It’s amazing that he’s doing the same thing for those long. I think that’s the definition of passion, I really want to find some projects/startups that make me fee like that as a SE. That’s the dream, hope he keeps it up!
How Dwarf Fortress is built
221–230 of 407 posts
Re: How Dwarf Fortress is built
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the Windows world SCM was not generally available until SVN was released as a File Explorer extension. This was sometime in the 2000s. Git took several years to become viable on Windows.
IIRC, Microsoft's TFS (Team Foundation Server) also came on the scene in the early 2000's. I first used SVN around that time, before TFS became the standard at Microsoft shops.
My first employer out of university kept their code in Visual Source Safe, Microsoft's first attempt at a VCS.
It was really, really bad.
My second employer used CVS. Tags were fun back then -- each file was versioned separately so committing multiple files while a tag was in progress might result in only some of your changes making it into the tag. My big innovation there was to add a validation step to our build machine to ensure that the tag matched the state of the branch once the tag had finished, and add the tag to the build version number. Presto: we can actually see which code was built into that day's full build :).
Re: How Dwarf Fortress is built
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Other amusing DF bugs: Dwarfs trying to clean their inner organs (dwarf wounded, doctor closes the wound, dirt stay inside) Undying children in the moat water (for years... just swimming there...) Killer carps (there was a long time during which carps were really overpowered because constant swimming was buffing them up really good, dwarfs getting close to water sources were eaten by carps) Catplosions (Tarn loves ca…
Catplosions (Tarn loves cats, cats reproduce, too many cats kills DF performance) This was a particularly insidious one because the usual strategy of culling excess livestock doesn't work out when applied to dwarfs' pets (pets can't be designated for slaughter, and other means of making pets die will make their owners upset). With most animals, you can avoid the pet adoption issue by just not marking them as availabl…
Verily, the dwarf would pick up a cat to take it to the slaughterhouse, the cat would adopt the nearest dwarf (the one carrying it) and then the dwarf would slaughter the cat.
And get sad because his pet died. And then eventually start tantruming and a tantrum spiral would begin.
Re: How Dwarf Fortress is built
#224Meta-question to the mods: why would you edit the original title of this entry? Feels somewhat interventionist.
I agree, I thought the full title was better and more relevant.
Sometimes the rule is to not editorialize, sometimes you get slapped for it, other times the hall monitors step in to change the title after the fact because they don't like the article's actual title. They want you to remove clickbait numbers so maybe that's what happened here.
Don't think too much about it.
Re: How Dwarf Fortress is built
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tried playing it like a decade or two ago. Couldn’t get past the ridiculous learning curve.
They're working on a Steam release with a more accessible interface, including mouse support. I suggest trying it again when that comes out.
Is there any timeline for the stream release? The release date on the store page just says, “Time is subjective.”
Re: How Dwarf Fortress is built
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
My favorite feature in Dwarf Fortress is that all eyelids automatically clean their associated eyeball, just so that players don’t post about how their dwarves have vomit on their eyeballs.
Ahh, so if a dwarf would have a missing eyelid because of combat or some mining accident, then they could have vomit on their eyeballs.
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Re: How Dwarf Fortress is built
#227Dwarf Fortress was a staple of my childhood, even if I only understood maybe 5% of the mechanics going on at any given time (even back when I used to play it). That was part of the appeal though: if you could learn how to do something in Dwarf Fortress, it felt like an accomplishment. Learning to dig better bases is a several-hour research project, and simple tasks like brewing beer can proliferate into any number of different problems. This kind of trial-and-error problem solving is probably responsible for getting me into development.
Nowadays though, I mostly play Rimworld for my colony management fix. I love Dwarf Fortress, but I could never comfortably learn it's mechanics in a lifetime (let alone several). Even still, the emergent, chaotic gameplay of Dwarf Fortress should be picked apart by any budding game developers. Even after 15 years of playing PC games, Dwarf Fortress still feels the most "next gen" out of them all.
Re: How Dwarf Fortress is built
#228I love the idea of Dwarf Fortress and I think the internet purest mission is to disseminate works of passion such as this, not to sell me ads instead. That said, I can't get past the ASCII interface -- I'm a huge fan of IF games (which used to be called "text adventures" in the olden days) and I can deal with spartan UIs, but for real-time strategy/sandbox games, I absolutely need some sort of graphics. Tiles, at lea…
>I love the idea of Dwarf Fortress and I think the internet purest mission is to disseminate works of passion such as this, not to sell me ads instead. That said, I can't get past the ASCII interface -- I'm a huge fan of IF games (which used to be called "text adventures" in the olden days) and I can deal with spartan UIs, but for real-time strategy/sandbox games, I absolutely need some sort of graphics.
You can see the new tileset in action here, demoed by Tarn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlzCrJS1Fho
Re: How Dwarf Fortress is built
#229I love the idea of Dwarf Fortress and I think the internet purest mission is to disseminate works of passion such as this, not to sell me ads instead. That said, I can't get past the ASCII interface -- I'm a huge fan of IF games (which used to be called "text adventures" in the olden days) and I can deal with spartan UIs, but for real-time strategy/sandbox games, I absolutely need some sort of graphics. Tiles, at lea…
There are tons of tilesets for DF. If you want to get started, just picking one of the "Lazy noob packs" is the way to go[1].
[1]: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Utility:Lazy_Newb_Pa...
Re: How Dwarf Fortress is built
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a passion for programming but I need something to drive me. I'm useless when I try and make stuff on my own. But if I've got someone telling me "I need a system that does X", I just get highly motivated in delivering it. Like I need requirements.
Damn you sound exactly like me...when I work for my own projects they usually die off quickly once I figure out how to do it (without actually implementing it but I'm pretty sure it can be implemented in this or that way). But if it comes from a friend, or a colleague then I'm super focused on it until it's done. It's almost as if I do projects to show off to other people or I like to serve other people.
Yes if you do it for yourself you rarely thank yourself for doing it. In a way that would be absurd, because giving thanks to someone means you are giving something to someone. But you can't really give anything to yourself because whatever you give you already have.
So it is quite natural that we prefer to do things for others. It makes you feel great when others thank you for it.