The Making of Dwarf Fortress (2012)

What surprised me was this.

After using a quickstart toturial or two and diving right in, I was all happy that my dwarves had started doing, well, something, and I was getting used to it. I started collecting some materials, as the tutorial said, and I dug some stuff, as the tutorial said. Then I noticed the water in the map seemed ot have changed colour, and the ground, in all it's pixellated ascii glory, appeared whiter than it used to. "could it be winter, are there seasons?" I googled, letting the dwarves work. Yes, there was winter. Water froze. When I eventually got back to my game, there was a food shortage, and much worse, we ran out of liqour. We also had no water. The dwarves stopped working. Investigating their stats, they were rather angry about the situation. Eventually one, then two, went berzerk and killed their fellow dwarves in a rampage. I tried my best to guide them to gather some foliage so we could make some booze and get things back on track.. but I was too late. By spring, everyone was dead.

The next time.. I made it through winter, but not the next... overpopulation got me. With the immigrants that keep showing up, I had more and more dwarves, and I didn't know how to manage it. Hilarity ensued.. from a kobold thief stealing babies to animals mating in the bedroom to checking on the dining area to find a horse sitting at the table with a bunch of partying dwarves.

Eventually I made it a few seasons... only to be raided by goblins. I had no militia, I hadn't figured that part out yet. I hadn't needed it. Everyone died.

And so it goes...

The awesome part, and I think a critical thing most players who like the game clue in to, is that it's always like this. You won't get to a feeling of mastery where you can just hone your skills like most games. You'll always be analyzing what you see, looking stuff up, talking with others, and resolving yourself to try a new strategy next time - imagination really pays off here. There are always hippos in the sewers, or cats breeding out of control, or ant-people that want to eat you, or a berzerk dwarf baby killing his family, or some monster from down deep getting up your stairwell and terrorizing your fortress, or a magma accident, or a dwarf who decides to lock himself in a workshop, depriving you of that shop abilities while he spends his sweet time making stuff. There's dwarves that promte themselves to nobles and demand stuff, and they generally need to be dealt with. Usually by death. Dwarves must be sacrificed on on occasion for the good of the fortress.

My point, I guess, is that the funny/sad/epic stories you read about aren't really embellished much - the game actually provides you with that level of detail... even early-on. Your imagination fills in the blanks.. but there aren't many blanks.

Definitely an understatement. I tried, and I failed. I desperately wanted to play the game, and I don't care if it's all extended ASCII characters, but when building similar-purpose buildings have entirely different key bindings, and when the steps required to place items varies widely on their purpose...

DF isn't a single-player game. It's a two-player game, and the game itself is an antagonist.

Or that 99% of the community relies on external applications which to manage dwarf assigned jobs, since doing it manually rapidly approaches impossible as you acquire more than a dozen dwarves.

I almost feel that Toady should hire somebody to design an ASCII-based UI for the game that actually works.

> "Peter Tyson is a human born in 1975 in New Zealand. He is the oldest son of Ron Tyson and Ann Tyson. In the Summer of 1996 Peter became a student at Auckland University. In the Summer of 1999 Peter became a student at Victoria University. In the Spring of 2000 Peter became an Analyst at Datamonitor. In the Spring of 2002 Peter became a Community Manager at Codemasters. In the Autumn of 2005 Peter became an Administrator in the New Zealand Government. In the Summer of 2008 Peter married Laura. In the Winter of 2009 Peter wrote popular tutorials for Dwarf Fortress on his blog, afteractionreporter.com. In the Winter of 2011 Peter was struck by a Strange Mood.

> In the Summer of 2012 Peter wrote "Pasubabo Thrathdad Teme", "Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress", a legendary wood-pulp paper bound book. The written portion consists of 180 page guide to the game Dwarf Fortress entitled "Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress". The writing is lighthearted with moments of humor.

> In Summer 2012 "Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress" was stored in O'Reilly by the human administrator, Peter Tyson."

From http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1avszc/im_tarn_adams_o...