Tarn Adams, co-creator of Dwarf Fortress, has over 1,400 hours in Factorio and is at the moment obsessive about terraforming video games: ‘Dwarf Fortress simply does not accommodate a full-on sci-fi factor’

Tarn Adams can’t recall precisely when he first received into gaming, describing his formative laptop years as “a haze of learning BASIC”.

“I remember there was MS-DOS, but we also had a TRS-80, and I remember the little demon game, little ASCII dude jumping back and forth, which is all just BBS games,” says the co-founder of Bay 12 Games. “We had Rogue and other things like that. But that was more in 1984 when I was six, so I already would have played more things by then.”

A lifelong programmer, Adams has developed dozens of video games. But he’s finest identified for Dwarf Fortress, the fantasy colony sim co-created by Tarn and his brother Zach. From its debut in 2006, Dwarf Fortress has grown into one of the most ambitious and beloved games on the PC, celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year.

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Following Dwarf Fortress’s hugely successful Steam release in 2022, Adams now splits his time “half and half” between supporting the existing game and working on new additions to it. “I’ve been doing these cool workshops, procedurally generated magic workshops,” he says. “If you want a nice little plant and some skulls on another table and a big crystal with lightning around it, I got you.”

Adams took a break from tinkering with workshops to show me around the digital battlements of his PC. We discussed his current obsession with terraforming games, his childhood experiments in BASIC, and how gaming’s greatest factory sim helped him work through a tragic loss.

What game are you currently playing?

I’ve been taking part in The Planet Crafter. I had performed it earlier than, again when it was in early entry and received as much as a sure stage of content material. And then, in fact, it simply stops. I did not have frogs or one thing and it was actually bothering me. But I needed to cease as a result of there was no extra.

It’s a terraforming recreation. You’re thrown on a planet—I will not spoil any story components—however you are on a planet and you need to terraform it, so there are not any enemies or something like that. You can die [from a lack of] oxygen or thirst or [starvation]. But you are not going to get attacked by large bugs or something. And you need to make your habitat sufficient to outlive. And then from there, you unlock the little applied sciences to get the planet hotter, construct the air strain, get the oxygen, after which ultimately get water and vegetation and bugs and creatures.

I set it down for a number of years I feel, and now it is previous 1.0 or no matter, and I received my frogs. So I’m nearly completed with it, and yeah, it has been blessed.

What was the earlier recreation you performed, and is it nonetheless put in?

I tend to be pretty scrupulous about uninstalling for whatever reason. I do still have Terraformental put in, which is a kind of incremental video games. And it is received a narrative between varied outpost-type issues on a planet, and you progress between them.

I do not solely play outpost planet video games, though I’m additionally taking part in Terraforming Titans on the similar time. And I used to be taking part in Terraformers earlier than that. And my brother was taking part in Plan B: Terraform or no matter. So there’s that occurring.

I feel a part of that is we used to have video games like this we have been writing within the background, and since Dwarf Fortress simply does not accommodate a full-on sci-fi factor. It’s simply form of a unique vibe. I do play fantasy video games and stuff.

But no, TerraFormental I used to be taking part in. That was a blast. It’s simply in early entry. I reached the top of the content material, which is a typical theme as a result of I are likely to play new issues that I discover that I’m all in favour of.

[It’s] very totally different from [The Planet Crafter] since you’re not crafting in any respect, you are form of simply fixing puzzles as you increase your data of the prevailing outposts. And it is a textual content recreation, it isn’t a graphical recreation actually, aside from perhaps some icons. So yeah, it is intriguing.

What is the oldest recreation (by launch date) at the moment put in in your PC?

If it’s not my own stuff, I have all the BASIC games, and also the BASIC stuff that I downloaded from the BBSes, so this would be from the early ’80s … The most recent one that I played—I actually had to grab a copy online—was Beast 1984.

It’s received blocks you may transfer round and make slightly home with, and that is 25 years earlier than Minecraft did that. And it even has little creatures that get annoyed and explode and blow up your partitions. It’s like an arcade recreation. I feel my brother and I performed it slightly otherwise by creating slightly home and stuff. I believed perhaps different folks did that too, simply form of free type. You can do what you need.

But there are beasts and tremendous beasts that may additionally push blocks. And there are eggs that get laid by the beasts, and there are beasts that you need to push into lava. There are three sorts of beasts. Just a incredible little recreation.

That’s one of the oldest. It’s laborious to say, simply within the depths of my BASIC folders, which is the oldest as a result of the dates have been form of misplaced. When I kind them by a date, loads of them simply say January 1, 1980. And I do know a few of them are from as late as ’89, or one thing.

My very earliest [games] are like actually “Shit moves across the screen”. I discovered one [called] ‘The Adventures of Heidi: How Many Zits Do You Have on Your Butt? …. It’s similar to the fever desires of a six-year-old.

What is the very best variety of hours you have got in any given recreation, in accordance with Steam?

It’s easily Factorio. 1,454 point five. It says point five. It’s so dangerous. Just get to the end. You have an out now, or you could get the Space Age expansion and get to the end of that. Was that not enough? Then you can install all the mods. I mean, everyone does a Bob and Angel run. Everyone does a Sea Block run, the place they simply begin in a single block within the ocean they usually form of unfold out slowly. There’s issues like Nullius, the place you can begin as the person who created the bugs. And prologue, there’s an entire prologue one.

I imply, why cease? Why cease at like 5 planets or no matter, we are able to add one other eight. And I simply did that. At the top of final yr, [it] was like 12 or 15 planets or one thing. It was loads of enjoyable.

What recreation will you by no means, ever uninstall?

I don’t have a thing like that …. I go through phases more. Like, winter is Factorio time.

Factorio winters are kind of my thing. It became a whole thing a couple of years [ago]. When my dad died, I played Factorio for 25 days without stopping, and then I did that again the next year. That was this last winter. And it kind of took on this different aspect for me. Now, I’m not sure I look forward to the winter.

It seems kind of morbid. I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I’m having trouble with this question. I probably would have just said Factorio, but now it’s complicated. Caves of Qud comes back around a lot. And that one, I’ve won that game now. Not like a Rogue, permadeath win. No way. I can’t do it. But on the other difficulty, the roleplaying difficulty where you can save in towns. Like, OK, I will save in a town, thank you. I will not be able to win this game legit ever, because my tongue will just rot out and I’ll just be gone.

It’s March. So it’s on the other end now, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. This is the only parent I’ve lost, so it’s just kind of working through how that is.

What’s a piece of non-gaming software installed on your PC that you simply couldn’t live without?

What I came up with, something that’s been hanging around on my computer for many years, is Ableton. And it is a sequencer for writing music. I periodically will write music. And I’d miss it if it was not there. I simply hearth it up, decide some devices, write slightly ditty.

It’s not 8-bit, as a result of I exploit extra devices and issues like that. But it is received sturdy melodies. I do not do soundscape very properly as a result of I do not know all of the little widgets and envelopes and modifiers you are able to do to make your swells good. There’s so much to study, and I have not invested loads of time in studying how to try this. So I principally deal with devices and instrumentation.

How tidy is your desktop display screen?

I feel it is about half full. Mostly folders associated to all method of issues. And then some .txt recordsdata that simply do not have a folder but. And then, each occasionally, the folders get put within the folders. And then there’s all the time a folder known as ‘Last Desktop’ and it has a final desktop in it, and that is how we get again to the BASIC video games from the ’80s.