
Dwarf Fortress: An actual look at graphical improvements - skibz
https://steamcommunity.com/games/975370/announcements/detail/2082292794864361478
======
jtolmar
I never thought the ASCII graphics were a big problem in Dwarf Fortress; once
you get used to it using a bunch of symbols as decoration, almost all the
weird stuff ends up being things you placed yourself. On the other hand, the
complete lack of UX consistency - whether a given submenu will use
primary/secondary cursor keys, nested menus, or a pile of hotkeys - is a lot
harder to deal with.

~~~
zionic
I completely disagree. The ASCII "graphics" (if you can really call them that)
are a huge reason why I've never even considered playing it. I've read all
about the mechanics, and they're interesting. I just don't understand why
anyone would spend so much time developing so many intricate features when the
presentation is so poor.

~~~
Natsu
The thing is, it's really not. Granted, I always used the Lazy Newbie Pack
which gave you basic tiles, but once you get used to ASCII, things tend to be
a lot easier. Also, this is a detailed simulation, so things move a _lot_
faster if you're not spending CPU on graphics.

Remember, each creature has a bunch of parts with individual health, each tile
can get stained by various materials (that can spread disease) and everything
is made of various materials with all sorts of mostly-realistic properties. I
mean, DF is the _sole_ reason you can find the solid density of Saguaro rib
wood on the internet and the value came from an empirical test of a small cube
of Saguaro rib wood. It's in the DF raws.

So yeah, you might enjoy DF with a tile set like the LNP if you like the
mechanics. But it's a super-complicated game so it takes a while to learn to
control things, to learn the requirements to make various items, etc. It's not
a game for everyone, you do have to sink quite a lot of time into learning it
to enjoy it.

~~~
seanhunter
"this is a detailed simulation, so things move a lot faster if you're not
spending CPU on graphics"

Consider Battlefield or COD Warzone, which simulate the effects of actions by
multiple players (including projectile travel) in real time and still manage
upwards of 100FPS of near photorealistic graphics.

Or factorio, where people build insane megafactories with millions of machines
in them and yet performance is great and the graphics will still show you the
shadows of clouds passing overhead.

Dwarf fortress is a very interesting game and a very deep simulation, but the
idea that it's such a detailed simulation that graphics would not be possible
is just untrue.

Honestly the UX in dwarf fortress is generally just insanely user-hostile and
graphics are only a tiny symptom of that. And I say this as someone who plays
and enjoys the game - I've had forts with upwards of 100 idiots^Wdwarfs in
them, magma moats, breaching multiple cavern layers, surviving necromancer
seiges etc. But every time I play I have to go through that thing over again
where I try to figure out how to assign a pet to a person, when I set up a
military squad getting them to wear the right equipment is a total chore,
minecart UX is completely baffling. Also the simulation is very detailed but
kind of broken in lots of annoying ways, like female dwarfs randomly dropping
their babies while working, forgetting where they put them and then freaking
out, random tantrum spirals because someone went out in the rain and so just
decides to murder their colleagues etc.

~~~
Accujack
>Consider Battlefield or COD Warzone, which simulate the effects of actions by
multiple players (including projectile travel) in real time and still manage
upwards of 100FPS of near photorealistic graphics.

>Or factorio, where people build insane megafactories with millions of
machines in them and yet performance is great and the graphics will still show
you the shadows of clouds passing overhead.

Compared to DF, both of those are an incredibly simple simulation that doesn't
lend itself to emergent game play. If you're trying to make the argument that
they're just as complicated and still have fancy graphics, that's not the
case. DF is far, far, beyond anything in those "simulations" in terms of the
back end.

I lament the lack of graphics in DF not because the UI is awful... I've played
worse, and in fact Fallout 4's builder interface comes to mind... but because
it's incomplete. Certain things that have shown up in third party utilities
like Dwarf Therapist are nearly impossible to do without, making the base game
more or less unplayable after a release until the third party stuff catches
up.

A lot of what you mention regarding tantrum spirals has been fixed in the new
release... the issues with dwarf emotions are much more balanced now. It's
still the same game, though, so I haven't gotten decades into a fort yet, but
I'm hopeful it'll be worth playing beyond the point it was in the past where
things spiraled into angsty dwarf death.

~~~
serf
>Certain things that have shown up in third party utilities like Dwarf
Therapist are nearly impossible to do without, making the base game more or
less unplayable after a release until the third party stuff catches up.

I called this Kerbal or Skyrim Syndrome amongs friends.

Games that are no longer playable vanilla after you've had the luxuries of
some of the simple convenience addons.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Eagerly awaiting the graphical version to finally be available on Steam so
that I can buy it and throw some money their way.

I know the regular version has been available for free forever, but the ASCII
graphics have always been a turn-off. I'm not opposed to MUD-style graphics in
general, Dwarf Fortress is just so _dense_ with stuff that I found I spent
most of my time just trying to figure out what was going on.

~~~
stevens32
If it's encouraging at all - after some hours into the game the ASCII actually
starts looking like what they represent, enough that even when you see a new
character given its context you can figure out what it's meant to represent
without really thinking about it.

~~~
alpaca128
It's a bit like the Matrix. At first it's an overwhelming amount of mostly
tiny green symbols and after a while things make more sense.

I'm definitely looking forward to this graphical version, though. And hoping
that one day the game will even support multiple threads, but that's probably
wishful thinking.

------
raytracer
Don't let Dwarf Fortress put you off ASCII graphic games if Dwarf Fortress is
the first you've played. I tried DF a while back but didn't have the time
available to get comfortable with it.

I found Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead much easier to get into. As a new Cataclysm
DDA player I spent most of my time learning how to survive in the early days
of a zombie apocalypse. Finding food, learning how to craft weapons, what the
zombies are capable of.

In one game I found a large mansion in the woods. There were a few zombies
inside but not too many to prevent me from clearing it out. I set up camp in
one of the bedrooms. The mansion had loads of food, water, materials for
crafting. Good times!

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
[https://cataclysmdda.org/](https://cataclysmdda.org/)

~~~
autarch
CDDA also has a whole bunch of graphical options. I find it way easier to
parse that way and I think most players use the tilesets these days.

------
jshaqaw
One day when I am retired and my kids are grown up I will have the proper
bandwidth for DF and play it. Until them I am an admiring fanboy from afar.

~~~
xtracto
That's my thought but for Eve Online. I've read and heard about it, and the
idea of it fascinates me. However I just dont have the time required to
dedicate to it.

~~~
edem
Same for DF and EVE. :D

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rstupek
The biggest single thing DF can do after graphical improvements is fixing the
performance, perhaps make it not single threaded. I've been able to get past
the graphics, and work through using the keyboard menus, but having the
fortress come to a screeching crawl when there's a ton of things going on is
when I stopped playing.

~~~
MperorM
I picked up dwarf fortress 7-8 years ago when I was in eighth grade, and have
been playing it on and off since. Performance is always what kills the game
for me.

The game is supposed to be hard, but if you at all know what you're doing it's
very easy to keep your fort well, and the only real risk of losing your fort
is from you intentionally doing stuff that puts your fort at risk. You
literally can defeat entire enemy armies by capturing them all with cage
traps, for example.

This I can forgive.

Dwarf fortress is all about the crazy stupid ideas you can come up with after
all. Want to build any interesting structures? Prepare for your dwarfs to get
stuck every conceivable way one could possibly get stuck trying to build a
simple wall. It can be incredibly tedious to accomplish something that ideally
shouldn't take more than a few simple commands.

All of this I could live with. The performance without fail is what eventually
kills my will to play. Want to do cool stuff with magma? Watch the game slow
to a crawl. Want to run a big society? Watch the game slow to a crawl. Want to
do anything remotely interesting? Watch the game slow to a crawl.

People go to obscene lengths to keep their performance, such as generating
atom smashers that will 'delete' unwanted stuff from their fort completely, so
the game stops wasting energy rendering 5000 rocks and how each dwarf is
reminded about their childhood traumas as every rock reminds them of how their
father died from a falling rock.

This game is so close to being great but falls short at the very last mile
because the basic gameplay is fundamentally flawed. This is a simulator first,
game second and it shows :(

~~~
ahefner
Concerning it being a simulator first and a game second, that's definitely
true, but it makes me wonder if the very old 2D versions (before there was a
Z-axis or fancy worldgen) was more enjoyable as a game. I didn't start playing
until after those versions, but I get the impression there was a lot more
consistent narrative as to what you discover while tunneling into the
mountain, as opposed to so much depending on the worldgen.

------
golergka
I spent significant time in DF in the early part of 2010s, but in the end
found that it's just too much to micromanage - the game (at the time, at
least) didn't offer much help with it, and after awhile, all the clutter
really got in the way.

If you like this kind of game, but would want something not as demanding, try
Rimworld. Out of all dwarffortresslikes (I don't think that calling them Dward
Fortress clones is fair), it's got a good amount of polish, reasonable 2d
graphics (nothing too fancy, but looks nice) and most importantly, you don't
feel as if you have to manually tweak every little thing. You still can, you
just don't have to.

~~~
bllguo
the key thing about rimworld for me is the multiplayer mod. there are many
things i am willing to sacrifice for that experience.

~~~
LilBytes
Unsure if RimWorld is getting multiplayer or if they're planning on developing
a new multi-player game, but they're advertising for a role that inc's multi-
player experience at the moment.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/fpe522/tynan_is_l...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/fpe522/tynan_is_looking_for_multiplayerfocused_developers/)

------
Der_Einzige
There is already a pretty excellent 3D isometric front end for Dwarf Fortress.
The name eludes me but it's well known within the community.

However - I found that many parts of Dwarf Fortress disappointed me (and I was
hyped as heck to play it - given that I'm a fan of Nethack, DCSS, Cataclysm,
and basically any rougelike or rougelite). The game just feels extremely
unfinished. Adventure mode is a total joke. Performance is totally garbage.
The creator refuses to open source his game (no one will laugh at you man!).
The documentation is horrific (no one quite knows how some of the BASIC SKILLS
work or what they do)

It's got the potential to be a true gem, but right now, it's like an uncut
diamond in the rough.

Might as well just play Rimworld. Rimworld solved every single problem that
Dwarf Fortress had and its world is more compelling to me.

~~~
bmn__
> pretty excellent 3D isometric front end for Dwarf Fortress. The name eludes
> me

[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Utility:Stonesense](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Utility:Stonesense)

It's not a complete front end. It cannot control the game, just provide a
visualisation of the world.

------
bootlooped
Seems like simply upgrading some of the characters to equivalent emoji would
have been a big improvement. I know many people don't like emoji, but for the
most part they are pretty universal and easy to understand.

~~~
Phrodo_00
This is not really needed. The game doesn't actually use ascii output, it
renders the text (windows terminals would probably be too slow), and it
supports graphic packs than can show the dwarves as actual pictures of
dwarves. The biggest problem is when a glyph is reused for multiple things, as
in that case the graphic has to pick one of them or stay generic.

~~~
bmn__
> The biggest problem is when a glyph is reused for multiple things, as in
> that case the graphic has to pick one of them or stay generic.

Solution: [https://github.com/mifki/df-twbt](https://github.com/mifki/df-twbt)

This is included in various content packs, so setting this up manually is
optional.

> The game doesn't actually use ascii output, it renders the text (windows
> terminals would probably be too slow)

Linux and OS X terminals are fast enough. The init.txt setting
[PRINT_MODE:TEXT] switches the renderer to ncurses.

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d4mi3n
Nice to see the classic getting some modern graphics. I love text based games,
but something as complex as DF really benefits from graphics that can make it
easier to determine what is going on on the screen.

~~~
nomel
My main DF consumption is through Kruggsmash playthroughs/stories on Youtube
[1], so I don't live it, but I know I would would enjoy watching the game more
if I knew which of the more than 30 creatures the "C" that I'm looking at
represents [2].

[1] Kruggsmash:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaifrB5IrvGNPJmPeVOcqBA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaifrB5IrvGNPJmPeVOcqBA)

[2] Creature characters:
[https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Creature](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Creature)

------
xyzal
In case you dislike Steam, take note Dwarf Fortress Premium is also available
at Itch: [https://kitfoxgames.itch.io/dwarf-
fortress](https://kitfoxgames.itch.io/dwarf-fortress)

------
archgoon
Dwarf Fortress strikes me as a game that would benefit from a strong engine /
UI split, with an API for querying the world state.

That said, DFHack is probably sufficient for this purpose.

[https://docs.dfhack.org/en/stable/](https://docs.dfhack.org/en/stable/)

~~~
Octopodes
I haven't used it, but Dwarf Fortress Remote for iOS seems to accomplish this
somehow; the whole UI is iOS native.

Obviously there's no official API, but the developer has somehow managed to
achieve something similar.

[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dwarf-fortress-
remote/id100366...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dwarf-fortress-
remote/id1003660287)

~~~
rashkov
I just got this, thanks to you. Appreciate it!

------
starpilot
Next step: going 3d
[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=167533.0](http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=167533.0)

A raytraced DF front end would be breathtaking.

~~~
zimpenfish
Get someone to write a DF to Minecraft map converter and then use Mineways to
export to Blender? (Admittedly, this won't be a real-time affair...)

~~~
bmn__
only works on old versions

[https://github.com/TroZ/DF2MC](https://github.com/TroZ/DF2MC)

[https://github.com/Thutmose/dorfgen](https://github.com/Thutmose/dorfgen)

------
ultrasandwich
The actual changelog of this game is legend.

\- "Dwarves form grudges with animals"

\- "Flying creatures stop flying, fall to the ground, and explode"

\- "Knocked out teeth dont bleed"

\- "Rodent men don't use their new teeth to bite."

\- "Eyes can't be gouged out"

[https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/changelog_page.p...](https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/changelog_page.php)

------
Waterluvian
If you like the Ascii aesthetic, check out Cogmind. It has amazing Ascii
graphics. Full animations.

------
pengaru
Having curiously perused the source for one of Tarn's earlier games, Liberal
Crime Squad [0], and running away in horror, I'm really curious what the
source for DF looks like... especially considering for how long they've
plugged away at it.

Looking at LCS source was a lesson in how unimportant good programming can be
when it comes to making a fun game. But I still can't bring myself to shed all
my hygienic programming practices whenever I sit down to hack on a toy. It's
really kind of frustrating, since it does add significant time to the
development process from waffling about good names and clean abstractions.

[0]
[https://sourceforge.net/projects/lcsgame/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/lcsgame/)

------
edem
I think the problem is not the ASCII. It is the UX. I've been playing DF for
years and what made the game for me from horrifying (not the complexity, but
the UX!) to bearable is DFHack! It fixes a lot of the UX issues (not all of
them of course) and obviates the need to use 3rd party tools like Dwarf
Therapist. I also enabled TWBT and added a nice color theme. Take a look
[here]([https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/469471886598995968/55...](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/469471886598995968/556182297989349377/unknown.png)).
I think the graphical tileset is kinda...empty and it doesn't hold that much
information as the ASCII.

------
tveita
I didn't know they were doing a graphics update, this looks great!

It will be interesting to see what they do with the interface. I've thought
before that a complete mapping and redesign of all Dwarf Fortress screens and
actions would be material enough for an entire thesis on UX.

------
koverda
One thing worth checking out if you're looking for DF-Lite with nice graphics:
Odd Realm.

------
nineteen999
I wonder how this will affect the performance; last time I played DF it was
pretty much single-threaded and the performance would tank noticeably once
your colony grew to around 100+ dwarves.

Granted, it's been about 10 years since I played it.

~~~
empath75
I don't think the graphics will add significantly to the work the simulation
is doing.

~~~
nineteen999
No, but they are presumably going to add a little extra time per frame over
the very basic display it uses now. It's certainly not going to make it any
faster.

