101–110 of 146 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's so hackish about this? Seems like pretty typical low-level programming.
Steve Wozniak recreated a disk controller in assembly on a motorola 68k chip in less than a day, and it worked pretty much perfectly first time, and you are complaining that he's not much of a hacker? What do you do in your spare time, if I may ask politely?
DF does have very impressive depth and game mechanics. Unfortunately, its interface is one of the worst of any game I've ever played. It's a pity that DF isn't open source either, as then its interface problems would have long since been fixed. But, as it is, its lead (and only) developer doesn't seem to care enough to fix it himself.
> It's a pity that DF isn't open source either I don't get that. It's totally donation-supported. Is it a pride thing? A control thing? I have already tried it out if it were in apt.
If your only reason for not trying it is that it's not in apt, just go to the website and download it. It doesn't take any installation; just download it, extract the contents, and run the game.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My 3.2 GhZ Dual Core system chokes at times with it, so yes. The biggest catch is that the core of the game is not multi-threaded (though graphics may be depending on config). The throughput of a single processor core is the most important factor in the simulation's performance. The iPad, while nice for the rather passive computations it's expected to perform, just doesn't have the muscle. Now assuming the game could…
I wonder how much of the simulation code could be appropriately ported to some sort of GPGPU (CUDA,OpenCL, etc) code. There'd be something nicely ironic about running an ascii-frontend game which required a serious GPU to play :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Completely agree with Tarn. I would go further, and describe certain types of games as evil. Social games, in particular, I believe have evil game design. Here's an interview with the somewhat controversial but always interesting game designer Jonathan Blow: http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/02/15/jonathan-blow-interview-so... In the second half, he talks about social game design. I'm very much with him on this.
Hostile, thank you for posting this, Do you think that any other designers are like him?
Companies like Zynga help push the issue to the fore-front: They get continuous real time data about how changes in their games effect player behavior, and try to use that to maximize the addictive factor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only thing he's missing out on is romance and sex. His occupation and lifestyle appears to satisfy all the other typical human needs. Taking a DSM perspective is not the most enlightening perspective. The sex thing is a big problem. In the past, great artists were able to find companionship and sex despite poverty and oddness. Why is it that hackers have such difficulty? If Richard Stallman's medium was anything…
>The sex thing is a big problem. Seriously? Not everyone in the world is a sex addict. He's living his own life. He'll look for what he needs when he needs it.
Sex is one of the most basic biological needs, and romantic intimacy (which is a part of good sex) is crucial for happiness, especially for a deeply social species like humans.
Having never been really involved with the Dwarf Fortress community/cult, but having played the game quite a bit, this exposé on the creator is extremely interesting. I always thought it must have taken a certain level of cleverness to build such an impressive simulation, but I honestly didn't think he'd be a Stanford Ph.D. Also, I'm honestly surprised they get that much in donations. It's very well deserved indeed a…
I don't play it, but Tarn really deserves more support as it sounds like he and his brother skate by on very little.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=87996.0
June: $2374.03
May: $3010.58
April: $3018.42
March: $4220.20
February: $2113.11
January: $2158.91
I added January from the previous post, just to get the whole year in there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's so hackish about this? Seems like pretty typical low-level programming.
Steve Wozniak recreated a disk controller in assembly on a motorola 68k chip in less than a day, and it worked pretty much perfectly first time, and you are complaining that he's not much of a hacker? What do you do in your spare time, if I may ask politely?
Soooo.... One can play this game, or one can be in charge of a real country's economic policies. Same outcome. ;)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry. I hear what you're saying and I think you are deeply wrong. (Oh no, someone is wrong on the Internet! :) Carmack, Gates, Zuck and Woz are the real deal. Saying they aren't because others toil in obscurity is some hopeless romanticism about hacker culture. A heart warmer, maybe?, but not justified. Just because financial outcomes are not matched to your hacker ideal doesn't invalidate either approach. The rich…
To be fair, Gates was more business man than any sort of hacker. While Zuckerberg may have actually coded his first product, unlike Gates, making a web app, no matter how popular, is far cry from what Carmack and Wozniak have done. Perhaps it's an illustration that it's often not fancy maths and algorithms that pay, but rather being in the right place at the right time with the right product. That said, there are ins…
If you're ever worried that a feature will be too complex to implement, take a look at the ridiculous number of things Dwarf Fortress keeps track of and simulates some time. The article briefly touches on it, but like any look at Dwarf Fortress, it bared dips its toes in the water. Just a quick list off the top of my head... In world gen, it simulates geology and erosion, climate/biomes, growing civilizations, politi…
For example, in the early Civ games the optimal strategy was to just build up to chariot technology and then go 100% on the offensive.