Friday, July 22, 2011

Dwarf Fortress in NYT Magazine

Saw this at Metafilter.  What I considered an interesting interview with the the brother designers of Dwarf Fortress.  I actually tried DF for the first time this summer.  It was complex, but not the rocket science I was afraid it would be.  If you've played rogue-likes and RTSs I think that's a good background already.

5 comments:

  1. You know, it doesn't make any sense to me that somebody could make a good effort to learn to play Dwarf Fortress and still not understand it.

    Like you said, it's not rocket science, it just demands that you spend a little bit of brain power and a little bit of attention to get over the fact that there's a minimal interface. Apparently it's too much to ask, though, for some people.



    Thanks for the tip, by the way. It's a pretty good article.

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  2. Also if you take the time to use Dwarf Therapist and a decent graphics mod, getting past 20 dwarves stops being so maddening.

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  3. I'm at the point with that game where I never play it because I believe their hype about the next release (I'm strictly adventure mode and they seem to have some amazing things in store).

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  4. @N. Wright and Oddbit: Well, in fairness, it isn't often that to play a game you need to have the internet open-- I had to Google how to move up and down through the z-axis. Turns out the game hadn't even assigned keys to do that! I had to go set them myself in the options. I think it fair to say, a dude like Tarn that actively dislikes socializing might have a hard time understanding what a typical player needs in a UI.

    All that said, I think what the game offers is worth some effort to learn in order to get to it.

    @Roger: I haven't tried the adventure mode yet. I dream about a game with Oblivion-like graphics with DF-like algorithms behind the world's generation.

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  5. a game with Oblivion-like graphics with DF-like algorithms behind the world's generation.

    It's not exactly that, but Minecraft is worth a look.

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