Are there any of the Dwarf Fortress "clones" good? Stuff like Rimworld, Timber & Stone, Stonehearth, etc

Are there any of the Dwarf Fortress "clones" good? Stuff like Rimworld, Timber & Stone, Stonehearth, etc.

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Rimworld is pretty okay, but at the end of the day is still a clone; DF with features removed in favour of graphics.

Most of the other clones are absolute trash though.

Banished is quite good

You have a game that a guy is constantly working on and has been for over ten years, and then you have a cheap knockoff made by some guy with rudimentary understanding of the source code designed for a quick buck (such as Minecraft)

There are no decent clones of anything, if something has to be cloned, it's merely a copy, and said developer is just admitting that their product is inferior to the original due to the fact they've had to leech and implement from it

So fuck clones, try hunting for something original judged on your own merit instead

>Therapist still out of date

brb killing myself again

>Needing therapist
Strengthen your autism, bro.

Nice-looking, with a nice UI, but ultimately very shallow.

The problem with dwarf fortress "clones" is they don't understand what dwarf fortress is all about

They think its a block based base builting ant farm sim with tech trees and random mob spawns to kill your guys.

When dwarf fortress at its core is an RNG story telling engine, with an adventure mode and fortress mode tacked on.

Thats why there are no true dwarf fortress clones, the only thing there are are ant farm sims where you build your forts and watch your guys do their daily work while fighting off bad things.

I honestly wish there were more dwarf fortress like games, but only aurora comes to mind.

Im still waiting for someone to use dwarf fortress style 'story telling' RNG to make a proper MMO.

>When dwarf fortress at its core is an RNG story telling engine, with an adventure mode and fortress mode tacked on.

can you elaborate on this? im curious. I don't know much about dwarf fortress and I thought it WAS the base building ant farm thing you describe the clones as being.

Banished is kinda disappointing. As user mentioned, it's very shallow, lacks of feeling of progress after a certain point since there's no unlocking system, you've got everything available from the start. But the modding community is decent.

Not that guy but literally everything is procedurally generated. When your world is created it has history added to it, descriptions, lords, races. It's autismal level of depth. The game sure looks like shit and the UI is terrible but everything else is developed far beyond what we see in any other videogames.

Dwarf fortress, at least to its developer, is a game that generates fantasy worlds with a set ammount of peramiters that generate magic, monsters, civilizations, enviroments, ect.

When you generate a world in dwarf fortress it generates a massive backlog of events that creates a lore onto the world itself, and shit is dynamic enough that you can end up with goblin civilzations ruled by kidnapped dwarves raised by demons, elves who become so badass the dwarves make them their king, and other crazy shit.

Then you can go on adventures in adventure mode, exploring the world, finding artifacts created by master craftsmen, slay mythical beasts with names due to how many people they've killed, and maybe encounter a megabeast and get anally raped by dragonfire or horrible forgotten beast diseases and poisons

Damn this is really cool. I'm actually shocked that no one has stolen this concept for other games.

Well now I want to get into DF. Any good online resources?

Yeah, the thing is though that dwarf fortress is older then the internet, the code is a massive clusterfuck, but its functional, toadyone's been working on it way longer then most of us realize.

Don't get me wrong, I think that this level of dynamic content would revolutionize the RPG genre 100 folds, especially where party based MMOs are involved, but sadly I don't think anyone would ever get as far as toadyone has gotten, especially if they have enough budget to develop a proper graphics interface and realtime gameplay mechanics.

Youtube tutorials were helpful for me. I can't remember the name, but it was a let's play and tutorial in one. Really helps you understand the opening phase of the game.

If you started this thread looking for recommendations, just play Dwarf Fortress. There are a ton of resources online to get newcomers started and /vg/ usually has a general up.

Look up Boatmurdered if you want an example of what an incredible greentext generator Dwarf Fortress is.

>aurora
For when your autism is too strong for DF!

If you haven't tried Dwarf Fortress then Rimworld will give you an idea of how to play dwarf fortress on a basic level. After you've played that for a few playthroughs you might understand enough about how these kind of games are played you can move onto dwarf fortress if you crave more features, greater story telling potential and amounts of content only a turbo basement autist could develop.

You might feel content with the ant farm simulators and thats fine too.

Its overwhelming at first but keep trying and/or keep reading tutorials and such. Its worth it.

I like the ant farms, and I like the idea of the autismal level of depth that dorf fort offers, but in practice I'm overwhelmed by the amount of options I have.

t.someone who has never succeeded at anything

For me the Dwarf Fortress clones are way too "in between". Not even close to having the same level of depth and complexity as DF and still lacking the visuals and polished gameplay of much simpler management games like Dungeon Keeper.

Rimworld is a good game, but I don't see why anyone would switch over from DF to play it.

Rimworld is alright, its simplicity really hurts it in the long run.

>When dwarf fortress at its core is an RNG story telling engine

You see, rimworld claims to do this but it very quickly devolves into exactly what you described. And since so much effort is going into things that don't alleviate that I don't think its changing anytime soon.

Part of the issue is that rimworld is so goddamn tedious. In Dorf Fort everyone dying is whatever, it was probably fun or funny, or both. Killing yourself with some megaproject is fun. In rimworld dying is something retarded like everyone getting muscle parasites or eternal volcanic winter and its exacerbated by the fact that rimworlds start is slow as fuck and dorf forts start is super fast.

Does the amount of content that Rimworld has make it worth getting into now, or should I wait for it to leave Early Access?

Why not just play DF? It has more content, is more fun, and it's free. There's plenty of guides for it, give it a go.

The worst thing about Rimworld is the dynamic storyteller. In DF losing is fun, in Rimworld losing is rage inducing because it just sends wave after wave of shit you can't really protect yourself from without meta-gaming.

>Rimworld is pretty okay, but at the end of the day is still a clone; DF with features removed in favour of graphics.
Rimworld is notable for actually adding things and not just being a pure clone.
For example, electricity and events.

The other clones are mostly just DF+graphics-depth.

honestly just learn the hotkeys and do it all yourself
looking at online resources ruins any game and saps all the fun you could have had
lets plays, wikis, etc are all cancer

And recently they added world map as a proper 3d globe with the ability to travel, still in build mode. It will never surpass DF as long as it has no z levels, but it's pretty close up there already.

I like the sci-fi aesthetic of Rimworld more than fantasy.

It has a lot of replayability

Because the game will buttfuck you into oblivion multiple times until you learn how to play

dfhack comes with manager, if you really can't stand the ingame labour system.

Even after that it'll just do it randomly.

>lol heres 4 guys with sleeping sickness enjoy your aids
>oh hey you hit late game heres 5,000 raiders better meta game them to death

etc.

Rimworld needs funner ways to lose.

Rimworld's combat wouldn't work in 3D, the UI would stop being clean and neat and get Dwarf Fortressish, the AI would get confused and retarded, and the game would lose a lot of its uniqueness.

Z-levels is much of why most clones are shit: they are afraid to become something more than clones.

Dont worry, you'll stop playing the moment you realize how shitty the UI is

No matter how deep DF becomes nothing will safe it from how unplayable it is

the "story telling" aspect is just a long list of stuff that happens, although it feels quite arbitrary unless something specific or funny happens
I think that the real storytelling is what the player makes up by their self when they are playing the game, which is greatly more interesting than anything RNG could produce

Not really

>literally a decade of criticisms for how shitty the UI is stopping people from playing
>not really
Yes really.

Some rich millionaire needs to fund toady to hire some guys to replace the unplayable current UI with something modern.

Nah, dwarf therapist solves the only deal breaking issue I had with the UI. It could be way better but its not unplayable and you learn the hotkeys for shit pretty fast.

>Well it works for me :)
It doesnt work for 99% of people, thats the problem

Dwarf fortress has power and random events.

99% of people couldn't play DF even if it had perfect neural link UI.

Not really in the "i already played it which is an undeniable proof that it's playable" sense.

Technically it is produced by RNG, as that dictates the world that is created, which dictates events which happen, which dictate the story which plays out. I once had my dwarves carve out an elaborate hall with carvings of a great wheelbarrow theft that apparently went down in the history of that civilisation.

Anyone turned off by having to learn hotkeys is going to be turned off by the rest of the game regardless of the UI.

thats just the first drop off a series of steep cliffs.

not even something modern is needed, just something that is simple
the worst part about the current UI is that the hotkeys are inconsistent between menus and items aren't organised well

What do you mean?

Their problem*

Nonsensical hotkeys are the only bad part about the UI. Once you've memorized the controls you might as well turn it off, since it's really just a hotkey reminder sheet.

the game is in alpha. how could he make the game polished when most of the stuff is bound to change and huge things are still to be implemented.

Rimworld is better than Dwarf Fortress:

+ Better interface
+ Better graphics and mod support
+ Easier to get into and play
+ Electricity
+ Lighting
+ Actual day/night cycle
+ Workbenches instead of workshops
+ Temperature makes more sense and has more gameplay effects (Keeping colonists cool/warm is important, machinery produces heat, refrigeration necessary to keep food from spoiling)
+ Better random events

The parts that Rimworld lacks which Dwarf Fortress has, are almost completely ignorable. Sure, there's no complex world-building - but you don't need it. There's a lot of stuff DF has that just don't fucking matter in terms of gameplay.

About the only thing I actually miss are randomly generated critters and multiple z-levels.
And I feel like Dwarf Fortress melee combat mechanics work better.

Rimworld is pretty nice. DF is still a better game overall, but that doesn't make Rimworld any worse for what it is.

>People who can handle the level of autism that the poor UI has cant take criticisms
Surprise! Not.

DF is held back by its poor UI. End of story.

...

>the game is in alpha
Please fucking end yourself

Rimworld's simplicity is fixed when you start using mods.

Hardcore SK is a few steps behind the current Rimworld version and some releases are buggy as fuck, but it is by far the best way to play the game.

typical anime retard

This.

I play both

I don't play dwarf fortress anymore specifically because it takes too much time just to start playing, and because the UI is a fucking disaster that makes doing everything a pain in the ass.

Dwarf Fortress will never be completed. And I'm okay with this. The game will be too good to ever be properly finished.

The AI will probably gain sentience in 20 years, anyway.

You're god damn right

You made a stupid claim that it's unplayable. Those responses are justified. Think more about what you write next time.

the thing is that dwarf fortress is a game in alpha, and rimworld is a game based on a game in alpha.
sure it can execute some things better than dwarf fortress, but that's only because ots ambitions lay at what df is now, not what it will be in a decade or two.

>multiple z-levels
Why ruin a good game with shitty attempts at becoming a clone?

...

>Rimworld is better than Dwarf Fortress

I want someone to slash your tires. In the event you don't own a vehicle, I want someone to paint mean things on your house that would make you really uncomfortable.

No way. You need computational power that won't exist for next 50 years at least.

how is it not? its version 0.42, meaning its 40 percent from 1.0. Not even half done from the "finished" product. Not that he will stop at that, he has said on multiple occasions that hell continue beyond that.

I like z-levels

I can live without them in rimworld, but I still like them and want them.

CIAniggers don't know bout my TempleOS.

i think we are coming to a point with rimworld where you shouldn't call it a clone just because it was inspired by dwarf fortress.

Well I am a fan of MMOs, players working together, I also love D&D, but D&D is hard to set up these days with everyone being so far apart and glued to their computers all the time.

I really wish someone would come along and create something like dwarf fortress's RNG story telling mechanics to generate world events to give players a more free form D&D style encounter system that dynamically tells stories as if the server acted as a digital DM seeding the game with content and events to explore with friends.

But sadly MMOs and multiplayer RPGs in general will remain stuck in the linear progressive style of gameplay, and the only thing to have come close is minecraft multiplayer, and that is a farcry from what I really want.

>what it will be in a decade or two
It will be like what it is now, with 2 more actual gameplay mechanics and gigatons of useless shitty gimmicks.

For every actual update like minecarts or trees, DF gets at least 10 updates like
>dances
>poetry
>irrelevant worldbuilding autism
>extra offscreen calculations regarding worldbuilding
>addition of new bloat like 10 entries of plants that differ only by names and spawn spots
>religion (purely worldbuilding, of course)
>criminals (also just worldbuilding)
>rumors
>bugfixes for crashes caused by the autism above

Also, every new version is slower and less optimized due to autistic bloat it gets.

I played DF for literally hundreds of hours, so it's not like I'm saying it all from a position of a normie who can't get into the game.

>better random events

rimworld niggers need only watch at /vg/. A new game without a general and a decade old game with a 24/7 general.

I'm hoping the rimworld dev actually starts incorporating some of the mods into the game.

Like the lighting mods that add lights attached to walls instead of the shitty default lamp thing that looks ugly as fuck and takes up a square space.
Or the mod that improves pathfinding calculations

Some mods could use a little bit of sanity, like the combat realism mod - great idea, bad execution.

I've always wanted to play D&D, but never knew anyone that played it.

>having a general is a good thing

Why would anyone want to be on that cesspool of a board?

What random events does DF even have? You basically get invasions, traders, migrants, or some critter walking into your territory. IF you go into evil areas, you can have it rain blood or something.

Rimworld meanwhile has solar flares, meteorites, critter attacks, weather events, drop pods of supplies, earthquakes, etc.

Rimworld is pretty fun, havent played for a while and theres new stuff which is neat.
I got some smokeleaf joints from raiders and wanted to sell them off later but my wounded just ended up smoking them.
Probably because I dont have medicine to take care of their pains they went ahead and smoked a joint or two.

I'd love a way to grow crops inside integrated, without them dying every time the power is disabled.

Now I know you're lying out of your ass. There's no earhquakes in Rimworld

oops mean to quote

Rimworld doesn't have nearly enough content to warrant regular discussion unless you just love your killbox design.

I don't honestly know where to go with the game that wouldn't just make it a worse dorf fort though. Late game might as well not exist because all it is is killboxes and 50000 man raids, early game is pure tedium, and mid-game is basically getting assfucked by RNG. Its still fun to play occasionally though.

The weather events all suck ass in rimworld. None of them are cool or fun. the only fun thing about toxic fallout is like, removing the roof of your prison so all your prisoners get cancer. otherwise its just sitting in your fortress of solitude waiting. Drop pods are just wealth inflation so you get more raids.

You know you can grow crops inside right? As long as you have dirt you can use a sun lamp and heaters

Okay let me tell you what playing D&D was like for me

Me and my best friends would all get together at someone's house on the weekend, we'd start an adventure with one of us running the campaign, we would non-stop crack jokes and laugh like mad the entire time, then we'd order some pizza. When we got tired of playing D&D we'd paint warhammer miniatures or play some co-op Halo on the xbox.

BEST. WEEKENDS. EVER.

You won't regret playing D&D if you can get friends together and mix it with pizza, jokes, warhammer, and vidya.

...Yes there are

They even vary in severity

Yeah I meant in caves.

rimworld is good
stonehearth has a worse UI than dwarf fortress

the next upcoming update will add artifacts to be a new mechanic. in adv mode you will be able to quest for them and in fortress mode you will be able to send a squad to retrieve them and will have to defend from enemy civs wanting your artifacts. The update after that will be the magic and myth arc update. in which the world will get magic, a creation story and a variance in high fantasy to low fantasy worlds decided by the parameters you set to your worldgen. this will mean human worlds with myths and fucking fantastical worlds where the creation is the actual truth and the magic will be based on it, like collecting shards of the egg that created the world for spells and such. toady has already made a prototype for the myth generator, and can be seen playing with it on some convention that was filmed to youtube.
its true that toady adds a lot of fluff, but he adds it because he wants a dynamic world. the next upcoming updates will be huge additions to the game, and to deny it is to clearly show you have no idea on what the dev is doing right fucking now. go read the development pages.

Dwarf Fortress is a much more complex game that caters to people who want mechanical depth and gameplay intricacies at the cost of convenience. It has a terrible UI and can be a chore to get into, but DF is still the superior choice if gameplay depth is what matters most to you.

Although to be completely honest: I think the two games are so dramatically dissimilar that comparing them is pointless.

Newest patch allows you to set up caravans and settle new bases or attack raider bases.
Thats something for sure.

Just build the hydro growing system. Its terribly powerhungry but if you use it for expensive and slow growing stuff its very valuable.

youtu.be/mdn1s8FxrUg

> no complex world building - but you don't need it.

Bitch that's half the reason I play DF.

Also why do you need better graphics? DF's graphics are pretty easy to adapt to.

Gameplay and depth matter to me, but so does fun.

DF has gameplay "depth" that is more tedious than it is fun. It's the wrong kind, and part of the reason I prefer Rimworld.

Rimworld's development also moves an order of magnitude faster than toady's. That might change if the dev gets tired of working on the game, but so far it's been pretty consistent.

Crops die when power goes off which happens too often.

Biggest complaint is that you cant really make good bunkers in rimworld, you just have to do with sandbags, pillars and rely on darkness.

D&D is amazing if you have at least 3 friends who have an attention span longer than 15 seconds that are willing to play a game that has almost no visuals besides a shittily-drawn map and some tokens.

df is shit tho.