Granted, graphic packs that overhaul the game's messy ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange, the way in which text is encoded on computers) art style have long been available unofficially, but anyone who installs the game on Steam right now will still be greeted by an arcane world of symbols representing geography, resources, enemies, and their misadventurous dwarven charges. The always-improving game's near-incomprehensible text art has long been many players' main obstacle into mining deeper into the ore-rich mountain that it Dwarf Fortress, and now they're getting their chance at last. I mean, it’s the friggin’ interface as far as the game goes, it’s your hands, feet, mouth, and then some! If the interface sucks, you’re turned into an epileptic cripple, and unless the point of the game is to be an epileptic cripple, it truly hurts the game.One of the most complex video games ever made, Dwarf Fortress, is finally replacing its signature ASCII art with tiles that resemble actual graphics, and it looks so, so much better than before. A frustrating interface and control scheme really, really can make people turn away from a game. But the interface frustration factor kinda impedes the fun, and the enthusiasm… faded. I’ve managed to build thriving farms and dug as deep as the chasm. Still have to stop and think about nearly everything I’m doing, and it’s been a couple years now.) (I have similar problems with some of my LG phone’s interfaces. And languages are hell to learn if you haven’t literally grown up with them. That makes mastery of the interface comparable to learning a new language with all kinds of bumps and oddities and inexplicable peculiarities. An inconsistent interface that keeps jerking the rug around in a way that’s very difficult for humans to keep track of? Now we have a problem. A weird interface? That’s okay, I can learn that. This is really the major sort of thing that discouraged me about DF, personally. > Keys do different things on different pages (use PgUp/Dn here, but Up/Down Arrows here for similar functions, stuff like that). I was quite struck when I found out how Dwarf Fortress really isn’t all that complex, but that it’s *just* incredibly extensive. You should just try not to be so overwhelmed. I understand that people can be put off by the game easily, but just do it again, do it the way it is explained, and I guarantee you will have fun, if you are at least a bit into the general concept. Quick reminder: That still has been good fun.Īnd from then on I already understood most of the essentials, so that I could freely go about the fortress-building and only whenever I found something I didn’t understand it could easily be looked up in the Wiki. This taught me many of the basics, so I could expand a lot on this with my second fortress. I suppose I haven’t seen half of what DF has to offer, yet I’m loving it nonetheless.įor my first fortress I totally followed the Wiki instructions and played a while. I think I haven’t even seriously built more than 3 fortresses, none of which were all that advanced. You just also got to realize one thing: There is a totally overwhelming wealth of things to do – but you merely need to understand very few of those for the start. Like I said before I don’t think that the interface alone really is a reason not to play Dwarf Fortress, and it surely doesn’t take a week to get into it when guided by a Wiki. I haven’t even remotely spent enough time with DF call myself that.Īnyway, I still don’t see the big trouble with the interface. I hope I don’t get along as that evil fanboy here.
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