ASCII-based Dwarf Fortress is the future of video games?
by John Bardinelli 
{ Mar 28th 2007 at 10:16AM }
In a recent interview with Gamasutra, Warren Specter touched on the technology vs. content debate in video games, saying "Stop building movie sets and make a world we can interact with instead".Someone should tell him indie developer Bay 12 Games has already done that. Dwarf Fortress is a single-player ASCII-based title that's a a cross between a roguelike and a real time strategy game. It's definitely no movie set, but the level of interactivity in the game's persistent world is monumental.
To give you an idea how massive Dwarf Fortress is, generating the initial world can take fifteen minutes or more. Think about that. An ASCII game on today's processors working for fifteen minutes. Every landmark above and below ground is named, thousands of creatures living persistent lives populate the environment, there's a bustling economy, weather effects, seasons, and a complete world history. All of which you can interact with.
Do developers spend too much time finding new ways for technology to play with itself rather than focusing on the end experience? It's a tired old debate, but Dwarf Fortress is proof the concept of gaming can evolve independent of the technology used to present it.
[Via GameSetWatch]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
supersocialist @ Mar 28th 2007 10:31AM
1981 called, they want their graphics back. I mean seriously, even nethack has slightly-better-than-8-bit tiles these days.
Jay @ Mar 28th 2007 10:28AM
Yeah, but is it fun?
JodyAnthony @ Mar 28th 2007 10:36AM
supersocialist, look up. yeah, way up over your head. See that? its the point.
jaysins @ Mar 28th 2007 10:46AM
It depends on the game and such. It's finding a happy compromise. I wouldn't be to content playing something like this after playing a world like oblivion but I wouldn't have minding dropping some of the graphical prowess of oblivion for some more weapons and a deeper RPG. Certainly cannot make everyone happy and I think developers should make the game as good looking as possible while still incorporating everything they want or is at least important in their eyes into it. If graphics need to be sacrificed to give us a much deeper experience that's fine with me but 8bit on todays console would be too much for me.
Crono @ Mar 28th 2007 10:48AM
Not to long ago, some friends of mine discovered nobunaga's ambition for NES via emulator. Even though we had oblivion and WoW to play, Nobunaga consumed us.
We all eventually got pissed because the game was impossible and quit.
Graphics aren't everything. Sometimes, they detract from the experience.
Agent MOO @ Mar 28th 2007 10:57AM
Yes! This is exactly the point behind the Wii. We can do better than high resolution brown textures and cheesy celebrity voice acting.
Jack of No Trades @ Mar 28th 2007 11:02AM
Yes! This is exactly the point behind the Wii.
Show me the games.
LaughingTarget @ Mar 28th 2007 11:05AM
This isn't exactly the point of the Wii. The Wii offers a new way to interact with the world, it doesn't expand the interactivity.
Specter's point is stop focusing on cinematic titles with heavy directing. The more directing, the less of a game experience it becomes and turns into an expensive, slightly interactive movie. In the end, the story development will always suffer because gameplay has to be crammed in there to make sense with the story. Hard to make an RPG with a decent storyline because it has to involve some kind of combat, so there go entire genres, leaving us with either sci-fi or fantasy (for the life of me can't figure out why no one does modern-setting RPGs).
Specter is saying that we have had the tools for decades for the player to create the story and truly impact the world around him. Developers chose to utilize Hollywood directorial techniques.
We don't have to give up graphical complexity, we need dynamic worlds WE can affect. How would FF7 have turned out if I decided to stay on Sephiroth's or Shinra's side? A new kind of writer than can build huge branching storylines and create dynamic AIs that can truly react to your choices.
Todd @ Mar 28th 2007 11:07AM
For the last decade there has been this huge movement and belief that better graphics equate to a better game. Is this something developers can really guarentee?
I've played too many games that were the best looking shit I've ever played, and then stopped playing because of the sheer boredom.
I miss the days of 8-bit/16-bit games in which graphics, while still emphasized, were obviously low end and game quality was more focused.
Not to say that games like "God of War" or "Twilight Princess" don't look good AND still maintain the fun experience, but many developers are still lost on this very idea.
ZeroCorpse @ Mar 28th 2007 12:10PM
The one glaring flaw in Oblivion has always been that there are about five voice actors playing thousands of different people, and they didn't even bother to change their voices, accents, dialects, or inflection for different characters. This, to me, is another bad example of "movie set" design, where they've made a beautiful, gorgeous game that sucks you in, only to ruin the effect by making it extremely obvious that these are all all digital puppets you're talking to.
It would be like if they made Lord of the Rings, but instead of hiring other actors, they ONLY had Elijah Wood, Ian McKellan, Sean Bean, Liv Tyler, and Sean Astin playing EVERY role in the movie. Every human, elf, orc, and dwarf. Every person in town. Every lord and lady. Every warrior.
It's this kind of thing that hurts the game immensely, and I can't help but believe they could have paid scale to a lot of starving voice actors to get a diverse population in their world, but instead they spent that money paying Patrick Stewart to read a page worth of dialogue for the beginning of the game.
Seriously... How many people in Tamriel? Thousands? And we're hearing FIVE distinct voices in total? oops, no- It's six voices; `Can't forget Emperor Picard in the beginning there...
Guys- You made a great game? Why did you hamstring it with only five voice actors and one big celebrity?
Another example: Crackdown. Looks good, has high production values, lots of interactivity and explosions, but THE BUILDINGS ARE SET PIECES. You can fire a rocket at an iron & steel truck and it will explode into pieces, but a shot at a brick wall yields NOTHING. The walls and buildings are all made of adamantium, apparently. wouldn't it have been handy to shoot holes in walls so you could climb using them as handholds? Leveling a building would have made sense, too, considering all the destruction in this game. I can drive a semi into a brick & mortar building, and the SEMI is what gets hurt? WHa?
Pretty is nice, but I'd prefer a world in which everything is interactive (and intelligently so), and where each character is a unique individual instead of a digital puppet that seems expendable and lifeless once you hear the other few thousand digital people sound and act identical.
I love Oblivion. I'd love it more if each person I met had a slightly different voice. I'd also remember people in the game a lot more as individuals. As it is right now, the only thing that makes me distinguish one character from another is what town he/she lives in, and their name if I happen to catch it. Otherwise, they all sound alike and it's frustrating and unreal.
Denbowski @ Mar 28th 2007 11:21AM
This remind anyone else of their days with ZZT?
TwilightKnight @ Mar 28th 2007 11:37AM
This game and the principal behind it is touching upon a much larger problem within the gaming culture and the industry.
If you look back into the history of gaming there have been shifts in thinking. When you look back into the 1st and second generation of games there was a huge explosion of creative, fun, and hard games. Once the market was created from these games a shift in thinking and business happened that allowed the idea that if you make a game based upon a movie license/slightly improved graphics without any decernible quality testing. A flood happened because of this thinking, leading to a overflow of shitty games and a eventual crash of the industry itself.
Once the third and 4th generation came along and put back together the industry in its proper mindset: Fun, creative, and hard games. Sure there were still movie tie in games but they didn't have much of a impact as before, the market was able to counter it with more quality then crap.
Then the 5th and 6th generation oddly enough went back to the holloywoodization of the industry. That flashy graphics and movie tie ins and sports games are more important then making a game fun, creative, or hard. When the top three best selling games of 2006 are a sports game, a movie tie in game, and another sports game, you better be worried. When a game like Okami only sells 200k in one year, you better be concered about where we are heading.
The breaking point will be the 7th generation, the one we are in right now. On one hand you have the Wii which allows for more creative and fun and new gameplay schemes to be had, and on the other you have the Xbox 360 which cators to only people who care more about graphics and shooting things to care if it is actually creativly interesting or not.
http://nintendonow.e-mpire.com/modules/articles/printarticle.php?articleid=3955&myplid=20&myplfolder=articles
makes a more larger view then this. It may just open your eyes for once.
Jack @ Mar 28th 2007 11:40AM
So no one actually read this blog post or the article it's referencing, eh?
This isn't about graphics, it's about interactivity. But yeah, it's a Joystiq comments section, so it's just going to turn into a graphics flamewar anyway.
Jack of No Trades @ Mar 28th 2007 11:45AM
TwilightKnight
"have the Xbox 360 which cators to only people who care more about graphics and shooting things to care if it is actually creativly interesting or not"
360 is for hardcore gamers. How long before you get it in your simple mind. The Wii is about quick easy fun because thats what most casual gamers want. They don't have either the time or mental capacity to get into a story or to learn a 8 button controller layout. Also the 360 has more variety than PS3 & Wii at this time.
gameclu @ Mar 28th 2007 11:52AM
I just might have to boot up my windows box to play this game. Yeah, I think I'm going to do that.
Thundernad @ Mar 28th 2007 12:51PM
You can put polish on a turd.... and what your left with is a shiny turd.
JonFitt @ Mar 28th 2007 1:37PM
@1: Yes it is fun!
It's absolutely amazing how into it you can get considering the simplicity of the graphics. You'll end up caring as for one of those smiley faces than you probably did for any npc in any rpg you've played before.
HaloBreaker @ Mar 28th 2007 1:02PM
quote me sometime when I say- graphics don't make a game fun, they just make it look fun.
DF and ADOM are some of the best games I've played, in fact most quality rogue likes are the best games I've played. Unfortunately it's done in tiles, and when the general public of people that goes "ZOmG thees grphx are for t3h sucks!!!1!!" are on a different level in life. One that is usually called blissfully ignorant. I opened my eyes and learned so much more about games in the past years.
Abandonware, Indie games, Rogue likes, the underdogs of gaming if you will. The funny thing is I've gotten more entertainment out of games done by people who put some pride in their work, compared to people who just put polish on theirs.
Most people suffer from what I'll call Gaming ADD. if the game doesn't "shine" or if the controls are too hard at first, or if the learning curve is too steep. They give up, this is one game everybody should learn to play. You may not like it but you will show a sign of "Wow this has a lot of depth."
TwilightKnight @ Mar 28th 2007 8:53PM
You missed the point Jack. Go read the article. What it means to be hardcore has nothing to do if you want to learn a 8 button layout or if you just want to play Wiisports.
As for the variety your argument there is also misguided. Yes it may have more variety but the majority of the games on the Xbox 360 are still just shooters and sports. This is the quantity over quality debate.
Go read the article Jack. Microsoft is blantently pro holloywoodization. This doesn't mean that there can be creative games on the Xbox 360, it means that to Microsoft they are just there to make it less apparent that people are only buying sports and shooters from them.
wait in the car @ Mar 28th 2007 12:15PM
"They don't have either the time or mental capacity to get into a story or to learn a 8 button controller layout."
The Wii controller has 8 buttons when a nunchuk is hooked up to it. Several games use all of them as well.
Do you have the mental capacity to count?
Todd @ Mar 28th 2007 12:31PM
@Jack of No Trades
"They don't have either the time or mental capacity to get into a story or to learn a 8 button controller layout."
Huh? What's with the mental capacity remark?
LaughingTarget @ Mar 28th 2007 12:50PM
The remark doesn't make much sense. Adding more buttons doesn't make the game more interactive. It adds a broader range of moves, but being able to punch a wall and have nothing happen vs being able to have strong punch and weak punch against a wall and nothing happens isn't more interactive. You're just living in the same minimally interactive world with a larger range of skills.
A game with one button where you can change the course of the game however you saw fit is better than one that uses a dozen buttons and drags you along its rail-like storyline.
Plus, one button is more than enough if designed right. Spore is along the lines of what Specter is talking about and you can play it with just the left mouse button.
Jesse Morrison @ Mar 28th 2007 12:52PM
My roommate went and installed this on his computer and generated a new world. It definitely didn't take 15 minutes to generate, probably more like 5, but his computer is a high end machine and it still took a while to complete.
Feep @ Mar 28th 2007 12:58PM
I disagree with the (generally western) trend of making games' stories open-ended. Extremely linear games, such as the recent Xenosaga trilogy, devote a team of talented writers, cinematographers, voice actors, and programmers to create a beautiful (and non-interactive) experience. Interactivity within a plot is ridiculous, because gamers ARE NOT BETTER STORYTELLERS than these people. It's their job, and they're good at it.
Even if perfect human AI was created, the story of you staying behind and chilling with Shinra would never be as compelling as the drama that unfolded afterward. Leave the sandbox to the GTAs, and give me a Phoenix Wright or Xenosaga any day of the week: it'll be a hell of a lot better than some interactive fan fiction trash.
James @ Mar 28th 2007 1:38PM
I read about this at Dan's Data a few months ago, when he was discussing Roguelikes. I installed it, excited at the prospect. I was overwhelmed -- there's no in-game tutorial whatsoever, they just drop you in. There's like 60 command keys, and to play well you need most of them. There's some web pages about it, but.... Maybe I'm spoiled, but I've grown used to having my hand held a bit to start with. I deleted DF because I felt like I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Maybe I'll get up the gumption to try it again, but I don't think it will happen soon. If you want to be that ambitious, I think you have to meet your players halfway.
Yoshi Likes Boys @ Mar 28th 2007 1:07PM
I must try this game. Roguelikes are godlike.
Speaking of the age-old graphics argument, I firmly believe that the piece of shit Game Boy Color was the best thing to happen to gaming in a long, long time. Yamauchi, in all his infamous hubris, said "here, take this 8-bit piece of crap and like it," and sold a kajillion of them thanks to those POCKET MONSTERS. That left the developers with the inability to rely on flashy graphics to develop good games and they had to instead concentrate on really good game design to add value.
I don't think the argument is that "graphics don't matter," it's that the inability to rely on glitz and glamour to make your game impressive means you actually have to design a good game.
LaughingTarget @ Mar 28th 2007 1:11PM
The argument would work if Xenosaga was a good piece of work. To truly make a good storyline, you have to take all the control away from the gamer. Whenever failure is possible, the storyline can never be what the writers want it. Otherwise, it is just a tacked on feature, like it was in Xenosaga.
From pointlesswateoftime.com
"Luke's X-Wing approaches the surface of the Death Star.
"Red Five, begin your attack run."
Luke swoops down into the trench. "It'll be just like Beggar's Canyon back ho-"
Turret laser bolts tear his X-Wing apart.
___________________________
Luke's X-Wing approaches the surface of the Death Star.
"Red Five, begin your attack run."
Luke swoops down into the trench. "It'll be just like Beggar's Canyon back home!"
Turret laser bolts miss by inches. He skims along the trench.
A Tie Fighter drops in behind him and blows his ship to ten thousand flaming pieces.
___________________________
Luke's X-Wing approaches the surface of the Death Star.
"Red Five, begin your attack run."
Luke swoops down into the trench. "It'll be just like Beggar's Canyon back home!"
Turret laser bolts miss by inches. He skims along the trench.
A Tie Fighter drops in behind him, shoots and misses. Luke approaches the exhaust shaft... fires a photon torpedo...
...and misses. The Death Star destroys the rebel base.
___________________________
Luke's X-Wing approaches the surface of the Death Star.
"Red Five, begin your attack run."
Luke swoops down into the trench. "It'll be just like Beggar's Canyon ba-"
Turret laser bolts tear his X-Wing apart."
How is that better than:
"Luke's X-Wing approaches the surface of the Death Star.
"Red Five, begin your attack run."
Luke swoops down into the trench. "It'll be just like Beggar's Canyon back home!"
Turret laser bolts miss by inches. He skims along the trench.
A Tie Fighter drops in behind him, shoots and misses. Luke approaches the exhaust shaft... fires a photon torpedo...and the Death Star goes up in a huge explosion. You get to go home and have a huge ceremony where Chewbacca growls, R2D2 beeps, everyone laughs and you get a medal."
It isn't. The storyline is now broken. All the effort put into the game by the writers to develop this deep story is now ruined because the player died. They aren't supposed to die, they're supposed to beat the evil at the end and save the day/world/universe/metaverse/Pittsburgh. Also doesn't help much when the player doesn't want to do something but the story dicates it otherwise. I still can't get over how some random townsperson NPC in FFX can keep me from backtracking to an earlier town just because Square decided that I didn't have the option of cutting him down where he stood or even just shoving him aside and continuing down the road.
The comment that players aren't good storytellers is bogus. Sure, they aren't great at developing a story from start to finish. Something like that is difficult. However, building a story dynamically through your actions is a whole different idea. We do this everyday of our lives. Our life is a story. It is filled with plot points, climaxes, denumonts and all the other things that makes a story a story. The only difference is it isn't dictated from the start where we're going to end up ... except if you buy into that Fate stuff.
Structured stories have their place, but don't pretend they're somehow better. A player can make his own story, talk about his own experiences and generally be more excited about it than a game that hired a hoard of professional writers and dictated the actions he was going to take and the result that was going to happen.
A good writer can make a static story. An awesome writer can develop a dynamic one.
Feep @ Mar 28th 2007 1:34PM
Xenosaga, IMO, is the most ambitious storyline ever conceived of and executed in a game. In the future, I will simply watch the cutscenes as an uninterrupted movie rather than playing the game, but the opinion of whether XS was "good" or not is irrelevant here.
It's important for the gamer to create their own experiences within a game. "Dude, you see how I jumped off that wall, dodged two bullets, and sliced that guy in half?" That's what developers and gamers want, and it can even be as deep as destroying environments and altering the tactical decisions of an entire enemy army. But most gamers aren't like us. If Half-Life 2 had allowed you to kill Alyx, as a truly interactive game should, reasons motivating half of the game's events would completely fall apart. Fact is, most gamers WOULD kill Alyx given the opportunity, and the plot would be shot to hell, so what can do you? Reset. Try again.
This leads into your argument that games' stories are somehow altered by their player deaths. Games have to be difficult, and most games' stories are can be enticing rewards for defeating difficult boss encounters. Dying and trying again is a simple illusion, one that is unavoidable, because the point of a video game is that you CAN die, you CAN screw up, but you get a second chance to try again. Nothing can be done about this, even in a "do it yourself" story. If you die, the game must let you try again, and so the slight suspension of disbelief that comes with resurrection is so tolerated at this point that most gamers take it for granted. What, you're going to have to start from the beginning? Screw that. Checkpoints, baby.
rinks @ Mar 28th 2007 1:36PM
Downloading it now at work, looks interesting. I wasn't a huge Nethack fan, I never really got that game. Anyone else give it a spin and have any thoughts on it?
I hate to interrupt the comments with something referencing, you know, the article, but what the hell, it's Wednesday.
Yoshi Likes Boys @ Mar 28th 2007 1:40PM
After reading James' comment, I am no longer excited about this. Back to Rogue.
oGMo @ Mar 28th 2007 1:53PM
@ZeroCorpse: Re: Oblivion... and it's worse than that. A single character you talk to can shift accents and tone wildly in the course of a conversation depending on the topic. A poor beggar woman with a creaky voice begging for a coin suddenly has a rich, lush voice as she discusses another topic... it's the most jarring thing to the suspension-of-disbelief in the game. While I laud their ability to have massive amounts of spoken dialog, I'd honestly prefer no voice acting at all, or only at critical junctures, to that.
Otherwise, it's a damn fine game. Smaller than I thought: fewer guilds, smaller map, and while you can make any "class", you're basically limited to fighting, stealing, casting, crafting, and assassinating. Now that's a lot of stuff, but when you have a class like "Bard" and no bardic magic system, it's *slightly* disappointing, though the rest of the game makes up for it.
That said, I'm *all* about deeper interactivity in the world. What LaughingTarget said is the reason I'm not excited about the Wii: not because it has "worse graphics" or "kiddie games" or *any* of that. It simply doesn't allow for that much greater *depth* and *interactivity* than previous consoles did. Now if they released a console which focused on tile-based games and gave them ginormous resources for processing and managing huge worlds where you could do anything... that would be awesome.
I've always thought the whole "movie set" thing sucked. If I see something, it should *be* something---at very least have an interesting description if I look at it. We have the technology. Some people are doing it. It just needs to happen more. Hopefully, with stuff like Little Big Planet, the trend will be pushed toward more interactivity.
Maxathon @ Mar 28th 2007 2:17PM
I tried to play Dwarf Fortress. I like a lot of old roguelikes--I got started playing Moria on my old Mac Performa. DF is hellishly complicated, though. I don't need that kind of learning curve in my life right now.
lavos.determination @ Mar 28th 2007 2:35PM
Denbowski: "This remind anyone else of their days with ZZT?"
I couldn't leave you hanging like that. That's the first thing I thought of when I saw the posted screen cap. ZZT shall always have a warm, ascii place in my heart.
rowd149 @ Mar 28th 2007 4:00PM
This is once again a case of interactivity vs story. The whole point is, some people will always want to be able to play in a world that's exactly like ours, only different. And others will want to play in a world where they get to play through a story someone else came up with. I actually like both, and I know there are others like me out there, so don't expect either type of game to just go away. Also, could the loading time be due to inefficient programming? :\
Riemann @ Mar 28th 2007 5:57PM
In case anyone is wondering, yes Dwarf Fortress is incredibly fun. The learning curve is steep but once you get into the game it provides far more entertainment than most of the recent commercial games I have bought.
There is massive gameplay depth, a nice dash of humor and the ASCII look is really quite beautiful at times.
The dev for the game is very active on the site and forums. He is currently engaged in a massive overhaul of the game. Check out the dev blog if you want to have your mind completely blown away.
Matt @ Mar 29th 2007 10:45AM
I'll take any RPG that gives you a completely different random adventure and only ONE LIFE TO LIVE, anyday.
The game will never get old.
Dansk @ Mar 28th 2007 4:43PM
I've been hearing quite a lot about this game. I will definitely get it.
Ken @ Mar 28th 2007 6:36PM
Graphics sell. As much as I agree with many of the comments on this page, making games is a business and the safest piece of software to send to the market is the best looking one. My favorite game is Conker's BFD for the N64. It's another example of the power of good story telling and character design. If graphics mattered, the Xbox version of CBFD would be a better game, it is not.
Rubang B @ Mar 29th 2007 3:25AM
Anybody play Dwarf Fortress AND ADoM? I'd like to know how the two compare. ADoM is my all-time bestest favorite.
Burnt Meatloaf @ Mar 29th 2007 4:16AM
Wait... we're complaining about the overuse of technology, and interactive worlds take 15 minutes to generate?
Does anyone else see something wrong here?
Sounds like a bad design right off.
Eagleon @ May 2nd 2007 1:40PM
For those wondering about the interface: DF could indeed be a little bit more polished. ADOM is a lot smoother in this regard, for instance. It isn't completely random, however, and there is a tutorial and rather in-depth help, accessed at any time by pressing '?'. After learning the basic functions, it's fairly easy to experiment and discover things on your own - all the possible commands are listed on-screen by default. If you need help, there's a comprehensive and growing wiki available, covering just about anything about the game.
It's complex, but worth a try.