6 ms·
I was under the impression that people use their own UIs on top of it. Sort of how some people use the fumbbl client. Which are sort of effective ways of “outs
by EnKopVand 4y ago
I was under the impression that people use their own UIs on top of it. Sort of how some people use the fumbbl client.
Which are sort of effective ways of “outsourcing” the UI development on projects where you don’t have the funds (or the talent) to make a great UI.
- bombcar 4y agoThe graphics people often change, though technically the UI would remain the same (keyboard characters, etc). However, there are additional tools that let you do "bulk actions" by directly editing the Dwarf Fortress memory while it is running - these are technically a UI bypass. The actual UI is just difficult to learn but once you do it's surprisingly easy to use - it's consistent in its own inconsistent way.
- jandrese 4y agoI would think things like Dwarf Therapist are a good example of the community trying their best to improve the UI despite the roadblocks put up by the developer.
- bombcar 4y agoYeah, what we need is DFaaS, where the engine is converted into various API calls and anyone can make a front-end for it.
- cyberpunk 4y agodfremote was close to this, it was very nice on my ipad with the apple pencil. Sadly we've not had updates in some time and I think the developer has moved onto other things [0]. 0: http://mifki.com/df/ http://mifki.com/df/ edit: In that with dfremote, df itself runs in a docker container on a server somewhere, and the UI is running entirely on your ipad.
- lom888 4y agoI am a DF obsessive. Many thousands of hours spent playing the game over the past 12 years, it is my favorite game by far. I've also had numerous abortive attempts to learn how to code. It humbles me to think that people find the UI so difficult to use that they'd sooner spend time coding another one.
- bombcar 4y agoThis is the problem - those who can code usually end up learning DF "well enough" and many of those who complain about the UI wouldn't even play it with another UI. I personally never really found the UI that big of a hindrance; it's like learning Lotus 1-2-3 shortcuts. This "sell it on steam with a GUI" is actually brilliant, because lots of people will buy it and some will play - but it gives those who like the idea but don't actually want to play an excuse to give Tarn money.
- R0b0t1 4y agoI think he should sell it but open source it enough to allow mods or an engine rewrite. I think capturing his creative output w.r.t. game inclusions could still make him some money. The game is kinda gimped because he doesn't know how to multithread it.
- burnished 4y agoLinks to blog posts or analysis? It seems like it's pretty compute heavy, not sure threading could help?
- bombcar 4y agoThe single biggest CPU usage in DF is the pathfinding algorithms, and making those multithreaded is complicated. Tarn himself has admitted he doesn't know how to do it well, and has left it for a later enhancement. Other aspects of DF are now technically multithreaded if I recall correctly, but that's for sound and graphics and stuff that doesn't really remove the pathfinding processing. Lots of the newer features like burrows, etc, are to allow the player to help the pathfinding algorithms.
- AngryData 4y agoPersonally I like the dwarfhack version that allows you to use a Dwarf Therapist style ui within the Dwarf Fortress UI without leaving game focus.