Dorf poetry, music and dance

March 23, 2015 3:47 PM

Dwarf Fortress will now include poetry, music and dance in procedurally generated forms. Making individual poems is beyond the capabilities of Dwarf Fortress (for now) but that hasn't stopped fans from making their own poems based on the publicly posted examples of poetic forms. Besides poetry, music and dance forms will also be generated and spread throughout the game as non-player characters teach each other. Dwarf Fortress developer Tarn Adams has been posting about these new additions to the game on his changelog (starting at 01/24/2015) and answering questions about it in his two latest monthly Future of the Fortress forum posts. On Rock Paper Shotgun Adam and Graham Smith delve into this topic to explore why it matters.
posted by Kattullus (55 comments total)

Tarn Adams, as always, being quietly awesome.
posted by JHarris at 3:51 PM on March 23, 2015 [7 favorites]

that hasn't stopped fans from making their own poems based on the publicly posted examples of poetic forms

I knew an idea this good wouldn't stay cooped up in my skull forever!
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 3:55 PM on March 23, 2015

delve into this topic

I see what you dug there.
posted by Celsius1414 at 3:58 PM on March 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

If the singularity starts with Dwarf Fortress I'm going to laugh my ass off... until a Forgotten Beast devours me anyway.
posted by BrotherCaine at 4:03 PM on March 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

It should scrape tvtropes and procedurally generate plots for Dwarven summer blockbuster movies.
posted by XMLicious at 4:03 PM on March 23, 2015 [11 favorites]

or generate descriptions of coats of arms. (or does it do that already?)
posted by ArgentCorvid at 4:06 PM on March 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't know if I really think the RPS guys made the best case there. Or I guess they got to it by the end, but they didn't start there — the thing that's important here isn't really "proc gen poetry" (the game isn't even actually generating poems for you to read), it's that now the game has a simulated sociology of art. So now a famous poet (or dancer, etc!) can be a world-historical individual whose feats and peregrinations matter to others, to their culture, and so on.

And that's important because it's one more piece of the enormous feat of worldbuilder-building that makes DF important and wonderful and interesting.
posted by RogerB at 4:07 PM on March 23, 2015 [12 favorites]

or generate descriptions of coats of arms. (or does it do that already?)

Next door, Mark Johnson generates the whole thing! No digging in his game.
posted by LogicalDash at 4:16 PM on March 23, 2015 [5 favorites]

And just to expand a little: something else that they sort of missed in coming to the defense of DF as a "good" game (which, I mean, of course it is! jeez!) is that, as with all the other bits of the game, this is basically a toy sociology-of-art simulator that Toady One built in a week; there's no pretense that it's more. It's not meant to work in a way that would generate all the kinds of history of poetry (or whatever) that you could imagine, just to get us all started thinking about a whole new facet of dwarven life. Toady's greatest discovery, really, is that once you combine a big enough bunch of good-enough-to-get-started, roughed-in 0.1beta versions of things like these into a game-world, it really ends up feeling a lot more significant than the sum of its parts. And then incremental improvements can come later, as he feels like it.
posted by RogerB at 4:18 PM on March 23, 2015 [6 favorites]

I think there is a strong argument that DF itself is one of the more significant artworks of the modern era. It represents a genuine commitment to dedicating technical skill to the elaboration of a personal vision, and does so in a manner which is revelatory in its own artistic field, and even beyond. Playing DF makes you think about games differently, certainly, but it also, to a lesser extent, makes you think about other narrative and representative forms of art differently too.

The obvious comparator is D&D, which is a sort of Velvet Underground and Nico of modern popular narrative culture. While is DF is not as revolutionary as the pen and paper RPG form, and I suspect will never be as influential as Dungeons and Dragons, it does matter, and is a testament to the sheer joy of human creativity.

And it's fun.
posted by howfar at 5:06 PM on March 23, 2015 [12 favorites]

Oh, now they'll write poems about being mauled by elephants instead of making some more damn axes? Great. Effing dwarfs.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:21 PM on March 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

A solemn poetic form intended to express grief over mining, originating in The Splattered Confederations. The poem is a single octet.

O weep! The meadow I adored,
where once was felled a lizard-stag;
the dreadful vault where once were stored
more jewels than one poor thief could drag;
the throne where sat my dwarven lord;
his fortress rising from the crag;
all of it passes to the grave.
I overwrote my goddamn save.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 5:28 PM on March 23, 2015 [30 favorites]

I love this with all my heart. I just tried to enact one of the dances to hilarious results. Can't wait to see the music forms.
posted by Bistle at 5:32 PM on March 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Dwarf Fortress, "The Legacy of Tarn & Zach Adams", a Dwarf Simulator
----------------------------------------------------
This is a Dwarf Simulator. All Craftsmanship is of the highest quality. It is studded with Dwarfs, decorated with ASCII, custom made tile-sets and it simulates drunken dwarfs. This object menaces with spikes of culture.

On the item are images of dwarves. The dwarves are dancing, playing lutes, orating, and eating cheese. This relates to the dancing, playing lutes, orating, and cheese eating of the late winter of 2015.

In the item is a concept of Tarn Adams and Zach Adams. Tarn Adams is programming Dwarf Fortress, "The Legacy of Tarn & Zach Adams", a Dwarf Simulator. Zach Adams is storycrafting. This relates to the programming and storycrafting of Dwarf Fortress "The Legacy of Tarn & Zach Adams", a Dwarf Simulator in the year 2002.

In the item is an image of a dwarf eating a cheese and laughing. This relates to the Eating of the Cheese in the year 2003.
posted by tychotesla at 5:47 PM on March 23, 2015 [19 favorites]

I think there is a strong argument that DF itself is one of the more significant artworks of the modern era.

MoMA agrees with you! (Probably there's a previously on this, but I have failed to turn it up.)

Sometimes for a bedtime story, my partner reads me the "art report" from a recent iteration of his fortress (recent engravings, artifacts, etc). On reflection, it's not that great as a bedtime story because of too much giggling.

We also talk about things in our house in DF terms. "Admired own fine tastefully arranged microscope lately." "Talked with the spouse recently." When our cats do something obtuse: "This animal doesn't care about your wishes."
posted by dorque at 5:51 PM on March 23, 2015 [16 favorites]

Very casual gamer here -- it's many years since I've played anything more taxing than Candy Crush Saga -- but I've recently taken up playing Dwarf Fortress.

I really can't believe that I'm so obsessed with playing a game that I had to buy and read a book -- not once, but three times -- to figure out how to play the damn thing.

I also can't believe that I'm playing a game that requires umpteen suplemental programs to help me play the damn thing.

And finally, I'm gutted about the fact that -- having just built my first Magma Forge, there isn't a scrap of iron anywhere in the whole of my fortress.

So is there a Metafilter DF group? I could definitely use some more advice on playing.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 6:05 PM on March 23, 2015 [6 favorites]

I play almost no computer games, but I'm a casual Dwarf Fortress player. Never get very far in my games before something awful happens (everyone starves, ...). (I've worked through several tutorials and other help texts, but none of it ever seems to actually be helpful in my games.) I keep swearing to stay away and not try it again, and keep finding myself losing yet another game. And yet "losing is fun" and I always seem to end up trying again.
posted by Death and Gravity at 6:13 PM on March 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

I know that feeling, D&G. Although I do have a boring, stable fortress that just ticks over now... (OK, it's four years old -- big deal -- but that's still older than I ever managed in the past)

But in my new fortress, just last night a weregerbil came in and chopped up all of my squad, but I managed to capture him in a cage before he made it into my fortress proper.

Then, as my dwarfs were burying the remains, a necromancer came along and reanimated their corpses and took the rest of my dwarfs down in minutes.

Losing really is fun though.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 6:24 PM on March 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've never played DF ever and probably never will but I love reading about it so, so much.
posted by kenko at 6:27 PM on March 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

A ribald poetic form intended to praise a lover, originating in The Laborious Sun. The poem is a single couplet. Use of assonance, consonance and vivid imagery is characteristic of the form. The second line of the couplet uses the same placement of allusions as the first line. The second line of the couplet presents a different view of the subject of the first line. The first line has six syllables. The second line has nine syllables.

My own dear love, he is all my heart,—
And I wish somebody’d shoot him.
posted by Phssthpok at 6:34 PM on March 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

I really wish I could resolve the inner conflict I have about Dwarf Fortress. It is, without question, a very very good game. Someone could come up to me and say "it's brilliant, totally unique, one of the best things ever made in gaming" and I wouldn't argue it even though I don't like it enough to play it. Because it is brilliant, and unique, and those two qualifiers alone might make it one of the best things ever made in gaming, even if only for its mere existence.

On the other hand, I can't help but feel that the developers are possibly the worst game developers to ever have lived. Like, things they implement after months of work are the kind of things that a competent developer does in an afternoon. Especially for a game driven entirely by ascii art and keyboard input. and after seeming millenia, they're still not at a 1.0 release.

I'm not mad. I don't even play the game, so it's not like there's some feature or device that's missing that I could even be mad about. I'm just dumbfounded. They're so brilliant!

But also so ass at this.

*changelog*
changed "ass" to "butt" in final line.

changed "butt" back to "ass."
posted by shmegegge at 6:50 PM on March 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

i'm not convinced that anyone has actually played DF, they are just too embarrassed to admit that they couldn't figure it out and invent wonderful stories of what it might have been like if they had figured it out to cover over the shame...

imagining DF is almost certainly better than playing it... how could it not be?
posted by ennui.bz at 7:20 PM on March 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

If Dwarf Fortress did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it?
posted by solitary dancer at 8:11 PM on March 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:27 PM on March 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

On the other hand, I can't help but feel that the developers are possibly the worst game developers to ever have lived. Like, things they implement after months of work are the kind of things that a competent developer does in an afternoon. Especially for a game driven entirely by ascii art and keyboard input. and after seeming millenia, they're still not at a 1.0 release.

Dwarf Fortress is not like other games. Its attention to detail is gigantic. It's huge, and everything influences everything else, sometimes in radically unexpected ways, and it's one person who's created this... THING.

And this is a field where many games never make it to 1.0, kind of on purpose. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is up to 0.16.1, and it's got far far less stuff in it than Dwarf Fortress. It's an artificial line; since the games are made for free anyway, there is no economic incentive to announce a major version release.

(Disclaimer: I have now interviewed Tarn Adams twice, and have exchanged emails with him once in a while. He personally told me that one of his influences was the randomized textual creature descriptions in PC Starflight.)
posted by JHarris at 8:32 PM on March 23, 2015 [5 favorites]

...randomized textual creature descriptions in PC Starflight.
I just swooned.
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 8:40 PM on March 23, 2015 [7 favorites]

Man I clicked and was like "ehhhhh procedural music, I dunno how this is gonna....."
"Oh god he's invented his own entire music theory and traditions and instruments and very specific forms, and ...... holy shit it's like 30 pages of specifications and...."

I've put 2k hours into DF, I don't know what else I was expecting

I mean seriously holy shit
posted by jake at 10:43 PM on March 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm going to actually record real live music based on these procedurally generated music descriptions for real with modified acoustic / physically modeled instruments

It's the right thing to do. It's the only thing to do
posted by jake at 10:47 PM on March 23, 2015 [14 favorites]

Dwarf Fortress is not like other games. Its attention to detail is gigantic.

Just to pick a favorite example of mine, this is a game that has different coded values for the specific heats of salt, potash, and glass (he used to have extensive temperature-related values for all materials, but I think he got rid of/consolidated them for most things that weren't likely to melt/burn/freeze naturally during the course of a game). Of course, this being Dwarf Fortress, the temperature scale is also ludicrously arcane and starts around 9500 degrees below absolute zero.

Its design process is also a thing that zigs when it feels like it should be zagging. I don't think anyone in the playerbase was clamoring for teachable styles of dance or, looking at today's devlog, philosophical education influenced by each character's particular values, but, on the other hand, it's a game that promises Gruesome Death by Zombie Elephants and yet has you spend most of the early game carving rocks into chairs and polishing tunnel walls. It's all part of the process of attempting to simulate actual societies and not borderline-logically-impossible fantasy societies, because while fantasy games (and the fantasy novels they're based on) are really good at telling one type of story, even sandboxy games are only good at telling that one type of story, and Dwarf Fortress wants to be a game that tells all kinds of stories. Not just the stories of heroes killing dragons, but of tavern keepers with unhappy home lives and outcast goblins staking out on their own, and all of that stuff needs systems to explain how the goblins came to be outcast or why the tavern keeper's son keeps waking up screaming in fright. That it works as well as it does is impressive as hell, and the promise that it can someday be an even deeper, more granular simulation of a fantasy world is simultaneously tremendously exciting and completely terrifying.
posted by Copronymus at 10:50 PM on March 23, 2015 [6 favorites]

On the other hand, I can't help but feel that the developers are possibly the worst game developers to ever have lived. Like, things they implement after months of work are the kind of things that a competent developer does in an afternoon.

This is what makes me very dubious about the quality of the source code inside Dwarf Fortress. I know it was evolved by two guys fiddling with it, incrementally adding things as they thought them up. Now I learn it takes a long time to add simple features. Both of these facts are pretty strong evidence for a software design pattern that computer scientists call The Big Ball Of Mud. Everything affects everything else in the program because there's no modular components, and so it takes forever to figure out how to make a change without introducing a subtle bug somewhere else. Does anyone know the current shape of DF as a C/C++ program?
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:48 PM on March 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

I believe it's just Tarn Adams coding (someone else maybe helped with some graphics code as a one-off?). I agree indications are that the codebase is a bit of a mess.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 12:55 AM on March 24, 2015

Ten years ago the codebase resembled Kobold Quest.

Most current data structures have been reverse-engineered.

From recent experience: the UI thread blocks on I/O operations and bugs usually involve a character doing something absurd or an operation taking too long. I can't recall any memory safety or data corruption issues. It is typical of expert low-level coding in the context of a monolithic, synchronous application.

The beautiful and unique parts of Dwarf Fortress are very closely tied to the specific implementation and the many years of focus on history-generation and character behavior. So even when you see a smoother UI in something like Banished or RimWorld, there is a lot less depth.
posted by Phssthpok at 1:14 AM on March 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm sure it is, but on the other hand, as I said before, Dwarf Fortress is not like other games. If I had written this, I wouldn't be able to maintain it at all. That Tarn Adams can and does itself indicates genius, even if the code were the clearest thing in the world.
posted by JHarris at 1:18 AM on March 24, 2015

There's a nice parallel between the reverse-engineering that goes on in the technical side of DF fandom (shameless plug) and the realization of art and poetry we are seeing here.

Toady describes the rules of the world, and the players and the game collaborate to find interesting things that can happen in that world.

I suppose the hallmark of all great worldbuilding is that it gives the audience ideas that take on a life of their own.
posted by Phssthpok at 2:55 AM on March 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's only a matter of time until Dwarf Fortress can read mail.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:20 AM on March 24, 2015

Long ago, in Nethack, there actually were mail daemons that would appear to deliver scrolls of mail...
posted by solitary dancer at 7:59 AM on March 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

I vote Dwarf Fortress most likely to evolve towards Vernor Vinge's Mailman, though...
posted by solitary dancer at 8:08 AM on March 24, 2015

things they implement after months of work are the kind of things that a competent developer does in an afternoon.

This is what makes me very dubious about the quality of the source code inside Dwarf Fortress.

I really don't know what evidence you guys are basing this conjecture on. The majority of things that I can recall taking "months of work" in Tarn's development log when I've been watching were things that basically no other game had ever done — and mostly also things that were pretty clearly so ruinously computationally expensive and/or required such major changes to the simulation model that there must be significant work involved in keeping the game playable at all. Apart from being a disgruntled fan who just wants the new version to come out already, the main reason I could imagine why someone would think Tarn's development is notably slower, or his code notably cruftier, than other people's, is a pretty serious misunderstanding of just how much stuff that code does. Given the complexity of its data model and the simulation it implements, and that it's a one-man indie show, the major miracle is that DF works at all, not that it sometimes takes Tarn a little while to add a new feature.
posted by RogerB at 8:21 AM on March 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

So is there a Metafilter DF group? I could definitely use some more advice on playing.

I know there's some active/knowledgeable DF folks over on Mefightclub.

As for me, I've played a few games and really still don't understand what I'm doing. My last fortress ended during the first winter, when all the water sources froze solid and I couldn't figure out how to get the dwarves to thaw ice. It was sad. But I'm watching some DF let's plays on Youtube and slowly figuring things out. If anyone else out there is interested in taking this game on, I highly recommend the Lazy Newb Pack.
posted by nubs at 8:26 AM on March 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh god he's invented his own entire music theory

And yeah, I mean, look at what we're talking about here: in just the last couple of weeks Tarn has added music and art-form generators built from scratch (and engineered from first principles based on his own study of those subject areas, including stuff like, e.g., random generation of a culture's musical instrument tunings) which tie into the game's existing framework for transmission and extension of cultural values. In the last three days he's built the rudiments of a new "tech tree" for intellectual history which gives dwarven thinkers access to a set of discoveries which will shape the kinds of books they and their students can write (again, based on first-principles modeling of the subject). You really think lots of other "competent developers" would be doing better than this?
posted by RogerB at 8:29 AM on March 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

But I'm watching some DF let's plays on Youtube and slowly figuring things out.

Let me be the first to say then, that, though everyone recommends them, Capt. Duck's video's suck. He speaks and moves too fast, has too much going on in each video and English is not his first language.

Das24680 is my boy when it comes to the YouTube Dwarf Fortress instructional.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:31 AM on March 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

@PeterMcDermott

And finally, I'm gutted about the fact that -- having just built my first Magma Forge, there isn't a scrap of iron anywhere in the whole of my fortress.

The Goblin Iron Delivery Service should help augment your supplies.
posted by botono9 at 2:57 PM on March 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

For those struggling to get started, I've found that the Fortress Mode Quickstart Guide is an invaluable resource. Just start a new game and follow along with the guide. In a couple of hours you'll have a pretty solid grasp of the basics.
posted by botono9 at 2:59 PM on March 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

I spent five hours last night on this. My new, seemingly more successful settlement is dying of dehydration and it's only been three hours. Who knew ice didn't count as a water source.
posted by wrabbit at 5:41 PM on March 24, 2015

Exact same problem I had, wrabbit. And there doesn't seem to be a way to get the dwarves to thaw ice.
posted by nubs at 6:17 PM on March 24, 2015

wrabbit: My new, seemingly more successful settlement is dying of dehydration and it's only been three hours. Who knew ice didn't count as a water source.

nubs: Exact same problem I had, wrabbit. And there doesn't seem to be a way to get the dwarves to thaw ice.

Most problems in Dwarf Fortress can be solved with judicious application of either magma or booze. In this case the problem is that dwarfs prefer booze over water and don't actually need water unless they're injured. Get some plump helmets growing, build a still, and have some empty barrels around.

Ice can be thawed with magma but that's a bit advanced. You could sink a well into the caverns (be prepared for ☼FUN☼ flying up the well) or tap into an aquifer. If you're in a biome that thaws, dig a small cistern off a river and let it fill over the summer. Be sure to understand how water pressure works in DF or you'll have even more ☼FUN☼.

Remember: This is a game where a dwarf will decorate a lead goblet with elf bone scrimshaw recounting the time cheese projectiles and Urist's right eyetooth were used to kill elves. Most problems have at least one solution, likely hilarious. (You can try to sell that goblet to the elves, btw.)

Anyone interested in Dwarf Fortress should check out Peter Tyson's (aka Tiny Pirate), Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress. It's a bit out of date but the fundamentals haven't changed and it's written with new players in mind.
posted by nathan_teske at 10:17 PM on March 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Anyone interested in Dwarf Fortress should check out Peter Tyson's (aka Tiny Pirate), Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress.

When I wrote this earlier:

I really can't believe that I'm so obsessed with playing a game that I had to buy and read a book -- not once, but three times -- to figure out how to play the damn thing.

That's the book I was talking about. As you get more into the game, the you find you're facing a different set of problems. So it's back to the book again.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:28 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

My dwarves were doing well until a werefox showed up and infected and murdered 1/3 of them. Now the remaining dwarves are all emotionally disturbed and dying of dehydration because they would prefer to attend parties rather than remove the mutilated corpses or brew alcohol.
posted by wrabbit at 2:13 PM on March 26, 2015

Most problems in Dwarf Fortress can be solved with judicious application of either magma or booze. In this case the problem is that dwarfs prefer booze over water and don't actually need water unless they're injured. Get some plump helmets growing, build a still, and have some empty barrels around.

It was kind of a set of compounding problems, all together - It had taken me a while to find somewhere that I could plant my plump helmets (I think I was primarily digging into sand, rather than clay/dirt(?), and going down levels just got me into stone), and while I had my barrels and still ready to go, I wasn't getting the harvest in fast enough to produce enough booze to keep them happy. Then the stream froze over, and one or two of them died, and everyone got freaked out over the corpses and just huddled in the dining room while inevitable dehydration set in. It was fun, in a way, and a realization that I had probably picked a start location a bit more challenging than a newb on his second game should really try.
posted by nubs at 2:24 PM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

And finally reading the RPS discussion of this:

Adam:...Especially in an age when content and features are so often known in advance, the enormity of something like DF, along with its many random generation systems, means that it’s full of unknown things, whether they’re lurking in the dark depths of a new (old) world, or doing a jig in an elven village.

Graham: There it is, that’s why every little bit of generation matters. It’s in service of a world that is larger than us, unknowable, and so full of surprises, longing, mystery in place of mastery. It has secrets, but not those placed with the purpose of being found. It has secrets because the world is very large and we’re all small and will die soon.

That's it, really, for me with DF - I suck at it, but I keep coming back because of that sense of mystery and secrets in the game. That if I can keep a fortress going long enough, I'll see some surprising shit happen because the game is about creation on multiple levels.
posted by nubs at 3:25 PM on March 26, 2015 [4 favorites]

(I think I was primarily digging into sand, rather than clay/dirt(?)

I wonder if this explains why my dwarves are getting such low yields in my current fortress? Oh, sure, plump helmets will *grow* in sand. But not necessarily at a sufficient rate to keep my dwarves in booze.

That's one more thing to look out for, I guess...
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:00 AM on March 27, 2015

Just want to say, that thanks to this thread I have my first truly kinda functional dwarf fortress...I'm smelting copper, silver, zinc, and brass (no iron yet, sadly); making stonecrafts, cutting gems, and making various metal objects. I seem to have enough food (largely by trading for meat every chance I get) and booze.

My second wave of immigrants was largely killed when a werebeast showed up and I had to recruit four or five them to attempt to kill it (silly me, should've waited until it transformed back to human, because at that point the only surviving wardog took it out pretty quickly).

In addition, a mayor got elected. My herbalist got taken by a strange mood and made a wombat bone battle axe with gneiss accents.

Every immigrant wave seems to have at least two rangers in it, which is about the last thing I need right now. I'm hoping to trade for some more war dogs and figure out animal training. And then get a better handle on farming (pretty much just plump helmets right now), maybe some weaving, build some fortifications...

It just never ends until you lose, does it?
posted by nubs at 8:05 AM on April 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

And....well, it's not quite a loss yet, but pretty close. I was just starting to think about my militia and some defenses when a Plains Titan came along; took me from 78 adult dwarves to 20, and about a dozen children to 3. (The "best"moment of the fight was when he threw one of the farmers across the width of the underground farm, leaving a blood trail and then the mangled corpse up against the wall.)

I could try to restore the fortress I guess...but I have a lot of traumatized dwarves, a lot of corpses and blood to clean up, and my layout was starting to have some serious problems. Might be time to abandon this one and try again.
posted by nubs at 8:28 PM on April 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

As this thread nears death I shall hijack for self-promotion.

LiSE, the Life Simulator Engine, is a tool meant to ease the construction of games that have certain characteristics in common with Dwarf Fortress: mainly, a complex set of rules that's evaluated every tick of the clock. To that effect it implements what's known in business software as a rules engine, wherein the rules of the game are modelled as discrete components (in this case, they look like trading cards) which can be switched on and off individually for testing purposes, or copied into other games without modification.

It is currently in deepest alpha, only of use to those who are already fluent in Python. If you are, and would like to help, send me MeMail.
posted by LogicalDash at 3:48 AM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

As this thread nears death

Nah, we're just going to abandon it for either later reclamation or for adventurer mode.
posted by nubs at 7:53 AM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]