Well here we are again.
Yes, it’s that time again. 34 days from part III, meaning a total of 120 days form “a few weeks”. The newest Dwarf Fortress update is upcoming, and a story may eventually be written. There are still a few things in the way.
Most importantly, the lack of an update. Second most importantly, the 13th of september this year. The day Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad is finally available. If you do not know what it is exactly, look it up. Good chance it will be the most realistic war game to date. A list of features can be found here.
Some more stuff. That one guy has (by what I hear) completed the Portal 2 co-op with someone else, so that is no longer an issue.
Losing is fun!
And lastly, I have decided to unravel what Dwarf Fortress exactly is to the people here. I must admit, it would be impossible to explain it in the space I have available. It must be experienced to truly know.
“Losing is fun” is the official motto of the game.
First, some links to stories that are good to know about, they give a rather good impression of DF and they speak for themselves.
Boatmurdered (More or less a must read)
Headshoots
Second, I will attempt to explain some of the features and possibilities of DF, and give some clue of what the community is like.
Dwarf Fortress is an extremely in-detail game about leading a bunch of dwarves to make a fortress. It has somewhere been described as “playing god with sentient legos”, which isn’t very far from the truth. It creates a fantasy world to play in, complete with geological stone layers, plants, civilizations, different beasts, both randomly generated and fixed. The dwarves all have different appearances and personalities, which even have an impact on the game.
Oh, and it’s all in ASCII default.
The game itself is a micromanagers dream. For instance, in order to forge a steel sword you must do the following (in the early game, later you may use magma as a fuel source):
1. Mine some stone (give a dwarf a pickaxe and tell him where to mine) Both for building structures and some ore, for making the metal. Also, steel requires flux stones.
2. Build a wood furnace. You need coal in order to melt some metal, and also for refining iron into steel.
3. Chop some trees. Give a dwarf an axe and tell him which trees to chop.
4. Burn the logs, by giving orders to the wood furnace to do so. A dwarf with the correct labor enabled will pick up some wood and rush to the furnace to do this.
5. Build a smelter. Use the stone again.
6. Smelt some iron ore in your smelter. Orders, dwarves with labors enabled, the whole deal. For steel you will need two iron bars.
7. Combine the iron bar with a bar of charcoal from your wood furnace and a piece of flux stone (specific stones), to make a bar of pig iron. You will also need fuel.
8. Combine the pig iron with an iron bar, charcoal and flux. Fuel required. You get two bars of steel.
9. Build a forge. You will need fire-safe stone and an anvil.
10. Set orders for the forge to “forge a steel sword”. A dwarf with the labor enabled will get some steel, some fuel and forge it. Congratulations! With ten easy steps, one can make a steel sword! After another ten easy steps, you may even be able to equip it to your military.
Around all this, a… unique internet community has formed. Towards users, it is possibly the friendliest I know. All users, be they new or old, are treated as equals, and new members are accepted quickly as long as they behave themselves. All “Hi, I’m new :)” -type threads on the forums are quickly filled with useful advice, and never have I seen a “Pointless thread” -type post.
A thread in which the users attempt to figure out how we would explain ourselves to outsiders.
Towards the game, however, the community is extremely cruel. Here are a few examples of what the community has come up with…
Mermaid farming:
Mermaid bones were valuable. Very valuable. A well made mermaid skull totem could even be more valuable than a statue made out of solid gold. Do you see a pattern?
As dwarves refuse to butcher sentient beings, players would capture and air-drown merpeople simply to get their bones. The bodies would rot down into a pile of valuable bones, which could be used for crafting, and later trading.
It is unfortunately no longer possible. Bodies rot into a full skeleton, and merpeople bones are no longer that valuable. Oh well.
Dwarven Optometry:
When a civilian dwarf sees an enemy, they freak out and run. This may be a problem for the operators of siege weapons, as they are seen as civilians. The solution? Make sure the siege operatos do not see the enemy.
Many methods were tried: using traps to remove the eyes, but this was sort-of like roulette. It wasn’t reliable enough. The second option was to find a forgotten beast, a twisted creature from the deep, and hope it has poisons which rot eyes. This was more like russian roulette with a semi-automatic pistol.
Finally, the starter of this whole deal came up with a solution that pleased people enough: modding. He made elves to have blood which rots a dwarfs eyes. The community was pleased. Partially because, in the process of building the mod correctly, elves would explode into a cloud of boiling, eye-rotting blood-steam. He also made elves tameable, so dwarves could arrive to a fortress with pet elves.
Babyfall:
Fortresses often die of one of these to reasons: their FPS drops too low due to excess pathfinding, or internal reasons originating from unhappy dwarves. But, if a dwarf sees enough violent death, they become desesitized, and no longer care for bad events. A desensitized dwarf could watch as their entire family is brutally murdered by a group of goblins, and be extremely happy because of the beautiful window he saw it through.
But first a dwarf must be desensitized. This can be done by dropping things from a great hight into a meeting hall, where they explode into a pile of bloody bits and pieces. Combine this with getting rid of excess dwarves, and you have a babyfall.
Baby dwarves are thrown from a great hight, splatter all around a meeting hall, dwarves become desensitized and the FPS of the fort is saved. Neraly everyone wins.
Also, those little bits and pieces occasionally rot into a pile of bones. They can be used for crafts. Too bad baby bones are just as valuable as any other average bones.
Dwarf Fortress is an excellent, and complicated game, with cruel potential. Deal with it.
“The best way to explain the fanbase, is that we are debase, violent, OCD, and we schedule our psychotic breaks with train-station frequency. But, in all that, we are real. We don’t puff up, we don’t brag (ok we do), we don’t cheat and lie and troll (much). What we do is what we play, and we’re earnest in our endeavors and we’re open with our relationships to other fans. You want to know how to designate a stockpile? We’ll put you on the experimental multiplayer server and hold your hand. You need to kill a mayor very fast? We will outline the details of a magma purge system within ten minutes. Tired of tantrum spirals? We can engineer a death fall trap in your dining hall, organized and synchronized to encourage death at the times of highest foot traffic and designed so that none of the falling animals/migrants are accidentally saved by landing on a wandering dwarf.
We are sick. And we do it right.
The game itself also lends credence to the fanbase’s style. Your fort will die. It will. You will not win. You will only have fun as you come closer to failure. Your entire goal is to have fun, as the only measurable success of a fort is enjoyment. Got steel clad legendary axedwarves? Got a platinum plated dining hall with waterfalls? Got a magma-duct that ritually kills goblin sieges with clockwork precision? It doesn’t matter, because you will fail. The only measure of success, is how much you enjoyed the route to failure. That’s what makes Dwarf Fortress, and its players, so unique. We don’t strive to level up, or to get top-tier gear, or to finish the quests, or to earn achievements.
We play for fun. And we do it right.”
-Girlinhat, Dwarf Fortress player
Large amounts of info could not be described. As I mentioned previously, it must be experienced.
Thank you for enduring this wall of text.
Not logged in