The Dwarfy Dwarf Challenge: Make Dwarf Fortress!

I am giving a challenge to the entire ComputerCraft community: program a version of the amazingly complex and hard to learn ASCII freeware game Dwarf Fortress with ComputerCraft. This will be the ultimate (besides Halo :D/>/>) challenge in my eyes of the community. Good luck, if you do not know what Dwarf Fortress is, it inspired Notch to make Minecraft along with Infiniminer. It is also hilarious to fail in DF.

I love DF. It has been too long since I've played…
Strangely enough I had a similar idea a couple weeks ago, but I wrote it off as likely impossible.
A slimmed down version might be possible, but I don't believe CC has the processing power to handle a full version.

CC has the power, as it is not an emulated computer, but it rather relies on you processor speed. Also, the ASCII graphics are easy to replicate if you have a character map and patience. Generally, it will be slimmed down a lot due to coding difficulty.

Thank you for this information!

repeat
   face = face + keyboard
until dwarfFortress

CC doesn't support the full ascii character set yet, though. This may be coming in a future update, but for now you're stuck.

ChunLing, on 26 October 2012 - 07:22 PM said:

CC doesn't support the full ascii character set yet, though. This may be coming in a future update, but for now you're stuck.

Do you get candy every time you crush my hopes and dreams?

No he came to the dark side so he got cookies…

On topic:
This seems like a big challenge, your saying to try and recreate a game that has been in development for a few years in a new language for a minecraft computer… That would at least need more than one person and even after that what is the point, you hardly have a big market…
No offense, I'm not saying "Don't do it" I'm just stating my opinion and that I, for one, am not going to bother to recreate a game.

What would be more productive is if you made a new game, maybe with similar graphics, but with new game play mechanics…

Better yet!
Recreate dwarf fortress, but have all of the in-game actions on screen be mimicked by turtles! Woo!
Good luck mapping out the environment first…

Mmm…candy, nom nom. Oh, what were you saying? No, I not get this for crushing your hope, is coincidence.

The turtles idea is awesome. Ambitious, but very awesome.

You wouldn't be able to have limitless maps, or maps bigger than the set width/height of the turtles area, without some sort of peripheral (like this http://www.computercraft.info/forums2/index.php?/topic/1486-mc-123125cc-131133sspsmp-operator-panel-api-added/), If you had that then creating a 3Dish landscape wouldn't be that hard…

billysback, on 26 October 2012 - 07:55 PM said:

You wouldn't be able to have limitless maps, or maps bigger than the set width/height of the turtles area, without some sort of peripheral (like this http://www.computerc...anel-api-added/), If you had that then creating a 3Dish landscape wouldn't be that hard…

Personally, if I were to attempt a DF recreation it would be with vanilla CC. Maximize accessibility.

Then creating a 3D map with turtles, or even a 2D one in the minecraft world, would be so, so, so much harder…
I agree that creating it in vanilla is better, I have always thought along these lines for most things as long as the inconveniences outweigh the conveniences (which in this case, I believe they do not for what you are suggesting)

But you're entitled to your own opinion and ways of doing things, just trying to suggest things…

I will stuff my square opinion into the circular hole until my hands bleed.
Then I may consider shaving off the corners.

I don't actually have any intentions of creating this though. I lack the motivation and free time. I just enjoy throwing out ideas.

Ah, wish I had more candy right now.

(Not in reply to ChunLing)

Same, kinda…

I wouldn't spend that much time on a program for CC, I would probably spend that much time on a Java game, however, If my motivation kept up (basically as long as I keep programming it and it stays on looking hopeful, if the idea starts to look like it will end up being bad in practice I will drop it).

However, a 3D map renderer using the Operator Panel does sound like something interesting to do;
generating simple landscapes that you can scroll around.

Listen, we don't need a whole army of coders. We need NitrogenFingers.
As for the turtles, um… ok.
I prefer it in the computer. I think that copy+pasting the less accessible ascii characters would solve it.

Ditto8353, on 26 October 2012 - 05:57 PM said:

repeat
   face = face + keyboard
until dwarfFortress

That works too.
off-topic: I think you can get more than 16 colors by using the 'colors' API to mix them together. Confirm?

ChunLing, on 26 October 2012 - 07:22 PM said:

CC doesn't support the full ascii character set yet, though. This may be coming in a future update, but for now you're stuck.

If you copy+paste the character map, I think you can get all you need.

martin509, on 26 October 2012 - 09:55 PM said:

Listen, we don't need a whole army of coders. We need NitrogenFingers.

Seems a bit optimistic, NitorgenFingers is a good coder but he's not exceptional; I'm sure the forums contain a better programmer than him, not offense towards him :D/>/>
(This isn't meant to say he's bad, just that he's not some coding god, I don't think anyone could successfully do this in any short period of time and come out with a respectable representation of Dwarf Fortres…)

billysback, on 26 October 2012 - 10:03 PM said:

martin509, on 26 October 2012 - 09:55 PM said:

Listen, we don't need a whole army of coders. We need NitrogenFingers.

Seems a bit optimistic, NitorgenFingers is a good coder but he's not exceptional; I'm sure the forums contain a better programmer than him, not offense towards him :D/>/>
(This isn't meant to say he's bad, just that he's not some coding god, I don't think anyone could successfully do this in any short period of time and come out with a respectable representation of Dwarf Fortres…)

Yes, but he is way better then the average coder, though others will need to help him.
Much of the code won't be so hard as complex.
Also, I think the hardest thing will be world generation, since I have no idea how a typical DF world generates. Especially the procedurally generated history stuff.

I'm not sure that copy pasting will work, a lot of the characters (not necessarily the ones you need) just come up as question marks even if you copy a string. Someone should experiment with that. But the problem isn't that the characters can't be internally stored or input, just that the consoles don't display them properly.

However, language support (along with support for the rest of the ascii characters) does appear to be in the works. So eventually that barrier should be removed.

Yeah… characters out of the range of even the full ACSII character range I have tested, these show up as ? and ! and those of the sort when CC tries to display them… The consoles won't display them because the font image doesn't contain them, I believe.

I DECIDED TO PUT THIS IN A SPOILER BECAUSE IT ENDED UP BEING LONGER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD

Spoiler

The generation would, yes, probably be one of the harder sections but it would also be one of the funner sections (In my opinion at least), every time I mess around creating generators infinite or not I have so much fun; It's the rest that's boring to me.

Adding items, actions, people, interaction, small mechanics which make up the bigger ones which are just annoying and boring to code; You put in too much effort in to them and get too little out of them in the end seemingly.

I have never properly played DF but from the little and from the games based upon it I have seen I can see that it has a lot little tiles and items. These items have undoubtedly been added slowly over the course of the games development, just as Minecraft had.

I think that coding this would take it's toll in the tedious areas, the generation and that sort is something that no-one would have done in CC before, you would be doing something new and be creating your own ways of doing it (most likely), that part of the coding would be hardest but also funnest and most rewarding. The tedious areas, the creating items, entities, tiles, small features like these which you seem to put more time in to that areas like generation and get less out of, are the ones which would make the coding of this game hardest. Especially when you are programming for a platform like CC, you wouldn't have the same amount of motivation as you would have if you were programming for a much bigger audience.

This is, again, just my opinion and someone out there could think the opposite of me, that the challenging parts of the programming are the more boring and that the frustration you get out of them outweighs the fulfilling feeling you get from making them work and that the small areas are more fulfilling as a programmer because they add up to make an individual game and that they are easy to code, you rarely run in to bugs after the first few and can easily add more and more nice features to the game, making it more and more personal. This is just not what I think :D/>/>

ChunLing, on 26 October 2012 - 10:37 PM said:

I'm not sure that copy pasting will work, a lot of the characters (not necessarily the ones you need) just come up as question marks even if you copy a string. Someone should experiment with that. But the problem isn't that the characters can't be internally stored or input, just that the consoles don't display them properly.

However, language support (along with support for the rest of the ascii characters) does appear to be in the works. So eventually that barrier should be removed.

So.. wait for update to get decent graphics?

Or do the turtle thing, that kinda sounded awesome.

martin509, on 26 October 2012 - 12:36 PM said:

I am giving a challenge to the entire ComputerCraft community: program a version of the amazingly complex and hard to learn ASCII freeware game Dwarf Fortress with ComputerCraft. This will be the ultimate (besides Halo :D/>/>) challenge in my eyes of the community. Good luck, if you do not know what Dwarf Fortress is, it inspired Notch to make Minecraft along with Infiniminer. It is also hilarious to fail in DF.

No. This isn't insane enough. How about, programming Dwarf Fortress. But when you do something a wireless turtle physically does it. Each Dwarf is a wireless turtle, and when you change class the turtle goes to some special structure (built by the player) that changes it into the new class.

Ok, someone already mentionned this. Nonetheless it should still be done, it doesn't have to be as complex as DF thou. I'd be pretty impressed if someone just built a decent mining simulator.

No code in main post, moving to general.

Dats a lot of dwarf in one dwarf. Dwarf.