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Dwarf Fortress Update – Tutorials and Tooltips
- user3939382 4y agoWhat’s the game where it’s really complicated and it’s all ASCII symbols?
- user3939382 4y agoNethack
- synu 4y agoThat’s a nice looking tile set. Did they update the default at some point?
- juice_bus 4y agoThis is for the steam release of Dwarf Fortress - it is getting an official UI overhaul!
- sprkwd 4y agoDo we have a release date for this yet?
- bjelkeman-again 4y agoI don’t think so. I am on their mailing list.
- alexktz 4y agoBreathes loudly in Factorio and Rimworld noises until then.
- AngryData 4y agoNo but they seem to be progressing at great speed, atleast that is my impression from the reading the dwarfortress main blog for years.
- ravi-delia 4y agoAiming for August, or so I've read
- Shared404 4y agoI believe this is for the Steam release, which will have a graphical default tile set iirc.
- standardUser 4y agoI like how they've made it look like a game.
- karmakurtisaani 4y agoA management simulator disguised as a game.
- drewcoo 4y agoBah! Lipstick! The pig is the game.
- Romanulus 4y ago
- LanternLight83 4y agoThose who prefer to listen to their articles and news can find Blind's coverage this post here: https://youtu.be/PT7adnfzmSU https://youtu.be/PT7adnfzmSU https://youtu.be/QdDxuU0rVvE https://youtu.be/QdDxuU0rVvE
- mabbo 4y agoDwarf Fortress has always been a brilliant lesson in UX. It answers the question: what if you had a great product, but the user experience was the worst possible choice in every single way, but all functionality still existed and worked? It turns out some people will still use the product. I'm excited to see what happens when the UX is also reasonable.
- izend 4y agoMuch fewer users though... If Dwarf Fortress magically had the UX they are working on now back in 2012 it would be worth at least $50million+ Now, the fact they skipped working on the UX until now allowed Tarn to implement very difficult crazy features Z-level fortress layers and Fluid Dynamics.
- bombcar 4y agoThe Z-level stuff is so ingrained into me as a default (I started playing just before it was added) that it's amazing to think that some of the most famous DF stories are from before it was added.
- Workaccount2 4y agoWhat is the z-level stuff? Haven't you always been able to move through layers up/down?
- cletus 4y agoI have enormous respect for the systems, complexity and emergent behaviour (eg [1]) that these two guys have created over decades at this point and continue to create. But I just cannot get into DF in the way I would like. Even with Dwarf Therapist, custom tile sets and so on it's still a management nightmare. I am told some people just have a lot of idle dwarves. It always struck me as there were too many dwarves before you've created any sort of structure. I got to a point where I needed a militia to defend against some monster and that was going to be a whole new system I'd heave to learn, assign dwarves to, suplly and manage and I was like "this is too much". I know failure is the default mode (and some consider inevitable). It's a cool feature that if you play again on the same world you can find your old ruins. I wish this were in a form where a community could contribute to and build this out because I think it could really help. I understand these guys derive an income from it and I support them in that. It just seems like there's so much missed potential here. Some good iconography would go a really long way. If dawrves were wandering around with symbols above their heads showing they were hungry, thirsty, sad or whatever without having to inspect them you could communicate a lot of information. You might be able to see you have a food shortage problem or why dwarves have wnadered off looking for food. Or even that they're just bored. If you were looking at dwarves you could see that they're your militia or your farmers or your miners. Not visually conveying information just seems like a massive missed opportunity. [1]: https://www.eurogamer.net/why-dwarf-fortress-started-killing-cats https://www.eurogamer.net/why-dwarf-fortress-started-killing...
- drewcoo 4y agoLosing is fun! https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Losing https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Losing
- bombcar 4y agoThere's a config option to limit the total max number of dwarves, which can help (though mainly on peaceful or similar starts - obviously you can't fight a war without dwarves). I believe the dwarves now will flash some various icons (in the text mode they'd flip between the dwarf character and a downwards red arrow, for example) but it's usually when they're almost dead of whatever it is.
- rav 4y agoThe development of Dwarf Fortress has been fully funded by donations for well over a decade I believe. I used to donate but I stopped when I was saving up for a home. It seems their financial support has been declining since 2020 - maybe it's time for me to start donating again. Donations from the beginning in 2007 through to 2021: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf//index.php?topic=179406.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf//index.php?topic=179406.0 Donations in 2022: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf//index.php?topic=179926.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf//index.php?topic=179926.0
- kirillbobyrev 4y agoI really hope they would release the game on Steam soon so that people would just buy the game and the donations won't be necessary. I understand that they might want to polish it but I'm not sure if polishing is actually worth. The original game has been continuously getting updates IIUC, so it might be totally OK to release sooner and then use the same model in Steam.
- Jochim 4y ago> I understand that they might want to polish it but I'm not sure if polishing is actually worth. The original game has been continuously getting updates IIUC, so it might be totally OK to release sooner and then use the same model in Steam. I think the platform shapes the user's expectations of what is acceptable though. If I buy a game on Steam I expect a certain degree of polish when I download it. If I were to buy the same game on Kickstarter I might not even expect to be able to download it for a few months/years. If someone donates to Dwarf Fortress, they probably already like it in it's current state and want to see where it goes.
- kirillbobyrev 4y agoThat makes a lot of sense, but I feel like Steam's "Early Access" is exactly for that. I can't speak for everyone but I often buy games there just to support the developers and don't expect it to be a success (maybe it turns out to be good, maybe it doesn't; either way, it's too early for a "full experience"). Maybe it changed lately, but plenty of astonishing games came out of "Early Access" while being rather unimpressive (though promising) at first.
- royaltjames 4y agoFeelings rant: I've played DF since just before the massive z-level update (2008?) - I was living in a girl's college dorm with my girlfriend and her roommate's boyfriend that was living there turned me onto DF and Fallout, etc. DF has been the one thing I have turned to over the years as a therapeutic device when I'm in deep depression and meds/therapy doesn't feel like it's doing it: the function of procgen obscurity, guided freedom of choice, and even the simple repetitive mundane nature of it that doesn't feel like it (even the looped guitar track) helps me really get through some dark days. I'm worried seeing the steam updates like Tarn is begrudgingly making UX/UI changes for "the people in our community that can't handle ASCII" when he is obviously NOT a UX/UI guy (evidenced by the product of DF itself). The textbox styling look like he's just adding bland graphics as #goodenough. If they patreon'd a $100/month tier where I could support a team to help translate his brilliant spaghetti into clean, streamlined frictive processes (militia workflow having broken defaults, navigation, etc), and maybe even some devs to optimize his legacy code so embark can handle larger complex sites and maybe CO-OP (come on I can dream). So much of the flow has always felt like I have to do this because this is how it is done in DF. tldr: I am worried Tarn is not a UX guy, begrudgingly building UX for DF, when he (and WE) are missing out on a massive opportunity to build something with less friction and more [FUN].
- OkayPhysicist 4y agoI was under the impression that Tarn's getting outside help for the Steam Version's UI.
- kibwen 4y agoTarn is outsourcing the UI and art. I think the art looks fantastic, better than any DF tileset I've seen.
- drakythe 4y agoTarn is not doing the UX outside of any back end coding changes needed. Kitfox games is doing the UX, which is why this blog post isn't on Tarn's site. As I read the blogs I believe he is giving input and making code changes to support information retrieval, but he isn't the one actually doing the UI and Graphics.
- leephillips 4y agoFrom the point of view of someone who basically never plays computer games and has almost no interest in them: if I were to start playing a computer game, this would be the one. I find this project fascinating. However, if I were to play a computer game, this would probably be the worst choice, because it would probably be too interesting and suck up too much time.
- muzani 4y agoIt doesn't really suck up that much time. It's not even as complex as people make it seem. There's a lot of stuff simulated - you can wrestle with someone and throw them down some stairs, where they break a rib, and that rib punctures their heart and causes them to bleed to death. But from a UI perspective, you're still just throwing someone down the stairs. I think it's a good choice for only game too, because once you're used to having so much agency in a game, it spoils you for many other games.
- xwdv 4y agoPersonally I don’t care about the graphics they are cool but the one feature I wish DF would have instead is being multi threaded to take advantage of modern processors with multiple cores. There comes a point where you just can’t play anymore because everything is way too fucking slow.
- kibwen 4y agoSadly this will probably never happen. Tarn is no slouch as a coder, but he's an old school C programmer working on a massive, legacy, single-threaded C++ codebase. Introducing useful and stable multithreading to similar codebases has taken teams of programmers years to achieve.
- hyperman1 4y agoI heard the pathfinding is slow, and that's almost readonly and very parrallel. So a model where the game only threads this part might be a first step. Talking as someone who knows nothing from the codebase here, of course.
- jonov 4y agoI'm not an experienced reverse engineer by any means but I took a peek at dwarf fortress in IDA and found what I believe is the combat simulation function. At least it uses strings like: "flies off in an arc" and concatenates them together. The function itself is massive, I had to increase the node limit for IDA graph view to see it in graph mode. If rest of the code base is similar then I can see how it would be a big job to untangle it all and parallelize. Tarn has also said that he is not a SW developer, coding is just means to an end for him to make a game so I sort of expected spaghetti. The game is great though!
- outworlder 4y agoSimulations are notoriously difficult to parallelize. You always have a bunch of things all dependent on the results of one another.
- Night_Thastus 4y agoIt's interesting to keep seeing DF evolve over time. It wasn't that long ago that I remember DF was ascii-only, and starting a new game took several pages of explanation and setup. It seems like they've streamlined and improved a lot. I think there's still a ton of room to go moving foward, UI/UX design is really hard and the problem of keeping a system flexible and configurable while also easy to use is no simple task.
- lazzlazzlazz 4y agoThey're doing a better job that I expected. Very happy to sponsor this project on Patreon.
- benjilb 4y agohttps://www.patreon.com/bay12games https://www.patreon.com/bay12games
- roblh 4y agoFor all the dwarf fortress fans out there, check out Songs of Syx. It’s still early access, but it captures a lot of the same appeal with a slightly more streamlined interface. All built by one dude as well.
- gabythenerd 4y agoIt actually looks pretty good! Definitely will give it a try, kinda looks like Rimworld.
- mlindner 4y agoI like it much better than Rimworld personally. Rimworld's setting always struck me as odd and unrealistic and I wasn't a fan of the sci-fi aspect of it as it leaves open too many technology ideas. It also required way too much micromanagement whereas songs of syx already has a lot more automation and the units seem to actually do what you tell them to.
- dreamercz 4y agoAnother DF inspired game I really enjoyed is Odd Realm. Still in Early Access, but already pretty enjoyable.
- coryfklein 4y agoI tried Songs of Syx a few weeks ago and, coming from a background that includes Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, SimCity 2000, Cities Skylines, and Oxygen Not Included, I thought Syx was kinda meh. The novel thing about it that was cool is that it seemed to mix Dward Fortress with SimCity in a completely novel way where you see the individual "sims" or "dwarfs" but they are cattle not pets and the thing you're building is a city. In the end, the city-building aspect quickly became rote for me, I find the direct overhead view disorienting and unnatural, and the game didn't have a lasting hook that pulled me in (opposite of Factorio, which maybe had TOO MUCH of that).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- waiseristy 4y agoAmazing after years of complete neglect, Tarn is focusing on the UI/UX. He used to be completely opposed to any sort of UI work, often talking about how the SDL code was a complete black box that he had not written.
- 4pples0ranges 4y agoThe donations have always flowed, but they've been incredibly meager compared to the success that several df inspired games have achieved in the last decade. Toady has mentioned that his brother's cancer scare made him more concerned about their financial future. It reminds me of lazlo's quote from Real Genius "Lately, I have come to realize that I have certain materialistic needs." Hopefully they find enough financial success with the steam release to never have to worry about money again.
- _carbyau_ 4y agoI've always thought that Dwarf Fortress was a great story engine without a good game engine and Minecraft was a good game engine without a story. If someone could simply combine the two it'd be amazing. Sigh Another pipe dream because of the insane difficulty involved.
- sonofhans 4y agoDang, that’s a nice way of saying it.