Talk:Dwarf Fortress

Open-ended or sandbox
I don't agree with this: "There are no objectives, with the player being free to decide how to go about managing the colony and making them interact with the environment, thus making it an open-ended and sandbox-style game. Since there is no way to win, it only ends when the entire colony is defeated by the various possible threats, or the player decides to abandon or retire the fortress." If you play the game for any length of time, it's clear that certain events are hard-wired into the game: the appearance of the king or queen, mandates forcing the player to perform certain tasks, all with the objective of driving the fortress deeper and deeper underground and into the destruction that awaits there. It is also possible to achieve small, stable fortresses that persist for a long time, even if they are boring, which is in effect a kind of winning. And eradicating the subterranean threat entirely has also been shown to be possible. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=156319.0) So without wanting to be iconoclastic: it sounds great and I wish the game was open-ended and like a sandbox. But it isn't. Totorotroll (talk) 21:08, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Tilesets
The main article states that the game had "solely text-based graphics" for the majority of the game's history, only adding tilesets in 2022, but this is incorrect. The 2022 premium release added official sprites, but these are *not* the same as graphics/tilesets, and the game in fact supported these in versions as early as v0.28 (possibly earlier; I only got this information from a brief scan of the Dwarf Fortress wiki ). While the game did not have official tilesets, users were free to create their own, and share them with the community. Anonymous 19:02, 1 August 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.65.140.92 (talk)


 * It should be accurate now. I think part of the problem was that it was too technical and explanatory, especially for the lead section. The same could be said for rest of the paragraph. Neutral0814 (talk) 02:10, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Going over the body now. I've looked at the sources that are cited alongside sentences that contain the word "text-based" and none of the sources refer to the graphics as "text-based". For example § Legacy has the phrase "Justin Ma, one of the developers of FTL: Faster Than Light, commented on its use of text-based graphics," but the source uses the term "ascii graphics". "ASCII graphics" is more accurate than "text-based", so i'm going with that here and a few other places. Neutral0814 (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I did not read your comment carefully and so anybody who read your comment and then read my responses and reviewed my edits may be confused. You're correct about the "solely text-based graphics" statement being wrong, but for a different reason. The mistake the article made was that it used the term "text-based" when it should have used "tile-based" or some other suitable term. A true text-based game does not use images and instead uses actual screen text, i.e. a TUI or teleprinter, something the game never did by default. (Linux version did have a text-based mode option, but I'm unsure if the feature still exists.) The game has always primarily used tilesets, even for ascii characters, so DF is a tile-based game. About sprites not being graphics/tilesets though: the new graphical tileset is still a tileset, even if it displays overlapping tiles in a sprite-like manner. Neutral0814 (talk) 02:14, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Updated Images
As the game released on steam and itch with a official tile set, it probably how most players will be experiencing the game moving forwards. Is it time to change out the game play images to the official tile set instead of ascii? Maybe keeping 1 or 2 of the old ones to still show how it used to/can look look like. PocketFerret (talk) 00:12, 28 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree with adding the new pictures, but the ASCII ones can coexist. Firstly, that is what the game was for 20+ years, so it's of big significance in its history. Secondly, Dwarf Fortress is still a free game, but people playing that version will only see ASCII visuals. There are several people who can't or don't want to pay for video games in general. TakodaNotDakota (talk) 22:03, 25 February 2024 (UTC)