8 ms·

Imagine how good it would be if two guys worked on it for 10 years straight, following their own vision and not compromising, making what they thought was cool

Imagine how good it would be if two guys worked on it for 10 years straight, following their own vision and not compromising, making what they thought was cool and making a decent living the while. That's how good it is!

justin66 13y ago
The interesting thing is that, when they speak, these guys sound like planners who would be happy to delegate some of the work involved in realizing their grand vision. That's obviously not how they're operating.
- eropple 13y ago
  That's almost exactly the opposite of reality. They're not delegators. They don't want to be delegators. They want to make a game.
  - justin66 13y ago
    I think their attitude is slightly unusual, in the sense that you don't see a lot of people who put that much into design and seem to enjoy it but still demand to handle all the programming themselves. > They don't want to be delegators. They want to make a game. Delegation is part of engineering (or not, since these guys have chosen not to delegate). Or part of "making a game" if you prefer. It would be genuinely weird to take the attitude that the only people who "make" a game are the programmers.
    - eropple 13y ago
      > in the sense that you don't see a lot of people who put that much into design and seem to enjoy it but still demand to handle all the programming themselves. Except in indie games all over the place, right? Zeboyd, Spiderweb Software, loads of small developers do exactly this. I do it. I don't want other programmers for something I can do myself because I don't need to share my project with them. It's mine. It's part of me. Bringing more people in lessens its meaning to me. (I wouldn't contract anything at all if I could do music and art to the level I deem required.) > Delegation is part of engineering Whatever gave you the notion that this is engineering? They're not frigging engineers. They're artists.
      - justin66 13y ago
        > Bringing more people in lessens its meaning to me. Which is fine, but if bringing in help or not is the difference between realizing the vision or not, and you choose not to bring in help and therefore fail to realize the vision, it makes what you're doing more like masturbation than creation. Which is also fine, I guess. > Whatever gave you the notion that this is engineering? They're not frigging engineers. They're artists. I hope you were wearing a black turtleneck when you said that, but regardless, delegation is also very much a part of art. For example there's a massive amount of work that a Leonardo delegates away while decorating the Sistine Chapel. He might really, really derive a lot of joy from building scaffolding, washing brushes, and the million other things that need to be done but he'd be an idiot to do all that stuff.
a3_nm 13y ago
How exactly is this incompatible with it being open source? Being open source does not mean that you have to accept contributions from others, nor is it incompatible with making a decent living especially when the game is free as in free beer anyways.
- lobotryas 13y ago
  True, but they would have to deal with increased competition and market diversity due to anyone being able to fork their vision and putting their own spin on it. This is (arguably) great for the consumer, but as a fellow creator I understand their reluctance to open source their baby.
- dageshi 13y ago
  I don't think it's about making a "great game", I think it's about making "their game", flaws and all.
  - hobs 13y ago
    Yep, they have said this countless times. While I am absolutely an advocate of OSS and I do wish Tarn would go for it, the basic thing is that they dont want to and they love what they do, so deal with it, it's their game.
hristov 13y ago
If they open source it they can still control things and follow their vision for their own main branch. But they can accept patches that have improvements for things that (i) are needed and (ii) do not necessarily go against their vision. There are several great weaknesses of DF that are not the result of the maker's vision but of their limited time and resources. For example, it is not Toady's vision for the game to get very slow even on powerful hardware when you have a big fortress. This is perhaps a negative blowback of Toady's very laudable vision to have each dwarf be independently simulated. However, an expert in parallel programming should be able to improve this a great deal. AFAIK, DF currently runs as a single thread, and many of its processes can be split off. This is, however, not easy and probably not something Toady is able to or wants to do. It is also not Toady's vision for the game to be controlled by a mindblowing number of complex menus and obscure key combinations. It was probably not his vision for about half the game controls to be mouse enabled and half of them not. He has admitted himself that the interface needs a lot of work. But he is obviously not working on it, but adding new features like vampires, and Indiana Jones style careening mine carts (last time I checked). I am not saying he should not add those things -- it is a free game and he should work on what is more fun for him. But if he opensourced it perhaps someone else would fix the interface for him. It is obvious the game needs outside help. People are hacking the game in memory in order to add functionality. Last time I played, you needed to run another program called "dwarf therapist" while playing in order to be able to manage your dwarf's skills and professions. Dwarf therapist would work by directly reading and manipulating dwarf fortress data in memory. Sorry but if the game worked well, nobody would take the time to hack DF just so he can write a helper program. If they opensourced the game, the people that wrote dwarf therapist could just add that functionality directly into the game. I say this as someone who loves DF, but has suffered plenty from its frustrations.
- glomph 13y ago
  People mod every popular closed source game. That isn't a reason to open source it in itself.
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    Mods, and even total conversions are completely different from taking source code and building a derived game (which then becomes a direct competition to the original).

justin66 13y ago

The interesting thing is that, when they speak, these guys sound like planners who would be happy to delegate some of the work involved in realizing their grand vision. That's obviously not how they're operating.

eropple 13y ago
That's almost exactly the opposite of reality. They're not delegators. They don't want to be delegators. They want to make a game.
- justin66 13y ago
  I think their attitude is slightly unusual, in the sense that you don't see a lot of people who put that much into design and seem to enjoy it but still demand to handle all the programming themselves. > They don't want to be delegators. They want to make a game. Delegation is part of engineering (or not, since these guys have chosen not to delegate). Or part of "making a game" if you prefer. It would be genuinely weird to take the attitude that the only people who "make" a game are the programmers.
  - eropple 13y ago
    > in the sense that you don't see a lot of people who put that much into design and seem to enjoy it but still demand to handle all the programming themselves. Except in indie games all over the place, right? Zeboyd, Spiderweb Software, loads of small developers do exactly this. I do it. I don't want other programmers for something I can do myself because I don't need to share my project with them. It's mine. It's part of me. Bringing more people in lessens its meaning to me. (I wouldn't contract anything at all if I could do music and art to the level I deem required.) > Delegation is part of engineering Whatever gave you the notion that this is engineering? They're not frigging engineers. They're artists.
    - justin66 13y ago
      > Bringing more people in lessens its meaning to me. Which is fine, but if bringing in help or not is the difference between realizing the vision or not, and you choose not to bring in help and therefore fail to realize the vision, it makes what you're doing more like masturbation than creation. Which is also fine, I guess. > Whatever gave you the notion that this is engineering? They're not frigging engineers. They're artists. I hope you were wearing a black turtleneck when you said that, but regardless, delegation is also very much a part of art. For example there's a massive amount of work that a Leonardo delegates away while decorating the Sistine Chapel. He might really, really derive a lot of joy from building scaffolding, washing brushes, and the million other things that need to be done but he'd be an idiot to do all that stuff.

a3_nm 13y ago

How exactly is this incompatible with it being open source? Being open source does not mean that you have to accept contributions from others, nor is it incompatible with making a decent living especially when the game is free as in free beer anyways.

lobotryas 13y ago
True, but they would have to deal with increased competition and market diversity due to anyone being able to fork their vision and putting their own spin on it. This is (arguably) great for the consumer, but as a fellow creator I understand their reluctance to open source their baby.
dageshi 13y ago
I don't think it's about making a "great game", I think it's about making "their game", flaws and all.
- hobs 13y ago
  Yep, they have said this countless times. While I am absolutely an advocate of OSS and I do wish Tarn would go for it, the basic thing is that they dont want to and they love what they do, so deal with it, it's their game.

hristov 13y ago

If they open source it they can still control things and follow their vision for their own main branch. But they can accept patches that have improvements for things that (i) are needed and (ii) do not necessarily go against their vision. There are several great weaknesses of DF that are not the result of the maker's vision but of their limited time and resources. For example, it is not Toady's vision for the game to get very slow even on powerful hardware when you have a big fortress. This is perhaps a negative blowback of Toady's very laudable vision to have each dwarf be independently simulated. However, an expert in parallel programming should be able to improve this a great deal. AFAIK, DF currently runs as a single thread, and many of its processes can be split off. This is, however, not easy and probably not something Toady is able to or wants to do. It is also not Toady's vision for the game to be controlled by a mindblowing number of complex menus and obscure key combinations. It was probably not his vision for about half the game controls to be mouse enabled and half of them not. He has admitted himself that the interface needs a lot of work. But he is obviously not working on it, but adding new features like vampires, and Indiana Jones style careening mine carts (last time I checked). I am not saying he should not add those things -- it is a free game and he should work on what is more fun for him. But if he opensourced it perhaps someone else would fix the interface for him. It is obvious the game needs outside help. People are hacking the game in memory in order to add functionality. Last time I played, you needed to run another program called "dwarf therapist" while playing in order to be able to manage your dwarf's skills and professions. Dwarf therapist would work by directly reading and manipulating dwarf fortress data in memory. Sorry but if the game worked well, nobody would take the time to hack DF just so he can write a helper program. If they opensourced the game, the people that wrote dwarf therapist could just add that functionality directly into the game. I say this as someone who loves DF, but has suffered plenty from its frustrations.

glomph 13y ago
People mod every popular closed source game. That isn't a reason to open source it in itself.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  Mods, and even total conversions are completely different from taking source code and building a derived game (which then becomes a direct competition to the original).