Quick Dip into Dwarf Fortress

So this week I finally decided to take the plunge into a game I’ve always been fascinated by: Dwarf Fortress. This is one of those games you’ve probably heard of before because it’s a game, much like Eve Online, that creates memorable and entertaining stories thanks to its sandbox nature and the way its incredibly detailed mechanics interact with each other behind the scenes.

But when I hear a story about these games and I inevitably try to get into them myself I’m always turned away at some point, usually by their complexity and steep learning curve. In Dwarf Fortress’s case, not only is it supremely difficult to get into, but it looks awful. We’re talking old, OLD school ASCII characters as stand ins for everything from the grass and tress to the camels and dogs that you can bring along with your team of dwarves. Regardless, I decided to sit down in front of a tutorial and force myself to come to grips with this interactive behemoth.

And after around 4 hours of slowly coming to grips with the control scheme and trying to figure out if that letter ‘C’ is a camel or a cannon, I feel like I’m on the cusp of seeing the vast ocean of free time this game is capable of siphoning from its players. And I think I’m going to give it a rest. I can already tell at this point that given a few more hours with its ASCII tiles and key bindings I could finally start to delve into the actual strategy and mechanics of setting up and maintaining a flourishing dwarf fortress, but I’m afraid of how many hours I could sink into this simulation.

And Dwarf Fortress is at its core and extremely rich and supremely detailed simulation, everything from the gods and demigods of your randomly created world’s pantheon and ancient history to the individual likes and dislikes of your dwarves is all simulated in real time. This game can have the processing load of modern AAA game titles due to this complex simulation that is always at work behind the scenes, and yet it uses the letter ‘O’ to indicate trees. This is a game that everyone who considers themselves a fan of video games should try out at least once, but is probably best left to the intermittent and bizarre online articles describing the tales of these ASCII dwarves and their pet cats.

Related posts:

I have already written about why you should learn functional programming and explored the fundamentals of functional programming. Before diving into more advanced topics I want to discuss advantages…

Instructive innovation is a precise utilization of applicable mechanical procedures and assets in educating, with an objective to improve understudies’ presentation. It includes a trained way to deal…

One of my resolution that i have planned before is reading some books, actually that isn’t easy anyway because i have to spare my time beside my daily-activites (working) but i enjoy the transition…