Dorf Fort (2020) | Hacker News Reader

Dorf Fort (2020)

androidarts.com

166 pointsFraterkes49 comments

I love looping at arne articles on his page http://androidarts.com/, especially his famicube page ! (I subscribed to his patreon a few years ago)

The one at the very bottom (illustration of one of these zany DF art descriptions) is the best ! xD

Wait, dwarf fortress is in 3D now?

For at least a decade.

I remember playing it in like 2010 and it had z-levels.

The Third Dimension was added sixteen years ago.

Feel old yet?

Depends what you mean “3D”. It is still ASCII sprites, but is considered 3D by way of multiple z-levels (each only visible one at a time).

Except last year a new UI was released for the Steam debut, which also features new graphics akin to the fan made tilesets. Those tile sets add a lot of visual interest and increase the 3D feel (even allowing you to see down to levels below your current level).

And, for many years now, there have been visualizer plugins like Stonesense that could render your fort in isometric view.

You can see more of the asset upgrade here[1].

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/12/dwarf-fortresss-graph...

There has been a renderer for a long time, but you can't play the game with it.

One of my favorite experiences was reading Boatmurder or boatsmurdered in the original ascii, and then looking at the renderings and realizing I can't understand characters at all.

The closest I've ever come to that matrix scene with the characters - is Dwarf Fortress.

For anyone who hasn't played the "ASCII" (technically modified Unicode iirc but eh, whatevers) it's worth doing so. After a short enough time you'll recognize the various characters quite well.

c+||@++c+cc+@@||,.,,.U,ggCgggT

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/ASCII_art_reward/A-F...

From dwarffortresswiki.org Version history: "0.27.169.32a - 2007-10-29 - The very first fully 3D version"

2D before the addition of the Z-levels.

does anyone know how the artist creates these drawings (Procreate, etc.)? They're super impressive. big fan of the Metroid ones.

You can do this with pretty much any semi professional painting program and a drawing tablet/display - procreate, photoshop, Krita, corel paintshop pro, etc. I looked through his website and couldn't find anywhere where he said what he used, and there isn't enough evidence to say one way or the other.

My favorite little known factoid is that when I googled his name Wikipedia says he's the guy who drew the pastafarian parody of The Creation of Adam, title "Touched by his noodly appendage".

I also put up lots of ref pics on it when painting in Photoshop on the main (the Wacom is mapped to main).

http://androidarts.com/ProfileFAQ.htm

I would bet Photoshop + Wacom or Procreate given the simple brushwork.

From my time hanging out with Arne on IRC I would assume he's using Photoshop (or opencanvas version oc11b72 ;-) )... I'd be surprised if he's on a PS version newer than CS2 though. I think Adobe added a subscription model to later versions and back in the day (ca 2000) he was mostly just using regular round brushes. If that's still how he's working, I don't see any reason at all why he'd have upgraded. Perhaps he's written his own raster editor by now, though (another low-odds bet tbh).

You can read his art tutorial on his main page. But essentially, I think he strives to get a clean result (no scribbling to "find" the form) with as few brush strokes as possible, which takes a lot of practice. He's also does a lot of pencil drawing, obviously.

i still play 2d df, infact i prefer it to the 3d variant. one less dimension to worry about!

Are you talking about the sprites created for the Steam release?

Because, unless I'm mistaken, Dwarf Fortress is very much 3D. Otherwise, how could you strike the earth!?

It was originally all on a single Z-level. You would dig sideways into the mountain, but you couldn't go up or down. I'm pretty sure it was 3d by 2010 or so, though.

Figuring out how z dimensions work is probably the hardest part of the game for me. Sometimes I just cannot make a stairway the way I want it or ramps or moats.

Do you play an old version of the game, or play the modern game on a single z-level somehow?

Something that I never realized (because not having played the game) is that it used to be "1D" !

> The mountain was a solid vertical wall. The further in (right) one dug, the more dangerous it got, with rivers (of water and lava) to cross. There was no going around.

(Compare with the 2D Rimworld.)

It was never 1D, they just mean that the river went all the way across the map and the only way to cross was by bridging it.

It really needs a 3D display. Humans never actually need to worry about the extra 3rd dimension given our entire sensory system is optimized for 3D.

It's just the view port of 2D slices is not optimal.

I played DF way back 12+ years ago, knew all the keyboard shortcuts by heart.

Then I acquired a life for several years and returned recently to the Steam version. I can highly recommend it! I'm able to play it with just my laptop touchpad. Of course a mouse makes it easier but point being the UI is VASTLY improved.

And it's still a source of endless random story telling.

The new version feels a bit nerfed, several users have pointed this out. But you can always increase the difficulty in several different ways.

Is it my imagination, or have the shortcuts changed? I picked up the Steam version over Christmas but was actually really struggling with the UI whereas I have memories of manipulating the keyboard shortcuts without a second thought in the original version. Could also just be I forgot since yeah it's been a few years here as well.

You're right, they did a reorganization of a lot of the actions to make things more accessible to new users and that did change/remove a lot of the shortcuts.

The shortcuts have changed, likely to accomodate the new UI structure.

You can pick it up within a few play throughs though.

this was the kicker for me. I really can't play the new update. that and the fact that the non-steam version has pretty huge bugs (entirely invisible menus)

I was under the impression the developer(s?) kept pretty thorough notes.

In any case, with the addition of the new graphics, I wouldn't be too surprised if some changes were made to make it a bit more accessible now that there's been so much more interest in it.

It might also be that they've fixed so many notorious bugs that you don't end up in a tantrum spiral or catsplosions anymore.

It's just a feeling so far, backed up by other players on the subreddit.

It might be, or it may also be that we're much better at managing them (and tutorials and guides implicitly encourage you to control for them).

Once I learned how to not starve, DF was never terribly difficult for me, but then again I wasn't trying expeditions to undead wastelands.

Similar story here: I played it until ~10 years ago, when a PhD got in the way. I might get the Steam version now, thanks for the reminder!

>The new version feels a bit nerfed, several users have pointed this out. But you can always increase the difficulty in several different ways.

I've always felt that it wasn't really so difficult unless you wanted it to be. My forts only ever fell to boredom or FPS, but I stuck to biomes where things stay dead. Goblins/undead/vampires/werecreatures are a pain, but usually manageable if you're not totally unaware. Clowns only ask that you take a limited amount of cotton candy if you don't want the circus to come to town.

> Clowns only ask that you take a limited amount of cotton candy

Actually, this is wrong. Rather, there are 'safe' candy tiles and 'unsafe' ones. You can take a unlimited[0] amount of safe candy, but taking even a single unsafe tile can potentially result in immediate circus. (That's what makes it 'unsafe'.)

0: Well, it's "limited" to however much [safe] candy is actually present, but that's not what "limited" means in the context you used it. You can safely take all of the safe candy that is there to take.

No, "limited" means the same thing in the context I used it, there is a limit to how much you can take, the limit being the safe tiles. If you really want to be pedantic, the amount is always "limited" because maps are finite.

The phrase "that you take a limited amount" implies that the amount taken is the primary determining factor. For example, that (at least approximately) taking four tiles is always safe, regardless of which four, and taking four hundred is always unsafe, even if each individual tile could have been one of the aformentioned four safe ones.

But (DF) candy doesn't work like that at all; each tile is either completely safe, or has a noticable (if not always large) chance of having a circus tent behind it, completely independantly of any safe tiles, and only dependant on other unsafe tiles in the minesweeper sense (ie, that you sometimes know there's a circus tent behind either tile A or tile B, but not which).

Then your issue is with "amount", not "limited". Still no reason to be so pedantic, I would recommend you try to learn to be less literal if you can.

> Clowns only ask that you take a limited amount of cotton candy if you don't want the circus to come to town.

You can methodically dig your way past all the candy, not taking any, and if you get far enough down you meet a whole lot of clowns. Not an entire circus, but hundreds of clowns.

I consider partying with them a pretty advanced challenge.

Did a newer version change the magma sea to have more openings? I think you could do something weird with channelling to get through the bottom, but that's still actively seeking out trouble.

> Then I acquired a life for several years

In EVE Online they call this winning the game.

Mixed feelings about the Steam version personally. The ascii version characters were all direction-neutral. All the Steam characters and creatures look straight left regardless of the direction they're moving or which way the object they're interacting with is, and I find it immensely disorienting.

First Dorf on Golf, now Dorf on Dwarf Fortress. What’ll that little guy do next?

For those who aren’t old enough to be familiar with Dorf:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorf_(character)

If he did that for some Nintendo property he'd be in jail awaiting execution now :)

Fan art? There are millions of it about Nintendo characters.

You mean like SMB, zelda or metroid?

http://androidarts.com/smb/SMB.htm http://androidarts.com/zelda/Zelda.htm http://androidarts.com/metroid/GFP3.htm

Only if he actually published the clone he was working on. Nintendo isn't usually crazy enough to go after people for free fanart, especially when the fanart is re-imagining things entirely (since this pre-dates the Steam version's sprites).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com