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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

#231

Post by hluska »

rmunn wrote: post #110
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?

I'm sure there is special handling for large sums... but six figures isn't it. Businesses routinely write checks for half a million dollars, two million dollars... it's perfectly normal to see such amounts within the banking world. There might be some extra scrutiny on the back end that you don't see, but since it's well within the realm of normal operations that the bank sees happen every day, it's nothing special.…

[flagged]

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

#232

Post by sensen »

oortoo wrote: post #211
Mobius01 wrote: post #3

I 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.

Dwarf Fortress's Steam UI is by far, my least favorite thing about the game. Does anyone else agree? After playing with the Lazy Newb's Pack and other similar tools for years, I found the Steam version to be a maaaaasive downgrade. The mouse was tied to the framerate, everything felt sluggish and hard to control. It really irks me because I had been telling everyone for years to play this game, and finally it gets an…

Has anything changed where the original version of the game no longer receives updates? I understood that the whole reason for the initial release of the steam version was to get more people exposed to the game and to allow the creators to actually start making money from their efforts.

If anything, I would recommend purchasing the steam version to support the creators. Continue to play the game any way that you like afterward.

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

#233

Post by cellshade »

oortoo wrote: post #211
Mobius01 wrote: post #3

I 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.

Dwarf Fortress's Steam UI is by far, my least favorite thing about the game. Does anyone else agree? After playing with the Lazy Newb's Pack and other similar tools for years, I found the Steam version to be a maaaaasive downgrade. The mouse was tied to the framerate, everything felt sluggish and hard to control. It really irks me because I had been telling everyone for years to play this game, and finally it gets an…

I also experienced performance issues when it came out on Steam, but that seems to be resolved now, and they've fixed a huge number of bugs related to things like squads, crossbows, etc. I'd give it another shot.

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

#234

Post by boomlinde »

satvikpendem wrote: post #208
db48x wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that’s not a game’s job. You will not enjoy every game. Those games that you did not enjoy are not necessarily failures. They are simply games that _you_ did not enjoy.

Sure, that's not what I'm saying though. It's the job of the game to be fun in general, not in specific to some individual, and one of those ways is to have a good onboarding experience. People saying DF is fun are having fun despite its terrible onboarding, not because of it; in other words, cope.

I remember the "onboarding experience" essentially being losing over and over again and learning from my mistakes, getting a little further or trying a new approach altogether on each new attempt. Maybe it's an acquired taste but by the time I started playing Dwarf Fortress, I was not only already used to that, but thoroughly enjoying it as a core mechanic of games like Rogue, NetHack and Ancient Domains of Mystery.

I don't believe in the concept of "fun in general" in the sense you imply here. I've played very successful games that have evidently achieved popular appeal but that nonetheless turn me off because they're the absolute opposite of Dwarf Fortress: carefully manufactured designs of intentional experiences that you are guided through at every step. Some people really like that, some will want to be thrown in the wilderness with no clue, some want something in-between. Different strokes for different folks.

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

#235

Post by gverrilla »

db48x wrote: post #115
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 consan…

I appreciate your reply and effort, but for me, personally, the experience was extremely frustrating and I don't intend to try again. I feel like it's a game design flaw, at least from my personal perspective as a player and how I expected to have fun playing the game: I didn't even know this problem existed at all before facing it, at the very least I would have liked to have been warned; and maybe game mechanics to avoid that. But on the other hand I do realize a lot of other people still can benefit from other aspects of a very creative game, even with these problems. Just not for me.

Obs: That experience was recent, at most 1y ago, and at the time I tried all fixes I could find including all "optimizations" and dfhack stuff.

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

#236

Post by OkayPhysicist »

sensen wrote: post #232
oortoo wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dwarf Fortress's Steam UI is by far, my least favorite thing about the game. Does anyone else agree? After playing with the Lazy Newb's Pack and other similar tools for years, I found the Steam version to be a maaaaasive downgrade. The mouse was tied to the framerate, everything felt sluggish and hard to control. It really irks me because I had been telling everyone for years to play this game, and finally it gets an…

Has anything changed where the original version of the game no longer receives updates? I understood that the whole reason for the initial release of the steam version was to get more people exposed to the game and to allow the creators to actually start making money from their efforts. If anything, I would recommend purchasing the steam version to support the creators. Continue to play the game any way that you like…

The free version got it's entire UI changed, matching the Steam version, just with ASCII graphics. Obviously you can still play old versions, but if you want to play with all the new features, you can't go full keyboard anymore.

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

#237

Post by tripleee »

izacus wrote: post #153
AngryData wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

it was ~10k per month if I remember correctly. They used to post monthly updates

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

#239

Post by tikhonj »

hluska wrote: post #231
rmunn wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there is special handling for large sums... but six figures isn't it. Businesses routinely write checks for half a million dollars, two million dollars... it's perfectly normal to see such amounts within the banking world. There might be some extra scrutiny on the back end that you don't see, but since it's well within the realm of normal operations that the bank sees happen every day, it's nothing special.…

[flagged]

They're different situations for the person, but not for the banking system.

And reading some lack of empathy into a comment about the banking system is wholly unwrannted.

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

#240

Post by tptacek »

db48x wrote: post #223
tptacek wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what we're saying here is that personal computers can run open weights models that can literally code earlier versions of Dwarf Fortress all by themselves, but handling lines of sight for a 101st dwarf in a mountain fortress remains past the frontier of computer science. I love this so much.

O(n²) scaling is brutal. If n=100, then that is 100×100=10,000 mood checks. When n=101, that grows to 101² = 10201. 102² is 10404. You see how fast it is growing¹? Every person you add causes far more mood checks than the last person you added. There is nothing that computer science can do to reduce this growth. The whole study of computer science is the study of the limits of computing, and these are the limits. No…

This is a fantastic comment that I don't deserve for making fun of the complexity of Dwarf Fortress in comparison to the space alien technology we're building elsewhere. I come from a place of love (and fear --- I refuse to install it again) with DF!
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