Anyone play Dwarf Fortress?

[fizzix]

It may be worth noting that I ended up abandoning my first and only fortress. Things were moving along OK, I had a pretty good grip on the interface. If I had to put it in a nut shell, I'd say the more dwarves that I had as whole, the less I cared about any of them individually. I enjoyed playing DF (to a point). Maybe I'll play again, but then again, maybe not. I never did figure out how to trade, just how to give all my trade goods away.

This problem with "too many dwarfs" is one that I had too. There were other things that annoyed me with the game, like not being able to tell people not to carry their kids into combat or combat training, forcing you to either turn off child generation or make your military all male. The entire military interface is a huge clusterfuck, and it's not easily solvable through dwarf therapist. These are things that are unlikely to be fixed anytime soon.

On the other hand, I recently picked up gnomoria which is sort of a DF clone with an isometric view. It's missing a lot of really cool things in DF, like the world history and the crazy artifacts and engraved images, but the military interface is much better (although not great) and there's a soft cap at something like 40-50 gnomes, which is much more reasonable than the 150 you have in DF. The population limit alone makes it more enjoyable to me.

[krazyhades]

One can change the DF population cap setting.

Also, separately, there's nothing saying you have to actually accept new migrants. Some players even wall off their initial 7 dwarves and let all other comers starve outside the walls while the initial group works towards loads of legendary skills. It's a very fun way to play, and lets one maintain personal connections to the dorfs.

[buzzkill]

One more thing, the sandbox nature of the game. It's nice to be able to do whatever one wants, but iit's too sandboxy for my taste. Once a basic fortress is established, then I need a goal, preferably one that's challenging, else I'll probably just watch TV instead.

When the very beginning of the game is the most fun part... well, the rest can be sort of a let down.

[taptap]

One more thing, the sandbox nature of the game. It's nice to be able to do whatever one wants, but iit's too sandboxy for my taste. Once a basic fortress is established, then I need a goal, preferably one that's challenging, else I'll probably just watch TV instead.

When the very beginning of the game is the most fun part... well, the rest can be sort of a let down.

Difficulty in sandbox games is almost always self-imposed. Mechanical / logical challenges while still playing the game were the most fun part to me. Piercing aquifers, a working decontamination system, goblin powered logical circuits, minecarts, reducing the accident rate, recovering an accidentally partly flooded fortress, swimming school without accidents (not as proof of concept but working), quantum stockpiles... The grind down to fps death despite paying a lot of attention to map cleanup, avoidance of animal husbandry, small maps etc. the most frustrating part. What irks me about "streamlined" DF-inspired games, is that the things most fun to me are usually cut out as well.

[Dampe]

Yup.
I mod Dwarf Fortress in my free time.

[Mondkalb]

Dwarf Fortress is going Steam:

https://www.pcgamesn.com/dwarf-fortress/dwarf-fortress-steam-release

https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/dwarf-fortress-steam-itchio-1203162351/

Due to financial issues because of health problems the Adams brothers decided to release a graphical enhanced version in the future to improve cash flow. Currently they are relying on donations mainly.

[tangar]

I hope it would be good for game and RLG popularization in general. Lets devs would be able to spend more time on game improvement, not on other jobs for living. ADOM and ToME went this way and it was good.