Slaves to Armok: God of Blood - Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress

[Mas Tnega]

And yet the Aussies have a song about shagging a sleeping bag.

[KingAl]

In...deed.

[wwarnick]

You're off on a tangent, people. An odd one at that.

wwarnick

[vanarbulax]

Actually I'm Australian and never hear waltzing matilda used in that way.

Anyways, back onto the topic, I recently got into this game and am quite addicted. I found it hard to learn in the begining, one of the hardest thing was to stop play like I had direct control over my dwarves and instead focused on efficiency and infrastructure, I find it similar to majesty in some bizarre way because of that. I've only started up two fortresses so far but I managed to get my population up to 70 and prosperous, that was until a bronze colossus came and killed all of my dwarves. It has a steep learning curve but the good side is that your constantly amazed at the things you can do, suddenly finding things like the traffic designation feature causes me to spend ten minutes or so optimizing my fortress's travel routes. It's good fun if you like trying to balance the most minute details and I can spend hours at a time on it.

[shinygerbil]

I got back into it too. It's awesome. It's sucking my life away.


I LIEK DIGGAN GAEM. IT GOT DORFS.

[Grandstone]

Are all of those subtitles jokes, or do they actually add up to something?

I'm almost afraid to try out this game. I liked NetHack, but this seems to push ASCII to a whole different level. I get vertigo looking at the screenshots.

[shinygerbil]

The best way to do it is to open the Dwarf Fortress Wiki in the background, then watch your first three or four settlements die out in various horrible ways while you try to figure out why.

As vanarbulax says, the best thing to do is just leave the dwarves alone - they can look after themselves, and are generally as efficient as any little dwarves run by simple algorithms can be.
Concentrate instead in just mapping out a decent fortress, making sure you've included all the basic workshops and things, and generally making progress.

[wwarnick]

And concentrate on learning the interface. I stopped before I learned it all. It's like learning to play an instrument. I'm sure it's great fun once you learn it, but man is it frustrating when you have no idea what to do and everything's going wrong. I wish Tarn would devote a month to improving the interface and nothing else.

wwarnick

[vanarbulax]

While I do agree that the interface is hard to learn at first the good thing about it is that once you get used to you everything sort of becomes second nature when you start remembering key shortcuts. For instance while it maybe be a bit cumbersome to look on the menu at the right for build under B and then scroll down for bed under B after you've done it a couple of times you do it without looking.

[wwarnick]

I think some people are more into keyboard shortcuts than others. Some people will use keyboard shortcuts in all kinds of games and apps, but others (like myself) use the mouse and menus, merely because there's less to remember. They can leave in the keyboard shortcuts, but they might offer an alternative of sorts.

wwarnick

[shinygerbil]

Personally, I don't feel the need for a mouse - I've always preferred a keyboard. Most people (those guys at Microsoft and even Apple included) don't know how to make good use of a mouse. I read an interesting, if slightly biased and ranty article on interface design with a mouse a while back. But I digress; I just prefer a keyboard. I can always, always do things quicker with a keyboard than with a mouse - I navigate around both Windows and Linux mostly with my keyboard, and I feel very much more comfortable with it. The only time I am really forced to use a mouse is while browsing the Internet.

(If I'm being lazy, of course, I'll use the mouse; it's less work, even if it takes longer.)

The problem is, those guys are making their game the way they want. They don't need/want a mouse, and I think the number of menus (and more importantly, the number of child items in those menus) would be just as overwhelming as trying to use the keyboard.

I'm not saying keyboard is better - I'm sure that I would probably find my way around the interface easier with a mouse - but I feel that I am quicker with a keyboard, and once the actions I need have been performed several times, it does indeed become second nature. So for me, as a person who is comfortable with a keyboard, the mouse would be redundant.


Either way: Play the game! It's awesome!

[wwarnick]

...it's less work, even if it takes longer.)

Exactly.

The problem is, those guys are making their game the way they want.

Yeah. I guess I have more of a wish than a complaint. We have no reason to complain when the game is freeware.

I think the number of menus (and more importantly, the number of child items in those menus) would be just as overwhelming as trying to use the keyboard.

I disagree. Combined, they are more than the sum of their parts in my opinion. If there were only a few commands, I wouldn't mind keyboard shortcuts, but when there's a thousand I just can't keep track and my brain explodes. I would much rather search through a list of commands and click one with a cursor. But that's me.

I never use the command prompt either (or Run...). I'm all about GUIs and cursors.

wwarnick

[KingAl]

Really? Trying to copy large numbers of files is nigh on impossible without xcopy, what with Windows cancelling the entire process on a single bloody read error.

[wwarnick]

I won't deny that it has its uses, and in said cases I probably would use it, but I usually don't have much trouble with copying. Then again, I don't do much copying anyway. Maybe I should starting backing up. I have a false sense of security because even after my only BSOD, I was able to recover everything before reformatting.

wwarnick

[NeoThermic]

Really? Trying to copy large numbers of files is nigh on impossible without xcopy, what with Windows cancelling the entire process on a single bloody read error.

Vista has an option to deal with the file in question without stopping everything because it thinks it had an error.

NeoThermic