
Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time - llambda
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/02/dwarf-fortress-ten-hours-with-the-most-inscrutable-video-game-of-all-time/
======
starpilot
Great explanation of DF's bodily combat damage modeling:
[http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/95316-complex-
dama...](http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/95316-complex-damage-model-
considerable-for-dayz-no-suggestion/)

> DF's damage system is just as complex and oftentimes difficult to keep track
> of as the rest of the game. Instead of simple health points or separate body
> parts DF simulates each individual by the sum of it's parts. This starts at
> the single parts of a body, then adds layers of tissue, muscle and fat to
> each part, connects all parts by joints and finally stuffs a share of vital
> and nonvital organs into the whole thing. Every part of this construct has
> several states it can be it, reaching from healthy over bruised, torn,
> mangled, nonfunctional, broken and missing...

> How does that play out in the actual game? Depending on what kind of injury
> a creature suffers it tracks the damage to individual body part and the
> results of it. Slashing damage will cut through tissue, muscle and fat,
> might even separate body parts, blunt damage will pass through protective
> clothing and only bruise upper layers, but shatter bones and joints
> mercilessly. Piercing damage will effortlessly penetrate all layers and has
> a high chance to damage.

A dwarf is graphically represented by a smiley face, so you can't see any of
this happen. All of it is conveyed by descriptive text.

It's also recommended to pick up a freshman textbook on geology to understand
the game's many types of rocks, which is apparently pretty realistic following
Tarn's personal interest in geology/mineralogy. The depth of this "game" is
breathtaking. The only thing I can think of comparable might be high-fidelity
but consumer grade flight simulators like X-Plane, or those put out by Russian
developer DCS (e.g.
[http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/series/black_shark/...](http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/series/black_shark/#22728)
)

~~~
gnarbarian
The UI in Dwarf Fortress is completely indefensible. Even when you do
understand how to play the game it's a kludge. Let alone the fact that AN
ASCII GAME CAN BRING AN 8 CORE DESKTOP TO A CRAWL. (The ASCII is actually
rendered in OPENGL for performance which is a joke in and of itself because
99% of the system resources are spent poorly simulating stagnant blocks of air
rock and dirt with nothing happening to them).

There are many amazing and laudable aspects to DF. Tarn has a physics
background and in this regard the game is well thought out. It has unmatched
emergent gameplay and behavior due to the physics and complexity of each
dwarf.

What isn't well thought out at all are both the 'design' of the software and
interface. This is the most beautifully complex game with endless unique and
hilarious morsels of awesome (the naming of geographic features and depictions
engraved on items) Yet absolutely no effort is spent on conveying that to the
user. It's like the game itself is autistic in its savant level complexity and
all that beauty is hidden behind an utterly unusable interface and horribly
inefficient software design.

Dwarf Fortress is a perverse decent into a single brilliant yet mal adjusted
person's 'ideal' game. It's wildly capable and meticulously tended to in all
the wrong areas while the glaringly obvious flaws go unattended.

It's like a brilliant mathematician who shits on the floor and writes earth-
shattering proofs on discarded fast food bags leaving them strewn about
homeless shelters. The hobos (DF fans) all rightfully commend his genius and
defend the antisocial idiosyncratic behavior as "part of the creative process"
or that anything else would detract from 'the experience' of reading a
revolutionary proof off of a shit stained McDonalds bag.

The main problem is Tarn's inability to work with anyone else or compromise.
The poor quality interface and software design is a perfect metaphor for the
developer behind it. The smallest improvement such as rendering more ASCII
layers at once from an isometric perspective would vastly improve the
usability and likely expand the userbase by 10 fold yet no effort is made to
make ANY UI adjustments.

Minecraft is the perfect example of the level of success DF is capable of.
Their premise is quite similar, but where Notch's effort went into a
simplistic usable UI with simple physics, Tarn went without a UI and devoted
his effort to a bewilderingly complex and amazingly inefficent engine with no
reasonable way for anyone to experience it. Tarn could be a multi millionare
if he simply would take some damn advice about sofware and UI design.

Seriously, With two more people helping him, one person focused on optimizing
the codebase and another focused on improving the UI this would literally be
one of the greatest games of all time.

Until that day DF will remain an obscure oddity, like a model train set with a
revolutionary efficient engine whose owner steadfastly refuses anyone to use
it in anything except a toy which actually causes physical pain to all who
attempt to play with it.

~~~
kaolinite
Maybe he just wants to make his game, perhaps not a game for you or many other
people - but his game. For him. Not everything has to be simplified and dumbed
down. We have plenty of those kinds of games.

Also, I'm confused by your shock that an ASCII game can bring an 8 core
desktop to a crawl. Just because most games spend most of the system resources
on displaying pretty graphics, doesn't mean that DF has to as well.

~~~
gnarbarian
Regarding the inefficiency of the engine. There is something seriously FUBAR
with the design when you must choose the size of simulation (the rendered rows
and columns of ASCII representing the playable zone in the window not the
physical dimensions) at the beginning of a game before embarking. The
performance of the game is directly proportional to the number of blocks in
this zone + the number of dwarfs and NOT the actual stuff happening to them.

The bad part is that you have to completely start over and embark with new
dwarfs if you decide that your system can/can't do a bit more and you wish to
adjust the size of the zone.

~~~
gchpaco
Current hypothesis on the forums is that he uses some simplistic variant of
A*; in extreme situations everything pathfinds to everything else once a tick
in a totally serial program. The player base sometimes resorts to weird hacks
and layouts to reduce the branching complexity of the path finding, but
ultimately the more loose stone and objects you have to pathfind off and the
more things you have pathfinding the worse everything gets. You don't even
have to have a large number of dwarves for it to crop up; sheep are capable of
bringing your machine to its knees if you don't ruthlessly cull them, or
notoriously the catsplosion problem.

~~~
gnarbarian
I would love to see a bunch of hard hitting engineers focus on optimizing DF
with multithreading and GPGPU stuff. It would probably require a full rewrite.
Having some experience with AI and pyopencl physics simulations I have no
doubt that DF could be many orders of magnitude faster and capable of sooooo
much more. That's really where my angst stems from.

~~~
eru
> [...] focus on optimizing DF with multithreading and GPGPU stuff.

You should probably start with algorithmic improvements.

~~~
gnarbarian
It could go either way IMO, GPGPUs are super great for naively simulating a
bunch of different blocks in parallel.

------
spacemanaki

      > There are instructions within the game, and without in the form
      > of wikis and forums, but I wanted to begin at the most basic
      > level, if only to come at the game from a recently trendy (if
      > controversial) design paradigm on discoverability that's flowed
      > from mobile apps to many new indie games: "if you see a UI
      > walkthrough, they blew it".
    

Some of the author's other points are valid, and DF definitely has some (just
some!?) problems with the UI (my personal nitpick is that there are multiple
ways to draw rectangles) but I get the impression that she set things up
planning to fail. Not R-ingTFM isn't really a reasonable way to review this
game. DF doesn't have a team of people behind it, and there's no UX designer
to figure out how to make things beautiful and intuitive. On the other hand,
the game is _free_ , and the developers have supposedly turned down at least
one relatively large buyout offer in order to keep working on their dream on
their own terms.

It's cliche, but you get out of DF what you put into it. If poring over fan-
made wikis, taking notes of all your findings, winning tiny victories like
successfully getting your first workshop running, and losing in spectacular
fashion only to retell your loss to friends doesn't sound fun, maybe stick to
Skyrim.

~~~
fennecfoxen
"Not R-ingTFM isn't really a reasonable way to review this game." This. If the
author had spent half as much time bothering to do research as he did coming
up with florid expressions about how this screen was like a bunch of "Greek
symbols" impervious to the casual glance, then the reviewer may have had more
fun Fun.

~~~
trentlott
It's almost as though you're saying one has to put effort and motivation to
derive pleasure from something!

Spoonfeeding is the way of the future, and anything else is second-rate
design.

------
dpeck
DF is a fantastic game, and one worth taking some time to explore if you have
a weekend to burn when friends and family are out of town, or you're just
feeling like being a shut in. It is an excellent example of a "forever
project" and one that has gained some quite a fanbase, but as you get deeper
in, you will be frustrated by some things.

The game is designed by 2 brothers, and coded completely by one of them. This
has led to a game with immense scope, and tons of features, but with most of
them lacking polish. Its also led to performance problems, as adding new
features is vastly more important than optimizing existing ones. The game is
single threaded, outside of some of the gui, and processors aren't really
getting any faster. Eventually you'll get frustrated and kill your fortress
due to FPS slowdown. This could happen from your fort growing to a large
number of dwarfs, or you playing too much with things that flow (lava, water),
etc.

There have been quite a few offers by fans of the game to help with the code,
but Toady One is adamant about keeping the source closed and being the only
developer.

So play, enjoy, and be impressed with what one guy and a lot of Mountain Dew
can accomplish, but be aware that you're playing in what is essentially
someones (amazing) lifetime art project.

PS: Dwarf Therapist and DfHack make the game much more playable and get around
a lot of the interface quirks. If you're going to get started playing I'd
recommend them.

------
intended
In the recent threads on armor and armor piercing on the Bay12forums, the game
calculates and checks for fracture stress and impact stress when crossbow
bolts impact armor.

So for example the game will test to see if the impact_yield, and further
research in the threads below reach conclusions such as :

" the IY (impact_yield) deflection mechanism is related to armor density,
armor thickness, bolt size, bolt impact yield, bolt contact area, and the
difference between mail and plate at larger contact areas."

Armor density takes from armor material - Iron/Steel/, as does impact_yield.

Here is the thread where the initial !!Science!! on whether bolt weight made
an impact on their lethality - [Dwarven Research: The Effect of Bolt Weight on
Crossbow
Performance](<http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=115683.0>)

The results were converted on reddit into a LaTeX PDF, which is excellent
reading - <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2891221/DF%20study.pdf>

This led to the follow up: A Comparison Study on the Eﬀectiveness of Bolts vs
Armors

LaTeX - <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2891221/DF%20study%202.pdf>

Thread - <http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116151.0>

The underlying algorithm for impact_yield deflection on page 11 was:

" Algorithm: 1\. The projectile is hitting the creature on a body part
protected by a piece of rigid armor (i.e. bolt hits steel breastplate). 2\.
Multiply the armor's LAYER_SIZE by the projectile's CONTACT_AREA, and round
the result down to the nearest 100. The exception is that you round up to 100
instead of rounding down to zero if the result was less than 100 (i.e. 20x2=40
-> 100). 3\. IMPACT_YIELD = (800/157) * ARMOR_SOLID_DENSITY * (step #2 result)
/ PROJECTILE_SIZE "

And thats to test if a bolt deflects on impact with armor. Penetration causing
severing of tissue, blunt damage causing bruising are also possible depending
on the Armor vs Bolt combination.

And this is a minor sub part of the game which most people don't see.

~~~
chris_mahan
This means, essentially, that the strategist can't build an Excel model of the
game and win that way, the way many games are played and won. Excel would blow
up...

~~~
intended
Good God.

At some point Toady will add an economy module.

I... shudder at the thought of the processing required for that.

Each site will have its own produce, production rates and ability to transmit
goods, (the current build is already deciding on how much transport succeeds
based on banditry and so on).

Man. It just painful to consider how much processing is going to be required
><.

~~~
chris_mahan
Perhaps DF will be the first game that requires an actual mainframe to run
on...

~~~
intended
One hopes to be the first to see the post.

"So I had some time and a cray... Also some refactored code"

------
gosu
I actually got bored towards the end of my first game of DF because it was too
easy.

The interface adds a lot of illusory difficulty, but that's not an issue for
people used to reading manuals. On the other hand, when you're not wrestling
with the system, there's not much fair challenge. When your underground
fortress is filled to the brim with traps and completely self sufficient, no
one is ever going to touch you unless you handicap yourself.

Once I had my base built out the way I wanted it, there wasn't much left for
me to do. Kind of reminds me of how Minecraft feels once you've built a
satisfying shelter, but I think that Minecraft's music and FPS perspective can
motivate people to keep playing for the sake of creativity. With DF: sure,
it's fun to imagine my fortress and all, but then I might as well move away
from the keyboard and just do the whole thing in my imagination.

~~~
intended
I played in a similar manner, and had 0 fun after a point.

Which is when the entire "losing is fun" part of the motto clicked for me.

After yet more introspection I personally drew a parallel between me playing
safe and how I approached many other things in life. And in this game, the
result of playing things that way were directly clear - utter boredom.

All I had left were mega challenges. So either I play to build something vast,
such as a new Morul, or I forego all those cheesy advantages and just let my
fortress run and fail, and see what stories come out of it.

edit: of course my experience may have little value to helping you find any
fun with the game, I strongly recommend playing without cage traps and danger
rooms.

This drastically increases the challenge and the resultant successes and
failures are usually enriched for it.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Wait, so which direction did you go in real life?

~~~
intended
I find myself trying desperately to return to utter boredom.

~~~
amw
This is an amazing reply.

------
danso
I'm really glad that this game came out after I was an adult with a full-time
job. Otherwise, I would not have the excuse to _not_ dive into it and
inevitably be sucked in. As it is, I can walk away, justifying that I just
don't have time to figure the game out. I liked DF when trying it out, but I
think I enjoy just reading about it more.

~~~
HelloMcFly
Given the current UI, you'd have all the excuse you need. I gave it an honest
shot but I just can't get too invested in a game that requires a few hours of
reading wikis and watching YouTube.

~~~
zalzane
This image is pretty relevant. <http://i.imgur.com/omJfhlt.jpg>

If you walked into dwarf fortress fully knowledgeable about the UI and game
mechanics, you'd have a relatively dull experience with very few surprises.

Being such an expansive game, you don't need to know every single command or
hotkey just to get a fortress started. The fun lies in not knowing what you're
doing, encountering something unexpected, then adapting to that unexpected
situation, either by learning something else about the game, or applying your
previous knowledge in a creative fashion.

Remember that people don't write stories and comics about dwarf fortress
because they knew exactly how to handle every hurdle the game threw in their
direction.

~~~
petercooper
That's what I loved about Minecraft for the first few months too. People keep
whining about putting the "recipes" in game and making it easier, but the
whole process of researching, looking up YouTube videos, reading the wiki,
etc, was what made it fun because it felt like you were learning something
useful, despite just being a game.

------
csense
The author's problems all have solutions:

You need to dig stairs to be able to go up and down levels. You need to dig an
"up stair", and then a "down stair" below it. Or you can dig "up/down stairs"
which combine both functions into the same square.

The lack of stone is probably due to embarking in an area that has clay, soil,
or sand layers on top. If you tunnel down a few levels, you should find stone.

If you have an axe (which is one of the default starting items if you didn't
customize them), you can (D)esignate (T)reecutting areas to chop down trees
and build things out of wood (assuming you're in an area that features trees).

~~~
alex_c
_The author's problems all have solutions_

Well, no, those are symptoms, not problems. The problem, as explained by the
author, is the sheer improbability of discovering how to play Dwarf Fortress
by trial and error. (I say that as a big fan of the game... I've put in a few
dozen hours over the years, which I feel is just barely enough to put me at
the high end of "beginner").

~~~
Evbn
Is that a problem?

Chess is inscrutable via trial and error too.

~~~
alex_c
Not sure I agree... give me the most basic computer chess program and 15
minutes, and I'll have (most of) the rules figured out. And that's assuming no
tutorials or hints such as highlighting legal moves.

Getting good at it is a different matter entirely, but figuring out how to
play is relatively simple.

~~~
Elidrake
But Chess is a game that you're already familiar with - unless you're going to
be changing the absolute foundation of the game with these altered rules, your
familiarity with the original game is what allows you to come up with an
altered set of rules.

Compare that to Dwarf Fortress, short of 'Sim City' (which is a dubious
comparison at best), there is nothing out there that remotely comes close to
the myriad of gameplay concepts that have been shoved into this single, mildly
coherent package.

~~~
bandwevil
I'd say that Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius come pretty close to DF's style of
gameplay. But yeah, DF still has far more above what those offer.

------
DrStalker
Dwarf fortress is difficult for two reasons 1: Unintuitive interface. It takes
some time just to learn how to do basic things and find the information you
need. 2: Complexity. Once you know every possible command you can give you
need to figure out what to do.

It's hard to get into but immensely rewarding and satisfying once you do, with
some amazingly detailed epic stories coming to life.

~~~
warmwaffles
My brother plays this constantly, any pointers where I can start playing?

~~~
lost-theory
Following the Captnduck tutorials [1] and using the Lazy Newb pack [2] got me
pretty far.

[1]: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHVZtRdtPdo> [2]:
<http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59026.0>

~~~
the_french
If you are on mac you can use MacNewbiw instead of the LNB:
<http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=106790.0>

------
6ren
The game dwarf fortress most reminds me of is git.

~~~
laureny
Ah, that's actually a pretty good analogy! Very powerful once you get to know
it, but with a baffling interface.

------
jgj
For a Dwarf-Fortress-like experience with a much more friendly UI and
reasonable learning curve, try Gnomoria (<http://gnomoria.com>)

The developer is awesome and releases an update (mostly) every week. It made
it through Steam Greenlight but hasn't been released there yet. It is well
worth the 8 bucks.

As a person who hates repeating himself, my biggest problem with DF and its
difficulty curve was that I often would make a small mistake early in the
game, like expand too fast or forget to close off an entrance to a cavern, and
have to start all over, and repeat the same X steps to get a basic
civilization going, which gets tiresome. Gnomoria is no different, but it is
much more forgiving in the early going and leads to fewer short-order
restarts. Also, graphics!

------
jokermatt999
I've noticed a lot of people in this topic complaining about graphics/UI. I'll
give you that the UI does need an overall badly, but there's a reason for the
graphics: the sheer complexity of the game, and the fact that his last game's
development stalled because of graphics.

In the "sheer complexity" department, imagine trying to depict any of the
following well graphically: randomly generated artifacts made of random
materials, the ridiculously intricate damage models, and completely randomly
generated titans (which do start with a base creature, but have random
materials/bodyparts galore). While you could just do essentially what he does
for the ASCII and have one symbol that represents all these, he doesn't seem
to want to go this route. Which is insane, but hey, insane seems to be the
normal for DF development.

The second part is that his last game died partly from his trying to implement
graphics too early. Notice how the full title is "Dwarf Fortress: Slaves to
Armok"? Armok was the game before this. Similar in overly ambitious scope, but
with an early 3d style graphics. However, for some reason or another, it
became to difficult to support its development after graphics, and it
collapsed under its own weight. Hence the switch to ASCII: he could continue
implementing hundreds of features without as much regard for performance or
implementation. It's easy to add in dozens of new creatures, random titans,
genetics and randomized traits when you don't have to actually worry about
representing it. I highly suggest reading his devblog
(<http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html>) just as inspiration for what
one crazy ambitious man can do.

As for why he doesn't enlist more help, make it open source, etc, the answer
is even simpler: this game is his bread and butter and both he and his brother
live off the donations. Yes, part of it is that he wants to maintain control
of the project, but if a program was literally the sole means of supporting
you and your sibling, I think you'd be wary of giving away its code too. He
has said it will likely be open sourced when he dies however.

~~~
kunil
It is not just the ASCII. He could write a more useful GUI. With buttons and
better mouse control, it would be much appealing for the crowds.

~~~
sclangdon
Writing better mouse control isn't fun. If he were to start writing such
things, I bet he'd either scrap them anyway or just get bored of writing DF
all-together.

The "boring" tasks are purposefully programmed to the minimum requirement so
he can spend more time on the interesting tasks, to ensure his motivation
stays high.

Admittedly, he could just outsource the GUI stuff, but for better or worse, he
clearly wants to keep the code close to his chest.

~~~
amw
He has played with outsourcing work--all the SDL conversion was done by a
third party. He hated the experience. Which goes back to the "he's a
programmer, not an engineer" thing. I would personally love for this project
to be tackled by a group of highly experienced engineers dedicated to the same
vision, but that's complete fantasy dreaming, there.

------
barbs
Ahhhh Dwarf Fortress...I really wish I had the patience to overcome the insane
learning curve, but I barely have enough patience to learn Civilization ><.
Some of the stories people have created with the game are incredible. My
favourite site for this is <http://dfstories.com/>

Also, the New York Times article linked in the above article is quite
insightful I found: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-
brilliance-of...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-
of-dwarf-fortress.html?_r=0)

------
brianberns
IMHO, NetHack is the king of clunky, quasi-graphical-but-really-text-based
games. In many ways, it is probably the greatest computer game of all time. Is
Dwarf Fortress in the same league?

~~~
jere
If you think NetHack is the greatest computer game of all time, may I suggest
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup? Supposedly, it was modeled after NH, but in attempt
to fix several of its problems:
[http://crawl.develz.org/other/manual.html#n-philosophy-
pas-d...](http://crawl.develz.org/other/manual.html#n-philosophy-pas-de-faq)

~~~
lifeformed
My roguelike of choice is Brogue
(<https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/>). Whereas Nethack was made to
satisfy the creators' interest in complexity and simulation, Brogue satisfies
the creator's interest in design and elegance. Brogue simplifies a lot of the
redundancies in Nethack and condenses it down into the core elements of
dungeon crawling. While it's a much less complex game, it doesn't sacrifice
much in depth. You still get loads of interesting emergent stories.

Brogue is probably the most accessible amongst the text-based roguelikes -
it's interface is excellent, it manages to be very visually appealing without
straying from the ascii aesthetic, and the design of it is streamlined and
elegant.

~~~
qznc
Thanks for the link. I like that game.

------
laureny
I think the author of the article made a critical mistake by not installing a
friendly set of tiles (e.g. Lazy Newb Pack). There is really no drawback, all
it will do is get you to enjoy the game faster.

------
jessaustin
I played DF quite a bit a few years ago. Sometime later I read Reamde, by Neal
Stephenson: [http://www.amazon.com/Reamde-A-Novel-Neal-
Stephenson/dp/0062...](http://www.amazon.com/Reamde-A-Novel-Neal-
Stephenson/dp/0062191497)

I only just realized, reading the comments here, how much the description of
the game in Reamde is patterned after DF, with simulations of geological and
even planetary processes driving mundane scenery and resource distribution.
Although of course in the novel it's a MMORPG because that's cooler. b^)

------
smogzer
The creators of DF could partner with some game studio to create a nice GUI
for playing, or create an API that could allow for beter interfaces to evolve,
the tilesets are great, but custom tutorials would be awesome. I tried playing
DF once but was overwhelmed with the information and didn't try again, and i
used to play nethack and adom.

I also recommend ADOM for those who like nethack and redrogue that is a
roguelike meets platformer, very nice !

------
mesozoic
If you play Dwarf Fortress without side help under the presumption that a
games UI that isn't immediately obvious is bad then "you're gonna have a bad
time."

Not that I'm defending DF UI because it is horrendous but the game underneath
is magnificent and there are many external resources to help one dig down far
enough to get to that magnificence.

------
ctdonath
Succinct explanation of Dwarf Fortress as fun:
[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110522180205/vsrecom...](http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110522180205/vsrecommendedgames/images/a/a5/Dwarf_Fortress_fun.png)

------
shocks
<http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=57557.0>

Here is a nice tileset that can make the game far more approachable. :)

------
edem
I really like this article. The phrasing is so good that I can imagine myself
sitting at the computer and staring at the weird ASCII characters.

------
simonebrunozzi
What would be the best way to play DF on a not-so-powerful machine? It seems
that rendering the ASCII art is a serious CPU dwell...

~~~
mesozoic
It's not the art rendering it's the massive amount of calculations about dwarf
feelings and cat mating the simulation is doing underneath that make it slow.

------
nnq
I never played DF, but... _wouldn't his be way cooler and maybe motivate more
people into learning it if it was a MMO?_

~~~
gchpaco
Good god isn't it addictive enough?!

More realistically there are things you can do in DF like bathe the world in
lava or crack the Maximum Fun Chamber that would be kind of obnoxious for your
neighbors. A bit like playing Minecraft with IC2 and accidentally leveling
half your neighbor's house because your nuclear reactor melted down. Just
because you are even worse off does not make people any happier about it.

~~~
mesozoic
But losing is fun.

And if it were an MMO then the motto could change to

Losing is fun for everyone!

------
hayksaakian
This is very beta/alpha an should be treated as such.

The dev is focused on depth of gameplay before all else.

------
pbhjpbhj
It looks like a SIMS variant played in "ASCII".

------
pvaldes
Falcon's eye, I miss you...

~~~
stuhacking
It's called "Vulture's Eye" these days and I think it's still in
development... <http://www.darkarts.co.za/vulture>

------
jebblue
It uses ascii symbols?

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DanBC
...and it uses text in an annoying way. It renders the text in OpenGL, which
is one of the reasons why a 'text mode' game is so resource intensive.

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Deestan
> It renders the text in OpenGL, which is one of the reasons why a 'text mode'
> game is so resource intensive.

No, that is not really resource intensive. The massive simulation behind the
graphics is resource intensive.

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jebblue
I guess I'll have to check it out, though anything so involved might be too
time intensive for me.

