#Dwarf fortress ascii vs graphics how to

the issues with dwarf emotions are much more balanced now. Certain things that have shown up in third party utilities like Dwarf Therapist are nearly impossible to do without, making the base game more or less unplayable after a release until the third party stuff catches up.Ī lot of what you mention regarding tantrum spirals has been fixed in the new release. I've played worse, and in fact Fallout 4's builder interface comes to mind. I lament the lack of graphics in DF not because the UI is awful. DF is far, far, beyond anything in those 'simulations' in terms of the back end. If you're trying to make the argument that they're just as complicated and still have fancy graphics, that's not the case. >Or factorio, where people build insane megafactories with millions of machines in them and yet performance is great and the graphics will still show you the shadows of clouds passing overhead.Ĭompared to DF, both of those are an incredibly simple simulation that doesn't lend itself to emergent game play. >Consider Battlefield or COD Warzone, which simulate the effects of actions by multiple players (including projectile travel) in real time and still manage upwards of 100FPS of near photorealistic graphics. Also the simulation is very detailed but kind of broken in lots of annoying ways, like female dwarfs randomly dropping their babies while working, forgetting where they put them and then freaking out, random tantrum spirals because someone went out in the rain and so just decides to murder their colleagues etc.

#Dwarf fortress ascii vs graphics how to

But every time I play I have to go through that thing over again where I try to figure out how to assign a pet to a person, when I set up a military squad getting them to wear the right equipment is a total chore, minecart UX is completely baffling. And I say this as someone who plays and enjoys the game - I've had forts with upwards of 100 idiots^Wdwarfs in them, magma moats, breaching multiple cavern layers, surviving necromancer seiges etc. Honestly the UX in dwarf fortress is generally just insanely user-hostile and graphics are only a tiny symptom of that. Or factorio, where people build insane megafactories with millions of machines in them and yet performance is great and the graphics will still show you the shadows of clouds passing overhead.ĭwarf fortress is a very interesting game and a very deep simulation, but the idea that it's such a detailed simulation that graphics would not be possible is just untrue. 'this is a detailed simulation, so things move a lot faster if you're not spending CPU on graphics'Ĭonsider Battlefield or COD Warzone, which simulate the effects of actions by multiple players (including projectile travel) in real time and still manage upwards of 100FPS of near photorealistic graphics. It's not a game for everyone, you do have to sink quite a lot of time into learning it to enjoy it. But it's a super-complicated game so it takes a while to learn to control things, to learn the requirements to make various items, etc. So yeah, you might enjoy DF with a tile set like the LNP if you like the mechanics. I mean, DF is the sole reason you can find the solid density of Saguaro rib wood on the internet and the value came from an empirical test of a small cube of Saguaro rib wood. Remember, each creature has a bunch of parts with individual health, each tile can get stained by various materials (that can spread disease) and everything is made of various materials with all sorts of mostly-realistic properties. Also, this is a detailed simulation, so things move a lot faster if you're not spending CPU on graphics.

Granted, I always used the Lazy Newbie Pack which gave you basic tiles, but once you get used to ASCII, things tend to be a lot easier.