Dwarf Fortress
Published by Mircea Ungureanu [rastilin] on 2008/2/3 (5732 reads)
I have to admit I feel bad for replacing the previous article.
Dwarf Fortress is an ASCII game that focuses more on the physics of world simulation and the intricacies of the Fortress economy than it does on usability or interface. As a result it is very fun, extremely fast on most hardware and has a nearly vertical learning curve.
Standard strategy games can only go so far. Sometimes you want as close to reality as possible, with AI good enough to make it worthwhile. DF provides that.
Not to say that DF is completely perfect. I'm personally wary of running it on wine as although it works perfectly most of the time, it locked X on one of my previous attempts and resisted all attempts to be restarted. It also works fairly well in VirtualBox although somewhat slower due to it's intersting construction and the fact that it uses OpenGL for what rendering it does.
In DF, nearly all processing power is spent rendering the AI and environment. The game also accounts for weather patterns and temperature effects. It's interesting that ponds freeze over during the winter and can be tunneled through, if one desires. Dwarves can die of exposure and need an insulated environment, like a fortress, to make it through the winter. Additionally, not all locations cause the river to freeze over, this only occurs in the more extreme climates. Some areas are frozen over all year, allowing for an ice fortress. The pathfinding is perfect in so far as I can observe, the creatures intelligently project their next actions, they don't always attend to their needs first, like the sims, but never allow themselves to starve to death looking at a wall.
If all else fails and you can't feed your men, they will independently hunt for vermin and can supposedly pick plants for food. In essence, they won't just die fighting something far stronger than them or run away from a Rabbit like the heroes in Majesty. If a creature passes out, someone will fetch them, lay them out on a bed and take care of them until they heal.
I'd better go over the features one at a time....
Realistic Game world
The game renders the world through a ncurses like interface. I say ncurses like because the game only runs on Windows and has not been ported to any other system; it doesn't use the ncurses libraries. From the site, it appears to be a mix of C++, C and some parts assembly code. Regardless of this, everything is modelled in the world. Not all at once, as that would be prohibitively complicated, even on a modern processor, setting the map size to maximum, in itself less than 1000th of the world map will cause the latest processors to grind to less than 6fps. The level of detail in the modelling really is stunning. In addition to modelling temperature, the game also tracks weather effects and stress forces inside the fortress. It's possible for unsupported caverns to eventually collapse if they aren't properly shored up.
Different creatures migrate through the maps at different times of the year. One can select to go hunting only when they are surrounded by groundhogs or to go take their chances killing wild horses. In the cursed terrain areas of the map, many of the creatures are undead. Less "skeleton" more "skeleton groundhog".
Dwarf and Creature AI
All your units have slightly different personalities and therefore slightly different weights for their AI decisions. Hunted units will fight back if possible, the realistic combat model includes ground wrestling and loss of limbs. Additionally, while units heal on their own, it does take a massive amount of time for this to happen. During that time, the units will be automatically recovered by the nearest friendly, carried back to base and be tended until they recover.
It should be highlighted that the architectural options allow for some intricate defensive tactics. Including setting up a system to flood entire levels with water or magma on demand, possibly both alternating, just to be sure. Or have slits with ballistae to fire through as well as moats, retractable bridges and other defensive emplacements. The biggest issue I've found is that there appears to be no way to designate a unit to pull a switch in times of trouble, something could happen and it doesn't get done. If you're using a gate system for watering crops, the same problem occurs.
Persistance
One interesting effect of the persistant world is that any changes you make to it will be kept as you move between fortresses. Namely, as you give up on a fortress or they're destroyed by skeletons, elves or whatnot, they stick around. It's possible to raid these fortresses in "Adventure Mode" as a lone hero or to design a custom group with the weapons to take back an old fortress one section at a time.
Problems
It's not without it's share of annoyances. For example, some enemies can shoot farther than you can see, which means that if you're in adventure mode, sometimes you'll just fall over. Lever pulling can't be scripted so it requires you to keep track of everything going on lest food production not happen. Fishing is almost worthless, hunting can be useful but often results in the death of every one involved. Dwarves can't swim at all, so they can get stuck on the other side of an unfrozen river and die, slowly.
Overall though, it's definitely one of the best indie games out there.
Screenshots
Download
Dwarf Fortress is an ASCII game that focuses more on the physics of world simulation and the intricacies of the Fortress economy than it does on usability or interface. As a result it is very fun, extremely fast on most hardware and has a nearly vertical learning curve.
Standard strategy games can only go so far. Sometimes you want as close to reality as possible, with AI good enough to make it worthwhile. DF provides that.
Not to say that DF is completely perfect. I'm personally wary of running it on wine as although it works perfectly most of the time, it locked X on one of my previous attempts and resisted all attempts to be restarted. It also works fairly well in VirtualBox although somewhat slower due to it's intersting construction and the fact that it uses OpenGL for what rendering it does.
In DF, nearly all processing power is spent rendering the AI and environment. The game also accounts for weather patterns and temperature effects. It's interesting that ponds freeze over during the winter and can be tunneled through, if one desires. Dwarves can die of exposure and need an insulated environment, like a fortress, to make it through the winter. Additionally, not all locations cause the river to freeze over, this only occurs in the more extreme climates. Some areas are frozen over all year, allowing for an ice fortress. The pathfinding is perfect in so far as I can observe, the creatures intelligently project their next actions, they don't always attend to their needs first, like the sims, but never allow themselves to starve to death looking at a wall.
If all else fails and you can't feed your men, they will independently hunt for vermin and can supposedly pick plants for food. In essence, they won't just die fighting something far stronger than them or run away from a Rabbit like the heroes in Majesty. If a creature passes out, someone will fetch them, lay them out on a bed and take care of them until they heal.
I'd better go over the features one at a time....
Realistic Game world
The game renders the world through a ncurses like interface. I say ncurses like because the game only runs on Windows and has not been ported to any other system; it doesn't use the ncurses libraries. From the site, it appears to be a mix of C++, C and some parts assembly code. Regardless of this, everything is modelled in the world. Not all at once, as that would be prohibitively complicated, even on a modern processor, setting the map size to maximum, in itself less than 1000th of the world map will cause the latest processors to grind to less than 6fps. The level of detail in the modelling really is stunning. In addition to modelling temperature, the game also tracks weather effects and stress forces inside the fortress. It's possible for unsupported caverns to eventually collapse if they aren't properly shored up.
Different creatures migrate through the maps at different times of the year. One can select to go hunting only when they are surrounded by groundhogs or to go take their chances killing wild horses. In the cursed terrain areas of the map, many of the creatures are undead. Less "skeleton" more "skeleton groundhog".
Dwarf and Creature AI
All your units have slightly different personalities and therefore slightly different weights for their AI decisions. Hunted units will fight back if possible, the realistic combat model includes ground wrestling and loss of limbs. Additionally, while units heal on their own, it does take a massive amount of time for this to happen. During that time, the units will be automatically recovered by the nearest friendly, carried back to base and be tended until they recover.
It should be highlighted that the architectural options allow for some intricate defensive tactics. Including setting up a system to flood entire levels with water or magma on demand, possibly both alternating, just to be sure. Or have slits with ballistae to fire through as well as moats, retractable bridges and other defensive emplacements. The biggest issue I've found is that there appears to be no way to designate a unit to pull a switch in times of trouble, something could happen and it doesn't get done. If you're using a gate system for watering crops, the same problem occurs.
Persistance
One interesting effect of the persistant world is that any changes you make to it will be kept as you move between fortresses. Namely, as you give up on a fortress or they're destroyed by skeletons, elves or whatnot, they stick around. It's possible to raid these fortresses in "Adventure Mode" as a lone hero or to design a custom group with the weapons to take back an old fortress one section at a time.
Problems
It's not without it's share of annoyances. For example, some enemies can shoot farther than you can see, which means that if you're in adventure mode, sometimes you'll just fall over. Lever pulling can't be scripted so it requires you to keep track of everything going on lest food production not happen. Fishing is almost worthless, hunting can be useful but often results in the death of every one involved. Dwarves can't swim at all, so they can get stuck on the other side of an unfrozen river and die, slowly.
Overall though, it's definitely one of the best indie games out there.
Screenshots
Download
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