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[webadict]

So, have we come up with a straight up list of things that MUST be changed to make it kid-friendly?

And what about it can not be physically changed with modding? I like this project. I would like a game like this that my little brother could play.

[Mariele]

Obviously one of the base things that is going to have to be changed is the plants that are available to be planted above ground, doing that would also make it so it makes more sense what the plant is brewed into. So perhaps most of the plants could be changed to assorted vegetables and fruits, and juices of some sort could be made from those plants, or something along those lines. The obvious things like rope reed could be changed to cotton and I've never actually learned much about the dye making process, so I'm not sure how that would have to be changed, if at all. If we were going to add the possibility to build "rooms" or something along those lines we might just want to make it like trade depots where it takes a certain amount of material to build the area and they are already laid out in a previous set up.

[Granite26]

A trip through the raws should be able to:

Remove all hostile races, fantasy creatures, and (optionally) large predators.
Remove all useless jobs and excess military jobs (don't really need swordsmen)
Change the color of the blood (non-red is for some reason, usually less offensive)
Change the language files (I would make them all straight read)
Change the civs to only use 'happy' words
Adjust the growing seasons and movement speed to make it a little harder to survive
Remove the brewer job to eliminate the booze (although I think the British are smarter than the US there)
Change the races to not be alcohal dependant or have moods.  Also 'Cave adaption' should go
Change the races to be nicer and less likely to tantrum.

Prolly some more stuff, but that should cover you.

Personally, I'm in favor of the Oregon Trail 2 method.

Here's a list of hard (feasible, with instructions) changes that could be made.

1: Remove all fantasy races and creatures from the raws.  Just delete them right out.  (Not the entities, though).  Change all entities to Human (for now)
2: Remove the brewer job (assuming booze is out) from the mountain civ entity.  Also, remove any combat jobs you don't plan on keeping.
3: Blood color is changeable.  While we can't stop things from bleeding like stuck pigs, if the screen isn't covered in red we're better off.
4: The language files have been mentioned.  Sanitize them, and maybe even turn them into foreign languages (bonus education!!!)
5:  Make sure that humans don't have alcohal dependency, underground farming, cave adaption or moods.


Those are hard steps that can be taken to help make the game more sanitized.  Taking out the skulking and sieging (evil) civs should reduce the violence (which is both inappropriate for a school setting and likely to distract from the educational focus).

What I would do to make it more educational is refactor farming to make it slightly more difficult while adding more traditional staple crops.  (imagine corn and wheat as really the only viable foodstuffs with a short 1 season growing cycle.  feeding your civ and managing growth would be challenging, without having to fight.)

[Eita]

If you have time, replace the entire Dwarven language file with Spanish.

[vanarbulax]

Si! Un cerveza mas por favor.

Oh wait we're removing the alcohol 

[Idiom]

Booze cannot be removed from this. "Teacher's edition" and removing fantasy elements is aiming for a more realistic representation of settlements.

Booze existed for a reason. Local streams were mostly for cleaning downstream, and useful water upstream. Harmful bacteria were removed from water by fermentation so it would be fit for drinking.

You don't want a bunch of kids thinking they can survive drinking water right out of the local creek.

[i2amroy]

Yeah, but how many people are going to willingly want to expose their third grader to a civilization that is completely dependent on alcohol. At the least, the "needs alcohol to get through the work day" line needs to go.

[beorn080]

Change all the alcohol names to various juices and explain that brewing juice involves mixing juice with water and boiling it.

[i2amroy]

Change all the alcohol names to various juices and explain that brewing juice involves mixing juice with water and boiling it.

This would probably work better if alcohol required water to brew, but it would probably be greatly preferable to the current alcohol amounts used in the game.

[daemoria]

Moods are hard-coded into the fortress mode, as is the fact all merchant conversations will end up addressing your people as dwarfs.

In my current Human Castle, the humans don't trance (they become enraged like all non trancers if the conditions are right) nor do they prefer to consume alcohol to get through the working day. Yet they still produce artifacts when I let their population get up high enough.

An interesting note is that I actually accidentally dug up some Inobantonite (HFS with another name) with the Praise the miners message going up. My king supposidly arrived next season, but there was no noble, just a fishery worker.
-Nobles are also hard coded, and'll raise some questions if they attempt to arrive, but don't actually exist in the home civilization. The Dungeon master also gets his/her arrival announced, but does not exist in the human faction.

My point is that you'd need to disable HFS materials from the rars so the early arival of kings/queens can not happen, and to add the missing nobles to the human culture files.

[ChazzyBurger]

Dwarf Fortress in school would be the best IT lesson ever.

Plus, you can learn so much about rock types, how to make things, how communities are formed...

The only problem I see is giant magma based death traps

[Reasonableman]

As DWAAARF FORTRESS grows and expands, it will gradually become a fascinating simulation of pre-industrial society. And perhaps at some point even post-industrial. Until that point, though, it remains largely a silly fantasy sandbox toy. If it were to be integrated into schools at its current point of development, there are a few changes that would have to be made: firstly, no alcohol. Just flat out. Second, no dwarves. Humans are a little easier to get behind, educationally, especially if supported with an entire 'tech tree' of classical feudal society. Thirdly, no fantasy elements. More powerful creatures, and perhaps barbarian hordes instead of dragons and goblins. Fourthly, a toooooooon of interface improvement. Fifthly, no blood, gore, missing limbs, etc. Replace with yer standard health bar system. Cuts down on parental complaints AND lag, which is rather important considering the poor financial situation facing many schools. Sixthly, a slightly more sophisticated 2-D version, for a more child-friendly introduction to the game.

That's all I can think of, at the moment.

[Randy Gnoman]

You know, I can't help but feel that some of these lists are a bit prudish.  No alcohol?  Seriously?   Even in this age, some children in Africa drink beer with their meals because clean water isn't available.  But meh, I guess if a school were ever to use such a thing they'd have to use the lowest common denominator of parental tolerance as a guide.  The problem they face isn't the average sensible parent, but the one that gets upset because children learned how frogs make babies in biology...

Anyhow, I wouldn't think that having pregenerated stuff would be the best way to go, either, because I think that modding would probably be the most educational part of the game.  Markup languages that change text or insert images are really cool things for kids to play with and experience- learning to change the tags in DF to alter the way that the world works would be a really nifty project.  I could see "make a new animal for Dwarf Fortress" being a genuinely educational assignment in a basic computer skills class- it would not only demand some creativity, but require the kids to learn the meanings and syntax of the tags, and figure out how to best construct their concept.

[Pickerel]

Dwarf fortress already is a wonderful teaching tool.  Particularly, mathematical modeling and simulation of real-world systems.  Here are a few examples:

1. Population dynamics, such as during worldgen, modeling succession, competition, and different life histories and how they play out, if you mess with their numbers.
2. Elements of RTS with competition from goblin sieges, for modeling everything from pathogen-immune system, to ecosystem dynamics, resource allocation, ect.
3. Modeling simple systems, such as liquid flow by probabilities, and resource flow in ecosystems.  Also modeling for efficiency of building setups (I am surprised how often people do not make efficient use of z-levels)
4. I have never seen a better martian colony simulation then a fort on a glacier without a river.  Just imagine your dwarves with space suits on and you are set.

Side note on alcohol: it is educationally important to keep this in.  Clean water, as Randy mentioned, has historically been scarce in many places, that being one of the main reasons why many cultures drank lots of wine and beer.  It helped avoid worms, cholera, dysentery, and many others, because the fermenters outcompete the pathogens (partly by making the environment unsuitable for them, partly by outnumbering them and killing/eating them). 

Life isn't sterile, and prudish ways don't survive in survival settings.  Keep the booze.

[XmasApe]

Making Dorf Fortress palatable to more people by taking out the things that make it Dorf Fortress just isn't something I can get behind. There are other, more child-friendly games in this vein - like SimCity, for instance, which is also of slightly more relevant subject matter - that could be used to educate children. Taking a game of moody, cave-dwelling alcoholics who are inclined to rip the limbs off their own children because their bedroom isn't nice enough and sanitizing it for 8 year olds is taking it too far, IMO.

I can hardly stop you from trying it, but honestly I see it being a monumental amount of work to produce a game with all the niggling complexity that drives would-be players off and none of the "HOLY HELL LOL I'M FUCKED NOW" that we love.