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The Minds Behind Dwarf Fortress

Zach and Tarn Adams spent 11 years in obscurity working on one game. Now it's in the MOMA.

May. 8 2013

Posted by: Drew

In This Episode:

Dwarf Fortress

73 Comments

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csl316

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Watching this after the full release in 2022 is fascinating.

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scarslasher

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I like the comment he made about the UI.

Adventure mode needs a less confusing UI.

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MeatSim

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Edited By MeatSim

I totally forgot about Dave's Dwarf Fortress videos. He needs to do another one of those when he stops by the office.

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Baal_Sagoth

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Edited By Baal_Sagoth

Excellent interview. Very interesting to get some insight into their development process and unrelated interests. Plus, they just seem like pretty nice and relaxed dudes.

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Vyper

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Edited By Vyper

Finding the Dwarf Fortress guys at EVE is a perfect analogy for the games.

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PopBot

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Edited By PopBot

That dude's blue sweatshirt with green pattern... Bay Hay & Feed for life!

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SatelliteOfLove

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Edited By SatelliteOfLove

"We don't care about expanding the audience at all."

Simultaneously, millions of Dogma-chuggers worldwide gasped as one.

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Nerolus

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Edited By Nerolus

Man, Zach is a nervous nelly.

Great interview.

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RVonE

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@dan_citi said:

@luck702 said:

I think we need some more Dave Fortress.

...and Blade Runner :(

Unfortunately, Dave is no longer with the site.

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Scampbell

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Edited By Scampbell

@onarum:

@onarum said:

@scampbell said:

@mikelemmer said:

@flint0 said:

hoe about some fuking GRAPHICS

That's what the usermade tilesets are for. The brothers make the game, the community provide the graphics.

Also the game is extremely power hungry because of the amount of calculations it has to do.

I would be unlikely to really work with 3D graphics. Besides after you've been playing it for a while your mind does the "rendering" for you.

Nah, the game is power hungry because all of the code is single threaded, if it was multi threaded and using the GPU for graphics rendering it would be 100% doable, never going to happen though.

I really don't mind anyway, the user made tilesets are more than enough for me, phoebus's are pretty nice, and DF is the greatest thing ever, can't play with the ascii stuff though...

Right, in retrospect that makes a lot sense for a game that has been in development since 2002.

Like you I've gotten used to a tileset (Mike Mayday's compilation) which means anything else just doesn't do it for me.

Man, all this Dwarf Fortress talk really makes me want to play it.

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kycinematic

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These dudes are on track to making one of the greatest games ever.

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ectoplasma

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Ha! Those guys know their games ;).

Civ, U7 & U:UW are some of my favorite games ever.

Also: Civ4>Civ5.

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CptMorganCA

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It looks like the Youtube version of the interview is only 2 mins long for some reason :O

Has the video player been buggy recently, more specifically the video randomly stopping playback for no reason? I'm running Chrome.

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viking_funeral

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Edited By viking_funeral

I love Dwarf Fortress. I love that Dwarf Fortress exists. I love that people like Toady are out there.

EDIT: "And it's not Civ 5"

Thank you! Gah, what a horrible transition from Civ IV.

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BigD145

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Edited By BigD145

I forgot before, but Tarn made a speech at the EVE Fanfest. It can be found on twitch at http://www.twitch.tv/ccp/b/396300023. Tarn starts about 5 hours 21 minutes in.

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GasparNolasco

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Must... resist... urge... to download... Dwarf Fortress... again!

Seriously checked their site to see how the development is going, but they didn't add any update since the last time I played :/. Good thing, though -- had they updated I'd probably fall prey to my DF addiction again.

Those merchant drowning floodgates wont build themselves.

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Dan_CiTi

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Edited By Dan_CiTi

Very cool game, while it is not something for me (an extreme amount of mechanics and complexity with a large time commitment), it is nice to see the depth of ideas bleed into games like The Elder Scrolls, RDR, and Minecraft just to name a few.

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Dan_CiTi

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@luck702 said:

I think we need some more Dave Fortress.

...and Blade Runner :(

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bgdiner

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Edited By bgdiner

I think I like these video interviews more so than those on the dumptruck.

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Dagbiker

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@onarum said:

@scampbell said:

@mikelemmer said:

@flint0 said:

hoe about some fuking GRAPHICS

That's what the usermade tilesets are for. The brothers make the game, the community provide the graphics.

Also the game is extremely power hungry because of the amount of calculations it has to do.

I would be unlikely to really work with 3D graphics. Besides after you've been playing it for a while your mind does the "rendering" for you.

Nah, the game is power hungry because all of the code is single threaded, if it was multi threaded and using the GPU for graphics rendering it would be 100% doable, never going to happen though.

I really don't mind anyway, the user made tilesets are more than enough for me, phoebus's are pretty nice, and DF is the greatest thing ever, can't play with the ascii stuff though...

You are right, but he has found a way to program what he wants and get paid to do it. He hasn't programed multithreading because it wouldnt be fun, or perhaps he has tried several times and couldn't get it to work. I say this with C# open in my second monitor and c++ on my desktop, this is exactly how i program. If I start a project try to get something working and cant, then I get bummed and drop it for a while, so I often focus on things I know I can get working. Things that are relatively easy to integrate such as non windows or hardware functions.

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headphonehalo

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Edited By headphonehalo

@vuud said:

Too bad this game will never be anywhere near finished.

Let's hope so.

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onarum

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@mikelemmer said:

@flint0 said:

hoe about some fuking GRAPHICS

That's what the usermade tilesets are for. The brothers make the game, the community provide the graphics.

Also the game is extremely power hungry because of the amount of calculations it has to do.

I would be unlikely to really work with 3D graphics. Besides after you've been playing it for a while your mind does the "rendering" for you.

Nah, the game is power hungry because all of the code is single threaded, if it was multi threaded and using the GPU for graphics rendering it would be 100% doable, never going to happen though.

I really don't mind anyway, the user made tilesets are more than enough for me, phoebus's are pretty nice, and DF is the greatest thing ever, can't play with the ascii stuff though...

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Scratch

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Edited By Scratch

Giant Bomb needs to revisit Dwarf Fortress. Maybe convince Vinny/Drew to get into it?

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Edited By amafi

Tarn easily seems like the most normal doctor of mathematics I've ever come across.

And everyone needs to take the time to fuck around with DF. If you don't feel like building huge mines, just sim the world and read the story and jump into the world in adventure mode and strangle wolves with their own intestines. Good times.

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LordPolish

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I've dabbled in this game for years and I've only ready articles about these guys. Nice to see them on video talk about their game.

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nophilip

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Edited By nophilip

Hooray! DF content!

I'd love to have a podcast with guys like Tarn or Chris Hecker where they just have a big roundtable about game design theory.

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w00tazn

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Edited By w00tazn

I got to learn Calculus from Tarn when he was a professor out at Texas A&M. I still remember the last day I had class with him and he mentioned that he was moving back to Seattle to work on DF full time. crazy.

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Luck702

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I think we need some more Dave Fortress.

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Scampbell

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@flint0 said:

hoe about some fuking GRAPHICS

That's what the usermade tilesets are for. The brothers make the game, the community provide the graphics.

Also the game is extremely power hungry because of the amount of calculations it has to do.

I would be unlikely to really work with 3D graphics. Besides after you've been playing it for a while your mind does the "rendering" for you.

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Scampbell

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Edited By Scampbell

Dwarf fortress is definitely one of my all time favorite games, I would have loved to have a longer interview, still pretty cool though.

PS. Why do you need that music?

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MarkJW

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Edited By MarkJW

DF is great, the stories that have happened in the succession games from the SA forums are amazing. Boatmurdered and the rest, all amazing. Wish I had the patience to play it without third-party hacks, but it's just so darn complex... Oh well, maybe ten years from now.

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sup

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Edited By sup

Awesome interview, can't wait to see more stuff from the fanfest or other locations where you guys go.

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brendanwins

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What a great and unexpected thing to come out of an event unrelated to anything remotely similar to Dwarf Fortress. I really enjoy looks into the indie developer world, and Patrick seems really good at asking the right questions and getting these people to open up about their thoughts and processes as developers make these games.

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ICantBeStopped

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Innocence is not a name, and neither is Tarn.

Nice interview.

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moonwalksa

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Edited By moonwalksa

@capasso said:

Huh. Those guys seem pretty chill. Which one is the programmer?

Tarn is the programmer. He's the one on the right side of the video.

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BigD145

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BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

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Nekroskop

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Dorf Fort is great.

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videospacegames

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I really tried to play it and think it's absolutely brilliant, I just wish it was more user friendly.

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xite

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The minds behind wet chicken knees.

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ajamafalous

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Edited By ajamafalous

This just made me even more sad that Dave's gone :(

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I was super interested (almost excited) to watch this interview as soon as I saw it existed and the watching itself was really interesting too.

I read the New Yorker (?) article on them a year or so ago but as the creators of this legendary game that is so unique I was curious to see if they were very partiuclar individuals to be able to create that. I've never seen them interviewed in a video before and they were more ordinary than I thought they might be, which was kind of nice and I don't mean that as an implied sleight on them. It was just good to be able to hear their perspectives almost purely because of everything that has been built up in my mind over the years of hearing about this game that continually crops up, always sitting out there on the edge of this scene.

Thanks for catching them Patrick.

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Draxyle

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Edited By Draxyle

Eve and Dwarf Fortress being in the same room is cause for a singularity to collapse in on itself.

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mrsmiley

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Edited By mrsmiley

Drew Scanlon: master of the "MTV sway".

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casper_

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love DF

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Vexxan

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Edited By Vexxan

Great interview!

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SonofSeth

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Dwarf Fortress is something I envision myself playing in my old age, when it finally get's some videogame features. I'm shallow that way, need something more than pure abstraction, but I'm completely fascinated with the idea of DF.

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@flint0 said:

hoe about some fuking GRAPHICS

That's what the usermade tilesets are for. The brothers make the game, the community provide the graphics.

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fisk0

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fisk0  Moderator

I kinda think stuff like Dwarf Fortress, EVE Online and to some extent Minecraft and Ultima Online are some of the strongest contenders in the "are videogames art" debate. These are games that are not really attempting to do something that can be done in any other medium (whereas most games try to imitate the narrative structure of a film or TV series - the story is told linearly and with minimum player interaction - for the most part the player is expected to watch as the story unfolds inbetween tangentially related missions, rather than taking an active part in it or the game's world). The stories that emerge in these largely unscripted games, where player input - whether it's between the player and the complex, near chaotic systems of the game world, or largely unrestricted interactions between players are unique to the medium, and is something that was pretty much the holy grail that visionaries in theatre and TV could only dream of 50 years ago.