Have you ever played, or even heard of, Dwarf Fortress?
I've been so addicted to the game recently.
First and foremost : The game is a roguelike. Which is to say that, similar to Nethack, it uses Ascii art and features amazing details in the ways in which you can die.
The ascii-art puts most people off immediately. They look at a bunch of @...,.%U and get all overwhelmed. There are tilesets which a lot of people use instead.
The game itself is reminiscient of Dungeon Keeper or Evil Genius. You dig out a home. Typically, this means that you find a nice mountain, send your 7 dwarves to establish a fortress, dig out a nice cozy place, get an immigration wave of 20 dwarves early in the 2nd year, dig some more, hit magma, unleash a flood of fiery death upon the hapless midgets, and salute as the entire place goes up in a plume of ash and failure. Like other Roguelike games, the motto is "Losing is fun".
Or you embark with 2 cats, which breed and produce 7 kittens, which immediately latch onto the Dwarven equivalent of 'Crazy Cat Lady' and continue to reproduce exponentially. Within three years there's over two hundred cats running amok, until you mod the game to give all cats a body temperature of 40,000 degrees. Then you watch the thermonuclear catsplosion and go to create another fort.
A couple years ago, some of the SomethingAwful forum goons did a succession game - each one playing for a year, then handing it to someone else. It resulted in one of the greatest games I've ever seen. Elephants running amok, slaughtering the stout little alcoholics in incredible numbers. A 'Final Solution' to all goblin sieges which unleashes floods of magma to incinerate the world. Images of demons, elephants, burning dogs, and cheese carved into the walls and floor by lunatics, dwarves butchering other dwarves while running around on fire.
http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/
Best thing to do, though, is to read the introduction and then jump straight to this page. Read on to the end. Khyron fucked around with this message on 07-21-2009 at 06:45 PM.
Boatmurdered was awesome. Then there was the saga of Nil Bastionhall!
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java the thoughts aquire speed, the teeth acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
I've never been able to get into it, mainly because it looks like absolute ass. Yeah, a catsplosion sounds funny...until you realize it is one sprite, then another sprite. Or one ASCII character and then another ASCII character.
Imagination is nice to use during a game. But I'd rather not have to imagine the whole thing. I'm too lazy for that. Falaanla Marr fucked around with this message on 07-21-2009 at 10:02 PM.
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Nobody really understood why Falaanla Marr wrote:
I don't get why goons blow their wads for this game.I've never been able to get into it, mainly because it looks like absolute ass. Yeah, a catsplosion sounds funny...until you realize it is one sprite, then another sprite. Or one ASCII character and then another ASCII character.
Imagination is nice to use during a game. But I'd rather not have to imagine the whole thing. I'm too lazy for that.
HURR GAM AL 'BOUT GRAFIX OLOLLOLOLOLOLOL
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java the thoughts aquire speed, the teeth acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
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Falaanla Marr obviously shouldn't have said:
I don't get why goons blow their wads for this game.I've never been able to get into it, mainly because it looks like absolute ass. Yeah, a catsplosion sounds funny...until you realize it is one sprite, then another sprite. Or one ASCII character and then another ASCII character.
Imagination is nice to use during a game. But I'd rather not have to imagine the whole thing. I'm too lazy for that.
Because most goons have aspergers, so the game clicks with them perfectly.
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Damnati had this to say about Jimmy Carter:
HURR GAM AL 'BOUT GRAFIX OLOLLOLOLOLOLOL
More proof that you're a fucking moron. As if we needed any more.
I stated why I didn't like it. I never called anyone bad for liking it -- simply said I didn't get why so many people cream their pants for it as a leadin to why I didn't like it.
And my stating that the graphics are horribly simplistic is obviously me saying games are all about graphics. Nice leap there, Captain Strawman. Falaanla Marr fucked around with this message on 07-21-2009 at 11:36 PM.
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Falaanla Marr had this to say about (_|_):
More proof that you're a fucking moron. As if we needed any more.I stated why I didn't like it. I never called anyone bad for liking it -- simply said I didn't get why so many people cream their pants for it as a leadin to why I didn't like it.
And my stating that the graphics are horribly simplistic is obviously me saying games are all about graphics. Nice leap there, Captain Strawman.
*applauds* Brilliant riposte! I am cut to the quick! Truly there is no wit sharper than yours!
It's kind of sad that you would jump at such an obvious troll, particularly given how often it's used on this very forum. Learn to recognize obvious mockery for exactly what it is; life will be easier!
All that said, you've certainly got no objection to like the game. It's rather obtuse and time-consuming; I find it to be the most fun when I'm otherwise occupied and I can just tab back to it periodically.
Won't stop me making fun of you, though. Damnati fucked around with this message on 07-22-2009 at 12:25 AM.
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java the thoughts aquire speed, the teeth acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
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A sleep deprived Falaanla Marr stammered:
I don't get why goons blow their wads for this game.I've never been able to get into it, mainly because it looks like absolute ass. Yeah, a catsplosion sounds funny...until you realize it is one sprite, then another sprite. Or one ASCII character and then another ASCII character.
Imagination is nice to use during a game. But I'd rather not have to imagine the whole thing. I'm too lazy for that.
Imagining everything sounds a lot like D&D to me 
I know, I know; two very, very different types of games, but it's a good example of how a lot of people see it. It's about the freedom that the games give you, I think.
I can't speak for others; for me, it's that freedom that draws me in. I've never tried another sandbox game that gives me nearly this level of depth. Other games can come very close, but this one manages to combine the best parts of a large number of different games into one. I describe it as a Dungeon Keeper or Evil Genius type game, but even those examples are incompletel; you're never limited to the underground. You can build a hundred-story-tall pyramid, a giant obsidian tower, or a wooden village. It doesn't restrict you in ways other games do.
Take a look at the images in reply #2 and #4 of this thread of the official forums. When you take the 2D game and render it in 3D you can see what the creator saw when he created it, block by block.
It has its flaws; Ascii is very limited, even when you replace it with tilesets there's still a lot that gets left out. The fact that there's so much to do also means that it's very difficult to learn, as Mightion mentioned above. And the amount of micromanagement borders on the obsessive. But somehow all that seems pretty minor when you've just dug out your own version of the Mines of Moria, complete with ten-story-tall engraved columns, goblin hordes, and a fire demon dug out of a pit leading to the depths of the earth itself.
Like I said, it's only my personal opinion but that's what I see in it. All the effort and imagination you put into D&D, I put into my forts; I see a character sheet and dice, you see a paladin or a cleric. You see a bunch of green and blue characters (.,`,.``.,`@D) and I see a dwarven caravan guard getting eaten by a dragon. It's just personal preference, in the end.
EDIT : Even some of the bugs or odd behaviors in the game are pretty damn funny when you look at them a little differently. Examples are here and here. Khyron fucked around with this message on 07-22-2009 at 01:09 AM.
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Khyron had this to say about Jimmy Carter:
EDIT : Even some of the bugs or odd behaviors in the game are pretty damn funny when you look at them a little differently. Examples are here and here.
This here is what the game is all about. In-depth and free-form as the game is, it wouldn't be anywhere near so engaging without the ridiculous dorf behaviors. You build this huge megafortress, complete with a dragon pit, magma moats, and impregnable gates of adamantite that menace with spikes of cat leather and rhyolite; then whole thing collpses because a peasant fell asleep on the triggering mechanism just as a demon, three colossi, and a marauding band of goblins showed up. It is absolutely brilliant in its flaws.
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java the thoughts aquire speed, the teeth acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
Why don't you all calm down.
ESPECIALLY YOU, GADANI
I am sorely disappointed. Captain Tarquinn fucked around with this message on 07-22-2009 at 09:41 AM.
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From the book of Captain Tarquinn, chapter 3, verse 16:
I came to this thread expecting midget porn.I am sorely disappointed.
Best I can do, probably a repost.
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java the thoughts aquire speed, the teeth acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
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Mr. Parcelan got all f'ed up on Angel Dust and wrote:
ESPECIALLY YOU, GADANI
I'm chill, man, I'm chill.
oh and this thread Willias fucked around with this message on 07-22-2009 at 03:08 PM.
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A sleep deprived Willias stammered:
this thread
I don't remember stuff I posted over 2 years ago 
Anyhow, two solutions to the problem!
First, Nayday's Graphical Dwarf Fortress.
http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/df.php
It is the full game with the graphics added, no need to mod shit. Goes a long way towards helping with simply understanding things at a glance.
Secondly...
The Complete and Utter Newby Tutorial for Dwarf Fortress
Good to follow along with, that is solely what got me playing the game.
It isn't a game for everyone but the modding for it is huge and allows you to tweak almost everything. (I for one got bored rapidly with the basic goblins and within two forts had swarms of super pissed orc hordes many times my number pounding on my fort's doors at all hours haha)
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Liam's unholy Backstreet Boys obsession manifested in:
let's ban damnati and gadani anyways
whoa whoa i didn't ask to get banned
