Dwarf Fortress is a single-player fantasy game. You can control a dwarven outpost or an adventurer in a randomly generated, persistent world.
Although Dwarf Fortress is still in a work in progress, many features have already been implemented.
- The world is randomly generated with distinct civilizations spanning over 1000 years of detailed history, dozens of towns, hundreds of caves and regions with various wildlife.
- The world persists as long as you like, over many games, recording historical events and tracking changes.
- Command your dwarves as they search for wealth in the mountain.
- Craft treasures and furniture from many materials and improve these objects with precious metals, jewels and more.
- Defend yourself against attacks from hostile civilizations, the wilderness and the depths.
- Support the nobility as they make demands of your populace.
- Keep your dwarves happy and read their thoughts as they work and relax.
- Z coordinate allows you to dig out fortresses with multiple levels. Build towers or conquer the underworld.
- Build floodgates to divert water for farming or to drown your adversaries... and don't forget the magma!
- Surgery, sutures, splints, crutches and more: care for your wounded dwarves instead of leaving them to fend for themselves.
- Much much more...
- Play an adventurer and explore, quest for glory or seek vengeance.
- Meet adversaries from previous games.
- Recruit people in towns to come with you on your journey.
- Explore without cumbersome plot restrictions.
- Seamlessly wander the world -- up to 197376 x 197376 squares total -- or travel more rapidly on the region map.
- Travel by day and search for a place to shelter as night falls.
- Accept quests from the town and civilization leaders.
- Retire and meet your old characters. Bring them along on an adventure with a new character or reactivate them and play directly.
- Z coordinate allows you to move between twisting underground caverns and scale structures, fighting adversaries above and below.
- Earn a reputation as a hero with the various civilizations in the world.
- The combat model uses skills, body parts, individual tissues, material properties, aimed attacks, wrestling, one-time opportunities, charging and dodging between squares, bleeding, pain, nausea, various poison effects and much more.
- A dynamic weather model tracks wind, humidity and air masses to create fronts, clouds, rain storms and blizzards.
- Over two hundred rock and mineral types are incorporated into the world, placed in their proper geological environments.
- Add new creatures, weapons, plants, metals and other objects via modifiable text files.
- Extended ASCII character set rendered in 16 colors (including black) as well as 8 background colors (including black).
Copyright (c) 2002-2012.
All rights are retained by Tarn Adams, save the following: you may redistribute the binary and accompanying files, unmodified, provided you do so free of charge. If you'd like to distribute a modified version of the game or portion of the archive and are worried about copyright infringement, please contact Tarn Adams at toadyone@bay12games.com.
This software is still in development, and this means that there are going to be problems, including serious problems that, however unlikely, might damage your system or the information stored on it. Please be aware of this before playing.
For help with gameplay, press the help key (initially '?') after starting the game. You might have to press ESC and use 2/8 to select keybindings on non-US keyboards in order to get the help key to work properly.
As of September 2008, you can also get help at the fan-created http://df.magmawiki.com/. Please make use of and contribute to this valuable resource.
- Visit http://www.bay12games.com to report problems, discuss the game and read information on future development. There are also other games there. All of the games there are free. If you paid for this game, get the latest version for free at bay12games.com, and let me know who was charging you at tarn.adams@gmail.com.
- See release-notes.rst for information on handling saves and a brief writeup on the changes for this version.
- See file-changes.rst for new init/interface information.
- See command-line.rst for information on world generation from command lines.
- Go to http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/faq.html for Frequently Asked Questions and their answers.
- Go to http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_now.html to see a full list of changes.
Bay 12 Games is fan-supported. We've put a lot of time and effort into these games, which are all freely distributed, but we can't survive on your feedback alone. Donations are appreciated.
Visit http://www.bay12games.com/support.html to see how you can help.
- Programming: Tarn Adams
- Design: Tarn and Zach Adams
- Initial Playtesting: Alan Ames, Alex Mooney, Martin Packman, Ben Ringland and Zonk
- Lots of HTML/IT stuff: Martin Packman
- First Mac port: Matthew Moss and eli
- SDL port, and additional changes: Bernard Helyer (see license below)
- OpenGL upgrade to this millenium, and additional changes: Svein Ove Aas (see license below)
- Additional changes to the SDL Port and related main loop/input code: Theodorick Grau (see license below)
- Many suggestions from fans on the http://www.bay12games.com and other forums (and the #bay12games IRC channel) have been incorporated over the years.
Existing save files will become unusable if any raw/objects entries are removed. If you change the configuration of the bodies of existing creatures, save files may become unstable.
New additions to the files are not incorporated into existing worlds but will be added to the next world you generate. We do not accept submissions for the official Dwarf Fortress releases. Please do not ask for your code, art, sound or raw/objects txt files to be incorporated into the official releases.
The game uses code by Svein Ove Aas (OpenGL upgrade) and Bernard Helyer (who did the SDL port).
This code was distributed under the following license (and will be made available at some point at http://www.bay12games.com/games after it's tested a bit more):
Copyright (c) 2008, Svein Ove Aas, parts by Tarn Adams, portions Bernard Helyer All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. * The names of Tarn Adams, Zach Adams, Svein Ove Aas, Bernard Helyer and Bay 12 Games may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Additional changes to the SDL Port and related main loop/input code by Theodorick Grau, who provided the following license:
Full license, ownership, and copyright is hereby granted to Tarn Adams, Zach Adams, Bay 12 Games (represensations thereof), and all assignees they may designate; for all source code submitted by me to any of the above mentioned parties. I retain no rights to any source code once it has been submitted. I also make no guarantees as to the fitness or mechantibility of any source code. All source code, submitted by me, and its binary products are wholly property of the above named parties.
Signed this day the 11th of January 2009, Theodorick Grau