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by SkyBelow
1261 days ago
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While you go into detail on the generation of the world, I think the simulation is another major factor that goes into it. Once you start playing the game, the level of detail used in generating the world is now used applied locally to simulating it. An example I like to use is to explain a bug where people's games were ending poorly (or with lots of FUN in dwarf fortress speak) because dwarfs were having mental breakdowns because their pet cats were dying. Which was because the game simulated the cats well enough that they could get alcohol poisoning and die. But why were the cats drinking that much alcohol? Because when they walked through dining rooms, the game simulated the dwarves getting drunk and spilling alcohol which stayed on the floor for some amount of time. If a cat walked over it, it got on their fur. When the cat cleaned themselves, which was also simulated, they would consume some of the alcohol on their fur. The bug was that each micro-dose of alcohol from licking themselves was accidentally being calculated like a full flagon of ale providing the small cat with far too much alcohol. The level of the world generation with the level of simulation create a basis for a fantasy immersion that you cannot find elsewhere. The UI limitations, even with the steam version, do prevent most from becoming immersed into the world, but there seems to be a crowd who are brought in by the fidelity of the simulation and who can get past the UI that let's them experience something that cannot be found elsewhere. |
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You see, in Adventure Mode (akin to a traditional Roguelike in your created DF world, rather than the Colony Sim that is Fortress mode) you can create a character out of whole cloth that gets plopped into the world, or take over an extant character created through world generation. Either way, both characters are fully initialized within the systems of the game, having their own personalities, likes, dislikes, quirks, moral codes, emotional trauma thresholds, etc.
Well, one player noticed over a few runs that their character's eyes were coated with tears. Odd, they thought, so they posted on the Bay12 forums about it. After some investigation, Toady confirmed that the full personality system was still running in the background, and the character was effectively possessed by an out-of-context demon, the player. The character's consciousness was stuck watching utterly helpless as their body did all manner of unspeakable acts (assuming the player was acting as a typical murder-hobo) that conflicted with their innate personalities, were horrified at what they saw, and could do nothing but cry about it.
It's absolutely insane, equal parts disturbing and chilling and, as far as I am aware, an outcome totally unique to Dwarf Fortress created by the ridiculous depth and detail of the interwoven systems.