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Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

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Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#101

Post by jgj »

For a Dwarf-Fortress-like experience with a much more friendly UI and reasonable learning curve, try Gnomoria (http://gnomoria.com)

The developer is awesome and releases an update (mostly) every week. It made it through Steam Greenlight but hasn't been released there yet. It is well worth the 8 bucks.

As a person who hates repeating himself, my biggest problem with DF and its difficulty curve was that I often would make a small mistake early in the game, like expand too fast or forget to close off an entrance to a cavern, and have to start all over, and repeat the same X steps to get a basic civilization going, which gets tiresome. Gnomoria is no different, but it is much more forgiving in the early going and leads to fewer short-order restarts. Also, graphics!

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#102

Post by intended »

gchpaco wrote: post #88
intended wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never used the workflow plugin, what are you primarily using it to achieve? Do note I am a slightly more impulsive player, so I tend to make massive stock piles of things so that I don't need to manage Just In Time systems. DF conditions tend to be similar to Hard Core modes on games like D3/Torchlight, which in turn inherit from Roguelikes like Nethack, so there is an old tradition of hard choices that mean stu…

Steady state things, mostly, like "ensure that there is always 30 bars of pig iron" or "ensure that ten quarry bush leaves always are available"; if there are too many objects it will stop making them (particularly useful with things like pig iron, which is worthless except in its role in the steel making process, so you need to have some but not lots ), and as it dips below the threshold it will start making them ag…

Hmm. Maybe I should make an effort to pick it up, just to learn to think and operate like that.

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#103

Post by intended »

Natsu wrote: post #100
gnarbarian wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UI in Dwarf Fortress is completely indefensible. Even when you do understand how to play the game it's a kludge. Let alone the fact that AN ASCII GAME CAN BRING AN 8 CORE DESKTOP TO A CRAWL. (The ASCII is actually rendered in OPENGL for performance which is a joke in and of itself because 99% of the system resources are spent poorly simulating stagnant blocks of air rock and dirt with nothing happening to them).…

There is (was?) actually an isometric add-on. It really only makes things slower and more confusing as far as I can see. The UI isn't the part bringing one's computer to its knees, rather the very detailed simulation going on (and a whole lot of pathfinding over ever-changing maps). His goal has always been a sort of "fantasy world simulator" which is anything but simple. I should know... I helped find a ton of physi…

Constant thanks to the people on the forums who do some of the very cool data gathering.

How'd you pull the data for saguaro wood?

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#104

Post by intended »

kunil wrote: post #89
gchpaco wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current hypothesis on the forums is that he uses some simplistic variant of A*; in extreme situations everything pathfinds to everything else once a tick in a totally serial program. The player base sometimes resorts to weird hacks and layouts to reduce the branching complexity of the path finding, but ultimately the more loose stone and objects you have to pathfind off and the more things you have pathfinding the wo…

Last time I played it, it wasn't that bad. It was like a year ago, before that minecart updates. People are exaggerating a bit or performance went worse?

Nope, it's about the same, if anything I believe there are some improvements...which just mean your system gets pushed to its knees doing something even more crazy.

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#105

Post by gnarbarian »

Natsu wrote: post #100
gnarbarian wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UI in Dwarf Fortress is completely indefensible. Even when you do understand how to play the game it's a kludge. Let alone the fact that AN ASCII GAME CAN BRING AN 8 CORE DESKTOP TO A CRAWL. (The ASCII is actually rendered in OPENGL for performance which is a joke in and of itself because 99% of the system resources are spent poorly simulating stagnant blocks of air rock and dirt with nothing happening to them).…

There is (was?) actually an isometric add-on. It really only makes things slower and more confusing as far as I can see. The UI isn't the part bringing one's computer to its knees, rather the very detailed simulation going on (and a whole lot of pathfinding over ever-changing maps). His goal has always been a sort of "fantasy world simulator" which is anything but simple. I should know... I helped find a ton of physi…

Yes, as I described in the first paragraph rendering it in openGL is a joke in terms of the performance gain. The real room for improvement lies in the simulations. Ignoring the crippling UI, there is vast room for algorithmic improvement in nearly every aspect of the game.

We don't need a button for everything, we could have context sensitive menus that change.

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#106

Post by intended »

danielbarla wrote: post #58
intended wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played in a similar manner, and had 0 fun after a point. Which is when the entire "losing is fun" part of the motto clicked for me. After yet more introspection I personally drew a parallel between me playing safe and how I approached many other things in life. And in this game, the result of playing things that way were directly clear - utter boredom. All I had left were mega challenges. So either I play to build…

I'm not sure if cage traps have been properly gimped (yet), but a year or so back they were capable of trapping dragons and similar mini-bosses. It's a real fourth-wall breaking feeling when you accidentally capture a dragon in a (presumably) tiny cage made of wood. (I see from the wiki that under some conditions the dragon may burn through the cage, but still...)

Nope, not gimped.

I used webbed cage traps to trap some 6 FBs, one made of fire iirc.

Give me enough land and enough cage traps and webs, and I'll trap almost everything that can move.

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#107

Post by jere »

chongli wrote: post #33
jere wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think NetHack is the greatest computer game of all time, may I suggest Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup? Supposedly, it was modeled after NH, but in attempt to fix several of its problems: http://crawl.develz.org/other/manual.html#n-philosophy-pas-d...

As Roguelikes go, DCSS is far, far away from NetHack in terms of design. NetHack aims to be a simulation/puzzle/environment focused game whereas DCSS is a combat and character building exercise. While they're both good games they scratch completely different itches for me. Calling what DCSS changes from NetHack 'problems' is pretty disingenuous; the games are not trying to do the same thing.

I have very little experience with NetHack. I'm basing my comment off of the DCSS FAQ. I probably have misrepresented it.

>The history of Crawl is somewhat convoluted: Crawl was created in 1995 by Linley Henzell. Linley based Crawl loosely on Angband and NetHack, but avoided several annoying aspects of these games, and added a lot of original ideas of his own.

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#108

Post by sclangdon »

kunil wrote: post #94
jokermatt999 wrote: post #93

I've noticed a lot of people in this topic complaining about graphics/UI. I'll give you that the UI does need an overall badly, but there's a reason for the graphics: the sheer complexity of the game, and the fact that his last game's development stalled because of graphics. In the "sheer complexity" department, imagine trying to depict any of the following well graphically: randomly generated artifacts made of rando…

It is not just the ASCII. He could write a more useful GUI. With buttons and better mouse control, it would be much appealing for the crowds.

Writing better mouse control isn't fun. If he were to start writing such things, I bet he'd either scrap them anyway or just get bored of writing DF all-together.

The "boring" tasks are purposefully programmed to the minimum requirement so he can spend more time on the interesting tasks, to ensure his motivation stays high.

Admittedly, he could just outsource the GUI stuff, but for better or worse, he clearly wants to keep the code close to his chest.

Re: Dwarf Fortress: Ten hours with the most inscrutable video game of all time

#109

Post by INTPenis »

gnarbarian wrote: post #67
starpilot wrote: post #9

Great explanation of DF's bodily combat damage modeling: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/95316-complex-dama... > DF's damage system is just as complex and oftentimes difficult to keep track of as the rest of the game. Instead of simple health points or separate body parts DF simulates each individual by the sum of it's parts. This starts at the single parts of a body, then adds layers of tissue, muscle and…

The UI in Dwarf Fortress is completely indefensible. Even when you do understand how to play the game it's a kludge. Let alone the fact that AN ASCII GAME CAN BRING AN 8 CORE DESKTOP TO A CRAWL. (The ASCII is actually rendered in OPENGL for performance which is a joke in and of itself because 99% of the system resources are spent poorly simulating stagnant blocks of air rock and dirt with nothing happening to them).…

I don't think it should bring your 8 core system to a crawl as DF can never use more than one core. ;)

But yeah, the interface is the worst part. I play it with Phoebus graphics pack and Dwarf Therapist for this reason.

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