Dwarf Fortress tutorial videos

[LordDon]

You've heard of Dwarf Fortress. All your cool friends play it and you want to be cool too! Right? So you tried to play it, you tried to be cool, but you end up, 30 minutes later, scratching your head in frustration and confusion. Your fortress is flooding regularly, that gray capital "E" keeps trampling all your poor dwarves before they've even finished their first bedroom, and your stone craftsman dwarf won't come out of his bedroom with that cage full of kittens.

No More! Let captnduck start you on your way to a successful fortress in 17 easy videos for the low low price of FREE!

koZUS2h-Yzc

[biosc1]

Nice. I admit to letting this game get buried in my backlog :(

[destoo]

I got my boss angry over this game.. No more boss now.. Time to reinstall it!
(or at least watch the vids)

The 17 easy videos is now 19 easy videos. 2 extra! For free!!

[Planetbuster]

Sure wish they would take this up a notch, i know you can download graphics but I gotta have a mouse. This game sounds hella fun.

[SilentScreams]

I need to play me some more DF. I haven't played it since last summer I dont think.

This was my GotY for 2007, even in it's half-finished, unpolished and buggy state I still had more fun with it than most of the stuff we got fed in 2007.

[boratika]

You've heard of Dwarf Fortress. All your cool friends play it and you want to be cool too! Right? So you tried to play it, you tried to be cool, but you end up, 30 minutes later, scratching your head in frustration and confusion. Your fortress is flooding regularly, that gray capital "E" keeps trampling all your poor dwarves before they've even finished their first bedroom, and your stone craftsman dwarf won't come out of his bedroom with that cage full of kittens.

You were watching me play weren't you?

[Arphahat]

There is a new release of the game, with some patches and such. I think I'm going to have to start up a new fortress.

Anyone interested in doing what we did last time? Find a small, interesting map and all play it independently, reporting the results for comparative and amusement purposes?

[biosc1]

There is a new release of the game, with some patches and such. I think I'm going to have to start up a new fortress.

Anyone interested in doing what we did last time? Find a small, interesting map and all play it independently, reporting the results for comparative and amusement purposes?

You know it. I suck at generating maps though. So, if someone could step up the plate and create a dangerous/sinister/evil map, that could be a lot of fun...

No giant spiders at the point of embarkation this time though, eh? Please?

[Arphahat]

I'll look through some of the pre-generated ones at the site we downloaded the last one.

[RandoM51]

Sure wish they would take this up a notch, i know you can download graphics but I gotta have a mouse. This game sounds hella fun.

Mouse does work for parts of it, works pretty good for marking zones for mining/etc.

[Arphahat]

Alright, how does this one (http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=734) sound?

[biosc1]

Looks good...I love a good ol' haunted mountain :)

[bean]

I'm waiting for Dwarf Fortress 2.0

The game obviously has a following. Give it an accessible UI and at least low res graphics rather than ASCII and all of you who like it would buy it for $10 on Steam (as would all of us who want to like it).

I remember spending a lot of time as a really little kid reading instruction manuals to learn how to play a handful of PC games with terrible controls. . . life is too short for that now.

[RandoM51]

DF mode is pretty much pure sim, adventure mode I suppose is more like a game.

People who can't put in the time to figure out how to play the sim mode are not people who would get any enjoyment out of the sim mode in the first place, IMHO. Considering you can keep a list of the main keys on the screen the entire time, I'm not sure how much easier the controls need to be.

Particularly if life is too short to read a game manual, lol, considering how long a game of DF can last if you know how to manage a fort. :) I've got a fort with over 3 weeks of actual play time put into it. It won't really end until I want it to end or I make some catastrophic mistake involving magma. :)

Lastly, the authors of the game appear to have every intention of making the game more complex, not less. They're not trying to cater to a lowest common denominator, nor are they going out of their way to make it accessible to the masses. So stop begging/waiting/wishing it were different and go play games that are different. There are plenty of simpler games out there for you, very few complex games for those of us who enjoy them.

[Ink Asylum]

I don't want less complexity, just a better UI.

[Panthera]

I'm waiting for Dwarf Fortress 2.0

The game obviously has a following. Give it an accessible UI and at least low res graphics rather than ASCII and all of you who like it would buy it for $10 on Steam (as would all of us who want to like it).

I remember spending a lot of time as a really little kid reading instruction manuals to learn how to play a handful of PC games with terrible controls. . . life is too short for that now.

This is one of those rare games where this would not be practical.

[RandoM51]

I don't want less complexity, just a better UI.

Can't significantly improve the UI without changing it from ASCII/tiles to an actual graphics engine. That would have to happen to support the type of context-sensitive mouse support people expect nowadays.

The two people responsible for the game don't seem to have any interest in doing such.

If you look at their potential development arcs (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_v1.html) you'll notice one that addresses UI, and a large part of that has pre-reqs the developers have labeled as bloat. :p

Looking through the very dev pages makes it pretty obvious that they're working on adding more game and more sim, while cleaning up some of the troublesome UI bits like linkages.

[bean]

Random - You come off as an elitist prick when you assume that people wanting a more accesible UI are not interested in complex games.

Thank you for pointing out that the developers are not going to improve the UI significantly. Perhaps another indy developer will fill this obvious gap and make some money off it. People who refuse to capitalize on a market they've developed usually will find someone else is happy to do so in their place.

[RandoM51]

Random - You come off as an elitist prick when you assume that people wanting a more accesible UI are not interested in complex games.

Thank you for pointing out that the developers are not going to improve the UI significantly. Perhaps another indy developer will fill this obvious gap and make some money off it. People who refuse to capitalize on a market they've developed usually will find someone else is happy to do so in their place.

Doesn't matter how I come off. You're not going to a) keep the game ASCII and b) simplify the UI without reducing the complexity of the game.

Considering that every command can be kept on screen in the third pane, I don't really see what the issue with the UI is. For an ASCII game of this complexity the UI is pretty good.

I don't think the guys at bay12 games lose any sleep about somebody taking the DF market away from them. The game is free in case you haven't noticed.

You should check out Populous or The Sims, great interfaces on both of them.

[biosc1]

Doesn't matter how I come off. You're not going to a) keep the game ASCII and b) simplify the UI without reducing the complexity of the game.

Considering that every command can be kept on screen in the third pane, I don't really see what the issue with the UI is. For an ASCII game of this complexity the UI is pretty good.

I don't think the guys at bay12 games lose any sleep about somebody taking the DF market away from them. The game is free in case you haven't noticed.

You should check out Populous or The Sims, great interfaces on both of them.

The UI in this game is pretty simple...especially, as you said, the menus and hotkeys can be kept on screen at all times. Sure, a tileset goes a long way towards understanding the events and actions that occur, but that's easily solved. The way "Toady" has gone about creating the game, he doesn't care about the tileset integration because a lot of other people have already stepped up to the plate in that regard.

With a tileset and the commands visible, it's easy enough to start slow and add your own complexity to this game...a game that truly lets you choose how to play.

Below you can easily make out water (which doesn't need to show depth, I just like it that way), bed, people, switches, walls, floors, dogs, traps, warriors, engineers, metalsmiths, etc..

http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/4633/clipboard18va0.jpg

[RandoM51]

Last version of DF I played that Depot would be inaccessible. You'd need a 5 unit-wide passage because wagons can't move in the space directly adjacent to a wall.

:)

[biosc1]

This one is running off of 0.28.181.40d (September 6, 2008)...which I thought was the latest? I actually just ran it to grab that screenshot...reminds me of the "epic" castle I'm building in that level with plenty of water traps. That cistern to the upper left is linked to some complex switches that close off hallways with invaders in them, then floods 'em...

[Panthera]

Last version of DF I played that Depot would be inaccessible. You'd need a 5 unit-wide passage because wagons can't move in the space directly adjacent to a wall.

:)

I have a three-wide entrance to my above-ground fortress leading to the depot, and wagons have no trouble passing through. As well, there's now a button that shows you where wagons can and can't go, and I used it to clear paths through the forest before I could get around to building roads.

[bean]

Doesn't matter how I come off. You're not going to a) keep the game ASCII and b) simplify the UI without reducing the complexity of the game.
So the game is shallow once you go to the trouble to learn the controls? That sucks. Why do you play it then? Are poor controls really that interesting to you?

[SilentScreams]

How the game looks and how the UI looks/works has absolutely nothing to do with the game's complexity.

[Panthera]

So the game is shallow once you go to the trouble to learn the controls? That sucks. Why do you play it then? Are poor controls really that interesting to you?

The controls don't suck once you learn them. It would be like trying to make, say, Photoshop simpler.

[Hemalin]

The controls don't suck once you learn them. It would be like trying to make, say, Photoshop simpler.
You don't even need to learn them since you can have the controls on screen at all times.

[bean]

The controls don't suck once you learn them. It would be like trying to make, say, Photoshop simpler.
This is absolutely false. A better UI would simply make the game more accessible. Photoshop already has this. Can you imagine trying to use photoshop without a mouse or other pointing device?

You don't even need to learn them since you can have the controls on screen at all times.
This isn't true. I spent five minutes the first time I was playing trying to find the button to back out of a highly specific menu I had looked in. Plus, sometimes you use F9 to back out and sometimes you use space bar. Also, have you tried setting up your dwarves very specifically before embarking? When I got to that set of screens and couldn't seem to effect anything, I decided that whatever dark fruits are hidden within this shit-flavored candy shell would have to remain a mystery to me.

I could definitely watch the tutorials, but from what I've seen of this one, he doesn't really tell people the useful things like how to interact with the interface and is more interest in talking about starting out strategies. I'm tempted to do so anyway because the fandom for this game causes me to suspect it would be worth the trouble.

[SilentScreams]

The one part of the interface that needs fixing more than anything is setting up your guys jobs and also being able to see who has what jobs.
At the moment, I edit their names to include what their assigned jobs are. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.
It's a big timesink when you get a decent size migration though,

[Hemalin]

This isn't true.
What isn't true? The game even defaults to showing the key bindings.
http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i264/Hemalin/dwarf5.png
I'm not sure what problems you had at the embark screen since all necessary controls are displayed at the bottom of the screen. The same as is done for pretty much every screen. Unless you need to be told at every single screen that the game is case sensitive and the numpad is used for nearly all movement.
http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i264/Hemalin/controls.png

The one part of the interface that needs fixing more than anything is setting up your guys jobs and also being able to see who has what jobs.
At the moment, I edit their names to include what their assigned jobs are. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.
It's a big timesink when you get a decent size migration though,
Check out Dwarf Foreman. It simplifies job managment quite a bit.

[Panthera]

This is absolutely false. A better UI would simply make the game more accessible. Photoshop already has this. Can you imagine trying to use photoshop without a mouse or other pointing device?

Why would you be so literal? Photoshop has a mouse, but its interface is completely non-standard for how we expect a Windows application to behave. A mouse in DF would make some things better, yeah, and there are some places where you actually CAN use a mouse in it, but the interface as it stands is actually fairly competent - again, once you learn it. Imagine using Photoshop without any keyboard shortcuts! You can do it all, just extremely slowly.

By learn it, I don't just mean look at the list of keys, but to hit them instinctively, to play until you can rapidly choose and set a massive variety of actions that would not be very quick to access with a mouse. A fully graphical UI would have to be bloated and overloaded to do everything, with the same buried, nested menus, and you'd still be better off using keyboard shortcuts for everything, which is much faster with both hands on the keyboard.

There are definitely some elements of the UI that could be improved, like job management and constructed elements (bridges, walls, etc).

[RandoM51]

I use a mouse in DF, don't know why people keep saying it doesn't use a mouse.

I thought a bit more and the current interface of DF models what would be hotkeys in a game with a graphic engine like any standard RTS and/or godgame like Civ. Even if they added context-sensitive mouse actions to every item the people skilled at the game would still rely on the hotkeys, the hotkeys that everybody plays it with now anyways.

I don't think the complainers really understand the scale of the game. When you're managing > 50,000 unique entities, the mouse comes up a bit short...

[bean]

What isn't true? The game even defaults to showing the key bindings.
You snipped the examples I gave out of your quote.

[biosc1]

I don't think the complainers really understand the scale of the game. When you're managing > 50,000 unique entities, the mouse comes up a bit short...

On top of that, it's not a game where you have a direct influence on one dwarf. You control the rules of it...but it's up to the dwarves to play it out.

[Hemalin]

You snipped the examples I gave out of your quote.I thought I addressed your examples? Anyway, I'll repeat myself.



I'm not sure what problems you had at the embark screen since all necessary controls are displayed at the bottom of the screen. The same as is done for pretty much every screen. Unless you need to be told at every single screen that the game is case sensitive and the numpad is used for nearly all movement.
http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i264/Hemalin/controls.png

Also...F9. Are you sure you're reading all parts of the screen?
http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i264/Hemalin/f9.png

[Hellbug]

Whoever thinks Dwarf Fortress would be better with a mouse is a douchebag :P. Unless they plan on playing on full screen, but who would do that?

Like someone said earlier, this game is hard to maneuver through... until you learn some of the commands by heart. Once you get the basic designations and building keys memorized it becomes much quicker and you will spend much less time paused in the game.

The comical moments in this game are aplenty, given the player has just an ounce of imagination in them. Watching as a dwarf goes berserk because he or she cannot find the one gem that they need to create a masterpiece beat a dog to death and then promptly get thrown through a glass window and into the defensive moat... priceless. :D

[ThievesAmongUs]

Hmmm, bookmarked this thread for reference over this weekend; I really need to work on my DF skills.

[SilentScreams]

Well that was...interesting.
I just lost a dwarf and a half to an alligator that somehow bypassed all my defences (including a dry moat with a drawbridge that was up and a door).
It butchered my Blacksmith, which is a real pain in the ass...it also tore off both of one of my miner's legs and his right forearm (hence the "half") so, he's probably going to die very soon and even if he recovers, he has no legs and no pickaxe hand.
In the end I stopped it by luring it onto a hastily constructed cage trap.
Losing two of my starting 7 Dwarves before an immigration is going to slow things down considerably.

[Jeffool]

I have to agree with most folk here, this game definitely doesn't need a mouse-driven UI, but at the same time, it couldn't hurt in tandem to the keyboard...

I think the bigger issue is graphics. Yes, I know, that's not the point of the game, and I agree, but there are times when it becomes an issue, and you have to look up what a letter/color combo means instead of having a simple graphical symbol to use. That definitely impedes on the 'fun factor'. And the longer they go without addressing this issue, the more control they're going to lose over the graphical aspect of it to modders/UI designers. I really don't think they want that.

/edit: And thanks for these links! I've definitely not mastered it by any means. Never even got a 'large' one going!

[Arphahat]

I have to agree with most folk here, this game definitely doesn't need a mouse-driven UI, but at the same time, it couldn't hurt in tandem to the keyboard...

I think the bigger issue is graphics. Yes, I know, that's not the point of the game, and I agree, but there are times when it becomes an issue, and you have to look up what a letter/color combo means instead of having a simple graphical symbol to use. That definitely impedes on the 'fun factor'. And the longer they go without addressing this issue, the more control they're going to lose over the graphical aspect of it to modders/UI designers. I really don't think they want that.

/edit: And thanks for these links! I've definitely not mastered it by any means. Never even got a 'large' one going!

Man, they really need to publicize this more: there are gobs of tilesets you can download that make the game playable. For simplicity's sake, get the latest version bundled with graphics in one download from May Green (http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/df.htm). The learning curve is huge in this game without having to figure out what all the symbols are.

[MagGnome]

I have avoided this game for a long time now. It's the type of thing that I know will suck up hours upon hours of my time once I get started. I'm a huge fan of simulation games, which are sadly almost non-existent these days compared to a decade or two ago.

I'm scared to jump into this. :p

[MagGnome]

I just downloaded it on a whim and started up a game.

I definitely need to read the instructions, as I had no clue what I was doing at all. My little dwarfs were just moving back and forth, and I couldn't figure out how to do a single thing. :o

[biosc1]

I have avoided this game for a long time now. It's the type of thing that I know will suck up hours upon hours of my time once I get started. I'm a huge fan of simulation games, which are sadly almost non-existent these days compared to a decade or two ago.

I'm scared to jump into this. :p

It's actually a great game to have going on in the background. Play in windowed mode, set some orders for your dwarves and then cruise the internet...checking back on occasion to make sure they didn't do something stupid...

Of course, only do this when you know it's safe...when you have precautions in place against attacks, etc...

I actually tend to play dwarf fortress and another strategy game of choice at the same time...Civ 4 + dwarf fortress = gluttony.

[MagGnome]

That sounds like a good idea. I'm going to watch these videos later so that I can figure out what in the world I'm supposed to be doing.

[SilentScreams]

Well that was disasterous. The dwarven traders came and on their way in got incinerated down to the last man by a fire imp, which then proceded to wreak havoc on my 5 remaining dwarves, who inevitably came charging outside to loot the traders.

I eventually killed it in the most unorthodox manner. It set my Brewer/Cook on fire, and he fell into a lake, and the Imp followed him. He promptly drowned, and the Imp crawled back out and fell unconscious.
I then set my Miner and Lumberjack to military duty, and they came outside and hacked it to bits while it was unconscious.
I'm now down to 4 dwarves. I really hope I get some immigrants soon.

[MagGnome]

Reading stuff like that makes me want to play this even more!

[NSFW]

I think i finally got over the gfx hurdle. I have been playing the last couple days and I only have one problem. I'm using the mayday version but when i try to do a change embark settings i can't. When i'm at the screen i try to use the sum and difference buttons but they don't seem to do anything. Am I doing it wrong?

[biosc1]

I think i finally got over the gfx hurdle. I have been playing the last couple days and I only have one problem. I'm using the mayday version but when i try to do a change embark settings i can't. When i'm at the screen i try to use the sum and difference buttons but they don't seem to do anything. Am I doing it wrong?

Are you on the inventory screen or skills screen? Do you have any points left to spend?

Usually, when you enter the Embark screen, all your points have been used up. What you have to do is sell off everything.

[NSFW]

I actually figure out my problem. It was that I am playing on a laptop and was trying to use the + over the = sign instead of the + sign from the numpad (it involves using a "function" button to access the 3rd option on the key). I do have other questions. Is there a way to easily switch the task a dwarf is doing. Often times my miners will move to store stuff in stockpiles when more digging is left to be done. Also is there a way to restrict what is stored in a stockpile. I designated an area for stone to be stored and somehow some trout ended up stored there.

I guess I'm still getting the basics down.

[biosc1]

First off. To prevent you miners from "hauling", you need to change their labour options. View a dwarf and view their labour options. For example, your miner will have the "Mining" option highlighted. Scroll up (or all the way down) the list until you get to the hauling area. There you can deselect the hauling options. For my main miners, I usually disable "Stone hauling, Food hauling, item hauling, refuse hauling, burial hauling" (pretty much all of them, because I want them to mine 24/7). Same goes with my other major dwarves. I keep some peasants and other part-time workers around for hauling stuff.

Of course, in the beginning, when you only have 7 dwarves, you'll have to share duties among them, but after your first migration, you can have dedicated haulers.

As for stockpiles, yes you can customize them. Select the stockpile, press "Customize" (c) and deselect anything you don't want to be there, or select only what you want.

[MagGnome]

Designating specific stockpiles goes a long way towards keeping things organized, but I know for a fact that the dwarves don't always follow your designations, cheeky bastards.

[RandoM51]

Stockpiles work fine, you just have to make sure you size them appropriately, redirect, allow for barrels/bins, etc.