samantha.sterling: hey, sorry i've been mia, it's been totally crazy this past week. i definitely want to meet up me: it's cool, I've been bizarely busy as well samantha.sterling: the film festival thing sounds awesome me: yeah, if I end up getting sent, might not be samantha.sterling: covering it rolling stone, that's a big deal. it's the only magazine i actually still order and read me: it's relatively good me: this incredible game came out, or a new version of it did samantha.sterling: i feel a strange sense of loyalty to it me: Dwarf Fortress me: read about it samantha.sterling: sounds weird samantha.sterling: ok samantha.sterling: are you going to download it? me: already did samantha.sterling: which mode are you playing? me: fortress me: it's the most amazing thing ever me: the guy who makes it is a maniac me: first, he does it all himself me: second, the game is probably the most detailed that ever existed me: even though it has no graphics, it slows down even computers samantha.sterling: wow me: the creatures are accounted for down to their circulatory system now me: when they fight, for instance, they can lose an eyelid samantha.sterling: how detailed me: fluid dynamics are there me: material composition, melting point me: genetics for the animals, for instance samantha.sterling: glad you're able to enjoy some down time me: I'm going to breed elephants me: yeah, it's awesome samantha.sterling: why elephants? me: I happen to have some elephants on the map I'm playing on me: also, it takes a great amount of time to start the game because it calculates the whole world and its history down to which old elf sliced off what giant immortal creature's finger 3,246 years ago and what his kids ended up doing me: it calculates all of this for 11,000 years of gametime samantha.sterling: how long does that take? me: varies by computer, on mine it took 10 minutes me: I've got a pretty fast little computer, too samantha.sterling: is it going to take that long every time you start a game? me: no, you only need to build a game map once samantha.sterling: ah samantha.sterling: i see me: it's the map of the whole world you'll use, then later you just select whatever sites you want in that world me: for your little fortress me: and there are cities and settlements all over the world with humans and whatnot me: and there'll all there because of whatever happened in the past 11,000 years me: and the individual people all have certain genes for the reasons they do in real life, there's a sort of natural selection that goes on by virtue of all of this having been calculated as if it actually happened me: there's nothing else like this at all samantha.sterling: i believe you, it's pretty nuts samantha.sterling: and i suppose you can play this indefinitely? me: yep me: the guy's going to keep programming it for years after me: eventually, the world will proceed dynamically