Thinking about a Dwarf Fortress type game...

Lately I've been thinking about making my own version of Dwarf Fortress. It's a big undertaking and probably not something I could realistically get around to doing anytime soon, but I can't help but think about it.

Assuming most people aren't familiar with it, DF is an incredibly complicated medieval sandbox simulation game akin to Pharaoh or SimCity with more Rogue-Like randomization elements. You might know it as the game that inspired Minecraft, but Minecraft only scratches the surface of its progenitor. DF's level of simulation is altogether more complicated than it needs to be and something like 10 years in the making, so making a game that is "like Dwarf Fortress" would be about simplifying it. In particular, I tend to look at Sierra's Pharaoh as an attractive alternative to the way DF does certain things.

Core to the DF experience is its fairly complex personality generator and realistic simulation. So your mayor might be a fat but muscular dwarf with auburn hair who likes carrot wine and schist and used to be the mason who built the sandstone tables in the main dining hall. Your top warrior might name his favorite spear "Thread Breeze, the Cane of Impulse" after using it to slay the Marsh Titan "Powdery Damp" who had killed 7 dwarves in its rampage. Playing DF is a very personal experience, so while I think there's room for simplification, I definitely need to keep that personal touch in the end product. I'm thinking it may not be necessary to track personal information for every single citizen, but a few celebrities could have real identities. Positions like The Mayor, Chief Constable, High Priest, Squadron Commander, Tavern Keeper, a Legendary Swordsmith, etc.

Next important thing is the concept of Industry. Let's say you want some pottery. First you need a Kiln, a furnace-building, so you need some fire-safe building materials like stone to build it out of. Once you have your kiln, you can collect some clay, from a clay-yielding area. Next the kiln needs some fuel, so chop down a tree, bring the wood to a Wood Burner and create some charcoal. Or, if you're so lucky, your miners might dig up some coal that you can process into coke at the Smelter. Now that you have clay and fuel, your potter can build you a clay pot. But if you want to store dwarven booze in that pot, you need to glaze it to make it water-tight. So you need more fuel, a glazing material, like ash or cassiterite, and a glazer dwarf can glaze you up a pot to store more food and booze. And this goes on and on for every material in the game, metals, gems, carpentry, masonry, textiles, crafts, etc.

Compare DF's Industry with Pharaoh's. To make Pottery in Pharaoh, you build a Clay Pit in a clay-yielding area, and then a Kiln and a Stockpile somewhere convenient. These are built with money, rather than building materials. The Clay Pit generates clay, a worker brings it to the Stockpile. The Kiln takes the clay from the Stockpile and turns the clay into pottery. The pottery goes to the Stockpile and a Bazaar takes it from there and sells it to residential districts. Dwarf Fortress also has Stockpiles, but these are optional, items can be left lying on the ground until someone decides to use it. The trade-off is that DF's laissez-faire approach to item positions can suck up a lot of computing power, with mature fortresses often dropping to 1 or 2fps, a condition known as FPS-Death, although some players muddle through it.

The final important component is combat and defense. Suffice it to say, I'm not thrilled about the way combat works in DF, overly complicated at times and often too costly, but the need for combat and defense is essential to what makes Dwarf Fortress entertaining. (DF's slogan is "Losing is Fun") Pharaoh's combat system is also less than ideal, so whatever I use would not be based on these games. I've been thinking, it might be ideal to have the game switch to some kind of combat mode when a siege or megabeast attacks. The obvious thing would be RTS style combat, but I'm not a huge fan of such games. I'd prefer something like Dynasty Warriors or Disgaea but this would mean switching to a very different system of game.

 

Okay.

Spoiler

Not sure why you made the thread.

 

To talk. I like talking. Sharing ideas. Putting thoughts in motion. Getting balls rolling, gears turning. Firing up the backburner. How to do you expect to make a good game without talking to someone about it?

Honestly, I did want to talk more about what I'd do differently, but it took so long to write up what Dwarf Fortress is like.

So one of the main things I would do differently is to use animal-people (anthros) instead of elves and dwarves etc. Couple of reasons for this. First thing is that I'm annoyed with this idea of "classic fantasy" that stems solely from Tolkienian literature. Fantasy should be more free-form. And one of the things that has always struck me as fantastical is a world full of animal-people. Even if you're in a world without everyday magic, the existence of a talking fox or whatever will grab you and whisk you away from the ordinary.

Second, I find animal-people to be a better source of inspiration. It can be tough to imagine "what is a dwarven society like?" or "how is a dwarven society different?" and if you get too creative, you know that someone out there will be thinking, "wait, that's not how dwarves are supposed to be!" But if you set out to create a fox society or raven society or iguana society, you have something from the real world to base it on, you have real-world differences in behavior and body plan that you can use. I have actually done changes like this in Dwarf Fortress already, using mods, and I've made 3 main animal races, the Lagomers, rabbit people, Vulps, fox people, and Komodos, goanna people. Mainly chose these animals because they all dig burrows. Each race also uses weapons based on Earth cultures, Lagomers will use English weapons like bills and backswords, Vulps use japanese weapons like katanas and kanabos, Komodos use Egyptian weapons like khopeshes and fan axes. If I was going beyond a mod, I would definitely extend their cultural links to more than weapons, clothing style, building styles, etc.

There's also a lot of animals to draw from. If give yourself a task like, "I want a fantasy race to be like Ancient Egypt in this world," you've got a shorter list of sensible candidates than if you say, "I want an animal race to be like Ancient Egypt". And I don't like the concept of evil races, like goblins, orcs, ogres, etc. Sentient beings should be able to make moral choices. With animal races, you can have something that's vicious, like a goanna or shark or badger, but at the end of the day, they're just animals, a part of nature, they are not evil.

And this leaves me with the design question of what animal-people would I use for my own Critter Fortress game? I'm comfortable with Lagomers, Vulps and Komodos, but again, I picked these because they are burrowing critters and DF is a game with a lot of digging in it. I don't know if I would want to keep DF's vertical nature. Although, I do like the idea of an underworld, like the caverns of DF or the UnderDark of D&D, and again, that's something that makes you feel like you're in a fantasy world. One thing that bores me about the caverns of DF is that they are pretty much the same every time. There are loads of above ground biomes, but only one below ground biome. It would be more fun to find places like mushroom jungles, moss savannas, underground deserts, prehistoric oceans, hot springs, volcanic vents, ancient cities, etc.

Branding is a bit delicate when using animal-people. I call my DF mod, Furry Fortress, and I often get the feedback that "The 'Furry' part made me hesitate, but I finally tried it and it's pretty cool". But then I've also had people tell me they tried the mod because they like furry stuff to begin with.

 

I love Dwarf Fortress! Or, I loved it. I remember spending a lot of time watching tutorials 8-9 years ago, just trying to get into this intricate game. I played it for a while, and then got distracted. I was never a good player by any means, but I enjoyed it a lot.
I can see why Furry Fortress might not be the best branding. Sure, you'd probably hit a target group that you wouldn't normally do, but you will face some negativity from using that name. Is it about Furries? If not, I'd find another name for it and let the antropromorphic animal crowd decide for themselves, whether they like it or not.
I find the decision to use animal people interesting, though. Tropes are important, when people relate to stuff, and elves/dwarves are so established that it's much easier to base your lore and game on those. In DF the whole thing about Dwarves writing intricate runic tales on the walls of the mine just fits with what people would expect and the whole going insane while making a legendary whatever is also something that just fits within mainstream dwarven lore. With animal people you are a bit more on your own, which requires you to do a lot more research and build a universe that people can relate to. This is very hard. I see you cover some of this already, but I want you to consider that you'll have to do some more ground work and build something bigger. I think the reason it works in Dwarf Fortress is that it is still Dwarf Fortress, so there's a connection between the lore there, and your new characters.

Have you tried RimWorld? I find it to be a great and more accessible version of Dwarf Fortress, but it might be too light for what you want to accomplish.