Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 186 posts

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#121

Post by hawkw »

varjag wrote: post #99
gnarbarian wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the inefficiency of the engine. There is something seriously FUBAR with the design when you must choose the size of simulation (the rendered rows and columns of ASCII representing the playable zone in the window not the physical dimensions) at the beginning of a game before embarking. The performance of the game is directly proportional to the number of blocks in this zone + the number of dwarfs and NOT the…

> There is something seriously FUBAR with the design when you must choose the size of simulation (the rendered rows and columns of ASCII representing the playable zone in the window not the physical dimensions) at the beginning of a game before embarking. Minecraft does that (the fog distance).

Fog distance can be changed on the fly, though. You don't need to start a new game to adjust it.

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#122

Post by MrMember »

jawilson2 wrote: post #117
ajuc wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First make it work. Then make it elegant. Then make it fast. DF is at stage 1 now, and I think it's very reasonable to postpone ui polishing and optimisations till all the features are in place. Otherways he would need to constantly rewrite optimizations and the structures that allows speeding the game up, to kep up with new features. Which will take much longer in the end, and could kill his enthusiasm, ending the p…

Isn't the game 11 years old? What is a reasonable amount of time to spend before moving to stage 2?

Tarn, the creator, has said that Dwarf Fortress might be the last game he ever creates. He may still be working on it 20 years from now, and it may still be in a pre-release state at that time.

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#123

Post by qznc »

lifeformed wrote: post #66
jere wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think NetHack is the greatest computer game of all time, may I suggest Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup? Supposedly, it was modeled after NH, but in attempt to fix several of its problems: http://crawl.develz.org/other/manual.html#n-philosophy-pas-d...

My roguelike of choice is Brogue ( https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/ ). Whereas Nethack was made to satisfy the creators' interest in complexity and simulation, Brogue satisfies the creator's interest in design and elegance. Brogue simplifies a lot of the redundancies in Nethack and condenses it down into the core elements of dungeon crawling. While it's a much less complex game, it doesn't sacrifice much in…

Thanks for the link. I like that game.

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#124

Post by icepotato »

gchpaco wrote: post #86
gnarbarian wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UI in Dwarf Fortress is completely indefensible. Even when you do understand how to play the game it's a kludge. Let alone the fact that AN ASCII GAME CAN BRING AN 8 CORE DESKTOP TO A CRAWL. (The ASCII is actually rendered in OPENGL for performance which is a joke in and of itself because 99% of the system resources are spent poorly simulating stagnant blocks of air rock and dirt with nothing happening to them).…

I assure you, the current player base is acutely aware of how bad the UI is. It's not even that it's opaque until learned, it is sometimes just downright impossible in vanilla DF to answer certain elementary questions like "how many dwarves are set to mine?" Workflow automation is really primitive, leading to either the "constantly assign dye thread jobs through the manager so the fools will do it" problem or the opp…

yeah, and sometimes new things get patched in like squad management so you can say "alternate patrolling with training", and of course it has a brand new interface, which is subtly different from all the other interfaces...

UI critiques of Dwarf Fortress are incredibly valid. But Tarn makes a living off of DF despite that, because he's trying to procedurally generate interesting stories. That's a really big challenge, and it's something very, very few other games try and do. If you check out his devlog (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html) and his planned feature list (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) you can see the scope is... staggering in complexity. So the vision is what draws me, personally into the game. The fact that this is all free and driven by donations (publicly tracked here http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122396.0) just makes it even more incredible.

This complexity and vision comes with a price. As people noted below, UI is not really Tarn's focus and probably won't be any time soon. The code is not open and Tarn is pretty straightforward about not wanting to share it with anyone, because he doesn't want to introduce more complexity with non-canonical versions and churn as he continues to replace older subsystems with new ones (At least, this is my recollection of the topic, but I've been out of the loop for a while). So no, it's not going to get fixed any time soon.

Regardless, I really love this game. But I think the wiki's quick-start guide is not sufficient to get up and running with the game. So I've been maintaining my own tutorial: http://www.hailingfromtheedge.com/p/dwarf-fortress-tutorial-...

so far i'd just been beta-testing this on friends who haven't played yet. If you want to try out DF for the first time, please give my tutorial a shot and let me know how it goes!

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#125

Post by fennecfoxen »

spacemanaki wrote: post #22

> There are instructions within the game, and without in the form > of wikis and forums, but I wanted to begin at the most basic > level, if only to come at the game from a recently trendy (if > controversial) design paradigm on discoverability that's flowed > from mobile apps to many new indie games: "if you see a UI > walkthrough, they blew it". Some of the author's other points are valid, and DF definitely has som…

"Not R-ingTFM isn't really a reasonable way to review this game." This. If the author had spent half as much time bothering to do research as he did coming up with florid expressions about how this screen was like a bunch of "Greek symbols" impervious to the casual glance, then the reviewer may have had more fun Fun.

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#126

Post by fennecfoxen »

icepotato wrote: post #124
gchpaco wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assure you, the current player base is acutely aware of how bad the UI is. It's not even that it's opaque until learned, it is sometimes just downright impossible in vanilla DF to answer certain elementary questions like "how many dwarves are set to mine?" Workflow automation is really primitive, leading to either the "constantly assign dye thread jobs through the manager so the fools will do it" problem or the opp…

yeah, and sometimes new things get patched in like squad management so you can say "alternate patrolling with training", and of course it has a brand new interface, which is subtly different from all the other interfaces... UI critiques of Dwarf Fortress are incredibly valid. But Tarn makes a living off of DF despite that, because he's trying to procedurally generate interesting stories. That's a really big challenge…

"UI critiques of Dwarf Fortress are incredibly valid." Yes, and no one has ever marketed the game as anything that's Ready For The Prime Time, possessed of a decent UI, or anything other than something that's really fun and interesting despite being an early development version of someone's cool pet project.

You can come back and complain some more in earnest when you've paid money for it. :)

--

Postscript: If some friend, roommate, frenemy, or random dude on the Internet has, in fact, marketed the game as something that's ready for the prime time or possessed of a decent UI, they're putting you on. :P

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#127

Post by gnarbarian »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #126
icepotato wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, and sometimes new things get patched in like squad management so you can say "alternate patrolling with training", and of course it has a brand new interface, which is subtly different from all the other interfaces... UI critiques of Dwarf Fortress are incredibly valid. But Tarn makes a living off of DF despite that, because he's trying to procedurally generate interesting stories. That's a really big challenge…

"UI critiques of Dwarf Fortress are incredibly valid." Yes, and no one has ever marketed the game as anything that's Ready For The Prime Time, possessed of a decent UI, or anything other than something that's really fun and interesting despite being an early development version of someone's cool pet project. You can come back and complain some more in earnest when you've paid money for it. :) -- Postscript: If some f…

Just because something is free by no means makes it beyond reproach.

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#128

Post by PeterisP »

jere wrote: post #107
chongli wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Roguelikes go, DCSS is far, far away from NetHack in terms of design. NetHack aims to be a simulation/puzzle/environment focused game whereas DCSS is a combat and character building exercise. While they're both good games they scratch completely different itches for me. Calling what DCSS changes from NetHack 'problems' is pretty disingenuous; the games are not trying to do the same thing.

I have very little experience with NetHack. I'm basing my comment off of the DCSS FAQ. I probably have misrepresented it. >The history of Crawl is somewhat convoluted: Crawl was created in 1995 by Linley Henzell. Linley based Crawl loosely on Angband and NetHack, but avoided several annoying aspects of these games, and added a lot of original ideas of his own.

For NetHack, these "several annoying aspects" are probably the essence of what makes it different than most 'roguelikes' and makes it good as a separate direction/niche of gameplay.

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#129

Post by fennecfoxen »

gnarbarian wrote: post #77
kaolinite wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he just wants to make his game, perhaps not a game for you or many other people - but his game. For him. Not everything has to be simplified and dumbed down. We have plenty of those kinds of games. Also, I'm confused by your shock that an ASCII game can bring an 8 core desktop to a crawl. Just because most games spend most of the system resources on displaying pretty graphics, doesn't mean that DF has to as wel…

Regarding the inefficiency of the engine. There is something seriously FUBAR with the design when you must choose the size of simulation (the rendered rows and columns of ASCII representing the playable zone in the window not the physical dimensions) at the beginning of a game before embarking. The performance of the game is directly proportional to the number of blocks in this zone + the number of dwarfs and NOT the…

"There is something seriously FUBAR with the design..." I call shenanigans.

I would like you to point out another reality simulator where you can dynamically resize the simulation. Can you ask SimCity "hey, generate me a few extra acres of The World around my periphery"? Or chop it back off again?

A fixed-size simulation is the norm. Anything else is fairly exceptional (and even Minecraft has caveats). What's different here is that you get to choose the size of the simulation in a very customizable manner.

Post reply on HN