Dwarf Fortress New Release!

By: Derek Yu

On: October 29th, 2007

Version 0.27.169.32a of Dwarf Fortress, or, as I like to call it, “Bob,” has just been released. From the release notes:

Well, it has been a while. That means potential instability, so don’t get too attached to your fortresses at this point. I’ll be doing subsequent releases more often now as I solve problems. In any case, dwarf mode now has a z-axis and you can make fortresses that span several levels. Fluids behave much more reasonably, and you can walk across the world in adventure mode in the local view without having to step off of an artificial edge. And various other lots more stuff.

The z-axis is amazing. As you can see in the screenshot, my newly created human swordsman can peer into the bottom of the lake, as well as spy part of a second story in the building. Shortly after, he climbed some logs onto the second story and then promptly fell back down again, stunning himself. Pretty embarrassing thing to do right in front of the Mayor of the city.

Toribash 3.0 and now this. Pants officially esploded.

Posted in Freeware, Roguelikes, Windows | Tags: TarnAdams

Tanner

When this game is out of beta,and fully-featured, it will become the greatest roguelike ever. Until then, we have Nethack and ADOM.

And Crawl.
Radix

I don’t think I’ve ever bothered to try Adventure mode.
Stij

BRICKS HAVE BEEN SHAT

This is amazing.
sinoth

HALLELUJAH!

Strike the earth.
Skyleak

“When this game is out of beta,and fully-featured…” If you take a look about the amount of features that have been added and bugs that have been squashed since Jan 07 and the fact it has only went from .23 to .27 it’s going to be a while. =D
Phasma Felis

When this game is out of beta and fully-featured, it may well be the greatest *game* ever, period. It’s not really a roguelike, it just looks like one, and only because the dev hasn’t gotten around to implementing graphics yet. Read the dev notes for Armok 1–the ultimate goal is a complete world simulator more comprehensive than Spore.

Of course, it may be 20 years. I’m willing to wait. :D
Dusty Spur

It took me a while to really understand what I was doing in the game, but so far it’s been pretty fun!

Actually, I still don’t understand half of what’s going on in the game…
idiotmeat

I must admit, going from having a mountain face always appear on the right side of the screen to having to essentially dig your home is a bit daunting. First mistake, don’t dig up into a lake. It will flood your base and destroy your mans for massive lulz.
wormguy

This game looks amazingly deep. Too bad I’ve never been arsed to figure out how to play it. It always confused me and I shut it down in frustration. I’ll give it another shot though.
Skyleak

Don’t give up Dusty Spur!

It’s too bad the wiki was erased for the new version because I needed it every time I wanted to start a new project! It took a good couple hours a day and trial and error but I got it… Still needed the wiki though.
Jayjayjuhwetplane

My favorite game
I was so excited
colorFool

I have not played Dwarf Fortress yet, but since everyone is enthusing so much about it I probably should give it a try. Unfortunately the high learning curve is scaring me off a bit, since I’m not too familiar with rougelikes at all. In fact, before visiting TIGSource I didn’t know there was such a thing as rougelikes at all. So thanks TIGSource – nerdy education is fun!
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

Arrrggh, I wanted to post this! But I was indisposed last night.

Game looks AWESOME. Been waiting forever and a day. Gonna get a world generating on my other machine RIGHT NOW.

So excited. :D
Radix

I have been looking so forward to this for weeks, checking the dev page every day and F5-F5-F5ing since the “tomorrow” post, and now that I have it I’m too scared to play beyond world generation (which seems better maybe? Only took 30 seconds this time).
It can keep being my perfect game for a couple more days until I relax a bit.
DrDerekDoctors

I’m with you, Wormguy. I *really* want to play it and enjoy it, but it’s a bit bloody hostile to new players and stubbornly retro as opposed to nicely retro.
ben.c

For those of you who’re new to Dwarf Fortress, and are turned off by the steep learning curve, you might want to put it down and come back in two weeks. By that time, the more enterprising players will most likely have a tutorial up on the Wiki, to at least get you off the ground, but for now, with this new version, we’re all still figuring it out as we go too.

On the other hand, if you’re brave, dive right in now! There are lots of places to discuss things with other players should you get stuck, such as the official forums or the SomethingAwful thread, or the Penny-Arcade thread.

Strike the earth!
MisterX

Just checked the DF-site again yesterday after about 2 weeks of not doing so – hit it right 3 minutes after the new version was released :D

Well, I also haven’t really gotten into the game when playing the last version, but it was astonishingly “easy” to get into the game. Once you read a few tutorials like those on the previously mentioned Dwarf Fortress wiki you will get the basics, which are all you need for starting the game. I did have quite some fun playing for the first time, especially as the amount of detail is simply amazing. But understanding what you’re _really_ able to do in the game, the endless possibilities you are given, well, yeah, that will surely take a while :)

I think this new version is a good reason for playing DF again, because the only thing that really disappointed me in the last version was that it was not really dynamic at all. The whole world creation was more or less pointless as every level basically had an identical structure anyway and many things were just scripted. As far as I’ve heard this has completely changed now, making it become just that much more awesome. Time to learn!
http://www.g4g.it FireSword

I would like to say this.
If this game had the ultra-cool pixel art (Nintendo DS or whatever) in it, it could rock the shelves or the digital distribution and make a lot of money..
Too bad it ‘s only ascii graphic.. :)
Shih Tzu

Skyleak: The old wiki is still around; it’s just been archived. Check the main page.

I fear this game will become one of those things that sounds awesome that I’ll never have the time to learn.
HumpyDumpy

It’s also got an incredibly intelligent and reasonably mature user forum. If you’ve got the patience to stick it out, you will NOT be disappointed.
Skyleak

FireSword: There are graphics available for the game, just for characters only right now. But it’s still pretty cool to have actual dwarves, humans, animals, goblins, and what not running around. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind ASCII at all, but I like the graphical version.

http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Graphics_sets

and maybe if we’re lucky in 20 years the game will look like this(but still be available in ASCII)
http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/~mayday/files/dwarf_show.png
Derek

Holy shit, Skyleak, where is that image from??? :O
Skyleak

From MayDay

http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/

Contact him about it if you want, I haven’t ToadyOne said he’s not against graphics in his game; it’s just not a priority right now. He wants to create a living breathing world first. Which is true since “air” is an actual object in the game lol.
Melly

Considering Dwarf Fortress is a 2 man project, only one of which is actually doing the coding, and is almost too complex for its own good, I find it doubtful the authors are ever gonna bother creating graphical assets for it themselves. It would be an enourmous ammount of work and to be done in a reasonable time you’d need a whole team of talented spriters. Not mentioning the sheer ammount of content they keep pouring into the game version after version.

If a full graphical overhaul is ever going to be made, it’s almost certainly going to be fan-made. It would be pretty neat, though, especially with a more user-friendly interface (though to be honest the game is as much user friendly as a roguelike complex-as-hell simulation game can be. It’s still a learning brick wall, though.)
DrDerekDoctors

I’ll second Derek’s question about that image. Looks lovely and exactly how the game should be expressed. :)
http://www.g4g.it FireSword

AT Skyleak: the image was a proper example of what i was thinking of, i thinked not isometric more ultima 6 point of view in hi-res but the isometric screenshot is good the same.

For the sprite team i don t think there’s need of an army.. i would say 5-6 artists could make it (500+ pixel-sprites). He could pay them after the game is published on steam(for example).

Mr. Derek Yu could give some work, i like some of his artworks (not all tbh lol)

http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/~mayday/files/dwarf_show.png (this set should be dquantas)

Anyway nice talkin.. cya.
http://www.g4g.it FireSword

http://derekyu.com/images/local/guts.gif

With this graphic.. Dwarf fortress really could be a big seller!

Ok Happy Halloween and see ya next time.. ;P
iopred

That image was created by DayDream.

http://spriteattack.cator.de//df/show/
http://spriteattack.cator.de//df/

MayDay is an imposter, it’s time to get primal.
Chris (DayDreamOZ)

http://spriteattack.cator.de//df/show/

Actually that image was done by me… MayDay contacted me about an iso approach to DF and I had a few hours of fun pixeling away… still very WIP…

The dwarf images on their own:
http://spriteattack.cator.de//df
Skyleak

Sorry for the lack of rep there Chris I found the link at work and when I wanted to pull up your site I couldn’t remember for the life of me who did the actual “dorfs”

Maydays actual dorfs are posted on penny arcade.

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=38984&page=7

PS: After reading some more of the thread I found your page lol
wormguy

I’ve been figuring this out slowly but surely, and it’s extremely addicting.
http://www.g4g.it FireSword

My comments hasn t been approved???
http://www.g4g.it FireSword

Oh nevermind here they are.. lol
please delete my lasr 2 posr thx :)
John H.

I don’t think this will be the greatest roguelike ever, because its adventure mode discards much of Rogue’s brilliance. And I don’t think it’ll be the greatest game ever, because there are lots of different types of games and it’s so difficult to compare many of them.

BUT THESE DO NOT CHANGE THE FACT IT IS SUPER-AWESOME.
Pnx

Toady has stated that he has plans to put in full graphic capabilities into the code that could be implemented in a similar way to the current graphics plugin. But I doubt that he will ever do much work in the way of actually making the tiles and graphics themselves.
Chris (DayDreamOZ)

PNX – Cool… might make it easier for noobs like me to get into the game.

I highly doubt Toady has the a) the skills and more so b) the time to make the art himself.
Skyleak

Well go through the core game list and read carefully.

“Core50, TILESET SUPPORT, (Future): Allow graphical tiles to be used for all game objects.”

Doesn’t say create tiles just reads allow. I’m sure the community would put together a group of the best art and release it. Or people could mix and match what graphics they wanted.