No.19851[Last 50 Posts]
Is Dwarf Fortress the most Historical Materialist game of all time?
>Simulates thousands of years of history
>Simulates individual lives
>Simulates entire economies
>Simulates private property, families, cities, states
>does not privilege the player with any kind of protagonism. You are simply an entity in a larger civilization
>any entity can be wiped out at any given moment and replaced with a similar one.
>deep physics simluation that includes erosion, precipitation, and the formation of continents
>can instantaneously generate an entire encyclopedia of interconnected occurences spanning thousands of years
>simulates marriage, divorce, courtship, cheating, betrayal, coups, assassinations, persecutions, and purges
No.19894
>>Simulates entire economiesIt's only bartering tho. The dev tried to simulate a capitalist economy, but the resulting coin placement bugs, chronic unemployment, fortress gentrification and periodic economic crises made the game near unplayable.
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Dwarven_economy No.19898
>>19894>The dev tried to simulate a capitalist economy, but the resulting coin placement bugs, chronic unemployment, fortress gentrification and periodic economic crises made the game near unplayable.3realistic5me
No.19899
>>19894Lol the old wiki page even talks about how to set room rents to zero.
Literally Dwarf Fortress rent control.
No.19901
>>19894>simulate capitalism.>fort end up becoming a shack where most live in poverty and an minority lives in weath while most lives in slums while crisis destroy everything.what Armok mean by this…
No.19912
>simulation
Most populations aside from historical figures (government positions, famous warriors, monsters, stuff like that) are abstracted and don't exist until the player makes a fort or visits those locations in adventure mode.
>historical materialism
Not really, civilizations themselves are static throughout history. Civilization-level values and government positions are predetermined at start (although human values are randomized) and unable to change, so you'll never end up with dwarven civilizations with conflicting values, and intra-civilizational conflicts, like wars of succession, rebellion, or new forms of govenment, are completely impossible. Plus the sentient races have varying levels of biological determinism, with goblins being the most extreme example. Goblins are physically incapable of being altruistic (on the scale of 1-100 for that personality facet, it caps at 50 for goblins) and are biologically cruel, and even after a lifetime of helping others a goblin's empathy attribute will only be below average compared to other races. One of the recent updates allows individual personality and personal values change in response to events but the change can be for better or worse, there's no way to control it as far as I can tell.
None of this is to say it's not a fun game, I've spent thousands of hours playing it and editing raws to make my own races, civilizations, languages, powers, and other stuff.
No.19916
>>19901 >>19899 >>19898poignant as it is, DF capitalism suffers from way, way worse problems than IRL capitalism, as insane as that sounds to say.
No.19921
this game gets boring after the first 30 minutes, it's a massive grinder and you can only build so much in your fortress before some wacky RNG thing fucks everything up
and no, it's not historical materialist because the world is entirely deterministic and based on idealistic RPG stats. nothing you listed has anything to do with historical materialism
No.19933
>>19921>it's not historical materialist because the world is entirely deterministicA consistent materialist worldview must be deterministic though.
>based on idealistic RPG statsFair enough.
>nothing OP listed has anything to do with historical materialismThrough simulating certain things, dwarffortress is less metaphysical and more dialectical than other rpgs. These systems also lend themselves to create a history driven by the simulated material reality, for example environment, minerals and hostile entities. Megabeasts shouldn't be seen as "le great men", but rather a force of nature in a fantasy world.
No.19936
>>19933The world isn't just deterministic, it's fixed in place: goblins will always be evil, dwarves will always have a monarchy, elf civilizations will never leave the forest. There are no class conflicts or antagonisms to drive change, only conflicts between civilizations. Even the research and discovery system is fairly barebones at the moment so civilizations are effectively static throughout history, but Toady plans to expand it at some point. Maybe he'll make civilizations dynamic at some point far into the future.
>>19921Toady's goal is to make a fantasy world simulator more than a proper game, but I still have fun with it. Getting all the industries running smoothly and ensuring every dorf accomplishes its life goal in an evil reanimating glacier brings its own sort of enjoyment.
No.19973
>>19933>A consistent materialist worldview must be deterministic though.what? you're just saying shit
No.19976
>>19973See the
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch07c.htm and the section on chance and necessity.
>Hegel came forward with the hitherto quite unheard-of propositions that the accidental has a cause because it is accidental, and just as much also has no cause because it is accidental; that the accidental is necessary, that necessity determines itself as chance, and, on the other hand, this chance is rather absolute necessity. (Logik, II, Book III, 2: Reality.)Marx condemns both the metaphysical distinction between chance and necessity and the denial of chance through the determinism of french materialism, instead refering to the hegelian conception of chance. These are the relevant passages from my German copy:
>Das Zufällige bietet daher die zwei Seiten dar; erstens insofern es die Möglichkeit unmittelbar an ihm oder was dasselbe ist, insofern sie in ihm aufgehoben ist, ist es nicht Gesetztseyn noch vermittelt, sondern unmittelbare Wirklichkeit; es hat keinen Grund. - Weil auch dem Möglichen diese unmittelbare Wirklichkeit zukommt, so es so sehr als das Wirkliche bestimmt als zufällig, und ebenfalls ein Grundloses.>Das Zufällige ist aber zweitens das Wirkliche als nur Mögliches oder als ein Gesetztseyn; so auch das Mögliche ist als formelles An-sich-seyn nur Gesetztseyn. Somit ist beides nicht an und für sich selbst, sondern seine Warhafte Reflexion-in-sich in einem Andern, oder es hat einen Grund.>Das Zufällige hat also darum keinen Grund, weil es zufällig ist; und ebenso hat es einen Grund, dar weil es zufällig ist.In short, chance is something immediate and without cause, yet it refers to its truth only through another, that is content of reality. Therefore, despite the necessity of chance in science, reality in itself is deterministic.
No.19977
>>19894sounds like he correctly simulated capitalism
No.19978
>>19976this has absolutely nothing to do with determinism
No.19980
>>19933> Megabeasts shouldn't be seen as "le great men", but rather a force of nature in a fantasy world.megabeasts really are the climate change of dwarf fortress. they eventually kill everyone off if you run the sim long enough
No.19981
>>19978>t. cannot readMarx ridiculed the use of the determinism in the natural sciences, but implicitly acknowledged it in parts of philosophy.
To clarify some things:
Accusing a game of being unrealistic because of determinism implies, that the game cannot develop from its possibly arbitrary foundation according to laws that mimic those of reality. I assert that from the position of the game, that creates the appearance of its own reality, chance need not be injected through prngs, in cases where the game is able to approximate the richness of all of its possibilities.
Dwarffortress is not "entirely deterministic" when it has many random checks, yet to accuse it of reductionism because of those that are deterministic seems illogical to me.
No.19985
>>19894The same thing happened with Black Desert. They had to make capitalism impossible because otherwise the economy would be immediately and irrevocably fucked from pretty much the outset.
No.20252
>start new fortress after reading this thread>"wew I can't wait to see what wacky fun happens this time">boring but peaceful start>clothier comes in migrant wave with strange mood>has a history of anger problems>send her to the mine to keep her away from everyone else>doesn't work>see assaults a child and slices their arm open>right outside the barracks>militia is too busy "training" in the commander's bedroom to do anything about the attempted child murder>a jeweler rescues the child by beating the clothier to death bare-handed>check in on the child>she is sad and is heavily traumatized by witnessing a brutal murder>have craftsdwarf make toy for her>she still is sadpic rel is me realizing the system has failed
>>19921>this game gets boring after the first 30 minutesnah
>before some wacky RNG thing fucks everything upthe game is so damn complex that it gives you all the tools and options (world gen/mods) to make that shit completely manageable. Plus that's kind of the point of the simulation, always something you won't expect to happen happens.
No.20259
Apparently cats used to die of alcohol poisoning because their paws had no set limit to how much alcohol they could absorb, do they'd walk through puddles of alcohol, soak them up, then drink them all when they cleaned themselves, dying instantly
that's pretty funny
No.20260
>>20259Non-dwarf visitors and residents still regularly die of alcohol poisoning if you have a tavern keeper, as they'll keep handing them drinks until they fall unconscious.
Another unrelated but entertaining feature is if you conquer a vault in fort mode, the sapient residents become part of your civilization and can migrate to your fort, so you can get migration waves with 9 dwarves and 1 unspeakable horror made of flame that sets everything it touches on fire. Intelligent necromancer experiments can also join your civilization, so a supernatural abomination that secretes toxic gas may end up as your mayor.
No.24120
>>24119Why not release the source code instead?
No.24121
>>24120Because the only reason the steam release exists is thanks to america's dogshit healthcare system.
No.24122
>>24121Please tell me more, I am not familiar with the circumstances.
No.24123
>>24122From what I remember, one of the brothers got cancer which resulted in a lot of money to get surgery and such. The other realized he was likely to get cancer as well and wanted to have enough in savings if the worse case scenario ever happened.
No.24124
>>24122NTA but it's probably something along the line of "creator fall sick and have to make a profit out of his project ASAP to get treatment.
No.24125
>>19980usually it goes the other way around, megabeasts gradually die off to giant armies if you just let the world simulate. That is why there is more megabeasts at earlier dates than later ones.
No.24126
>>19916well yeah because Toady didn't code the dorfs to unionize or anything. labor revolting has always functioned as a check on bourgeois insanity at least to some degree. you can only push real humans so far, unlike simulated dorfs…
No.24132
>>24120pretty sure cause its horrible
not 100% sure but I think the brothers agreed that should they drop dead it will be released
No.24699
Can't believe the steam version is finally coming out in 3 days.
No.24700
>>24132>pretty sure cause its horribleYeah the source code has to be very cruddy, given that it's been in development since 2002. But if they open-sourced it there would probably be a community effort to refactor the code and give it a proper documentation.
I hope they open the code, i want a scifi version in the style of how alpha centaury was a scifi version of CIV. You'd start out with the crew of a spaceship that has landed on a new planet. And the procedural world generation at the beginning of the game would be the terraforming process.
No.24767
so is the new steam version with graphixx any good ? is the UI functional ?
No.24778
>>24767If you're new to DF then the new UI and mouse controls will be a godsend for you. If you're someone whose been playing since forever you'll be irritated by a lot of the changes. Overall, I'd say it's worth it especially if you haven't played DF before and got scared off by the ascii and keyboard only UI interaction.
No.24799
>>24767Apparently it's missing some features the original had. Hopefully, they'll be restored in future patches.
No.24807
https://leftypol.org/games/res/19851.html>i'm at loss even after playing the tutorialNot sure what the tutorial is like, but as someone whose played the game for awhile I'd recommend reading the quickstart guide on the wiki (
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Quickstart_guide). It's slightly outdated until they start making pages for the current version but starting out is mostly the same. I was going to write up what to do, but that guide explains what I was trying to type far better.
No.24853
Only 4 years into my new fort and ~20 monster hunters have died to the local tribe of bat people in the caverns below, yet they still keep on coming
No.24856
Any of you guys play The Long Night mod?
No.24858
>>24856Nah, but I wanted to try it out at least once for a long time. I'll try to check it out this week or so if I have the time to spare
No.24859
>>24853I trained a militia to take on the birds who were stealing from my refuse stockpile. the popup was annoying me.
My best dwarf shot one in the stomach, causing it to vomit as it fell to the ground. Because it was winter, the vomit froze and domed my dorf.
RIP Reg.
No.24860
>>24853I let those guys act as free security from forgotten beasts. That and the other critters down there.
No.24861
>>24860That was also my original plan but these steel clad hardy warriors keep getting destroyed by a bunch of half naked cave dwellers with fungiwood spears
No.24863
picked up the steam version and god it feels even more magical than when I first picked up minecraft in 2013
No.24864
>>24861Ok the problem could stem from them getting absolutely shitfaced in my tavern before they decide to go down into the caverns, but if I remember it correctly drunkeness only raises the chance of them starting brawls
No.24866
>>24853>>24861Unless they have good combat skills and are able to properly use their equipment they'll get bodied in a fight, especially if there are multiple opponents. If they're wearing a full set of armor without a good armor user skill and/or high endurance they'll get winded before the fight even starts
No.24867
>>24866I know, but I was under the impression that these self proclaimed monster hunters had more to show than some shiny armor
No.24871
>>19894Why would you try to simulate capitalism if the game is a medieval fantasy? They should have a feudal economy. But that is pretty cool and IIRC there was an update that included class struggle elements so the possibility of transitioning from feudalism to capitalism (and/or socialism) would definitely be possible with the base the game currently has. Given that the whole thing centers around production and building (potentially) large scale industry and complex supply chains, the transition to capitalism would actually make perfect sense and be quite historically materialist, but one can imagine there would be a lot of kinks to work out.
All that said, the description given sounds like capitalism doing what capitalism does, just without (A) proper management measures to help contain the instability at least a little and (B) ways of transitioning into and out of that economy (perhaps a system relating to class consciousness). However, the development of capitalism and its destructive tendencies being a possible
outcome (i.e. a fail state) rather than simply the default status quo is entirely in the spirit of Dorf Fort and actually sounds rather
FUN.
No.24872
>>24801This guy is supposed to be good.
Bump so you see it since your thread got merged.
No.24879
>>24871I don't think its particularly viable because when you get down to the brass tacks of the game, the basic level of technology stays the same mostly throughout - from the beginning to the end of the world humans are on a bronze/iron age, dwarves have steel and can rarely work on adamantine, elves live in communal treehouses, goblins are lead by demons, and kobolds never establish real civilization. There isn't civilizational progression in a real sense beyond the stories, culture, legends, and artifacts the civilizations generate.
No.24895
>>19851How tf do I deal with werebeasts? Just had a fort taken down by an infestation of wereelephants
No.24897
>>24895there is one metal randomly chosen at worldgen to be effective against werebeasts, you gotta find it and use it. Otherewise, try for dismemberment and decapitation, they are too tough otherwise.
No.24898
>>24897Can also increase mineral occurrence in general.
No.24900
>>24895lock up and wait it out. the werecunts will eventually change back to their original forms and leave
No.24909
I gotta say, I love the newfound enthusiasm the internet has for Dorf Fortress with the new steam release.
I'm looking forward to mod makers getting strange moods.
>This is a furry mod. All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is encrusted with gems and coal. It menaces with spikes of fur.
No.24914
>>24909want to see the Masterwork mod in the Steam version if it's possible.
No.24915
>>24909A mod that would allow beast race civilizations to spawn would be absolutely game changing.
No.24916
>>24915You can edit the raws pretty easily and adding new civilizations is surprisingly easy, I've made a few attempts at beast people civs before if you're interested. I have some auto-generated languages to go along with them as well, but I never bothered proofreading to see if there are any goofy inclusions. The only thing to keep in mind is any flying race will completely break when they visit your fort and just hover at the edge of the map, which fucks up caravans. Also, having too many different civ trade caravans in a season can really mess things up in weird ways.
No.24918
>>24916 (me)
That said, the raws alone are pretty limited in what they can do and if you want to do things like:
>wild beast people entering the map and petitioning for residence (or existing subterranean tribes doing the same) or having some kind of diplomacy system>flying civs having functional trade caravans>egg-laying and caste morphology (e.g. ant people) working properly>aquatic civs functioning at allyou'll need to use lua scripting through dfhack, but I'm not sure it's compatible with the steam release yet. Also if you get too crazy with civs you can really fuck up your other forts.
This is true in vanilla as well. If you locate a vault in adventure mode you can conquer it pretty easily in fort mode, making the sapient angels part of your civ and they can visit your fort. They're randomly generated and some of them are made of flame or steam, causing anything and anyone near them to combust. No.24925
>>24879>I don't think its particularly viable because when you get down to the brass tacks of the game, the basic level of technology stays the same mostly throughoutI'm sure they plan to add mechanics relating to tech levels and tech trees. A whole lot of production mechanics are very placeholder right now. I mean, you get the same amount of leather from the skin of a rat or an elephant. But that's not actually as important as it might seem. The development of capitalism is less about the development of new technology and more about the adoption of machine production at societal scales. Getting mountain fortresses or other settlements up and running with heavy industry creates a situation where political-economic power can shift away from the nobility toward whoever controls the manufacturing.
The most true-to-life version would be merchants getting rich from trade caravans using their money to buy property in fortresses as an investment and from there starting to extract surplus to reinvest for capital accumulation (purchasing more territory, putting resources into settling new territory, building more workshops, etc). The existing Villains system is pretty opaque but could probably handle this sort of thing. You would just need to have a clear system for property and a way for the emergent porkydwarf to control it (by using their wealth to pay for their own militias). You could also have this emerge directly within fortress mode. A dwarf who has enough personal wealth could use it to outfit a militia of their own and then use that to take over a stockpile or a workshop, for example. Strange Moods could be used as a basis for something like "entrepreneurial spirit" that causes a dwarf to put effort into developing the resources to buy territory or means of production, thus creating private property.
But sure, it would be cooler and more interesting to have this also work with some kind of tech tree system. Something kind of like that already exists where the game tracks what lore the different civilizations know. It also tracks which animals a civilization has experience domesticating. A regular tech tree with some abstract "research" value being applied an gradually unlocking new things is probably too simple for Dwarf Fortress. I imagine whatever they eventually add in that regard is going to be fairly sophisticated (at least at the level of Fortress Mode) and be tied to the details of what you're actually doing in the game.
>There isn't civilizational progression in a real sense beyond the stories, culture, legends, and artifacts the civilizations generate.That's not really true. The fundamental abilities of the civilizations don't change, but they do expand and form larger networks that trade and develop a greater sophistication.
No.24970
>>24905>How Dwarf Fortress Abandoned Capitalism & Embraced Communismholy based
I always knew dwarfs were commies
No.25035
I think it's time to retire my fortress, the yearly agitated giant crow migrations are a toll on my mental health
No.25036
>>19894wait lol they tried to make money inherently valueless as if it was fiat (it just appears). The solution to the bugs is then simple, you need a gold based commoditiy to act as the universal equivalent which can be mined.
smh should have read capital before trying to do a ltv
No.27730
Now that multithreading has been partly implemented, do you think the whole game could be made to run that way?
No.27731
>>27730With Putnam working on the game now, it's likelier than it was before but I'm not certain she could do it for the entire game.
No.27734
DF is the most overrated shit I've ever played.
No.27735
>>27734>playedIt's not really a game.
It's a simulator for retarded dorfs to make stories with.
For instance, I had a fortress and decided to spruce it up with some statues.
Every single statue that was made was of a spider, and every single statue was made by one dorf.
I thought, alright, this dorf loves spiders, maybe I could theme my fort around it and tame some spiders or make a spider pit to throw elves in.
Turns out, the dorf fucking despised spiders, and was channeling her hatred into her art.
I then decided to promote her as the head hammerdorf of my most prestigious squad and sent her around the caverns slaughtering spiders.
The fun of the game doesn't reveal itself, you have to look for it
and read No.27736
>>27734Is it highly rated? I know there was a lot of hype for the steam release but no one's ever pretended it was a masterpiece (or even good). I've been playing on and off since v0.31 and the sentiment was always that it was a free, goofy, janky simulation game that's
fun. I don't know if the outlook and composition of the playerbase has changed since it's become a product where players are now customers demanding satisfaction, but you can still play it for free.
No.27737
>>27735>It's not really a gameThe classic DF fan copout argument. You can't criticize DF's shortcomings as a videogame, because it isn't actually a videogame! Except it is, and its shortcomings are glaring.
Each new fortress needs the same unfun gameplay loop to get going: make a million stockpiles; set up your workshops; set traps; manage your dwarve's labors (which is tedious af even with Therapist); make a gazillion bedrooms; set your seeds to brewing only; etc. etc. Once you get going, "winning" is actually easy: once your fortress is self-sustaining, build a drawbridge and almost never open it. DF is such a brilliant game that drawbridges are indescrutible!
Military and combat are absolute dogshit to handle. The military is so obtuse and complex to wrangle that it feels like a job trying to get shit to work. In fact, DF's shit UI ruins more than just the military. Entire classes can be taught showing how DF fails at UI at all fronts and how this results in an unfun and miserable experience for those without rose-tinted glasses. And this criticism goes for both the classic and Steam versions.
DF is the epitome of wide but shallow. The dev just thew a hodgepodge of shit into spaghetti code and people think it's so "deep" because there are a million different items and the world is procedurally generated. But procdeural generation wasn't new when DF was made, and DF's "emergent storytelling" merely comprises some simple interaction of the game's spaghetti code with one of the million of lol so randumb items. For instance, the story you just told is actually common; as the wiki explains: "Statues will often depict creatures that the artisan likes or loathes, or other dwarves surrounded by the creatures they like or loathe." (
https://www.dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Statue)
If I want to play a fun videogame, then DF isn't as me because, as you even admitted, it's not a good game. And if I want to immerse myself in a deep rich fantasy story, well I'll just READ a book and not bother with DF's unfun autism.
>>27736>Is it highly ratedGo to any generic videogame forum and people will unquesitonably bleat in unison that "OMG DWARF FORTRESS IS DA BEST GAME EVA" despite the fact that most people haven't even bother to play it for a considerable amount of time. It's overrated as fuck
>the sentiment was always that it was a free, goofy, janky simulation game that's funEven that take is overrating DF. DF is FULL of unfun and dull mechanics that delusional people trick themselves into thinking are fun because said people don't want to admit that the 100+ hours they invested into learning the game has all been for naught.
No.27738
>>27737omg why does this game not cater to my tastes
just move on
No.27739
>>27738>hurr how dare you have a strong opinion about something!I'm explaining why DF is an objectively overrated game. I'm sick and tired of people praising this shitheap when it's just not good. It's an Emperor's New Clothes situation.
No.27741
>>27739>objectivelylol /v/ermin moment
No.27743
>>27737>I'll just READ a book and not bother with DF's unfun autism.okay
No.27744
>>27742>actually try to be argumentative >tryand fail.
/games/ is occupied by the most toxic people on leftypol. I don't even know what is being attempted at belittling every post, is it to increase activity and bump the thread or is it to stroke an ego that they can't stroke on the main /leftypol/ board due to their immense deficiency in all aspects of their life?
No.27746
Why the fuck are you guys getting salty in a thread about dorf fortress god damn
No.27751
>>27746some can't resist responding to shitposters
No.27767
>>27737This is why simulation games suck: they're a pointless chore
You can shit on first person shooters or whatever, but at least they provide some mindless fun, which is what video games are ultimately for
No.27773
>>27767>but at least they provide some mindless fun, which is what video games are ultimately forBased AF take. I would refine your statement that videogames are for mentally-stimulating fun that's a step above just sitting on your ass watching TV, but you are fundamentally correct. If I want to grind at something, I practice guitar or a sport. If I want to challenge my mind, I'll study math. If I want to be creative, I'll try to write music. If I want to immerse myself in a good story, I open a book or watch a film.
Videogames are great for that intermittent state for when I don't have the energy to do difficult/creative tasks but I want something more stimulating than staring at the TV. Personally, team fortress 2 fills that niche for me, and I can see how other first-person shooters satisfy that as well. But games like DF are just an exercise in extreme autism with little to no payoff.
No.27777
newest version (0.50) kinda freaks me out. mouse use is a complete non-starter for me. would love to try it out and see all the changes but its unplayable as of now. 0.47 for lyfe!
No.27780
>>27777I got used to it but I fucking hate how they gutted the traditional keyboard shortcuts. A lot of things take longer than they used to.
No.27864
>>19894Why does this happen every single time they try to simulate capitalism?
No.27894
>>27864Because this is what happens with Capitalism in the Real world. Its just when you do it in games that it is more in your face about it than in real life.
No.27895
they need to try a capitalism patch again, after reading capital
No.30864
>>19921idealist rpg stats. wouldn't that be like the laws of nature?
No.30866
>>30863They were working on it from the start, it just has more for them to do to give it a GUI, and it's clearly a lower priority than Fortress mode (and Legends has minimal UI).
>>27895The capitalism patch was pretty accurate from what I understand. The problem is that the lack of mitigating effects like conflict between nobles and capitalism or the ability of the player to levy taxes and whatnot. The forts essentially would always end up doing runaway ancapistan.
No.30868
>>30866I think the capitalist mode fails in the game because it doesn't resolve itself through revolution, I haven't played it so maybe I'm wrong.
No.30871
>>30868Yeah it's the same basic issue where there are more complicated behaviors you have to code into the character AI. The closest you'd get with the current system is for morale to get so low that it causes poor dorfs to go berserk, but they don't really have a system for organizing collectively. There are guilds that form spontaneously but I'm guessing that system is too mechanically abstracted to adapt well to that kind of purpose. Toady working on the plots/villains system is probably more useful to including those kinds of mechanics. The idea there is having people with plans and gathering resources and allies to make it happen. You could probably rework that to account for revolutionary figures or just political movements in general.
As far as the economic mechanics of capitalism go, there wasn't really a problem there probably. What was missing were "external" factors that would act as a check or a proper "end state."
No.30884
>>30864In adventure mode you can get godlike strength and endurance by putting a weasel in a headlock for 10 hours and in fort mode a group of 5 experienced farmers can support a fort of 200 dorfs and still have a huge surplus of food, it's definitely not meant to be an accurate simulation. The world can't really evolve either (unless that evolution means getting destroyed by necromancers), dwarf civilizations will
always value craftsmanship and goblin civilizations will
always be evil baby kidnappers (and goblins themselves are genetically cruel bastards).
No.30885
>>30884>it's definitely not meant to be an accurate simulation.I think that's more of an issue with feature completeness. This is mostly an issue of balancing the ratios of inputs and outputs, which hasn't been done at all at this point (1 unit of rock/wood to build a door, a cup, a chair, a staircase, etc).
>The world can't really evolve eitherIIRC tech trees are an intended feature eventually.
>dwarf civilizations will always value craftsmanship and goblin civilizations will always be evil baby kidnappersThere's some variation here already, probably more is intended. The game does operate on a pretty static idea of history for now though, where cultures and polities just are the way they are. You'd need to explicitly include mechanics to allow for that to change, which would probably be pretty hard given the complexity of the features. Not that it's impossible or not going to happen, but it would take a while to make that work.
There's a degree of "cultural exchange" already though, in the sense that literature can be transfered between settlements and copied. Toady wants to make the books able to actually impart knowledge that affects the mechancis, so part of the plan would include things like Goblins being able to read Dwarf books about crafting and pick up skills or attitudes.
No.31734
>>31733you ain't dug deep enough yet
No.31735
>>31733I think when people say 'hardest' what they mean is 'highest barrier to entry'
No.31736
>>31733It's not hard, just inaccessible. You can cloister up and wait out any problem until you've trained up 100 legendary fighters in full masterwork steel ready to deal with it, but it's more fun to take risks and set limitations on yourself. Dig deep, set up in evil biomes or near necromancer towers, start wars with everyone, stuff like that. I just like making my dorfs happy by fulfilling their dreams.
No.31740
>>31733The only "hard" thing about Dwarf Fortress was the UI and some of its mechanics being obtuse to understand without reading the wiki.
No.31744
>>31733go play in an undead biome and purposefully dig as deep as possible if you really want to lose over and over.
No.31758
>>31756>release capitalism update for dorf fort>it completely ruins everything in the same ways that capitlaism ruins things IRL>fanbase hates it and sees a demonstration of how the logic of capitalism works>roll back update so it's a planned economy againwhat did he mean by this
No.33805
>>27737Recently bought it, and fuck if this post doesn't actually understate how fucking awful of the game it is on almost every level. I think my biggest gripe is that behind shitty UI, weird mechanics working on some looney tunes logic, bugs, crap performance after couple of years even with a relatively small fortress (after 20+ years of development smh) etc…there isn't much to it. Making fortress sustainable is simple, there isn't much of a complex automatization or production chains, nothing that would require serious problem solving skills. And if you like "stories" that are result of random generation, i think chtgpt is a much better choice (and definitely has better grammar).
>DF is FULL of unfun and dull mechanics that delusional people trick themselves into thinking are fun because said people don't want to admit that the 100+ hours they invested into learning the game has all been for naught.Ironically it's the same approach as many AAA open world crap games use - distract players with constant meaningless chores and they forget to ask themself if they even have fun doing it.
No.33807
>>33805If you don't like the game, you don't like it. Nobody would tell you it was polished or finished. The messiness is one of the core parts of DF's reputation.
>Making fortress sustainable is simpleWell yeah, that's step one. After that it's open-ended but there's a variety of goals to pursue. The simplest one and the one the game nudges you towards is just raising the value of the fortress by turning more resources into treasures. That levels up the significance of the fortress in your civilization and you can eventually become the capital. You also start getting requests like guildhalls after you have enough skilled workers. Then there are all the locations in the outside world to explore, raid, conquer, etc. If you train enough soldiers you can fight wars against your neighbors and take over their settlements. Or you could try to build a fortress around a specific goal, like producing musical instruments and trained musicians. The worlds are compatible between modes, so you can also build a fortress and share the file for other players to explore in adventure mode.
>crap performance after couple of years even with a relatively small fortressYou probably have an issue with trash accumulating and slowing things down. The game doesn't purge trash items automatically, but there are ways to do it manually, most popularly the "atom smasher" method using a bridge to crush items.
Another possible problem is using a layout that messes with the pathfinding algorithm (A*). More open areas is better, and fewer, centralized stairways in contained rooms is better.
>>33806Settlements look nice on the map.
I agree the dialogue portraits seem very helpful in keeping track of who's who.
Surprised that the combat options look pretty intuitive for how complicated the system is.
No.33808
>>33807>If you don't like the game, you don't like it. Nobody would tell you it was polished or finished.Just wanted to vent tbh. Spent 20 hours on trying to find good game underneath all of that and came out incredibly dissapointed.
None of those goals looks hard, or all that interesting, just more of a chore. Compared to stuff like Factorio, the level of complexity is…just not there, i guess.
>You probably have an issue with trash accumulating and slowing things down.Well, that's on dev, who in 20 years couldn't make it work better. Again, Factorio is MUCH larger in scale and doesn't have such problems.
>most popularly the "atom smasher" method using a bridge to crush items.Oh, yeah, that's one of the things - almost everything, even something simple like farming, feels like an exploit or workaround. Meachanics works seemingly incidentally with each other rather than intentionally.
No.33809
>>33805>bought itYou what?
No.33810
>>33809Bought. Purchased. Paid for.
No.33811
>>33810There's a free version on the game's website.
No.33812
>>33811Sure. Money is not the issue tho, i do have some disposable income.
No.33813
>>33808>Just wanted to vent tbhI am other anon just in case. I feel you fam. I still find DF fun, but it feels like you need very particular mindset to make it engaging. I have days when I can play it day after day, then don't feel like it for a year or so.
Anyways, the mindset I have in mind is particularly autistic "I want to create emergent stories about stupid stuff". This is why people do succession games, this is why people start doing merpeople holocaust, this is why carp is memetic.
No.33814
>>33813Yeah, i guess i was looking for something else, which is why i was this dissapointed to come here with rant. All the time i was playing i had a feeling that it is the game that i could like, but never found myself enjoying fully, always halfway there. Guess it blueballed me, lol
No.33815
>>33814Understandable, if anything many people prefer to read about DF than actually play it. The fact that Boardmurdered succession game having own wikipedia page is enough of a proof for this.
No.33819
>>33808>Again, Factorio is MUCH larger in scale and doesn't have such problems.Based, and it's also libre software, maybe you're right. But are the the same kind of games really?
No.33820
>>33808The appeal of DF is like the appeal of minecraft, as a way to flex your creative muscles more than solve difficult problems.
No.33824
>>27737>Each new fortress needs the same unfun gameplay loop to get goingColony sims will have colony sim shit in them. Fortresses are different if you build them in different environments, yet they have the same basic building blocks because it is logical: stockpiles store materials, etc. how would you have do it differently? Guessing it's too hard to use the painting the area tool, or maybe it's the allowed items menu or what. Never used traps or dwarf therapist, labor is for nerds and personally speaking I've had 15-ish labors max at my largest fortresses. You are simply unskilled if you think this is bad.
>Once you get going, "winning" is actually easy: once your fortress is self-sustaining, build a drawbridge and almost never open it. DF is such a brilliant game that drawbridges are indescrutible! Dearie me, I found an exploitable bug. Better ruin the gameplay experience. Playing the meta in any game is a good way quaranteed ruin your experience. Rimworld is not fun if you build 2x2 bedrooms and killboxes. TES V is not fun if you use stealth archer. Meatspace sports aren't fun if you go out of your way to do all you can to win either. All of this applies to dwarf fortress.
>Military and combat are absolute dogshit to handle. The military is so obtuse and complex to wrangle that it feels like a job trying to get shit to work. In fact, DF's shit UI ruins more than just the military. The only issue I found is that the arrow system was bugged for a while (archers didn't get them automatically, you couldn't assign them any) but even that got fixed. After having done the army stuff for 20 minutes I figured it out almost completely. It's a list of equipment and a schedule, easiest shit ever. After having played the game for a week, I was waging war and fighting defensive battles like second nature. Got my brother to test this due to your reply, he does not like management games, took him about an hour on a prebuilt fortress (including setting up equipment manufacturing orders, training schedules, etc.) so he could start doing raids on others and defend. Does not describe it as frustrating, simply time consuming. Did you ever play the game expecting an advisor icon popping up every second telling you what to do, or did you even play the game? Genuine fucking question.
>Entire classes can be taught showing how DF fails at UI at all fronts and how this results in an unfun and miserable experience for those without rose-tinted glasses. It's a programmers' UI, utilitarian and working. The learning curve is so hecking steeperino it takes a whole two days max to test and learn all it's elements. Actually reading back your "argument" is all UI issues. Have you checked if you have issues in remembering what for example objects in real life are without actively using them yourself?
No.33831
>>33820>The appeal of DF is like the appeal of minecraft, as a way to flex your creative muscles more than solve difficult problems.Those are the same thing. And DF is pretty crappy for that, unless you consider making pixel art out of fortress layout creative, but then again there are games that would suit it thousand times better because people wouldn't have to deal with crappy UI.
>>33819>But are the the same kind of games really?I would say it tries to be (a lot of fans will try to make it look like one), but fails. I has many of the elements that could make it one - production chains, automation, management and so on, but the guy who develops the game doesn't really understand what it takes to make it work, and didn't manage to learn it in 20 years, from what i have seen and read about him, he only interested in procgen.
No.33832
>>33824>It's a programmers' UI, utilitarian and working.It's not. It's a complete fucking dumpster fire of the UI. It is neither utilitarian nor working. It's not about being ugly, it's about being disfunctional.
No.33837
>>33831>I would say it tries to beDwarf Fortress came out earlier. So it's Factorio that's trying to be Dwarf Fortress if anything.
No.33844
>>33837I didn't say it tries to be Factorio specifically. They are different games after all, though they have similar elements. I said it tries to be the kind of game, what they call a colony sim, which is exactly why i played it and i would say it fails miserably at being a good sim game.
Anon here
>>33813 said he played it mainly for "emergent stories". I guess i will agree that if you play it that way, it can be fun for you. It is unfortunate that many people try to pass it for something else.
No.33846
>>33844That sucks if someone sold it as a colony sim game. That's the "genre" you'd put it in but the appeal of it is in the detailed interactions. The colony sim is like the framework that creates a context for all the stories to happen within. The actual colony building part isn't really that challenging or deep in itself because it's not the focus but rather the foundation for everything else.
No.33848
>>33846>That sucks if someone sold it as a colony sim game.Even in this thread people call it that, like this guy
>>33824And on steam it is being tagged by players as colony sim too.
Yeah, i guess i was looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place. It happens. If other people are having fun with it, good for them.
No.33849
>>33848Well it
is technically a colony sim but it's not what it's about or its appeal. Idk if steam has a tag that's more suitable to describe the story generation. Some games like this are a little outside the box and hard to put into those kinds of categories.
Sucks that you got led to expect the wrong things and wasted your time and money.
No.33850
>>33849You can refund a game on Steam thankfully. I'm sure the anon did that.
No.33851
>>33850If you played more than 2 hours, you can't. I played quite a bit more than that.
Anyway, i think i'm over it, so thanks guys for letting me vent.
No.33853
>>33851Should have played the free version instead.
You know what? That's why Steam SUCKS and GOG is based, might as well pirate. It's just stupid, that kind of thing happened to me to. Like, how much can one really do for 2 hours in a game? Pass the tutorial?
That's why the developers don't bother with later-game content, they expect you to not be able to refund the game in time.
No.33854
>>33853>Like, how much can one really do for 2 hours in a game? Pass the tutorial?Especially since a lot of game companies make them longer and longer specifically so that you won't be able to refund the game after.
Factorio devs are based because they provide a free demo.
>That's why the developers don't bother with later-game content, they expect you to not be able to refund the game in time.Yeah, why bother polishing the game when marketing did it's job and shitload of preorders are in, and they won't be able to refund them if they've just passed tutorial stage.
No.33855
>>33854>Factorio devs are based because they provide a free demo.The game's also libre so you can compile it if you wanted to. Though I'm not sure if the in-game sprites are also libre.
No.33887
>>33808Try Songs of Syx. It's like Dwarf Fortress mixed with Sim City or Pharaoh, and has an extensive free "demo" that basically lets you play forever, unless they updated that.
No.34037
Hate the new controls and menu system. None of the hot keys work anymore, weird mouse stuff and thry stopped updating to Linux almost instantly after they sold out to steam.
Anyone else hate it?
This all genuinely made me depressed as the game (and bay12 games generally) was a big part of shared enjoyment between me and my sibling as kids.
No.34122
>>34037>Anyone else hate it?I don't hate it, but i started playing again (waiting for adventure mode) and damn i'm fucking lost.
No.34123
>>34037I get it's supposed to appeal to people who like the idea of DF but got filtered by the old UI, but I wish there was an option to go back to the old UI. It's way faster to do things with once you built the muscle memory for it compared to having to use a mouse.
No.34159
>>34123after trying out the updated version and finding out the controls were different i immediately lost interest, maybe this is what becoming a boomer feels like
>>34155lol there was a meltdown on 4chan back when he posted the announcement in support of BLM, maybe they'll rally to defend the honor of EA and microsoft execs this time
No.34171
>>34123 >It's way faster to do things with once you built the muscle memory for it compared to having to use a mouseYes. I never really got the kvetching about oldUI, the new one makes the game monotonous, slow and repetitive.
>>34122It took me days to get the hang of it and I still found myself trying to press shortcuts that no longer do anything.
Building things like zones and bridges is actually a nightmare now too.
>>34159>maybe this is what becoming a boomer feels likeYes. Part of my miserable NewDF experience was realising I am old and its no longer for us oldheads who were pro.ised thst Because of our donations the game would never be commercialised etc. The fact is we've been discarded for the prospect of a new audience bringing more cash than us.
Deeply sad.
No.34172
>>34171>The fact is we've been discarded for the prospect of a new audience bringing more cash than us.Aren't they still releasing it in the old version with the same UI?
No.34175
>>34171>I never really got the kvetching about oldUIThere's a lot of a fair criticisms of it. Some stuff isn't placed logically in the categories you'd think they'd be, inconsistencies with specifying the size of a designation requiring you use -/+/*,uhkm, or wasdx, lack of searching in certain menus without DFhack, mouse controls being in a dogshit state (until recently of course), etc. But it still should've been refined alongside mouse controls instead of the latter virtually superseding it.
>>34172If you're talking about the free version, no. It has the same UI as the steam version. The only way to play the game with the old UI is to play any version before .50.
No.34178
>>34175>If you're talking about the free version, no. It has the same UI as the steam version. The only way to play the game with the old UI is to play any version before .50.Oh damn that does suck. Hopefully they fix this with restoring hotkey functions or modders do it.
No.34675
I've come to terms with that we will never see the Myth & Magic update, and that the steam release ruined the game. I don't blame the Tarns for working on it, it's not like they had much of a choice, but it killed the game all the same. Very sad.
No.34705
>>34675I checked the site yesterday actually.
Barely any updates unlike how it used to be even if progress was slow
Literally still pandering to the steam crowd
Hasn't even started work on M+M despite claiming to be just about to before the Steam pivot.
I have 0 respect for Toady now, which is sad i used to think of him highly and have donated to DF back in the day at various points.
Money grubbing freaks.
No.34706
>>25036You should go make this case on their forums. It's not like Toady and bro are completely unresponsive to feedback, you just need to popularize it. Hit em with the David Graeber and Michael Hudson ancient monetary histories. If you refuse this call, tell me, I feel like doing it now. I already troll like 57 forums. One more is nothin
No.34707
>>34705Oh God forbid they start taking community feedback and compensation after like 100 years of doing it for the art.
No.34713
>>34675Bitch: the steam version STILL IS NOT FINISHED. They released early.
>Money grubbing freaksIt's inexhaustibly funny to me how myopia is a plague on all blackflags.
>>34708This but unironically.
No.34734
>>34675There was an interview where there's upcoming features for adventure mode that's supposed to help further lay the foundation for myth and magic (things like magic potions), but honestly even before the steam version myth and magic was kinda a "never ever." I just hope Tarn brings on more programmers beyond Putnam. That's the only way I see development not taking 2 decades to get out the "Graphics & UI" arc.
No.34764
>>34734>even before the steam version myth and magic was kinda a "never ever."If you actually believe this you are dumb as hell.
No.34765
>>34734>I just hope Tarn brings on more programmers beyond Putnam.This, there's no reason it needs to be such a small team.
No.34768
>>34705tarn adams was literally broke and had health problems and needed moeny
No.34823
>>27737the type of uygha to play FIFA and then get upset that you can't shoot the keeper in the face with a glock
No.34825
>>34823sorry man interesting indie games that appeal to niches shouldnt exist they should be slop that only appeals to meeeeeeeee
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