
The Brief, Incredibly Poetic Life of Bañec Hazyblockades: A Dwarf Fortress Diary - smacktoward
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/06/28/the-brief-and-incredibly-poetic-life-of-banec-hazyblockades-a-dwarf-fortress-diary/
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mikekchar
If you are curious about Dwarf Fortress and want to understand the attraction
without necessarily grinding through learning how to play the game, I _highly_
recommend watching some of the play throughs on Youtube by Kruggsmash:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/kruggsmash/playlists](https://www.youtube.com/user/kruggsmash/playlists)

He is currently illustrating his adventures and it is nothing short of
amazing. It's hard to know where to suggest starting, but basically he began
his current story telling and illustration technique in Steelclutches Part 2.
That's actually adventure mode, though, so it might not be the best place to
start. The current series, Monster Killer, is stand-alone so you could
probably start there.

However, one particular special episode it worth watching, which is the first
Holiday special:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiy8zCvD_1U&t=3s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiy8zCvD_1U&t=3s)

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
Thanks for sharing, I just watched Monsterkiller episode 1 and it was
hilarious and really entertaining.

I'm a bit lost as to what many of the sprites are, and I'm still unclear on
many of the game's mechanics, but hopefully things become clearer over time.

~~~
mikekchar
I've been playing the game for several years and that still describes me :-).
Although, he uses a custom font -- normally it would be only characters in
codepage 473. He's modified it so that some of the items in the game look
closer to what you might expect. Quite a lot of people like his font for the
game, but personally I prefer to have just normal characters.

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epaga
A perfect time to whip out the sad story of one of my dwarves. Important to
note that NONE of the details in this story are embellished, they are all
simulated in-game:

I needed to tap a source of water to create a nice waterfall in my dining
room. Everything was prepared: the waterfall would fall through the dining
room, and then a channel under the dining room led off the side of the map
through a fortification. All I needed to do was open the wall of the tunnel
which was touching my water source.

Feeling too lazy to channel in from above (and slightly evil), I decided to go
ahead and sacrifice a dwarf for the effort. I had the dwarf wall itself in and
then open the wall. Two seconds later multiple bad things were revealed about
this decision:

The dwarf was a mother carrying around her small child.

The water was under high pressure.

I had forgotten to make a floodgate to stop the water if needed.

The water shot out of the wall, instantly killing the baby and smashing the
mom against the wall of the tunnel. She was dragged along by the water, fell
down the waterfall and was pushed up against the fortification on the edge of
the level with two broken legs and a bruised spleen. The baby's corpse was
caught under the waterfall right underneath the dining room and wasn't going
anywhere. The mother kept trying to run upstream but was unable to.

I felt pretty bad at this point. But thinking there was not much I would be
able to do since the mother would certainly die soon anyways, I just tried to
quiet my bad conscience and focus on other things, awaiting the inevitable
message the mother had died.

A day later the baby's corpse started to fill my dining room up with miasma,
making me have to wall out the waterfall to keep my dwarves from vomiting.
Quite poetic justice, really: the stench of death was on my waterfall.

I was still waiting for the message that the mom had died. It didn't come.

After a week of game time or so I looked to see what she was doing and my jaw
hit the floor. She was FISHING. The mom was fishing to stay alive while
drinking the water. She was in an obviously really bad mood having witnessed
death and the decomposition of her child. But she was barely staying sane
because she was being "comforted by a lovely waterfall". That did it for me. I
finally decided to launch a rescue mission to save her. Not 2 seconds after I
had given the command to dig a tunnel to where she was, she went insane and
died of thirst shortly after. I was too late.

Her name was Môsom.

~~~
encrystation
>NONE of the details in this story are embellished, they are all simulated in-
game

This is the crucial thing that distinguishes DF stories from LP writeups of
other games. Other games provide maybe some suggestive details and you have to
read between the lines. DF stories have to be pruned down from the huge amount
of detail in the world.

~~~
IggleSniggle
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead also gives this deep simulation experience in the
form of an ascii survival game.

You’ll be hopped up on cocaine trying to offset the painkilling effects of the
opioids, so you can maintain the necessary concentration to install a
nightvision cybernetic enhancement directly into your eye, when a once
domesticated hungry dog stops by and sees you as a regrettable alternative to
starving. Knowing you won’t survive the encounter in your current state, you
throw a grenade at it just to be on the safe side. Except, you didn’t throw it
cause in your euphoria you decided to take a little micronap.

Or: you build a freaking TANK powered entirely by an array of solar panels. It
doesn’t move very fast or far given its power source, so you just let it roll
forward on its own while you read a book from before the cataclysm about How
to Win Friends and Influence People (in case you ever actually meet anyone).
While you’re reading, you accidentally crash at 5mph into a wall. You get out
to repair the minor damage, and a zombie grabs you, and hundreds more are
spilling out. If only you were in your tank...you bludgeon the zombie with
your book and think about how to Win Friends and Influence People.

~~~
WalterGR
To save people some googling:

Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataclysm:_Dark_Days_Ahead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataclysm:_Dark_Days_Ahead)

Home page: [https://cataclysmdda.org/](https://cataclysmdda.org/)

Github: [https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-
DDA](https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA)

Stable releases: [https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-
DDA/releases](https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/releases)

Daily builds:
[https://cataclysmdda.org/#downloads](https://cataclysmdda.org/#downloads)

~~~
veli_joza
Stable releases are very old. 'Experimental' builds are very stable and most
players update to newest build regularly. Some prefer to use a launcher for
automatic updates: [https://github.com/remyroy/CDDA-Game-
Launcher/releases](https://github.com/remyroy/CDDA-Game-Launcher/releases)

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wasx
Check out Boatmurdered for a look at how a dwarven fortress spirals into
amazing and beautiful chaos: [https://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-
Boatmurdered/Introducti...](https://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-
Boatmurdered/Introduction/)

That version is very, very old however and doesn't reflect current gameplay
style or mechanics, however the stories still unfold pretty much the same way.

~~~
seszett
For me, Roomcarnage is one of the best Dwarf Fortress stories. It's presented
as a set of imgur albums, listed here:
[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=139393](http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=139393)

It's also a recent enough version, with gameplay similar to the latest ones,
and I find the illustrations and writing style to make the whole thing very
enjoyable. It might still get updated in the future, though the pace of
updates has now slowed down considerably.

~~~
brazzy
Given the most recent update, it seems pretty certain the next one will be the
last... but I am quite curious about it.

~~~
Bartweiss
I'm not up on DF's internals, and basic Googling doesn't really clarify to an
outsider - what's so big with the current update, and why would it make the
next one a final release?

~~~
PebblesRox
I think they’re talking about Roomcarnage updates, not DF updates.

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intended
This article catches one of those typical moments of dwarf fortress.

A moment where you are mining through the menus of something new you haven't
tried before, and then being gobsmacked by the options available to you.

In this case, when the author got to looking at his list of possible actions
he finds that he has a huge list of poems he can recite.

And then you can actually recite them to the audience and have people respond
to it.

By all criteria of code and project management that's just a huge waste of
resources to code up.

But it is so much fun to read.

What bugs me a bit about DF stories of late is that I don't see many which
engage with the new and weird mechanics the game has introduced.

Maybe I'm not looking hard enough but I've seen very few videos/gifs of dances
in the game, or even people messing around to show what that bizarre musical
instrument the game generated was like. (I remember something like a stone
keyboard/glass organ)

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pavel_lishin
No Dwarf Fortress comment section is complete without a link to Tim Denee's
excellent Bronzemurder and Oilfurnace.

[https://www.timdenee.com/bronzemurder](https://www.timdenee.com/bronzemurder)

[https://www.timdenee.com/oilfurnace](https://www.timdenee.com/oilfurnace)

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jdcarter
If you like the idea of Dwarf Fortress but want more sci-fi and less ASCII,
check out Rimworld. The game has a similar bent towards story-telling with
crazy events that befall your beloved colonists. It's far less daunting to the
newcomer than DF.

That said, this diary is great. "The goal is simple: try to survive and thrive
in Adventurer mode of Dwarf Fortress by relying mostly on the poetry and
language skills." Oh this is going to be good...

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openasocket
I've always been amazed by all that interactivity and depth that DF can
provide procedurally. And the amazing behaviors the NPCs can exhibit. How do
you program something like this? It just seems like there are so many
interacting layers of complexity and nuance. Does anyone know any good sources
on how one programs an NPC like this to interact in such a complex
procedurally generated world?

~~~
aeorgnoieang
Keep in mind that the lone developer has been continually (?) working on DF
for more than a decade. I suspect that's the key ingredient.

~~~
lainga
Tarn considers DF his life's work and intends to work on it "until it's done",
possibly for the rest of his life. That's dedication.

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henryoz
Dwarf Fortress is so wonderfully rich and incomprehensibly dense. Plus, the
patch notes are so varied that they make for some fun found poetry:
[https://medium.com/@henryoz/issues-a-dwarf-fortress-found-
po...](https://medium.com/@henryoz/issues-a-dwarf-fortress-found-
poem-4a6c3cb33232)

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jcranendonk
I don't have the patience to actually play DF, but I always love reading
people's play-throughs.

~~~
VectorLock
Me too. I occasionally read them and try to play and the whole process just
feels bad. I'm not averse to hard games, I ascended in Nethack but I think I
rather just be a spectator for this one. Sort of like EVE Online.

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intended
This comment captures one of those moments which makes dwarf fortress.

Plumbing some odd appendage of the program, going through various menus and
options and then having that moment of incredulity as you see a ridiculous set
of options appear where you expect none.

In this case the op is fiddling around with being a poet.

When it comes to recite poetry, he finds his character has pre learned a large
number of poetry, all of which is of course produceduraly generated.

And behind it, you see how the songs have been influenced by different
cultures (the enslaved goblins, and ruling dwarf cultures)

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pavel_lishin
Is there a way to subscribe to this particular series, via RSS or email or
anything?

edit: hm, looks like my best option is an RSS feed for the "dwarf fortress"
tag: [https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/dwarf-
fortress/feed/](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/dwarf-fortress/feed/)

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forkandwait
Are there any roguelikes designed specifically for story generation? DCSS is
probably the most playable but with the least interesting stories, DF may be
the inverse.

