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inetknght
> I got burned out with RimWorld recently
Yeah. I like RimWorld but it constantly throws ridiculously powered raids against my startup village no matter what difficulty settings I use. It's a story generator... but the stories aren't really that varied in my opinion.
copx
RimWorld raids are actually ridiculously easy to defeat.
The problem is that there are two ways to play RimWorld which will lead to very different results there.
A.) You do what "makes sense" to a normal human being dealing with a real situation.
B.) You know the algorithms and minmax.
If do A.) the game can be incredibly frustrating as you watch the colony you spent hours carefully building go down in flames despite the fact that you seemingly did nothing wrong.
In contrast, if you do B.) the game becomes so dead easy that you can't even impress other players anymore by starting alone, naked, as a tribal, on an ice sheet - with one leg!
Have you ever wondered why RimWorld likes to throw that "Imperial Deserter" quest at you right at the beginning of the game?
A.) people will think "This is silly, how could I possibly defeat an Imperial raid right at the start?"
Meanwhile B.) people are like "Sure, no problem. I can build a wodden trap corridor on day 1 which will kill the entire raid before they can even see a single of my pawns."
Also note that RimWorld raids are scaled according to colony wealth and number of pawns in the colony. Thus if you are an A.) player you are probably accidentally signing your own death sentence by e.g building fancy bed rooms for your pawns. Or givign your craftspeople chairs to sit on while they work..
I think the game needs to be rebalanced somehow to make it a less frutstating experience for A.) players. Cheesey tactics like kill boxes which exploit the stupidity of the AI, and seemingly non-sensical decisions like not letting your colonists have chairs, should only be required at the highest difficulty level IMO.
hinkley
> starting alone, naked, as a tribal, on an ice sheet - with one leg!
Francis John on Youtube basically did this recently. He talks a good bit about the math of the game, and he minmaxes his minmaxing. You could just spend all your time cheesing the game, or you can cheese it when it doesn't really affect whatever narrative you are trying for in your playthrough. There are materials in your environment that ding you even if you don't gather or process them. There are materials that ding you less once processed. Knowing what's what mean you don't mine a mineral formation until you need the material.
If his camp wasn't constantly attacked by giant furry creatures he would have probably been toast. The RNG kept throwing him meat and cold weather clothing materials. He had to kite them but then real hunters of megafauna kind of do the same thing. He fed his animals meat that the humans would not eat (namely, the flesh of dead raiders).
Anyway, I think if you want to understand Rimworld 'physics' more, that series is probably a decent starting place. But he also makes no bones about how frequently the game is one or two clicks away from war crimes.
I've mostly just gone back to Oxygen Not Included and make do without narrative and variation that I kind of wish were there.
em3rgent0rdr
Exactly! Route B turns into a tower-defense game, and for that reason I try to play by A for more enjoyment.
The raids compensate for their dumb AI with sheer size. A smarter AI could be more challenging but use fewer soldier. And maybe the AI could adapt its tactics...like once they learn there is a big wall outside your fortress, then maybe they should park themselves outside and call sappers for support or air droppers to arrive first. Maybe the game could introduce cannons to counter wall building. And to prevent cave dwelling, maybe there could be some crucial supplies that spoil such that it is essential to have some trade, and so enemy armies instead of doing a dumb assault could instead do proper siege warfare to conquer you by depriving you of crucial supplies until you die of starvation, thrist, disease, like was done for most of human warfare history.
bcrosby95
> I think the game needs to be rebalanced somehow to make it a less frutstating experience for A.) players.
Yep. The problem is some people want to play like A but the game seems balanced around people playing like B.
Dwarf fortress lets you opt into a lot of this madness with their biomes. You still survive in a friendly biome if you're playing like A.
And no, hand tuning every aspect of the game isn't a good option. By that point you've lost most of your players. There should be an easy default option.
inetknght
> RimWorld raids are actually ridiculously easy to defeat.
Yeah tell that to my 5 pawns with bows or maybe pistols looted from a previous raid when they're attacked by 50 raiders or a mech drop or whatever...
> Meanwhile B.) people are like "Sure, no problem. I can build a wodden trap corridor on day 1 which will kill the entire raid before they can even see a single of my pawns."
Been there, done that. Then my pawns hit their own damn traps and get raided while they're in the hospital minus a leg
> Also note that RimWorld raids are scaled according to colony wealth and number of pawns in the colony. Thus if you are an A.) player you are probably accidentally signing your own death sentence by e.g building fancy bed rooms for your pawns. Or givign your craftspeople chairs to sit on while they work..
Yup, exactly.
> I think the game needs to be rebalanced somehow to make it a less frutstating experience for A.) players.
Yes.
ed312
You just articulated why I kept getting really obsessed with, then extremely pissed off at Rimworld. It also didn't make much sense to my why you could build all this advanced future tech in-game but then needed to tame alpacas to leave your settlement...
MikePlacid
> seemingly non-sensical decisions like not letting your colonists have chairs
Chairs for workers?? Everyone who’s familiar with Russia’s history knows that automatic cannons should go first (and they did a rather good job in my case). It is non-sensical to let workers have chairs unless they refuse to work without them. Or until all your neighbors are reduced to the status of Canada and Mexico.
debacle
Completely agree with everything said here. Because of the way Rimworld is balanced, there is really only one way to properly "play" the game.
Arrath
> I think the game needs to be rebalanced somehow to make it a less frutstating experience for A.) players.
It can! As the player you can fine tune just about every aspect of the storyteller you might want. You can disable events you may not like, like toxic fallout or sunspots. You can tweak raid sizes, disable certain types of raids, change the impact curves that time and/or wealth have on raid sizes, etc.
smoldesu
If you respond the same way to raids every time, it will not feel very dynamic. However, there are a lot of defensive tools you unlock in the mid-to-late game that really spice up your combat. If you want things to feel fresh, try building a base around a few mortar launchers or build things out of stone and give everyone flamethrowers. The possibilities are fairly limitless.
agolio
Some people will disagree with me, but you might enjoy the "save and load when you lose a fight" play-style.
I played RimWorld that way and I had a thoroughly fun experience learning the tech-tree. It's arguably not the way the game is meant to be played, but for the casual player, it works
inetknght
> you might enjoy the "save and load when you lose a fight" play-style.
I've done that. But it gets repetitive when every fight has three or four or ten red pawns for every one of mine.
moffkalast
AI Story director: "And then everyone died. I SAID EVERYONE DIED, THE END"
mcv
It's a GRR Martin story generator?
danuker
You have too much wealth vs. defenses.
Good and cheap defenses are intermittent walls (which have 75% cover).
tribaal
That's it, I just got a mail from Steam, it's been released right now!
fnordpiglet
TAKE MY MONEY FASTER PLEASE
eslaught
I don't know if you're serious, but they've been taking donations for (literal) decades at this point:
poisonarena
^ this is what reddit pollution looks like
bombcar
Be sure to add the soundtrack so they can take more ;)
rdl
My favorite Roguelike is ADOM -- similarly had problems getting into the DF UI, and kind of burned out on Rimworld (can only make so many hats...). I wish they'd waited until I finished end of year accounting and stuff before releasing this highly addictive game in a new, cracklike format, but enh, I can just not sleep.
lelandfe
For those curious, I recommend you do not buy the "Ultimate ADOM" release. It is pretty but was not even nearly half-baked before being abandoned. Go for the original one, "ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)", which has ~unlimited replayability.
ApolloFortyNine
CDDA is unbelievably fun and has good graphic tiles sets available. The crafting is incredibly deep, and the whole game lends itself very well to exploration and creating your own story.
vanderZwan
I wonder if CaptnDuck will stream something. I remember both enjoying his tutorial videos back in the day, as well as being utterly convinced them that I need not ever bother with actually trying to play Dwarf Fortress myself
Tomte
I've tried DF ages ago, but it was simply too hard for me. I never really got into digging a fortress, already the first few minutes bounced me off.
Even read a DF book. No help.
I just bought it on Steam.
Probably I will never play it, but it's one of those purchases that are… aspirational. I'd like to be a person who plays DF. I know it's stupid.
But graphics and better onboarding are a real argument for me.
What tipped me finally over the edge towards buying was the background about the creator's health problems. I like that he's doing DF single-mindedly and I can afford the game without thinking twice.
dj_mc_merlin
> I'd like to be a person who plays DF. I know it's stupid
Not stupid. The feeling of mastering a properly hard game is a good reason to try it.
I've used the same "strategy" for most technically challenging games: play in long stretches, trying to make any kind of progress. Have the wiki open and read it any time you are confused. Just keep trying to do _something_.
Eventually it will either click and you'll have a bunch of fun, or you'll tire out. If you tire out, just don't play the game again for a couple days, or whenever you regain your energy.
Once it clicks once, it will instantly start being fun. The interesting part is that the click happens multiple times with challenging games. I've been playing EVE for more than a year now and the combat system _still_ gives me huge revelations. Same with DF, once you learn how to get your fortress rolling you can very quickly learn to build a fully defensible mega castle. Then the next click is realizing that makes the game boring and allowing some danger by fulfilling self placed challenges.
edit: I just bought it and played it for a bit -- the updated graphics/UI are a great improvement! Obviously bit hard to judge but now there's proper icons indicating common actions (mine, cut trees), a tutorial.. give it a try!
RupertEisenhart
Let me confirm the long stretches thing.
I learned DF by setting aside two weeks and playing ~16 hours a day. Was a piece of cake.
It's not the kind of game you can pick up with an hour here or there.
binkHN
> I learned DF by setting aside two weeks and playing ~16 hours a day.
Now that's commitment.
dpedu
I learned like this too, though not quite so extreme. I was going to be somewhere with my laptop but no internet for about a week so I printed off an at-the-time popular strategy guide called something along the lines of "the absolute beginners guide to dwarf fortress". This was before the wiki existed! Anyhow, it worked out, as my build order still is vaguely reminiscent of what was in that guide, more than 10 years ago.
to1y
That's way too much. It should take 3-4 hours tops. The most difficult thing is the ridiculous UI (press b then d then c, etc.) It's basically just a slightly more complicated AoE)
vlunkr
Nah, OP was right, it is stupid. I like hard games, but if you’re not getting any enjoyment out of it just give it. There are a million other things to do.
kibwen
> I just bought it on Steam.
> Probably I will never play it
Even if you never end up playing it, it's worth buying it to support DF. We need more works of art that are a product of passion and vision and fewer that are just a clumsy, accidental byproduct of profit-seeking by way of mindless, manipulative psychological tactics.
zimpenfish
Exactly this - I've bought a whole bunch of games I'm never likely to get more than a couple of hours into or even play at all but supporting the authors with a purchase gives a strong "I appreciate what you're doing" signal and, hopefully, encourages more of that kind of stuff (which only really works on indies, I know, but then those tend to be the people making interesting games.)
binkHN
> We need more works of art that are a product of passion and vision...
Can't agree more--look forward to the day when something better replaces capitalism.
ryanstorm
For those that can't play it but would still like to experience the joys of its flavor of generative art, there's a YT channel that interprets it and puts a story and illustration to his playthroughs:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXX7Rp0iXj0nPwER_CwBD...
mikedelago
Even without clicking, I knew it was Kruggsmash.
He's a fantastic artist, storyteller, and content creator.
jonnycomputer
Once during a job interview, when asked about an accomplishment I was personally proud of, I mentioned defeating Morgoth in Angband (the classic roguelike). I'll admit, not quite as hard as beating NetHack but it still required a lot of self control, because Cocky -> Lazy -> Stupid -> Dead.
schiem
The assessment of Cocky -> Lazy -> Stupid -> Dead is spot on. I haven't gotten super far, but my last run ended because I saw a bunch of 'C' in the next room and didn't bother checking what they were - turns out gravity hounds have a pretty good stun lock. Out of curiosity, what class were you playing?
For what it's worth, if someone told me they beat Morgoth in an interview I'd probably hire them.
jonnycomputer
Thanks!
That's a classic scenario with the gravity hounds!
I was a human paladin. Took me a while to find it, but here is my place on the Angband ladder:
mihaifm
Nice one, how did the interviewer react?
jonnycomputer
I knew my play failed when the interviewer asked me what that was? and i got a blank stare when i said it was like Nethack.
shrimp_emoji
>I've tried DF ages ago, but it was simply too hard for me.
I still dig and irrigate farm chambers if there's a nearby river as though out of reflexive PTSD from that one time where the game required you to moisten soil before you can grow crops. (That hasn't been the case for a looong time, fortunately.)
bombcar
I still (and probably always will) design fortresses with anti-"bug" features to prevent "unexpected fun". Grills on water inputs, preventing diagonals, all those things.
throwaway675309
I feel like I'm one of those people that believes that a good game is one where you can learn and play the game well without ever having to leave the game itself.
For me games are an escape from reality and the moment I have to context switch and go look up something in an FAQ or read a guide just to be able to play a damn game I completely lose interest. I hate the idea that I'm having to study or work for the purposes of entertainment. Zero interest in memorizing inconsequential fictional information that only applies to a game. If I'm going to study it's going to be some thing that's applicable to the real world around me, Not some bull crap crafting recipes.
Games should always aspire to be self contained with the appropriate levels of guided discovery within the system itself.
Gigachad
You're looking for games for people who are already burned out from other work.
There are people who either don't work full time, don't work at all, or the games are their paid job who are completely fine to put as much effort in as a regular job. And there are people who want to watch these people play the game to a level of ability difficult for most to achieve.
Agentlien
I have a mentally very taxing job and often feel exhausted after work. I have my own projects I would love to work on in my spare time but I can rarely find the energy to do so. I've tried pushing myself, but that only results in migraines.
Instead, I watch TV or play games to relax. Dwarf Fortress is one of those games. It may sound counterintuitive but immersing myself in something like that, or a puzzle game, clears my mind and helps me wind down.
remram
Not necessarily. DF could easily show you what the ore you found is for, what workshop a work order requires, warn you to create a pen before a meeting area so your cattle doesn't stand in your tavern until they starve, etc.
This is not necessarily about the richness of the game, it's about how you present information, and not merely accepting that a player will have to have an external wiki open or memorized and dwarf therapist running at all times to play the game.
criley2
The only success I've had is playing closely alongside a guide which is basically telling you every large scale and medium scale decision you should be making for years of in game time. Reminds me of Minecraft mods that get so complex that you need an entire questbook mod included just to teach players how to progress.
poulpy123
I'm like you, and I will buy it this evening although I never buy a game fullprice and I will probably never have the patience to play it
danso
I've put hundreds of hours into Rimworld and tried to get back into it recently. The DLC are pretty good and the mod community is just superb. But after putting a few hours into any colony, what ends up killing the vibe for me is the inevitable realization that the game is basically just a random challenge generator — e.g. as your colony becomes prosperous, a bunch of seeming arbitrary disasters are thrown your way. I wish there were a way to have the game be more like an emergent simulation, but maybe it requires the complexity of DF for it to feel right.
nicopappl
I know I shouldn't recommend it because it is extremely addictive, but try Oxygen Not Included. To me it is like Rimworld, but without the feeling of arbitrary nonsense sometimes literally falling on your colonists' head. There is a lot of challenges, and all of them are natural consequences of the simulation. It's much more "emergent simulation" although since the simulation is much more focused on physics than humans, it might feel a bit too technical.
forgetfulness
Oxygen Not Included is a ton of fun, the thing that makes me abandon my playthroughs is that, after learning so much of fake-plumbing, fake-hvac and fake-electrical installation mechanics, embarking on ever more ambitious projects that demand more planning and player-labor (harnessing that natural gas vent!) feels like a bit of a waste of time. It's so much of a job that I feel like I could be preparing to be an actual HVAC technician in real life with the amount of time and effort spent into keeping gases flowing through pipes at the right temperature in a simulation.
pm90
And debugging when something goes wrong can be really tedious if you're currently focused on another project.
That's what gets me ultimately. I get a good colony going, but end up trying to do something just a little bit ambitious, but there's something that starts breaking and requires so much effort to fix, after a while I just give up.
theptip
I’d agree with this one. On one hand, small tasks like wiring up a new volcano tamer can be a good bite-sized puzzle for a session. But last run I played I just ran out of steam at the prospect of building a petroleum boiler again. It's fiddly, error-prone, and to do it optimally you really need to prototype in debug mode. Sounds too much like a chore!
That said I got many, many hours of fun mastering the simulation up to that point, so it’s still a strong recommend for me.
imtringued
Do you really think a video game is comparable to a 40 hour work week?
mdaniel
My heartburn with ONI is that it seems to fall into that category of game that is all about "it's all about the journey, and discovery!11" which makes debugging anything incredibly hard. Why is water not flowing? Who knows, the computer won't help me
Life also doesn't come with an instruction manual nor any handy mouse-overs, but in life I can use my existing years of experience and non-2D view of the world to deduce what's wrong. In a game, I only have access to the information the game chooses to share with me
I tried to get a refund, but Steam was all "nope"
Fradow
I feel you, but unless you really want to experience the game without any outside resource (in which case, good luck, and I understand being turned off), I really encourage you to try again while using guides, the wiki, and asking questions on forums/discord.
The community is overall very welcoming, and it's an old game by now, with most things figured out.
billfruit
Oxygen Not Included has also much gaminess to it, like gating things behind having to build a Science Workbench Grade 1, Science Workbench Grade 2 etc which seem rather arbitrary.
danso
Thanks for the suggestion! ONI has been in my backlog — absolutely love Klei, the developer — but haven’t found time or energy to try it out, but hadn’t known it was more emergent in style.
Fradow
It definitely is more emergent than most games once you get past the early stage.
A few examples to make that clear:
- to get petroleum, you have to refine crude oil. There is a building that does that, but you only get 50% of the mass out. On the other hand, if you boil it yourself (raise its temperature to 402°C), you get 100% of the mass. Cue furious designing of an efficient boiler. Then you gotta figure how to efficiently burn it to get water out to produce more crude oil.
- if you think that's cute, you can instead continue the boiling to 510°C and get Sour Gas. Then you freeze it to -162°C (not an easy task) and get Methane. Heat it up again and you get Natural Gas that you can burn for power. That comes out to 6X the power of the previous petroleum boiling.
- you have some salt water provided by a geyser (an infinite source at a fixed output). You can use a building to get water out. But that means Dupes have to operate it. What if instead you boil that salt water to get steam, then cool that steam back to get water in a fully automated setup? Turns out it can be more power-efficient too!
Oxygen Not Included is filled with unexpected behaviors, way more than meet the eye (there is a dedicated wiki page, which is lengthy but still far from complete) that enables to make all sort of crazy contraptions.
I prefer to consider Oxygen Not Included as 2 separate games : the survival game you get at the beginning, and the engineering game you get once you overcome the survival issues. Unfortunately, many people drop off before reaching the engineering stage, or don't expect it and drop off because they only wanted the survival part.
EMM_386
This, to me, is why Factorio is so incredible.
It's blananced to a point it always feels incredibly fair, and there are sliders and fine-tuned adjustments you can do if you wan to make it "just a little more chaotic", or "a slower start", etc.
It's brilliant.
avtolik
I agree with everything you said. Except the DLCs - while they add content, they feel like somebody is copying from a Game Design book. Here is a cool new thing, but we will make it miserable and hard to use in these ways. Have fun. Also in general Rimworld is pretty linear somehow. I play a few colonies, I get bored, then take a break for half an year. And repeat.
grenoire
In terms of usability, I still just find Dwarf Fortress to be a decade behind Rimworld. The fact that we had to use Dwarf Therapist for years... Rimworld just has it all on the screen within four clicks, with clear indications on how to resolve issues like mood modifiers.
Dwarf Fortress in all its complexity, embraces fuzziness in how things work, and focuses on a bit of a higher-level focus (fortresses reach many more dwarves than a Rimworld colony). However, this complexity makes the game a lot less accessible too. I hope the UI changes help bring ease of use and clarity!
Vespasian
For me Dwarf Fortress demonstrates why good and accessible UI / UX is required and is an art of itself.
I repeatedly tried DF and despite having spent hours in similar games, this one eluded me to this day due to it's borderline unusable UI (for me at least) and art style.
I'll be happy to give it another go since the mechanics seem to be supremely refined.
mabbo
Dwarf fortress should be in the UX hall of fame as an example of how an incredible product can be made completely inaccessible to 95% of it's target audience purely through bad UX.
And I say that as one of the 5% who still played and loved it.
forgetfulness
Same, I was a big fan of character-based roguelikes (and at the time, in the late 2000s, that was the format of most roguelikes), and while I was unfazed at the time by the character-based interface, the inconsistent menus and micronamanagement tired me out of Dwarf Fortress.
It needed various external tools to alleviate the painstaking manual labor that went into managing the colony, like macro generators for floor plans and the memory hacking of Dwarf Therapist to have high-level management of the colony, and all that with wacky menus.
mlindner
I've tried Rimworld a couple times and it always came off as just bland, flat, and uninteresting compared to Dwarf Fortress. Once you played it a bit you could see "through" the game and into the random number generation beneath it. Also I didn't like the sci-fi aspect personally as I like fantasy more.
Perhaps it's gotten better in the few intervening years since I last tried it.
TillE
RimWorld has tons of interesting features, it's a game I really want to love. But their much-hyped "story generator" is really just a very basic random event system, without even much variety to pad it out. The only "AI" thing it does is take into account the status of your colony (wealth, etc).
It's frustrating because it's the system which really drives the whole game, and it's so simple, and so arbitrary. Without Dwarf Fortress' depth of simulation, it needs some stronger glue to tie the game together.
mlindner
Yes you did a much better job of describing my feelings on the game. The systems are very simple and show it leaves nothing more than randomness and an almost complete lack of emergent behavior that happens in Dwarf Fortress.
LoveMortuus
I love fantasy too! Do you know if any games that are like RimWorld but fantasy? I saw Amazing Cultivation Simulation but you need a master's degree to play that, at least that's how it felt to me...
programd
You need Rimworld with mods. To see what's possible see for example "The Wizards of the Black Death" playthrough by Rhadamant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIkNXqlIIas
And here is the list of mods for Rimworld which creates this world:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=27809...
Rhadamant shows a ton of different Rimworld scenarios in his Youtube channel, and does marathon Twitch streams of the game as well. Many of them heavily modded to do all sorts of fantasy and sci-fi scenarios. You can get many ideas for your own scenarios from them.
To bring it back slightly on-topic, I strongly suspect that while Dwarf Fortress influenced Rimworld, Rimworld had some influence on the Steam version of DF in terms of the graphical user interface.
sundarurfriend
I want the opposite. I like the complexity of Dwarf Fortress, but the fantasy element makes it not as immersive as Rimworld for me.
philipov
> like RimWorld but fantasy?
Dwarf Fortress ;)
Slippery_John
Clanfolk, though it's more medieval than fantasy.
kibwen
I won't let myself play until this weekend, but I hear that the new UI actually incorporates some elements of Dwarf Therapist, making e.g. assigning jobs an order of magnitude easier.
bee_rider
IMO there’s a spectrum that has Dwarf Fortress on one end, and, I dunno, like Factorio or Mindustry or other automation games on the other. Rimworld would be somewhere in the middle. On the Factorio side, most of the enjoyment comes from working out a really optimal base and looking at every detail.
In Dwarf Fortress, there are just too many details to look at them all, and the reward isn’t so great anyway. IMO it is much more enjoyable to just embrace the fact that there will always be too many details and, as you say, it is better to just focus on the higher level. The details aren’t really there to look at all of them or play with all of them, they are there to interact with each other and with the things you do, to result in emergent phenomena that (within the limitations of the simulation) “make sense.”
Or at least when you are picking over the rubble of your base, after one of those phenomena really emerged all over the place, you can piece together where it all went wrong.
Rimworld in my limited play time, seemed like I’d really want to optimize everything fairly well, and like that was actually do-able. So it while the games are pretty similar mechanically, the actual feel of playing is pretty different, and I can’t really compare them.
tranxen
I wish the enemies would be able to destroy walls in DF like they do in Rimworld.
I really love DF but at some point, I know that I can surrender my fortress with walls and only let a small entrance with a labyrinth of traps that the pathfinding will lead enemies to.
In Rimworld such strategy is not very effective since some enemies will dig into your base walls.
copx
In normal Rimworld raids enemies only attack walls if you do not leave an open path for them.
That is why meta players always leave one door open. The AI will brainlessly walk in .. right into your kill box.
kllrnohj
Rimworld has multiple different raids that defeat that defense, though. Drop pods, sieges, sappers, and breachers - most all in both human & mech variants.
The open-door killbox is still super strong, but you can't survive with only that defense.
bombcar
This works in DF also, and with the addition of burrows you don't even have to worry about dwarves accidentally going outside when they shouldn't.
OkayPhysicist
They experimented with tunneling enemies a while ago (it was before my time, and I started playing about a decade ago). But for walls and moats, enemies do try and scale up/swim through them now.
bombcar
I believe DF now has creatures that can destroy/deconstruct built walls. I don't know if sappers yet exist (creatures that can dig after you).
lelandfe
> In terms of usability, I still just find Dwarf Fortress to be a decade behind Rimworld
And that, from a game that looks like it's still using stock, placeholder graphics and interface elements.
coletonodonnell
Although not exactly like Dwarf Fortress, I've been playing Songs of Syx[1] recently and it's incredibly good. It is made by a single developer and it is super fun. It's more of an Empire building game, and it checks a lot of the boxes I want out of these sorts of games. I can see it becoming even more impressive and as time goes on. Demo is unlimited and free, it's just 3-6 months behind the paid version with features, so if you like it definitely support the dev.
sleight42
Well, crap. Like I need yet another bad habit. Thanks?
TrevorJ
Yesss! I haven't learned how to play the game nearly as much as I want but it's so unique in it's scope.
INTPenis
I waited for it and as soon as it came out I went offline.
I played DF a lot around 09-11. I knew all the commands by heart, experienced so many fun situations that it absolutely holds a special place in my heart.
Then life happened, I didn't play it for a long time and after that trying to get back into it just felt like such a time sink. Played rimworld more during this time.
But now it's back and I am not disappointed. I would have payed 70 euro for this no problem.
Also I'm so happy Toady and Three are getting some money out of all this. At least I hope they are.
hrnnnnnn
They're going to rake it in. I heard it's been the most wishlisted game on Steam for a while now.
INTPenis
Oh snap, I had no idea. I assumed it was still kinda sub-culture nerdy. I'm so happy.
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AustinDev
It’s been the top seller all day on steam. I dunno if it has the possibility to be for the month because I think we’ve got a couple other super high profile games coming out before month close.
dccoolgai
I've played it probably more than any other game over the last 10 years. I'm really just buying it out of a sense of decency to pay back the guys who made it. I know I should have donated before, but I just didn't have time to figure it out. I may not even play it, just buying it to help those guys out.
bombcar
For those interested in directly supporting Tarn and Zach you can find details here (Paypal/Patreon): http://www.bay12games.com/support.html
YesBox
For those who like this type of game, I'm working on a city builder heavily inspired by Dwarf Fortress. Demand will be much more granular than traditional city builders (e.g. specific business/service needs and building the appropriate buildings for them).
You'll be able to see the interior of buildings and design the buildings as you please, save them as blueprints, and be able to plop down duplicates.
You can find progress updates on: https://www.reddit.com/r/Archapolis/
Or a few video logs at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUYLstskSLNcSkFg1giTBtQ
mikrl
Last time I played DF I would just compulsively keep going until 1-3 AM despite having to go to work the next day.
I had had a normal sleep schedule before that bout, and was otherwise a functional and responsible adult.
I’ve been waiting for this release for ages, but I do not think it’s going to do my mental health any favours Hah
theptip
I’m probably not going to play this, because I don’t want to sink hundreds of hours into it (again). But it’s an instant release-day Steam buy for me; these guys are legends, and deserve some cash and recognition for their original work on DF, and also for what looks to be a well-executed graphical overhaul.
“Better UI” was the #1 DF feature for as long as I played it; it will be interesting to see how many more players they get in this incarnation.
troon-lover
[dead]
fullstop
If there was ever a title which needed a native Linux build, this is it. ProtonDB does not list compatibility yet, have any of you tried?
AlotOfReading
Official word on Linux and Mac support is soonish [1]. They didn't have any experience with packaging on those systems, which seems like a totally fair prioritization to me.
I was personally able to download on Linux (Pop!OS) and run it without enabling proton experimental or installing anything else. Worldbuilding didn't seem noticably longer than classic.
[1] https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/11/dwarf-fortress-release...
eljost
Works fine w/ steam and "Proton Experimental" under "Linux 5.10.154-1-MANJARO #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Nov 10 20:51:28 UTC 2022 x86_64 GNU/Linux". I had to install the package "sdl_ttf" though; without it, the game just hung at the inital screen that says "Loading".
dvzk
If this update is like the old version, it has bundled dependencies on glibc and SDL 1.2. You can overwrite the outdated glibc libraries with symlinks to the system glibc. SDL, SDL_image, and SDL_ttf can be relinked to sdl12-compat, which implements the SDL1.2 ABI using the maintained SDL2 libraries. (edit: I forgot this is a Windows-only release, so maybe disregard this.)
8jy89hui
The game worked perfect for me on Proton Next (7.0-5). Manjaro Linux x86 (5.15), Nvidia GPU, Intel CPU, x11 (I do not think I have `sdl_ttf` installed though I might be wrong.)
mempko
Works flawless for me using proton experimental (didn't try other versions). I wouldn't hesitate to buy it at this point, has platinum rating on ProtonDB.
fullstop
Wow, from "Not Enough Info" to "Platinum" over the course of three hours. Nice!
tstrimple
Proton fails to launch. I was able to get it running in Lutris with the caffe runner in a couple minutes though.
fullstop
Thanks! I'll look into Lutris.
tstrimple
It's a bit annoying to setup initially. Caffe is the default runner for Bottles and plays more games out of the box than any other runner I've tested. However I hate the Bottles interface so I downloaded the Caffe runner separately.
https://github.com/bottlesdevs/wine/releases/tag/caffe-7.20
Then you can drop that into the default folder in Lutris and choose it as the runner. Lutris also integrates with Steam so it'll see your entire steam library and you can choose a different wine runner and wine options on a per-game basis.
jl6
Works flawlessly on Ubuntu 22.04.
AdamH12113
I a fair bit of time playing Dwarf Fortress a year or two ago. Once I grasped that I wasn't supposed to directly tell the dwarves what to do, I started picking up the mechanics much more quickly. The depth of the simulation is amazing, but it's not particularly legible unless you spend a lot of time manually poring over descriptive text in menus. DFHack and its various plug-ins[1] (especially labormanager) and Dwarf Therapist greatly ease the management process and can help avoid confusion when your dwarves just won't do what you want.
It's still a lot of fun to play around with for a while. I would love to see what could be done with a larger development team working on it, but I suppose it would be hard to keep the concept focused.
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Oh man, I can't wait. I got burned out with RimWorld recently (it's cool but it's not fun for me; I have been following and supporting the project since Early Access) and I've waited for accessible Dwarf Fortress for ages.
I enjoy ASCII games (Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead [1] is surprisingly easy to get into in ASCII mode), but the obtuse UI of Dwarf Fortress was a little too much effort to learn. I hope the Adams brothers get some well-earned financial stability with this incredible endeavour. They are some old-school software craftsmen, devoted to the art of excellent game design for the sake of it, money be damned.
And I can't wait for the next Kruggsmash [2] series, now with actual, beautiful sprites to pair with his beautiful drawings.
EDIT: Kruggsmash is currently streaming his first look at this new version! https://youtu.be/sByxI7UX5-g
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1: https://cataclysmdda.org/
2: https://youtube.com/@kruggsmash