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So, I’m not good with segues…

Players choose their class and wage war! The VIP (King) starts on each players ‘fortress’, marked here:

Each player attempts to capture their opponents Fortress with their VIP. If your VIP takes an enemy’s Fortress for three turns, you win.

If your VIP is checkmated, then he is placed back on your fortress (or the nearest open square of the taken VIP’s choice.)

If a VIP is checkmated by a VIP while on his Fortress, he loses.

Choose any of the classes to begin, and set up your side appropriately!
Demoman

Engineer

Medic

Pyro

Sniper

Soldier

Scout

Spy

And that’s not all! The Scout and Spy have some ‘special abilities’!

Scout
The Scout can move any two pawns forward one space (or diagonally to attack) in the same turn by audibly shouting “Bonk!” If the players are not playing in real time, Vent, Skype, or some other method of audibly getting the point across is required. If the opposing player doesn’t have speakers or headphones, the Scout is screwed.

Spy
The Spy starts with the exact same setup as the Soldier, but has a very special ability. At any time the Spy can reveal that any of his pawns is in actuality the ‘VIP’! If this is done when the VIP is attacked, the attacking piece is killed! When the VIP is revealed, the VIP and pawn must switch places to reveal their true nature.

More special abilities to come in future expansions! :D

Hrm. Wonder if I could find an online chess engine that lets players define rules…

I intend to get a ‘to do’ list widget, but until then, I’ll post here that I’m firmly aiming to do a Nintendo DS game. In fact, I’ve already ordered the R4 card. But until that gets here, I intend to dedicate this weekend completely to Dwarf Fortress.

I love that insane game with all of my ACII-art lovin’ heart, but I’ll be damned if the tiny window it uses doesn’t make my eyes well screaming for relief from deciphering one tiny mark from the next. The creator has said in an interview in which he talks about ‘losing’ his own project, saying: “I’m leery about third party interfaces. If a third party interface becomes popular, I think I might lose control of the project. I don’t want to be in a position where I have to accommodate and work with other people.” That’s a pretty scary notion, and one worth worrying about.

But at the same time, when my eyes hurt trying to play the game, it’s pretty hard to say that everything’s okay. I mean, I’m not saying I want 3d, or even a tileset, I just want it larger, so that I can see the stuff, y’know? Ahhh well.

But DF has something special. That thing; that “special something.” It does exactly what I want to see games do, tackle data complexity over graphical complexity. I want to be able to chop a bed up into its components, and breed war dogs, and when enemies (be they goblins or attacking wildlife,) enter your fortress, close the gates and flood the entrance with water through a system of levers that leaves your foe lying dead on the soggy ground.

Like Crysis goes to graphical extremes, and Grand Theft Auto goes to physics-interactive world exploration extremes, Dwarf Fortress juggles data like no other game out there, and it’s a shame that no one’s decided to back this guy, and hire him an additional coder to work with him (or some type of help that he’d have, anyway.) I mean, I could only imagine if a few other programmers were put under him and he was still given creative control.

Two more things to add to the “To Do”-list that never gets anything crossed off of it:

1. Program a Nintendo DS game.
2. Learn a second language. Esperanto?