1
23

Hello everybody. Hope you all had a good weekend so far. I've made some major progress in Morrowind. Also been playing more casual Balatro on my phone. Have a great week!

2
25
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

It's Fortress Friday! Today we wait for Me to finish my turn and for control of the game to pass on to @Moonworm@hexbear.net (please confirm), with the following players waiting for a chance to leave their mark on Dwarven history.

  1. (Beginning Feb. 6) @Doubledee@hexbear.net

  2. (Beginning Feb. 13) @gay_king_prince_charles@hexbear.net

  3. (Beginning Feb. 20) @booty@hexbear.net

  4. (Beginning Feb. 27) @Oreb@hexbear.net

New players are encouraged to apply in this thread. All players and spectators are welcome to load up the save and see what's going on first hand.

Lore

How to play

Importing the save

Dwarf Fortress saves are not stored in a single file. They are stored as named directories containing over a thousand individual data files. In order to load the game, you need to download a zipped archive of the save and place it in your Dwarf Fortress save directory. This directory can be located in a number of places depending on which OS you are using and what settings you have enabled.

If Portable mode is enabled (not default), the save directory will be located in the same directory as dwarfort / dwarfort.exe. If you are using Steam with the default locations, these are:

On Linux: ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Dwarf Fortress/save

On Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Dwarf Fortress\save

This directory might exist, even if Portable mode is turned off (default), but in that case it will be ignored by the game. Instead, save files are stored somewhere in your user directory.

On Linux: ~/.local/share/Bay 12 Games/Dwarf Fortress/save

On Windows: %AppData%\Roaming\Bay 12 Games\Dwarf Fortress\save

Extract the FFSeason1 directory from the archive and place it inside of the appropriate save directory, then you should see it after starting the game.

Stopping the clock

By using a combination of the "Autosave Frequency" (any setting as long as it is not "Off") and "Pause after every autosave" options, you can cause the game to pause at the exact moment the calendar ticks over to 1st Granite (the first day of the year).

After the game pauses, you still have the opportunity to do a couple minor things, like designating blueprint tiles to label hazards, noteworthy sources of material, or leaving graffiti. You can also rename stockpiles and rooms, etc. before writing the final save. You should avoid doing anything that will substantially change the behavior of the fort or generate labor tasks (like creating / removing stockpiles, changing which items are allowed to be stored in stockpiles, enabling / disabling standing orders, creating new work orders, or designating new rooms / meeting areas). Military schedules often change at the start of a season (e.g. the "staggered training" preset). This is fine.

Any blueprints left are merely suggestions. The next player is free to ignore them. If you wanted something built there, you should have microed your miners better :P

Exporting the save

When Dwarf Fortress creates auto-saves, or if you use the "save and continue playing" feature, Dwarf Fortress will write these saves to an alternate directory (e.g. autosave1 or pull the lever). When you finish your turn, you need to use the "Save and return to title menu" option and choose "Save to this timeline." You need to do this even though the game just created an auto-save. This will write the save back to the FFSeason1 directory, which you can then place in a zip archive and submit.

Making your submission.

Save files can be e-mailed to fortress-friday@matapacos.dog ahead of time. Some e-mail services (like Gmail) prohibit sending large enough attachments, but if it works on your end, it should work on mine. Otherwise, the file may need to be hosted using a third-party service. Dwarf Fortress File Depot is the canonical service for this (they have a category specifically for community games), but any service which doesn't require me to create an account or jump through flaming hoops is acceptable. Currently (as of Episode 3), the compressed save is about 58MB. It won't get any smaller with time.

Alternately, submissions can be made as a reply to the following week's Fortress Friday post, which will be posted in anticipation of a submission. This thread will be posted and used to coordinate the game and get the proper files into the hands of the next player regardless of if the anticipated turn was completed.

Whether or not the file was transferred in advance, The player who just completed their turn should make a top-level comment in this thread describing noteworthy events of their turn. You are encouraged (but not required) to roleplay and continue to spin a fantasy narrative out of it, but you don't need to write us a Tolkien novel - especially if you are pressed for time and have other shit to worry about. This shouldn't feel like a homework assignment.

My initial submission will be excessive because I am also covering the results of world-generation, the historical circumstances of the civilization we chose, and the embark. Subsequent posts will mostly be focused on chronicling events in Fortress Mode. You are absolutely not expected to export the world history and spend hours dicking around in Legends Viewer spinning up backstories for every minor goblin who gets turned into dog food.

What if a turn is not completed / running late?

If you anticipate not being able to complete your turn, just let us know (the sooner, the better) so we can make adjustments. Shit pops up. There are more important things in life than a stupid game. We won't be mad at you.

In case Fortress Friday rolls around and there is no submission, Tentatively, I think we give the player 24 hours to actually make their post before we start openly contemplating passing to the next player, followed by another 24 hours to find out which of the next players is actually available. So if there is no update by mid-Saturday, we find another candidate, and if there is no word by mid-Sunday, they are given the green light to play.

What if a turn is completed early?

You can tease us (it's reassuring to know progress is being made), but hold on to your spoilers until Fortress Friday. I think keeping this thing on a regular schedule will do a lot to keep everybody looking forward to updates and keeping things organized. If anticipation is eating away at you, try to fill in some lore and backstory.

Rules

There are not many hard rules, but generally

  • You play for one year in-game time. Turns should begin and end on 1st Granite.

  • Avoid using blatant exploits (the game is built of cheese, so this is sort of like the pornography rule, "you know it when you see it.") Things like perpetual motion machines or material duplication schemes should be shunned. Some things classified as exploits, like "atom smashers" should be fine as long as their applications aren't egregious.

  • Try not to save-scum (Do save though. Crashes happen, and named "save and continue" saves won't clutter the main save).

  • You are free to use DFHack, but do not use any of it's "Armok" (god-mode) features. Also, try to keep it modest. The fort shouldn't fail catastrophically if the next player doesn't have DFHack installed.

3
15
4
6

Fun Fact: The real life voice actor of the Service Technician, Sarah Elmaleh, was on strike in real life with SAG against AI usage in voice acting. That's a likely real life cause of her character's absence and the reason the Service Technician is now referencing a strike being the cause of her "re-education". Fortunately Sarah was not reeducated in real life.

5
15
6
60

Mewgenics, the new release from Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel, the indie devs behind hit roguelike The Binding of Isaac and all its subsequent expansions, smashed through 250,000 copies sold in just 12 hours.

In a tweet posted by Glaiel, he screenshotted a post from 2023 where he explained it would need to sell that much for him to "consider Mewgenics a success." Shortly before, IGN reported the game sold over 150,000 copies in six hours, and that McMillen's previous sales record came with The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, at 40,000 in one day.

This came just a few hours after he revealed the team "made back their development budget after three hours," which given the game was first announced in 2012, is a huge accomplishment. That's a whopping 14 years, although it was put on hold in 2014, canceled in 2016, then picked back up again two years later

To celebrate, Glaiel posted a picture of both him and McMillen with a cat-shaped cake, while they each hold replica awards and wear gold medals. At the time of writing, Mewgenics peaked with a player count just a few shy of 66,000 on Steam, and it was the top-selling game on the platform yesterday.

It's also been received to critical acclaim, with a Metacritic score of 89 from 38 reviews. Polygon's Mewgenics review describes it as "a charmingly churlish game" that "players could likely get years of entertainment from," along with considering it "the first GOTY contender" for 2026.

7
44
8
19
submitted 1 day ago by 9to5@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

I think this is free (content) update nr 40 since the game launched . I wouldnt be suprised if we hit 50 before they stop support.

9
10
submitted 21 hours ago by LaGG_3@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

It's like they expected you to surprised-pika

10
11

01010100 11000011 10000100 01001110 01001011 00100000 01001111 01001101 00100000 01010010 01001111 01001100 01001100 01000101 01010010 01001110 01000001 00100000 01010110 01000001 01010010 00100000 01001111 01001101 01010110 11000011 10000100 01001110 01000100 01000001 00101110 00100000 01010100 11000011 10000100 01001110 01001011 00100000 01001111 01001101 00100000 01001110 01001001 00100000 01000010 01000101 01000110 01000001 01001110 01001110 00100000 01000101 01010010 00100000 01001001 00100000 01010110 11000011 10000101 01010010 01010100 00100000 01010011 01010100 11000011 10000100 01001100 01001100 01000101 00101110

THINK IF THE ROLES WERE REVERSED. THINK IF YOU WERE IN OUR PLACE.

An Automaton Propaganda Video parodying the Helldivers 2 Intro Cutscene!

11
8
12
96
13
27
wtf i love ai slop. (thelemmy.club)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Yuritopiaposadism@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

14
17
15
30

In disco Elysium you live in a nation some time after a failed socialist revolution. Said revolution was sparked off, in part, due to an infectious Prion virus-disease-thing. I never really understood it, neither in game nor metatextually.
Was there actually a virus? Why did it make people socialist?
And metatextually: why make it part of the story? DE has a lot of esoteric stuff going on - the insulidian phasmid, the actual presence of divinity and weird holes in the world. But that stuff usually, to me at least, serves some sort of clear parallel to the real world and a way to critique it - Wonders and loss of nature, climate change, spirituality getting coopted by the state, so on and so forth. Or not exactly clear purposes, but it doesn't strike me as something that's coming completely out of the blue.
The prion disease kind of is. I can see how a plague could lead to social unrest, the game however makes an effort to make it clear it was the disease itself. And also, why make it prion if it was just regular old "plague makes people angry"? Even if that's part of the explanation, there must be more to it.

So whats your take?

16
30
submitted 2 days ago by Snort_Owl@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net
17
16
18
22

I just grabbed HoI IV just recently, but am kind of daunted by the game so far, I tried the in game tutorial briefly, but it didn't give me a good idea on what the hell I was doing, I felt like I was reading gibberish. I did download the Hearts of Iron IV 2025-2026 beginner guide video on youtube, but haven't had the time to watch it just yet, and am aware of the wiki too. I'm wondering what current players feel like the best resources for a beginner to get into the game are? I appreciate any help and look forward to tackling the game and it making sense because it looks and sounds awesome ;)

19
36

Between this and hiring known sexual harasser Teruyuki Kagawa, I think this is the first time I'm not even considering playing a Yakuza kiryu-slam

20
132
21
124

That’s fiction, because no one in their right mind would ever allow something like that to exist in the real world.

22
7
submitted 1 day ago by git@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net
23
32
submitted 2 days ago by Snort_Owl@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net
24
46
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by RondoRevolution@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

Riot is yet again proving they are completely incapable of doing anything that is not League of Legends, TFT or Valorant.

I just started playing the game after it launched on consoles because they need their bullshit anticheat for a fucking fighting game for some reason, so I can't run it on Linux, and not even a month after the official release they are already firing half the development team.

This is smelling awfully like another LOR, which didn't die because the game is "too fair" or whatever other bullshit g*mers say about the game, but rather because Riot is literally incapable of doing the bare minimum to ensure their own game's success, be it doing actual advertising, both irl and in other related games they own like the fucking League client, or doing joint events between their games, or not asking for an arm a leg for a single skin like it is right now on 2XKO.

How can this multi billion dollar company be so incompetent?

Devs talking about being fired:

25
107
submitted 3 days ago by vegeta1@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net
view more: next ›

Games

21227 readers
200 users here now

Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.

Rules

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS