6 ms·

Much 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 t

• bombcar 4y ago
  The 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 ago
    What is the z-level stuff? Haven't you always been able to move through layers up/down?
    • bombcar 4y ago
      Nope, that was added in Dwarf Fortress in 2008 (and it was a huge change at the time).
      • Arrath 4y ago
        Sometimes I miss the predictable and ensured progression as you tunneled into the mountain and got farther from natural light. Underground river -> Chasms -> Magma -> Bad Things(tm)
        • jml7c5 4y ago
          I almost prefer it, I think! It felt much more like a proper story game with a challenge rather than the modern result of "The Sims, but dwarves". A single Z-level may be too austere today, so perhaps a modern iteration could use the same layout but with three or four Z-levels. I wonder if there's a way to replicate that today with some map editing... The real trouble I had with the old versions was the inability to build walls. As I recall, once you dug something out it was dug forever.
          • bombcar 4y ago
            It used to be you could be almost completely safe if you just stayed in the upper z-levels and didn't dig too deep, but with the caverns update you now can find various types of fun imported directly to your back door.
            • R0b0t1 4y ago
              Sometimes you have the fun, sometimes the fun has you.
          • AngryData 4y ago
            When you generate your world you can change the amount of layers per layer zone. I don't know the minimum off hand but it is probably around 6 normal stone or cave levels, minus the levels used for open sky space and magma sea which I don't know the minimum for. Trees are multilevel now and I don't know that they will grow on a single layer.
  • NhanH 4y ago
    So what was it like before the Z-level stuff? Only the surface and one level below that?
    • drewcoo 4y ago
      https://www.dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Bloodline:Boatmurdered https://www.dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Bloodline:Boatmu...
    • danaris 4y ago
      From what I've seen, it was fully 2-D: the "surface" was to the left, then you hit the mountain face, and the further to the right you went, the deeper you were, until eventually you breached the proverbial Hidden Fun Stuff.
    • RugnirViking 4y ago
      No, the surface was at one side of the map, and you kept tunneling through to the side
    • Arrath 4y ago
      Pre-Z DF was basically a side-scroller. Surface was map-left, there was a cliff face, and the further map-right you went was 'deeper'
    • jtolmar 4y ago
      The left was outside, the mountain face was basically a vertical line, and all the things we associate with "deeper" were found further and further to the right of that line. Some ways in you'd find an underground river (which floods when you first find it), then a chasm (enemies spawn from here), then a magma river, [spoilers for ancient versions of DF start now] eerie glowing pits, and finally adamantine. Finding adamantine made the king show up and demand you mine more and more adamantine, but the more you mined the more likely you were to have your fortress suddenly end in a cutscene. All these fixed elements gave the game a specific progression of increasing rewards and challenges, and a guaranteed story arc for the whole fortress.
• revolvingocelot 4y ago
  >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 Not sure how seriously this was meant, but I unironically agree. I learned, while still in college, never to mock up a "working" polished UI lacking all the complex backend, just to show the client how it'll look when it's done. To the non-computerati, the metaphor is a tradesman working on renovations. If you don't make development versions look and feel like crap, the normies won't accept that it's not "almost ready". Tarn's priorities here drive away most people, and filters for the sort of person who thinks "modern graphics library" means "ncurses".
  • bombcar 4y ago
    It's also a side-effect of his work on the previous game, where he got bogged down in graphics, etc, and couldn't even get close to what he wanted to make. Which is why it is Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress.
• ctvo 4y ago
  > If Dwarf Fortress magically had the UX they are working on now back in 2012 it would be worth at least $50million+ And how did you come up with that 50 million USD number? Is it multiplayer? Can a major corporation use it to target a young audience demographic? Will there be a mobile version or micro transactions?
  • kjs3 4y ago
    If it had all that, someone would say it was worth $1b+.
  • shagie 4y ago
    Consider https://www.wired.com/2013/11/minecraft-book/ https://www.wired.com/2013/11/minecraft-book/ and its estimated value https://fictionhorizon.com/how-much-is-minecraft-worth/ https://fictionhorizon.com/how-much-is-minecraft-worth/ If Dwarf Fortress was able to be more than an inspiration and took the "we're selling it" instead which then would allow a different cycle time on features with different priorities, a 50M number isn't unreasonable at all for what the game would be worth today.
    • ctvo 4y ago
      I understand Minecraft's valuation -- sort of my point -- those features are what made Minecraft valuable, not the core gameplay elements. Dwarf Fortress would need to go down that road, not just a nicer UI for it to be valuable.