Here's a question about Dwarf Fortress: I play a lot of roguelikes, which are a genre of similar games, insofar as they're relatively complex, keyboard-and-ASCII oriented games made by geeks for geeks. Like Dwarf Fortress, these tend to have accumulated a lot of developer-hours, and like Dwarf Fortress, these developer-hours tend to get channeled into adding complexity to the game rather than superficial polish, like graphics and interface.
But they vary in terms of their approach this complexity: some seem to always want to add more, seeing more complicatedness as always better, and end up feeling like they contain everything but the kitchen sink - complexity for complexity's sake. (Nethack, I'm looking at you.) Others add it only where it's justified by producing interesting gameplay decisions. (Brogue and Sil are rigorous about stripping out unneeded complexity and getting the maximum amount of subtlety and nuance from a stripped-back set of mechanics. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is more complex, but seems aware of the trade-offs around complexity, and is known for removing features as often as it adds them.)
Which of these camps does Dwarf Fortress fall into? There's a lot of complexity, features and mechanics there. Is it all justified, in terms of adding interest to gameplay? Or is just for complexity's sake?
If the history of Dwarf Fortress interests you, I recommend you check out the history of roguelike games (probably the nerdiest of all my passions.) Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, for example, is a beautiful illustration of applying open source software development tenets to a massive game, as dozens of contributors have continuously evolved and enhanced it over time (and its massively fun to boot.)
I've wanted to love Dwarf Fortress, but the fans sometimes come across like Stockholm Syndrome victims when you mention the UI and UX.
I mean I came at the game from a long history of playing Roguelikes, so the ASCII graphics weren't an immediate turnoff, but figuring out how to do anything is just plain daunting.
Also, there is a big difference between most Roguelikes and DF on the graphics front. In Rogue you start in a small room with just yourself and maybe a treasure or a monster. New monster icons are introduced slowly so you can learn them at a reasonable pace. In Dwarf Fortress you are apparently expected to learn dozens of symbols right from the start in addition to figuring out what keybinds do what and trying to figure out what you are supposed to be doing or if the fact that there are dozens of different kinds of rocks is important yet or not.
If there was ever a game crying out for a hand holding tutorial it is Dwarf Fortress.
Dwarf Fortress is more like if you liked Sim City but wished it was more like Nethack. It's quite a different beast, but you should give it a shot if that description sounds good. Also the UI is self-inconsistent and the learning curve is a cliff, so like... expect that going in.
If you haven't played other traditional roguelikes besides Nethack, I'd recommend giving them a shot. Brogue and Shiren The Wanderer are both focused on resource management and exploiting monster/item properties, which you'll have seen some of in Nethack. DCSS is more about streamlined tactical and strategic decision making in a dungeon.
Hmm interesting description there. From the OP article and things I've read previously, I'd say Dwarf Fortress is the epitome of focusing on the ends of the software rather than means of software developement.
Dwarf Fortress goes into depth to a truly magnificent, ridiculous degree. (I guess also in the non-ridiculous degree of having a 3D world instead of 2D ;)) It simulates a lot more, and thus more is possible in game and more weird and wonderful chain reactions can happen.
Well, Dwarf Fortress's scope is... impossible to match. I struggle to think of any game with even similar complexity. Making a Dwarf Fortress clone would take many years, however culling down the feature set (and the depth of each features) to the actual "fun bits" at least makes it possible. So it's not even cutting the breadth of features, but also their depth. No need for complex climate or economy simulations, etc. No need for insane descriptiveness of objects (save for artifacts). It's a lot of complexity that reduces its appeal to a lot of folks (though caters very well to a specific targeted audience). Dwarf Fortress with a touch interface and cute graphics won't magically broaden it's appeal -- the core game needs to be streamlined and no longer be daunting to newcomers.
For example, no massive world at worldgen with full history and legends. Most people don't want to deal with complexity, they just want an embark site to start in and get to work on. It takes a lot of time to create those things that the majority of folks would never notice or appreciate.
There's a lot of satisfaction with gathering/growing food, building basic shops and homes, defending against threats, creating a trade industry, and a bit of dungeoneering. However one of Dwarf Fortress's strength is it presents a lot of competing interests -- where you need to weigh building defenses with industry, etc. Plus the occasional "oh shit" moment where the game attempts to stomp on your sand castle.
Dwarf Fortress is a different kind of game from No Man's Sky or The Witcher 3. It has a huge learning curve and takes a lot of effort to play. For every amazing story that people crafted there are hundreds, maybe thousands of failed game attempts.
That's fine and purely procedurally generated games can be amazing (I'm working on one myself), but they are a different type of game play, and often attract a different kind of player. Not everyone wants to be a musician, some people just want to play rock band.
For open world exploration games in particular, in every single example I've seen, mixing in hand crafted world building with systemic game mechanics always provides a better experience.
Even a pale imitation of what Dwarf Fortress does would greatly enrich the game.
I think the problem is graphics. It's both easier and more time-consuming to fill a game with pretty graphics than to come up with procedurally generated history, economics, etc. That's why there are so many simple-graphics roguelikes and so many simple-graphics RPG's that provide incredible procedurally-generated content and incredible stories, respectively.
Respect to the developers for their effort. But I would never get into dwarf fortress because to me the idea is kind of insane. I get that it is fascinating to try and model complex
real-world behaviour into a video game. But the truth is you can spend 100 lifetimes worth of time perfecting these systems that try to appear like a physical world (but really aren't) by trying to preprare for every possible situation the player can get into. And in the end you don't even come close to preparing for 0.1% of the possibilites.
So on one end you are mercilessly sacrificing gameplay for complexity to the point where the game devolves into manual reading. And on the other hand the complexity is never going to be enough.
Maybe in the future AI Networks will be able to come up with convicing game-systems like in dwarf fortress on the fly to offer an illusion of complex emergent behaviour.
FYI, Dwarf Fortress is an ASCII-only roguelike, and the learning curve is as steep as the graphics are primitive. But the emergent gameplay is amazing.
If the inconsistent UI or graphics give you pause, I'd suggest taking a look at Rimworld, currently in Early Access on Steam (or available directly from the developer's site). It has some of the deep qualities of DF but is a bit more forgiving.
Same, I was a big fan of character-based roguelikes (and at the time, in the late 2000s, that was the format of most roguelikes), and while I was unfazed at the time by the character-based interface, the inconsistent menus and micronamanagement tired me out of Dwarf Fortress.
It needed various external tools to alleviate the painstaking manual labor that went into managing the colony, like macro generators for floor plans and the memory hacking of Dwarf Therapist to have high-level management of the colony, and all that with wacky menus.
Definitely agreed, but is there anything more complex than DF?
As a sidenote, to anyone who doesn't know the story of how Dwarf Fortress is being made, you should check it out. It's one guy, working full time on it, and managing to support himself and his brother through monthly donations. It's released completely free of charge, so this is just solely from people donating. That alone would be a pretty cool story, but when you look at the immense, mindboggling, ridiculously ambitious scale of the the planned finished game, it's incredible. He's basically trying to build a completely "generic fantasy world simulator", with procedurally generated world, history, etc. The amount of detail he goes into in this is amazing, and he has so much more planned. If you ever need to be inspired that one person can make a living doing what they love, or that you can actually implement features that are ambitious beyond most AAA developers' wildest dreams, look to Toady One.
I played NetHack for a long time and wanted something more. NetHack becomes pretty repetitious after a while. I tried various roguelikes and hit upon DF.
Also, I see Dwarf Fortress as the natural progression of programming games. As programmers, we always look to abstract away busywork. DF takes away the busywork of dungeon-building and hands it off to little applets.
Basically it became popular by word of mouth. I think the popularity of Minecraft led more people to hear about it, since Minecraft was said to be influenced by it. But as far as I know, it's always been a slow build, never went viral or became an overnight success.
But they vary in terms of their approach this complexity: some seem to always want to add more, seeing more complicatedness as always better, and end up feeling like they contain everything but the kitchen sink - complexity for complexity's sake. (Nethack, I'm looking at you.) Others add it only where it's justified by producing interesting gameplay decisions. (Brogue and Sil are rigorous about stripping out unneeded complexity and getting the maximum amount of subtlety and nuance from a stripped-back set of mechanics. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is more complex, but seems aware of the trade-offs around complexity, and is known for removing features as often as it adds them.)
Which of these camps does Dwarf Fortress fall into? There's a lot of complexity, features and mechanics there. Is it all justified, in terms of adding interest to gameplay? Or is just for complexity's sake?
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