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Silver Samurai
United Kingdom
Belfast
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Personal Background
I'm a retro-gamer with only an occasional dabbling in contemporary titles via my PSP / Wii (occasional, mostly due to my wife's insatiable need for a daily fix of Monster Hunter Tri!)
Instead of contemporary gaming, I'm currently playing Dwarf Fortress (DF) which, for the uninitiated, is basically a blend of Civilization - Settlers - the Sims! I love sandbox games: World of Warcraft is my favourite game ever, and my claim to fame is beating all GTA games 100% except the last one. But WoW or GTA this is not...
Overview of The Game
DF achieves its sandbox status through its complex modelling of the world. Before you play each game, the gaming-world must be randomly generated. During this 10 min downtime, you get to watch while civilizations rise and fall, natural disasters befall and the seasons come and go in rapid succession moulding the landscape. Not only is the landscape randomly generated, meaning that no 2 worlds will ever be the same, your world is also perpetual: it exists until you decide to overwrite it. After one colony falls, you can decide to establish a different one in another part of the world. Or maybe adjacent to the last one, so you can explore the remnants of your previous civilisation.
Not only does this game account for the macro-effects of weather, time, erosion, it micro-manages the lives of your little people. Injuries are simulated (right down to internal body parts); as are personalities, moods and even relationships. It's a massively complex RTS. Sometimes i have to just turn it off due to fact that my head hurts!
Simulated Chaos
While you get to decide what tasks you set your little population, and how to fashion their environment, it's up to your dwarfs whether they ultimately pay any heed. Oh, and to further complicate things, your dwarves work best when supplied with booze! It's a receipe for disaster...and ultimately this is the fate of your civilization. Sooner or later your people will succumb to impending doom, generally through a careless decision or blissful ignorance on your part.
EVERYTHING needs thinking about in this game. I built an underground farming plot close to the surface to account for richer soils, but unfortunately rainwater percolates down and floods part of my fields during certain seasons, putting paid to my hard work.
The negatives
All of this complexity does not come without its tradeoffs. And the trade-offs for SUCH awe-inspiring complexity are potentially show-stopping:
- Graphics. What graphics?
Yups, you heard it. DF is an ascii-based game. It means that everything you see occurs via a series of unintelligible symbols moving across the screen. Here's a few examples from the official web site:
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/screens.html
For those of you still reading at this point, the graphics can somewhat be improved via third party graphic packs which add pictures instead of symbols, but visually it's a hark back to 80s gaming. I've heard of recent interest in improving the 3d isometric packs that exist, which would open this game to the masses.
- Consistency. Personally, this is what irks me. I can understand the graphics trade-off, but not the lack of consistency in the controls. There's no reason why the same keys can't be used to navigate each menu in the game. Some menus don't even reference their navigation controls so it can be a matter of trial and error until you find the right key combo.
Summary
That said, for those who have time and energy to invest in overcoming the near vertical difficulty curve, there's infinite reward in seeing the civilization that you have micro-managed since creation overcome the numerous threats and disasters that befall. If you like exploration and being master, in charge of your own destiny, then you'll like this.
While the above is an un-biased review, i'd prefer to hold off on rating this until i confirm it's longevity.
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Concerning world generation:
You can abort the generation after as many years as you want. Start early and you have more monsters and titans than civilizations and if you start later you get more peace and less disasters fun.
Welcome aboard. 
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chris reichl
Appleton
Wisconsin
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You can also get tile sets if you tire of looking at the ascii characters.
But I like DF it's a game I go back to once in a while, just to give it a try.
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... ... I ... just ... wow... found something: http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-8460-themechanism
The guy created a freakin calculator ingame! Oh my...
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Jorge Montero
United States
St Louis
Missouri
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The game's physics are far better than a kick in the teeth, and the gearing options are pretty good, so calculating machines are not impossible.
Some shortcuts were taken though, which allow for impossible machinery to be built. For example, it's not just possible to build perpetual motion machines, but to make them have excess power to run useful parts of your fortress.
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Silver Samurai
United Kingdom
Belfast
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Harlekin wrote:
I'm thinking: "I wonder what goes on in his head? I wonder how many hours it took? I wonder what he could have built in RL in the same time...?"
But, all the same I'm...
:Speechless:
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Fabian Trunz
Switzerland
Degersheim
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How is this a Retro-Game? It's quite new, is still being updated, and would never, ever have worked on old computers. Probably one of the most demanding games there is, and this includes Crysis.
Edit: If you like the GTA's up to San Andreas, you'll probably want to check out Saint's Row 2.
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The (vanilla) Graphics are retro.
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Fabian Trunz
Switzerland
Degersheim
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Not really, those old games weren't this ugly
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Silver Samurai
United Kingdom
Belfast
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Thanks for the recommendation Fabian.
Speaking of ugly graphics, does anyone have a favourite tileset in DF? I've recently switched away from Phoebus' to Mayday's (tho the dwarf sprites are a bit blurry) and am now experimenting w. Ironhand's which i think is the best of all.
I think it's down to personal preference, but is there a reason why you opt for a particular graphical look?
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I currently use the vanilla "ascii looking" stuff. I don't mind the graphics at all.
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Fabian Trunz
Switzerland
Degersheim
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I liked Dwarf Fortress when it was still two dimensional. Then all the 3d stuff came with all its added complexities and whatnot and I got lost in the horrid interface. Right now I'm waiting for an eventual interface update, which is most likely a long way off. I can't wait until Dwarf Fortress gets to that point. By then I might even own a computer that can run it
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Silver Samurai
United Kingdom
Belfast
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Yeah, this is one of the most enjoyably complex games I've ever played but the interface inconsistency means its not without its frustrations (see above)
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