Polygon sat down with one of the creators of Dwarf Fortress • Hacker News Board

Re: Polygon sat down with one of the creators of Dwarf Fortress

#101

Post by philsnow » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 7:06 AM UTC

bhickey wrote: post #75

philsnow wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We place a strong emphasis on usability and interface in crawl. For example, we actively avoid putting items in the inventory slot corresponding to using them: potions shouldn't land on 'q', food on 'e', etc. Another advantage is that we're dealing with a simpler game. Brogue takes this one step further and I think does a fabulous job. For example, there are no inventory stacks on the floor. Either there's an item or…

Brogue just blows my mind with how simple it is. The magic system is reified as items. You really only have one stat (strength) IIRC. The food clock is both dead accurate and merciless [0].

I haven't played DCSS in a few years, but when I did, it was literally feast or famine: I would either be walking around with dozens of rations or else dying of hunger all the time. Herbivorous races like Spriggans didn't have very high food consumption but also didn't have many options in case they didn't find vegetarian food.

I read the summary page for the usability study, it seemed to give tons of (in particular) very _actionable_ feedback.

[0] Nethack, as much as I love it, causes brain damage in the same way that BASIC does: it shapes the way your brain works in a disadvantageous way. Consider that all of the nethack variants _add_ features (and are unabashed about it, SLASH stands for Super Lots of Added Stuff Hack).

Re: Polygon sat down with one of the creators of Dwarf Fortress

#102

Post by boomlinde » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 9:56 AM UTC

intended wrote: post #98

boomlinde wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what definition of "clone" you use, but in my eyes you are using the word too liberally here. Was there any stage of Minecraft development that was even remotely similar to Dwarf Fortress in concept? When I started playing it it lacked, say, crafting, and the only concept it really shared with Dwarf Fortress was the idea of generating terrain procedurally; a concept shared by many games, and one that mak…

Notch has said so himself.

Which of course makes it so.

Re: Polygon sat down with one of the creators of Dwarf Fortress

#103

Post by bhickey » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 11:24 PM UTC

philsnow wrote: post #101

bhickey wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We place a strong emphasis on usability and interface in crawl. For example, we actively avoid putting items in the inventory slot corresponding to using them: potions shouldn't land on 'q', food on 'e', etc. Another advantage is that we're dealing with a simpler game. Brogue takes this one step further and I think does a fabulous job. For example, there are no inventory stacks on the floor. Either there's an item or…

Brogue just blows my mind with how simple it is. The magic system is reified as items. You really only have one stat (strength) IIRC. The food clock is both dead accurate and merciless [0]. I haven't played DCSS in a few years, but when I did, it was literally feast or famine: I would either be walking around with dozens of rations or else dying of hunger all the time. Herbivorous races like Spriggans didn't have ver…

pender has done an amazing job with Brogue. Without a doubt it's the best roguelike out there today. It doesn't have the same scale as crawl, but I think this is more of a strength than anything else. Slogging through 51 levels in a normal length game or upwards of 100 in extended is just exhausting. I joke that every time crawl gets better, we do it by cribbing something from Brogue.

Two features that come to mind are summoning mechanics and axes. Previously summoned monsters would stick around after a summoner died. This encouraged players to just run away if too many summons dropped. Instead, brogue pops all the summoned creatures as soon as you kill the summoner. This raises interesting tactical possibilities: Do I expend items to kill a summoner? Do I try to separate a summoner from other monsters?