After 16 years of free updates, Dwarf Fortress finally arrives on Steam with a graphical interface

Counting the development time before going online, a total of 20 years.

Just on December 6th, a 16-year-old classic game landed on Steam with a brand-new look after optimization, and received nearly 5,000 reviews within a day, with rave reviews. This game has a famous name – “Dwarf Fortress”.

Hearing this name, it is not surprising that such a good result, “Dwarf Fortress” has actually been ranked at the top of the Steam wish list since the announcement of the production plan on Steam two years ago.

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Players of simulated management games such as “Famine”, “Edge of the World”, and “Alien Factory” have more or less heard of the game “Dwarf Fortress”, but perhaps because of its ASCII “Matrix-style” graphical interface, they have never heard of it. Really get your hands on it.

On the other hand, even players of classic Rogue-like games such as “TOME4” and “Kad’s Cave” will be surprised by the complexity of this game’s system, and it may be called one of the most complex games in game history.” One of the two words can also be considered to be removed.

Since the birth of the game “Dwarf Fortress”, it has inspired many classic games, including “My World”, “Fringe World” and “Oxygen Deficiency”. Elona” and “CDDA” (Chinese translation of “The Great Cataclysm”) have also gained a lot of inspiration and learned a lot from it.

In addition to the hidden respect status of the old-timers in the game circle, “Dwarf Fortress” does not lack other dazzling auras. It was selected into the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the games collected together with it also include “Pac-Man”, “Snake”, “Tetris”, “The Sims”, etc., which shows that it is in the game world. unique position.

Previously, this large-scale game

Never actively charged any fees to players

, has always been available for free download on the official website of the BAY 12 company founded by its creators Tarn Adams (hereinafter referred to as “Tarn”) and Zach Adams (hereinafter referred to as “Zach”) brothers.

Tarn and Zac opened the donation channel on the official website only after the fans of “Dwarf Fortress” reminded them. It is through donations that they have kept updating “Dwarf Fortress” to this day.

Counting from the beginning of the development of “Dwarf Fortress” in 2002, it has been a full 20 years this year. It can be said that brothers Tarn and Zack have devoted half of their lives to the development of this game in a literal sense.

Tarn, who is mainly in charge of program development, said that the code of “Dwarf Fortress” has reached 711,000 lines, and maintaining the game itself has become a difficult problem, and it is not easy to insist on updating.

In this long development, there have been many interesting bugs due to these problems, the most interesting of which is undoubtedly the most widely circulated drunk cat bug.

This story best reflects the depth and fun of the Dwarf Fortress game, as follows:

After updating the tavern in the game, the players inexplicably found that there were a lot of dead cats in the tavern, so they reported the bug, but the producer himself didn’t figure out what the bug was after a long time.

It was only later that people gradually recovered the full picture of this bug. It turned out that it was because Tarn set that the cats in the game did not like water. If they were covered with liquid, they would keep licking their fur. A lot of spilled alcohol is often left behind. After the cat steps on it, it will continue to lick the alcohol off its paws. Alcohol is poisonous to cats in the drug system of the game, so the cat will be poisoned to death.

Such interesting stories generated by the automatic interaction of the system are often used by players to introduce the game, and thus a group of people who specialize in reading the text of the Dwarf Fortress story has also been formed. This famous Drunk Cat Bug incident was later filed as “0009195 Incident”.

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Originally, the original version was prone to various bugs. Now that the advanced version of Steam graphics is launched, it is obviously a challenge to insist on updating the two versions.

And these challenges don’t just stop at the game development level. The donation income was originally able to maintain the lives of the brothers, and they were very happy to continue to update “Dwarf Fortress” under the condition of receiving donations.

But the reason why the paid version of Steam is launched is mainly because the elder brother Zach was unfortunately diagnosed with cancer, and the treatment would cost a huge amount of money, which made the life of the two brothers unsustainable.

In an interview with game media GameRant, Zach said that this was the initial reason for the idea of ​​​​making a Steam version. In addition, going online on Steam can show the game to a wider audience that we have never reached before.

Moreover, he also joked that this game may never be finished, and I also hope that the money I make on Steam will give me and Tarn the financial freedom to develop “Dwarf Fortress” to death.

Although this sentence is meant as a joke, “development to death” is likely to become a fact, and this game seems to be able to extend forever.

In fact, before going online on Steam, the brothers also considered using crowdfunding to solve the dilemma of survival such as seeing a doctor, but the income from crowdfunding was still a drop in the bucket. Zach explained: “This is because the crowdfunding environment as a whole is not good. Take Patreon’s changes in recent years as an example…too many people make games.”

After deciding to launch on Steam, Tarn and Zach fully optimized the game, not only replacing the original ASCII characters with graphics, creating a brand new UI, adding mouse operations, and even thoughtfully built in a large number of tutorials, This is undoubtedly good news for novice players who want to enter the pit.

At least now players may not need to read the 250-page “Dwarf Fortress Beginner’s Guide” written by Peter Tyson to figure out what “Dwarf Fortress” is.

While it works well, this optimization process is not easy. Due to limited funds, Tahn has been using Microsoft’s free development software Visual Studio. For the improvement of these graphical interfaces, there is no ready-made development system like Unity or Unreal Engine that can be used, and many graphical materials are also quite expensive. All these need to be solved step by step by Tarn.

In addition, the background music has also been expanded, but the process is also very difficult for them.

Tarn especially thanked the publisher Kitfox for their help. He said that usually publishers only help with marketing, and the work of graphic artists and musicians needs to be solved by the producers themselves, but this is something we are not capable of handling. Kitfox helped us contact Lots of great musicians and artists. The game wouldn’t be in its new state without the publisher’s involvement.

When it comes to whether there is a source of inspiration for this fully optimized version, Tarn is still very conservative. He said, “Although graphics are added, “Dwarf Fortress” is still a 2D game, so most of our sources of inspiration are still very old, such as games like “Civilization” and “Star Voyage”. But when it comes to UI Design, we still learned a lot from the latest The Sims.”

When it comes to old games from before, Tarn and Zack are always full of enthusiasm. They said, “We’ve been playing games for as long as we can remember, almost as early as we started reading. Back then our parents spoiled us and bought us almost every game we wanted. “

They have been trying to make games since elementary school. Before Tarn entered the game industry, he had produced no less than 50 games, but none of these works were officially released.

“Dwarf Fortress” is actually Tarn’s second official work after entering the industry, but what is the first one? Careful players may have discovered that the full name of “Dwarf Fortress” is “Slave of Yamer God and Blood Chapter 2: Dwarf Fortress”.

This “Slave of Yamer God and Blood” is Tarn’s first official work, and “Dwarf Fortress” is actually just a small side development project for this work at that time.

It is estimated that Tarn himself could not have imagined that this small incidental project at that time would become his main work for the next 20 years. For this project, Tarn even gave up the teaching position he could obtain after obtaining a doctorate in mathematics, and devoted himself to game development full-time.

Perhaps it is precisely because of the enthusiasm for games formed since childhood that the brothers Tarn and Zac were able to silently invest in “Dwarf Fortress” and persist in developing it for 20 years with a relatively meager income.

epilogue

There is also a very touching story about these two brothers, I think it might as well end with this story.

Tarn and Zach often make some small gifts and mail them to players who donate to support the game, it may be a painting, or a short story may be written. Once they drew a picture, and the content of the picture was as follows:

Under a starry sky, two dwarves stood beside a tower that soared into the sky, small but hopeful. Thane wrote next to the painting: We will build a tower so tall, we will mine these stars!

I think this may be a true description of the brothers’ dedication to this game, and it is also the best summary of their 20 years of life, a journey to discover the bright starry sky of the game!

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