Stonesense - Dwarf Fortress Visualizer

Posted by Derek Yu Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:40:00 GMT

Stonesense

Now this is a dream coming true right here! Stonesense (alpha) is an open source isometric visualizer for Dwarf Fortress, created by jonask and Solifuge. It can run side-by-side with the venerable roguelike/sim to provide a graphical view of the game. The sprites are being contributed by various members of the DF community.

Here’a video of the mod in action:


Thanks, Michael Komalarajun, for the heads-up!

Posted in , , ,  | 78 comments

Comments

  1. TeamQuiggan said 43 minutes later:

    Oh, wow, That looks really awesome.

  2. HandCraftedRadio said about 1 hour later:

    This looks incredible!

  3. cigarettes said about 1 hour later:

    damn. that is awesome.

    makes me want to get in the game, however it still seems to be a severe mindfuck to actually learn it.

  4. Ben said about 1 hour later:

    Total confusion… now in 2.5d!

  5. ssp said about 1 hour later:

    Sweet baby Jesus in a jar! There’s so much good stuff coming out this fall it’s insane! Gonna try this ASAP

  6. Renton said about 2 hours later:

    Maybe I can finally understand what’s going on in this game and actually get into it. Maybe.

  7. SpeedRunGames said about 2 hours later:

    This is really cool! Great project!

  8. Anarkex said about 2 hours later:

    This looks like exactly what I need to actually start playing this game.

  9. Caliber9 said about 2 hours later:

    Finally, this looks so great! I have a feeling Dwarf fortress is about to get alot of new fans.

  10. Alex May said about 2 hours later:

    holy shit

  11. Cymon said about 3 hours later:

    This is it. This is what the game’s been needing. When it’s done I may actually consider playing the game.

  12. Cliftor said about 3 hours later:

    Damn, that looks good. After I finish playing my current obsession… maybe it’s finally time to take the DF plunge!

    IIRC, there’s an article on TIG about some really thorough guide. Time to dl and start reading!

  13. Ricky said about 3 hours later:

    Awesome. Now it just needs a proper GUI, and I’m there!

  14. Solifuge said about 4 hours later:

    Greetings from the Stonesense team!

    With Toady’s blessings, we’re ultimately hoping to make this a full GUI, but for now it’s just a live visualizer using good old-fashioned 256 color sprites.

    I must admit, I did not expect this kind of response, much less from TIGsource and Mr. Yu, to take notice of this thing. Apparently there is a bigger desire for full graphics support in DF than it seemed!

  15. John Evans said about 4 hours later:

    Hotness!

  16. mania said about 4 hours later:

    This game is so complex that I have no idea what I’m doing while playing it. This causes frustration, but at the same time I’d love to understand everything because it has to be awesome!

    It’s driving me nuts

  17. Michael "Kael" K said about 4 hours later:

    @Solifuge: It’s the kind of thing people have been clamoring for since… ever. It’s bloody fantastic and as such that’s why I thought it’d be a good thing to share. (Now if only I didn’t try talking about it while brain-dead at 2 am)

    With the attention it deserves, Stonesense will hopefully have much more sprites and progress. Toady has the actual game to work his magic on~

    Much thanks to the great team at TIGsource for posting it :]

  18. kavs said about 4 hours later:

    Awesome! That is just… awesome!

    Awesome awesome awesome.

  19. namuol said about 4 hours later:

    This sounds a lot like Toady’s biggest fear is coming true, according to multiple interviews he’s been given…

  20. Hypersapien said about 4 hours later:

    Oh god! Oh GOD! NO!!

    I deleted the damn thing and finally got my life back! And now this! I don’t want to get sucked back in!

    But… so.. pretty..

  21. Nikica said about 5 hours later:

    I prefer ASCII graphics over tilesets so that’s why a tool like this, which runs side-by-side with the game is great for me.

  22. Skofo said about 6 hours later:

    Interesting!

    3D next?

  23. seth said about 6 hours later:

    great!

    the graphics are way too happy though

  24. Echo said about 7 hours later:

    @Skofo 3D views for Dwarf Fortress exist. Most of them are not real time (you run them seperate from the game), but few few projects that are have begun popping up.

  25. peterix said about 7 hours later:

    3d should be comming eventually. Don’t hold your breath tho.

    Btw: dfhack, on which stonesense is based, needs reverse engineers and hackers. I’m just a single guy and this thing is getting into the ‘barely manageable’ territory very fast.

  26. Ezuku said about 9 hours later:

    I must confess, this is so awesome I actually thought it must have been an april fool’s joke.

    This is amazing. Must get right back into DF this instant.

  27. Ezuku said about 9 hours later:

    I mean, when people say “oh, they’re working on an open-source visualiser”, you don’t really figure that it’s ever going to be completed and to such a high quality.

    Also, I love the cute SNES-like graphics.

  28. TinyPirate said about 10 hours later:

    If you want to try Dwarf Fortress, but have been scared off before, come try my complete newby tutorial. Comes with a save file and many pictures and details! http://afteractionreporter.com/2009/02/09/the-complete-and-utter-newby-tutorial-for-dwarf-fortress-part-1-wtf/

  29. Pyabo said about 11 hours later:

    OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!

    Looks incredible… exactly ONE HALF of what this game needs. Now if someone would come up with a good UI… :)

  30. Cliftor said about 11 hours later:

    @Solifuge

    Oh sure! I’m sure ASCII has it’s charm for many, many people, but there’s always an audience for this kind of addition.

  31. Matt said about 12 hours later:

    Nice. Looks very neat. Maybe my friends will be more interested in my obsession now that I can show them sprites rather than ASCII.

  32. Thomas said about 12 hours later:

    Holy fucking shit!

  33. The Monster King Ren said about 13 hours later:

    this shows how pretty DF is, even though its (and only its, I can’t get into (other) roguelike) ASCII looks almost as good; but this, this is beautiful

  34. Lily said about 14 hours later:

    That is beautiful. My fortress and its wall are gonna look AMAZING in it. :D

    Alternatively, the fort I plan to start later to address the shortcomings of my current system will look TEN TIMES AS AWESOME in it.

  35. msarge said about 15 hours later:

    While this is fantastic I really wish someone would make the user interface slightly more intuitive. If I could see what was going on AND I could control the game, I would probably be able to have lots of fun with this game.

  36. Phasma Felis said about 16 hours later:

    Ha! About god damn time.

    @Solifuge: I dunno who you’ve been talking to, for every person I know who actually plays DF there’s like five who would like to play it if it were less like staring into the Matrix. :D (And had a less miserably impossible interface.) Those people just don’t post on the DF official forums, for obvious reasons. Keep up the good work!

  37. Gustave said about 18 hours later:

    Man I LOVE pixel art and merging the depth of DF with pixels can only be a good thing :D

    I would pay for this…

  38. Jay said about 18 hours later:

    the ascii graphics look better O.o

  39. MOK said about 19 hours later:

    Looking fantastic, if only something would be done about the user interface I might have another crack at learning this game.

  40. Cokho said about 21 hours later:

    OH WOW! HANDSOME! Can’t wait _

  41. Come On Toady! said about 23 hours later:

    One less excuse to keep that dreadful interface.

    I mean, ASCII looks cool and everything and I guess the whole DF aesthetics are a comment on the the slowing down of game development by excessive 3D requirements (isn’t the predecessor to DF a 3D game?). But it’s getting ridiculous. There is a todo list with priority entries like “make dwarfs limp on left foot” or “add ‘grip’ value to hammer shafts”. No word on making the game possible to play without learning 200 hotkeys. It’s like a mockery of interface design.

  42. shipwreck said about 23 hours later:

    Is this heaven?!

  43. lp said about 23 hours later:

    i dont have problem with interface at all…

  44. ecto said 1 day later:

    i’ve played it many many hours and i still very much hate the interface..

  45. Ezuku said 1 day later:

    I’ve played DF way too much, and I can cope with the interface. That said, it takes way too many keypresses to do a lot of things, especially fine designs. I can also understand how a lot of it is very unaccessible to newcomes, especially since there’s a lot of bloat in the menu system (things you’ll almost never use, or which are broken, higher than much more useful things).

  46. Chris L said 1 day later:

    This is blasphemy at its finest.

  47. xot said 1 day later:

    Huge image is huge. Ever heard of JPEG?

  48. Figgin said 1 day later:

    Actually, that -is- a JPEG. For oldschool sprite stuff like this, you want to use PNG or GIF, with 256 indexed colors.

    You get uber-tiny graphics that way. TXT file sized.

  49. nobody2 said 1 day later:

    It’s actually an unoptimized PNG.

  50. Andiaz said 1 day later:

    This is freaking excellent. I’ll definitely give DF a new try thanks to this. :D

  51. jonte said 1 day later:

    wow this is really cool looking .. never got iunto the game cuz of the graphics .. this is a try

  52. jonte said 1 day later:

    wow this is really cool looking .. never got iunto the game cuz of the graphics .. this is a try

  53. nihilocrat said 1 day later:

    Neat client.

    You people who weren’t interested in the game until now because “the graphics”: Go read a book.

    I’m more bothered by the job system than interface or graphics. Often there are emergency situations and it’s very hard to get a dwarf to actually do what you want it to because it’s too busy trying to do something very stupid.

  54. Michael "Kael" K said 1 day later:

    @nihilocrat: If you haven’t already, this may be of use to you http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=39229.0 Dwarf Therapist, following in the footsteps of Dwarf Manager/Foreman: it’s a GUI for adjusting the professions of your dwarves en masse and more. Saves much time as you can have profiles and apply them to immigrants or easily tweak job preferences instead of scrolling through menus.

  55. Anthony Flack said 1 day later:

    “You people who weren’t interested in the game until now because “the graphics”: Go read a book.”

    Yeah, go read a book that uses a mass of ascii characters to substitute for words and sentences.

  56. Ian said 1 day later:

    “You people who weren’t interested in the game until now because “the graphics”: Go read a book.”

    Some people simply can’t get in to the game because they have too hard of a time understanding what everything stands for. I fail to see how more people now being able to play this, thus supporting Tarn’s work, is a bad thing.

  57. literary critic said 1 day later:

    “You people who weren’t interested in the game until now because “the graphics”: Go read a book.”

    You know, I really hope Toady One doesn’t actually think like this.

    I both played DF intensively and read many, many books. Yet I hate… HATE the interface. It’s like someone snoring while you’re trying to get some sleep. Like accidentally clicking “don’t save” after you’ve written on a paper for 5 hours. Like driving an airplane with a Super Nintendo game pad. Like finding a dead mouse in your strawberry yogurt… after you’ve already eaten half of it. Like… well, let’s just say that the millions of seconds I wasted using the arrow keys instead of a mouse click (for every fucking single thing!) must make up months, combined.

  58. weirdguy said 1 day later:

    So, uh….what happens if you try to depict the ULTIMATE EPIC MONUMENT?

  59. Derek said 1 day later:

    What do ASCII graphics have to do with roguelikes at all?

  60. Why should I give my name to a machine?! said 1 day later:

    Holy christ’s balls!

    It’s not confusing as hell!

  61. The Monster King Ren said 1 day later:

    well most roguelikes i played, or at least tried to play had ASCII graphics, and most games I played that had ASCII graphics were roguelikes and then there were some visualisations and whatnot, but yeah there’s a lot of graphic tile things and there’s spelunky of course mr Derek but don’t you think the main character sort of looks like an @ if you squint

    maybe it’s just my personal experience, or maybe it’s an elaborate conspiracy

    also you never answered my e-mail but i’ll assume you never got it

  62. Nektonico said 1 day later:

    Neo : Is that…

    Cypher : Dwarf Fortress? Yeah.

    Neo : Do you always look at it encoded?

    Cypher : Well, you have to. The image translators work for the construct program. But there’s way too much information to decode Dwarf Fortress. You get used to it… I, I don’t even see the code. All I see is… miner, mason, brewer…

  63. madrain said 1 day later:

    ha! nice, @62!

    My only problem with this is that isometric view. It’s so godawfully ugly. I won’t play DF without tilesets and character graphics, but I’d rather play ASCII than an isometric view of that sort.

  64. Alex May said 1 day later:

    The projection lets you view structure and layers though - with a straight top-down view you’ve got no way of showing depth really.

  65. Carl Nixon said 1 day later:

    Reminds me of the other classic 80’s game Ant Attack on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum (ask a grown up LOL)

  66. Th. Ang said 1 day later:

    Oh no, DF is becoming casual!

  67. literary critic said 1 day later:

    @nukeedit Nektonico: Epic win!

  68. Trotim said 2 days later:

    Still didn’t help me get into the game! I swear, I try. It just doesn’t… click.

  69. I am said 2 days later:

    YOu know, you players that see this as a bad thing: why, exactly? It certainly doesn’t impede your ability to continue using the classic ASCII. All it means is that more people will be playing.

  70. zach said 3 days later:

    1. This doesn’t help make the game that much more accessible, as most people have far greater problems with the interface than the visual representation (the latter which can be helped a bit with graphical tilesets).

    2. Stonesense is very awesome, but nowhere near usable yet. It runs well on my system with 100+ dwarves, but most of the tile graphics that would make this useful (stockpiles, for example) are still missing. That, and it keeps crashing.

    3. Nektonico <3

  71. eobet said 3 days later:

    Extremely impressive.

    This shot was amazing, I think:

    http://pix.sparky-s.ie/images/42164853370715316874.png

    How the authors of Dwarf Fortress could envision that in plain 2D ascii is difficult to understand.

    Now, if someone only would do the same for the interface…

  72. SoulMyst said 3 days later:

    FINA BLOODY LEEEE!!!!! omw I must be dreaming and when I wake up tomorrow this will be gone O_o

    Looks awesome and cannot wait to play DF with this!

  73. Phasma Felis said 4 days later:

    @I am: It’s plain elitism. “If you don’t like ANSI, you must not be smart enough to appreciate Dwarf Fortress. Not like me!”

  74. xxxxxx) said 4 days later:

    Am I the only one to notice this mod looks exactly like a 2d MineCraft?

  75. Blue Slime said 5 days later:

    So when’s Derek gonna make a custom sprite set?

  76. Consumatopia said 5 days later:

    Like driving an airplane with a Super Nintendo game pad.

    Yeah, Pilotwings was great.

  77. CosmicMaher said 5 days later:

    This is awesome. Thanks.

  78. Narushima said 7 days later:

    Ewww, I don’t think I’ll ever use it. Ugly…

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