Talk:Dwarf Fortress/Archive 2

So someone finally created it

I added this article to Millionth topic pool more than a year ago! :)  Grue  18:57, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

For reference purposes, this is only an "alpha" because of the quite, quite ambitious plans of the authors. Players are already treating these early versions as a full-fledged game. --Kizor 22:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

8 years later ... 216.158.60.221 (talk) 21:17, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

"Losing is fun" origins

The main NYTimes article goes like "...unfolds as a series of staggeringly elaborate challenges...no matter how well one plays, to eventual ruin. The goal, in the game’s main mode, is to build as much and as imaginatively as possible before some calamity...wipes you out for good..... The game’s unofficial slogan, recited on message boards, is “Losing is fun!” ...unique difficulty begins with its most striking feature:"

whereas PC Gamer article page 4 puts it more better "Losing is such a core aspect of the game that it has its own wiki article , and the article title “Fun” redirects to it. The whole point of being a dwarf is to dig too deep and too greedily...onwards"

So while the addition of "...its ruins remain in the world to be reclaimed or explored as a later adventurer" does not seem to be mentioned, the original "As there is no way to win the game, every fortress, no matter how successful usually gets destroyed somehow" is incomplete too. I'm still not sure how to frame it according to these two references. Any suggestions or should we look at more refs? Sincerely, Ugog Nizdast (talk) 14:36, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

For now I can't think of anything better, I've have gone ahead and just added "As there is no way to win the game, every fortress, no matter how successful usually gets destroyed somehow and to encourage experimenting further through this, prompted the unofficial community phrase: "Losing is Fun!"". -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:22, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Dwarf Fortress/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: ChrisGualtieri (talk · contribs) 15:52, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

• I'll review this. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 15:52, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

• Just a few questions first. Why is the adventure mode section so sparsely covered? Does it not have many complex interactions, quests, unique play mechanics and activities? What about the comparison of the passage of time between these two modes? There is at least one factual error. Dwarf Therapist has "10 classes" not Dwarf Fortress. "Adamantine" could use an explanation. Gameplay seems excessively wordy even for this game - you sure you cannot make more sense with fewer words? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:07, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

1) I agree it's not covered adequately, however I doubt I'll be able to find more good sources covering it. If I recall correctly, there are two sources which solely discuss the mode--I'll see if I can extract more information from them. 2) Time between the game modes? again, the sources didn't cover this but I'll see if I can dig out anything. 3) Yup good catch, I blindly copied that from the source, I've addressed it. 4) Isn't Adamantine covered enough? it talks about its properties, extraction process and where it is found. Anything else? 5) Ahh gameplay, that's something I need your help with. I'm stumped as to what to remove, I even thought of the extreme solution of creating a subpage Dwarf Fortress gameplay and summarise it here. Can you point out instances where it can be trimmed or removed? Thanks for taking up this review. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:39, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

I've done a search for sources again but found nothing. Unfortunately, Adventure mode or the passage of time are not covered further by any sources that I've come across. Even the handbook which I have (Getting started with Dwarf Fortress) does not cover Adventure mode. Currently that section to almost fully sourced to "Dwarf Fortress: The Detailed Roguelike That's Easy To Play" from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Maybe later someone might publish something as the game develops, I'll try to keep a watch. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 14:15, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

• As a reviewer, the only real issue is the sheer depth of gameplay elements, but a page dedicated to gameplay elements would not survive. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and the primary value is boiling down complex points without getting into really niche details. Most of these details are not "gameplay", but explanations of mechanics. And can pass into their own section with less scrutiny. Also, much of the details are really needlessly worded. The Biome system can be represented in a single table like this. Word clean up and simplification to remove redundancy is easy for most parts of the test.

Here is an example:

The first step in Dwarf Fortress is selecting the "Create New World" option, which has various customizable options. The player can adjust certain parameters like world size, history, in addition to number of beasts, natural savagery and mineral occurrence. The world gets generated with continents, oceans, histories involving gods, people and randomly generated mega-beasts or "Forgotten Beasts".[8] Only one game at a time can be played per world. The history parameter sets the amount of pre-generated simulated history, thus making the process take longer but ending up with a world with more legends and ruins of civilizations. The world is viewed in ASCII visuals and constantly changes as the generation progress goes on. In the map, certain symbols represent roads, hills, towns and cities of the various civilizations.[6]

I reorganized some details and removed things that would be explained later. This includes the basic options, but also more advanced controls without deviating from the purpose of the section. The details of what is generated raises questions and bring up more information of "what are those" before describing how the world is even made. Here is a condensed reading that conveys the information pertaining world generation without confusing the reader.

The first step in Dwarf Fortress is generating a playable world.[8] Only one game at a time can be played per world.[6] The player can adjust certain parameters governing the world's size, savagery, mineral occurrences and the length of history.[8] During creation, the ASCII visual representation of the world and changes throughout the generation progress as indicated by symbols representing roads, hills, towns and cities of the various civilizations.[6]

This going to actually be the focus of my review and changes. I am not sure I can remain as a "reviewer" when I am going to end up condensing the largest chunk of the page and still be a valid reviewer. So I am not sure how to proceed. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:50, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

You can proceed by making me do the work, right? So I need to split game mechanics from the gameplay elements...that would mean having a separate section on world generation split from Gameplay--this just covers the current subsections "Overview" and "World generation". The new "World Generation" section would be outside the Gameplay, but I can't think of a proper order for it. The rest of Gameplay, according to me, doesn't have the game mechanics problem; so there we have the task of finding areas which need to be trimmed. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:46, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Though I'm no longer very active on Wikipedia, I am watching this proceeding out of interest. ResMar 04:50, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I read the previous review when I was working on this; I thought you'd be interested and considered notifying you but saw that you weren't active any more. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 14:32, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

• I've had little choice, but to fail the article because the issues are too great and the article is too imbalanced to be within the GA criteria. The gameplay elements comprise the bulk, and that is probably to be expected with such a game. Though I think it is not concise or clear while at the same time being heavily dependent on the materials. I am not able to be both a reviewer and major contributor, so I've decided to fail it and move to address the issues as an editor. This will likely make it to GA on the next attempt. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 23:58, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Hmm...okay. I look forward to seeing your edits here. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 13:57, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Use of "ASCII"

References to ASCII are misleading. Dwarf Fortress uses code page 437 (CP437) and not ASCII. Normal references could be changed to "text graphics" or something easier to understand than "CP437" but the correct character set should be stated.

08:39, 24 December 2014 (UTC) Eradicator (talk)

The problem is all the main sources mention just "ASCII". I'm not sure how this can be remedied without going against them. This seems like a case of Verifiability not truth. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:23, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Come to think of it, I think we can make some adjustments. Factually, we could cite the game itself and say it uses code page 437; whenever the sources refer to it as ASCII, we'll say that too. So in the end, the readers would know what it uses as well as that different sources mistake it for ASCII. I'll make those changes when I get time but feel free to do it before me. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:36, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I think the article can be corrected without delving into a debate about "Verifiability note truth". Article/source quotes could include "[sic]" as needed and I think general references could be changed to "text graphics", as above. Eradicator (talk) 09:20, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I made the changes, improving the overall presentation and adding a "Graphics" section to separate that information logically from gameplay information. Cited the DF Wiki for the graphics section. Eradicator (talk) 10:10, 26 December 2014 (UTC)~

Ok but I don't think we can have "Graphics" section sourced only to DFwiki. We'll have to use reliable video game sources and wikis are a strict no-no. If nothing can be found, I'm afraid I'll have to trim that section. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 13:02, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Done, and I've finally found this article which refers to code page 437. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 15:09, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. The 'Graphics' section was a bit too sparse, anyway. It didn't work. Eradicator (talk) 09:44, 31 December 2014 (UTC)~

Condensing the game guide aspect

I've begun condensing the prose to fix the game guide aspect of the article. There is a difference between detailing the functions of the game and how certain operations and aspects need to be handled. The condensed beginning of Dwarf Fortress#Basics is now a window into how complex and detailed the world is without duplicating Dwarf Fortress#World generation's content. Some more complex aspects of the game management and function need to be preserved, but the article does need to be more direct in the presentation in "what" instead of "how". Dwarf fortress is more the operation and creation of a city - and it is easier to break it down into low and high aspects of organizational that development. As the text needs to be reduced by probably 50% - this means that each word and example will need to do more to better convey what Dwarf Fortress is. It is far from complete and I'll have to tinker with it quite a bit, but the wording should be better now. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 20:07, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@ChrisGualtieri: I took a few months break from this and recently approached the article with a fresh perspective, mainly trimming the Gameplay and copyediting it. I saw clearly now what was irrelevant and tried my best to be comprehensive. What do you think now? Anything else needs to be done further? Take a look at the Before and After. I'm ready for GA3. -Joel. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 14:42, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Name of the game

The name of the game, according to the starting screen of the game, is actually Slaves to Armok: God of Blood: Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress: Histories of Greed and Hard work (where the synonyms of Greed and Hard work are chosen at random on start up). Should the article reflect this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mount2010 (talk • contribs) 11:26, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

We could just ignore that and say no source mentions this extra subtitle For argument's sake, it isn't the official title per Bay 12 Games; check their website and forum etc. Or if we did have to add that it as a title, what do we do? add that it is random synonym of something every time ? not much of a title now is it? I do confess, that this thought did cross my mind at some point though. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 13:44, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

SDL is not a game engine

The infobox says Dwarf Fortress' engine is SDL. But it even says on it's own page that it's not an engine. I tried changing it myself, but there aren't actually any references to "Simple DirectMedia Layer" in the article's source text. I'll assume wikipedia is being buggy, but regardless the engine entry in the infobox needs fixing. 77.164.107.1 (talk) 20:12, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Good catch, I remember this was fixed some time ago. Fixed. Had me stumped for some time but then realised it was due it still being there in its wikidata entry. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 11:20, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

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Dwarf Fortress on Steam

This article should be updated to reflect the announcement that Dwarf Fortress will be available on Steam and Itch.io at an unspecified future date on par with the free version's features but with default graphics and music. Mount2010 (talk) 14:54, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

It is, under Enhanced edition. --Masem (t) 14:58, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

"Tower cap" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Tower cap. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. TheAwesomeHwyh 16:32, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

"God of Blood" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect God of Blood. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. TheAwesomeHwyh 16:41, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Quick comment

I don't want to get the peer-review page delisted from unanswered requests, but just wanted to leave a quick comment: I'm not sure that the lead places enough emphasis on the text-based graphics and (to a lesser extent) the difficulty. Those are the two main distinguishing characteristics of the game in my view, so it'd be nice to see them discussed a little rather than just mentioned. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:24, 28 August 2020 (UTC)Feel free to move this comment to the peer review page once that page becomes active.

Quick comment

I don't want to get the peer-review page delisted from unanswered requests, but just wanted to leave a quick comment: I'm not sure that the lead places enough emphasis on the text-based graphics and (to a lesser extent) the difficulty. Those are the two main distinguishing characteristics of the game in my view, so it'd be nice to see them discussed a little rather than just mentioned. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:24, 28 August 2020 (UTC)Feel free to move this comment to the peer review page once that page becomes active.

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