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The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

nytimes.com

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Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#61

Post by forensic »

scott_s wrote: post #50
jokermatt999 wrote: post #38

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…

Remember, what one person can program when they're truly dedicated is a pretty incredible feat. And I wonder if the level of dedication he has demonstrated requires Asperger's. He has all of the classic symptoms, down to the the involuntary rocking. I've worked hard, and I've sacrificed a lot of my time to my work. But I'm not willing to sacrifice as much of my time as he has. And it's quite likely his life's work wi…

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 other than computers he would have to fight off the women, but somehow hackers are girl-repellent despite being devoted artistic geniuses?

I don't think his devotion will last long or stay fresh unless he starts fulfilling sex and romance needs. Exposure like this NYT article should help, and also a rising income would help a lot. Then he still has to make time for women and he might find the intimacy too threatening.

Anyway for the sake of Dwarf Fortress and his art ambitions I hope he figures out a way to fulfill sex needs. Other than that I don't see anything unsustainable or obviously unhealthy about his lifestyle.

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#62

Post by sunir »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #51

Some notes: First, these guys are the real hackers. Not Carmack, Woz, Bill, or Zuck, or all the super-cool guys that made the bucks and then coasted (technically). These guys are living the life just because they love it. They're a much better representation of the inner hacker in all of us than those stories of riches and fame. I got the impression they would continue doing this no matter what their financial circum…

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 famous hackers were also good at business and publicity. Not everyone wants that or is good at all three, which is the case with Dwarf Fortress.

Money is not the scorecard. Read the article. That point is addressed.

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#63

Post by InclinedPlane »

jemfinch wrote: post #60
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #51

Some notes: First, these guys are the real hackers. Not Carmack, Woz, Bill, or Zuck, or all the super-cool guys that made the bucks and then coasted (technically). These guys are living the life just because they love it. They're a much better representation of the inner hacker in all of us than those stories of riches and fame. I got the impression they would continue doing this no matter what their financial circum…

I wish I could have ignored you saying that John Carmack is not a real hacker, but I couldn't. Carmack has consistently pushed forward multiple industries on multiple fronts, and remains to this day a far better programmer than any I've ever worked with. He revolutionized computer gaming while living the life just because he loves it. He's not famous because he has Ferraris; his Ferraris are famous because they're hi…

These days he splits his non-Ferrari-driving-time between hacking on next gen. cross-platform game engines and hacking on rockets (at Armadillo aerospace). He may be a successful hacker, but he's most definitely a hacker right down to the core.

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#64

Post by rhdoenges »

praptak wrote: post #34

Being a Nethack fan who has also lost countless hours managing civilizations, space fleets, cities, insect colonies, zombie apocalypse survivors' camps, I have three words to say: Must... not... play...

Dwarf Fortress sounds to me like nethack in its difficulty but unlike nethack in its endlessness. You can play all you want, but there will be no end!

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#65

Post by cpeterso »

cydonian_monk wrote: post #24
jmelloy wrote: post #21

I haven't played it much, but I've always felt it would make an interesting iPad game. Seems like it wouldn't be too complex to put an objective-c wrapper around the code.

The problem is simple: The iPad lacks the horsepower to run the game at approaching a playable rate. Now if you were running it on another machine and playing by remote desktop.... Maybe. But to me this game simply demands a keyboard.

I have not played Dwarf Fortress, but is the game really so processor intensive that a 1 GHz dual-core iPad 2 (with GPU) could not keep up?

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#66

Post by marvin »

forensic wrote: post #61
scott_s wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember, what one person can program when they're truly dedicated is a pretty incredible feat. And I wonder if the level of dedication he has demonstrated requires Asperger's. He has all of the classic symptoms, down to the the involuntary rocking. I've worked hard, and I've sacrificed a lot of my time to my work. But I'm not willing to sacrifice as much of my time as he has. And it's quite likely his life's work wi…

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…

You've got it backwards. Women aren't scared of hackers, hackers are scared of women. This is a gross generalization, but it fits for the examples you mention. Yes, some nerds are completely unattractive and girl-repellent. But it doesn't take that much effort to become attractive, and a lot of hardcore computer guys are attracted to computers precisely because working with computers allows you to lead a solitary lifestyle with minimal social interaction.

I'm certain that there were people before that were as scared of social interaction as the biggest hardcore nerds today, but they weren't working in a technical profession. Working with technical things 50 years ago required interacting with other humans much more than computers do, because the machinery in question was physical and more distributed.

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#67

Post by martey »

jonnathanson wrote: post #46
jokermatt999 wrote: post #38

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…

Dwarf Fortress has a level of micro-complexity that I wish Civilization had. I think there is a niche -- albeit probably a very small one -- for more super-hardcore strategy games in a variety of settings and genres. Folks like me would love to play a game like Civilization and have incredibly rich, complicated diplomacy and trade and other issues that simulate, as closely as possible, real-world geopolitical issues.…

While I have never played it, I have heard good things about the complexity of the Europa Universalis series. IF author Adam Cadre wrote a mini-review of it a few years ago:

http://adamcadre.ac/calendar/10898.html

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#68

Post by cydonian_monk »

cpeterso wrote: post #65
cydonian_monk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is simple: The iPad lacks the horsepower to run the game at approaching a playable rate. Now if you were running it on another machine and playing by remote desktop.... Maybe. But to me this game simply demands a keyboard.

I have not played Dwarf Fortress, but is the game really so processor intensive that a 1 GHz dual-core iPad 2 (with GPU) could not keep up?

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 be ported to iOS (wrapper/emulator or whatnot), 1 GHz would allow you to generate a small world, and maybe play for a year or two at a low FPS. (I used to play the older version on my 1.2 GHz AMD "netbook," so it's certainly possible.) But in fortress mode, when you've got a great many dwarfs doing pathfinding (say, 80+) and a whole bunch of other stuff being tracked by the game, the simulation can be extremely taxing on system resources. Ultimately, most forts die from what is called "FPS Death," when the simulation frames completed per second reaches an unplayable level.

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#69

Post by mechanical_fish »

Produce wrote: post #28
jgfoot wrote: post #13

Very interesting: "Tarn sees his work in stridently ethical terms. He calls games like Angry Birds or Bejeweled, which ensnare players in addictive loops of frustration and gratification under the pretense that skill is required to win, 'abusive' -- a common diagnosis among those who get hooked on the games, but a surprising one from a game designer, ostensibly charged with doing the hooking. 'Many popular games tap…

To put it another way, the makers of Angry Birds are crack dealers while Tarn prefers to expand minds by selling LSD.

I was going to say: I admire Tarn's exquisitely esoteric sense of taste, which informs his art and makes both him and others happy, but I try not to shame other people for being addicted to achievement. We are all addicted to achievement. Some of us are just much, much kinkier about it than others. ;)

I have yet to definitively locate the bright shining line between a great game and an evilly addictive game. I certainly believe the people who say that WoW, Minecraft, and now Dwarf Fortress are excellent games, yet I don't play them because I don't want to be addicted. And the fact that, say, bridge and chess are socially approved addictions, requiring much more practice to attain skill, doesn't make them harmless. People get addicted to Scrabble, ice hockey, knitting, model making, composing tiny essays on Hacker News, mathematics, and of course programming just as they get addicted to Angry Birds. Is it the fact that these hobbies are less accessible that makes them less "evil"?

Re: The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

#70

Post by johnswamps »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #48
eru wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might benefit from having played Nethack first. At least the culture shock will be a smaller.

I still can't get a grip on Nethack. I think I need to print out the list of key bindings in order to actually play.

I would try playing Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup instead. It's another roguelike that is heavily inspired by nethack but is more modern and more beginner friendly. I love nethack (I've ascended twice) but it's definitely showing it's age (not to mention that the game is pretty broken in some regards). Crawl has a better interface and tries to remove all the tedious parts of roguelikes, though there's still a learning curve.
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