Dwarf fortress always seems like a brilliant idea wrapped up in a terrible ui and execution. I recently started playing rimworld and its a very similar game but much easier to get started on. The game progressively gives you tips and messages on how to get better and do stuff rather than requiring you to spend hours reading a wiki to get started.
If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away
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Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away
#12A truly American story, basically the only developed country in the world where you can be bankrupted from getting sick.
Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away
#13I've considered this issue before. How much is 'enough'? It certainly depends on what your preference is (are you okay with second hand cars, or do you want to try a Lamborghini for size?), but $5M in the bank is 50 years at $100K a year (ignoring interest, etc). Towards the end of your life you probably don't need that much, but if you didn't want to have 'too much' and were disciplined enough to leave most of what…
The decision to monetize DF came after a cancer scare, so it might be reasonable to assume 'enough' would be 'enough to ensure that both of us are comfortably able to handle such a medical emergency'
I'm sure you've heard this already, but it would be far more practical to move to pretty much anywhere other than the US that has free health care. The US is crazy when it comes to this.
Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
The decision to monetize DF came after a cancer scare, so it might be reasonable to assume 'enough' would be 'enough to ensure that both of us are comfortably able to handle such a medical emergency'
I'm sure you've heard this already, but it would be far more practical to move to pretty much anywhere other than the US that has free health care. The US is crazy when it comes to this.
Tell Tarn and Zach... but presumably they like living in the US for some reason.
Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away
#15> " [...] at the point where Zack and I would both have like 5 million dollars, and I don't know what that means,” he says. “Is that going to corrupt my morality somehow and turn me into a strange person?" [...]
The fact that he thinks about it this way, already tells me, that he shouldn't be so worried about it. Put it in a few different banks with a good track record and just let it sit there if you don't want to interact with it. It's there when you need it then :)
Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away
#16Dwarf fortress always seems like a brilliant idea wrapped up in a terrible ui and execution. I recently started playing rimworld and its a very similar game but much easier to get started on. The game progressively gives you tips and messages on how to get better and do stuff rather than requiring you to spend hours reading a wiki to get started.
Yeah, the idea of it is attractive, and learning the crazy UI is half the fun, but once you really get into it you realize that there is no there there. It's nowhere near as complex as it seems, and full of bugs, some decades old. Trade is so easily exploited that there is nothing exciting about the elves coming. You can kill them and start a war, but the combat is so unbalanced and exploitable that they pose no threat. Trade being pointless makes half the items in the game worthless. I recently played until FPS death kicked in making it impossible to continue, and didn't feel engaged enough to start a new fort.
The problem is that the brothers do not play their own game, and it clearly shows.
Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away
#17Dwarf fortress always seems like a brilliant idea wrapped up in a terrible ui and execution. I recently started playing rimworld and its a very similar game but much easier to get started on. The game progressively gives you tips and messages on how to get better and do stuff rather than requiring you to spend hours reading a wiki to get started.
It's better to think of Dwarf Fortress as a simulation project rather than a game. The developers have stated that improving the quality and depth of the simulation comes before making it playable or fun by games industry standards.
Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away
#18Dwarf fortress always seems like a brilliant idea wrapped up in a terrible ui and execution. I recently started playing rimworld and its a very similar game but much easier to get started on. The game progressively gives you tips and messages on how to get better and do stuff rather than requiring you to spend hours reading a wiki to get started.
The Steam release will have a new UI:
Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away
#19Dwarf fortress always seems like a brilliant idea wrapped up in a terrible ui and execution. I recently started playing rimworld and its a very similar game but much easier to get started on. The game progressively gives you tips and messages on how to get better and do stuff rather than requiring you to spend hours reading a wiki to get started.
the ui problem stem from the very deep menu that you have to traverse and where to find them, and that comes from the sheer amount of stuff you can do in the game
even making it prettier won't really solve the issues at it's root that cause it to work that way
however, if you play with the menu visible (tab key), it's already a order of magnitude easier because at least you see all the mnemonic to traverse the control tree and they are well organized after all.
(compare with rimworld campfire, which is in temperature even if it's a production item, that always gets me by surprise if I don't play for a while)
Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away
#20Everyone is always above money until they’re looking at a stack of it in front of them. The only folks I know that have the willpower to turn down a pile of money is someone who has their eyes set on a mountain of money.