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Dwarf Fortress in 2013

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Re: Dwarf Fortress in 2013

#71

Post by FreezerburnV »

mushishi wrote: post #25
axefrog wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you. I think I'm just bitter because I hate bad UIs and it stops me from properly exploring the game. I don't understand why they don't care about the fact that so many people will never experience their creation because of the unnecessary barrier they've created.

Haven't been following much of Dwarf Fortress, either, but according to the post, I'm confident that they care. For instance, the 1.0 version should have a more consistent interface, tutorials and context-sensitive help menus. It's probably just that there are plenty more things that they care more about than revamping totally the UI.

I understand they're working on the game out of passion, but I feel like they should bite the bullet and spend a good chunk of one of their update cycles on the UI. I remember reading patch notes one time, where they literally re-wrote the entire damage system to account for more things. (swords don't do as much damage when wearing armor, maces cause bruises and broken bones through armor, etc.) It's not my project, and I don't want to sound entitled to something I can play for free, but I feel like they could take time away from simulating muscle fibers or something ridiculously detailed such as that, and make the game more easily playable. It honestly still feels like the debug interface a developer might put into a game with all the odd keys you have to press to activate one thing or another.

That said, they can work on what they want, as they're the developers. And they're providing the game free of charge to anyone who wants to play it. It's just a nice pipe dream of mine to be able to play the game without spending a month learning how to navigate the menus :)

Re: Dwarf Fortress in 2013

#72

Post by andybak »

Lockyy wrote: post #56
tokenizerrr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, except it wasn't done well in this case. The game is great, the UI not so much. Some menus require the arrow keys to navigate, some +-, others hjkl. It's been a while since I last played, but there is a "Designation" menu which orders your dwarves to perform specific tasks. You want them to build a staircase where there was some rock before? Awesome, they'll do it. You want them to build a staircase after you…

Except it makes sense if you realize that designations are for changing existing terrain and the language reflects that, so using it to "carve [a] staircase" out of thin air doesn't really make sense. Building one from the buildings menu in a space that has been mined out does. I admit there are problems with the dwarf fortress interface, major ones, like job management. However this is not one of those problems.

I'm afraid it is still a UI problem.

Or rather - it's also a problem of information architecture to borrow the parlance from another field. The internal logical structure shouldn't be reflected in the external UI unless it's intuitive or discoverable.

Re: Dwarf Fortress in 2013

#73

Post by ef4 »

king_jester wrote: post #68
ef4 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most middle class people aren't really financially independant either.... Why should they? Those people aren't really middle class. They just think they are. "Middle class" has political and functional meanings beyond just "having near-average income". Nobody living paycheck-to-paycheck, no matter how big those paychecks are, can really function within the middle class. The difference between lower class and middle…

You can be middle class and live paycheck-to-paycheck. There is nothing about that arrangement that prevents some folks from having assets, there is a reason the term "house poor" exists and there is a reason why foreclosure rates shot up for middle class people in the 2009 housing collapse.

Someone who is house poor has liabilities nearly as big as their assets, so their net assets are still nearly zero.

Nobody who actually owned their house free and clear got foreclosed on.

Again, if your existence is so tenuous, you are not middle class. At least not if the word still means what it meant for the past several hundred years.

Re: Dwarf Fortress in 2013

#74

Post by ef4 »

imdsm wrote: post #33
kaoD wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the ASCII interface. I love ASCII art, and they managed to pull a high information density. You have graphic tile sets too. Although fan-made, these have a great quality. The problem is the inconsistent input system. The same task uses different shortcuts in each menu, which makes it hard to remember. Even selecting rectangular regions of the world is done in a particular way depending on what you are doing.…

But the thing is, you get over that. Would I trade some of the depth of features for a better interface? No. Would I make the combat arcade-like in return for a better interface? No. I play the game for the fact that it is infinitely replayable. I play it so much that the menu is now ingrained into my very being. If the interface was to change, it would confuse me. It would take a lot of getting use to. It could work…

> Would I trade some of the depth of features for a better interface?

But that's really not the tradeoff. A more consistent interface takes less total time to write and maintain than one that has one-offs for every situation. Inconsistency makes future development slower.

And we only see the tip of the interface iceberg. I find it highly unlikely that the internal interfaces between components are any better. Everything about Dwarf Fortress gives the impression that their source code is probably a nightmare.

Which doesn't matter, of course, so long as it runs -- until you want new features and progress grinds down to a crawl.

Re: Dwarf Fortress in 2013

#75

Post by smacktoward »

axefrog wrote: post #24
exDM69 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys should just try the game. There have been a few articles that highlight the difficulty of the game but that is only in comparison to modern console games targeted at soda guzzling teens with a one second attention span. You can grok the basics of the game in an hour or so by following a beginner tutorial. During your first few hours you will fail your first few fortresses. After your first session, you shoul…

"There have been a few articles that highlight the difficulty of the game but that is only in comparison to modern console games targeted at soda guzzling teens with a one second attention span" No. Your assertion is that the only likely improvement to the UI would be a simple gamepad-mashing interface. DF is difficult even compared to programs with a complicated UI and games with a "normal" steep learning curve. Not…

Seriously. I play and love the grand strategy games Paradox Interactive makes (Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria, etc.), and those are some pretty complicated, hard-to-get-into games. And yet even I look at Dwarf Fortress and think "man, that's impossible."

Re: Dwarf Fortress in 2013

#76

Post by gwern »

> "We've just had our mitts on this one for a long time without passing it along," he says, "but that's not going to be a forever thing, obviously. It's only going to stay afloat as long as people keep it afloat, right?"

> "I think the game has actually gotten easier compared to what it was in 2006," Adams reasons. "It's not really the mechanics that matter so much, since a lot of the mechanics in DF are under the table. A lot of the updates don't matter either -- I mean, I spent a month on beekeeping, but you're not confronted with beekeeping, and you don't need to learn how to do it, but if you want to make wax crafts and honey, then it's an avenue you can explore."

Perhaps it's the language weenie in me, but I can't help but think they're doing this wrong. If you're going to work on something for 30 years (with the Moore's law that implies), wouldn't it make a heck of a lot of sense to use the highest-level language you can, start building up DSLs for specific things like crafts, and other strategies so you don't spend a month hacking on a sprawling C++ codebase just to add in beekeeping?

Re: Dwarf Fortress in 2013

#77

Post by tokenizerrr »

derleth wrote: post #48
tokenizerrr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, except it wasn't done well in this case. The game is great, the UI not so much. Some menus require the arrow keys to navigate, some +-, others hjkl. It's been a while since I last played, but there is a "Designation" menu which orders your dwarves to perform specific tasks. You want them to build a staircase where there was some rock before? Awesome, they'll do it. You want them to build a staircase after you…

> Right, except it wasn't done well in this case. According to you. Is it so hard to imagine others may disagree? Must you downvote?

> Must you downvote?

I must not. I have refrained from voting because opinions.

Re: Dwarf Fortress in 2013

#78

Post by jayrobin »

dekz wrote: post #28
jayrobin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Denee's two infographic/comics on his [1]Bronzemurder and [2]Oilfurnace fortresses were what finally convinced me to take the plunge. I knew basically nothing of the game, so found a random [3]step-by-step tutorial and actually did pretty well until I accidentally killed the mayor, several other nobles and half my standing army at the grand opening of the new great drawbridge due to a...Minor malfunction. The big…

That bronzemurder story is fantastic, I started playing DF the other week and although I move and plan quite slowly, it's very fun. I'm actually building on a pregenerated world right now where there are 2 cliff faces and waterfalls across from each other. Aquifer's are really annoying though. Do you know of any texture packs that don't make the map 'zoom' level extremely high? Most of the texture packs seem to be ma…

Thanks to that tutorial I made absolutely sure my starting point was aquifer-free, but I might try with one at some point just for the challenge.

I use Phoebus' Graphics Pack on my 1024x600 netbook and it seems ok, but I'm pretty used to a tiny screen and resolution so it might not be what you're after.

Re: Dwarf Fortress in 2013

#79

Post by phaedrus »

morsch wrote: post #29
fleshgolem wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also hilariously outdated, to the point that the game had a whole dimension less than it does now. Still a great read though

I loved reading Boatmurdered many months ago; is there anything of similar quality that reflects the current state of affairs in DF?

The Dwarf Fotress Headshoots LP is from 2009, but it is a 3D version of Dwarf Fortress. I have seen it mentioned as equivalent to the Boatmurdered.

Re: Dwarf Fortress in 2013

#80

Post by astrodust »

robbiep wrote: post #18
axefrog wrote: post #16

"It's not like people see our $50,000 a year and think 'Hey, I want a piece of that pie.' They'd much rather look towards things like Minecraft, where there are hundreds of millions of dollars." The brothers have this massive, massive blindspot regarding the importance of the UI. That $50,000 cap they perceive is barely scratching the surface of what would be possible for them if they made the damn thing a bit more a…

You are, of course, totally right. But do you know much about dwarf fortress? The brothers have responded to questions about this a number of times (regarding UI) but more importantly than that, it appears that they don't particuarly care about making the big bucks. They are totally happy just pottering along with a loyal hardcore following, earning a very middle class salary, doing something they are massively passi…

Money is not the goal here, but it is a metric that indicates in general terms how engaged people are with what you're doing.

People are very engaged with Minecraft. It's spawned an entire subculture, and the impact it's had on gaming in general is considerable. It appeals to all ages, to people with wildly different expectations, and continues to provide an enjoyable experience for millions of regular users even years after they picked it up.

This is largely because you can do something useful, even if almost inconsequential, right away, and from there you can explore, discovering more depth, uncovering new aspects of the game, engaging with it by degrees. You can have fun without ever crafting a single thing, that's purely optional.

Dwarf Fortress is not any of these things and it's not for a lack of interesting content or game depth. It's that the interface is insane. It's only slightly more coherent than something like Losethos/TempleOS (http://www.templeos.org/). If you don't commit to learning Dwarf Fortress you won't be able to do anything.

I've tried on several occasions to get in to Dwarf Fortress, but the level of complexity is staggeringly high. There are tutorials that cover the basics, but these are hours long. The only game I've seen that's similar is the painstakingly realistic A10 simulator (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huVi6rdPE4I) that has an 800 page manual. At least it has a manual, though!

User interface is extremely important. Don't think it's something users will get used to.

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