Dwarf Fortress Creator Explains Its Complexity and Origins [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Dwarf Fortress Creator Explains Its Complexity and Origins [video]

#71

Post by lstodd » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 7:01 AM UTC

Trasmatta wrote: post #24

I would love to be able to read the Dwarf Fortress source someday. I know Tarn considers Dwarf Fortress to be his life's work, so it would be amazing if he decided to release the source someday -- even if that's 10, 20, 30 years from now.

For the time being you can enjoy the lisp/perl/ruby reverse-engineering/c++ decompiler tool used in df-structures[1] that was made to make dfhack[2] and Dwarf Therapist possible that were made to make managing a 100+ dwarves fortress possible.

[1] https://github.com/DFHack/df-structures [2] https://github.com/DFHack/dfhack

Re: Dwarf Fortress Creator Explains Its Complexity and Origins [video]

#72

Post by nix23 » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 7:12 AM UTC

DF and Aurora are the two 'games' i sunk the most time in by a far margin, what two pieces of great software!!!

Re: Dwarf Fortress Creator Explains Its Complexity and Origins [video]

#73

Post by hyperion2010 » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 7:17 AM UTC

After watching this I went to go check in on my last fort that I played which was about two years ago. Turns out the countless hours I spent herding dorfs in college have left me with an instinctive memory of the key bindings over a decade later. DF has such incredible depth and nearly infinite replayability. It struck me today that despite all that time playing I have never actually made it to a fort that was able to produce adamantine weapons, and you know what? Loosing really IS fun! DF is one of those works of art that truly elevates our sense of the possible. Now, if only we could convince Toady to work on multithreading ....

Re: Dwarf Fortress Creator Explains Its Complexity and Origins [video]

#74

Post by Kiro » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 7:43 AM UTC

dmonitor wrote: post #36

eindiran wrote: post #27

I attempted to play DF in high school many years ago, booted it up and was immediately overwhelmed. I ended up uninstalling it and forgetting about the game for a long time. Recently I remembered the game and gave it another shot, and have been having a lot of fun [0]. Having the noob pack available to try out some titlesets made it a lot more approachable as well. And there have been a lot of quality of life improve…

I can see it being very fun for a certain kind of person, but I don’t think most people will get a ton of pleasure from just making your base bigger without any end goal

Sandbox games, especially base-building, survival and colony sims, are immensely popular nowadays and most are open-ended with either an optional ending or no end goal at all.

Re: Dwarf Fortress Creator Explains Its Complexity and Origins [video]

#75

Post by tetris11 » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 7:51 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #62

I have been playing dwarf fortress for about 7-8 years. If anybody has any questions feel free to ask me. I think the difficulty of learning the game is overstated: if you follow a tutorial, use a graphics pack, and use dwarf therapist (dwarf therapist is a must, most experienced players also use this because it's just a better UI) I think you can get the hang of the game in a few hours of play time. Probably the big…

I found that you get used to the ascii after a while. Now I dont even see the code, just blonde, brunette, redhead, quantum stockpile...

Re: Dwarf Fortress Creator Explains Its Complexity and Origins [video]

#76

Post by tetris11 » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 7:53 AM UTC

hyperion2010 wrote: post #73

After watching this I went to go check in on my last fort that I played which was about two years ago. Turns out the countless hours I spent herding dorfs in college have left me with an instinctive memory of the key bindings over a decade later. DF has such incredible depth and nearly infinite replayability. It struck me today that despite all that time playing I have never actually made it to a fort that was able t…

Or just opening the graphics interface ever so slightly. Those menus do not need to be so convoluted as they are, and plenty of fans would jump in to do a UI overhaul if allowed.

Re: Dwarf Fortress Creator Explains Its Complexity and Origins [video]

#77

Post by INTPenis » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 8:03 AM UTC

I love DF. I played it for so many years that I knew all the bindings I needed by heart. It was insane.

But I left it alone many years ago, like 6 years ago at least.

And after that I feel like you can get the same joy from simpler games, and prettier games, like Rimworld and Oxygen not included.

Sure they'll never be as complex and deep as DF but they're much simpler to get into after not having played and they don't have a steep learning curve.

To this day I'm on the lookout for DF-like games on Steam. And I'm still waiting for DF to come out on Steam to give it another shot.

Re: Dwarf Fortress Creator Explains Its Complexity and Origins [video]

#78

Post by kagbor » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 8:06 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #62

I have been playing dwarf fortress for about 7-8 years. If anybody has any questions feel free to ask me. I think the difficulty of learning the game is overstated: if you follow a tutorial, use a graphics pack, and use dwarf therapist (dwarf therapist is a must, most experienced players also use this because it's just a better UI) I think you can get the hang of the game in a few hours of play time. Probably the big…

So I have to install 2 third-party tools and follow 2+ third-party tutorials/guides for a few hours before I can potentially start enjoying the game.

Doesn't sound overstated at all...

Re: Dwarf Fortress Creator Explains Its Complexity and Origins [video]

#79

Post by imtringued » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 8:10 AM UTC

hyperion2010 wrote: post #73

After watching this I went to go check in on my last fort that I played which was about two years ago. Turns out the countless hours I spent herding dorfs in college have left me with an instinctive memory of the key bindings over a decade later. DF has such incredible depth and nearly infinite replayability. It struck me today that despite all that time playing I have never actually made it to a fort that was able t…

>Now, if only we could convince Toady to work on multithreading ....

I have thought about this problem mostly because Minecraft runs like shit when you overload it with 300 mods.

It's much harder than you think. Unfortunately there is no "easy" solution. Converting single threaded code 1:1 would only be possible if you could guarantee that no deadlocks will occur and that requires trickery unique to the problem at hand. It's not really a scalable solution. If you can, you should try to avoid acquiring more than one lock at a time but that also means you will have to rewrite everything to use message passing. Rewrites mean bugs and no new features for a long time.

Re: Dwarf Fortress Creator Explains Its Complexity and Origins [video]

#80

Post by yvdriess » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 8:10 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #62

I have been playing dwarf fortress for about 7-8 years. If anybody has any questions feel free to ask me. I think the difficulty of learning the game is overstated: if you follow a tutorial, use a graphics pack, and use dwarf therapist (dwarf therapist is a must, most experienced players also use this because it's just a better UI) I think you can get the hang of the game in a few hours of play time. Probably the big…

I was surprised how fast the (frequently inconsistent) keyboard commands just get into your fingers, where you don't think about it anymore.

Similarly for the graphics, and that applies to games in general. You really stop noticing the graphics around ~30mins into a session, because you're running this asynchronous simulation in your head that only needs minimal information to update. That might be a reason why we remember games we played a long time ago being a lot prettier or detailed.