According to modder Japa Illo, early member of the Stonesense team, utility relies on DFHack, community-make library that reads the game's memory and can be parse, thus allowing for additional utilities to render things while bypassing initial ASCII output. Stonesense utility renders the game in 3-D isometric viewpoint. How it got there is thanks to a whole daisy-chain of mods that are built on each other's successes. Players can now choose to experience the game using a 3-D isometric viewpoint.
Because of this, over years, modders have been able to improve upon its graphics. Despite its 1980s visual look, Dwarf Fortress was actually created in 2006 and runs on a fairly complex physics engine. Perhaps more notably, though, is its rudimentary 2-D aesthetic, composed entirely of colorful ASCII text symbols. Officially titled Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress, it's known for its depth as procedurally-generate city-building game with a dizzying learning curve. The game Dwarf Fortress is notorious for a handful of reasons.
