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Graphics Games

Dwarf Fortress' Graphical Upgrade Provides a New Way Into a Wildly Wonky Game (arstechnica.com) 43

Posted by BeauHD from the new-and-improved dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Kevin Purdy: Available tomorrow on Steam and itch.io, the new version of Dwarf Fortress updates the legendary (and legendarily arcane) colony-building roguelike with new pixel-art graphics, music, some (default) keyboard shortcuts, and a beginners' tutorial. The commercial release aims to do two things: make the game somewhat more accessible and provide Tarn and Zach Adams, the brothers who maintained the game as a free download for 20 years, some financial security. I know it has succeeded at its first job, and I suspect it will hit the second mark, too. I approached the game as a head-first review expedition into likely frustrating territory. Now I find myself distracted from writing about it because I keep thinking about my goblin defense and whether the fisherdwarf might be better assigned to gem crafting. "For me, the commercial release of Dwarf Fortress succeeded at transforming the game from a grim, time-killing in-joke for diehards into a viable, if not graceful, challenge," writes Purdy. "I will start again, I will keep the badgers and floods at bay, and next time, I might have the privilege of failing to a magma monster, an outbreak of disease, or even a miscarriage of dwarf justice."

Further reading:
The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress (Slashdot, 2011)
Dwarf Fortress Gets Biggest Update In Years (Slashdot, 2014)
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Dwarf Fortress' Graphical Upgrade Provides a New Way Into a Wildly Wonky Game More

Dwarf Fortress' Graphical Upgrade Provides a New Way Into a Wildly Wonky Game

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  • We say "Little Person Fortress" today.

  • For an update that's charging $30 for a better UI, it sure fell out of the "improve the interface" tree and missed every low-hanging-fruit branch on the way down.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xenx ( 2211586 )
      To each their own, but I've also seen it being praised and it looks perfectly ok

      • Yep, to each their own.

        Its been free with fan-made usability mods for 20 years and in my case I picked it up (soundtrack included, which is great) to show my support for the developers, I fully intend on working on my old forts on my non-windows boxes. There is also a medical bill backstory as to the reason for the steam listing after so long, I don't know enough of the details to comment more than just directing people to that narrative.

        Icing on the cake is that at the time of this post its currently #1 i

    • Re:It's really not that great (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @03:39AM (#63109714)

      So far its worth every cent I've paid.

      I cant believe I'm writing this about dwarf fortress but....

      This is actually really intuitive. Dwarf fortress is now intuitive, and it looks great, for what it is.

      Goddamn thats a weird sentence to write. I've been bashing away doing my yearly DF run for a good decade now, and I never thought it would be something I could recomend to my less technically patient friends. But it is. SOMEHOW.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Jamlad ( 3436419 )
        This is what pushed me out of trying DF ~15 years ago; the noob-punishingly steep learning-cliff. I gave it a few tries and my dwarfs kept dying and it wasn't fun it was infuriating and obtuse. When I saw the release announcement yesterday the first thing I checked was to see if there's now a tutorial.
        • Isn't their motto "losing is fun" :).

          Reminds me of those old school CRPGs that you pretty much had to either cheese or grind non stop for 2 years. Bard's Tale 3 can be speed ran in a few hours if you know the exploits (not even bugs, just game design). If you paid $35-$40 (equivalent to about $70 or $80 today) back then you'd probably be upset (or rather your parents would, since it was still mostly kids playing back end).

          It was "Nintendo Hard" on steroids for the console kids.

        • I sat there with DF and a youtube video that purported to be an intro to a very simple game, and couldn't do squat.

          I need an even simpler tutorial that literally leads me through a full simple game so I don't wiff or start crying I don't know how to do something.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Shane A Leslie ( 923938 )
        For the past ten years or so I have had a rule that I am only allowed to have Dwarf Fortress installed for 2 weeks a year. It's usually over the Christmas holidays, and I'm only allowed to play it when everybody else is asleep. I bought it and installed it last night and said that I could give myself 15 minutes to play it before I went to bed at midnight. I went to bed at 1:30.

        • Yep. Pretty much the same here. I'd do one big run through a year and limit myself to that.

          This thing? Up till late and utterly enthralled. My fortress currently is running OKish , but I did manage to open up an underground cavern full of nasties and its become a tourist destination for idiot human monster hunters who turn up in droves only to get eaten by trolls and troglodytes and whatever a cave aligator is.

          I'm working on building an aqueduct into the stair case with which I'll first make sure my guys ar

    • Re:It's really not that great (Score:4, Informative)

      by RKThoadan ( 89437 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @09:06AM (#63110158)

      There is a post in the Steam Community asking "have all those ppl been playing free DF for 25 years and just waiting for an opportunity to pay $30?"

      It's currently at 81 pages of people just replying "yes"

      LInky: https://steamcommunity.com/app... [steamcommunity.com]

  • So the original is free for Linux, Mac, and MS-Win, but they're only releasing the commercial version for MS-Win? I guess I can't use the commercialone then.
    • Pretty much any windows program can be run on Linux or Mac nowadays with minimal effort, particularly things put up by Steam.

    • Rumor is it that they released a commercial Windows version (on Steam) to pay for medical bills.

      Sadly, any sales of the Linux and macOS SKU wouldn't represent any significant amount of profit due to how entrenched Windows is.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Feneric ( 765069 )
        I wish them success, and I was personally there day one with money in hand, but I'm not going to purchase a copy that won't natively run on anything I've got. I'm sure I'm not alone.

  • I'm a huge fan of DF and have been for years. I genuinely hope it's successful.

    But I'm doubtful that offering it to a vastly wider base of players is going to mean much?

    I mean, this is like offering a large-print illustrated version of Caesar's Gallic Wars. It's STILL IN LATIN, mind you, just a lot prettier. Is the new version going to really scoop up that many new players?

    Then again, if even a tiny % of the Steam users are intrigued enough that's probably several multiples of their current playerbase, s

  • Purchasing, honored to reward a labor of love. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PJ6 ( 1151747 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @10:50AM (#63110492)
    They will deserve every penny they get.

  • Banished (Score:3)

    by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @12:46PM (#63110878)

    Banished, despite its bugginess from time to time is better.

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