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Comment by DrStalker | Hacker News Reader

Dwarf fortress is difficult for two reasons 1: Unintuitive interface. It takes some time just to learn how to do basic things and find the information you need. 2: Complexity. Once you know every possible command you can give you need to figure out what to do.

It's hard to get into but immensely rewarding and satisfying once you do, with some amazingly detailed epic stories coming to life.

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It's hard to get into, but if you deal with vim/emacs/etc on a normal basis, the learning curve shouldn't be a big deal (unless you don't have time for it).

The game is just like vim/emacs in that you don't know what you don't know and you're likely going to learn piecemeal.

If you looked through a couple tutorials and said "Hey I think I get the hang of it now" and start cracking at your first mountain, you'll quickly realize that you have no idea how to craft, deal with rooms, plant stuff, etc.

As far as the graphical elements of the interface goes, there's a number of tilesets to use[1] which make the game exponentially more enjoyable.

Also, there's a fellow on YouTube by the name of captnduck[2] and, aside from the official wiki, he's probably been the most helpful source for me when it comes to DF. I suggest taking a look at a video or two from him if DF interests you.

[1] http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/117975/dwarf-fortr...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL06686270DA5FF439

I'm not sure that DF's learning curve is really comparable to vi. Maybe TECO. Almost everybody's first fort dies because they didn't set plant orders or ran out of booze or something similar. Next, forts die because you got enough wealth to spawn an ambush and you are totally unprepared. There's a litany of failure conditions that can shut you down hard and once they've begun it is very difficult to impossible to reverse; tantrum spirals are the most obvious but for example you might find out that you needed to plant food some time ago, or that aquifers are full of Fun and Exciting and cause interesting problems for your nascent fort. I mean as a veteran I'm pretty good at avoiding these and getting into the late game but I can't even remember what they all are.

It reminds me in some ways of the old HGTTG text game, where if you didn't take exactly the right steps at the start of the game you would be irreversibly fucked two hours later with no warning. Except I think that was due to malicious intent, and DF's complexity is some combination of developer indifference / incompetence (Toady is quite good but obviously UI design is not something he's really enthralled by) and Stockholm syndrome on the part of the player base. Some folks won't play without Dwarf Therapist, I absolutely require dfhack's workflow plugin to not go insane, etc. This is not really a good situation, but there's just one of Toady and the community is startlingly loyal, probably helped by the sheer addictive quality of the game once you get going; he can be excused, to some degree, a focus on new, novel things before the total UI revamp needed.

I've never used the workflow plugin, what are you primarily using it to achieve?

Do note I am a slightly more impulsive player, so I tend to make massive stock piles of things so that I don't need to manage Just In Time systems.

DF conditions tend to be similar to Hard Core modes on games like D3/Torchlight, which in turn inherit from Roguelikes like Nethack, so there is an old tradition of hard choices that mean stupid death. (B/U/C identification How I hate thee)

Steady state things, mostly, like "ensure that there is always 30 bars of pig iron" or "ensure that ten quarry bush leaves always are available"; if there are too many objects it will stop making them (particularly useful with things like pig iron, which is worthless except in its role in the steel making process, so you need to have some but not lots), and as it dips below the threshold it will start making them again. This is really useful to ensure that e.g. there are always barrels available when needed, but you don't blow your entire wood harvest on barrels or bins or what have you; it can also be used to ensure that your idiot brewer does not brew everything leaving nothing to eat.

If you play one if the mods with multi-stage metal refining, it is even more useful to ensure that the pipeline does not go dry on the one hand but you don't get a glut of pig iron or whatever either.

Hmm. Maybe I should make an effort to pick it up, just to learn to think and operate like that.

It sounds like they have made an enterprise resource planning system for DF. That's very interesting.

That may also be why I never got into DF, it sounds like too much work. Like actual work.

Nah, thats just DF Hack, it adds lots of plugins and functionality that the more advanced DF player starts hankering for after a while.

The base game with a wiki, a tileset, and dwarf therapist, will be accessible and fun for the average HN visitor.

The ERP aspect of it is for people who just want to reach that level of gameplay. I don't. I just mass produce my stuff and never run out of goods.

I find that with large forts the "rolling resource shortage" problem is really obnoxious. Things like "oh, my idiots turned all the wood, the wood I needed for beds, into charcoal" get my goat. Actually solving the steel shortage problem is really difficult; ERP is not a bad comparison for that, which is made especially difficult because as your dorfs get better at tasks they get significantly faster. A master armorsmith can kill 100 bars of steel in very short order.

I will admit I have more sophisticated desires / needs, though.

My brother plays this constantly, any pointers where I can start playing?

Following the Captnduck tutorials [1] and using the Lazy Newb pack [2] got me pretty far.

[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHVZtRdtPdo [2]: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59026.0

If you are on mac you can use MacNewbiw instead of the LNB: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=106790.0

O'Reilly has a book for this: "Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress"

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920022565.do

Looks good so far, although I'm not more than a chapter into it yet.

You could also move to the reddit forums for DF, they tend to be more newbie frequented, but you could always just lurk in the vintaged Bay12forums.

ask your brother :-)

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