Dwarf Fortress Gets Biggest Update In Years

An anonymous reader writes Dwarf Fortress, the epic, ASCII text-based, roguelike citybuilding game, just released its biggest update in years. The game is notable for its incredible depth, and the new release only extends it. Here are the release notes — they won't make much sense if you don't play the game, but they'll give you a sense of how massively complex Dwarf Fortress is. It's also worth noting the a team of modders has recently released a new version Stonesense utility, which renders the game in 3-D from an isometric point of view. "[T]he utility relies on DFHack, a community-made library that reads the game's memory and can be parsed, thus allowing for additional utilities to render things while bypassing the initial ASCII output." If you're unfamiliar with the game, here's an illustrated depiction of an amazing story generated by the game.

Re:PeridexisErrant's DF Starter Pack - Get it!

[Anonymous Coward]

And you should spend a few hours reading the wiki. I love the game, but learning to use vi is probably easier.

Re:PeridexisErrant's DF Starter Pack - Get it!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

And you should spend a few hours reading the wiki. I love the game, but learning to use vi is probably easier.

If you can master vi, you are possibly ready to cope with DF's interface.

At that point you can begin working with the fact that the game mechanics tend fairly strongly toward 'emergent malevolence'.

Re:Perspective

[Oronar]

There's a reason the motto of the game is "LOSING IS FUN!"
With a little practice and judicious use of the wiki it's not too hard to get to semi-stable fortress that won't collapse from internal forces (instead it'll be the goblin or elf sieges).

Re:Ahh Dwarf Fortress...

[PopeRatzo]

Where else can you drain the ocean, trap whales in lead cages, load them into lead minecarts, and send them careening down the steep, steep slope to hell as a kinetic anti-demon weapon?

You've clearly never used DMT.

Progress Quest

[Timothy Hartman]

More of a Progress Quest [progressquest.com] fan. No sense learning all those commands when the game can do it for you.