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DF is the deepest game (really, toy, like SimCity; there's only one end state within the game and that's getting wiped out, and most of the rest of the game is very open ended) I have ever played which pairs it with a terrible interface and a learning curve like a brick wall (no joke, I only figured out how to get doctors to take medical jobs promptly a few weeks ago after playing the game for months). The DF interface problems aren't just that it's console oriented; there's no straightforward way absent external tools (which I generally can't have, because I play on a Mac) to get a list of e.g. which dwarves have a certain labor enabled, or which dwarves have skill levels in a certain labor. Also the way the game is played today is very stuff intensive which means you tend to have between a quarter and up to half of your fort on full time crap hauling duties.

I heard that it is actually written using GL to draw the character glyphs. Hilarious.

From data/init/init.txt

> By and large, 2D should be the most reliable, while STANDARD has a good combination of speed and reliability. However, all 2D modes are normally fa r slower than even STANDARD, which may be the slowest OpenGL mode.

It is indeed. However:

> Linux/OS X users may also use PRINT_MODE:TEXT for primitive ncurses output.

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