Not sure why Dwarf Fortress is on the front page, but I will always upvote.
If you're intimidated by ASCII visuals, consider wishlisting the graphics release, scheduled for Dec 6, 2022: https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/
If you're intimidated by ASCII visuals, consider wishlisting the graphics release, scheduled for Dec 6, 2022: https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/
I call ONI my "dollhouse."
It's such a sleeper compared to similar games. The art and sound effects really elevate it. Klei has such a unique art style and it's really shown off. Also has a much more interesting "survival" curve than most; you'll be presented with many many hours of challenges trying to get a sustainable base, without cheap tricks like ever-escalating interruptions based on quantitative progress (looking at you, Rimworld.)
Dwarf fortress is the first thing since MUDing that's really scratched the imagination itch in quite that way and, as someone who has worked in game development themselves, I think it's something that is only possible if you keep to the lowest tech. If you use words or abstract symbols then each player will fill in the details themselves, usually in their head but sometimes in artwork (see Kruggsmash as an approachable example here[1]) which can be extremely fulfilling.
I hope to see the non-ASCII version work as a gateway drug to get more people into the imagination of what they're building. And I hope this didn't come off as ranty or judgemental - each person enjoys games in different ways... but low detail art has a way of really spurring the imagination on!
So you begin to do other things, mega projects are a common one.
In one of the last times I played, some invader had broken through my defenses and killed a couple of highly respected dwarves (one of whom was a skilled fighter), but finally came face to face with a young girl dwarf who confronted him in one of the dining halls and, though she lost a leg, managed to kill him (eventually recovering to grow up to be a skilled craftsdwarf). I had a some statues made of her, and most of them came out depicting the heroic deed in different levels of detail (so of course the best one was put up in that dining hall).
There's also a sort-of-exploit related to this, where if there's a stranger in your fortress whom you suspect of having a nefarious background, you can commission artwork of them and sometimes it will reveal malicious traits about them if you examine it. The artists always seem to have perfect knowledge of their subjects.
ASCII version will get the new UI Soon™
Personally I don't think the new look they're going with will be problem with imagination for me - the new look adds just enough detail that you can spot dwarf by their look alone but there is still plenty of space to imagine how exactly the described things look
Most days I preferred ONI due having to go way out of your way to commit war crimes, whereas in Rimworld it's just clicking a couple buttons.
Long story short it got upgraded from Emacs to IntelliJ IDEA.
But controls, controls are ridiculous. I can't just enjoy it. And I play very hard games, indie games, Ultima Online which you need to script own things to play properly. But DF is another beast.
Like, instead of going "select bed, make bedroom, repeat 40 times", you can just make rooms, put beds, doors, etc, then just select whole area and it will make a bedroom out of each of those rooms.
camera controls are normal WASD now, most of the things can be done with mouse, there are tabs on panels and hyperlinks in legend browser and thousand other little things.
It will be coming eventually to free ASCII version too
Why did Tarn need to put out a paid release?
(I think I know / I kinda remember, but hey - there's no better place to tell us why we should be helping a fellow geek)
It's probably true that if word got out that Tarn or Zack needed medical care, the donations would flow like water, but it's understandable wanting to prepare.
It bring up a lot of criticism of healthcare in the US which I don't quite understand. Yes, healthcare is expensive in the US, especially without insurance. It has been for a while, so dont be surprised when not having a regular income nor insurance puts you in a bad spot. It was poor planning as much as it is expensive healthcare.
It basically amounts to one day realizing "oh shit, $35,000/year and no health insurance isn't enough money. This is the fault of the United States."
This isn't the fault of the United States - the US has made a choice in how the game works and they weren't playing by the rules laid out for them to follow. The expected course was for them to work in some job that robs them of their free time to produce a work of this caliber and if they had done so they'd be just fine... and we wouldn't have dwarf fortress.
Beyond that, the United States doesn't owe people who make art in exchange for donations anything extra. We can argue about the merits of different healthcare systems but the point remains that they realized their plan was poor so they changed course - the United States inflicted no damage on them.
Providing correct healthcare to all definitely is a duty of any modern rich country. If Cuba can manage it so should the US. You are trying to hide how poor your healthcare system is under a thin political veneer.
It goes along with the whole "civilisation started when one human helped bind and heal the broken femur of another human", a quote which may or may not be able to be attributed to Margaret Mead.
The only thing that's usually considered otherwise is long-term stupid decisions such as smoking, etc.
They used to personally make a crayon drawing for each person who donated. They stopped in 2020, but I made sure to get one of the final ones before then: http://www.bay12games.com/support.html
My $10 was a small price to pay for all the hours of fun I got. (I'll surely buy the Steam version too though.)
So, this has been a game that's always fascinated me, though when trying to play myself I nope out within minutes.
On one hand, graphics might get me there -- and yet, even to me, it feels kinda wrong :)
Also most of the DF complexity comes organically during gameplay and not all at once - if all you do is set up food source and some bedrooms you already buy yourself a lot of time to fuck around. The discoverability of systems should also be much better
Or to put it another way, if I'm pretending to manage a fortress, losing because I was too focused on expansion and didn't stock enough food and ammunition to survive a siege can be fun. Losing because I was fully prepared but forgot how to tell my minions to raise the drawbridge and man the walls is just frustrating.
But yes, the new version has an entirely redone UI to greatly organize and simplify things.
The updates here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/975370 go into more details - there's even a tutorial!
https://steamcommunity.com/games/975370/announcements/detail...
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=8410
Bug title: "0008410: Crash due to zero-size weasel"
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