81–87 of 87 posts
Passenger pigeons were still around in the 1890s, weren't they? Is their omission deliberate since their range seems to have been east of the Rockies?
They were extinct in the wild by 1895.
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"Long Lasting Consequences" like changing the color of the sky during the final cut-scene... Don't get me wrong, I loved those games, but when I played 3 and that was the big pay off...jesus.
The DLCs fixed the endings somewhat, but in any case the journey itself was amazing. Sometimes it's not just about the destination but how you got there
Again: loved the games, had a lot of fun, but I was also disappointing that decisions I thought would matter wound up being relatively meaningless.
Not trying to say your experience playing the game wasn't valid, just that it might not be the best example to point to since that was a rather noteworthy example of what NOT to do for many people.
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That's a good point. That is a big difference with Dwarf Fortress. It's definitely a masterpiece of game design. To donavanm's point that you need writers to create engaging content, as you've pointed out Dwarf Fortress has writers--they're just operating on a different level. But I still think the learning curve is a big part of it. Just look at how many "Get started with Dwarf Fortress" tutorials are out there.
I'm pretty sure the learning curve is more a result of DF's total lack of interest in reducing the learning curve, than any kind of necessary function of it. Obviously the complexity of the game leads to complexity of the interaction, but 10% of DF's learning curve is its nonsensical UI, probably another 30% is the fact that it has no tutorial or manual of its own, 20% is all the additional tooling surrounding it, wh…
I don't think they were only talking about an overarching large scale story, but also the small scale side stories that happen throughout the world. Allowing the player to overhearing the backstory of 2 train robbers right before they start the robbery, or coming up with a back story for an abandoned house and telling it through the items left around. Small additions that add flavor and detail to the world. When you add to that some game mechanics around choosing to aid or stop the train robbers, choosing to find the lost treasure hinted at by a journal found in the abandoned house etc..., and then the game world reacts and changes based on those actions, to me, you're doing exactly what Dwarf Fortress is doing. To me the difference is scale (granted it's a huge difference and I think much more difficult to pull of right). Dwarf Fortress does it on a much grander level that allows for more variation and more genuinely unexpected emergent behavior.
The creators of Dwarf Fortress write small stories that add flavor to the world and then they add systems to make those stories possible. It requires much more human effort to develop than just piecing together systems and hoping that the interactions are interesting, which is what I think donavanm meant by being less scaleable.
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I'm pretty sure the learning curve is more a result of DF's total lack of interest in reducing the learning curve, than any kind of necessary function of it. Obviously the complexity of the game leads to complexity of the interaction, but 10% of DF's learning curve is its nonsensical UI, probably another 30% is the fact that it has no tutorial or manual of its own, 20% is all the additional tooling surrounding it, wh…
And while it isn't anywhere near as deep as DF, the mass attraction of Minecraft shows that procedural generated worlds where there are no real goals can be very attractive and approachable, even to children.
The genius of Minecraft is that it's a vast canvas for you to shape, not an interesting world to study. The purely procedurally generated world that it generates are fun to build on they just aren't that interesting after you've experienced it for a bit.
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I first got a PlayStation (1) when I was about 9 years old, and we got Road Rash 3D with it. Looking back the graphics were pretty shocking (though cutting edge at the time). But my main memory is how liberating it felt to leave the race route and just ride around aimlessly for hours and hours, exploring the countryside and the towns and cities you'd discover. I got a lot more out of that than trying to keep up with…
Half of the pleasure of Sir You Are Being Hunted is that it's a very good English countryside simulator, with occasional murderous robots.
Passenger pigeons were still around in the 1890s, weren't they? Is their omission deliberate since their range seems to have been east of the Rockies?
I believe the entirety of the game is set in a fictional equivalent of east of the Rockies, so I doubt it.
In game there is talk about real places (like New York, Cuba, Tahiti) but there is little context to where those are in respect to where the player is.
This kind of tiny piece by piece interaction with the world is something I desired in the late 90s, dreaming as a teen, but my rudimentary O(n) skills showed me was beyond the computers of the time. It's gorgeous & I love the potential that brims here. What if something was this complex and well built, but the storyline was removed - the player simply builds their own story, ala DF Adventurer mode.
if you did that, it would be boring. The difference between a livestream of somebody's house and a soap opera is the storyline. Without the story, only the world, the intensity is much lower and you would need the world to be much much more detailed to hold any interest. A real fractal of details like in a real world is much more effortful to implement compared to a good story.
And also, Dwarf Fortress is essentially a story building simulator, it is designed to generate interesting stories.
anyway, just some thoughts, people get fun from different things.