(no subject)
Oct. 14th, 2011 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI'm not quite sure why it is that I'm so attracted to these sorts of sand-box games like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress. DF is only a recent distraction; I've seen my brother, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
akreaveter, playing with it for a while, but I was put off a bit by the learning curve and a certain lack of time. Minecraft hasn't been at the forefront of my interests lately, but there were times when I could easily sit in front of a computer for many hours straight, building my theatre. There was one day where I did just that, working on it for literally over ten hours straight, and I can see doing that with Dwarf Fortress too.
I showed this game, with all of it's ASCII-graphiced splendor to my lovedanaeris who said that she couldn't understand why I would spend so much time constructing things in systems like Minecraft and DF when I could instead invest that time in learning to use something like Google Sketchup and end up creating things that are actually pretty. And to some extent, I agree.
But I also disagree. See, while I used the term 'system' in that last paragraph to describe these games, I think there are other equally applicable words. As well as games, I think they could even be called forms of media in themselves. Consistent, if ever-changing, canvases on which to create your own strange art. In truth, I've spent something like twenty or thirty hours, maybe more, in Minecraft, constructing my mid-twenties-inspired Art-Deco movie palace with 1100 seats, a full flyloft and curtains, a projection booth, a fully trapped stage, a green room, a scene shop, and more. I think it at least qualifies as something artistic. Maybe even a work of art on its own, if you look at it the right way.
I don't see Dwarf Fortress as having quite the same artistic appeal, but I do think the landscape has a certain mythic beauty. Once your brain manages to begin parsing all the little green single-quotes, brown-shaded playing-card suit-symbols, blue wavy-looking things that flow along a path, and little letter 'c's and 'd's wandering around the place into things like grass, trees, flowing brooks, and wandering cats and dogs. My fortress, for instance, is cut into a small platform of relatively flat ground on the side of this amazing notch-valley that descends swiftly down toward the south. A small brook flows along nearby, hurtling into a precipitous drop down a waterfall into a narrow eroded chasm that parallels the larger form of the valley. As I look southward down the slope, I find a few places where deposits of hematite come to the surface, and I attack the stone there with pick and shovel, digging small caves into the walls of the valley a score of meters below where my fortress sits on the higher ground to the northeast.
I have a pasture where I put my cows and yaks and chickens. I've built a defensive ditch and a working drawbridge across it to get out. The bridge, as well as the fortified wall, full of arrow slits for my defending crossbowdwarfs to fire at attacking goblins through, are made of fine marble that I have extracted from a quarry I've dug from a large layer of the stone that I've found a few levels below the fortress proper.
Within, I have a furnace for burning wood and making charcoal to fuel my smelters. I have smelters running continually, processing tetrahedrite ore into copper, and hematite into iron. I have a gem cutter to work the various precious and semi-precious stones I've come upon in my excavations, like spinel, agate, tiger iron, and even a rare bit of jade. I have carpenters making bins and barrels, as well as beds to furnish the living quarters I've constructed upstairs for my ever-increasing population. I have one dwarf who brews alcohol for the fortress, and another who cooks fine meals (though, sadly, he seems to have this fondness for putting tallow in everything. And I mean everything. Eww.)
Sometimes there are problems. My brewer kept canceling his brew drink job. Turns out my hunter and butcher were working so well together that every time my carpenter produced a new barrel, it would immediately get filled up with, um, rendered fat. Again, ew. I really need to get a dwarf making soap. But making soap requires lye, and my furnace is too busy making charcoal to fuel my smelter and forges to spend time making wood into lye. So I had to build another carpentry shop to have two people making barrels, in the hope that eventually there would be an extra one to put some beer or something into. Meanwhile, fat was piling up on the floor of my butcher shop, eventually rotting and stinking up the place, making my dwarves unhappy about the smell, because there was nowhere to put it.
And I was laughing the whole time. This game is just funny sometimes! And that's without even starting on the randomly generated names that, on occasion, just have me in hysterics.
I don't know what it is about these games that's so appealing. I love to organize things. I love to see things come together under a plan. I love to feel like I'm building this functioning organization. And I love finding things to laugh about while I'm doing it. And with that, I have to get to class. I'll leave you with a parting link to the game. Maybe you can figure out why it's so appealing. Or maybe you can take a look at it and tell me that you cannot conceive of anyone actually enjoying something like this. Either way, It'd be fun to see other opinions.
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
akreaveter, playing with it for a while, but I was put off a bit by the learning curve and a certain lack of time. Minecraft hasn't been at the forefront of my interests lately, but there were times when I could easily sit in front of a computer for many hours straight, building my theatre. There was one day where I did just that, working on it for literally over ten hours straight, and I can see doing that with Dwarf Fortress too.I showed this game, with all of it's ASCII-graphiced splendor to my love
danaeris who said that she couldn't understand why I would spend so much time constructing things in systems like Minecraft and DF when I could instead invest that time in learning to use something like Google Sketchup and end up creating things that are actually pretty. And to some extent, I agree.But I also disagree. See, while I used the term 'system' in that last paragraph to describe these games, I think there are other equally applicable words. As well as games, I think they could even be called forms of media in themselves. Consistent, if ever-changing, canvases on which to create your own strange art. In truth, I've spent something like twenty or thirty hours, maybe more, in Minecraft, constructing my mid-twenties-inspired Art-Deco movie palace with 1100 seats, a full flyloft and curtains, a projection booth, a fully trapped stage, a green room, a scene shop, and more. I think it at least qualifies as something artistic. Maybe even a work of art on its own, if you look at it the right way.
I don't see Dwarf Fortress as having quite the same artistic appeal, but I do think the landscape has a certain mythic beauty. Once your brain manages to begin parsing all the little green single-quotes, brown-shaded playing-card suit-symbols, blue wavy-looking things that flow along a path, and little letter 'c's and 'd's wandering around the place into things like grass, trees, flowing brooks, and wandering cats and dogs. My fortress, for instance, is cut into a small platform of relatively flat ground on the side of this amazing notch-valley that descends swiftly down toward the south. A small brook flows along nearby, hurtling into a precipitous drop down a waterfall into a narrow eroded chasm that parallels the larger form of the valley. As I look southward down the slope, I find a few places where deposits of hematite come to the surface, and I attack the stone there with pick and shovel, digging small caves into the walls of the valley a score of meters below where my fortress sits on the higher ground to the northeast.
I have a pasture where I put my cows and yaks and chickens. I've built a defensive ditch and a working drawbridge across it to get out. The bridge, as well as the fortified wall, full of arrow slits for my defending crossbowdwarfs to fire at attacking goblins through, are made of fine marble that I have extracted from a quarry I've dug from a large layer of the stone that I've found a few levels below the fortress proper.
Within, I have a furnace for burning wood and making charcoal to fuel my smelters. I have smelters running continually, processing tetrahedrite ore into copper, and hematite into iron. I have a gem cutter to work the various precious and semi-precious stones I've come upon in my excavations, like spinel, agate, tiger iron, and even a rare bit of jade. I have carpenters making bins and barrels, as well as beds to furnish the living quarters I've constructed upstairs for my ever-increasing population. I have one dwarf who brews alcohol for the fortress, and another who cooks fine meals (though, sadly, he seems to have this fondness for putting tallow in everything. And I mean everything. Eww.)
Sometimes there are problems. My brewer kept canceling his brew drink job. Turns out my hunter and butcher were working so well together that every time my carpenter produced a new barrel, it would immediately get filled up with, um, rendered fat. Again, ew. I really need to get a dwarf making soap. But making soap requires lye, and my furnace is too busy making charcoal to fuel my smelter and forges to spend time making wood into lye. So I had to build another carpentry shop to have two people making barrels, in the hope that eventually there would be an extra one to put some beer or something into. Meanwhile, fat was piling up on the floor of my butcher shop, eventually rotting and stinking up the place, making my dwarves unhappy about the smell, because there was nowhere to put it.
And I was laughing the whole time. This game is just funny sometimes! And that's without even starting on the randomly generated names that, on occasion, just have me in hysterics.
I don't know what it is about these games that's so appealing. I love to organize things. I love to see things come together under a plan. I love to feel like I'm building this functioning organization. And I love finding things to laugh about while I'm doing it. And with that, I have to get to class. I'll leave you with a parting link to the game. Maybe you can figure out why it's so appealing. Or maybe you can take a look at it and tell me that you cannot conceive of anyone actually enjoying something like this. Either way, It'd be fun to see other opinions.
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
