(Dwarf Fortess) 42% of the way done to simulating existance

[Mr Bean]

42.06% or so

On the first day of GDC 2016, the creator of Dwarf Fortress stood at the front of a packed audience and explained how to procedurally generate the beginning of the world. And not just the land and trees and rivers and mountains of the world, which Dwarf Fortress has randomly generated for many years. The mythology of the world: the creation myth told in whispers and rhymes over the centuries, which determines the form of civilizations, the land and the magic in the world.

The work-in-progress creation generator is just another step towards version 1.0 of Dwarf Fortress for Tarn Adams, who has been designing and programming the game since 2006. The most recent release, .42.06, is very deliberately named, as I found out when I spoke to Adams for an hour a few days after his talk. The version number represents 42% completion towards a list of roughly 2,600 planned features or tasks for the final version. As he chips away at those tasks, Adams brings Dwarf Fortress ever closer to, essentially, simulating existence. Or, as Adams told me in our interview, the "narratively interesting" parts of existence.

The thing is with DF, it's hard to tell if this is an early April Fools or no he's dead serious his design document is 2,600 features long and he's 42% done after a decade of work.

Big hopes for Dwarf Fortress 2028 Gold edition if that's anywhere near being correct.

[Purple]

I'd say he is serious. Been playing the game for quite a few years not and the thing he's added recently are just amazing. Like every dwarf now has dreams, thoughts, feelings, mental and spiritual needs to be fulfilled. And these are all extrapolated from his or her procedurally generated personality. It's not just a series of arbitrary flags. And so you have the little guys running around, getting drunk, working, falling in love and loosing loved ones. And it's all unfolding before your eyes.

Just thinking about it makes me feel as if I am cough in a cosmic recursion. As if I am looking at god developing his world one version at a time up until the point where it replaces our own. Knowing full well that within it too shall one day rise a new god.