Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Game Discussion => Classic Roguelikes => Topic started by: jocke the beast on November 13, 2011, 08:29:31 AM
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Topic started here since DF should be a major.Right?!
Anyways, I've just fallen in love...
First off, I've tried 2 times before to really "get into" DF but both times it ended up with me angry of the overwelming UI and just frustrated of the depth...resulting in aborting the playing. But now...
I checked out two tutorials (one might do for others but for me two was needed) and after some hours it happend: I began to understand! And....I began to fall in love :)
DF is now not just a game for me, it's more of a religion or a relationship. It's not just that it's so deep and you can do "anything"...the thing I love is that the game kind of acts as a movie (a movie you can "try" to direct and produce but the result is never the same after a new game).
I havn't yet tried Adventure Mode...but that's to come. Right now I'm kind of busy running my "kingdom" :)
So, any DF-players here?
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Dwarf Fortress is
not a Roguelike so awesome.
There's always a bunch of fun projects going on in the fort that you look forward to completing. And it really feels like you're creating a story.
The only bad thing is lack of challenge once you get the fort going. The game just keeps going, like a TV-show that should have been finished long ago.
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I was playing DF for a long time. Nowadays I don't have enough time for it, but I'll get back to it as soon as the new version comes out. ;D
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The only bad thing is lack of challenge once you get the fort going. The game just keeps going, like a TV-show that should have been finished long ago.
Seems like you've been more successfull then me then ;D For me it's like: if it isn't a invading goblin army that's causing me panic it's perhaps some crazy dwarf who runs amock in the living quarters cause he got a dream to make this impossible item in the masonry and after realizing just that...well, madness here we come ;D ;D
How long have u been playing?
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When I first discovered it three years ago, it completely absorbed me for several days. ;D
Other than that I haven't really played it that much. I start a new fort maybe 2-3 times per year. I haven't played it since June so maybe attacks have gotten nastier since then (that would be good). I recall one fort where I easily killed all attackers by shooting bones at them that was left-overs from eating. But IIRC crossbows have been nerfed since then, because they were basically machine-guns.
Nowadays I mostly go for 7-dwarf forts or even 1-dwarf forts. It's a nice change if you don't feel like managing 200 dwarfs. :)
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Nowadays I mostly go for 7-dwarf forts or even 1-dwarf forts. It's a nice change if you don't feel like managing 200 dwarfs. :)
Hehe...how do you do with migrants? Lock them up? Must try that some day, a 7-dwarf fort sounds cool!
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Yeah that's one way to get rid of them. Assign newcomers to the militia, order them to go into the little room full of dwarf corpses and a few alive insane dwarfs. Then seal the room up.
That can get tedious though, so you can experiment with more efficient systems for getting rid of immigrants, like pressure plates in the fortress entry triggering some horrible death trap.
Haha I just had an idea I must try sometimes. Maybe you could capture dangerous animals and put them in rooms next to the main hallway entry, with floodgates triggered by pressure plates. The plates would simultaneously block all escape routes from the hallway. It would be pretty hilarious to release undead gorillas or something on the elves when they come with their trading cart. Though it sounds like it would probably backfire (=fun).
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I can't seem to get the Lazy Newb Pack to work anymore, which has basically stopped me playing. :p
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I play dwarf fortress. I spend two weeks - one month with a fort and then get bored and start a new one. Not very hardcore player. The housing problems and demands by the nobles get on my nerves.
I love making danger rooms and seeing the little dwarves become epic +587 cave marines of doom, then watching the goblin feet, noses and "right eye teeth" flying off leaving a streak of blood.
What the fuck is an "eye tooth", btw?
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The eye tooth (as far as I know) is the canine tooth (at least that's how Wikipedia translates it for me as such).
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Ahhh so that's it. Guess it fits with how DF uses some traditional terms for things like male/female/baby farm animals.
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Ahhh so that's it. Guess it fits with how DF uses some traditional terms for things like male/female/baby farm animals.
I'm not a native speaker, so I was quite surprised when I discovered i could fight bushtits in Arena Mode. :o I later found out that it's a bird. That was weird.
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Bushtits? Yeah that's new to all of us I think.
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I have tried to play dwarf fortress hoping that I would enjoy it but I am so lost with the controls that it just frustrates me. Do you think you could link the tutorial that you watched/read?
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I have tried to play dwarf fortress hoping that I would enjoy it but I am so lost with the controls that it just frustrates me. Do you think you could link the tutorial that you watched/read?
I can't speak for whatever you are referencing, but honestly all you need to do is follow these quick guides word for word and you will get into it very easily:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Quickstart_guide
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Adventure_mode_quick_start
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DF..... I think it's a great roguelike and I would recommend it for everyone.
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I love DF but I think that nobody shor of a savant can learn to play it without outside help and in a reasonable amount of time.
You either need guides or someone to teach you, I went by the below guide on fortress mode (I have very little interest in adventure mode if any)
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I commit about 48 hours per release of DF. My own personally strategy has developed pretty significantly.
I find that the wide variety of DF's options will suck you into a micromanagement frenzy. However, if you manage to stay strong, there is a very effective approach.
Using the Therapist app, I create a Serf class that has ALL non-quality based skills ticked on (and farming usually- Fishing, Wood Cutting, and Mining excluded). Most immigrants become serfs unless they have a quality-based skill (that is, skills that produce items with quality levels).
Then I set up one permanent squad and cycle all my serfs in 2-3 squads (so that their schedules alternate between training and serfing). All my non-serf units that aren't permanent soldiers become specialists or administrators, that just do whatever it is they're good at.
The dirty part of my strategy comes with the Embark. Now that Bituminous coal nets 8 units of coke, doing a minimalist* steel start-up with a weaponsmith can result in the production of a LOT of steel serrated discs. These babies can have 30k+ trade value. With just the starting ores you embark with, you can buy-out every trade caravan for about 5 years. This effectively means you could spend nearly all of your time building up a military force and laying traps everywhere. You only MIGHT need a fisherdwarf or a herbalist and a few serfs (which have brewing and fish cleaning because they aren't quality skills) to provide a buffer for food and drink if caravans don't bring enough.
*Embark with ores in the following ratios
1 Limonite/Hematite
2 Marble
1 Bituminous Coal
From there, setting up industries is trivial- limited only by the number of serfs you have.
This is more or less the reason why I hate Dwarf Fortress. Once you learn all the tricks, the game is trivial and monotonous. There aren't any dynamic challenges. I embarked to a glacier with 4 biomes of evil and, doing the above strategy, had little trouble mastering all of the threats. All it does is take a lot of time to understand the intuitive methods to fortress design. Once you've learned it, the game itself isn't a ton of fun. You find yourself mundanely prospecting fortress locations and dig-designs. Because the game relies primarily on memorization, entering a state of 'flow' is aggravated by the need to set up all of the micro-components of an industry.
Then again, I'm not a fan of Sandbox games-- unless they have an interesting Narrative. DF has pretty good narrative- Artifact descriptions alone make the game worth playing, but once you understand the game there is little challenge, even in dangerous biomes.
The game itself, however, is very important. Learning how to play it and how to think like Toady is very useful.
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This is more or less the reason why I hate Dwarf Fortress. Once you learn all the tricks, the game is trivial and monotonous. There aren't any dynamic challenges. I embarked to a glacier with 4 biomes of evil and, doing the above strategy, had little trouble mastering all of the threats. All it does is take a lot of time to understand the intuitive methods to fortress design. Once you've learned it, the game itself isn't a ton of fun. You find yourself mundanely prospecting fortress locations and dig-designs. Because the game relies primarily on memorization, entering a state of 'flow' is aggravated by the need to set up all of the micro-components of an industry.
Then again, I'm not a fan of Sandbox games-- unless they have an interesting Narrative. DF has pretty good narrative- Artifact descriptions alone make the game worth playing, but once you understand the game there is little challenge, even in dangerous biomes.
The game itself, however, is very important. Learning how to play it and how to think like Toady is very useful.
It's really not even as complicated as you say, since building a wall makes your civilization invincible. The challenge/enjoyment comes from not doing the things that make the game easy. I find it enjoyable to do forts with specific societies in mind, like economy built solely on sheep herding.
Just curious, have you conquered the HFS?
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Are any of you aware of other roguelikes in the same genre as Dwarf Fortress? (I would call it a "settlement simulation" genre, but that's just me.) I can of course see similarities to other games (the sims, the anno series, etc). Would be nice to sample a few other takes on the genre, as I plan out my own settlement simulation game.
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Are any of you aware of other roguelikes in the same genre as Dwarf Fortress? (I would call it a "settlement simulation" genre, but that's just me.) I can of course see similarities to other games (the sims, the anno series, etc). Would be nice to sample a few other takes on the genre, as I plan out my own settlement simulation game.
I'm only aware of Goblin Camp, but that isn't being actively developed anymore.
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Are any of you aware of other roguelikes in the same genre as Dwarf Fortress? (I would call it a "settlement simulation" genre, but that's just me.) I can of course see similarities to other games (the sims, the anno series, etc). Would be nice to sample a few other takes on the genre, as I plan out my own settlement simulation game.
There are some low quality clones, like towns and gnomoria, but to be honest they don't even come vaguely close to touching the level of depth and simulation in dwarf fortress. There really isn't anything on that level, since most people can't spend their entire lives developing a game :P
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There are some low quality clones, like towns and gnomoria, but to be honest they don't even come vaguely close to touching the level of depth and simulation in dwarf fortress. There really isn't anything on that level, since most people can't spend their entire lives developing a game :P
You can probably say a number of not-so-nice things about how unoriginal Gnomoria is (and be completely right), but it hits the mark in a lot of areas Dwarf Fortress doesn't.
-Robobob puts out a release every week or two
-He squashes bugs on a regular basis
-He listens to community feedback
-He's willing to work on parts of the game that maybe aren't terribly interesting, like improving the user interface and reducing tedium.
Towns is perhaps best not commented about.
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Eh, I'm not specifically looking for high-quality or low-quality, just alternative takes on the genre that could help me generate ideas (or avoid pitfalls) as I conceive of my own variation. I had heard of Gnomoria. Towns looks interesting, thanks.
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There are some low quality clones, like towns and gnomoria, but to be honest they don't even come vaguely close to touching the level of depth and simulation in dwarf fortress. There really isn't anything on that level, since most people can't spend their entire lives developing a game :P
You can probably say a number of not-so-nice things about how unoriginal Gnomoria is (and be completely right), but it hits the mark in a lot of areas Dwarf Fortress doesn't.
-Robobob puts out a release every week or two
-He squashes bugs on a regular basis
-He listens to community feedback
-He's willing to work on parts of the game that maybe aren't terribly interesting, like improving the user interface and reducing tedium.
Towns is perhaps best not commented about.
I think there's a place for DF-likes in the world. DF is a really complex game with an unmentionable UI, not something likely to appeal to more casual gaming folks. And compared to other games it takes really effin' long to get into it.
That said, people should be honest about ripping off Toady's work. Don't pretend you're coming up with something new.
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That said, people should be honest about ripping off Toady's work. Don't pretend you're coming up with something new.
If you check their websites, both of the games mentioned make it very clear that they're borrowing from DF.
For Gnomoria, the biggest influence has of course been Dwarf Fortress.
...we have taken cues from our favorite games. Diablo, Dungeon Keeper, Evil Genius, and even Theme Hospital are in the mix, although an honorable mention must be made to the absolutely gigantic elephant in the room, Dwarf Fortress.
I'm not sure how you'd classify DF. I've been calling it a "settlement simulator" genre. It's got a "people simulator" like the Sims, a "supply chain simulator" like the Anno games, a "fortress architecture simulator" and a multi-character roguelike "RPG/combat simulator". Oh yeah, plus a world generator that actually simulates the geological processes and mineral content shaping the planet up to a couple hundred layers deep.
I would imagine you could make good games in the same genre without nearly as much complexity.
My (still vague) idea is to do one with a medieval theme, like you're an order of missionaries and crusader knights building a monastery-fort in heathen lands.
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That said, people should be honest about ripping off Toady's work. Don't pretend you're coming up with something new.
If you check their websites, both of the games mentioned make it very clear that they're borrowing from DF.
For Gnomoria, the biggest influence has of course been Dwarf Fortress.
...we have taken cues from our favorite games. Diablo, Dungeon Keeper, Evil Genius, and even Theme Hospital are in the mix, although an honorable mention must be made to the absolutely gigantic elephant in the room, Dwarf Fortress.
I didn't mean to imply that they don't! :) I just thought people should be fair with crediting their main source of inspiration. I have to admit I'm not familiar with either.
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No love for elf treetop city (http://silverspaceship.com/elfcity/)?
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No love for elf treetop city (http://silverspaceship.com/elfcity/)?
I'll have to check it out sometime. I love that the webpage describes it as a Dwarf Fortress parody.
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That said, people should be honest about ripping off Toady's work. Don't pretend you're coming up with something new.
This is pretty rich. This is a forum devoted to a genre that is completely derivative by definition -- indeed, a lot of discussion goes into whether new games are enough like the classics to fit within the genre and therefore merit attention as more than just a throwback to the C64 era. The question here isn't "Is it original?" It's "Is it unoriginal enough?"
That said, by any sane definition Dwarf Fortress is roguelike -- it's fantasy roleplaying, with turn based play if the player wants it in terminal graphics. If your fortress goes to hell, there's no recovering it. Adams has moved the ball so far forward with Dwarf Fortress, people are still in denial about it. Developers are talking about building the successor to ADOM or the next iteration of the zangband legacy. They should be thinking about how to incorporate aspects of Dwarf Fortress into more middle of the road roguelikes and how to improve on what Tarn's accomplished with his game, by, yes, straight up stealing mechanics from his game and chewing on them. There's a lot there to be chewed.
Dwarf Fortress is THE development in roguelikes of the last decade. After twenty five years of talking nethack, there has to be something new in the endeavor of wrecking one's GPA despite sitting alone in front of a computer terminal 15 hours a day or we risk losing the next generation to facebook and sex.
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That said, by any sane definition Dwarf Fortress is roguelike -- it's fantasy roleplaying, with turn based play if the player wants it in terminal graphics. If your fortress goes to hell, there's no recovering it. Adams has moved the ball so far forward with Dwarf Fortress, people are still in denial about it. Developers are talking about building the successor to ADOM or the next iteration of the zangband legacy. They should be thinking about how to incorporate aspects of Dwarf Fortress into more middle of the road roguelikes and how to improve on what Tarn's accomplished with his game, by, yes, straight up stealing mechanics from his game and chewing on them. There's a lot there to be chewed.
Dwarf fortress adventurer mode is clearly a roguelike, but to say the fortress mode is a roguelike is a bit crazy. It's a real-time city simulator! That's like saying the new sim city has moved the roguelike genre forward. I mean, it is also a role playing real-time city simulator, right? Dwarf fortress is honestly in a genre all its own, world simulation, in every aspect and at every level.
I think (based on various posts you've made) that you are hopelessly out of the loop when it comes to roguelike developments. There are a LOT of projects recently that are messing about with Tarn's mechanics (in the sense of open worlds, very complex/realistic combat mechanics, etc). Another large development is bringing the survival/crafting mechanics from minecraft into roguelikes. Most likely the reason these projects don't often pan out into full games (and perhaps why you don't know about them) is the shear amount of development time required. I've seen many conversations in the roguelike irc channel about this subject material (in fact, for a time the majority of the talkative folks were working on df/mc-likes).
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Agreed. Even my recent little project was DF light + adventure mode.
Agree with the rest of what you said as well, careful not to get trolled though.
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That said, people should be honest about ripping off Toady's work. Don't pretend you're coming up with something new.
This is pretty rich. This is a forum devoted to a genre that is completely derivative by definition -- indeed, a lot of discussion goes into whether new games are enough like the classics to fit within the genre and therefore merit attention as more than just a throwback to the C64 era. The question here isn't "Is it original?" It's "Is it unoriginal enough?"
That said, by any sane definition Dwarf Fortress is roguelike -- it's fantasy roleplaying, with turn based play if the player wants it in terminal graphics. If your fortress goes to hell, there's no recovering it. Adams has moved the ball so far forward with Dwarf Fortress, people are still in denial about it. Developers are talking about building the successor to ADOM or the next iteration of the zangband legacy. They should be thinking about how to incorporate aspects of Dwarf Fortress into more middle of the road roguelikes and how to improve on what Tarn's accomplished with his game, by, yes, straight up stealing mechanics from his game and chewing on them. There's a lot there to be chewed.
Dwarf Fortress is THE development in roguelikes of the last decade. After twenty five years of talking nethack, there has to be something new in the endeavor of wrecking one's GPA despite sitting alone in front of a computer terminal 15 hours a day or we risk losing the next generation to facebook and sex.
Alright, first let me make something clear. If I say "rip off", I don't mean taking features from DF. I mean outright clones, or semi-clones or what ever you want to call them. If you incorporate some mechanics from DF into your roguelike, that's fine. Heck, I actively appreciate it. Because DF is awesomesauce ffs. If you take DF, give it nicer graphics and cut out 50% of the advanced features of DF, that is at least partially ripping off IMO. If you take not only the gameplay, but also a large number of features and possibly even the setting, you should at least acknowledge that you are re-making DF in a way.
Now, you may say, what's the difference? Us devs make games that take the gameplay and many features from Rogue, or Angband, right? Yes. That's why we call our games "roguelikes". To acknowledge the history of our genre. If someone went and said "Hey! I'm making a DF-like!" or something like that, wonderful. I love it. No problem for me. Making a DF-like and not acknowledging DF would feel like someone saying "Hey! I'm making a game where you run around a dungeon killing monsters in turn-based combat on a grid! This is completely new and revolutionary! Give me all of your moneys!" (last sentence optional).
I'd also like to debate your point on DF being the first innovation in the Roguelike scene since Nethack. There have been numerous games doing new and exciting things in the scene. For example, take Crawl. It's a roguelike that has become itself a classic, but introduced or at least championed many new features that have been adopted by others since. Another good example would be ToME. It is radically different from most contemporary roguelikes, yet unmistakably roguelike. True, the level of simulation reached in DF is unparalleled so far (except maybe in some WIPs that have since popped up), but to claim that DF is the first "new thing" in the scene since Nethack is far overstating the importance of DF's Adventure mode.
And yes, I said Adventure mode. Because Fortress mode is not a roguelike. kraflab has elaborated on that aspect already, so I won't go into it. I will say, though, that some of us are increasingly annoyed at the increasing misuse of the term "roguelike". There have been many discussions on #rgrd, and many users seem to be of the opinion that "it's hard, and it has permadeath" is not enough to qualify as a roguelike. I'll happily agree with those who postulate a sliding scale of roguelikeness, but there is a point where a given game just isn't really roguelike anymore.
Now, if you want to talk about roguelikelikes, that is something different. I can see Fortress mode being roguelikelike, depending on how you define it.
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The question "what is a roguelike" is going to continue to evolve and devolve over time.
I've taken to using modifiers. "Straight roguelike" being that done in the classic style with all the fixings. Games like Rodney, Crawl, Brogue, Angband, Rogue, Nethack, etc...
It's pretty clear though that the presentation and complexity of DF was inspired by Nethack's kitchen sink and ASCII approach.
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I don't really agree that DF is the single important source of innovation in the genre. There have been a ton of new ideas in the last decade. Flend's DDRogue introduced a totally new approach to hand to hand combat, and then PrincessRL polished the concept to perfection and added an interesting character building system on top of it. Sil awards experience for simply seeing enemies. It's about stealth and caution rather than hack and slash action. Games like Mage Guild and Brogue have perfected Rogue's basic formula while also coming up with their own unique ways of interacting with items and advancing your character. Caves of Qud offers a unique experience. So do CastlevaniaRL and Incursion and Prospector. Every year we have a 7DRL competition which brings new concepts to the medium.
Yeah, the genre could still use more fresh ideas, but every genre could. Every medium could. Look at how incestuous first person shooters have become. Millions of dollars are being poured into the development of individual games, and half of them are still indistinguishable from one another. Roguelikes aren't doing too badly compared to that.
I wish people weren't so quick to call any game a ripoff for using another game's ideas. That needs to happen. That's how the medium advances. There's a difference between adopting lessons and concepts derived from and outright cloning it.
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I wish people weren't so quick to call any game a ripoff for using another game's ideas. That needs to happen. That's how the medium advances. There's a difference between adopting lessons and concepts derived from and outright cloning it.
Yeah, I agree. I just dislike projects pretending to be innovative when they just outright imitate another game. The DF-likes actually aren't bad in that regard. I hear this happens a lot with Minecraft clones, though.
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Alright, first let me make something clear. If I say "rip off", I don't mean taking features from DF. I mean outright clones, or semi-clones or what ever you want to call them. If you incorporate some mechanics from DF into your roguelike, that's fine. Heck, I actively appreciate it. Because DF is awesomesauce ffs. If you take DF, give it nicer graphics and cut out 50% of the advanced features of DF, that is at least partially ripping off IMO. If you take not only the gameplay, but also a large number of features and possibly even the setting, you should at least acknowledge that you are re-making DF in a way.
Another large development is bringing the survival/crafting mechanics from minecraft into roguelikes.
Again, rich, guys. Many say minecraft is a Dwarf Fortress rip off. I'm no fan of fingerpainting simulators like minecraft, but it's good to hear someone has a more stringent standard of what constitutes a rip off. This sort of handwringing about whether someone's game is getting enough credit for the influence they had on yours, like the question of whether your game is similar enough to some other game or set of games to be called "like" it, only delays progress in any genre. On the other hand, this stuff about people drawing inspiration from the mechanics of minecraft strikes me as kind of sad. "crafting/survival"? Really?
About whether DF Fortress mode is roguelike, for those who like to split hairs, we should clear up some confusion about what "real time" is. If you can stop the clock and queue arbitrary actions, your game is not real time. Dwarf Fortress is not real time. Starcraft is real time. Mario Brothers is real time. Dwarf Fortress allows you to advance gametime one time quantum at a time and allows you to stop time altogether and issue arbitrary commands during the pause. It has a time system essentially identical to the ones used in angband and crawl, it just gives the user the sensible option of automatically advancing time according to a real time clock (incidentally, that's exactly what tomenet does, except it doesn't allow you to stop time -- I suppose that makes it "less roguelike" or not a "straight roguelike" or some similar nonsense).
Crawl would profit from such a mechanic, actually (maybe it already has it and I just haven't noticed it -- the latest incarnation is admirably forward looking). For example, if you play the crawl Zot Defence (tower defense) mode, you frequently want to pass a lot of time without doing anything and you frequently want to advance a turn with enemies on the screen while standing still -- probably most turns, depending on how you play. So you're hitting 5, . . . . . . . ., 5 5, . . ., 5, . . . . . . . . -- I'd take a turn advance timer, thanks. Just let me hit space to pause and return to blocking input. Just like Dwarf Fortress.
There are two things about Fortress mode that mark substantial deviations from the usual roguelike approach: Controlling multiple entities and doing so via issuing work orders that are carried out by various dwarves according to who's available and so forth. You guys make it easy on me by saying roguelikes no one's ever played or heard of ("7DRLs", etc.) count as expanding the genre, so I should say I know of at least one roguelike that allowed you to control a party of characters -- it was an angband variant and the author did not come up with a convincing system of control (unsurprising for an angband variant maintainer). I'm sure there's a ridiculous thread to be had about whether this angband variant is roguelike, please spare me. The point is, once you allow multiple entities, which is not unprecedented in the genre, it's natural to have a command set with emphasis on performing tasks that would take a number of turns and therefore hundreds of keystrokes in a traditional roguelike.
Of course, that's nothing new either. Roguelikes have had shift-move since the eighties at least (I don't know if rogue had it in the 70s) to avoid spamming your calculator pad through every tunnel you encounter. Now the standard bearer of the traditional roguelikes, crawl, has o-move, which * gasp * automatically moves the player to explore levels, the greatest blasphemy since direction pad replaced the o'pen door command -- a fitting irony that this formerly absurd command key is repurposed in such an expressive and interesting way. Why not a-move then? I don't usually stop hitting direction and space until a new monster hits the scene or I go below a certain threshold of HP.
But this is all dangerous thinking. Be careful not to get trolled.
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Vits er þörf,
þeim er víða ratar;
dælt er heima hvat;
at augabragði verðr,
sá er ekki kann
ok með snotrum sitr.
As always,
Minotauros
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Grah! Wall of text nonpersuasive.
I say Troll because you are telling people who develop roguelikes what a roguelike is. Very adamant and precious about it too. Don't you have fun with these games? Or is the fun in the arguing? I get that, I used to be that way. Law school sorta beat it out of me.
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I'm continually impressed by the level of substantive engagement this forum offers!
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So who's excited for df2013!?
New complex stealth system, the world becomes alive, armies pathing about on the overworld, the ability to start insurrections, non-lethal combat, movement and attack speed decoupled, creature tracking, tree climbing, fortress retiring...
Here's a fan maintained list of expected updates: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg/edit (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg/edit)
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A ton of new features and no UI improvement?
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About whether DF Fortress mode is roguelike, for those who like to split hairs, we should clear up some confusion about what "real time" is. If you can stop the clock and queue arbitrary actions, your game is not real time. Dwarf Fortress is not real time. Starcraft is real time. Mario Brothers is real time. Dwarf Fortress allows you to advance gametime one time quantum at a time and allows you to stop time altogether and issue arbitrary commands during the use.
I'm going to counter this saying that cat adoption cannot be stopped with the pause key, and thus it is real-time, but that is just me being facetious. ;)
Look, I don't debate that Fortress Mode isn't real time, but I don' really feel comfortable calling it turn-based either. I'd argue that most of the time is spent running the game instead of having it paused, but what that makes it is really up for discussion.
There are two things about Fortress mode that mark substantial deviations from the usual roguelike approach: Controlling multiple entities and doing so via issuing work orders that are carried out by various dwarves according to who's available and so forth. You guys make it easy on me by saying roguelikes no one's ever played or heard of ("7DRLs", etc.) count as expanding the genre, so I should say I know of at least one roguelike that allowed you to control a party of characters -- it was an angband variant and the author did not come up with a convincing system of control (unsurprising for an angband variant maintainer). I'm sure there's a ridiculous thread to be had about whether this angband variant is roguelike, please spare me. The point is, once you allow multiple entities, which is not unprecedented in the genre, it's natural to have a command set with emphasis on performing tasks that would take a number of turns and therefore hundreds of keystrokes in a traditional roguelike.
Again, this challenges the typical definition of a roguelike. For many people, roguelike also means you control one char, and you control it directly. Both of those have been subverted over the years - there are multi-character roguelikes, yes, and there is at least one game with indirect control. I don't deny that.
But if you look at the existing roguelikes, both established ones, small ones and 7DRLs, 99% of them are about exploration and hack&slash, either in the stereotypical dungeon or some other hostile environment. DF, in contrast, is a game about building a base and caring for dwarves. The gameplay is vastly different from almost every roguelike I know. It's much more like a 4x game.
As an example, let's take a look at my favorite TBS game of the old days, Civ 3. It has a world that can be and often is randomly generated, it is turn-based with direct control, it is grid-based (good old pseudo-eight-directions like roguelikes have it), it's non-modal, has several solutions for problems (as you would expect in a roguelike), you have to manage resources, no rule difference between player units and other units, it shows you the numbers and is tactically complex. So right out of the box it fits at least more than half of the points of the Berlin Interpretation (which of course isn't perfect, but a good compromise between different people's idea of a roguelike). The problem is that Civ 3 is a turn-based strategy game and no one ever will call it a roguelike.
Of course, that's nothing new either. Roguelikes have had shift-move since the eighties at least (I don't know if rogue had it in the 70s) to avoid spamming your calculator pad through every tunnel you encounter. Now the standard bearer of the traditional roguelikes, crawl, has o-move, which * gasp * automatically moves the player to explore levels, the greatest blasphemy since direction pad replaced the o'pen door command -- a fitting irony that this formerly absurd command key is repurposed in such an expressive and interesting way. Why not a-move then? I don't usually stop hitting direction and space until a new monster hits the scene or I go below a certain threshold of HP.
I don't think anyone views autoexplore as a 'blasphemy'. It's a useful tool to skip uninteresting parts of the game, and thus has been incorporated into several recently developed games. The debate on autoexplore is more about the fact that it means skipping content, which leads to the question why this content is there at all if everyone skips it, and what can be done to make it interesting. But this is more of a design issue than outright dislike for a feature.
So who's excited for df2013!?
New complex stealth system, the world becomes alive, armies pathing about on the overworld, the ability to start insurrections, non-lethal combat, movement and attack speed decoupled, creature tracking, tree climbing, fortress retiring...
Here's a fan maintained list of expected updates: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg/edit (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg/edit)
I am. So. Much. I think every Bay12er is.
Though I really hope that in the aftermath of the DF2013 release, we will see fixes for a few long standing bugs that have forced me to run binary patched for a few fortresses now.
A ton of new features and no UI improvement?
What are you, some sort of elf? ;D
Toady has made it pretty clear that feature completion is more important than UI, so we'll probably see most of the UI improvements once the game hits version one or at least RC.
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So I hear. I'll wait until it reaches version 1.0 before I give it another try. Maybe two decades?
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So I hear. I'll wait until it reaches version 1.0 before I give it another try. Maybe two decades?
Yeah, around that time. In the NY Times interview last year he said it would take at least 20 years to get to v1. We're about 34% there.
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Edit: duplicate of above
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Better account for Hofstadter's law and make it 3, then ;)
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About whether DF Fortress mode is roguelike, for those who like to split hairs, we should clear up some confusion about what "real time" is. If you can stop the clock and queue arbitrary actions, your game is not real time. Dwarf Fortress is not real time. Starcraft is real time. Mario Brothers is real time. Dwarf Fortress allows you to advance gametime one time quantum at a time and allows you to stop time altogether and issue arbitrary commands during the use.
...
Look, I don't debate that Fortress Mode isn't real time, but I don' really feel comfortable calling it turn-based either. I'd argue that most of the time is spent running the game instead of having it paused, but what that makes it is really up for discussion.
I think we could probably agree that Dwarf Fortress can be played in a turn based way in almost exactly the same way crawl and angband can though. Of course, no one would want to, but the mechanics for doing so exist.
There are two things about Fortress mode that mark substantial deviations from the usual roguelike approach: Controlling multiple entities and doing so via issuing work orders that are carried out by various dwarves according to who's available and so forth. You guys make it easy on me by saying roguelikes no one's ever played or heard of ("7DRLs", etc.) count as expanding the genre, so I should say I know of at least one roguelike that allowed you to control a party of characters -- it was an angband variant and the author did not come up with a convincing system of control (unsurprising for an angband variant maintainer). I'm sure there's a ridiculous thread to be had about whether this angband variant is roguelike, please spare me. The point is, once you allow multiple entities, which is not unprecedented in the genre, it's natural to have a command set with emphasis on performing tasks that would take a number of turns and therefore hundreds of keystrokes in a traditional roguelike.
Again, this challenges the typical definition of a roguelike. For many people, roguelike also means you control one char, and you control it directly. Both of those have been subverted over the years - there are multi-character roguelikes, yes, and there is at least one game with indirect control. I don't deny that.
Yeah, it's definitely a departure from established conventions, but not so radical as to be unprecedented or, in my view, disqualifying.
But if you look at the existing roguelikes, both established ones, small ones and 7DRLs, 99% of them are about exploration and hack&slash, either in the stereotypical dungeon or some other hostile environment. DF, in contrast, is a game about building a base and caring for dwarves. The gameplay is vastly different from almost every roguelike I know. It's much more like a 4x game.
As an example, let's take a look at my favorite TBS game of the old days, Civ 3. It has a world that can be and often is randomly generated, it is turn-based with direct control, it is grid-based (good old pseudo-eight-directions like roguelikes have it), it's non-modal, has several solutions for problems (as you would expect in a roguelike), you have to manage resources, no rule difference between player units and other units, it shows you the numbers and is tactically complex. So right out of the box it fits at least more than half of the points of the Berlin Interpretation (which of course isn't perfect, but a good compromise between different people's idea of a roguelike). The problem is that Civ 3 is a turn-based strategy game and no one ever will call it a roguelike.
I agree with what you say here about Civ 3 and the so-called "Berlin interpretation." But this just shows that the Berlin interpretation is absurd. For example, "ASCII based display" is not a low value factor, unless you're writing a tile based game for a handheld and trying to call it roguelike. Likewise, the Berlin definition makes no mention of a fantasy setting, despite that being a clear common denominator among the canonical examples of rogue, larn, hack, moria, nethack, crawl, ADOM etc. Why might that be? Because one of the handful of people in attendance at some summit was promoting a sci-fi or trademarked commercial video game themed "roguelike", I'd wager.
The definition held up as the gold standard fails to clearly separate roguelikes from other genres while at the same time failing to take into account basic commonalities between the classics, old and new. Yet, as you say, the according to Hoyle roguelikes really are clearly different from any civilization game and no one would call Civ 3 roguelike. It's ridiculously easy to poke holes in the Berlin "definition", so why even bother with it?
On what you say about exploration and hack and slash, this is true to some extent. Dwarf fortress can definitely be played in a way that has not a lot of monster killing and not a lot of looking for things or going places. Of course, mining and excavating, finding caverns and eventually hell are forms of exploration. I think the more damning issue is that the items you collect in the process are primarily raw materials (minerals, plants, etc.) rather than the traditional prefabricated loot of roguelikes and you're exploring/striking the earth, not a fully formed dungeon (although the caverns are dungeon-like).
On the other hand, it's obvious that Dwarf Fortress is heavily influenced by the roguelike tradition. The objection to calling it roguelike can only be that Tarn ran too far with the concept, abandoning conventions like dungeon diving to recover an artifact or kill a monster, a single character directly controlled, etc. The problem with these kinds of objections, to my mind, is that Dwarf Fortress shows clearly that single character control and dungeon diving isn't what makes (some) roguelikes good (and it's obvious it isn't what makes them distinctive). So I'll agree that it may not be a roguelike by some reckoning, but it's a view of what a roguelike could be. You know, I'm no big fan of ESR, but he said something to the effect that the strength of roguelikes is that the lack of graphics allows one to pour more into the underlying game logic and create more depth than is possible when you need an animation for every possible action, etc. I think he's onto something there (something completely lost in the 7DRL concept) and Dwarf Fortress shows that in the way nethack always has, but in a new, radical way. So I would tend to look at Dwarf Fortress as a direction for roguelikes to head in, even if some would deny it a place in the genre.
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There is no denying that dwarf fortress shares in the meta-genre of roguelikeness. It's design is clearly guided in the same direction as most roguelikes, but here applied to a different starting point genre. This is in the same way as spelunky represents roguelikeness as applied to a platformer. In other words, there is no doubt that dwarf fortress exhibits roguelikeness, but the base genre is different (and thus the resulting genre is different).
I think you want to talk about roguelike games in the same way someone might say "casual games" and sweep a bunch of games that exhibit similar properties but have different genres into one group. It is perhaps unfortunate that the term roguelike refers to a specific sub-genre of roguelikeness, but that's just the way it is. Of course, the number of games discussed on this forum that are part of this meta-genre and not part of the sub-genre indicate to me that no harm has been done in this distinction.
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I agree with what you say here about Civ 3 and the so-called "Berlin interpretation." But this just shows that the Berlin interpretation is absurd. For example, "ASCII based display" is not a low value factor, unless you're writing a tile based game for a handheld and trying to call it roguelike. Likewise, the Berlin definition makes no mention of a fantasy setting, despite that being a clear common denominator among the canonical examples of rogue, larn, hack, moria, nethack, crawl, ADOM etc. Why might that be? Because one of the handful of people in attendance at some summit was promoting a sci-fi or trademarked commercial video game themed "roguelike", I'd wager.
ASCII-based display has, in the meantime, become a rather low value factor. There are quite a few very popular games out there which prefer graphics over ASCII. ToME and DCSS both have tiles which are used by the majority of players, POWDER is very graphical, Nethack and Angband both feature tiles nowadays, and there are several smaller games that don't even have ASCII modes anymore. Sure, ASCII has its merits, but people are getting used to tile-based games more and more - and if you want anyone outside the RL scene to try your game, tiles are pretty much necessary.
I think you're being a bit unfair on the fantasy aspect as well. The ancestors of the genre, Rogue and Moria, are both fantasy inspired, so it's just logical that their descendants would be as well. Linley's Dungeon Crawl is directly inspired by them and ADOM is fantasy because Biskup, like many, is an old FRPG veteran. Our genre is rooted in this tradition, and since most devs have been players first, they continue this tradition. But there are numerous games outside the fantasy genre. ZapM is outright space nethack (and the PRIME fork is epic). One of the older roguelikes, Alphaman (about as old as LDC), is post-apocalyptic, just like Cataclysm and its recent fork DDA. BOSS is even older and so weirdly scifi I don't even know what's going on. Infra Arcana is by no means fantasy. And I didn't even mention the gearhead games and all the steampunk/cyberpunk stuff that has been done over the years. All I'm saying is, if you think fantasy is a defining feature of roguelikes, it hasn't been at least since the early 90s.
The definition held up as the gold standard fails to clearly separate roguelikes from other genres while at the same time failing to take into account basic commonalities between the classics, old and new. Yet, as you say, the according to Hoyle roguelikes really are clearly different from any civilization game and no one would call Civ 3 roguelike. It's ridiculously easy to poke holes in the Berlin "definition", so why even bother with it?
Because it's pretty much the closest we have to a definition? I don't say it's a good one, but it's the best we have right now. I'm just saying that many characteristics of roguelikes are also inherent to grid-based 4x games, which I personally consider Fortress mode to be. I don't deny its roguelikeness, but I don't think it's a roguelike. Heck, it's close enough for us to have this discussion.
On what you say about exploration and hack and slash, this is true to some extent. Dwarf fortress can definitely be played in a way that has not a lot of monster killing and not a lot of looking for things or going places. Of course, mining and excavating, finding caverns and eventually hell are forms of exploration. I think the more damning issue is that the items you collect in the process are primarily raw materials (minerals, plants, etc.) rather than the traditional prefabricated loot of roguelikes and you're exploring/striking the earth, not a fully formed dungeon (although the caverns are dungeon-like).
Yeah, this is why I consider Fortress mode to be more of a 4x game with roguelike elements. I wish more standard roguelike games would take this approach to creating items, like Sil f.ex. does. Heck, someone has to make all these items/artifacts, why not let the player make some himself?
On the other hand, it's obvious that Dwarf Fortress is heavily influenced by the roguelike tradition. The objection to calling it roguelike can only be that Tarn ran too far with the concept, abandoning conventions like dungeon diving to recover an artifact or kill a monster, a single character directly controlled, etc. The problem with these kinds of objections, to my mind, is that Dwarf Fortress shows clearly that single character control and dungeon diving isn't what makes (some) roguelikes good (and it's obvious it isn't what makes them distinctive). So I'll agree that it may not be a roguelike by some reckoning, but it's a view of what a roguelike could be.
The problem is that about 90% of roguelike players and devs will disagree with you on this point. Roguelikes are a subgenre of the RPG, and direct control is very important to RPGs. Even in multi-character roguelikes, you have direct control of at least one character.
You know, I'm no big fan of ESR, but he said something to the effect that the strength of roguelikes is that the lack of graphics allows one to pour more into the underlying game logic and create more depth than is possible when you need an animation for every possible action, etc. I think he's onto something there (something completely lost in the 7DRL concept) and Dwarf Fortress shows that in the way nethack always has, but in a new, radical way. So I would tend to look at Dwarf Fortress as a direction for roguelikes to head in, even if some would deny it a place in the genre.
You know what that also applies to? Books. Text games. Pen&Paper RPGs. Just because something is non-graphical, or only features simple graphics, doesn't mean it's a roguelike. I don't deny that this is one of the core qualities of roguelikes, but not everything that fits this description is a roguelike.
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We seem to be discussing Dwarf Fortress as if its fortress building/rts style mode can be considered roguelike when it also has a single player adventurer mode. Right now the DF developer is adding new mechanics and content to the adventurer mode to make it more fleshed out, and more complex interactions for adventure mod either have been added by mods or are forthcoming. I think the question is when we see the stark contrast between gameplay in both of Dwarf Fortress's modes, should we assume that permadeath and emergent complexity alone in Fortress Mode also qualify it to be a roguelike? Would this also admit games like the original or modern xcom played in hardcore mode, or a theoretical rebuild of Dom 3 with no permasave?
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Roguelikes, certain arcade games and strategy games like Dwarf Fortress share a similar design principal. The games are very rule based and failure is the main consequence.
Add in the Ascii display and the Nethack kitchen sink nature of Dwarf Fortress and you have even more similarities.
But they are largely superficial. For example, do you think Dwarf Fortress has anything really in common with Dungeons of Dredmor? You take away the aesthetics and things are more clear.
In the end though i think Dwarf Fortress is it's own thing. It borrows from many genres and is just so unique it almost needs it's own category. But if you were to pick a category I'd say that City Sim is the best one, it shares far more elements with City Sims than with roguelikes. If the game looked like Sim City instead of Nethack I think the discussion would not be so frequent. Graphic choices and obtuse interface are hardly core Roguelike attributes.
Adventure mode, of course, is undeniably a straight up roguelike. Which makes the game so totally full of win I just want to scream.
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Scanning the thread... see Berlin interpretation mentioned. [internal weeping]
Let's do something fresh and NOT talk about whether DF is a roguelike.
So, that DF eh?
I remember way back when, when you only had one z-level.
Your dwarven band started at the left side of the screen, and you had to dig to the right. Along the way you'd come across lava, a monster spawning chasm, and water. It was a bit more.... gamelike? arcadey? back then, and I actually thought that was charming. I wish Toady had kept that in as an option.
The game's developing well though. I don't know if you gentlemen read the changelogs? They're hilarious at times. I miss old Adventure mode though. Used to be that you could pick up anything (bear with me); sand. Water. Worms.
Then you could THROW it. And throwing was by far the most lethal skill in existence, with some points in it.
Imagine it in your mind's eye, if you will. A mighty dwarf stoops low. He scoops up a hand of water from the nearby puddle. His mighty dwarven muscles propel his hand with the fury of Wotan. The water is sailing through the air! Orgmatuktuk the bronze colossus is hit in the head. Orgmatuktuk's eyes are crushed! His sockets are shattered! His brain is bruised! His skull is shattered! Orgmatuktuk falls to his knees and vomits. DWARF FORTRESS.
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Dude I wonder if you can download legacy versions of the game? Surely you can.
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Dude I wonder if you can download legacy versions of the game? Surely you can.
Yeah, you can. All of them, to be precise. Here. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/older_versions.html)
I sometimes go back and play the really old versions. They don't have quite as much content as the newer ones, but they make up for it with even more insanity.
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Very much devlog updates lately over at bay12...wonder if the new version will arrive before 2014.
Anyways, the next release will be awesome and I can't wait...
World gen activities during play, site overhauls, climbing...it's gonna be crazy!
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Yes I'm pretty pumped as well. I've not gotten too much into Dwarf Fortress, but when the next big update hits I'm going to jump onto the band wagon. I've enjoyed Terraria and a bit of Minecraft.
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What's in the next version?
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Post-worldgen history continuation, complete combat overhaul, complete personality overhaul, complete conversation overhaul in adventure mode, complete tree overhaul (now multi-tile!), dwarf sites in adventure mode, elf sites in adventure mode, goblin sites in adventure mode, new Hidden Fun Stuff in adventure mode, complete movement overhaul, small trading overhaul, complete questing overhaul, complete politics overhaul.....and more :)
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The Dwarf Bros are the true
indie gaming bedroom coding heroes. And I haven`t even really played DF yet.
(Okay, I made one corridor and room last week. Great success! Took me months before stepping up, but I always knew I would. And as somebody mentioned above, I love just reading the changelogs, it`s like a whole parallel universe out there)
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As far as I understand, the main thing in the new version is adventure mode (Yay!). I'm ready for it!
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At last...after more then 2 years a new version is done :)
---- from bay12games.com/dwarves ------
Here is the world activation release! Lots of processes from world generation -- birth, invasions, succession, site foundation, and so on -- now operate in the world after play has begun. Getting all of that to work led to a meandering route through various pieces of the game, some of which are described below. Aside from any bugginess, a lot of it will still feel rough and unfinished as things bump around.
New stuff
World activation! There are a few things that aren't active, like megabeast invasions, but lots of world gen actions made it into the game. Birth, death (to the extent it wasn't handled before), marriages, site foundation as well as reclaims, basic succession and appointments/etc., invasions, as well as some more detail beyond world gen, like patrols, banditry and animal population handling. We still don't have army battles -- the invasions are all successful right now, unless they are locally interfered with by you.
The game advances two weeks before each play -- the calendar there still moves slowly when there's a lot of action, as there is in larger worlds, but there are quite a few things I can do soon to speed that up. Due to the speed of the calendar, new forts in particular also get just two weeks. This'll probably cause some shenanigans with the caravan (or you'll just have to wait a year in an autumn fort for your first one) until we sort it out.
Fortresses can be retired and unretired. Losing is still fun but if it doesn't happen when you want, you can put it off for a while. Retired forts can be conquered (much more easily than they would be if you still controlled them), so don't be surprised if you have to reclaim instead of being able to unretire sometimes. You can reclaim forts that didn't make it through world generation.
Site maps for dwarves, elves and goblins. These are very basic, but they are there, anyway.
Multi-tile trees and lots of new plants. Fruit and flowers. Leaves that fall in little clouds. I had to put off dwarf mode tree harvesting, but we should get to that before long.
Megabeasts/forgotten beasts can attack, destroy and then reside within world gen sites like dwarf fortresses.
Various movement changes. Climbing/jumping/sprinting in both modes, though invaders still require a line of site to use them. Adventure mode has a stealth rewrite, and some elements of that are present in dwarf mode (it is generally easier to spot thieves and ambushers, and I'll probably need to make them smarter about finding cover). Movement and combat are separate now. Startled people climb up the walls of their homes a little too often.
Tracking information in adventure mode. You can pull up a little window and see tracks (capital K), and you can also have it describe the freshest track that isn't yours to more easily stay on a trail (alt K). Tracks are also part of the regular look command.
Different levels of conflict -- your opponents in adventure mode will be listed with the current status (non-lethal, lethal, no quarter, etc.).
Combat moves take place over a period of time now, and you can do things like catching an opponent's attack -- you have to do that by targeting a grab at the offending part now (reactions used to have a menu, but that was before combat got more smeared out). You can get information about what attacks your opponent is doing in the attack menu -- the quality of the information depends on your situational awareness skill. You can add adjective modifiers to your attacks (quick/heavy/etc.) and you can perform more than one attack at a time for a significant penalty to its force. It might make sense with two adamantine swords or something, twirling them about.
Rumors of incidents can be spread, and the rumors need to be spread before you gain reputation (good or bad). Killing all of the witnesses to an event will effectively remove it from play if you don't let them get off the screen. People are a little psychic as it regards ongoing conflicts, so that they can make decisions non-stupidly. Your liaison can share rumors with your fort, but I still need to set up the screen for reviewing them after you've seen them the first time... not that you can do much with the information.
You can travel through tunnels.
You can get a guide to travel with you to a faraway place -- it still ended up being too cumbersome, so locals continue to be able to tell you the location of sites, but only within a certain distance of their home town.
In general, conversations have been redone. They no longer have their own screen, but run along with other actions, and there are many more options.
The mind has been rewritten quite a bit -- people now experience emotions according to different circumstances (lots of awkward monologues there), and they consider actions differently. The main outstanding issue is that I didn't get around to converting existing dwarf mode thoughts, so they sort of exist concurrently with the new emotions and that needs to be changed. I'll get to that before job priorities (which was one of the main shorter-term reasons for the rewrite). Some dwarves have life-long dreams and it is possible for them to recognize that they've accomplished the ones relating to skills and family. They cannot yet realize their dreams of taking over the world.
The paragraph at the beginning of adventure mode was marginally more useful, but that slipped a bit at the end as things were tweaked. I think it'll still describe certain invasions and abductions, but it needs to be redone.
Lots of new arena options -- not just the conflict state, but you can set the temperature etc. to all sorts of extremes.
Some experiments with procedural items, though the new demon-type sites are still quite un-fun now. The knowledge on the slab at the bottom can be used, but it is probably not worth the trouble.
The stuff I forgot
Bug fixes
I'm sure several old bugs were "fixed" as large portions of the code was rewritten/removed, but I haven't tried to track exactly which ones. Bug fixes will commence in earnest now, and everything will be handled over at the bug tracker.
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Just had my first quick game with the new version.
Adventure did not play too different from the previous version, but it has become a tiny bit more immersive.
That I can already say and that is good of course.
Sneaking for instance and the chat menus and overhearing other conversations or apparent monologues and reactions to events during battle.
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Right now it's extremely buggy and Toady is working on squashing the bugs.
It's really hillarious at the moment, alot of crazy conversations and spitting and eagles crashing into trees and so on :)
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The first release is always really buggy. I found a tomb and stole some stuff from it, awakening a mummy who never attacked (even after I attacked it), just kind of followed me around and climbed up the walls, probably staring at me disapprovingly the whole time.
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Some character will sing a ballad about the frowning mummy in a later game.