Dwarf Fortress: Very Ambitious Roguelike

I think Rimworld is more enjoyable/interesting when you begin to play it whereas DF has so much depth you need to spend a lot more time with it to really appreciate it.

I played it one day years and years ago in its full-ASCII glory, but otherwise no!

I am beginning to learn that, my dwarves are finding every rock under the sun except the two that are able to be turned into coke haha.

Thanks for the comparison of the two games, it is interesting! It almost reminds me of the difference between the Old (DF) and New (RW) Testaments.

I think it is fair to say that Rimworld is much more of a simulation “game” whereas DF is much more of a simulation that you get to play. Rimworld has a lot of game-ified survival elements to it, as there is a thematic element of a band of survivors building a colony, as well as a story engine built in to send encounters and various happenings your way.

DF is a game where you just build a simulated settlement until it falls apart, you get bored, or you accidentally dig into the lair of a gigantic elder god spider creature and it kills everyone.

Honestly, the gameplay loop and base-building are much more simple in DF, same with combat etc. You aren’t really building and directing people in the way that you can in Rimworld, you are just more giving dwarves jobs and sending out orders (that may or may not be followed).

I like Rimworld a lot too, but there is something about how a DF game can just go completely sideways, and tell so many funny stories.

One of my favorite DF storylines is boatmurdered (an old somethingawful pass and play game) where you have these effing elephants just rampaging and attacking trading caravans at random, and then years later in game, you have dwarves carving pictures of the elephants absolutely wrecking an elven caravan. The game just has this depth and history to it that is unequaled anywhere else.

It is those weird lore and simulation systems that make the game for me, not that you alone have a story to tell from playing the game, but the actual citizens in your world tell that story to their children as well.

I found this reddit post on the new labor system helpful.

Various tips:

  • Traders will accept your offer when the profit number turns green.

  • You can zone many bedrooms with one click-and-drag by using the Multi toggle.

  • The auto-mining mode (advanced sub-menu) is handy to dig out seams and collect gems.

  • The labor menu has a stone section that lists the different uses for each type.

  • Mining blueprints are just a “don’t dig this yet” designation.

  • The macro system only records key presses (and not commands, beware of changing keybinds), so you have to enable the keyboard cursor and record everything by keyboard. Digging macros are fairly easy, but for building use the single-item mode and not continuous placement because pressing Esc resets the cursor position. You can offset the cursor at the end of a macro to make it repeatable (like: dig 4x1 sideways, return to start, move 2 down).

Try the free version when it gets updated with the new interface. The UI is still pretty rough, but it’s much more accessible.

They have accepted some of the yellow trades ive requested, but it is very unreliable unlike green.

you guys. my experience with DF is classic, about 10 days before the release so i could learn the systems. so straighten me out here. classic would pause when there was fighting of any sort. you could hit period and step through the fighting, reading the blow by blow descriptions.

the new game isn’t pausing, and there is no step button? i just had another civ demand an artifact, or they would kick my ass. i said no, and they kicked my ass. it took them 2 seconds of real time, and i had no blow by blow readout. which took away the most ‘fun’ i had with classic. is this right?

When there’s a fight now you’ll see a crossed swords icon appear on the left.

You can left click it and it’ll tell you who is fighting. If you click the magnifying glass icon from that page you’ll be able to read all about your Dorfs wrestling the back left tooth out of a Werecapybara.

yes but it doesn’t pause. i’m busy doing something else and i see the crossed swords halfway down the list, it’s obviously too late since fights take 1 second to resolve.

plus you only see the fight from that creature’s point of view when you click. it seemed like i had a total overview of everything in classic.

I have seen in a steam review someone complaining about how it is impossible to step through frames one at time, so maybe there is no way to do it right now.

Rimworld is a game, DF is a hobby.

These days, games like Songs of Syx and Rimworld simply have better design and play better. DF has stalled for quite a long time and development keeps sprawling in odd directions that may or may not contribute positively to the experience.

But the scope is nowhere close. DF could be an immensely better “game” if it had more focus on things that matter. Someone mentioned a light system, but there are tons of examples like that. And sometime things give the illusion of complexity when they are just broken.

I don’t remember having so many cave ins just chopping down trees. How do you prevent that?

My first game, it happened a couple times and they just shook it off. This game the second time it mangled all the limbs of my poor woodworker!

EDIT: I think I may have figured it out. From the wiki: “Avoid digging directly below one z-level in wooded areas before clearing out the trees”

I will start over and test that!

Have they changed the cave-in mechanics to be more than just “this section of floor is disconnected from everything”?

The announcements, pausing, and pop-ups can be customized, as explained in this Reddit thread. The wiki has formatting details for the announcements file.

You can fake a step button with a macro that hits pause twice.

I don’t think so. They published a partial changelog for the premium release.

Disappointed right now. Got stuck in this weekend, and I am just getting crashes randomly all the time. No error message, no warning, game just exits. Lose all progress from recent save.

Really sad because I just started really getting into the game too, learning all the keys and interface etc, but now it is unplayable, because I don’t want to play if I am going to lose progress at random.

Did you try verifying the installation?

Yeah, that isn’t it.

It just basically just crashes after playing for anywhere to 5-15 minutes. Just closes the application without warning or reason.

Really disappointing I can’t play it right now. The lack of the combat log and the ability to step move time is also baffling. Those were pretty heavily used parts of the game before.

This is in bad need of QA, because there are a lot of people experiencing crashes.

The other issue is that there is no error logging, so I can’t even send an error log in to help. At least, there is no logging for the crashes I have going on.

I wanted to finally try this with the Steam version with the nice new professionally done tilesets but I heard there won’t be an adventure mode for a very long time, and it’s missing easily accessible information panels and logs that were in the free version, Think I’ll wait a while longer.

If you aren’t playing in 1080p, give that a try. Was mentioned on one of the official outlets that for the short term, that was the ‘fix’ for frequent crashes until they get the next patch out.

Nope, I have tried changing resolutions, windowed vs not.

It doesn’t seem to do anything when I change resolution to 1080p. Like, when I change to 1080p, nothing appears to change, when windowed, and it certainly is not at 1080p, I even followed their FAQ on settings for non 1080p monitors. Didn’t work, it will just close to desktop at random.

It is odd.

yeah this isn’t cutting it. i paid 30 bucks for this thing. we are no longer in ‘this game is free’ territory. it’s supposed to be a better version of the free game. it’s not.