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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

#151

Post by somenameforme »

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #108
scratcheee wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Optimization and bug hunting makes supporting multiple graphics api's a pain. I really don't understand Apple's stubborn refusal to make vulkan drivers. Between Apple and the better performance on SteamDeck, I can see PC game developers seriously considering Vulkan over directx.

Sony's PS3 is an interesting comparison. It had some borderline ridiculous hardware by the standards of console development. I mean that both as a positive in terms of theoretic capability, and as a negative in terms of practical usability. Sony had a huge market, so I think they were banking on developers bending over backwards to build things to the strengths of the PS3 which would be such an undertaking that it'd almost undoubtedly have left the PS3 version of stuff as definitive, and other platforms operating as second class citizens. Unfortunately for them developers took the path of least resistance and ended up doing the exact opposite.

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

#152

Post by flohofwoe »

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #108
scratcheee wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Optimization and bug hunting makes supporting multiple graphics api's a pain. I really don't understand Apple's stubborn refusal to make vulkan drivers. Between Apple and the better performance on SteamDeck, I can see PC game developers seriously considering Vulkan over directx.

If game devs want to reuse their Vulkan code on Apple device, they can use MoltenVk or the more recent KosmicKrisp.

> Optimization and bug hunting makes supporting multiple graphics api's a pain.

The problems usually lurk in the graphics drivers, and not in the 3D API layer (e.g. optimization and bug hunting isn't much difference even when your code only supports a single API, and especially Vulkan drivers from different vendors may behave wildly differently on Windows, at least compared to D3D).

> I can see PC game developers seriously considering Vulkan over directx

Lol. That train has left the station long ago (around the time when Stadia was shut down, Vulkan saw a small uptick because of Stadia, but that soon fizzled out). Games need to support multiple 3D APIs anyway once they release on consoles. One or two more for the PC and Mac version doesn't make much of a difference (and most games are built on top of an off-the-shelf-engine anyway).

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

#153

Post by izacus »

AngryData wrote: post #143
aplummer wrote: post #118

This thread really inspired me to never release anything for free for decades.

Why? Dwarf Fortress only exists because it was given away for free for decades, bringing in tens of thousands of dollars in donations, and eventually leading to a fandom popular enough to bring others onboard with the project to produce a GUI and paid steam release version. If something you build brings in a lot of critique, it is likely something of great value. Because something that doesn't have value won't bring…

Tens of thousands dollars of donations over decades is a very small amount of money even outside US.

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

#154

Post by msh »

zamalek wrote: post #92
hamdingers wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's missing the point. There were official native MacOS builds and now there aren't. Can't be too mad about it though, it was free back then too.

What benefit does a native build have over proton? I used to care more about it on Linux, until I realized that "native build" probably means "doesn't work." I can only imagine this being much worse on a niche gaming target which there are extremely few users making (and voting for) bug reports. Tack on having to pay Apple to play in their shitty ecosystem and it makes complete sense. Wine/proton as a gaming ABI/runt…

Native build usually also means it’s a supported platform and developers will try to fix any big issues coming up.

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

#155

Post by flohofwoe »

hamdingers wrote: post #55
bigyabai wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game runs fine in Proton, including with dfhack. You can probably get it working on your Mac with a tiny bit of Crossover/Wine/GPTK tweaking.

That's missing the point. There were official native MacOS builds and now there aren't. Can't be too mad about it though, it was free back then too.

> There were official native MacOS builds and now there aren't

They probably stopped supporting macOS when Apple introduced the notarization bullshit. Can't blame the DF team tbh, macOS is a royal PITA to support (even without notarization), Apple doesn't mind breaking stuff from one OS release to another.

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

#156

Post by well_ackshually »

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…

Dwarf Fortress used ASCII graphics & KB controls because that's what was cheap and fast to implement. Tarn & Zach always wanted proper graphics & mouse support, and has always been the vision from day one.

>Long-term supporters, in this case, means people paying, and not insubstantial amounts either -

You clicked on a button that said "support", where it was explicitly pretty much a tip jar, and now you feel entitled to keyboard controls ? You're full of shit.

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

#157

Post by [deleted] »

Waterluvian wrote: post #107
UltraSane wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a documentary about them putting Dwarf Fortress on Steam Tarn talked about how he had to split the $7 million first payment from Steam with his brother and it turned out the easiest way was to just use the bank app.

I’ve never received $7M but a few times I’ve handled large sums (when buying a house and previous startup exit) and it felt so weird to be how completely normal it was. Like just… oh yeah go ahead and write a cheque for six figures. Or do an e-transfer into your chequing account for six figures. It felt like… no there has to be a whole special world for large sums, no?

[deleted]

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

#158

Post by akho »

UltraSane wrote: post #122
Waterluvian wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never received $7M but a few times I’ve handled large sums (when buying a house and previous startup exit) and it felt so weird to be how completely normal it was. Like just… oh yeah go ahead and write a cheque for six figures. Or do an e-transfer into your chequing account for six figures. It felt like… no there has to be a whole special world for large sums, no?

What is it like when billionaires sell like $10 billion worth of shares? Do you need a special bank account to hold that much?

At that point, there's an IB team handling the deal, an LLC holding the money, and probably several banks holding its accounts. Few banks are happy to handle that kind of concentration in a retail sight account.

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

#159

Post by brobdingnagians »

wlesieutre wrote: post #112
scratcheee wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Which gives two options in the market:

1. They don't exist, so if you own the game you still want it to work on your computer without maintenance updates

2. They still exist, so they don't want to have to update it every year because they can use that effort on making a new game and continuing to exist while still being able to sell from their existing catalogue because it still works

Either way it's in a game developer and gamers interest to have stable platforms

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

#160

Post by db48x »

AngryData wrote: post #126
db48x wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wasn't the graphical interface 95% outsourced to others? And originally the graphic version was suppose to be layered on top and leave the underlying version of the game barely touched from the player's side. It was even touted as an excuse at the time to fix some of the keyboard shortcuts that were inconsistent among different submenus, and certainly not to eliminate or supersede keyboard interfaces.

Programmers and artists at Kitfox helped, but no, 95% of the work on the UI was not outsourced. Perhaps if you add in all of the countless time spent drawing sprites for all of the creatures in the game.

And your understanding of “layering” is simply wrong. The _game_ is the same underneath the UI, aside from the new features that have been added and the bugs that have been fixed, but the UI was ripped out and rewritten. It could not be any other way. You are correct that the goal was not to eliminate keyboard–driven interfaces, but the rewrite did completely replace the entire UI with something new. And that new UI does not have the same structure as the old UI.

For example, in the old UI you used to have to first enter the “designations” menu and then choose “dig”. So digging had the keyboard shortcut ‘d d’. To place buildings you typed ‘d b’ to “designate buildings”, and to “designate stockpiles” was ‘d p’.

But now these three things are all at the top level of the menu, so simply typing ‘m’ for digging, ‘b’ for buildings, or ‘p’ for stockpiles is all you need to do. (Digging cannot be on ‘d’ because the view is now moved using the WASD keys.) There is no designate menu any more. The old keyboard shortcuts are simply meaningless.

If you prefer different keyboard shortcuts then you can customize them. One of the features of the rewritten UI is that there is also a new UI for customizing the key bindings.

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