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Noclip Blog: We're Making a Dwarf Fortress Documentary
🕑 Added 2022-11-28 19:21:33 +0000 UTCThere are few games that capture the imagination quite like Dwarf Fortress. And fewer still that have such an immediate barrier to entry.
Back in 2019 we interviewed Tarn Adams for about 30 minutes and I spent most of it with either may jaw agape, or laughing hysterically at the tales the game's emergent narrative is capable of spitting up.
Tarn is just one reason why we always wanted to do a full documentary on Dwarf Fortress, but there are so many others. Like how he and his brother have worked on this game for nearly 20 years. How they've been giving it away for free this entire time, subsidizing development through a Patreon fund. How Zach's medical issues forced them to look for a way to sell the game. How they worked with a publisher to outsource the creation of graphics - the game's most requested feature. To say nothing about just how interesting the game is mechanically. And so many of these stories converge on December 6th when the game finally comes to Steam.
Watch our video on Dwarf Fortress from 2020
In truth we've been talking to Kitfox Games and the Adams brothers about visiting for years but like so many fun ideas Covid-19 put that on hold. So thankfully the pandemic has given us a window to travel to the boys for arguably their most important milestone ever.
Noclip will be embedding with Bay 12 Games for the week of Dwarf Fortress' Steam launch. Interviewing the brothers about the highs and lows of this remarkable journey. Filming the final days before launch, capturing the moment the game goes live, and seeing how it all pans out.
We plan to get this documentary out in Q1 2023 but right now we'd like to welcome any ideas / feedback from our Patrons and the Dwarf Fortress community at large.
So, what would you like to see in this documentary?
- Are there aspects of the game you'd like to know more about?
- Are there stories or people within the community worth exploring?
- What parts of the game are the most technically interesting to you?
- Are there any stories from Dwarf Fortress history we should definitely know about?
Let us know in the comments. Our best work comes when we can openly collaborate with the communities around these games so if you have any thoughts, comments or concerns we'd love to hear them.
And to our Patrons, thanks for supporting our work.
This should be a fun one!
Danny
Comments
Duckerby
So hype. Especially with the success the Steam release had.
Captain Invictus
YEYEYEYEYEYEYEYEYE
Alexandre Moreira
Dude yes! So cool!
Christophe Fettouhi
you could stream on twitch playing it from the location after its launched ad you filmed things. that could be really fun to celebrate with them and enjoying the game
Connor McNamara
I guess one thing I'd be most curious about is how the devs feel about the presence of Dwarf Fortress vs its actual playerbase, and how competitors like Rimworld might be affecting development. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking Dwarf Fortress is really cool, but also thinking it's not something I'll ever play because of the complexity and high learning curve, where something like Rimworld is clearly trying to pull off a similar experience while being more accessible, and even that can be a steep hill to climb. Is that something that affects their decision making? Does it bother them that the player base isn't as large as the mythos, so to speak, or is the reputation of the game satisfaction enough?
Max Goldstein
You touched on it in the post but: how do you make people want to buy something that is already free? How do you retrofit modern graphics onto this game in a way that works mechanically and aesthetically but adds enough to justify the purchase price?
Max Goldstein
As a fellow programmer I would also be interested in this but I doubt it has broad appeal. So maybe NoClip can get the devs to talk about this for 20 minutes and release that footage as a separate video on the second channel?
Surells
Just bear in mind everything you learned from the Fallout 76 episode. The game is clearly great and you like the creators, but try and keep some distance. And I say that with all respect - you guys are making brilliant work and I trust your judgement. I'm sure you don't need my advice.
Annie VanderMeer
Absolutely love this! I first got into learning about Dwarf Fortress via the YouTube channel Kruggsmash - his weaving together his drawings with the emergent narrative happening in the game (and some great behind-the-scenes looks at systems) has fascinated me for years, and finding out the development of the project is equally fascinating is deeply exciting to me. As for questions... I know that in development there are always the things that start out as bugs and end up as features, and that there are more than a few systems in Dwarf Fortress that have been... let's say QUIRKY at launch. I'd love to know what ones they decided to keep vs. why they'd throw them out (like the exploit for farming mermaid bones!) I'd also like to know a bit more about Adventure Mode - it seems to be intended to bring a bit more D&D or adventuring party style play to DF. How was that inspired, hows it going, etc? And do they see themselves happy with keeping DF going for the foreseeable future, or is there another game (spinoff or no) they dream of making? Finally, as with many games with long lifespans, I know modding has played a part in the longevity of DF - what are their takes on it, especially with potential conflict with the introduction of graphics? (Yay, I wrote a novel here, my apologies) /sheepish
rizen
Were there any notable rewrites of the underlying code of the game as technology marched on over the past 2 decades? Things they could take advantage of they could have never thought possible in the early 2000's?
Damon Perron-Laurin
Bronzemurder (Not to be confused with Boatmurdered) is another classic story from the community (with a fully drawn comic) and one of my favorite!
Snoopy20111
SO ready for this. I'd love to ask: how do the brothers keep a sense of direction after actual decades of development? Related, how on earth does one debug a game like Dwarf Fortress, where reaching the exact scenario an issue occurred could take hours? This isn't really a "famous" story but my favorite memory of my first time playing Adventure Mode: the first house I came upon on the road, I entered, and had a nice, casual conversation with a male human being consumed by a giant crocodile. His buddy kept me company when they ate me next.
Evan Bailey
Dwarf Fortress has a codebase that is nearly 20 years old. Wow! As a programmer I've always been interested in the challenges that Zach and Tarn had in maintaining such a long-lived project as just a two-person team, even as they continued to add features. What approaches did they take to keep the code maintainable over time? Are there parts of it that are so calcified that they just can't touch it without the game exploding?
Lee Brownhill
Looking forward to it guys
Dez Revis
What advice would the brothers give on working on a game with complex systems like this?
Brian Marsh
Holy crap, this is amazing news! I'd love to learn more about how they came to the decision to focus on engine vs graphics early on - was ASCII just easier to deal with/enable them to focus on mechanics?
wightfyre
Not up on current DF community stories, but Boatmurdered is a classic
