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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

#81

Post by TomMarius »

DanBC wrote: post #44
TomMarius wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are just a few (under 5) countries in the world where you will get the same treatment for "free" as you'd get in the US. The price is >65% taxation. In most of these "universal healthcare" countries, it's not that easy - a healthcare "insurance" is deducted from your wage, if you don't work, you have to pay it out of pocket (mandatory, but cheap - around $100 monthly). Social security programmes are useful just…

It would help if you could say which healthcare system you're talking about, because what you say bears no resemblance to the English NHS. I'm not sure why you mention the UK system because you don't appear to know anything about it. And that's one of the really confusing things about people who criticise the NHS: there are plenty of things that are real problems and that we're trying to fix, but these aren't the thi…

In the Czech Republic and most other universal healthcare systems you need to separate pharmaceutics sold to patients directly (prescription or over the counter) and pharmaceutics sold in bulk to (governmental) medical facilities, I meant the latter. These are considered two different fields of business here.

Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away

#82

Post by TomMarius »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #61
TomMarius wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is one of the five countries, and it has the lowest taxes among them. The rest are Austria and Scandinavian countries where total taxation rate approaches 70% all things factored in (I'm counting indirect taxes as well). Isn't it interesting that the best healthcare system in the world is entirely privatized, in Switzerland?

You can add Australia and New Zealand to that list too. Both have amazing public/private systems, where everyone has access to public healthcare, and if you want to pay the extra money, you can go private. They also have (very affordable and fair) health insurance if you want that extra security. The public hospitals are fine in both countries, you'll get the critical care you need, when you need it. There aren't peo…

Very well, I'm happy to hear it's 8 now if we include UK and the original five (Germany, Austria, Scandinavia). Can we find more? Still way too low to justify a change that affects almost a whole continent (population wise) IMHO.

Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away

#83

Post by gridspy »

kgwxd wrote: post #57
ndnxhs wrote: post #11

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.

"The game progressively gives you tips and messages on how to get better and do stuff" Maybe rimworld figured out a tastful way to do that but, so far, every game I've seen it in only managed to ruin the experience.

It has really good detection of which features you are not using and gives you little (textural, easy to ignore) nudges to use them.

Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away

#84

Post by pvg »

lawlessone wrote: post #80
pvg wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you feel it's alluding to Notch? There are plenty of game developers who've struck it rich and the Dwarf Fortress authors' concerns about sudden wealth seem pretty specific to them.

They both rely on procedural generation to build worlds and give users some degree of creative control to build things. But one became a billionaire and spends his days on twitter whining about how hard it is to be white.

I don't see anything about that in the interview.

Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away

#85

Post by Fjolsvith »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #19
ndnxhs wrote: post #11

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.

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 contro…

To me, it is similar to memorizing the spell keystrokes for Moria, the roguelike I played when younger. "mab" to cast a magic missile.

In DF, "bCf" orders the construction of a floor.

Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away

#87

Post by jmts »

NikkiA wrote: post #8
jmts wrote: post #6

I'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 aware of that. I also noted that they mention multiple cancers are not unlikely over time (I'm unable to access the article at this time so I can't quote directly), and they specifically pick the $5M figure as a value that they are uncertain about. I'm suggesting that $5M is probably a reasonable figure to remove any uncertainty.

Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away

#88

Post by LoSboccacc »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #75
philo23 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd highly recommend giving Rimworld a go. It's like a simplified version of Dwarf Fortress but with a space theme. The controls are much more friendly and there's a huge number of mods that can completely change the way you can play the game. It definitely doesn't have the level of depth that Dwarf Fortress has (there's no z-levels for example) but it'll still suck hours of your life away if you're not careful.

dungeon keeper is within the same space as well and thematically closer

damn I got my names confused, I meant keeperRL

Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away

#89

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

fbnlsr wrote: post #28

DF seems amazing but the learning curve is so steep it's discouraging. I've yet to find a base building game that feels fair and does not put so much pressure on the player. Tried Prison Architect but my prison got burnt to the ground because guards were on strike (and they announced it 3 hours before while it takes 5 hours to be able to offer them a raise). Tried Oxygen Not Included but the water behaves SO erratica…

In Don't Starve you can adjust the world generation parameters to turn off all the things that turn your game into misery: the hounds, the giant monsters, the meteorite rain in the end of the Dry Season in the Shipwrecked DLC, etc.

The only problem is of course you then don't gain any experience and can't unlock new characters. And you don't get materials for some advanced recipes (e.g. no Iron Wind without the Sealnado).

I think, the game goes out of its way to realise its creators' vision, but, like all game creators, the people at Klei who designed Don't Starve, have spent a lot more time designing and implementing than actually playing their game, at least compared to their players (players/ designers - play/design 100/00-20/80 percent of the time). So the end result is full of little details that are meant to add to the fun, but only contrive to make the game really annoying in places.

For instance- with the meteorite rain, the only thing you can really do is pick up enough light and food, move far away from your base and start running around like crazy to avoid the meteorites hitting you. You have to move away from your base because the meteorites home in on you so if you stay home, they'll obliterate it. And pray that the hounds don't pick that moment to make an appearance. I don't quite understand who is that supposed to be fun for. The designers, thinking of you running around like an idiot trying to avoid fiery death from the sky, I presume.

Also:permadeath (but, then again: savescumming). I'm OK with permadeath in Nethack, but in Don't Starve I make a serious commitment of time and energy to build a base, then something stupid happens, like a hound takes a lucky bite or a spider poisons me and I die a stupid death and lose everything I've built. That's not funny.

Re: If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away

#90

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

rscnt wrote: post #34
fbnlsr wrote: post #28

DF seems amazing but the learning curve is so steep it's discouraging. I've yet to find a base building game that feels fair and does not put so much pressure on the player. Tried Prison Architect but my prison got burnt to the ground because guards were on strike (and they announced it 3 hours before while it takes 5 hours to be able to offer them a raise). Tried Oxygen Not Included but the water behaves SO erratica…

You'll like Rimworld [1] and Factorio [2] 1: https://rimworldgame.com/ 2: https://www.factorio.com/

I don't think they will like Factorio.
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