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Polygon sat down with one of the creators of Dwarf Fortress

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

#21

Post by Lockyy »

dpeck wrote: post #14
pekk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

This is the only thing that disappoints me about Dwarf Fortress, my CPU has gotten more and more powerful over the years and despite that my FPS crashes faster and I have to drop to smaller and smaller worlds every release.

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

#22

Post by grimgrin »

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.

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)

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

#23

Post by mcdougle »

erichurkman wrote: post #3

I encourage everyone to check out the game. It's quite crazy, and beginners inevitably lose due to the game's depth and crazy events ("Losing is fun!"). If the ASCII tile sets make your eyes bleed, there are other tile sets of graphics to try out. [0] There's also a very vibrant modding community, including a lot of memory hacking through the dfhack project [1] – even fixing a lot of longstanding bugs in the game, li…

The third party graphics are helpful (but still make your eyes bleed) but the main issue is the controls -- I just couldn't get past how difficult it was to do anything.

It's been a while since I've played, but if I remember, you couldn't use the mouse -- I bet adding that functionality would make it so much easier to get into the game.

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

#24

Post by Lockyy »

na85 wrote: post #20
Lockyy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's a mod, is it not?

Yes. One bundled with every beginner's pack linked anywhere you'd learn how to play.

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

#25

Post by freehunter »

pekk wrote: post #11
dpeck wrote: post #2

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.

What are you talking about? Of course it's meaningful to criticize a game for how well it uses the resources available. Not many applications are are resource-dependent as a video game. Word can be a little slow, but as long as it recognizes what I type, it's fine. Excel can hang for seconds while it calculates my formula. 3D rendering can take days and that's to be expected. No one talks about frames per second in productivity applications. But look at how much crap WatchDogs got when it came out and people realized it was only using 70% of the available resources on AMD cards. Look at how many hundreds of dollars people spend on video cards and quad/octo core processors to get a little better performance. Meanwhile the workstation on my desk has a Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM, and I couldn't care less.

If video games shouldn't be developed to high levels of efficiency, what should be?

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

#26

Post by jeremysmyth »

presidentender wrote: post #17
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.

You're missing out. I mean, I assume that you're doing other things with your time and enjoying them instead, but Dwarf Fortress is a unique experience well worth a few hours every couple of years.

A few hours every couple of years? I admire your discipline.

If I wait a couple of years to play, I end up losing a weekend or two to a few forts. I have to get my fix by spending a day or two every few months. No other game does that to me.

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

#28

Post by gagege »

TillE wrote: post #9

The truly exciting thing about Dwarf Fortress is that it proves that deep, detailed simulation is well within our reach. It suggests whole new genres of games that have yet to be created; imagine a typical fantasy RPG (or perhaps one that plays more like Mount&Blade) where the entire world is simulated as you play, so every choice you make has logical consequences. The possibilities are endless, and while Dwarf Fortr…

No, please, if Mount and Blade had the simulated world of Dwarf Fortress, I would never leave my house.

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

#29

Post by FreezerburnV »

mcdougle wrote: post #23
erichurkman wrote: post #3

I encourage everyone to check out the game. It's quite crazy, and beginners inevitably lose due to the game's depth and crazy events ("Losing is fun!"). If the ASCII tile sets make your eyes bleed, there are other tile sets of graphics to try out. [0] There's also a very vibrant modding community, including a lot of memory hacking through the dfhack project [1] – even fixing a lot of longstanding bugs in the game, li…

The third party graphics are helpful (but still make your eyes bleed) but the main issue is the controls -- I just couldn't get past how difficult it was to do anything. It's been a while since I've played, but if I remember, you couldn't use the mouse -- I bet adding that functionality would make it so much easier to get into the game.

It's interesting, I used to think the same way. (well, I still do to some extent) But after getting acclimated to using VIM bindings for coding, learning keyboard shortcuts for common things, etc., when trying out the new version the controls were surprisingly comfortable. Now granted, they still aren't really good controls by any stretch of the imagination. But I found it to be an interesting experience that as I've gotten better at coding/using the keyboard for coding, purely using the keyboard to control such a complex game as DF has become a bit less of a barrier. I wonder if anyone else has had a similar experience?

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

#30

Post by LanceH »

codezero wrote: post #27

Are there any good newbie tutorials? I always start it but just get way too lost right away.

Follow along with some youtube examples of how to start. There are a couple out there with good explanations of moving between the different modes.
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