Gamasutra: Tarn Adams Interview

By: Derek Yu

On: March 3rd, 2008

Finally got around to reading this Gamasutra interview with Dwarf Fortress co-creator Tarn Adams (the other half being his brother, Zach). It’s a really great read that covers a lot of Dwarf Fortress’s history and pre-history, and also gets into a lot of geeky stuff like pathfinding and fluid dynamics.

But this is the best part:

What’s left to answer is why’d we be so into doing a fantasy game. That’s probably the same as everybody else: Tolkien, D&D, myths, and of course, the movie Beastmaster. (We like the part where the evil priest is like, “You’ll be sacrificed to ‘The God of AAaa,’” like they didn’t even bother thinking of a name, just powering through on the power of their badassedness.) But there were all kinds of things like that. In the movies, books, the arcade, PC, consoles, we were surrounded by that sort of thing.

Yes, frickin’ Beastmaster! I love that movie! I love you guys!

The image depicts YADFA (Yet Another Dwarf Fortress Anecdote), from DF forum member goldminer:

Its [sic] pretty fun to capture invaders and then devise crazy ways of getting rid of them. My current method happens to be a gold arena over an active volcano with an enraged bronze colossus. Goblins get dumped in through a hole from above.

Every year or so, the dwarves lower the bridge, re-capture the colossus and ‘clean’ the arena for future use. I had to build walls around the arena because too much precious iron was getting thrown into the magma.

Via this DF forum thread.

Posted in Community, Interviews, Roguelikes | Tags: TarnAdams

Chained to Fate

So much love for Dwarf Fortress! RAAA!!
Squidi

Beastmaster is indeed a great movie. My wife mocked me when I bought it on DVD. Then she saw the movie. And… well, I think she lost all respect for me on that day. But it’s Beastmaster!

I’ve never played Dwarf Fortress, but I am endlessly fascinated by it. I thought this article was great and it makes me wonder why we can’t have more of that kind of journalism in the game industry.
ChevyRay

“This time, it was called Slaves to Armok: God of Blood, named after Armok, the god from dragslay. Armok himself was named after “arm_ok”, a variable that counts the number of arms you have left, for inventory purposes.”

Haha, I hadn’t known that. <3DF.
sinoth

<3
the one

I must get that arena!!!!! Also I wonder what would happen to the arena when the volcano erupts?
Paracetamol

In the interview, a Miner VGA parody was mentioned. Did anyone find a download for this? I loved Miner VGA so much, I just had to play it again in DOSBox a week ago.
mr

The God of AAaa? I’m surprised nobody brought up the easy and obvious Monty Python reference yet. :)