Earlier quoted context omitted.
As long as he wants - it's his project.
Amen to that. Where does everyone find their sense of entitlement?
I don't feel entitled I feel a tragic sense of loss knowing how much better it could be.
Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time
141–150 of 186 posts
Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time
#142I actually got bored towards the end of my first game of DF because it was too easy. The interface adds a lot of illusory difficulty, but that's not an issue for people used to reading manuals. On the other hand, when you're not wrestling with the system, there's not much fair challenge. When your underground fortress is filled to the brim with traps and completely self sufficient, no one is ever going to touch you u…
I am not sure exactly what your game is but it seems that you are simply not challenging yourself. The DF economy is such that if you get your fortress running well towards the end of the game there is a pretty large surplus. This is in order to allow you to have extra manpower for interesting projects. So you should try to do some interesting things. Here are some ideas: - build and train an army so that you can act…
In relation to "dig deeper" -
It's easier to simply drop a fortress on a hypothetical foe attacking from underground than it is to kill them all with a finicky army prone to wandering about near magma til they catch fire.
For this reason I tend to dig out one fortress to drop and another fortress for living in.
Survivors can of course be dealt with appropriately.
Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time
#143If you play Dwarf Fortress without side help under the presumption that a games UI that isn't immediately obvious is bad then "you're gonna have a bad time."
Not that I'm defending DF UI because it is horrendous but the game underneath is magnificent and there are many external resources to help one dig down far enough to get to that magnificence.
Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe that the ASCII isn't true ASCII, though, as I believe gnabarian said - which is part of the problem. This post has more: http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/24693/pseudo-ascii...
Normally the DF executable works like a terminal emulator, rendering the glyphs using GL or such. You can however run dwarf fortress in a console (ie, to run it over SSH) by changing the configuration file, and then it is a true text game. BTW it doesn't use only ASCII but a larger subset of unicode. ASCII would be a very restricted set of characters to use.
It uses a mix of graphical tiles and text, it's not all just an array of unicode. They're sufficiently decoupled now that you can have most text rendered nicely using truetype fonts alongside whatever graphics set you're using.
Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time
#145I never played DF, but... wouldn't his be way cooler and maybe motivate more people into learning it if it was a MMO?
Good god isn't it addictive enough?! More realistically there are things you can do in DF like bathe the world in lava or crack the Maximum Fun Chamber that would be kind of obnoxious for your neighbors. A bit like playing Minecraft with IC2 and accidentally leveling half your neighbor's house because your nuclear reactor melted down. Just because you are even worse off does not make people any happier about it.
But losing is fun.
And if it were an MMO then the motto could change to
Losing is fun for everyone!
Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not just the ASCII. He could write a more useful GUI. With buttons and better mouse control, it would be much appealing for the crowds.
Writing better mouse control isn't fun. If he were to start writing such things, I bet he'd either scrap them anyway or just get bored of writing DF all-together. The "boring" tasks are purposefully programmed to the minimum requirement so he can spend more time on the interesting tasks, to ensure his motivation stays high. Admittedly, he could just outsource the GUI stuff, but for better or worse, he clearly wants t…
He has played with outsourcing work--all the SDL conversion was done by a third party. He hated the experience. Which goes back to the "he's a programmer, not an engineer" thing. I would personally love for this project to be tackled by a group of highly experienced engineers dedicated to the same vision, but that's complete fantasy dreaming, there.
Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time
#147What would be the best way to play DF on a not-so-powerful machine? It seems that rendering the ASCII art is a serious CPU dwell...
It's not the art rendering it's the massive amount of calculations about dwarf feelings and cat mating the simulation is doing underneath that make it slow.
Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time
#148Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time
#149Great explanation of DF's bodily combat damage modeling: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/95316-complex-dama... > DF's damage system is just as complex and oftentimes difficult to keep track of as the rest of the game. Instead of simple health points or separate body parts DF simulates each individual by the sum of it's parts. This starts at the single parts of a body, then adds layers of tissue, muscle and…
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).…
Here is the tale of BOATMURDERED:
http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Introductio...
Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time
#150Earlier 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?
> Isn't the game 11 years old? What is a reasonable amount of time to spend before moving to stage 2?
I'm guessing you don't program?