11–20 of 103 posts
Dwarf fortress will crush your CPU because it isn't, and likely never will be, multithreaded.
Is it really a big concern how well DF will scale? It's a game, it is made to be played. It isn't really meaningful to criticize games for whether they are multithreaded or not.
I think it a loss that a game with such original complexity has the most primitive graphics. Nobody wants 3D acceleration, but an upgrade to a simple 2D with sprites and effects with a better interface, would open it to a wider crowd.
A sane interface with even the most primitive 2D tile-based GUI would make Dwarf Fortress better by orders of magnitude.
We changed the linkbait title to one of the article's introductory sentences that accurately (if blandly) describes the piece.
Dwarf fortress will crush your CPU because it isn't, and likely never will be, multithreaded.
Doesn't that mean that DF will only "crush" one core rather than all of them? Is it really a big concern how well DF will scale? It's a game, it is made to be played. It isn't really meaningful to criticize games for whether they are multithreaded or not.
It actually is a concern as DF in game (dwarf mode anyway) does a huge amount of pathfinding for the little buggers and other creatures. Not to mention item tracking and other bits.
This means that once your fortress gets somewhere around 200 dwarfs you start getting into FPS death because it doesn't scale. So it actually as is a problem, and development of the game is going against the grain of modern computing.
I'm not downing on it at all, DF is Tarns forever project, and a damn good one. He, by design, doesn't owe anyone anything. But the reality of it is that it only gets less and less playable over time and will not be able to reach the mass civilization simulation that many of its players want as more features are added and core speeds remain relatively unchanged.
I will continue to have no interest in Dwarf Fortress until it has an actual UI instead of whatever insane random combinations of controls the developer felt like adding on any particular day.
I think it a loss that a game with such original complexity has the most primitive graphics. Nobody wants 3D acceleration, but an upgrade to a simple 2D with sprites and effects with a better interface, would open it to a wider crowd.
http://code.google.com/p/stonesense/
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/40d:Graphics_set_repo...
To quote myself from the last time I commented on an article about DF: I will continue to have no interest in Dwarf Fortress until it has an actual UI instead of whatever insane random combinations of controls the developer felt like adding on any particular day.
I think it a loss that a game with such original complexity has the most primitive graphics. Nobody wants 3D acceleration, but an upgrade to a simple 2D with sprites and effects with a better interface, would open it to a wider crowd.
Yep. Dwarf Fortress players seem to revel in the abhorrent UI. It's not even just the abysmal graphics, it's the arcane controls, too. A sane interface with even the most primitive 2D tile-based GUI would make Dwarf Fortress better by orders of magnitude.
The UI may be bad and need improvement (personally I find it no more complicated than any other CLI, even if it is a little inconsistent), but you can't complain about the default tile-set being ugly and unreadable and how "even the most primitive 2D tile-based GUI would make Dwarf Fortress better by orders of magnitude" when there is a rich and dedicated group of fans who pour a lot of time into making the game look, in a lot of cases, very nice.
And as your sibling poster said, if you really cannot stand the 2d, there is Stonesense for rudimentary 3d graphics.
I think it a loss that a game with such original complexity has the most primitive graphics. Nobody wants 3D acceleration, but an upgrade to a simple 2D with sprites and effects with a better interface, would open it to a wider crowd.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. Dwarf Fortress players seem to revel in the abhorrent UI. It's not even just the abysmal graphics, it's the arcane controls, too. A sane interface with even the most primitive 2D tile-based GUI would make Dwarf Fortress better by orders of magnitude.
It really does suck how the game has no way to make the tiles easily understandable: http://i.imgur.com/KqHkn4z.png The UI may be bad and need improvement (personally I find it no more complicated than any other CLI, even if it is a little inconsistent), but you can't complain about the default tile-set being ugly and unreadable and how "even the most primitive 2D tile-based GUI would make Dwarf Fortress better by or…
