Aug 25
I’ve talked about Dwarf Fortress before. It’s like a combination sim strategy game combined with a roguelike, and uses ascii graphics. When you play it, your screen looks sorta like the matrix with random symbols flowing across your screen as you move. It can be quite confusing to play, at least, until you get used to the learning cliff of the game (it’s not a learning curve, it’s a cliff).
Anyhoo, I just realized that although the game had many intricate details, down to injuring specific body organs, the child rearing simulation portion of the game could use some work. For instance, dwarven babies and children do not drink water or milk (though both are in the game). They only consume ale.
Now that’s just strange.
Not only do they consume ale, but they do so straight from the barrel. I mean these tiny little babies and children drag huge barrels of ale around with them sometimes so they can drink them at their favorite statue garden (or goblin trap as the case may be).
Not sure if it’s intentional (it might be) or if it’s just waiting for further development (the game IS still in an unofficial beta), but it does paint dwarves in a particular light when it comes to alcohol consumption if their young’uns prefer ale in their sippy cups.
Dwarf fortress remains an awesome game, but yes, it does have its quirks. I think this is intentional though, I recall reading something about it during the tutorial.
If it makes you feel better: http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/132811/132811,1221231469,1/stock-photo-baby-beer-beer-bottle-with-teat-17296621.jpg
Heh. The scary part of that image is that you know that someone, somewhere in the US has done exactly that, but without the irony.
I think it is probably intentional. A stranger quirk is how you can produce glass from the same patch of sand indefinitely. I once used sand and a lava pool to make a no-digging fortress out of glass. For that matter, keeping invaders out with walls made of glass (wile living in your 11 story wall extremely thin glass tower) is funny in itself.
Ugh. I once tried a no-digging fort. Unfortunately I didn’t have a volcano or other source of magma. I stripped the forest bare before I even got to the second floor of my fort and abandoned the fort shortly thereafter.