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Comment by refulgentis | Hacker News Reader

TL;DR: Is it possible that it seems to you that Dwarf Fortress was the first game with procedural generation?

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Factorio wouldn't exist with Dwarf Fortress?

If this is a claim that Dwarf Fortress paved the way for deep(er) simulation games, enabling Factorio, I don't think that's accurate.

I was ~18 in 2006 and a huge fan of simulation games when I was growing up. There were plenty with depth that approximated Factorio.

I've never heard of Infiniminer or Rimworld.

5 minute review of Infiniminer shows its a very different game and has a specific triad of inspirations named by the creator, all of which predate Dwarf Fortress. (Team Fortress, Infinifrag, and Motherload)

Rimworld is nearly a decade after Dwarf Fortress, so its impossible for me to claim it wouldn't exist without it, and I believe vice versa.

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Notch (the original creator of Minecraft) mentioned he got inspired by DF:

> Infiniminer is the main inspiration for the blocky design and the terrain deforming. Dwarf Fortress is the main inspiration for the survival game mode, and this is where I want to take the majority of the gameplay.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120126163153/http://notch.tumb...

Kovarex (creator of Factorio) mentions Minecraft mod(s):

> I always loved minecraft mods like industrial craft, but limitations of minecraft were my motivation to create something on my own.

https://forum.industrial-craft.net/thread/8845-factorio/

and not getting job at Mojang:

> I had this great idea to apply for a job at Mojang as working on Minecraft might be very inspiring. I didn't get any reply, and later on, I decided to try to make something on my own.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170324040836/https://www.minec...

My curiosity/claim is neither "There are 0 games inspired by Dwarf Fortress" nor "Minecraft was not inspired by Dwarf Fortress" :)

Rather, 2 of the 3 specific games named, none of which are Minecraft, seem directly contradicted. I'm curious about the larger idea OP was getting at.

> Factorio wouldn't exist with Dwarf Fortress?

According to Factorio's developers, they were heavily inspired by Minecraft factory mods like IndustrialCraft. Minecraft is commonly said to have been inspired by Infiniminer.

I'm not aware of Infinimer being inspired by Dwarf Fortress.

RimWorld is basically "Dwarf Fortress on an alien planet", although the simulation doesn't go as ridiculously deep. RimWorld has in turn inspired a bunch of attempts to do "RimWorld on a spaceship," but none of so far have achieved the status of being a "classic".

Minecraft was inspired by both Infiniminer and Dwarf Fortress.

No, their claim is that specific lineage of inspirations led to the games we enjoy today. It is very unlikely that the games would exist in the same form without the innovations and discoveries made along the way.

>There were plenty with depth that approximated Factorio.

Curious if you could name a handful.

SimCity, Age of Empires, Sim$X (they really need to rerelease SimAnt), Roller Coaster Tycoon were my gotos, off the top of my head. Railroad Tycoon is probably the best obvious simile but also wasn't my favorite. Too much management :)

These are management games, not factory games.

Crafting games are games where a lot of the gameplay is combining items in particular ways to get new items.

Factory games are crafting games where you build raw logic, wires, conveyor belts etc. for automating crafting. Some are pure factory games where automation is the only way to craft anything, others reveal their debt to modded Minecraft by having a player person who does the first crafting by hand.

There were arguably factory games evolving alongside Minecraft, in particular Zach Barth's programming/automation puzzle games. But you'd be hard pressed to find a factory game before modded Minecraft.

The first game anyone built a working computer in was Dwarf Fortress, although through unintended game mechanisms. I believe this was what inspired Notch to add redstone to Minecraft, the first intended game mechanism for Factory-style gameplay.

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