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It is certainly a fun experiment but it's also the poster child of wasted potential. If even a few more developers and artists could work on the game with toady

by Sargos 11y ago

It is certainly a fun experiment but it's also the poster child of wasted potential. If even a few more developers and artists could work on the game with toady still making 100% of the decisions the game would be much more flexible and much more polished and accessible. It is still a wonderful sandbox that can be experience by a select few but I hope one day the code is released to others and the game can truly blossom.

andrew_wc_brown 11y ago
The project's success is due to the ecosystem they've created. Any introductions of designers/developers could spell entire doom for the project. I can appreciate not bringing in new talent as it is an unnecessary gamble.
jfoutz 11y ago
That sounds appealing, but it would be something else. There are hundreds or perhaps thousands of polished fun games to play. Dwarf Fortress is different. It's raw. The wretched interface and myriad bugs are part of the whole experience. In a lot of ways, it's like punk rock. Yeah, the musicians could keep better time, and be in tune, but then it would be a different kind of music. The lunacy of one guy writing so much depth and detail has it's own magic that you can't really get anywhere else. Maybe it is indeed a waste. I think i've spent more for that game than any other, save maybe WoW because of all the expansions.
db48x 11y ago
Except that then he'd be a project manager rather than a programmer.
VonGuard 11y ago
No need. Plenty of 3rd party tools. Take a look at the Lazy Newbs Pack: http://lazynewbpack.com/ http://lazynewbpack.com/ It contains utilities to do just about everything you feel is lacking, save some major interface overhauls. I agree, the interface is byzantine, but at the end of the day, it's basically like emacs or vi.... Tools in the Newbs Pack include 3D fort imager, StoneSense, Dwarf task/military/nobles manager Dwarf Therapist, dozens of pixel art packs to turn your d's and c's into little dogs and chickens. There are even tools to directly modify the game: turn off aquifers, turn off invasions, remove races, turn off vampirism, limit the number of children. The only wasted potential in Dwarf Fortress is people who maybe can't get into it because it's so freakin' complex. Tarn knows the code's a mess. He's not a programmer. He's a mathematician. He writes code that works, and when it does, he moves on. Nothing in Dwarf Fortress was written to be touched by an outsider. It's a truly personal project for the Adams.
- Forlien 11y ago
  Sargos mentioned 3 benefits that they would expect - flexibility, polish and accessibility. Sure, maybe we have enough flexibility right now, but Dwarf Fortess definitely isn't a paragon of polish or accessibility.
  - VonGuard 11y ago
    And it never will be. And that's a good thing. Also, if you don't think DF has polish, you've never played it. The polish is very subtle, but the game is SUPER polished with tons of details you'll miss if you don't go deep.
- exDM69 11y ago
  > No need. Plenty of 3rd party tools. Take a look at the Lazy Newbs Pack .... A lot of trouble has been put into making tools such as Dwarf Therapist in the Lazy Newb Pack. They're basically made by snooping the memory of the DF process (unless I'm mistaken here). If DF source code was available (even if it would be immutable), a tremendous amount of effort could have been into better use than practically reverse engineering parts of the core game. In my opinion, Dwarf Fortress could be much better if the source code was open or at least available.
  - orf 11y ago
    Or there was some formal API or at least some convention for communicating without hacks
  - ximeng 11y ago
    He does talk in the interview about why he doesn't do that, and the reasons aren't completely unreasonable (basically he wants to avoid professionalising the dev process)
    - clarry 11y ago
      That sounds unreasonable to me. To put a different license and dump the source somewhere, you don't need to change your personal process at all.
Natsu 11y ago
There are other ways that people have contributed, though. Take, for example, the project that led to the solid density values being updated for all sorts of materials. Saguaro wood density only exists online thanks to Dwarf Fortress, for one example.
ajuc 11y ago
Adding graphic would completely change the proccess, because new features to add would have different comparative costs than now. This would result in completely different game in the end, probably a lot more mainstream. I'm glad he decided not to pursue that path.
alexc05 11y ago
I think you're right here. I read the comments of another link to this article where someone was going on about how DF only runs on a single-core and could benefit from a layer of threading. Apparently even though it's text only there are points in the game where it slows down to a few frames per second.
- stepvhen 11y ago
  The modern iteration is based on SDL graphics, not text (though that is available). The game slows down because you end up with 80+ dwarves, cats, forgotten beasts, Mothmen, kobolds, and more, all trying to pathfind to their next thing, and by that time you have dug down 60+ z-levels and there's rivers and fish and some dwarf really wants a sock from his/her dead friend and it all adds up to an awful lot of computation 100 times a second. The graphics of it all is probably one of the easiest parts. However, this is a 14 year old, very complex codebase. Tarn has said himself that multithreading is highly improbable at this point, it's not something you can just drop in. It would probably absorb an entire release cycle.
sago 11y ago
The Sistine chapel roof is such wasted potential. If he'd got a team together and sculpted it before painting it, and used a bigger range of paints, it would have been much better.
- Qworg 11y ago
  "See son? That @ sign there represents God and the - is God's finger. The _ is the hand of Mankind, reaching out, and # is of course Mankind."

by Sargos 11y ago

andrew_wc_brown 11y ago

The project's success is due to the ecosystem they've created. Any introductions of designers/developers could spell entire doom for the project. I can appreciate not bringing in new talent as it is an unnecessary gamble.

jfoutz 11y ago

That sounds appealing, but it would be something else. There are hundreds or perhaps thousands of polished fun games to play. Dwarf Fortress is different. It's raw. The wretched interface and myriad bugs are part of the whole experience. In a lot of ways, it's like punk rock. Yeah, the musicians could keep better time, and be in tune, but then it would be a different kind of music. The lunacy of one guy writing so much depth and detail has it's own magic that you can't really get anywhere else. Maybe it is indeed a waste. I think i've spent more for that game than any other, save maybe WoW because of all the expansions.

db48x 11y ago

Except that then he'd be a project manager rather than a programmer.

VonGuard 11y ago

No need. Plenty of 3rd party tools. Take a look at the Lazy Newbs Pack: http://lazynewbpack.com/ http://lazynewbpack.com/ It contains utilities to do just about everything you feel is lacking, save some major interface overhauls. I agree, the interface is byzantine, but at the end of the day, it's basically like emacs or vi.... Tools in the Newbs Pack include 3D fort imager, StoneSense, Dwarf task/military/nobles manager Dwarf Therapist, dozens of pixel art packs to turn your d's and c's into little dogs and chickens. There are even tools to directly modify the game: turn off aquifers, turn off invasions, remove races, turn off vampirism, limit the number of children. The only wasted potential in Dwarf Fortress is people who maybe can't get into it because it's so freakin' complex. Tarn knows the code's a mess. He's not a programmer. He's a mathematician. He writes code that works, and when it does, he moves on. Nothing in Dwarf Fortress was written to be touched by an outsider. It's a truly personal project for the Adams.

Forlien 11y ago
Sargos mentioned 3 benefits that they would expect - flexibility, polish and accessibility. Sure, maybe we have enough flexibility right now, but Dwarf Fortess definitely isn't a paragon of polish or accessibility.
- VonGuard 11y ago
  And it never will be. And that's a good thing. Also, if you don't think DF has polish, you've never played it. The polish is very subtle, but the game is SUPER polished with tons of details you'll miss if you don't go deep.
exDM69 11y ago
> No need. Plenty of 3rd party tools. Take a look at the Lazy Newbs Pack .... A lot of trouble has been put into making tools such as Dwarf Therapist in the Lazy Newb Pack. They're basically made by snooping the memory of the DF process (unless I'm mistaken here). If DF source code was available (even if it would be immutable), a tremendous amount of effort could have been into better use than practically reverse engineering parts of the core game. In my opinion, Dwarf Fortress could be much better if the source code was open or at least available.
- orf 11y ago
  Or there was some formal API or at least some convention for communicating without hacks
- ximeng 11y ago
  He does talk in the interview about why he doesn't do that, and the reasons aren't completely unreasonable (basically he wants to avoid professionalising the dev process)
  - clarry 11y ago
    That sounds unreasonable to me. To put a different license and dump the source somewhere, you don't need to change your personal process at all.

Natsu 11y ago

There are other ways that people have contributed, though. Take, for example, the project that led to the solid density values being updated for all sorts of materials. Saguaro wood density only exists online thanks to Dwarf Fortress, for one example.

ajuc 11y ago

Adding graphic would completely change the proccess, because new features to add would have different comparative costs than now. This would result in completely different game in the end, probably a lot more mainstream. I'm glad he decided not to pursue that path.

alexc05 11y ago

I think you're right here. I read the comments of another link to this article where someone was going on about how DF only runs on a single-core and could benefit from a layer of threading. Apparently even though it's text only there are points in the game where it slows down to a few frames per second.

stepvhen 11y ago
The modern iteration is based on SDL graphics, not text (though that is available). The game slows down because you end up with 80+ dwarves, cats, forgotten beasts, Mothmen, kobolds, and more, all trying to pathfind to their next thing, and by that time you have dug down 60+ z-levels and there's rivers and fish and some dwarf really wants a sock from his/her dead friend and it all adds up to an awful lot of computation 100 times a second. The graphics of it all is probably one of the easiest parts. However, this is a 14 year old, very complex codebase. Tarn has said himself that multithreading is highly improbable at this point, it's not something you can just drop in. It would probably absorb an entire release cycle.

sago 11y ago

The Sistine chapel roof is such wasted potential. If he'd got a team together and sculpted it before painting it, and used a bigger range of paints, it would have been much better.

Qworg 11y ago
"See son? That @ sign there represents God and the - is God's finger. The _ is the hand of Mankind, reaching out, and # is of course Mankind."