Dwarf Fortress

[Tain]

This is pretty old by now, but I've never seen it mentioned on TNL.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html
(ugly website ahoy)

It's a combination of a strategy game, where you build and manage a fortress, and a roguelike. The level of detail in the roguelike seems borderline retarded; I encountered a tame cat in the forest, grabbed it by the head, gouged out its left eyeball, and choked it to death with a nearby flint rock. Before that, it managed to rip off two of my fingers on my left hand and bruise some of the ones on my right.

Hell, look at this bug description:

I also thought I had fixed an adventure mode temperature bug a few days ago, but it happened again today -- it drops the temperature way below zero. I was walking around in a temperate area, and the water froze, all the trees died, and I died, and a few turns later my body crumbled away. I think there might have been some bones left but I'm not sure. So I'll have to fix that one up.

Also, the random world process that the game goes through when you first run it is insane. It generates the terrain (after throwing out, like, 100 terrain candidates), runs streams through it, and lets water erode the surface over time. It populates different areas with randomized civilizations and makes up a history for it all. And the world is huge. Here's an ugly, downscaled picture of one for shits:

Click for full size


I've barely touched the main strategy game part, though.

[dog$]

Thanks for this. I really don't know why I never noticed this at all until now, seems it's been mentioned elsewhere a few times.

I just jumped right into download and world generation, so at this precise moment I have a lot of unknowns. Hopefully the classic style Nethack movement is supported (since that's what I'm familiar with). It also would be pretty cool if the eminent death wasn't so random and quick, considering how long this is all taking.

[Tain]

I've since read that, apparently, the roguelike mode is for wiping out fortresses that you built in the other mode after they've been overtaken. They say the mode is pretty unfinished. Maybe there aren't traditional dungeons or anything yet. =/

[dog$]

Eh, that's ok anyway. I've pretty much never going to play Nethack again despite how much I like the idea behind it. Seems like this has plenty else to do regardless.

I'll try to plug with this for a while and see what happens.

[Opaque]

The level of detail in the roguelike seems borderline retarded; I encountered a tame cat in the forest, grabbed it by the head, gouged out its left eyeball, and choked it to death with a nearby flint rock. Before that, it managed to rip off two of my fingers on my left hand and bruise some of the ones on my right.

It's text.

I'm not impressed.

[FuryFox]

This sounds pretty cool, I used to play Nethack a lot, and then after that A.D.O.M. I am perfectly fine with trading sophisticated graphics for a broader depth of play and creative choices.

...and maybe it's an age thing, but the tension and fear of death that ADOM can build (with its "text") is more effective than most next-gen graphical showcases. It's too bad rogue-like games never generated a really successful multiplayer, but I'm not sure how it would work turn-based like that anyways (and sure, I realize MMO's and dungeon crawlers are pretty much modern day rogue-like, but the variety in interaction is severely reduced).

[Opaque]

Maybe I'm just out of it, but if I write down a list of 50 options you can use to interact with someone in a building, then photo copy it and walk you through situations and have you circle which option you want in each one, it wouldn't be a good game.

Maybe it would. Actually, lets all get together and play D&D.

[Saint of Killers]

You're such a graphics whore that you bitch about PS2 games coming out now. Of course this isn't going to appeal to you.

[Opaque]

I bitched about the new Yakuza being on PS2 when the first came out after it died. I wasn't even completely about graphics, but it does suck to think about how awesome it would look to go around the city if Yakuza 2 was a PS3 title and had those resources backing it up.

I mean shit, I'm playing Katamari right now, I don't give a shit about whether graphics are amazing if the game play is still solid. I just hate when companies keep supporting old dead hardware when they have newer hardware they could be working on instead.

In this games case, I'm just not impressed that a lot of things are listed, when there's no real representation of what's going on other than that text. You could write all day about the cool shit going on in HL2, but I wouldn't give a shit because it's just text. Same thing in this case.

[Saint of Killers]

There are tons of roguelikes that don't have that level of detail. It's pretty impressive for a roguelike.

Comparing a free game some nerd made in his spare time to HL2 is downright retarded.