I always thought dwarf fortress would be a great simulation backbone for some kind of LLM driven story telling system.
Something that keeps the world consistent while the user experiences a generated adventure
Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates
131–140 of 273 posts
Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it the games job to handhold you?
Because it’s not a complete or compelling experience if the systems aren’t naturally exposed and taught over time in a progressive manner. This has been a cornerstone of good game design for over 30 years.
>good game design
There are plenty of good or even great games that dont give a shit about "good game design". And developing in the direction of "good game design" is sort of like Carcinization, AAA games have been tending towards a single unified structure. Its great for mass media but its terrible for art.
I learned Dwarf Fort through a mate of mine. We both played separately, and we would have phone calls discussing how we were able to achieve x or y outcome. Eventually we determined an ideal set of bootstraps to achieve a plateau of semi functional Dwarf society.
And then they dropped the dwarf economy update, and everything went to shit and we got to relearn how to pick ourselves up all over again.
Then Bees, then Taverns and Travellers. Then Danger Rooms started causing more serious wounds.
You are welcome to limit yourself to AAA games and yellow paint but thats you deciding to artificially limit what experiences you participate in. It doesnt cast a single shadow on people tooling around and experiencing the art of games.
Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates
#133I wish nothing but success to Tarn and Zach, it’s great that releasing on Steam and adding a friendlier UI helped the game reach new audiences. It’s the proverbial time black hole.
“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…
You may prefer a game like 'Going Medieval' which is a similar concept to Dwarf Fortress but is heavily simplified, almost as though someone played Dwarf Fortress then decided to make a version for their kids.
Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, the game is difficult to get into, it's not for everyone. The game is great, though. You are in the "I have no idea what's going on" phase.
It’s the games job to create an on ramp to understanding. It’s not mine to spend 200 hours grasping every concept before I can play “the real game”, that’s just shitty game design.
No.
Dwarf fortress challenged what I thought the rules of game design were.
It was absurd amounts of fun. I was happy to go through the tutorials or ask questions on bay12.
Figuring out how things worked, and then using those skills to explore the world was fun. It was also internally consistent.
The game simply isn’t for you.
Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates
#135They can make a simulation of magic based on the fabric of a procedural universe work, but even they failed to make a simulation of economics work. Fantasy magic makes more sense than modern economic theory.
For this one, I loved playing Dofus when I was younger. It was (hopefully still) a quite popular french turn-by-turn 2D MMORPG.
The main goal is PoE or PvP, but actually I ended up fully playing for the economy.
You can get a job with its own leveling system, like a farmer, cutting crops, collaborate with a baker who will make you a cut so that he can get baker xp, and then sell the bread in an auction based local marketplace for player to buy and heal.
You can as well just arbitrage: buy something cheaper in one town, and sell it in an another where it was more popular.
I ended up with a tone of paper notes, just calculating the margin of different product, e.g jewellery, so that I can buy the materials, calculating the risk of loss during the building process, partner with someone for some materials, and then finding where to sell the end product
Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates
#136I'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…
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Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates
#138I'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 have to agree. Sure, the new GUI is a some kind of accessibility improvement over the old, but is seriously underpowered for e.g. any kind of repetitive tasks (which are not atypical in DF). Most annoying is the fact that even though a fair number of keyboard shortcuts exist, a full pipeline often does not. It's barely more efficient to use the keyboard since you'll still have to switch over to the mouse every second action.
I know that the keyboard features are coming at some point, but I doubt it's a very high priority. My hopes rest on the modding improvements; once the UI becomes moddable, the old one is recreated in an instant. Until that, I'll stick to the trusty 0.47. (I have bought the "new" game to show support and thank for all the earlier work, of course.)
Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
I know how to stream ty :)
And I do use that option, as i said, for games that you play in finite sessions and that have a beginning and an end.
Also as I said, I don't use it for forever games (mmos or endless simulators like DF) by choice. My playing pattern for those is not finite and relatively long sessions. I fire them for a short break, do something in them, close them and move along.
If you have to turn on a separate box for that half your short break is gone with booting and shutting down. And you may lose interest before the other box is finished booting.
Same for running games under crossover. Start crossover - SLOOOW. Wait for the game to start through the layers of emulation - SLOOW. It's fine if it's a weekend and I want to play say Dishonored [1] for a few hours. It's not fine if I want to spend 20 min improving a build in Minecraft and then go do irl stuff.
[1] Dishonored is an example of the type of game I'd jump through hoops to play. I've always streamed it actually. No idea how it runs in Crossover.
Re: Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates
#140I'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 chose to have social security over a keyboard only interface for a game they continue to publish for free.
It's sold for $30 now. The old version is free but that's not updated anymore apparently.
When he asked whether long time supporters would want to pay $30 bucks for the game I don't think that was implied? Seems fair to be annoyed.