7 ms·

Dwarf Fortress consumed hundreds of hours of my life in high school, I have so many fond memories of it. Every year or so I come back to it and I'm always surpr

Dwarf Fortress consumed hundreds of hours of my life in high school, I have so many fond memories of it. Every year or so I come back to it and I'm always surprised that they've managed to add another mechanic or feature that just makes the game feel even more like its own little universe. After enough time in the game there really is a moment like that scene in the Matrix - "I don't even see the ASCII anymore. All I see is dwarf, plump helmet, magnetite ore." That said, I've always wondered if Dwarf Fortress would be a more smooth experience if it had more developers or was just open source (understandable that it's not though since it's basically Tad's passion project). The biggest headache was always the lack of multithreading, since your fortress really starts to chug once you pass maybe 150 dwarves or do anything exciting with fluids. Regardless, it's amazing what one developer with a great idea and an enthusiastic community has been able to do with the game.

fridif 5y ago
Passion project? It is the sole source of his income.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  It might be both.
- Octopodes 5y ago
  He's lucky enough for it to be both.
- Yajirobe 5y ago
  Lichess is Thibault's source of income, passion project, AND it is open-source.
  - fridif 5y ago
    I suspect that Thibault is making money from it because he is actually deploying a web service, and the value there is coming from the network effects of its multiplayer user base. Even if I deployed his code tonight, there's no guarantee users would switch over to my LeeChess clone :) In the case of Dwarf Fortress it's just "download my exe and please donate if you like it!"
- dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
  I've been working on a project for a long time. It's not even yielding income, though I hope it will. A friend referred to it as a passion project. That hurt for some reason. I can't explain why.
  - s5300 5y ago
    I think you're interpreting his meaning in saying that incorrectly. You're not an employee for somebody else (correct? It's your own project) - it's not a salaried or hourly position where somebody else is currently signing your paycheck. You obviously don't hate it (I hope? If so, not sure why you wouldn't have canned it yet) Thus, this is what most people would refer to as a passion project. You may have a different meaning of that term in your own mind, but I think, on average, most people would refer to what you're doing as such, and not to be malicious in doing so. I wouldn't let it hurt you, I'm sure that's likely not a friend's intention.
    - dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
      Yeah for sure, he didn't mean anything by it. I try not to be super sensitive, that makes interacting with people impossible. But sometimes it's hard :).
      - biztos 5y ago
        I have a similar sensitivity around my primary vocation: I'm an artist with a day job, like many others, but since my day job is programming and I take it seriously, a lot of people think of my art as a "hobby." Which it very much is not. FWIW I have found that three things help me deal with this sensitivity: 1) Take it as motivation to be more outwardly "professional" about my art. Improve the website, be more active on social media, try harder to exhibit, even (ugh) sell things. 2) Remember that most people are just saying that out of ignorance: they don't have a mental model for anything outside of "work for the Man" or "mess around in free time." 3) Have examples ready if someone needs an explanation, and also as inspiration for yourself. For instance: was William Carlos Williams[0] a "hobby" poet? [0]: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-carlos-williams https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-carlos-willia...
anthk 5y ago
It happened to me with Nethack/Slashem and interactive fiction games. Once you get absorted at night by imagining your surroudings upon reading the game actions, the game feels scarier and more "real" than any current 3D adventure game.
andrewzah 5y ago
Even if it were open source I doubt there would be enough impetus to implement multithreading. It would literally be easier to completely make a new game from scratch with async and threading designs taken into account, instead of trying to adapt an existing monolith. Async and multithreading are complex and introduce many subtle bugs. It's not so easy to just move to that from a single-thread event loop.
- waiseristy 5y ago
  I would hope there would be low hanging fruits. Pathfinding for example causes huge huge issues late in the game, same with the fluid calculations. Of course we have no idea how Tarn implemented these things, but I would have to guess if you need to do pathing for 50 entities in a single frame, you could probably parallelize them?!
  - beart 5y ago
    Not if those entities are moving relative to one another (combat, tasks, social interactions, just moving past one another)
asciimov 5y ago
> That said, I've always wondered if Dwarf Fortress would be a more smooth experience if it had more developers Maybe, but only if it was under the benevolent dictator model.
- bombcar 5y ago
  There exists at least one Dwarf Fortress done in Tarn’s model - it seems there exist zero done via any other method. He perfected a Patreon-style support system before Patreon was really a thing, and he keeps plugging away at it, keeping people interested. (Dirty secret - he’s found ways to let people access parts of the code he doesn’t care about such as the sound or SDL)
  - skeaker 5y ago
    Your comment is true in a literal sense, but there are other games with very similar mind-boggling complexity that exist and thrive thanks to being open source. SS13 and CDDA jump to mind.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      I think those take a different kind of person as a leader - the “Tarn + bro” person would need to be better at delegating and management of others vs implementation of his design himself. Often if you have an idea but aren’t doing the low level implementation it’s harder to understand why something should change vs doing it yourself - in the latter case you just change the implementation and the design at the same time.
devenvdev 5y ago
> I don't even see the ASCII anymore. All I see is dwarf, plump helmet, magnetite ore It's even more than that - I can spend ridiculous time in legends mode just reading facts and events going from one personality to another trying to "feel" the world. It's like from these pieces of trivial information a bigger picture emerges, partially consisting of the facts and partially of random connections my brain made. It's an amazing experience.

fridif 5y ago

Passion project? It is the sole source of his income.

hutzlibu 5y ago
It might be both.
Octopodes 5y ago
He's lucky enough for it to be both.
Yajirobe 5y ago
Lichess is Thibault's source of income, passion project, AND it is open-source.
- fridif 5y ago
  I suspect that Thibault is making money from it because he is actually deploying a web service, and the value there is coming from the network effects of its multiplayer user base. Even if I deployed his code tonight, there's no guarantee users would switch over to my LeeChess clone :) In the case of Dwarf Fortress it's just "download my exe and please donate if you like it!"
dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
I've been working on a project for a long time. It's not even yielding income, though I hope it will. A friend referred to it as a passion project. That hurt for some reason. I can't explain why.
- s5300 5y ago
  I think you're interpreting his meaning in saying that incorrectly. You're not an employee for somebody else (correct? It's your own project) - it's not a salaried or hourly position where somebody else is currently signing your paycheck. You obviously don't hate it (I hope? If so, not sure why you wouldn't have canned it yet) Thus, this is what most people would refer to as a passion project. You may have a different meaning of that term in your own mind, but I think, on average, most people would refer to what you're doing as such, and not to be malicious in doing so. I wouldn't let it hurt you, I'm sure that's likely not a friend's intention.
  - dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Yeah for sure, he didn't mean anything by it. I try not to be super sensitive, that makes interacting with people impossible. But sometimes it's hard :).
    - biztos 5y ago
      I have a similar sensitivity around my primary vocation: I'm an artist with a day job, like many others, but since my day job is programming and I take it seriously, a lot of people think of my art as a "hobby." Which it very much is not. FWIW I have found that three things help me deal with this sensitivity: 1) Take it as motivation to be more outwardly "professional" about my art. Improve the website, be more active on social media, try harder to exhibit, even (ugh) sell things. 2) Remember that most people are just saying that out of ignorance: they don't have a mental model for anything outside of "work for the Man" or "mess around in free time." 3) Have examples ready if someone needs an explanation, and also as inspiration for yourself. For instance: was William Carlos Williams[0] a "hobby" poet? [0]: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-carlos-williams https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-carlos-willia...

anthk 5y ago

It happened to me with Nethack/Slashem and interactive fiction games. Once you get absorted at night by imagining your surroudings upon reading the game actions, the game feels scarier and more "real" than any current 3D adventure game.

andrewzah 5y ago

Even if it were open source I doubt there would be enough impetus to implement multithreading. It would literally be easier to completely make a new game from scratch with async and threading designs taken into account, instead of trying to adapt an existing monolith. Async and multithreading are complex and introduce many subtle bugs. It's not so easy to just move to that from a single-thread event loop.

waiseristy 5y ago
I would hope there would be low hanging fruits. Pathfinding for example causes huge huge issues late in the game, same with the fluid calculations. Of course we have no idea how Tarn implemented these things, but I would have to guess if you need to do pathing for 50 entities in a single frame, you could probably parallelize them?!
- beart 5y ago
  Not if those entities are moving relative to one another (combat, tasks, social interactions, just moving past one another)

asciimov 5y ago

> That said, I've always wondered if Dwarf Fortress would be a more smooth experience if it had more developers Maybe, but only if it was under the benevolent dictator model.

bombcar 5y ago
There exists at least one Dwarf Fortress done in Tarn’s model - it seems there exist zero done via any other method. He perfected a Patreon-style support system before Patreon was really a thing, and he keeps plugging away at it, keeping people interested. (Dirty secret - he’s found ways to let people access parts of the code he doesn’t care about such as the sound or SDL)
- skeaker 5y ago
  Your comment is true in a literal sense, but there are other games with very similar mind-boggling complexity that exist and thrive thanks to being open source. SS13 and CDDA jump to mind.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    I think those take a different kind of person as a leader - the “Tarn + bro” person would need to be better at delegating and management of others vs implementation of his design himself. Often if you have an idea but aren’t doing the low level implementation it’s harder to understand why something should change vs doing it yourself - in the latter case you just change the implementation and the design at the same time.

devenvdev 5y ago

> I don't even see the ASCII anymore. All I see is dwarf, plump helmet, magnetite ore It's even more than that - I can spend ridiculous time in legends mode just reading facts and events going from one personality to another trying to "feel" the world. It's like from these pieces of trivial information a bigger picture emerges, partially consisting of the facts and partially of random connections my brain made. It's an amazing experience.