700,000 lines of code, 20 years, and one developer: How Dwarf Fortress is built

Dwarf Fortress is one of those oddball passion projects that’s broken into Internet consciousness. It’s a free game where you play either an adventurer or a fortress full of dwarves in a randomly generated fantasy world. The simulation runs deep, with new games creating multiple civilizations with histories, mythologies, and artifacts. I reached out to him to see how he’s managed a single, growing codebase over 15+ years, the perils of pathing, and debugging dead cats. Our conversation below has been edited for clarity.  The post 700,000 lines of code, 20 years, and one developer: How Dwarf Fortress is built appeared first on Stack Overflow Blog.

https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/31/700000-lines-of-code-20-years-and-one-developer-how-dwarf-fortress-is-built/

Created 3y | Dec 31, 2021, 3:21:02 PM


Login to add comment

Other posts in this group

How the internet changed in 2024

John Graham-Cumming, CTO of Cloudflare, joins Ben and Ryan for a conversation about the latest trends in internet usage highlighted in Cloudflare's 2024 Year in Review report. https://stackoverflow.b

Jan 24, 2025, 10:10:02 PM | StackOverflow blog
WBIT#3: Can good team dynamics make Agile obsolete?

Kyle welcomes Wes Copeland, a senior frontend engineer at Apartment Advisor, to the interview. They talk about how good test coverage helps you develop software faster, the benefits of low-fidelity pr

Jan 22, 2025, 7:30:02 AM | StackOverflow blog
The developer skill you might be neglecting

Ben and Ryan talk with Geoffrey (Jef) Huck, a software developer turned public speaking coach, about the importance of soft skills in the tech industry—in particular, speaking and communication skills

Jan 17, 2025, 6:50:04 AM | StackOverflow blog
Robots building robots in a robotic factory

Ryan talks with Sterling Chin, a senior developer advocate at Postman, about the intersection of APIs and AI. They cover the emergence of AI APIs, the importance of quality APIs for AI integrations, a

Jan 14, 2025, 6:50:04 AM | StackOverflow blog
“Data is the key”: Twilio’s Head of R&D on the need for good data

In this episode, Ben and Ryan sit down with Inbal Shani, Chief Product Officer and Head of R&D at Twilio. They talk about how Twilio is incorporating AI into its offerings, the enormous importance of

Jan 10, 2025, 7:50:07 AM | StackOverflow blog