dwarf fortress

That's adorable in a strange way.

it's also a pain in the ass. now she wants all this new shit... a fancy bedroom (she ended up marrying the dwarf who engraved the walls of it), an office, some chests, and a proper militia. i'm uploading pics of my fortress, which i'll post in a few minutes.

ground level: trading depot, animal pen, garbage heap, drawbridge and walls, and entrance

2 levels down: bottom of the moat, food prep area for fish and animals, and plant farm

another level down: dining hall, prepared food storage area, and uncut gem storage

another level down: unused furniture storage

another level down: workshops and crafted goods storage. there's workshops for a carpenter, mason, craftswarf, gem cutter, brewer, furnace, forge, and mechanic, with appropriate storage. also the manager's office and the mayor's bedroom

bedrooms for the proles

start of the mines, and two graves

more mines

check out this sweet cup one of my dwarves made when he went mental

current population is 70 which is a record for me

how does a game that looks so shitty get fps lag?

every dwarf has their own personality and their own shit going on. before you start a game it constructs a history of the land you live in. there's a metric fuckton of complexity and emergent gameplay that it has to deal with... this new york times article explains it better than i can: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-of-dwarf-fortress.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

(and btw i'm using a tileset. the vanilla DF just uses ASCII!)

How the fuck do you play with it in ASCII? Must be like the fucking matrix you just start "seeing" it after a while.

well, i've got into roguelikes lately, so i can dig that to a degree. but DF is just too complex, i don't think i could. i started with a tileset, i reckon it's one of those things where if you do you just can't go backward.

from that NYT article:

I'm digging your tileset it reminds me of castles in final fantasy 4

it's called phoebus.

i've had more hilarity since. another dwarf entered a strange mood, and took over a carpenter's workshop.

a storage bin. great job, you lunatic.

and then there was the bed

also, when the last trading caravan convoy arrived, some goblins decided to raid me. so i waited until the last caravan was in, pulled the magic lever, and raised the drawbridge. all good. however once the raid was over, i lowered it again... at exactly the wrong moment.

squish.

that'd be the pancaked remains of two dwarves trying to get home after i fucked them over by leaving them stranded. i can just imagine it... 'oh thank the gods, we can get home at last... wait. what's that... shadow?'

I play ASCII.

maybe try a tileset? might help with your 'more work than fun' problem. i'm working my ass off but i'm having hella fun in the process. i'm at 87 fucking dwarves now. biggest pain in the ass is making bedrooms.

another update, from a post i made for reddit looking for advice:

GROUND LEVEL:

inner keep with depot and entrance, raiseable bridge with lever, and moat.

in the middle of making an outer keep to graze animals in and have a secure water source.

-1:

nothing much to see here, apart from the planned military area.

i still don't have a military.

-2:

bottom of the moat, farms, food prep

-3:

nothing here but us cave collapses, move along.

-4:

finally some meat! uncut gems, prepared food (from the kitchens on -2), dining hall, weapons.

-5:

unused furniture, some rocks and shit.

-6:

crafting level. carpenter, mason, gem cutter, smelter, craftsdwarf, forge, brewer, and tanner.

along with associated storage areas.

also manager/bookkeeper/etc office, and my mayor's quarters. all smoothed/engraved.

-7:

dormitory. individual bedrooms, smoothed/engraved.

-8:

start of the mines. i have a stockpile for rough gems, like i said. another for rough metal.

so when i mine em, they're collected pretty quick.

I like the ASCII view, although a tileset would probably be a bit easier. Wish I could just get the LNP.

so today, i definitely discovered the !FUN!.

i had a very successful and efficient fortress built into a mountain by the side of a river.

it even had a well tapped off the river

dormitories

and a floor providing the luxuries my pain-in-the-ass mayor demanded

but just like those poor fuckers in moria, i dug too deep. i discovered caverns. mmmm enticing. nice gems.

sweet, a pool! let's dig a well down to it...

and then out of the depths rose a hideous horned crab-beast!

so i sent my (seven-strong, part-time, farmer) military down there. abject slaughter

dead dwarves everywhere. so i order to retreat.

and now my dwarves are huddling in a room hoping the monster doesn't kill em.

Embarked on a glacier. Set up cage traps in front of my door. My dining room is lined with caged yetis, and they bring happy thoughts to the dwarves as they drink the plump helmet wine they've been complaining about for the last two years.

A 30-dwarf migrant wave has arrived. My fort was running fine before, so I'll enlist them to begin an ice quarry for my future ice castle. They'll be separated from the rest of the fort, so their potential (eventual) deaths in the blizzards won't damage the happiness of my main fort. Then I'll use more expendable labor to transport all my food, booze, and items into the multi-z-level ice castle. With all the dwarves I care about pimpin' in the ice castle, i'll forbid the doors and unleash the yetis in a yeti-moat around my castle, with a trap-filled bridge suspended above. Potential invaders will dodge the traps on the trap bridge and fall to their untimely yeti-deaths.

This might be a bit more extravagant (and less effective) than my previous fort's defense plan... but it should be just as fun.