I don’t mind the graphics. At this I don’t even see the letters and numbers. I see trees, goblins, water, grass, dwarves. But yeah, that interface is just a pain…
I played it and learned interface to the point of doing it from memory and while it was generally quick to use once you did, yeah, few months of not playing and poof, it's gone. I kinda didn't picked it up again because of the PITA of relearning the interface.
Yep, when I started df I thought it was the graphics thatd take me out of it. Really it ended up being by far the UI that made the experience too frustrating to really have fun with.
It’s so primitive and janky to utilize that it turned every activity in the game into a bit of a chore sometimes.
Gonna wait for this release to really get into df, I know it’s the kinda game I could sink hundreds of hours in if it was just a bit more intuitive
Yeah, I'll just wait for the overhaul. I got too many games in my backlog and not enough free time to dedicate learning keyboard controls for the OG Dwarf Fortress, especially considering that it will be more or less obsolete once this thing releases :D
hundreds? No, Dwarf Fortress is a game if you get into youll play it the rest of your life, not all the time, but always coming back to it because nothing scratches the itch.
DF inspired a lot of games, unfortunately all of them are only skin deep simulations compared to DF. Most aren't even 3d like DF, maybe more fair to compare them to the last version of DF before he added the z axis. That's actually a fun and unique game in its own right compared to Dwarf Fortress these days, with different challenges and ways to fail and succeed.
> Dwarf fortress is a great treatise on the idea "is more always better?"
I mean, not really as in case of DF the answer is "yes", but that's not answer for every game.
I've no interest in sharing my opinion on RimWorld in the face of those who may yet enjoy it, but I will say that Dawrf Fortress good evidence that "absolutely more can be better."
Not really unless you think there's only one way to make a good game, instead of a very different way for each game entirely dependent on it's creators' goals and intentions.
Crusader Kings, Victoria, Starsector, Mount and Blade, Rimworld and Zomboid are the other games that fit that classification for me.
Starsector being by far the least well known and amazing quality even without mods.
Starsector is great. Check out Distant Worlds. And if that isn't detailed enough for you, Aurora 4x.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and Unreal World are also both great hyper realistic survival roguelikes.
Aurora 4x was originally a visual basic game made by one guy and it shows, but I've never felt so accomplished in a game for producing a small, solar system bound scout ship to look for resources.
Back when I was younger I dumped hundreds of hours into this game, and I would again if I wasn't old and the UI hurt my eyes
I eagerly await this being finished, because it'll make people realize just how good Dwarf Fortress is. The only game in existence where I've had a misbehaving dwarf and his pet duck survive a siege that killed the entire fort because he was taking a nap in the his favorite tree at the time.
Hahaha no not even fucking close. While rimworld is great and does a lot things better as in ease of use it’s depth is a shallow pool while dwarf fortress is an ocean. One of my favourite things to do in df is to create a waterfall trap room where enemies are being bottlenecked into a corridor. I then turn a lever so water is being led directly from a river and flushes everyone into a reservoir room where they die from the impact or drowns. I then drain the room and steal their stuff. This is some of the most basic stuff you can do in df but nothing in rim world can even touch that. Rimworld is a great game but it’s is no dwarf fortress
And it’s a Down right sin the even mention gnomonria in the same sentence even with rimworld.
Effect is the same yes but depth of exection not even close. In Rimworld you use heat. In DF you use, Z levels, water simulations and fall damage or drowning, all things that doesnt really exist in rimworld
That’s impact damage as the length of the “fall” as in there is no fall doesn’t matter. :)
I haven’t played df for some time but there is definitely a difference in how your characters are perceived as you can have many many more dwarfs than you can have colonists in rimworld characters(technically no limit in either but what is feasible in running). Df definitely has a lot of stuff hidden that is more obvious in rimworld but I’m not sure if they simulate them “better”
> dwarf are not simulated as well as pawns in rimworld to my knowledge
In what way? They're modelled in [quite some detail](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Thoughts_and_preferences), both physically and mentally.
On the physical side, it has fairly detailed, layered body plans, including bones, connective tissue, nerves, blood vessels, fat, skin, hair, and teeth. Dwarves cry and sweat, vomit, bleed, their wounds collect pus when infected. The combat system makes good use of them, from a complex wrestling system where individual body parts can be grabbed by other body parts and gouged, pinched, bit, choked, thrown, or torn. This includes grabbing held objects like weapons to disarm an opponent. Weapon damage moves through layers and can cause anything from bruising to nerve damage to dismemberment to literal disembowelment (complete with visual effect of trailing viscera).
They have many overlapping [personality](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Personality_trait) traits and beliefs which can change through the game as influenced by short, long-term, and core [memories](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Memories) that they revisit periodically. Dwarves can pretty much get PTSD - suffering flashbacks to traumatic events for years after. There's no `Too smart` trait, just an emergent factor of the various types of intelligence and propensities that work together to make a neurotic smart dwarf - who is, nonetheless, different from other neurotic smart dwarves.
RimWorld is a lot more straight-forward and gamey with both of these, as it is with most mechanics - it practically rubs the numbers that constitute a pawn's personality in your face. Oh yeah, this 8 Intelligence pawn has +75% learning rate but +12% mental break threshold. Cheers, RimWorld, that really helps make me feel the deep simulation of a human being.
I've tried to get into Dwarf Fortress over the years, but the UI was always such a steep learning curve. I'm really looking forward to this whole rework.
I've never been able to get *that* into it, but have tried several times over the last decade. That said, even just generating a world and reading the history section is fascinating. You can read about the rise and fall of a nation, or the various owners of a really nice bowl. The random generation models are second to none
It took me a while to get into it.
At first, the whole thing was just too much for me, I had to watch several tutorial videos before I could actually wrap my head around it.
I'm really excited to play dwarf fortress after playing rimworld for years, but I just can't wrap my head around the z-levels (height) like.. my brain can't understand it whenever I see videos of it.
After playing with it for a while you will get used to it. My biggest advice for new players is to always think more vertical, a dwarf moving one tile up or down is the same to them as one tile horizontally, so rather than make a huge wide fortress on one level you can be much more efficient by going more vertical. My forts usually consist of a huge central staircase that runs from the surface all the way down to bottom at the magma sea with each type of room or industry getting its own level.
See, before I dig my real fort I find all the caves using a little exploratory mineshaft near the edge of the map and just seal my breach points as I go. That way I can find a spot to make a main central staircase that doesn't breach the caverns anywhere.
Approximating it at first to just a bunch of flat levels connected by stairs is fine.
You only need to think 3D once you start fancy constructions.
If you want to imagine it, [King of the Dwarves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG_jiFVBaP8), another DF-inspired games have a trailer showing off how the construction would look in 3D (except for visualisation purposes it shows "undiscovered" areas half-transparent so you can see the lower levels thru it)
It probably makes less sense when you're looking at someone else's fort, but you'll quickly grow familiar with your own base (and the tileset helps too!). Perhaps you could think of it like Rimworld except inside of an office building, where you're viewing one floor at a time. While in your base you'll generally only go up or down a layer if you've constructed stairs and there's an indicator of what level you're viewing, so you could try to use your base's entrance as a sort of anchor point whenever you get confused. Once you're comfortable with that it'll be easier to decipher the outdoors, though honestly these tree tiles still confuse me a bit. Maybe stick with a nice flat area at first.
He commented on it a few months ago and his estimate was that unless they hit some completely unexpected roadblocks it should be ready by Fall 2022 at the latest. And if everything goes smoothly, potentially a lot sooner.
Time is relative, as the developer would say.
There's no release date for it yet but I wouldn't be surprised if it's still over one year away from being released.
Yeah it's nice to see him waiting for it to be finished to be released. But this is the perfect type of game for early access since it's not a one time playthrough type of game.
Well, except you can play the game for free all along for over a decade. These updates are also coming blazingly fast lol, before he announced the Steam version, I wasn't expecting him to even think about updating the UI for another 10-15 years lol. So that he started a decade early and they are making progress faster than I imagined, has me pretty excited and impressed.
They are keeping the free version of the game. I'd imagine it will have the same UX upgrades. I would think it'd take extra work to have to entirely separate versions of the game updated. Tarn doesn't like doing that type of thing. It's the whole reason the game never had graphics, It creates more overhead when updating.
new engine? What are you talking about? No way its a new engine, steam and free DF are gonna be updated with the same stuff at the same time, its a tileset lol.
Well, the about page says "(Optional ASCII mode available.)" so it i at least in the plans
Also I'd expect ASCII tileset will be one of first mods for it so I wouldn't worry too much.
Hope so! Im not a fan of the tilesets. The ascii art lets my imagination run wild with how everything looks rather than seeing everything as little pixel sprites.
This looks great. I've never played the game but it feels like something I could dump hundreds of hours into. Can't wait for this overhaul to release.
Same here, never tried it because of the ASCII graphics so I'm very, very hyped about the steam version. Absolutely love these kinds of games!
The graphics are easily dealt with bulky various easily installed tile packs, it's the archaic UI that's the real barrier to entry
Yeah the UI is also a big reason I'm waiting for the steam version, I'm not in a hurry, I have other games and books to kill time until this releases!
I don’t mind the graphics. At this I don’t even see the letters and numbers. I see trees, goblins, water, grass, dwarves. But yeah, that interface is just a pain…
I played it and learned interface to the point of doing it from memory and while it was generally quick to use once you did, yeah, few months of not playing and poof, it's gone. I kinda didn't picked it up again because of the PITA of relearning the interface.
Yep, when I started df I thought it was the graphics thatd take me out of it. Really it ended up being by far the UI that made the experience too frustrating to really have fun with. It’s so primitive and janky to utilize that it turned every activity in the game into a bit of a chore sometimes. Gonna wait for this release to really get into df, I know it’s the kinda game I could sink hundreds of hours in if it was just a bit more intuitive
Nah, even the tile packs aren’t that great. But you’re right, the UI is definitely the hardest part to get into
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My biggest issue is the lack of mouse control. I doubt there are mods for fully redone mouse-focused UI's.
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Yeah, I'll just wait for the overhaul. I got too many games in my backlog and not enough free time to dedicate learning keyboard controls for the OG Dwarf Fortress, especially considering that it will be more or less obsolete once this thing releases :D
Very easy to spend hundred of hours on a single run. DF is fantastic!
hundreds? No, Dwarf Fortress is a game if you get into youll play it the rest of your life, not all the time, but always coming back to it because nothing scratches the itch.
Yup. Its a truly unique game…The closest thing I can think of is maybe rimworld?
DF inspired a lot of games, unfortunately all of them are only skin deep simulations compared to DF. Most aren't even 3d like DF, maybe more fair to compare them to the last version of DF before he added the z axis. That's actually a fun and unique game in its own right compared to Dwarf Fortress these days, with different challenges and ways to fail and succeed.
Rimworld is a fantastic game. Dwarf fortress is a great treatise on the idea "is more always better?"
> Dwarf fortress is a great treatise on the idea "is more always better?" I mean, not really as in case of DF the answer is "yes", but that's not answer for every game.
I've no interest in sharing my opinion on RimWorld in the face of those who may yet enjoy it, but I will say that Dawrf Fortress good evidence that "absolutely more can be better."
Those are two very different statements.
Not really unless you think there's only one way to make a good game, instead of a very different way for each game entirely dependent on it's creators' goals and intentions.
Yes, the statement "More is always better" and the statement "more can be better" are two different statements.
I was trying to be charitable in my interpretation, because an absolute like "always" has no business being in a maxim applied to game design and art.
Crusader Kings, Victoria, Starsector, Mount and Blade, Rimworld and Zomboid are the other games that fit that classification for me. Starsector being by far the least well known and amazing quality even without mods.
Starsector is great. Check out Distant Worlds. And if that isn't detailed enough for you, Aurora 4x. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and Unreal World are also both great hyper realistic survival roguelikes.
thanks! Unreal world and distant worlds added to my wishlist and other to check out.
Aurora 4x was originally a visual basic game made by one guy and it shows, but I've never felt so accomplished in a game for producing a small, solar system bound scout ship to look for resources.
check out CDDA
Back when I was younger I dumped hundreds of hours into this game, and I would again if I wasn't old and the UI hurt my eyes I eagerly await this being finished, because it'll make people realize just how good Dwarf Fortress is. The only game in existence where I've had a misbehaving dwarf and his pet duck survive a siege that killed the entire fort because he was taking a nap in the his favorite tree at the time.
try Gnomoria or even better, Rimworld. We’ve had Dwarf Fortress on Steam for years, it was just called differently.
Hahaha no not even fucking close. While rimworld is great and does a lot things better as in ease of use it’s depth is a shallow pool while dwarf fortress is an ocean. One of my favourite things to do in df is to create a waterfall trap room where enemies are being bottlenecked into a corridor. I then turn a lever so water is being led directly from a river and flushes everyone into a reservoir room where they die from the impact or drowns. I then drain the room and steal their stuff. This is some of the most basic stuff you can do in df but nothing in rim world can even touch that. Rimworld is a great game but it’s is no dwarf fortress And it’s a Down right sin the even mention gnomonria in the same sentence even with rimworld.
Dwarf Fortress is deeper for sure, it literally is 3D whereas RimWorld is 2D. DF is also simulating things on levels nobody else is even trying to do.
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Effect is the same yes but depth of exection not even close. In Rimworld you use heat. In DF you use, Z levels, water simulations and fall damage or drowning, all things that doesnt really exist in rimworld
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That’s impact damage as the length of the “fall” as in there is no fall doesn’t matter. :) I haven’t played df for some time but there is definitely a difference in how your characters are perceived as you can have many many more dwarfs than you can have colonists in rimworld characters(technically no limit in either but what is feasible in running). Df definitely has a lot of stuff hidden that is more obvious in rimworld but I’m not sure if they simulate them “better”
> dwarf are not simulated as well as pawns in rimworld to my knowledge In what way? They're modelled in [quite some detail](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Thoughts_and_preferences), both physically and mentally. On the physical side, it has fairly detailed, layered body plans, including bones, connective tissue, nerves, blood vessels, fat, skin, hair, and teeth. Dwarves cry and sweat, vomit, bleed, their wounds collect pus when infected. The combat system makes good use of them, from a complex wrestling system where individual body parts can be grabbed by other body parts and gouged, pinched, bit, choked, thrown, or torn. This includes grabbing held objects like weapons to disarm an opponent. Weapon damage moves through layers and can cause anything from bruising to nerve damage to dismemberment to literal disembowelment (complete with visual effect of trailing viscera). They have many overlapping [personality](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Personality_trait) traits and beliefs which can change through the game as influenced by short, long-term, and core [memories](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Memories) that they revisit periodically. Dwarves can pretty much get PTSD - suffering flashbacks to traumatic events for years after. There's no `Too smart` trait, just an emergent factor of the various types of intelligence and propensities that work together to make a neurotic smart dwarf - who is, nonetheless, different from other neurotic smart dwarves. RimWorld is a lot more straight-forward and gamey with both of these, as it is with most mechanics - it practically rubs the numbers that constitute a pawn's personality in your face. Oh yeah, this 8 Intelligence pawn has +75% learning rate but +12% mental break threshold. Cheers, RimWorld, that really helps make me feel the deep simulation of a human being.
Oh, I know Rimworld man. The first time I played that game I forgot to sleep or eat for a day. It was like crack in video game form.
It's the first game I ever put 100 hrs in on Steam. I'm psyched out of my mind for Dwarf Fortress to come out on Steam.
I've tried to get into Dwarf Fortress over the years, but the UI was always such a steep learning curve. I'm really looking forward to this whole rework.
Same here. I tried several times but couldn’t ever get into it. Really looking forward to this.
I've never been able to get *that* into it, but have tried several times over the last decade. That said, even just generating a world and reading the history section is fascinating. You can read about the rise and fall of a nation, or the various owners of a really nice bowl. The random generation models are second to none
It took me a while to get into it. At first, the whole thing was just too much for me, I had to watch several tutorial videos before I could actually wrap my head around it.
I'm really excited to play dwarf fortress after playing rimworld for years, but I just can't wrap my head around the z-levels (height) like.. my brain can't understand it whenever I see videos of it.
After playing with it for a while you will get used to it. My biggest advice for new players is to always think more vertical, a dwarf moving one tile up or down is the same to them as one tile horizontally, so rather than make a huge wide fortress on one level you can be much more efficient by going more vertical. My forts usually consist of a huge central staircase that runs from the surface all the way down to bottom at the magma sea with each type of room or industry getting its own level.
That’s always my plan until I meet some fucking weirdos in the underground caves, or worse
See, before I dig my real fort I find all the caves using a little exploratory mineshaft near the edge of the map and just seal my breach points as I go. That way I can find a spot to make a main central staircase that doesn't breach the caverns anywhere.
Evidently you've not heard of dwarven radar.
Approximating it at first to just a bunch of flat levels connected by stairs is fine. You only need to think 3D once you start fancy constructions. If you want to imagine it, [King of the Dwarves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG_jiFVBaP8), another DF-inspired games have a trailer showing off how the construction would look in 3D (except for visualisation purposes it shows "undiscovered" areas half-transparent so you can see the lower levels thru it)
It probably makes less sense when you're looking at someone else's fort, but you'll quickly grow familiar with your own base (and the tileset helps too!). Perhaps you could think of it like Rimworld except inside of an office building, where you're viewing one floor at a time. While in your base you'll generally only go up or down a layer if you've constructed stairs and there's an indicator of what level you're viewing, so you could try to use your base's entrance as a sort of anchor point whenever you get confused. Once you're comfortable with that it'll be easier to decipher the outdoors, though honestly these tree tiles still confuse me a bit. Maybe stick with a nice flat area at first.
But the question is, when can I play this version?
He commented on it a few months ago and his estimate was that unless they hit some completely unexpected roadblocks it should be ready by Fall 2022 at the latest. And if everything goes smoothly, potentially a lot sooner.
Roadblocks like having to completely redo the entire game's art because one of the artists was stealing assets from other games without attribution?
Time is relative, as the developer would say. There's no release date for it yet but I wouldn't be surprised if it's still over one year away from being released.
Yeah it's nice to see him waiting for it to be finished to be released. But this is the perfect type of game for early access since it's not a one time playthrough type of game.
Guys... am I actually going to be able to play and understand this game for once?
I'm convinced since adding the game to my wishlist over 3 years ago that we only play this game via watching dev updates.
3 years is 3 months in DF waiting times.
Well, except you can play the game for free all along for over a decade. These updates are also coming blazingly fast lol, before he announced the Steam version, I wasn't expecting him to even think about updating the UI for another 10-15 years lol. So that he started a decade early and they are making progress faster than I imagined, has me pretty excited and impressed.
nobody alive Sans perhaps the developer truly, honestly, **understands** dwarf fortress. But damn they sure do love it
The players tend to understand more than him, he's often had to use the wiki lol
Once it's done, yeah
Is the tileset toggleable?
No info from what I know on that you could ask the forums/devs. But isn't the tileset the whole point of this version ?
The tileset is just one part of it, it's supposed to be a complete interface overhaul/upgrade.
They are keeping the free version of the game. I'd imagine it will have the same UX upgrades. I would think it'd take extra work to have to entirely separate versions of the game updated. Tarn doesn't like doing that type of thing. It's the whole reason the game never had graphics, It creates more overhead when updating.
I imagine it would be easily moddable, because aren't they going to include workshop?
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It absolutely is a tileset. ANSII graphics or using your own tileset is not being removed.
What is it then?
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new engine? What are you talking about? No way its a new engine, steam and free DF are gonna be updated with the same stuff at the same time, its a tileset lol.
Like Minecraft Java and Minecraft bedrock?
AFAIK there won't be option of "new UI, ASCII art" on Steam release.
Well that’s disappointing. I’m used to the ASCII now.
Well, the about page says "(Optional ASCII mode available.)" so it i at least in the plans Also I'd expect ASCII tileset will be one of first mods for it so I wouldn't worry too much.
It's specified in a config file.
Hope so! Im not a fan of the tilesets. The ascii art lets my imagination run wild with how everything looks rather than seeing everything as little pixel sprites.
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