{"id":151465,"date":"2022-12-08T05:08:15","date_gmt":"2022-12-08T05:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/dwarf-fortress-is-no-longer-pcs-most-inscrutable-game\/"},"modified":"2022-12-08T05:08:15","modified_gmt":"2022-12-08T05:08:15","slug":"dwarf-fortress-is-no-longer-pcs-most-inscrutable-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/dwarf-fortress-is-no-longer-pcs-most-inscrutable-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Dwarf Fortress is no longer PC’s most inscrutable game"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

When Tarn and Zach Adams, the two creators of Dwarf Fortress<\/em>, <\/em>were children, their father worked in sewage management just east of Sacramento in the 1970s and ’80s. Specifically, Tarn explains over Zoom, their dad was the guy who \u201cintroduced computers to sewage treatment plants,\u201d helping digitize the measurement of things like \u201cflows, digesters, bacteria,\u201d and grossest of all, \u201cactivated sludge.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

For anyone even vaguely familiar with the strikingly complex settlement sim that is Dwarf Fortress<\/em>, these could plausibly be components of the game. Alas, despite the community calling for the implementation of poop mechanics for years (check out any number of forum threads on the subject such as \u201cSanitation Abstraction\u201d and \u201cOn poopsmithing and urine\u201d), the brothers have yet to relent. Excrement, to this day, remains a straight \u201cnope,\u201d Tarn says. Manure, though, is a possibility \u2014 \u201csince manure is very useful.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Within the Dwarf Fortress community, poop and urine are discussed in rarefied tones<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

within the Dwarf Fortress<\/em> community, poop and urine are discussed in rarefied tones. People have considered the way they might be used for crop fertilizer, dye for clothes, and biological warfare. Mostly, though, players want a sewage system, another complex mechanic to manage amid a game filled with many other complex, overlapping systems. This should tell you everything you need to know about the silliness and seriousness of Dwarf Fortress<\/em>a game with a simple enough premise that quickly becomes anything but.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

At its outset, you are given a handful of dwarves whose goal is to bed into the earth and make a home. You dig down slowly, carving out a corner of cavernous paradise. Your dwarves love drinking beer, but they also get sad. (You might reasonably ask if they’re alcoholics.) You do your best to make them happy, but life is full of big and small challenges. Indeed, a favorite phrase among the game’s fans is \u201closing is fun.\u201d Before long, your earthen lodgings will fall, be that at the hands of a vampire, famine, or perhaps most tragically, a burst aquifer that floods your labyrinthine wonder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Since its release in 2006, Dwarf Fortress<\/em> has been a hardcore pursuit for two primary reasons: its ASCII graphics and lack of in-game tutorials. Booting up the original version for the very first time remains one of gaming’s most disorientating experiences. At its outset, you generate a procedural world, although this is handled differently from most other games. A timeline whirs on the left-hand side of the screen as a map shifts and shimmers in the middle. Mountains ascend from the earth only to be eroded by rivers and empires rise and fall, leaving behind only crumbling ruins.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

This is the first way Dwarf Fortress <\/em>imparts a sense of \u201ccontext vertigo.\u201d Once the world has been generated, you select your place in it \u2014 where you would like to build your bearded dwellers’ base. Now, you must begin to parse the mass of arcane ASCII icons \u2014 austere, yes, but packed with a veritable deluge of digital information. You may see a world teeming with procedural possibility while also starting to feel the prickle of a headache. Like many others, I never learned to play this version. I was perfectly happy admiring it from afar. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

\u201cThe cognitive load of the game is so high.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Tanya Short, co-founder of Kitfox Games, the company publishing the new version of Dwarf Fortress<\/em>, felt a similar way. In 2014, she attended a workshop on the game in Montreal, learning its basics for a few hours (digging the cave, growing mushrooms), but when she got home, she hit a brick wall. \u201cThe cognitive load of the game is so high,\u201d Short tells me over Zoom. \u201cWhen someone was holding my hand, I could wade in\u2026 [but] the cognitive load of trying to boot it up [on my own] It was too high, it was too scary, and it felt more like work, even though it’s theoretically only 30 seconds of reading your mental landscape.\u201d Now, however, with the newly accessible \u2014 and notably cute \u2014 pixel art graphics, that \u201ccognitive load is gone \u2014 it’s dissipated,\u201d Short says. \u201cIt’s just a game now.\u201d Indeed, Short counts herself among the target demographic for the new version: \u201cWe call them the Dwarf Fortress<\/em> curious.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Tarn admits that the ASCII graphics were \u201crunning out of steam a little bit.\u201d For all their dense computational beauty and the way in which they facilitate speedy development (previously, the pair never had to worry about an artist production pipeline), the 255 icons at their disposal posed limitations. \u201cEvery character has been used pretty much, and a lot of them are duplicated,\u201d Tarn says. \u201cIf you can tell a goblin wrestler from a goose from a mountain goat, you are doing it by context or by using the look command, which is cumbersome in the text version.\u201d If you’re confused, don’t worry \u2014 I was, too. \u201cThose are all white G’s,\u201d Tarn clarifies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

The new and old versions of <\/em>Dwarf Fortress.<\/em><\/figcaption>Image: Kitfox Games and Image: Kitfox Games<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Now, a mountain goat is a pixel art version of just that and a goblin wrestler is, well, a goblin wrestler (who, malevolent the depth of the game’s simulation, is able to have children). The challenge, Tarn says, wasn’t creating a variety of art to match the eye-watering array of variables the game can spit out (the dwarf was \u201cnailed immediately,\u201d while variations of hair and, just as importantly, beards came together naturally over time). Rather, it was in representing the game’s subterranean space. \u201cThe challenge was, how do you display this 3D environment when you’re doing 2D slices?\u201d he says. The example Tarn provides is for ramps. A point of confusion in the original version, ramps required an upward triangle being placed next to a wall and the space above the ramp being free. \u201cThere’s four tiles that have to come together to make the perfect ramp,\u201d he says. \u201cNow, we have a giant ramp tile set that shows hills pointing in different directions. It works but it took a long time to land on that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

\u201cThey are motivated by the craft, the potential, and the dream of making something new.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

With Tarn and Zach not wishing to handle the bureaucracy of an actual game studio, part of the publishing deal involved Kitfox recruiting the necessary artists and composers, many of whom were active participants within the Dwarf Fortress<\/em> community Short admits this was a \u201cnerve-racking\u201d process. \u201cYou don’t want to seem like you’re playing favorites,\u201d she says. \u201cIt’s weirdly political, right?\u201d Barring one unfortunate incident involving plagiarized work (which resulted in over 10,000 sprites being scrapped), working with such modders has otherwise been a hugely positive experience. \u201cThey’re very highly technically competent. They tend to be very collaborative and very communicative,\u201d Short continues. \u201cAnd yet, they’re not motivated by money. They are motivated by the craft, the potential, and the dream of making something new.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

You could describe Tarn and Zach in precisely the same terms, two developers who, in the often entrepreneurial arena of indie game development, are as close to punk rockers as it gets. Since 2006, Dwarf Fortress<\/em> has been a free game, the pair’s livelihood sustained only by donations made from a page tucked away in a corner of their website and then via Patreon. Prior to signing with Kitfox, they were DIY perhaps to a fault, the money from such donations enough to live on (ranging anywhere between $3,400 to $8,181 per month, according to this Vice<\/em> article) but little more. Then, a few years ago, Zach contracted skin cancer, having to dip into personal savings to cover what his health insurance did n’t. The Steam version, then, is a means of providing Tarn and Zach, 44 and 47, respectively, with a degree of security \u2014 funds for a \u201cvery rainy day,\u201d as Tarn puts it. \u201cWe don’t anticipate any great changes in the future as to how this country is structured,\u201d he says. \u201c[So] we have to figure it out for ourselves, what we’re gonna do, and this [the Steam and Itch version] seems like the best solution for us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n