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Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates

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Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates

#111

Post by rmunn »

TaLiTr wrote: post #98
Our_Benefactors wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Friendlier” and still one of the worst UIs available. It’s nearly impenetrable and the game has no tutorial to speak of, no on-ramps for new players, and is probably the most overrated game I’ve ever had the displeasure of playing. I’m convinced from articles about dwarf fortress that it’s a game that few actually play and enjoy, but like talking about as if it’s fun. The promise of dwarf fortress is far more intere…

> Few people enjoy it. I am the majority opinion here. The majority of people do not play videogames. The majority of those do not play any roguelikes. Citing the majority is completely useless. Furthermore I'm not convinced you can make a tutorial for Dwarf Fortress. There's too much complexity, too many edge-cases that you end up needing to know. Most people seem to burn out if fed too much info at once. > I’m conv…

The tutorial is the wiki. I used to play Dwarf Fortress back in the 2008-2009 era, and I kept going back to the wiki when I needed to learn something. It was, and still is, comprehensive, containing not just a "getting started for beginners" tutorial page, but also a list of every building and workflow (from ore to metal to swords and armor, from seeds to plants to food and drink...). In-game tutorials are not the only way to learn about a game; a well-maintained wiki (that isn't on wikia, oops sorry they're called fandom dot com there days — but that's a whole other rant) is also an excellent resource. And certain types of games seem to lend themselves to having well-maintained wikis: Dwarf Fortress's wiki is perhaps the best I've ever seen, narrowly beating Minecraft's also-excellent wiki.

Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates

#112

Post by wlesieutre »

scratcheee wrote: post #91
rkido wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While individual game developers choose whether to support macOS, the broader phenomenon of developers dropping macOS support is Apple's fault. They either have no interest in being a serious gaming platform, or else they've made catastrophic missteps in their quest to stay relevant for gamers.

I don’t think it has anything to do with their gaming specific capabilities, just their general philosophy matches poorly with the games industry. Apple insist on having their own apis and they don’t maintain compatibility for older software for very long, these 2 facts explain things fine on their own. Game devs don’t want a major support burden, they’re happy to patch here and there but constant dropping of apis or…

> Game devs don’t want a major support burden

What fraction of game studios still even exist 10 years after releasing a game?

Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates

#113

Post by db48x »

flurb wrote: post #38

I'm still pissed about the fact that they essentially gave the finger to everyone who has been long-term supporters - when they added the G to their UI, they essentially scrapped the old. In favor of a mouse-driven design, they dropped the old, keyboard-driven UI. Long-term supporters, in this case, means people paying, and not insubstantial amounts either - before they partnered with Kitfox, they used to publish how…

What you are asking for is completely unreasonable. There’s no way that one programmer can maintain two completely separate UIs. Keep in mind that they could not simply “add graphics” to the existing interface, they had to write a completely new one that was not based around fixed–size character cells.

Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates

#114

Post by db48x »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #66
Agentlien wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took me some time to remap the muscle memory but it felt so worth it. The Steam version is not just a new AI, it introduced a lot of gameplay changes which really improved the underlying systems a lot.

Does the non-steam version not receive the same gameplay updates? I had been under the impression that the only difference was the UI.

The version available for free on their website is the same exact program as the one you purchase on Steam. It simply includes a different set of graphics for the UI. These graphics are designed to look as if they are made up of text characters, but in reality they are still just sprites. The sprites that come with the version you buy from Steam are designed to look like a normal but stylized gui.

Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates

#115

Post by db48x »

gverrilla wrote: post #103

I was passionate about this game (gui version), until my fps dropped to 1 (unplayable) and I found no fix.

Try the game again, the performance has improved significantly. One major problem that was affecting most players were the line–of–sight calculations. Every person and animal in the game has an opinion of every other, and can get mood changes simply from seeing people (or animals) that they like or dislike. And that opinion is both based on the history of interactions between them as well as other factors like consanguinity. So every time someone moves the game has to check who they can see, and for every person (or animal) that they can see it has to check to see if they are related, and if so to what degree. Guests, invaders, monsters, zombies, ghosts, sneaks, villains, etc all have their effects.

The fundamental O(n²) behavior remains, but caching has greatly improved performance for typical forts. They also improved cache locality and refined the exact set of conditions that affect mood. They also parallelized this specific part of the code, though I believe you have to enable that in the options.

You can also improve performance by making changes to your fort. Primary amongst these is simply to reduce the number of people and animals on the map. Don’t keep 50 sheep and 100 cats and 100 dogs and so on. Cut those numbers severely. In the mean time use cages. Caged animals in small rooms behind closed doors don’t see very many people in any given frame, so the cost goes down. Plus you can sell the cages with the animals in them, which is nicer than simply butchering all of your puppies and kittens. Kick out some of the guests too. If you have public taverns, libraries, and/or temples with guests in them then either close them down or make them smaller. Focus on quality over quantity. (Actually for taverns and I guess temples I still recommend having a large room with a big square area with a nice floor and no furniture so that everyone can dance. If you haven’t seem them dance then you have been missing out!)

You can also consider changing the layout of your fortress. I don’t recommend going too far down this road, but even small changes can have large effects. Long corridors full of people are the most expensive, so try breaking line of sight using doors or corners. Put things on different floors instead of along a single long corridor. Naturally some players experimented with zig–zag corridors so that nobody can see more than a tile or two in any direction, which works, but of course that results in completely alien fortresses that feel terrible to the player.

Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates

#117

Post by tekacs »

threedliams wrote: post #95
flurb wrote: post #38

I'm still pissed about the fact that they essentially gave the finger to everyone who has been long-term supporters - when they added the G to their UI, they essentially scrapped the old. In favor of a mouse-driven design, they dropped the old, keyboard-driven UI. Long-term supporters, in this case, means people paying, and not insubstantial amounts either - before they partnered with Kitfox, they used to publish how…

I was under the impression that the classic keyboard-only version was kept up to date with the Steam version? They're both on patch 53.16[1][2] which was released simultaneously on 8/5, so it doesn't look to me like keyboard-only is forgotten or left behind unless I'm missing something. [1] https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ [2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/

Sadly no – the current 'classic' is just the Steam game without the steam features AIUI – i.e. still the mouse-oriented UI. 0.47.05 is the last keyboard version AFAIK.

Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates

#119

Post by TylerE »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #52
Our_Benefactors wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike dwarf fortress, minecraft is fun and engaging from minute zero, and exposes its systems to you naturally over time. Terrible comparison.

Yeah, I think this actually supports the idea that Dwarf Fortress is needlessly bad at onboarding players. Every time I try to get into it, I end up confused by why people enjoy it and unable to figure out how to play it. Whereas with Minecraft, exploring how to play it was actually fun, with Dwarf Fortress, it felt frustrating and unnecessarily obscure.

That's because the UX/UI is utterly awful. It's cargo cult: the game. (And BTW my complaints have nothing to do with the controls. The actual UX is just... not thought out at all).

Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates

#120

Post by goda90 »

nottorp wrote: post #46
flurb wrote: post #38

I'm still pissed about the fact that they essentially gave the finger to everyone who has been long-term supporters - when they added the G to their UI, they essentially scrapped the old. In favor of a mouse-driven design, they dropped the old, keyboard-driven UI. Long-term supporters, in this case, means people paying, and not insubstantial amounts either - before they partnered with Kitfox, they used to publish how…

They also dropped the Mac version. They complain there are few Mac players on Steam. Well, I'm not going to buy it if it doesn't run on the desktop OS [1] i use most, duh. [1] My Linux boxes are headless. And the windows boxes I have to RDP into them. That may work for a game with a beginning and and end via Steam streaming or something, but not for a forever game you just keep around.

You might be interested in running games from your headless boxes with this: https://github.com/hgaiser/moonshine
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