Dwarfen Fortress Tutorial

Since there seemed to be some need for a DF tutorial, here´s the best one I know:

http://afteractionreporter.com/2009...-newby-tutorial-for-dwarf-fortress-part-1-wtf

 

I know I'm being an ass, but it's "Dwarf Fortress"; off to the fun chamber you go.

But thanks for the tutorial, maybe it will allow some people who are new to the game to survive until the first elephant shows up...

 

Well, it might be better when it comes to newer stuff, but personally I think it's better to start with an older version and an older tutorial and only then get newer stuff, because DF is getting more complicated as time passes and thus not everyone will manage with the new tutorial.

I know of some people who didn't need a tutorial at all, but then I also know of someone who had to be hand-guided through the whole thing.

 

Thanks for posting this. I will look at both of these. DF looks absolutely amazing once you get into it, but I haven't been able to get past that initial feeling of being overwhelmed. Even the tutorials are overwhelming, but these seem somewhat manageable.

 

Try Nethack for a few years. (I did, and look what it did to me!)

Tutorials for complex games often are worthless. You simply have to attempt the games and see how far you get this time. When you inevitably fail, you may learn something or get aggravated enough to search for details on how to do whatever it is you are doing.

Aside from Nethack, I never once played Sokoban. But because they made an entire branch of the Nethack dungeon Sokoban levels, I played them all to completion.

The point is that I never looked for a tutorial for Sokoban. I thought it was a stupid idea some idiot put in there because they liked that game. But as I played again and again and managed to get further each time and finally figured out a sure-fire way to win each level each time, I learned it was actually a great game. (Sokoban that is.) And I now know it was a great idea too. Tutorials may have shown me how to do it, but the rewards of doing it yourself by repetition far outweigh what a tutorial would ave given me in the experience.

Likewise DF is not about winning. It is about playing. And losing horribly. It is pretty-much the antithesis to most games. No tutorial can deliver the sheer idiot deaths to all your dwarves that learning manually can.

 

Dwarf Fortress doesn't even have a "curve", per se; it's more like a learning cliff. You bang your head against it, over and over again, but at some point the doors open and you discover that you can do pretty much everything. Control scheme, fort management, checking your stocks, using the job manager, military assignment... it all comes together all at once, for most people.

Keep at it. Like Dredmor on GRPD, the rewards are worth the effort.

 

This was posted elsewhere, but I forget where exactly. I think Frelus posted this.

 

True, but DF tells you about nothing and more often then not you simply can´t udnerstand why you dwarfs aren´t acting the way you think they should. For example it´s almost impossible imo to get the whole military system without at least some kind of explenation. Took me half a day to find out how to get them to use the target range (and even then they for some reason I never found out refused to use the second one I build). Or how pits work. etc. etc.

 

This stand-alone app helps you keep your sanity. Part of it, anyway. Dwarf Therapist:



http://code.google.com/p/dwarftherapist/

 

And if you aren't already borderline insane.

Because I have to say I never used to use that, but my sanity is rather questionable (well, I did enjoy playing "Stars!", which is a good sign of abnormality).

 

Stars! is the best game ever.

 

Fixed that for you. But yeah, it's great if you can kidnap someone and force him/her to play with you.

 

A pity the sequel Stars! Supernova Genesis was canned. These days I play Sword of the Stars rather than Stars!

To get back on topic: I am inclined to say Sword of the Stars is giving me a higher fun per click/keystroke ratio than Dwarf Fortress.

If Sword of the Stars is a spreadsheet, then Dwarf Fortress is a word processor.

That's an understatement. Playing Dwarf Fortress is like hand-coding a word processor in assembly.

 

I have not mastered Sword of the Stars, but I'm certainly able to enjoy it. DF, on the other hand had me totally flumoxed from the start. And I've found that lately, I've had very little patience for trying to learn things that have no intuitive nature to them.

 

You mean to say they made a remake of Master of Orion 3? Run for your lives! A spreadsheet is eating the Universe!

 

I tried Dwarf Fortress twice now, and I was impressed by the detail of it all. What turned me away however was how actively unfriendly it is towards the user. Information is hard to find, you have to micromanage everything and do it all over again afterwards and the UI is just plain horrible.
Menus upon menus, in some you use +- to scroll, in others arrow keys, in other some other combination again... To designate an area use arrow keys, or umkn and so on. Or better yet, only use hotkeys, and about 30 per page.
Honestly, I could live with the micromanagement, but the UI just repels me. It's not a disgrace to implement mouse support, nor unifying the menu structure. The problem I see is that the dev just likes adding new features more than cleaning up and fixing the game.
Ultimately, I was impressed, but too frustrated by the UI. Note that my fortress did not die and in fact was doing decently well, but there was more micromanagement to be done by the minute, and the UI just got more horrible.

 

You know I trust you guys to do exactly that right with CE, right?