(The submission should have a [2006] in the title)
As silly as it sounds to say, the importance of Boatmurdered can't be understated. Boatmurdered was an internet sensation and put Dwarf Fortress on the map; the depth and complexity of the simulation was mind-blowing to read about for the era (and it's still more-or-less unmatched in many ways). Without that there'd be no Infiniminer (and later, no Rimworld, no Factorio), and without that there'd be no Minecraft.
Nitpick, but I think you mean “can’t be overstated” - no matter how important you state the thing to be, it’s not overstated, because the thing is just that important. Hence, can’t be overstated.
TL;DR: Is it possible that it seems to you that Dwarf Fortress was the first game with procedural generation?
Full comment:
Factorio wouldn't exist with Dwarf Fortress?
If this is a claim that Dwarf Fortress paved the way for deep(er) simulation games, enabling Factorio, I don't think that's accurate.
I was ~18 in 2006 and a huge fan of simulation games when I was growing up. There were plenty with depth that approximated Factorio.
I've never heard of Infiniminer or Rimworld.
5 minute review of Infiniminer shows its a very different game and has a specific triad of inspirations named by the creator, all of which predate Dwarf Fortress. (Team Fortress, Infinifrag, and Motherload)
Rimworld is nearly a decade after Dwarf Fortress, so its impossible for me to claim it wouldn't exist without it, and I believe vice versa.
Notch (the original creator of Minecraft) mentioned he got inspired by DF:
> Infiniminer is the main inspiration for the blocky design and the terrain deforming. Dwarf Fortress is the main inspiration for the survival game mode, and this is where I want to take the majority of the gameplay.
> I had this great idea to apply for a job at Mojang as working on Minecraft might be very inspiring. I didn't get any reply, and later on, I decided to try to make something on my own.
According to Factorio's developers, they were heavily inspired by Minecraft factory mods like IndustrialCraft. Minecraft is commonly said to have been inspired by Infiniminer.
I'm not aware of Infinimer being inspired by Dwarf Fortress.
RimWorld is basically "Dwarf Fortress on an alien planet", although the simulation doesn't go as ridiculously deep. RimWorld has in turn inspired a bunch of attempts to do "RimWorld on a spaceship," but none of so far have achieved the status of being a "classic".
No, their claim is that specific lineage of inspirations led to the games we enjoy today. It is very unlikely that the games would exist in the same form without the innovations and discoveries made along the way.
Please don't take the wrong way: is it LLM generated? If so, it disturbed me, I thought I had an excellent ear but I wouldn't have caught it without the sugary "innovations and discoveries". That made me read again and note the LLM sheen of words directly related to the topic but aren't engaged in discussion or cognizant of the social purpose of a comment thread (ex. A) there is no "specific lineage of inspiration_s_" mentioned, just one game. B) its not "games we enjoy today", its rather old games. C) my reply is curious about OP and procedural generation D) vague, can't be engaged with, generally correct claim that "today's games wouldn't exist without yesterdays")
SimCity, Age of Empires, Sim$X (they really need to rerelease SimAnt), Roller Coaster Tycoon were my gotos, off the top of my head. Railroad Tycoon is probably the best obvious simile but also wasn't my favorite. Too much management :)
My favorite Dwarf Fortress playthrough description and did a good job of explaining how the game actually works and how different people approach the game. I believe someone made a comic or animation or something based on this specific playthrough.
Reminds me a lot of sofrware engineering projects where someone works on this pet project for a long time then someone else comes in and completely ignores it or has no idea how to use it because there's no documentation...
> Reminds me a lot of sofrware engineering projects where someone works on this pet project for a long time then someone else comes in and completely ignores it or has no idea how to use it because there's no documentation...
I didn't understand how this connects to the first paragraph at first, but I think you're saying this playthrough is an analog to someone making such documentation, thus saving DF from such a fate?
The general point is certainly true, there's a lot of projects out there that never see as much use as they could, where someone has put a lot of effort into the work, but never managed to present it in an accessible way - where you can't even tell what problem it's solving, even if you're dealing with that problem at that very moment.
No documentation is one obvious way this happens, but there's also lots of projects where there's a good amount of documentation but only at the wrong abstraction level. It's easy to get lost in the implementation and document only the minutiae, but taking the small step to imagine your past self, go back to the big picture, and write just a few paragraphs from that perspective, can make a project so much more usable for others. (It's also ok to just create something for yourself and put it out there in a "take it or leave it" way if you're not charging for it, this is more about the projects that do want more people to use them, but just never manage to present themselves in the right way.)
> I didn't understand how this connects to the first paragraph at first, but I think you're saying this playthrough is an analog to someone making such documentation, thus saving DF from such a fate?
(Not OP) Possibly, but one of the repeated themes in Boatmurdered is a number of fortress defenses (some with considerable collateral damage) attached to a variety of scattered and unmarked levers.
Does pulling this lever lower the drawbridge, irrigate the fields, or douse the world in cleansing magma? Only one way to tell!
A Boatmurdered read is one of the few times I actually burst out laughing in front of my screen - multiple times.
Every time I read it I want to get back into dwarf fortress, but this damn game introduces so much new stuff over time that I can't shake off the feeling it's just too much for me. I _loved_ that game until about ten years back but haven't played in ages.
Why would want to hear a so wonderfully written story changed into a shallow, awkwardly phrased shadow of itself, read by robot voices in podcaster cadence?
If you've not been back in a while, give it a look a lot has been added. There's multi-tile enemies now, and a UI!
If you do go back, there's an option in the Game tab in the settings to bring back keyboard controls for area selection called "Keyboard cursor enabled".
(The submission should have a [2006] in the title)
As silly as it sounds to say, the importance of Boatmurdered can't be understated. Boatmurdered was an internet sensation and put Dwarf Fortress on the map; the depth and complexity of the simulation was mind-blowing to read about for the era (and it's still more-or-less unmatched in many ways). Without that there'd be no Infiniminer (and later, no Rimworld, no Factorio), and without that there'd be no Minecraft.
Nitpick, but I think you mean “can’t be overstated” - no matter how important you state the thing to be, it’s not overstated, because the thing is just that important. Hence, can’t be overstated.
Listen, my capacity for malapropisms can't be understated.
Maybe he meant "mustn't be understated", so "can't" as in "mustn't".
Not to argue about idioms, what you say is right.
Then it sounds authoritarian, "we'll have a beef if I hear you understated boutmurdered"
Similar to "I could care less".
I tried to get into dwarf fortress, but always went back to Rimworld occasionally and mostly Oxygen Not Included.
TL;DR: Is it possible that it seems to you that Dwarf Fortress was the first game with procedural generation?
Full comment:
Factorio wouldn't exist with Dwarf Fortress?
If this is a claim that Dwarf Fortress paved the way for deep(er) simulation games, enabling Factorio, I don't think that's accurate.
I was ~18 in 2006 and a huge fan of simulation games when I was growing up. There were plenty with depth that approximated Factorio.
I've never heard of Infiniminer or Rimworld.
5 minute review of Infiniminer shows its a very different game and has a specific triad of inspirations named by the creator, all of which predate Dwarf Fortress. (Team Fortress, Infinifrag, and Motherload)
Rimworld is nearly a decade after Dwarf Fortress, so its impossible for me to claim it wouldn't exist without it, and I believe vice versa.
Notch (the original creator of Minecraft) mentioned he got inspired by DF:
> Infiniminer is the main inspiration for the blocky design and the terrain deforming. Dwarf Fortress is the main inspiration for the survival game mode, and this is where I want to take the majority of the gameplay.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120126163153/http://notch.tumb...
Kovarex (creator of Factorio) mentions Minecraft mod(s):
> I always loved minecraft mods like industrial craft, but limitations of minecraft were my motivation to create something on my own.
https://forum.industrial-craft.net/thread/8845-factorio/
and not getting job at Mojang:
> I had this great idea to apply for a job at Mojang as working on Minecraft might be very inspiring. I didn't get any reply, and later on, I decided to try to make something on my own.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170324040836/https://www.minec...
My curiosity/claim is neither "There are 0 games inspired by Dwarf Fortress" nor "Minecraft was not inspired by Dwarf Fortress" :)
Rather, 2 of the 3 specific games named, none of which are Minecraft, seem directly contradicted. I'm curious about the larger idea OP was getting at.
> Factorio wouldn't exist with Dwarf Fortress?
According to Factorio's developers, they were heavily inspired by Minecraft factory mods like IndustrialCraft. Minecraft is commonly said to have been inspired by Infiniminer.
I'm not aware of Infinimer being inspired by Dwarf Fortress.
RimWorld is basically "Dwarf Fortress on an alien planet", although the simulation doesn't go as ridiculously deep. RimWorld has in turn inspired a bunch of attempts to do "RimWorld on a spaceship," but none of so far have achieved the status of being a "classic".
No, their claim is that specific lineage of inspirations led to the games we enjoy today. It is very unlikely that the games would exist in the same form without the innovations and discoveries made along the way.
This is true, of course.
Please don't take the wrong way: is it LLM generated? If so, it disturbed me, I thought I had an excellent ear but I wouldn't have caught it without the sugary "innovations and discoveries". That made me read again and note the LLM sheen of words directly related to the topic but aren't engaged in discussion or cognizant of the social purpose of a comment thread (ex. A) there is no "specific lineage of inspiration_s_" mentioned, just one game. B) its not "games we enjoy today", its rather old games. C) my reply is curious about OP and procedural generation D) vague, can't be engaged with, generally correct claim that "today's games wouldn't exist without yesterdays")
>There were plenty with depth that approximated Factorio.
Curious if you could name a handful.
SimCity, Age of Empires, Sim$X (they really need to rerelease SimAnt), Roller Coaster Tycoon were my gotos, off the top of my head. Railroad Tycoon is probably the best obvious simile but also wasn't my favorite. Too much management :)
I don't know if that's appropriate, but that's an opportunity for me to boost this little tool I made : https://github.com/Arwalk/lparchive2epub
This tool builds an epub file from a let's play from lparchive.
Installation is through pip, it requires python >= 3.12.
Boatmurdered has been built with it for the occasion on https://github.com/Arwalk/lparchive2epub/blob/master/prebuil... (click on raw to get it) , but i wouldn't advise on downloading stuff from the internet without prior verifications, of course.
I'd love to have some feedback on it and its output, considering i've been the only one using it so far, afaik.
My favorite Dwarf Fortress playthrough description and did a good job of explaining how the game actually works and how different people approach the game. I believe someone made a comic or animation or something based on this specific playthrough.
Reminds me a lot of sofrware engineering projects where someone works on this pet project for a long time then someone else comes in and completely ignores it or has no idea how to use it because there's no documentation...
> Reminds me a lot of sofrware engineering projects where someone works on this pet project for a long time then someone else comes in and completely ignores it or has no idea how to use it because there's no documentation...
I didn't understand how this connects to the first paragraph at first, but I think you're saying this playthrough is an analog to someone making such documentation, thus saving DF from such a fate?
The general point is certainly true, there's a lot of projects out there that never see as much use as they could, where someone has put a lot of effort into the work, but never managed to present it in an accessible way - where you can't even tell what problem it's solving, even if you're dealing with that problem at that very moment.
No documentation is one obvious way this happens, but there's also lots of projects where there's a good amount of documentation but only at the wrong abstraction level. It's easy to get lost in the implementation and document only the minutiae, but taking the small step to imagine your past self, go back to the big picture, and write just a few paragraphs from that perspective, can make a project so much more usable for others. (It's also ok to just create something for yourself and put it out there in a "take it or leave it" way if you're not charging for it, this is more about the projects that do want more people to use them, but just never manage to present themselves in the right way.)
> I didn't understand how this connects to the first paragraph at first, but I think you're saying this playthrough is an analog to someone making such documentation, thus saving DF from such a fate?
(Not OP) Possibly, but one of the repeated themes in Boatmurdered is a number of fortress defenses (some with considerable collateral damage) attached to a variety of scattered and unmarked levers.
Does pulling this lever lower the drawbridge, irrigate the fields, or douse the world in cleansing magma? Only one way to tell!
No.
It's because it's a succession play (series of users, each plays one in game year before handing it to the next.)
So the various mechanisms set up for drawbridges, flood control etc by player 2-3.... aren't labeled / clear to player 7...
It looks like the animation had to be abandoned in favor of real life commitments unfortunately: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60750.0
This artist made a short series for another LP that are really charming: https://youtube.com/@starguarded
A Boatmurdered read is one of the few times I actually burst out laughing in front of my screen - multiple times.
Every time I read it I want to get back into dwarf fortress, but this damn game introduces so much new stuff over time that I can't shake off the feeling it's just too much for me. I _loved_ that game until about ten years back but haven't played in ages.
The Deadwood narrative in one of the parts put me off. I might read it again but I'll ask ChatGPT to clean that part up.
Does anyone have a pdf of all of the pages together? This seems great to listen to as a NotebookLM podcast on a commute to work on Monday.
Better yet, if someone has already _done_ that Notebook Lm podcast and has a link to it, please share!
Why would want to hear a so wonderfully written story changed into a shallow, awkwardly phrased shadow of itself, read by robot voices in podcaster cadence?
Yes!! Such a classic
Dwarf Fortress is a single player game. But if you take a saved game and pass it around you can take off from where others left off.
Boatmurdered is a Dwarf Fortress game session done by different people in this way, which is a good intro to the game for those who haven't played it.
tempts me to finally pick up dwarf fortress
that will keep me away from new factorio for a sufficient time for that world to settle out and become safe, surely
If you've not been back in a while, give it a look a lot has been added. There's multi-tile enemies now, and a UI!
If you do go back, there's an option in the Game tab in the settings to bring back keyboard controls for area selection called "Keyboard cursor enabled".
I got it on the steam deck but it needs a keyboard so I haven’t actually played it yet.
Absolute classic.