Dwarf Fortress: Very Ambitious Roguelike

I’m pretty sure that in TK you just mouseover the damn thing and it tells you what it is. I have no idea how a pink J (or is it j?) is supposed to be clearer than a picture of a pink jelly.

FUCK ASCII!!!

thanks for mentioning TOME, I haven’t played that one before. Should I install THEME right off bat, or does it just add a ton more stuff like SLASH’EM did for nethack?

In my opinion, ASCII wins on all counts - it looks better, is easier to understand, and does a better job of stimulating the imagination.

Not saying a really nice high tech 3d engine would be a bad idea - even if its buggy and difficult to implement at first - but as long as the internal game mechanics themselves are in the early prototype stage this is a good idea

You have to mouse over every Jelly you come across? In that case I’m sure that I can die horribly before reaching the Serpent of Chaos much faster than you can.

I loved playing Roguelike games in ASCII back in the day when they had to be that way, but Jesus On A Pogo Stick, there’s no way I’d play them that way now. The world has moved on.

It adds a lot of stuff and makes it more Tolkein-themed (hence the name). Personally I find it a little more forgiving as well.

They need to do a Budweiser Real Men of Genius song about you, Mr. Super ASCII Man.

No. I know most of them by sight, and I can see them just fine. The tiles are big (you can change the size). I was just saying in those cases where you can’t tell, for whatever reason, you can mouseover.

So if I want to try TOME and Theme (or is it THEME), what do I download exactly? The main Theme download mentions an older versoin of TOME, but then there’s another package that includes graphics and it talks about the next version of TOME as well as a couple of other mods. I would like graphics. WHAT I DO?

What I like most about this thingy is it generates its own world. How cool is that?

And an ASCII intro movie! Cool!

Hmm. While generating, it ‘rejects’ regions. I wonder why? Wrong language? Too stuffy? Too much jelly on the toast?

Probably they violate some “useability” guideline. I find it odd that it bothers to tell you how much is rejected (although maybe that’s leftover bug hunting).

I’m trying to play and like this game, I really am. Maybe I’m too much a roguelike virgin/noob, but this is almost completely impossible to get into from square 0.

The new version of TOME’s been in development for ages. 2.3.3 works fine.

http://www.zionmainframe.ca/tome/theme/download.html

To get some tips, the Day in the Life Of archive is a half-decent read.

I love ASCII roguelikes because I can play them on my work computer (P2 233).

ADOM is my drug of choice right now.

http://www.firestormproductions.co.uk/prospero/g-dwarffortress.htm

To quote the lead coder: “You’re going to have to learn to embrace inevitable death.” There’s a certain charm about struggling against an unstoppable fate!

As a strategy gamer, THAT is a challenge I accept!

I got started on this last night; it is indeed very difficult to get into, though the in-game documentation is EXTENSIVE and very well implemented - you can access help from literally any point in the game.

My main sticking point was in figuring out how to get the dwarves to start work at all; took me a bit to figure out what “designate” does.

Going to watch some of those movies and read the bay12 forums and see what all I can pick up.

I also play the TK version and the tileset makes a world of difference for me. I agree with others that some tilesets are probably worse than the ASCII graphics, but the TK version gets it right. I’ll play the ASCII version of other roguelikes, but always go back to the Angband-tk versions. Just wish the guy who did them hadn’t stopped updating those versions.

I’ve only just scratched the surface of this game. No, I’ve only just breathed on the surface and maybe fogged it up a bit. I’m going to have to set aside some time to surmount the learning curve and get properly into this game.

The extended character set is driving me nuts though.

I don’t half know what I’m doing with this thing but I’m already addicted. My first game was a fiasco; the less said the better. My current one, I’ve got a nice hallway excavated lined with a series of 3x3 rooms, with a workshop in each one, and a large room with a well that I want to fill up with tables and chairs and engravings, and I’ve started on the sleeping quarters, and goddamn it my lunch break is over.

My 2nd minor beef is that if you play fullscreen, you can’t switch to other windows/processes. If you play non-fullscreen (at least on my D810) the window can’t be resized and it far too small to play on.

It makes trying to follow suggestions/reference guides impossible, which in turn makes learning harder.

So, in my first game, I was going along reasonably well, until my mason was killed in a cavern collapse as he was putting up the supports to prevent a cavern collapse, then my hunter got eaten by a named wolf (leaving “dwarf chunks” lying at the site of his death. eww) which is now moving towards the rest of my dwarves. I saved and quit, but I’ll go back and watch their demise later. Time for take two.

I lost my first batch from hunger. I didn’t know you could just pick plants for makeshift food, and I was in the middle of trying to flood a farm when they all went nuts and killed each other.

If I could give anyone a first tip, it’d be that you can go into your characters and set what Labor they can do … in my new game I immediately made the jewelcraft help with the mining, and the mason guy help chop trees/pick plants. It help quite a bit. I’m flying along now.

Once you swallow the interface and depth of it, it’s not too hard to play at all.

Oh, also… make sure you have a trade depot for when the caravan comes. And to trade, select THEIR items first, then hit offer, and then he’ll go “what do you want to give me for these items?” - if you select everything all at once, the merchant will just take your crap (kind of silly, I should probably post about that on the forum).

Terrific game in any case. The ascii bugs me a tad just due to the sheer amount of black-ness on the screen (i.e. one blade of grass per tile doesn’t look so great)… which makes me want a tileset for it. If anyone discovers one, let us know!