmawiki.com/

If you're going about it for the first time, I'd recommend the Lazy Newb Pack:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59026.0

Because of the somewhat eccentric nature of the DF menus, this contains a number of utilities like Dwarf Therapist that are, IMO, indispensable for running a fortress of more than about twenty dwarves. It also has a custom tileset built in and an isometric visualization tool.

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#18

Post by danso » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 6:30 PM UTC

MrFoof wrote: post #10

A few things. First, as mentioned in the article, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC will be featuring Dwarf Fortress as part of its "Talk to Me" exhibit. The exhibit will be open from July 24th through November 7th. http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1080 Second, for those looking to get into the game, the two recommended video tutorials are SippyCup's (humorous) http://www.youtube.com/51ppycup , and Captai…

I tried DF awhile ago and liked it, but realized it would take more time than I was willing to put in it. Reading this article makes me want to try it again, just out of respect for Tarn's humble devotion and his pursuit of the joy of "just building things". I'll definitely check out the MoMA exhibit next week.

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#19

Post by jergason » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 6:33 PM UTC

MrFoof wrote: post #16

dpritchett wrote: post #11

Don't miss the chance to read through the "Boatmurdered" Dwarf Fortress succession campaign: Perhaps most fascinating are the stories that fans share online, recounting their dwarven travails in detailed and sometimes illustrated narratives. In a 2006 saga, called Boatmurdered, fans passed around a single fortress — one player would save a game, send the file to another player and so on, relay-race style — while docu…

In addition, might I also suggest the illustrations done by Tim Denee. * Bronzemurder: http://www.timdenee.com/bronzemurder.html * Oilfurnace: http://www.timdenee.com/oilfurnace.html

Bravemule (http://www.bravemule.com/matulremrit/) is the best Dwarf Fortress-related writeup I have ever read. It is fantastically illustrated, and captures the black humor and horror of Dwarf Fortress better than anything else I have read. Check it out.

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#20

Post by pbhjpbhj » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 6:48 PM UTC

jgfoot wrote: post #13

Very interesting: "Tarn sees his work in stridently ethical terms. He calls games like Angry Birds or Bejeweled, which ensnare players in addictive loops of frustration and gratification under the pretense that skill is required to win, 'abusive' -- a common diagnosis among those who get hooked on the games, but a surprising one from a game designer, ostensibly charged with doing the hooking. 'Many popular games tap…

FWIW Bejeweled [Blitz] requires skill. I'm moderately good, second in my circle of friends and I go off the boil if I've not played it for a while, it takes time to get back into the groove. That said they do manipulate the scoring a lot and there is a lot of pressure to buy, buy, buy to get a higher score (that I've resisted, that's not my thing).

Bejeweled is a very well constructed Skinner Box that has been effectively optimised over time. TBH it should be part of a course on addiction psychology, it probably is.

Interesting comments nonetheless. Thanks for sharing.