A large DF world is approximately the size of the moon, according to one guesstimate. A pocket world is 153 square miles.
But completely exploring even a pocket world would be an immense undertaking. Scale is much less important than depth of content—the first ocean you find might be exciting, but the tenth is just another ocean. And that is where Dwarf Fortress does quite well, with a finely detailed simulation of the world and its history.
Wow, DF is much much larger than I had thought. There is behavior going on in the background in Minecraft, but from my highly non-expert position on both games I suspect that Dwarf Fortress has more intricate background behavior.
To give some idea of the amount of background detail, here are some bug fixes/reports:
Stopped prisoners in goblin sites from starting no quarter fights with their rescuers
Stopped adv goblin performance troupes from attacking strangers while traveling
Vampire purges in world generation to control their overfeeding which was stopping cities from growing
Stopped cats from dying of alcohol poisoning after walking over damp tavern floors and cleaning themselves (reduced effect)
Fixed world generation freeze caused by error in poetry refrains
Performance troupes are active in world generation and into play, visiting the fort, can be formed in adventure mode
Values can be passed in writing (both modes) and through adventure mode arguments (uses some conversation skills)
So, what of this isn’t true of, say, Minecraft?
Or Dwarf Fortress...
How far afield (not just down) can you go in DF? IIRC, the world in Minecraft, if fully generated, would put Ringworld to shame.
A large DF world is approximately the size of the moon, according to one guesstimate. A pocket world is 153 square miles.
But completely exploring even a pocket world would be an immense undertaking. Scale is much less important than depth of content—the first ocean you find might be exciting, but the tenth is just another ocean. And that is where Dwarf Fortress does quite well, with a finely detailed simulation of the world and its history.
Wow, DF is much much larger than I had thought. There is behavior going on in the background in Minecraft, but from my highly non-expert position on both games I suspect that Dwarf Fortress has more intricate background behavior.
To give some idea of the amount of background detail, here are some bug fixes/reports: