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Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

bay12games.com

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#131

Post by pavel_lishin »

scotty79 wrote: post #17
jplur wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun to note DF is a massive voxel simulation that displays a 2D slice as ascii. There's some neat third party visualizers that can hook into it's memory to show more. http://i.imgur.com/PTj1QpL.jpg

Wow. I'd definitely play it with that UI. I often wonder why games almost never have swappable (or even just scriptable) UI-s that could allow player to use shorthands through UI drudgery.

DF badly needs that for the key combinations. They're complete nonsense, and in all the time I've spent playing, I've always needed a cheat-sheet for even the things I didn't do all that rarely.

But I'm guessing that's not trivial to implement if you haven't already started doing it that way, and for something like Dwarf Fortress, it would probably be a lot of effort for not a significant amount of result - after all, everyone's already got their cheat sheet...

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#132

Post by listic »

What language is Dwarf Fortress written in?

It is closed source, isn't it? I assume it is, like ADOM, to keep the secrets. Though there is an obvious solution: you could separate the game data from the engine, and open-source the engine, for public benefit and participation.

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#133

Post by dpeck »

mordocai wrote: post #33
dpeck wrote: post #20

I admire the forever project, and the dedication of the brothers. I've played the game way too much in the past, but I grew increasingly frustrated with the single threaded model combined with their disinterest in fixing it. Building an expansive fortress and number of dwarfs is a lot of fun (honestly, probably the most fun I've had with a game since Dungeon Keeper and Settlers way back) but then FPS starts dropping…

To be fair, from what I understand the code was written in such a way that a very large portion of it would have to be rewritten in order for DF to be multi threaded. It's a shame it wasn't designed with multi threading as an idea in the first place, but I don't think multi core was a big thing back then.

Somewhat true, though first release was 2006 and it was pretty clear everything was going multi-core by then.

But regardless, its their pool and they choose how they want to operate it. We're fortunate that they share it with everyone because it is a very cool project, but that doesn't mean we can't take note that it falls under the weight of itself fairly quickly in practice.

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#134

Post by ohitsdom »

epaga wrote: post #8

For anyone who is thinking about giving it a spin for the first time, do yourself a favor and don't get this .01 version. Either wait for a few patches or download the far more stable and mature 0.40.24 ( http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/older_versions.html ) Dwarf Fortress is basically a perpetual beta with lots of major bugs as it is, but especially brand new major versions like this one usually have multiple game…

Amazing story. Did you not know she was pregnant when you decided to sacrifice her? Did she have the baby still born? I've never played the game but almost want to now.

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#135

Post by logfromblammo »

VLM wrote: post #114
ixtli wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is the creator's stubbornness in not including others in his effort. Even if he doesn't want to release the source he should put some effort into making components pluggable so that others can do the boring work of, say, refactoring the UI.

Its a conceptual continuity issue. Like claiming the Mona Lisa would have been a better painting if the painter abstracted the girl out so Bob Ross could paint the trees in the background.

Yeah, well, the original developer never got the frame rate high enough for Mona Lisa to ever actually be playable.

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#136

Post by duffdevice »

listic wrote: post #132

What language is Dwarf Fortress written in? It is closed source, isn't it? I assume it is, like ADOM, to keep the secrets. Though there is an obvious solution: you could separate the game data from the engine, and open-source the engine, for public benefit and participation.

Yep, it's closed source. I dream of a day where they open-source it, but IIRC the creator has turned down various monetary offers so as to retain complete control of the game, so it seems unlikely that he'd ever release the code.

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#137

Post by kibwen »

ohitsdom wrote: post #134
epaga wrote: post #8

For anyone who is thinking about giving it a spin for the first time, do yourself a favor and don't get this .01 version. Either wait for a few patches or download the far more stable and mature 0.40.24 ( http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/older_versions.html ) Dwarf Fortress is basically a perpetual beta with lots of major bugs as it is, but especially brand new major versions like this one usually have multiple game…

Amazing story. Did you not know she was pregnant when you decided to sacrifice her? Did she have the baby still born? I've never played the game but almost want to now.

By "The dwarf was a mother carrying a child" I believe the OP means that the dwarf was carrying a baby in her arms. Maternal dwarves are rather infamous for carrying their infant children into harrowing situations, e.g. when conscripted into a militia and sent out to slay dragons (though they're just as apt to give birth right there on the battlefield).

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#138

Post by sbov »

epaga wrote: post #8

For anyone who is thinking about giving it a spin for the first time, do yourself a favor and don't get this .01 version. Either wait for a few patches or download the far more stable and mature 0.40.24 ( http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/older_versions.html ) Dwarf Fortress is basically a perpetual beta with lots of major bugs as it is, but especially brand new major versions like this one usually have multiple game…

My #1 recommendation is to play along with a youtube "let's play". Otherwise you get lost pretty fast.

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#139

Post by qznc »

hodwik wrote: post #2

This is why text-based games are king. One dot release and we're seeing a mountain of new features. I've always dreamed of getting together a big budget to make a text adventure (e.g. Zork) of incredible scope, both in depth and "interactibility" -- a complex object typologies system, bring in learning chat bots for NPCs, and a system where users can add new objects, rooms and descriptions while they play, a complete…

It is not what you wish for interactibility, but you might enjoy http://seltani.net/

Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.42.01 released

#140

Post by dpedu »

rsync wrote: post #123
Filligree wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, actually. I'm pretty sure the text output mode should still work. I wouldn't recommend it, because it's noticeably slower than the SDL or OpenGL renderers, but you can .

Hmmm.... that's always been my chief complaint about DF - that it isn't text/console based ... I don't want to run DF on my local system - I want my DF world running on a server in a rack somewhere and I connect over screen/SSH when I need to. Is that a sane use-case with recent DF releases ?

From my experience a few releases ago, the game is completely playable in text mode, over SSH. Like others have said, it's a little slower. I think some key combinations work differently too.
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