I started writing this text a couple of years ago. Dwarf Fortress At that time, eight years in Alfa Stadium. While I was going to my thoughts, the game managed to transform a great, but something remained unchanged: Dwarf Fortress is still only an alpha version. Yesterday Alpha turned ten years old. It's time for a small preview!
But it, alas, it will not work out small. I could just retell a pack of chic stories that Dwarf Fortress generates continuously. It seems that about the bronze colossus, walled up in the walls (is on the network). Or from their own, about the bed of pork bones. Or one of those that have developed on our broadcasts.
But let's first figure out what the game is generally.
Large strokes
The inhabitants of our planet, from cave residents to people of the industrial era, sought to display reality as accurately as possible. The brushes of artists over time were getting closer to photorealism, to complete imitation. Then the era of decadence came, and the picturesque thought switched to the transmission of images. And the reliably written out cheeks of the mamzeles are a concrete sarcophagus for images, not a showcase.
► DWARF FORTRESS uses ASCII pseudographics. Any other graphics (except for the most primitive texture-packs) simply will not allow you to launch the game, so many things are in it.
Once a game thought made exactly the same somersault. Graphics developed year from year. But the content was more and more simplified (compare, for example, Morrowind And Skyrim). This is also a development. But also on our street there was a decadence. The brightest star of the new revolution – of course, Minecraft.
However, not at all Marcus Persson for the first time neglected the form for the sake of maintenance (otherwise his superpose mushroom would not have started at all). Before him, for example, introversion refused external testimony. DefCon – The best game work about a nuclear war, conveyed in the form of icons, a gloomy map of the world and inscriptions: "20 million died". But that was an exclusively stylistic move: introversion, like thousands of other independent studios, would not damage the content, decorating it “richly”.
► Warehouse and workshop levels. Usually life boils here, and only more people crowd in the gym for feasts and meetings.
Dwarf Fortress, which once served as a source of inspiration for Marcus Persson, was the first and so far a never-over-the-over-the-sore ideal of content. There is simply no place left for the supply. But it is not so necessary – the game simulates the world, its patterns and properties, and not the outer shell.
In the cave of the mountain king
Dwarf Fortress has two main modes, and the first of them has exactly the same name, "Fortress Dvorfs". You can argue, but I think that it has the whole charm of the game.
► Sleeping compartment: the rooms are small, but decorated luxurious: smooth floors, engravings on the walls, stoned furniture.
So the fortress. We take the starting set of colonists – seven brave beards – and a set of utility for the first time, whether it be food, weapons or cattle. If you want – select the expedition yourself, do not want to – take a standard set for all occasions. In any case, your team will arrive in place and the game will begin.
Dwarf Fortress does not set any purpose. Formally, your task is to establish and maintain a flourishing fortress dug in a rock or built on the surface. In practice, this is exactly what the player is doing until he moves to the level when he wants something extravagant.
At your disposal of medium sizes, a square plot of land, in the depths of actually unlimited. The camera with a view of the top observes only one horizontal slice, and the rest have to be flipped through. And more often – the fortress of the Dvorfs always grows vertically. It is useless to fight: if “artificially” slow down this process, the stronghold will quickly take the entire affordable cut.
► huge caves – a problem that you will certainly encounter during geological intelligence. Flooding them with water from the surface is also a solution, albeit controversial.
The traditional appearance of the bearded lair – dug in rocks multi -story network of tunnels and rooms. Not all courtesy will dig it, but at first the only one you arrange with a pick and appoint a miner at all. Classes for underground booze are found decent and without digging tunnels. One enumeration of industries will put in an uncomfortable position the entire kind of role -playing games: work on stone, wood, fishing, jewelry, healthcare, hunting, agriculture, blacksmithing, engineering, architecture … and in each industry there are many individual professions, from the usual blacksmith to to soap and beekeeper.
Physics of disaster
Mechanics Dwarf Fortress has an indecent number of internal systems. Start by the jangles want to get drunk. Without food, they will stretch for some time, catching rats and eating them along with the skin. But without a duty mug of beer, the yardes will have to drink water, and their mood spoils from forced sobriety.
How to get a drink? Grow some culture (you need a farmer) and transfer it (you need a brewer here). Just? But after all, the courtesy should still prepare food (cook) from meat (butter, who will drag the carcass hunter), fish (fisherman and kitchen worker), plants from the farm (again farmer) or wild (herbalist). And if you have a cattle, then milkman, cheese rod, sheep is useful and you never know anyone else. More detailed production chains are associated with weapons, medicine (five professions in medicine alone!), furniture, construction, goods for sale ..
► The most curve of DWARF FORTRESS – Personnel Management. It is solved by programs like Dwarf Therapist, without which to command at least a hundred yard – real hell.
Dwarf Fortress lives according to very complex laws, which is probably not in any game – except in scientific simulations. So, there is physics of current and standing water. There are mechanics of communicating vessels, groundwater, pumps. The stormy stream easily knocks down an adult dawn, and give me an Armok, so that there is no sharp turn in the way, otherwise it will smear along the wall.
With solid substances easier. Mountain and soil arrays consist of conditioned cells that are convenient to represent cubes. But he does not understand such words as “stone” or “soil”, because of the soil species only two dozen types of soil – though sand, peat, and river silt are included there.
Whether the matter of rocks. Their account goes to many dozens. Dear cobblestones are the basis of the economy of the fortress of the Dvorfs. Metal ores go to smelting. Bubiles interspersed with crafts and precious stones will fall on the table of a jeweler. Cox will make coal, and they will melt the melting furnaces. Gypsum breed of trampling into powder for fixing fractures. And from non -so useful breeds will make doors, tables, pots for food, mechanisms and workshop buildings.
► Orders are distributed through the manager: you make an order, the manager visits him, and the courtesy begins to work.
It is useless to describe the entire industry industry: it is incredibly extensive, and if you want to achieve sufficient autonomy, you will have to develop almost everything. In addition to that it is impossible by definition. There is no grass and there is nowhere to graze cattle – there will be no meat industry. Naked cliffs around instead of a forest – there will be no tree -processing industry, and the forest will have to be purchased from visiting caravans. The only understanding of all industries, all production and logistics nuances go away for many days. The fortress has no development ceiling, the longer you play, the more you will find ways to enrich and protect it.
And the more distinctly you will see the web of the relationship. A gateway for magma must be made of refractory breed. Drinking water in the well is only running, otherwise any drop of blood will poison the entire tank. You will find that the sale of an artifact is very upset by its creator, up to the confluence of in Tantrum – a fratricidal rabies that only your soldiers stop. And then you will be surprised why these wards are so badly sleeping, forgetting that noisy excavations go below three floors below. Each good strategy abounds with similar details, but only in Dwarf Fortress do they make up a significant part of the game itself.
Thanks to this, such a close and devoted community has developed around the game. I'm not talking about the quantity and quality of internal memes (Urist Makstepid, killer carp, atomic disintegrator, spiral tantrum and still abyss of others). And the community has collected collective wisdom in game Wikipedia, without which the development of the game is comparable to the development of space.
Bearded children
One of the main problems of any underground fortress is its inhabitants. The first seven settlers will turn into a population of several hundred beards over time: migrants will come from other Dvaty forts, kids will be born and grow up, a bearded nobility will be settled, and there, you see, the king himself will move his yard to your den. And every yard is a person full of thoughts, desires and prejudices.
Of course, Dvorf and needs that are familiar to indirect control strategies: food, drink, sleep. But their satisfaction is almost unlimited. One bearded man is on the floor, because he did not have enough bed, and accumulates gloomy thoughts. The other is pushed on a bed of ginkgo wood, inlaid by a dragon bone and opals, and rejoices more and more rejoices in life.
Such thoughts arise among the Dvorfs for any reason, including events in the family, relations with colleagues and neighbors. Even a simple job can please or upset a yard. You can describe social mechanics until the morning, but I will try to express it with one example. Beardaches, who have not left the fortress for a long time, will receive a charge of sadness, barely seeing the sun – because cave adaptation has come.
► Soldiers spend most of the time in training, which is incredibly happy. And during breaks they can return to civil matters for a while.
The https://sister-site.org/virgin-games/ longer you play, the more your fortress risks, and every danger threatens to turn into another story for your piggy bank. Once vampires and werewolves will come to visit, and if the second is easy to break, then the bloodsucker is almost no different from the dwarf. With a lack of witnesses of his atrocities – and the game has a simple system of justice and imprisonment – the vampire’s visit will turn into a middle hand detective.
The fortress is covered with fun
There will be sieges. How you smash a gold mine, so greedy goblins smash you. And to collect and arm the militia is one of the most difficult tasks for the young fortress. It is necessary to forge swords, to teach warriors, and select the barracks. Combat mechanics is not amenable to manual control, but it contains tons of all kinds of techniques and there is no HP scale – only parts of the body, only hardcore. I hope you have stored soap for disinfection and threads for seams. If not, then not all warriors will celebrate their triumph.
The farther, the stupid and funny you are able to destroy your fortress: from an inaccuated fluid deficiency to total flooding by magma. At this time, and you come to the idea of how true the folk wisdom “lose fun!", Because only the most epic, most grandiose failures give birth to your personal annals. But I do not consider a focused desire for death the only entertainment. Even in the most peaceful fortress there are adventures that you want to remember.
And if you settled in a dangerous area … Say, if a necromancer besieges you, it would be better not to see your warehouse with oysters, otherwise there will be a story about the king, cut by dead shells in your collection.
► seven tabs, almost a dozen of different sores on each.
And the longer the game remains in development, the more mechanic in it. More and more options for "fun" are possible. Therefore, the review on this site you will most likely not see. Dwarf Fortress is making two enthusiasts, Tarn and Zach Adamsa, they live on generous donations of fans (up to eight thousand dollars a month!) and do not intend to stop. Ten years in alpha, fifteen centuries – development, and before the release … Why is it needed? To solemnly release version 1.00.00 and cut the ribbon?
The most monstrous flaw of the game – the threshold of entry – will never be fixed. DWARF FORTRESS graphics will definitely not make money, and the management promises to bring to mind a very, very long time ago. However, ASCII has its advantages. The first days of the eyes will be bleeding (and you still read guides), but the imagination will draw the most impressive paintings. If you need it, of course. Not everyone loves when the game leaves you alone with yourself and with a set of instruments, even exclusively rich.
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I have more and more crucified about the value of the game as a generator of stories and a specific “fun” (in the language of the yard “fun” means a terrible disaster). But Dwarf Fortress is allowed to play as you like. For example, in adventure mode, the game turns into "Horned". You can still simply neatly and peacefully learn the fortress. Or to embody crazy ideas, like a huge tower from dragon soap or dining room in hell. Yes, and no one prevents you to let everything on its own and see what happens.
But I warned you. When you play it properly, your friends will have to be tight: you torture them with your incredible stories about the misadventures of the yard.