[Roguelike] Dwarf Fortress

[GreenGoo]

Seeing as how I have no idea WTF Rogue is.... so what?

lol, Rogue is the game that roguelike games are like.

Heh. Slightly more helpful is this link. The "(" is giving the bbs code a problem and I'm too lazy to find out how to fix it. Just cut and paste the link into a new browser/tab.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(computer_game)


Click on the screenshot for an example of ascii graphics gameplay.

[Sepiche]

I played this quite a bit last night.

It's actually strangely like a deeper version of Evil Genius or Dungeon Keeper... with really sh!ty graphics.

I'm still figuring out some stuff and, although my first fortress is nearing the end of it's first year, I think I'm getting close to running out of food and I was only able to plant crops recently.

Time to waste valuable work hours researching yet another game.

s

[yossar]

It took me 3 tries to get a fortress to last the winter. Well the 2nd time it did, but then immigrants showed up in the spring, we ran out of food and everyone went berzerk and started killing each other.

And I actually prefer the ACII to crappy graphics. The ASCII is like a representation of graphics, but crappy graphics are just crappy.

[Kelric]

Alright, this damned forum effect is going to get my trying this game. I need something to kill some gaming time with until OOTP's latest patch comes out anyways. I'll DL it this afternoon.

[Sepiche]

Alright, this damned forum effect is going to get my trying this game. I need something to kill some gaming time with until OOTP's latest patch comes out anyways. I'll DL it this afternoon.

It basically just takes some trial and error to get things going. I wouldn't expect your first fort to do well, but a failure or two will teach you a lot.

Also, if you look through that something awful thread that was linked above it has about 7 pages of tips and answers from the guys there. How to setup trade, how to setup floodgates, how to delve too greedily and too deep and unleash things upon the world that should not be unleashed... stuff like that. Helped me figure out a lot.

s

[Baroquen]

Ok. I'll bite - will be downloading and playing soon.

Someone mentioned earlier in the thread that this was a pain to play without a keypad. Would most of you agree? This'll decide if I play the game on my notebook or on my desktop.

Thanks.

[LordMortis]

Ok. I'll bite - will be downloading and playing soon.

Someone mentioned earlier in the thread that this was a pain to play without a keypad. Would most of you agree? This'll decide if I play the game on my notebook or on my desktop.

Thanks.

As far as I know, it is driven mainly by keypad until your rehot key stuff. What I know is a game after a half an hour of trying to figure what the hell I was doing, though.

[The Meal]

jkil 4tW! Unless you're telling me this is a rogue-like game without a roguelike keyset?!?

~Neal

[Debris]

Seeing as how I have no idea WTF Rogue is.... so what?

lol, Rogue is the game that roguelike games are like.

Is it anything like Rouge?

[Lyno]

Seeing as how I have no idea WTF Rogue is.... so what?

lol, Rogue is the game that roguelike games are like.

Is it anything like Rouge?

It's like Rogue, Nethack, Dungeon Crawl, etc.

-Lyno!

[hitbyambulance]

Seeing as how I have no idea WTF Rogue is.... so what?

lol, Rogue is the game that roguelike games are like.

Is it anything like Rouge?

It's like Rogue, Nethack, Dungeon Crawl, etc.

-Lyno!

!jokeGet

[Chesspieceface]

All the keys can be rebound so the keypad pain is temporary, but by default the game uses the keypad +-/* keys a lot.

A tame dog just chased an angry elephant towards my gates and the elphant stormed my fortress. He ran amok in the halls untill he got inside one of my cave farms and killed a farmer where he stood. I was about to organize a militia when I realized we had no weapons or armor, save for the mining pick and woodchopping axes. I didn't want to lose any skilled craftsman battling the bezerk elephant so I decided to just be quiet and hope it went away. Crazily 2 more elephants came charging looking for their friend, luckily just then the one inside found the gate and left and all three went bounding off together back to the west where they belong. Time to dig a graveyard, cant leave that farmer corpse laying in the fields, it freaks the other farmers out.

[Kelric]

A dog chasing the elephants through the gates? That's it, I'm installing this now.

[killbot737]

You know that thread about Supreme Commander and emergent gameplay vs. rock/paper/scissors? This game is an exemplar of the former.

If only it were open source! Can you imagine the mayhem the programming community at large could produce? It's already quite the masterpiece! Perhaps someday...

[Kelric]

How do I take apart a wagon to get some wood?

[Kelric]

Well, I tried playing for about 30 total minutes and I just couldn't get into it. It was windowed mode, but then I had to play that way to figure out what the hell to do. If there were even basic 2d graphics, I think that'd make it a hell of a lot easier. I couldn't remember where I placed stockpiles (is it that little horizontal line or is that one? is there anything even there?), didn't know what 90% of the things on screen meant, etc., etc.

[yossar]

Fortress mode actually isn't much like Rogue apart from the graphics and to some degree, interface.

[Kelric]

Well, I tried playing for about 30 total minutes and I just couldn't get into it. It was windowed mode, but then I had to play that way to figure out what the hell to do. If there were even basic 2d graphics, I think that'd make it a hell of a lot easier. I couldn't remember where I placed stockpiles (is it that little horizontal line or is that one? is there anything even there?), didn't know what 90% of the things on screen meant, etc., etc.

Having figured out how to adjust the window mode size, eliminating most of the needless dots and hash marks.... I've now sunk an hour into this new world. I'm restarting it however as I made a rather important cavern too large and it's collapsed three times on me. Didn't expect that, these dwarves don't know how to build support pillars!

[yossar]

They don't do it automatically, but you can tell them to build supports.

[Chesspieceface]

Easier to just not dig out the center square of the a big room, at least early on. 7x7 is the biggest non collapsing room possible, sort of. Really its that at least one ste of parallell walls must be no more than 7 spaces apart. A 6x20 room will not collapse.

[yossar]

My sheriff kept throwing tantrums and started killing people left and right (even children!). If you can't trust the Sheriff, who can you trust? Had to recruit a big army to take him out after he killed my three sworddwarfs.

[xwraith]

Looks interesting, generating a world now....

[Gryndyl]

My first fortress just died an ugly Donner party style death. I never struck an underground river and we were pretty much down to seeds when the first trading caravan arrived. A trading caravan that brought absolutely nothing. My dwarves sat forlornly on the piles of stone tables and chairs in the trading depot, staring glumly at the empty wagons.

That was when the killing began.

[Chesspieceface]

An easy way to avoid the underground farming is to make your early focus building a channel from the outdoor river to a seperate floodgated farm cave. You can usually have this done by mid-spring and start farming very early on. In my current game the 3rd winter just passed and I don't think we are going to farm at all this year. Have over 700 units of food in the stockpile, need to free up some of those barrels.

[Kelric]

How do you get your dwarves to actually build support pillars? I set some up, but they just stay as grayed out squares with the pillars in the middle, making me think they aren't really there.

[Gryndyl]

How do you get your dwarves to actually build support pillars? I set some up, but they just stay as grayed out squares with the pillars in the middle, making me think they aren't really there.

You need a dwarf with the Architecture job highlighted. Architect dwarves will also build the well and the trading post.

[Kelric]

Ah, ok. Thanks.

This game is so friggin' confusing to learn.

[malichai11]

My first fortress just died an ugly Donner party style death. I never struck an underground river and we were pretty much down to seeds when the first trading caravan arrived. A trading caravan that brought absolutely nothing. My dwarves sat forlornly on the piles of stone tables and chairs in the trading depot, staring glumly at the empty wagons.

That was when the killing began.

I've read this blurb about seven times and it still makes me cackle.

[Gryndyl]

The Horror at Zonmarkrey

As we neared the end of our second winter, the food began to run dangerously low. Orlun the Trapper had been augmenting our supplies with his hunting until he was wounded in what he claims to have been an epic battle with a raccoon. His incessant bedridden tantrums wore on us all. Finally, he snapped. He didn't seem partucularly injured as he struck down the farmer and the jewelcrafter but perhaps his insanity lent him strength.

He calmed down after that but the verdict had been reached. Incessant tantrum throwing dwarves were to be put down before they snapped. A special "bedroom" chamber was constructed near the river. A nearby lever put whomever slept their out of our misery. Orlun was the first resident.

We were down to just seeds when spring finally arrived. There was a great sigh of relief through the rough hewn halls. It was, however, a false hope. Overcome with their hunger, the dwarves chose to forego fishing in the newly thawed river and the crops would not be grown in time. Lean dwarves with wild eyes roamed the halls, daggers clenched in their teeth, looking for any vermin that hadn't already been eaten by the scores of cats.

It was quickly decided that the horses and puppies would be eaten out of desperation. This fed a few, but not enough. The starving dwarves began going berzerk, killing anything they came across. The graveyard began filling with bodies, the refuse pile with scraps of kittens and dogs. Rioting ran rampant.

In the middle of the chaos, the immigrants arrived. A Sheriff, a broker, and twenty assorted craftsmen and workers who had heard the legends of the dwarf kingdom's glory. They had no idea what they were walking into whent they came strolling through the gates. The bodies continued to pile up. The broker lived just long enough to "ban the exporting of certain items" (kitten scraps?) before being killed. I never saw what became of the sheriff.

Perhaps sensing the fortresses weakness, that was when the snakemen launched their attack. The blade traps by the river caught of few of them but not enough. Snakemen and insane dwarves rampaging through bloodsoaked corridors, the bodies of cats and dogs lying in heaps, absolute carnage.

I blame the raccoon. One or two more deer might have carried us through..

I think I need to have my food supply figured out a little better in my next fort

[Chesspieceface]

New version today.

[Kelric]

What on earth is the button to select a region to settle? I can scroll through them no problem, but this is the 4th game I've started and I've yet to be able to get the actual region I want. +/- scrolls through, but then next to the Select: part of the screen, there's nothing but a blank. Enter doesn't seem to get the job done.

[Gryndyl]

What on earth is the button to select a region to settle? I can scroll through them no problem, but this is the 4th game I've started and I've yet to be able to get the actual region I want. +/- scrolls through, but then next to the Select: part of the screen, there's nothing but a blank. Enter doesn't seem to get the job done.

Once you have it on the region you want I think you just hit 'e' for embark and you'll go there.

Warning: Remember that it's a persistent world. If you choose the same region that your previous fortress was in you may find the river to be very low on fish since your previous guys ate them all.

[Chesspieceface]

This game is so freaking amusing. Earlier, in my biggest fortress yet (first with nobles) A dwarven caravan of 4 traders was heading in but elephants were blocking the road. Their guards engaged but drove the elephants towards my fortress. There was a macedwarf patrolling the road with about 10 Wardogs. As the elephants ran across the bridge they killed a peasant and a carpenter who were gathering wood, so the wardogs all attacked. A couple got knocked off the bridge into the river and drowned. The macedwarf goes totally apeshit from seeing the other dwarves die and his dogs being drowned and starts breaking shit all over the place. Then he kills a kitten, . Meanwhile the caravan dwarves kick some elephant ass and everythign proceeds as usual. I had to have the macedwarf arrested, 300 days in jail should straighten him out. When I look at his memories, it talks about how much he enjoyed breaking all that shit and killing the cat. Hillarious.

[Kelric]

What on earth is the button to select a region to settle? I can scroll through them no problem, but this is the 4th game I've started and I've yet to be able to get the actual region I want. +/- scrolls through, but then next to the Select: part of the screen, there's nothing but a blank. Enter doesn't seem to get the job done.

Once you have it on the region you want I think you just hit 'e' for embark and you'll go there.

Warning: Remember that it's a persistent world. If you choose the same region that your previous fortress was in you may find the river to be very low on fish since your previous guys ate them all.

I just create a new world every time I start over. I've yet to make it into Fall as the first time I got aggravated at the interface, the second I created a cavern a little too big that kept collapsing, the third I screwed up and placed a floodgate blocking another floodgate and couldnt get the dwarf to the further one to install the proper lever.

So... we'll try again. Though this one had over 150 rejections before it created one it liked (usually it takes about 75).

[Chesspieceface]

Doh! YOu dont need to make a new world every time. Just abandon your fortress and start a new game. Each world has spots for like 50 or so fortresses.

EDIT: On the official forum a guy posted the beginning of a tileset with some ASCII characters replaced with little icons, likes beds and tables and trees and stuff, its a great start.

[Kelric]

Doh! YOu dont need to make a new world every time. Just abandon your fortress and start a new game. Each world has spots for like 50 or so fortresses.

I know, I just like starting with a new world.

I finally got my first farm up and running, had to pull the old two floodgate trick to get it to work though. If I can figure out other essential things I need to do/create, I should be able to make a decent fortress.

And great news on the tileset. Keep an eye on it for us. I'll get it when it's more complete.

[Quitch]

Heh, I lept in today having read part of the manual (then realising I would never remember it all) so I started with a basic idea of the building commands.

Found I hadn't a clue how to excavate and had to quit.

I will master this game though, but damn if that isn't one hell of a learning curve. I was just looking over the professions and boy are there a lot of them.

[Kelric]

Heh, I lept in today having read part of the manual (then realising I would never remember it all) so I started with a basic idea of the building commands.

Found I hadn't a clue how to excavate and had to quit.

I will master this game though, but damn if that isn't one hell of a learning curve. I was just looking over the professions and boy are there a lot of them.

Seriously, read this thread. I've almost got the basic commands memorized.

[Koz]

It's a steep learning curve, but once you get it, it's a ton of fun.

I just sank about four hours into it without realizing. I finished off learning how to use floodgates, so next time round I can start my farms off early. I also need to set up a better system of storage to workshop so people aren't running everywhere.

I just hit winter with my first fortress and there's no way I have enough food. I'll probably just start over, but I may watch my dwarves go all Donner party before I do.

[LordMortis]

I started again last night. Very little happened. I get messages for dwarves being mauled that are not mine which confuses. I managed to follow the tutorial long enough to dig out two room from the tutorial posted here but I have yet to fill them and to get my lazy dwarves to work properly. They like to just go idle until I get them a job that they're willing to do.

I still haven't finished my filling my two rooms from the tutorials. I was told to build five buckets but I don't know how to place them. I assumed I'd be putting them next to the beds, but their are no buckets on the placement list.

I did dig deep enough to find a silver vane, though I still haven't found water which I hear is problem from my reading. I'm hoping my dwarves are smart enough to drink from the river.

I don't know how to make my hunting dwarf hunt for food.

I haven't laid down a garden yet as I still havent finished the mess hall or the barracks.

I'm taking tomorrow off of work and will probably give this a couple of hours then. It's going to take a long time to get familiar with all of the crap in this game. I still only know a few of the ASCII characters and have barely touched the navigations, though the way menu structure works is much more comfortable after a few hours of play.

Yes. That's right. After a few hours all I have done is dug out two mostly unfurnished rooms.

Why did a get two cats and two dogs. The one tutorial strongly recommended this and I have no idea what they are for.