5 ms·

This may be pedantic, but I wouldn't say DF is content rich exactly. Dwarf Fortress (and similar games, like Banished and RimWorld) shine because you can execut

This may be pedantic, but I wouldn't say DF is content rich exactly. Dwarf Fortress (and similar games, like Banished and RimWorld) shine because you can execute an infinitely different number of stories/scenarios/playthroughs without changing any the fundamental systems of the game. The content there is emergent from the actual gritty gameplay mechanics (rather than the reverse, where the mechanics exist solely to propel an overarching plot).

edem 10y ago
Content in Dwarf Fortress is generated. It does not make a difference when we talk about the term "content" whether it was written by hand or was generated by a function. The emergent behavior is the most interesting part of "content" in DF which is just a generalization really. The concrete type of content which DF is based upon is "story" and Tarn Adams is working on a story generator (which he hopes to achieve by simulating the narratively interesting parts of our world).
yolesaber 10y ago
The gameplay is the content. You are confusing plot with content which isn't necessarily the case for videogames.
adamrezich 10y ago
In my opinion, it's not so much about the "content" as much as it is about the number of interacting systems that cause unexpected and emergent gameplay situations. One of my first Dwarf Fortress runs had me embarking to a cold area in the middle of winter. The lake had frozen over and that's where my caravan landed. As I was still learning the basics of the game, I forgot to make beds for my dwarves. They fell asleep on the iced-over lake, and while they were sleeping, spring came, the lake thawed, and seven very surprised dwarves suddenly found themselves struggling to swim. I think one or two died and I laughed my ass off and started over. In No Man's Sky, this one time, I went to a planet and saw some cool stuff and mined some minerals and made some stuff... oh wait, that was every planet, every time. Once I found a neat spaceship! Then a few miles later I found another one. Then I realized that the distribution of procedurally-generated content meant that there was a random, abandoned spaceship every few dozen miles. On every planet. That's around the time when I stopped playing No Man's Sky. Obviously the two games are extremely dissimilar in many ways, but this just goes to show how "shallow" the procedural elements of NMS end up being. Yes, the technical details of the underlying systems are super cool to explore from a programming standpoint... but design-wise, the procedural systems don't really lend themselves to interesting or emergent gameplay. There's like three different AI routines for fauna, or something, the different planetary hazards all amount to different bars with different flavor text that affect gameplay in the exact same ways, etc. etc. The bottom line is, if your procedurally-generated world has enough interacting systems that leads to interesting and emergent gameplay, you'll have your players recounting stories of interesting, unique things that happened to them for years to come. If your procedural generation systems just generate different visuals for the exact same gameplay, it will get very old, very fast. Not every game with procedural generation has to be Dwarf Fortress, of course... but if you're going to hang your game's proverbial hat more or less entirely on its procedural generation systems and sell it for sixty bucks a copy, you should probably make sure that all that work you put into your procedural generation code is going to do more to your game than generate different skins of paint on top of the same mundane gameplay.
- Rapzid 10y ago
  > In my opinion, it's not so much about the "content" as much as it is about the number of interacting systems... Right on. I'll give a concrete example from one of the most immersive games I recall, Ultima VII. Now, this may or may not have been intended as a possibility by the developers, but I think it's important to consider this could have been emergent gameplay non the less. Why is this important? Because it should serve to inspire the pursuit of future emergent gameplay of course! So here it is -> The Bank Robbery. The Setup: Lord British will resurrect dead people you bring to him(you can put dead people in your sack!). NPC's have daily schedules(go to work, the pub, home to sleep, etc), and resurrected NPC's will find their way back into their schedule. The bank/mint in Britain has a banker name Cynthia. She has the keys to all the locked doors and chests that have tones of gold bars and coins.. There are powerful guards in lobby. What you do: Grab powder kegs from the castle and bring them to the lobby. Ignite the kegs to kill the guards and Cynthia. Loot her corpse to get the keys, then place the corps in a party mates bag. Now start making your way through the mint with the keys while locking the doors behind you. More guards will arrive and be blocked by you locking the doors. Loot every room and exit the back of the mint. Flee town until the heat is off. Return and take Cynthia to Lord British asking him to resurrect her. Cynthia will go home and return to her routine. Go back to the mint the next day and Cynthia will be at work! Sell her all the gold bars and nuggets you stole for coin. Profit :D Systems interacting in unforeseen ways is totally the way to go with this stuff. Ultima VII has given me a lot of inspiration for creating a multi-resolution whole-world AI system that can make more of these sorts of stories possible. One day perhaps.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

edem 10y ago

Content in Dwarf Fortress is generated. It does not make a difference when we talk about the term "content" whether it was written by hand or was generated by a function. The emergent behavior is the most interesting part of "content" in DF which is just a generalization really. The concrete type of content which DF is based upon is "story" and Tarn Adams is working on a story generator (which he hopes to achieve by simulating the narratively interesting parts of our world).

yolesaber 10y ago

The gameplay is the content. You are confusing plot with content which isn't necessarily the case for videogames.

adamrezich 10y ago

In my opinion, it's not so much about the "content" as much as it is about the number of interacting systems that cause unexpected and emergent gameplay situations. One of my first Dwarf Fortress runs had me embarking to a cold area in the middle of winter. The lake had frozen over and that's where my caravan landed. As I was still learning the basics of the game, I forgot to make beds for my dwarves. They fell asleep on the iced-over lake, and while they were sleeping, spring came, the lake thawed, and seven very surprised dwarves suddenly found themselves struggling to swim. I think one or two died and I laughed my ass off and started over. In No Man's Sky, this one time, I went to a planet and saw some cool stuff and mined some minerals and made some stuff... oh wait, that was every planet, every time. Once I found a neat spaceship! Then a few miles later I found another one. Then I realized that the distribution of procedurally-generated content meant that there was a random, abandoned spaceship every few dozen miles. On every planet. That's around the time when I stopped playing No Man's Sky. Obviously the two games are extremely dissimilar in many ways, but this just goes to show how "shallow" the procedural elements of NMS end up being. Yes, the technical details of the underlying systems are super cool to explore from a programming standpoint... but design-wise, the procedural systems don't really lend themselves to interesting or emergent gameplay. There's like three different AI routines for fauna, or something, the different planetary hazards all amount to different bars with different flavor text that affect gameplay in the exact same ways, etc. etc. The bottom line is, if your procedurally-generated world has enough interacting systems that leads to interesting and emergent gameplay, you'll have your players recounting stories of interesting, unique things that happened to them for years to come. If your procedural generation systems just generate different visuals for the exact same gameplay, it will get very old, very fast. Not every game with procedural generation has to be Dwarf Fortress, of course... but if you're going to hang your game's proverbial hat more or less entirely on its procedural generation systems and sell it for sixty bucks a copy, you should probably make sure that all that work you put into your procedural generation code is going to do more to your game than generate different skins of paint on top of the same mundane gameplay.

Rapzid 10y ago
> In my opinion, it's not so much about the "content" as much as it is about the number of interacting systems... Right on. I'll give a concrete example from one of the most immersive games I recall, Ultima VII. Now, this may or may not have been intended as a possibility by the developers, but I think it's important to consider this could have been emergent gameplay non the less. Why is this important? Because it should serve to inspire the pursuit of future emergent gameplay of course! So here it is -> The Bank Robbery. The Setup: Lord British will resurrect dead people you bring to him(you can put dead people in your sack!). NPC's have daily schedules(go to work, the pub, home to sleep, etc), and resurrected NPC's will find their way back into their schedule. The bank/mint in Britain has a banker name Cynthia. She has the keys to all the locked doors and chests that have tones of gold bars and coins.. There are powerful guards in lobby. What you do: Grab powder kegs from the castle and bring them to the lobby. Ignite the kegs to kill the guards and Cynthia. Loot her corpse to get the keys, then place the corps in a party mates bag. Now start making your way through the mint with the keys while locking the doors behind you. More guards will arrive and be blocked by you locking the doors. Loot every room and exit the back of the mint. Flee town until the heat is off. Return and take Cynthia to Lord British asking him to resurrect her. Cynthia will go home and return to her routine. Go back to the mint the next day and Cynthia will be at work! Sell her all the gold bars and nuggets you stole for coin. Profit :D Systems interacting in unforeseen ways is totally the way to go with this stuff. Ultima VII has given me a lot of inspiration for creating a multi-resolution whole-world AI system that can make more of these sorts of stories possible. One day perhaps.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]