Dwarf Fortress is a (semi/quasi/exceedingly) realistic fantasy world simulator.
Build your own Mines of Moria, there are treasures deep within the mountains!
Adventure, explore the world (get eaten by wolves!), maybe even slay a giant (or start over and hear him tell you how much your last (five) characters sucked!)
You don't even need to be trained in combat, even a child can get lucky and slay a giant bronze colossus in a single punch!
Though, training like a merchant is certainly one way to survive (thrown coins are deadly in skilled hands!)
Back in the fort, manage your troupe of dwarves as they battle against hoards of goblins, an ambush! Quick! Pull the level and drop a bridge on them!
Build a tower into the sky or dig deep and battle demons from below!
Bring enough booze, start a farm, get digging, Urist Rothub is struck by a fey mood! He needs metal bars and wood for his artifact!
Rigoth Umamnil, Cat has given birth to kittens. Hey! Fresh meat! Its no coincidence that "kittens" rhymes with "mittens!"
Brutal combat! The spear hits the dwarf in the head! It pierces through completely! The spear hits the dwarf's left eye! It is mangled!
The spear hits the dwarf's right ear! It is bruised! The spear hits the dwarf's brain! It is broken!
The dwarf has been struck down.
All this and more, every world has over 200 years of history to explore! You enter the town of Rusted Cudgel of Bruising. The human has died of old age. x40

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"Travel quietly like a big fortress. Ah, desolation! All fortresses command dark, rough dwarves. The rugged carp roughly loves the fortress."


Download, play, and respond with your comments.

Well, it had to happen sooner or later . . .
Dorf Fortress has invaded dumpshock O.o

An ambush has appeared!

Its a game I have wanted to get into, strikes me as something like what The Sims could be if it took the gloves off, but unfortunately I just can't seem to wrap my head around its GUI enough to accomplish any of the disasters I want to befall my dwarves to actually happen. Those that understand the interface however do some pretty cool stuff and I like reading about it.

If anything will persuade you to play DorfFort, it's Boatmurdered. Of course, that's using an older version of DorfFort. We have Z levels these days.

"I think I made fish too hardcore" --Toady One

We do have some nice 3D Visualizers. Here's one guy's fort.

Ah, yes, Boatmurdered . . hilarity/insanity ensues ^^

heh, to me the adventure part is nuts, and the fortress part reminds me of dungeon keeper, only with ascii art...

Adventure mode isn't complete yet--a lot of work is going into it this next update--and fort mode is pretty much Dungeon Keeper, but crazier.

I picked this up last week and I'm still trying to figure out how to dig them into the ground Youtube tutorials are nice, though.

Digging downward took me a while to figure out too. Make a down staircase, and an up staircase right below it. Or a ramp.

What do you mean 'take the gloves off'? I would intentionally invite other Sims to my house just to have them drown in the pool. I once trapped a hapless Sim in a small room with nothing but an oven and a refrigerator. The best time were to be had when I created the home of no escape, where the only way into the house was to take a dive into the pool. Conveniently there was no exit ladder to use to leave the premise. Inside they would be subjected to the horrors of no beds, no couches, and 100 lights!

Dammit, now I have a slight urge to play The Sims again....

Yes, but how often have your Sims' neighbors ambushed them with bows and arrows. Have you had your Sims need to kill another dwarf for parts of an art project?

Phew. Here I thought I was going to have to post myself ... oh wait, going to anyways, I like describing the many weird and wonderful ways Dwarf Fortress kills its lemmings. I think that Boat Murdered story describes most of them anyways.

Hmm, lets see now that I am reminded of it, Dungeon Keeper 2 + The Sims 2 with ASCII or 2D tile graphics, that might be a better way of describing "with the gloves off".

Man I had a lot of fun with Dungeon Keeper 2, my favourite part was my monsters winning in the casino...

Man, I'm reminded of Evil Genius, where you get to construct clever traps to delay or kill agents trying to enter your super secret base. I had a really high value door to my mountain right next to my regular entrance which was of low value. Doors were rated on a security of 1 - 4. 1 had no lock, 2 could be opened by any of your minions, 3 could be opened by your henchmen, and I think 4 could only be opened by the Evil Genius, if at all.

So I put a value 2 door, to keep out pesky tourists next to a value 4 door. Agents would almost always break into the value 4 door. This door lead to a winding hallway full of motion sensors. When the agents would trip a sensor, the entire hallway would be consumed in flame, roasting the agents.

How often have you set up traps for sims that cause them to be sliced and diced?

Dropped off a 40 foot cliff?

Impaled on spikes? (Possibly after a 40 foot fall)

Incinerated with magma?

The Sims isn't capable of any of that, if you want to kill them you have to work at it, and then they usually stave to death.

Evil Genius is capable of doing most of those.

Can it freeze creatures in solid ice?

Can you create an orbital magma cannon?*

Do your units like tentacle demons for their corrupt intentions?

Can you build a computer?**

Can you use cats as a random input to a complex series of doors and floodgates that makes it impossible for a creature to path anywhere?***

Can you build a fort whereby you have concentric rings of locked off areas that only open once a week/month/year/decade/century?***

Can you fill your fort's moat with carp as an effective defense against invaders?

Elephants?

Unicorns?

Giant skeletal eagles?

*Theoretically proposed megaconstruction whereby you cover the highest z-level you can with floor hatches, flood the entire thing in magma, then coat every ground tile with pressure plates, then link every pressure plate to the hatch directly above it, such that when a creature steps on the plate, a flood of magma falls from the sky.

**Another theoretically proposed megaconstruciton that uses water in place of electricity to perform complex calculations, the most advanced form every actually constructed was a clock that was perfectly on time, provided that the fort ran at an exact FPS speed.

***Theoretical megaconstruction that I never saw the end results to, but supposedly the guy was trying.

Evil Genius is what Dwarf Fortress would be if you made the world map interactable, put a UI on it that isn't ASCII-based, and reduced it to about 1% of it's complexity.

No, I am not even exaggerating a little. I loved Evil Genius, and thought it was brilliant. But the sheer depth of what you can do in DF is absolute MADNESS. It's driven me to try to build megastructures, such as undersea glass houses, simply because it was a challenge. Or to build a tree-like fortress, all of which would collapse with a single lever. Or my underground greenhouse and tree farm project!

Evil Genius is to Dwarf Fortress as Doom is to Fallout 3. Similar concepts and interaction, massive difference in depth of gameplay.

I'd say that would cover it. *Nodnod*

World map interactions are coming (and so is the interface--maybe not in our lifetimes, but it's coming).

I really need to start a new epic fortress. I lost a lot of steam after my largest and best fortress collapsed. Metalshove, it was called, and it was founded in a volcano which was rife with platinum, jewels, silver, and copper. It also had plenty of sand for glass. A perfect heaven for dwarves. By the time it was done, it was an impregnable fortress with many obsidian towers full of crossbowmen; engineered waterfalls; lava moats; steam vent generators (as traps for goblin armies); and the crowning glory: a series of five massive (25x40 squares) underground greenhouses with glass roofs. Platinum and Silver statuary lined the walls; every inch of stone was etched by a master, and the food was epic in proportion.

Well, it was the economy that fucked Metalshove, actually. Once the Tax Collector showed up and started setting prices on things, it was discovered that because Metalshove was *so* rich, the populace that worked there couldn't afford to live there. Basically, I didn't have any gold, or any copper. And most of my silver had gone into statuary, so the primary coinage was platinum, with almost no smaller coins. It looked like this in practice:

Dwarf A is a genius blacksmith. He gets paid $5,000 a month for his work. His palatial apartment is expensive: $2,500 a month. Food in Metalshove is also expensive. Expect a sandwich to go for $50, but it'll be the best damn sandwich ever. The problem is that when Dwarf A gets paid, the smallest denomination of money in circulation is... $5,000. No one can make change.

So my dwarves had to choose between a sandwich, shelter, or any other good. Once a month.

It taught me a good lesson about hoarding copper.

Or never minting more than 4 stacks of coins.

Damn you, man, I had like... 45 stacks of platinum!

The whole not making change thing was wholly unexpected. And here I was thinking they'd learn to float their dollar/deutchmark/franc, or whatever.

heh, you problem sounds like whats been troubling RL metal currency since its invention, adarael.

btw, i think i may get the hang of this game, and that scares me. i still find some setting or other to play with tho, like what jobs a dwarf may do, or how you slaughter those animals...

now to find some magma...

I would like to add an important note: Go to the Something Awful Forums, and watch our most recent Let's Play game. Between Jazzimus's updates and waiting for someone to name the king Sankis(which always herald the end), it's going to be amazing.

Seriously you're better off going into the config file and disabling the dwarven economy. That way you can keep your happy dwarven communist paradise going indefinitely where even the lowliest butcher has a bedroom filled with solid gold furniture.

Okay, I have to ask, because I've looked and have not found...

How do you hook up mechanics?

I have a windmill working happily. I've attached gear thingers and horizontal bars in every orientation around every corner of it, yet they all stay inactive. What gives?

How much distance do you have between the windmills and whatever you're hooking them up to? I think some energy is wasted with distance.

Also, I have no idea how to determine the strength of the wind at your fortress. There may not be enough for what you're trying to run.

I've got 40 wind. I'm trying to attach a millstone, so I can put it where-ever I want.

to hook up mechanics you should find a interface pretty much like a workshop, and then select connect or something in there, then it gives a list of things you can hook it to, just dont use the arrow keys to move the camera around as that will jump you out of the whole thing and you need to start over...

and you can find a lot of info here:
http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Main_Page

I'll give that a try. I checked the wiki and they didn't mention anything (at least not anything that made sense to me) and I'm watching some tutorials on youtube. I did connect levers though (after making one of my fortress levels all muddy).

sounds like the perfect place to start a farm then

I've picked up playing Dwarf Fortress. I'm not sure if I'm doing it right since most of my gameplay involves plopping my dwarfs into a serene area (to minimize the threats of elephants and other inane BS while learning the game). I'll start out building basic structures but then I believe I become possessed and order my dwarfs to dig out a meeting hall beneath a murky pool and order everyone to gather there. I'll then wall the area off (one dwarf may be stuck outside) and order the dwarfs to dig up into the murky pool.

Am I doing it wrong?

Yes. You should have them dig up into lava, not water.

Yes, you are doing it wrong. You should be making sure the pool is filled with carp first.

~J

Well crap.

In all seriousness though, there is a metric crapton to get my mind wrapped around just to get a competent fortress from the beginning. A lot of the guides and tutorials I've read seem to be for 2009 and older versions of the game, not the 2010 version.

It's my opinion that a fortress that successfully lasts for 10 ingame years or more should reward you with a BS in city planning.

Aye, but subsequently a fortress that can last for more than 2 seasons is probably preferable.

I prepare for DF by reading the saga of Boatmurdered. Haven't touched it in a bit because of WoW and Fallout: New Vegas, but I might get back into it while I'm waiting for my raids to form...

Elephants... they're worse than carp.

I was humored by all the engravings that pop up of dwarfs being slaughtered by elephants.

I suggest this guide for getting your feet wet so to speak.

Personally my cities always tend to do very well. It is more likely to end because I get bored with my mountains of treasure, multiple decade stores of food and drink, and dozens of legendarily skilled dwarfs, my 30x20 great hall with a glass ceiling, etc. Perhaps my biggest difficulty in most maps is running out of wood to make barrels to store food and drink in.

I've read through that guide but it's for an older version of dwarf fortress.

I used this tutorial to get used to the changes since last time I played. It was made for a few versions back, but the major difference I have seen is some bug fixes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGBTNPbUvFM

It's a multi-part series, so you can skip to whatever you are having trouble with.

That's right, I forgot that the burrows or whatever finally got added. Regardless, it is still a great thing for getting started. The basics haven't changed.

Here's a problem I've had that hasn't featured an obvious solution to me.

Moats.

Everything I've read about moats talks about pumping water. This method makes sense, I understand it. However I have read people connecting moats to water sources to fill them, such as a water. When you channel, as far as I can tell, the ramp that is created will allow enemies to wade into and out of the moat, making it utterly useless.

How the heck do you connect a moat to an existing water source without leaving a ramp?

You use channel instead of ramp. Channels don't create ramps of any kind for people to wade through.

Er, they don't? I get the little down arrow icon whenever I use the channel designation. I have to go down a z-level and then designate remove channel to get rid of that. Does flooding it with water magically make it impassable?

Every time I dig a channel I have to have a ramp or stairs so my Dwarf can avoid drowning.

Nope, channels don't create ramps, or they didn't used to, and I can't imagine that they changed that because it is fairly important in construction.

Wait, remove channel? There never used to be a remove channel. There was a remove ramp, but like I said, channels didn't create ramps. I'll have to go download the latest version and try it out a bit. I just really can't imagine that they changed channels like you're saying.

Wow, they changed channel. I'm not entirely sure why, but whatever. In that case, what you need to do is channel out the area, but one tile should be an up stair. Then you remove all the ramps, then the stair from above.

Just can't believe they changed channel.

Edit: Looks like they changed this too. Yeash. Well, just dig into the area from the side and wall it off then.