Dwarf Fortress

16 entries. 14,433 words.

2019-01

  • My Brief Dwarf Fortress Time. 2019-01-11. I saw @Stargrace and some other folks talking about Dwarf Fortress in the blogosphere and on Twitter. It’s that game that has that reputation for being the greatest game ever, and also the most impossible to actually play, that I’ve been hearing about for the last ten years. I think I first heard about it on the Gamers With Jobs podcast years and years ago. It dawned on me that I’ve always heard it’s a game that sounds similar to RimWorld, and I love RimWorld, so therefore by the transitive property I should also love Dwarf Fortress.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    1,749 words
  • Building vs. Simulation – Dwarf Fortress. 2019-01-15. So a weird thing happened. I played more Dwarf Fortress. And then a little more. And I kind of started liking it. “It’s really not that hard once you learn it.” This is Bekarlogem, my third fortress. Bekarlogem apparently means "Dippedpainted" which makes me giggle every time for some reason. Ha! Just kidding. It’s still super hard. Every screen has a different method of navigating the menus. Sometimes it’s arrow keys.
    • Musings
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    839 words
  • The Fall of Bekarlogem – Dwarf Fortress. 2019-01-20. I imagine if you draw a Venn diagram of “people who play Dwarf Fortress” and “people who are programmers,” the two circles would overlap quite a bit. Unfortunately for me, I’m a programmer, so I think I’m more vulnerable to this DF sickness than most people. Playing the game is quite a bit like using a text editor, considering how much you use the arrow keys to select things in rhythmic patterns.
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    • Stories
    764 words
  • The Fall of Guzilingiz – Dwarf Fortress. 2019-01-23. There’s supposed to be a diacritic or something on one of those vowels in Guzilingiz, but who can be bothered with such things. I started another fortress in Dwarf Fortress. Guess what? If you guessed “werelizards destroyed the whole fortress again” you’d be exactly right. Yeah it's another scene of unspeakable carnage and horror. So much gore splashed on the walls here it couldn't even get an R-rating if it were a movie.
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    542 words
  • Gusilingiz: The Videos. 2019-01-24. This post is about the boring inside baseball minutia of audios and videos and scripting, so beware. I uploaded the four videos comprising the entire brief lifespan of my Gusilingiz fortress to my YouTube channel. Since I did some experimental stuff in those videos, I thought I would document it all here, because I love this stuff and you can’t stop me. By the way, I spelled Gusilingiz wrong in my last post, in case you’re an expert on the dwarven language and noticed that glaring error.
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    • Videos
    2,417 words

2019-02

  • Games Played – January 2019. 2019-02-01. January has been a PC simulation game month, continuing from December. The big oval room is a bustling tavern in my most-recent fortress, Amostitdun. Dwarf Fortress, 69 hours. Yeah, I kinda still play Dwarf Fortress. It’s really not that bad once you learn it. No, really! I mean, if you’re a programmer, that is, who’s spent decades using programming text editors, moving cursors around and learning keyboard shortcuts. And also someone who’s played a month and a half of RimWorld beforehand to get the hang of this specific kind of game.
    • Roundup
    266 words
  • Amostitdun – Dwarf Fortress. 2019-02-06. Amostitdun turned out to be kind of a boring fortress. Everything just kind of worked fine and the dwarves went about their lives. They had plenty of food and drink and housing and most everyone seemed happy, except a few pesky killjoys. I got tired of managing them when they reached the population cap of 200. Just like RimWorld, it’s just not fun for me to play this kind of game unless I’m reacting to some kind of threat or obstacle.
    • RPG
    829 words
  • Avuzestel – Dwarf Fortress. 2019-02-09. I created a new world called Emeecamo, “The Eternal Universes.” I used all the default settings except I set the mineral occurrence to “Frequent” because I’m a filthy casual and I don’t like looking all over creation for metals. Unlike my last world, which was dominated by humans, Emeecamo has a fairly balanced population between all the races, and almost all of them are at war with the goblins. All but the dwarves, oddly enough.
    • RPG
    644 words
  • Dastotdeg – Dwarf Fortress. 2019-02-18. One of the interesting things about Dwarf Fortress is that your “save game file” (which is actually a huge directory of tiny files) contains not just your fortress, but the entire world around your fortress, including all of the other AI-controlled fortresses and civilizations on the map. In RimWorld, if you get an itch to try something different, you simply save your game and start a new game with a new colony.
    • RPG
    1,665 words

2019-03

  • Gatiztun – Dwarf Fortress. 2019-03-01. I think I’m getting a little weary of Dwarf Fortress. I’m starting to detect some repetition in how each game plays out. The outcomes aren’t exactly the same, but the events that happen along the way are starting to feel a bit routine. There’s always artifacts, there’s always a cavern system, there’s always goblin invasions, there’s always forgotten beasts and titans and ettins, there’s always unhappy dwarves, etc. It feels a little like if I build the same fortress plan every time, I’ll get the same outcome every time.
    • RPG
    1,676 words
  • Games Played – February 2019. 2019-03-08. Oops it’s over a week into March and this post is still sitting here waiting for me to attach a picture to it. Hey guess what? I played Dwarf Fortress. Dwarf Fortress, 118 hours. ANTHEM Open Demo, 1 hour. I don’t think I turned on my PS4 at any point either. Why did I buy that contraption again? Well, there was a sale. And it’s the only way to play Bloodborne.
    • Roundup
    92 words

2019-04

  • Complicated Character Creation. 2019-04-30. MassivelyOP asks: “How obsessively do you plan your characters?” At first I thought they meant the *appearance* of your character. So I tweeted my usual I-can-say-everything-that-needs-to-be-said-about-MMOs-in-one-sentence-and-hoo-boy-does-that-make-blogging-hard response to most discussion topics: Honestly these days I just click randomize a bunch of times and then "Enter Game" … I've been burned so, so many times spending an hour in character creation only to find that everyone looks exactly the same from the back.
    • MMORPG
    797 words

2022-08

  • Dwarf Fortress Again. 2022-08-12.

    Okay, yes, fine, I downloaded Dwarf Fortress again.

    • Gaming
    639 words
  • Dwarf Fortress - Limulitred. 2022-08-17.

    A brief recounting of the dwarf fortress of Limulitred, “Goldbuff,” in the world of The Eternal Everseeing Dimensions. Updated with illustrations by DALL-E.

    • Gaming
    453 words
  • Kruggsmash Dwarf Fortress Videos. 2022-08-18.

    It’s creator appreciation week here in Blaugust, and by coincidence, I just happen to have one to mention.

    • Gaming
    291 words
  • Dwarf Fortress - Otinsthinthäd. 2022-08-27.

    The tale of Otinstinthäd.

    • Gaming
    770 words