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Dwarf Fortress:About

From Dwarf Fortress Wiki
Revision as of 07:14, 15 March 2012 by 86.71.2.147 (talk) (added the ASCII description)
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General

Dwarf Fortress is an ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) game which includes both a roguelike adventure mode, and the more popular Dwarf Fortress Mode, which focuses on the creation and survival of a small dwarven settlement.
Dwarf Fortress is completely free.

Difficulty

The game has a very steep learning curve, partly due to its ASCII graphics, but also due to the fact that it is one of the most complex games ever released. That said, the curve can be overcome with time and with help from this wiki.

Gameplay

Before you play, you must generate a world to play in, which persists until you create a new one. World generation can be time consuming, even on modern computers, but be patient. It's worth it.

Dwarf Fortress has three major game modes and a fourth non-game mode:

An important part of Dwarf Fortress is that it creates a randomly generated, persistent world for you to play in. (The world is only "on" when you are actually playing in it, however.)
When you die in either the adventure or fortress modes, your next game will be in the same world, albeit a few days later. You can visit your old fortress, or get revenge on the monster that killed your adventurer. If your fortress or your adventurer had done anything of particular note, there's a chance that the game will generate a legend for them, which you can read about in the legends section. (Provided you've discovered enough information about the legend or enabled full legends knowledge.)

History

The first alpha version of Dwarf Fortress was released on the 8th of August 2006 after nearly 4 years of development (which began in October of 2002).
Note that while Dwarf Fortress is technically still in the alpha stage of development, it is fully playable, and definitely enjoyable.
If you are interested in the history of the development of the game you can look at the development log.