Dwarf Fortress
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dwarf Fortress is a computer game for Microsoft Windows that combines certain aspects of roguelike games and strategy games.
| Dwarf Fortress | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Bay 12 Games |
| Latest version | Alpha |
| Release date(s) | August 2006 |
| Genre(s) | |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Platform(s) | Windows |
| Input | Keyboard |
Contents |
[edit] History
Dwarf Fortress is a successor to "Slaves to Armok: God of Blood" by Bay 12 Games. The earlier game was a more traditional "hack and slash" roleplaying game, with a 3D graphical interface. Dwarf Fortress discarded Armok's 3D graphics for a tileset based on ASCII characters and expanded play to incorporate an economic and strategy mode, in addition to more conventional roguelike roleplay.
Development on Dwarf Fortress started in October 2002, and the first version was released in August 2006. The game has garnered substantial attention for a freeware release still in the alpha stage, with a review in the December 2006 issue of PC Gamer UK, an article on popular website Eurogamer, and multiple extremely long threads in the Something Awful and Penny Arcade internet forums. Development is active, with 20 releases in the first two months, and a small but robust testing community providing feedback.
[edit] Gameplay
Dwarf Fortress encompasses two modes of play: "Dwarf Fortress" mode, in which the player builds a dwarven mountain settlement, and "Adventurer" mode, in which the player controls a single dwarf or human in a general rogue-like manner.
[edit] Dwarf Fortress Mode
When the player elects to begin a game, a world is created. World creation is done by generation of a fractal landscape, which is then evaluated for necessary conditions such as having enough potential fortress sites. If not, then the world is rejected by the program, and a new fractal landscape is generated and evaluated until one meets the requirements. As there may be over a hundred such rejections, world generation can take some time, especially on slower computers. Once an acceptable landscape is found, the program populates it with towns, wildlife, and finer landscape details (rivers, lakes, etc).
The initial settlement party consists of 7 dwarves. The player has a number of points to spend on resources (food, weapons, armor, equipment, etc) and skills for his settlers. Once these decisions have been made, the settlers arrive and begin their work.
The number of skills in the game is daunting. They range from the basic and obvious (such as mining, wood-cutting, metalsmithing, masonry, farming, and cooking, to pick just a few examples) to the obscure or detailed (lye-making, tannery, engraving, and so on). A dwarf who practices one skill more than others will generally choose that skill as a career.
Upon arriving at their mountain, the player directs the dwarves indirectly by creating jobs. Jobs are created by designating work areas. The marking of an area for wood-chopping creates one "chop down tree" job for every tree in that area. If a stockpile for wood is created, a "haul lumber to stockpile" job is created whenever there is a free log and a free space in the stockpile. Any dwarf with the appropriate skill may try to do a job. Higher skill in a given job may result in the dwarf doing it faster (such as with mining) or better (in the case of crafting).
As they excavate their cave the dwarves will generally have to create living space, find a way to produce food (which generally means some form of farming and irrigation), secure access to water and alcohol, and build workshops to create valuable goods to trade for essentials. They will also encounter hostile creatures and monsters who they must defend against; this generally means organizing a military. As the colony grows, additional dwarves will arrive, providing more labor and the possibility of increased specialization.
[edit] Adventurer Mode
In "Adventurer Mode", the player guides a single elf, dwarf or human. This mode is more like traditional roguelike games.
While the player can play both fortress and adventure modes in the same. You choose from a list of various races and cultures set in the same generated world (Humans, Dwarves, Elves) and from a list of civilizations of those races. After that, character generation is similar in some respects to making up a Reclaim Mode party -- you add points to the attributes :
- What weapons you specialize in (axes, hammers, etc)
- How good you are with armor and shields
- How good you are at ambushing, wrestling, etc
The adventure mode revolves around getting quests from either mayors or kings, or just wandering around slaughtering things. There is no real 'goal' per se, other than survival. Quests are handed out by mayors and kings (which inhabit the towns and cities in adventure mode) and involve killing monsters found in dungeons and caves.
You can assemble a party of adventurers by talking to them and having them join your group. This can be far more flexible than in most roguelikes, since you can have archers to fight at a distance, spearmen to handle dangerous monsters, etc.
Adventurer mode features stores you can buy weapons, armor, items and accessories from. It has a semi-working model of how the towns operate (Toady One is updating this constantly) to make them more realistic. Still, there are some issues -- every game always ends up with you splattered against some dank floor by a horrible monster.
One notable feature about adventurer mode is that, if you have built fortresses in the world in Dwarf Fortress mode, you can visit them in adventure mode. This is only slightly interesting if the fortress was small, but can turn into a fight of epic proportions if you were unlucky enough to have monsters camp out in your fortress or you were overrun by demons.
