the bblog

wherein bbot drinks with dorks

So I attended the recent Dwarf Fortress meetup.

It was about as awkward as you'd expect a superfan meetup would be, but alcohol lubricated things somewhat. Awkwardness wasn't lessened by me showing up, admitting that no, I didn't have a forum account, well, I haven't actually played the game that much, or at all, really.

Dwarf Fortress is the very picture of a game I would like to play.

Procedural world generation and mythos creation? Excruciatingly in-depth item crafting? Mining, but real mining, with actual ore, and ore processing, and smelting? Magma forges? Yes, please!

But when I actually try to play, I am presented with the paralysis of choice. Indeed, I am not choosing one thing, but eliminating thirty others. If I make it past this, I smash into the sheer wall of the Dwarf Fortress Learning Curve, and promptly resolve to figure it out later, when I have time.

Later, When I Have Time, is a mythical point far, far in the future, where I have both free time and liquid assets in infinite abundance. It is safe to assume that this mythical reckoning will never come to pass in any of our lifetimes.

But the embarrassment at attending a meetup for a game I have never played for more than five minutes got me past the world generation phase, and to a point where I was actually digging into a mountain and planning rooms, at which point everyone starved to death, because seeds are filed under food, but aren't actually food. Bug report! A proper whine post will wait until the next patch, since I am sensitive to complaining about things that are already fixed. Tarn, his spies being legion, has discovered my plan, and has thus vowed never to release the patch. Fie!