
Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released - robinhoodexe
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
======
epaga
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](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-breaking bugs, including crashes, corrupted saves, etc. It would be a
shame if people willing to give it a try would give it up due to the poor
quality of the initial release of a new major version.

Dwarf Fortress is a truly unique game and really worth putting in the effort
to learn simply due to the stories it generates as you play.

Here's an example of a story that happened to me.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/1mb0cw/the_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/1mb0cw/the_sad_story_of_môsom/)
Note this story is in no way embellished by me. Everything described there was
actually simulated within the game.

~~~
metalliqaz
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.

~~~
jacobolus
Anyone who would be kept away by a warning about crashes because he “ain’t got
time” would also be kept away by simply trying to play Dwarf Fortress for 10
minutes. It’s not a game for the faint hearted or impatient.

~~~
metalliqaz
Hey you can read it however you like, but I find an expectation from an
established player that the current released version is bug-ridden and may
corrupt your save to be... scary. How many saves must he have had corrupted in
the past? That's just not cool, man.

~~~
tptacek
If you're not the kind of person who can take flaws like crashes or game-
stopping frame-rate issues and work them into your gameplay, DF is not the
game for you. It isn't a friendly game. It can take hours just to figure out
how to do core game tasks. "Don't do this thing that crashes the game" is just
another task to learn.

------
ndarilek
Does anyone know enough about how this game works internally to know if
alternative interfaces and presentations are possible?

I'm blind, and have wanted to play this game ever since I heard of it years
ago. I used to play console-based roguelikes, and while they were a bit slow
to interact with, RLs were a refreshing tactical change from text-based IF.

Reading lots of DF stories would suggest that there's some sort of internal
eventbus-style system by which the characters themselves interpret their
surroundings, and if you could hook into that, you could describe the world
textually to some extent. You might even add audio cues for certain events to
increase the non-visual fidelity of the UI.

I see in some of the below comments that there's a text-based mode. Might give
that a try to see if it's playable on the same scale as Nethack/Angband were
for me.

~~~
gcb0
how did you worked out the maze map of nethack?

~~~
ndarilek
An old 90s-era laptop with a monochrome display whose brightness I could turn
down to 0, a screen reader that let me arrow around all the tiles, and a bunch
of long boring high school classes where teachers thought I was such a
diligent student, always taking such great notes.

:P

~~~
crocal
You need to tell us more about this. It sounds like an extraordinary story!

------
hodwik
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 object relational system (so it can tell "on", from "next
to", from "above"), a very complete state system and so on.

Perhaps an "adjectives system", so it knows a huge amount of adjectives
relating to any one object, and can generate simple novel sentences about that
object on repeat views.

I think that at some point someone will be crazy enough to do it, and it's
going to be most excellent.

~~~
eropple
_> 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 Linux-on-the-desktop
people with all the unseriousness they demand.

~~~
thoth
>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".

~~~
eropple
Yeah, I know. The poster to whom I was responding was gleeing about a "dot
release" having a bunch of features, and that that's something only a "text-
based game" (and DF isn't a text-based game, unless your text-based games
normally support tilesets or the IBM upper-ASCII set and run inside of SDL)
can do. Which is trivially untrue, both in terms of pumping up the impact of
the DF release and downplaying what others do.

Honestly, I'm kind of done with DF _until_ it's more of a game, precisely
because of these rabbit holes. I respect what they're doing, but aside from
the first "oh, what's new?!" moments, the same core issues with the actual
game persist. The "significant subsystems" don't make it play any better, so
we're in ant-farm territory and not in a great way.

~~~
Natsu
Well the main attraction is the stories it creates and what you create in
game. So I'd say to play Craft the World if you want a DF-like with more
direction to it, but DF itself is irreplaceable if you want to do things like
attacking Hell with minecarts full of whales for the added mass (and
therefore, momentum).

DF is more about the crazy stories that happen when you're, say, draining the
ocean to set up those whale traps. Or building a roof over the world, pumping
it full of magma, and rigging trapdoors to allow your Orbital Magma Cannon to
fry any spot on the surface.

~~~
eropple
"Well", it's not a complaint about direction, it's more that the ability to
create interesting stories hasn't expanded a lot in a long time. Early on in
my time with DF, I really enjoyed the exploration, mastering the subsystems
involved and developing cool stories out of both my successes and mistakes--
but then the mistakes stopped happening because the game _ended_ and it became
a time sink rather than a growing and evolving challenge. I have built most of
the stupid dwarf tricks (I have an embarrassingly large attempt at a CPU lying
around somewhere) because of the lack of breadth to the stories that can be
told, but eventually, I very much hit the end of the interesting and
challenging things and reached the point of "this would take a dozen hours to
do and wouldn't be _fun_." It's not much fun if you can't fail, and the
mastery ceiling of DF is much lower than most people think it is; the self-
imposed challenges are artificial ones, and while mechanically they can be
interesting, I do not find them fulfilling when I know how it's all supposed
to work.

(Minecraft would have this problem if not for the _tremendous_ mod support,
Forge, etc. that enables you to make what you want of it. Crash Landing is
still one of my favorite things in games--not because of the use of HQM, but
rather just the profoundly different environment and options for exploring the
same rules in a very different milieu.)

------
snake_plissken
Dwarf Fortress is a truly special endeavor. The gameplay is unique and
engrossing. And completely maddening, in a the best way. The quirky bitmap
graphics are mesmerizing. Each time you start a new game, it's a new world
with new areas to explore and new chances to make your kingdom last longer
than the last one. But the music! Amazing! Honestly the music is my favorite
part.

In a lot of ways DF is similar to the early days Minecraft. It was just
"special". You can get lost in it for hours on end.

Girlfriend - "You want to go out tonight?" Me - "Nah I'm good. I am just going
to play Dwarf Fortress for 10 hours..." Girlfriend - "Well I am going to go to
Dim Sum Garden!" Me "Iiee decisions, decisions!"

------
KirinDave
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...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBrdUj1adIBD-
vgUodaaxebcdqQ4oEWtg)

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.

~~~
clock_tower
If memory serves, there's even an O'Reilly Press book on this -- "Getting
Started with Dwarf Fortress" or thereabouts. (And it's for two major releases
ago!)

~~~
richard_mcp
I have a copy of the book. It was pretty good when it came out and the author
promised to update the digital version as the game changed.

------
dpeck
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 and you find yourself doing dumb things
to counteract that. The fun bits fade away and it gets tedious.

To me, DF is best looked at and enjoyed as an amazing art project and an
inspiration for other game devs.

~~~
ixtli
The real problem is the creator's stubbornness in not including others in his
effort. Even if he doesn't want to release the source he should put some
effort into making components pluggable so that others can do the boring work
of, say, refactoring the UI.

~~~
VLM
Its a conceptual continuity issue. Like claiming the Mona Lisa would have been
a better painting if the painter abstracted the girl out so Bob Ross could
paint the trees in the background.

~~~
logfromblammo
Yeah, well, the original developer never got the frame rate high enough for
Mona Lisa to ever actually be playable.

------
aresant
>First time playing dorf

>Make a nice, tidy fort, everything is going great

>Out of booze and it’s winter

>”Oh well, the farm’s still working” >suddenly

>”Urist McFarmer has gone berserk!” >and, soon after

>”New migrants have arrived.”

>there are like 3 children with them

>they are on the entrance, where there’s a gigantic moat and a bridge

>Urist McFarmer is on the other side

>he pulls the lever to the bridge

>all of the children are on the bridge

>they fall down

>they are all still alive, they fell like 12 z-levels though

>the moat is almost completely red

>they’re crawling around, everything is broken oh god

>Urist McFarmer is finally put down by one of the miners

>children aren’t even starving or dehydrating, they’re just crawling there

>have to lock up the non-important people in a room so that they don’t
diminish the food reserves

>the nobles are sad now, the miasma is getting to them

>dump the corpses in the moat, including urist mcfarmer

>the children are puking and still crawling, not even starving or dehydrating,
just endless agony

>the migrants are still on the other side, they die too

>the only people left alive are a few miners and a farmer

>and the children

>they never die

via [http://dfstories.com/](http://dfstories.com/)

~~~
shostack
>children aren’t even starving or dehydrating, they’re just crawling there

>dump the corpses in the moat, including urist mcfarmer

>the children are puking and still crawling, not even starving or dehydrating,
just endless agony

As morbid as it may be, I think I may have pieced together why the children
didn't starve...

------
aymeric
It is unfortunate that a game as famous as Dwarf Fortress only makes so little
in money:
[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=152358.0](http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=152358.0)

~~~
ta0o0o0
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 
      donations drop that would likely result.
    

[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)

~~~
lmm
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.

~~~
thedavinci2000
Serious question. Why would it not be easy?

~~~
moron4hire
There are still a lot of employers who see time spent on your own venture as a
gap in employment history. I mean, I guess it literally is, since you aren't
an "employee". But they completely discount any applicable experience during
that time.

~~~
bduerst
The founder Tarn Adams has a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Stanford, so I don't
think any of his potential employers will mind that he spent his time working
on a fantasy economic simulator of this scope.

------
vessenes
The only thing that is frustrating for me about DF (well ex-game frustration,
not in-game) is that getting visualizations and interface changes in is gated
by Toady. I dearly wish that this part could be taken over by the open source
community; it would let him keep writing the simulator, and we would get some
amazing VR-friendly worlds on top of the simulator.

I know that he doesn't want to support an open developer community because he,
you know, wants to write his simulator and make it even more incredibly
awesome than it is, but if only there were a way to get that code unlinked and
into an API, it would make millions of people very happy.

------
AndyKelley
I tried to play this game, and I think that the interface is a complete
bottleneck. Once you have more than 12 dwarves, which you are completely
intended to do, it's tedious and difficult to access them, organize them, and
generally, the interface to the simulator you have is like drinking through a
straw. I think the fun would be massively improved with making it easier to
interact with the simulator.

~~~
sageabilly
Check out Dwarf Therapist. It is what makes the game accessible IMHO.

~~~
AndyKelley
I've heard this suggestion before, and I may have even attempted to install it
at one point, but this is exactly my point. To really have a good gameplay
experience one must turn to community-made tools. But the game is not open
source, and really, it's kind of a fundamental user experience problem with
the game. Seems like it might be worth putting into the actual game.

I'm hoping that in 10-20 years, the devs have a change of heart about the
importance of the user interface, or they open source the code so the
community can _really_ step in, and then I'll give it another shot :-)

~~~
intended
If you are on HN, it's quite likely you will find the issues trivial to
overcome. The support tools really are ridiculously good now, and you'll find
that the cost of running them is ideological, while the pay off is magical, if
not inspirational.

Minecraft came after notch got irritated with DF. The entire dwarf-lite genre
is inspired from wanting to do DF better.

Now DF has been improving it's adventure more gaming, something which had been
vestigial for 90% of the dwarf fortress Dev cycle.

Take a look at the kisat dur thread (Dwarven martial arts) on the bay12games
forum.

Go for it, you can always put it down and come back later.

------
ctdonath
Summary of the maddening complexity of Dwarf Fortress:
[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/4/40/FunComic.png](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/4/40/FunComic.png)

~~~
jdmichal
Also, for those that aren't in on the joke:

In Dwarf Fortress lingo, "Fun" is a euphemism for losing. As in, Dwarf
Fortress is a lot of Fun.

~~~
wingerlang
I don't think so. Because at the end the Df guy has lots of fun. I think it is
just intended that once you get over the many many deaths, you will find the
fun.

~~~
jdmichal
This isn't something I made up.

[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php?title=DF2014:Fun&redi...](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php?title=DF2014:Fun&redirect=no)

~~~
wingerlang
I understand, I just don't think the comic was referring to that.

------
lips
Home of the best bug tracker ticket titles evar:

"Lye in wood barrels can't be used for making soap"

"Dwarves upset from not seeing family not in fort"

"Zombies start conversation with necromancer adventurer who tries to sleep in
their house"

~~~
Zikes
More: [https://twitter.com/TheStrangeLog](https://twitter.com/TheStrangeLog)

------
awakeasleep
People who really 'got into' DF- What age were you when it clicked?

~~~
snerbles
Eight years ago, at 22.

------
sageabilly
Anyone else compare every other game they play to Dwarf Fortress? The only
game I've ever played that even comes close (IMHO) is The Long Dark, and
that's only because I know the studio pours their heart and soul into the
game.

So glad this is still going. I hope development never stops!

------
codewithcheese
I've seen some mods that make Minecraft beautiful, I wonder if the same can be
done for DF?

~~~
brianwawok
There are some GUIs for it... but I think the complexity is so high it would
be a lot of work ;)

------
dccoolgai
Word to those who want to begin their DF journey: counter to what you might
expect for a text-based game, DF can chew a lot of CPU cycles. I always pick
small world size and very short world history at worldgen, bc the
larger/longer worlds have a lot more stuff for the game to keep track of and
can slow it down, IME.

Strike the earth!

------
jmnicolas
There has been a lot of articles about emacs on HN recently, so now I wonder
why Dwarf Fortress is not an emacs mode ;-)

------
listic
What language is Dwarf Fortress written in?

It is closed source, isn't it? I assume it is, like ADOM, to keep the secrets.
Though there is an obvious solution: you could separate the game data from the
engine, and open-source the engine, for public benefit and participation.

~~~
db48x
It's written in C++.

There are no secrets to keep; it's not like an RPG where the ending can be
spoiled. Well, not really any secrets, anyway. Anyone who lives in a country
where Tolkien ever published a book will have some ideas about what to expect.

It's really just about creative control. He has let people help in limited
ways in the past though. There were some improvements to the way it uses the
OpenGL API and to the way it renders fonts (it can now use TrueType fonts for
most purely-textual elements) that were contributed by a fan. he later stated
that although it was a good improvement to the game, it wasn't an unalloyed
good. The changes _worked_, but he no longer understood that part of the code
very well.

------
nodivbyzero
Is Dwarf Fortress open source?

