Polygon sat down with one of the creators of Dwarf Fortress

Post by patio11 » Thu, Jul 24, 2014, 1:18 AM UTC

myrmidon wrote: post #58

zyxley wrote: post #15

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.

In that case, you might want to give http://gnomoria.com/ a try, which is similar to dwarf fortress, but significantly less complex, easier to control, and looks decent out-of-the-box. You might also be interested in https://www.factorio.com/ which is a game about building factories (free world, 2d isometric). Aside from being addictive, it is also performant, looks good, has a decent soundtrack and comes with all of…

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 24, 2014, 2:11 AM UTC

skaevola wrote: post #48

Scuds wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He, by design, doesn't owe anyone anything. A commercial game would have a tutorial mode and other bells and whistles to make it more approachable. Thing is, I have one hour a day before sleep to screw around, so is it Bob's Burgers or Dwarf Fortress?

> A commercial game would have a tutorial mode and other bells and whistles to make it more approachable. Does Jackson Pollock have a tutorial? Duchamp? The beauty in Dwarf Fortress is that it doesn't cater to the lowest common denominator. It's the vision of Tarn and Zach Adams manifested without the filter of commercial interests. Nobody's opposed to a tutorial (and there are plenty of community created ones: http:…

Post by bhickey » Thu, Jul 24, 2014, 2:34 AM UTC

philsnow wrote: post #59

grimgrin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least many of these "insane random combinations of controls" follow a pretty OK mnemonic naming convention. b>c to build a chair b>d to build a door b>w>l to build a still (type of workshop, many other things under b>w)

This is the kind of stuff that always trips me up: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/40d:Controls#Building... Several different sets of keys to use depending on what you're manipulating, even though they all have to do with direction. I can never remember and always have to use the in-game help. Whereas, when I play nethack or DCSS or brogue, 99% of the things my fingers do, they do without needing to consult th…

Post by DrStalker » Thu, Jul 24, 2014, 5:13 AM UTC

thebelal wrote: post #52

dpeck wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it will crush a core. 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 gra…

Back when I was hacking on DF ~4 years ago I believe it was actually the item tracking that was ruining performance in big forts. The main loop had to touch every item in the game every frame, including things like every rock mined by your dwarves. You can usually get significant speedup in big forts just by destroying all the spare rocks (I think the best way to do this in-game was put them under a bridge and then c…

Post by Kiro » Thu, Jul 24, 2014, 6:32 AM UTC

EvenThisAcronym wrote: post #64

glittershark wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minecraft was actually started as an explicit DF clone and then deviated from there

Minecraft was started as a clone of Infiniminer.