It’s not just that DF’s interface is antiquated, it’s also obtuse and inconsistent.
Apparently I’m some sort of Rainman-esque savant or something, because I see no inconsistencies. It has multiple “modes” that it functions on based on what you’re doing, but those modes always work the same across the various situations in which they’re used. I dunno, I guess I’m sounding like a dick here but really most of the complaints about the DF UI just sound like whining to me. Do you really expect a super deep, super complicated game like DF to be simple to learn?
A game can be complex and require deep strategy, but fighting the intrface shouldn’t be part of it.
If it supported a mouse and right clicking to open menus/select actions a simpleton like me could probably play it.
But if you understood the game well enough to play it you would understand why simple right click menus really wouldn’t work. Maybe it’s sort of a catch 22.
For how much you bitch about people bitching about DF’s UI, you sure do like to pop in just to continue to drag it out, something you snidely snipe at me about all the time in more threads than just DF. And right-clicking would be one way to get rid of several of the nested options that are currently in there.
On topic, I don’t think this actually looks like DF. It has dwarves, and it has gridded hallways and rooms, but DF is a complex animal where those two features are ancillary to the simulation that’s going on underneath the hood.
This is going to sound weird, but the closest parallel I draw to what Dwarf Fortress is about is more like Hinterland than anything else.
Hahaha
Maybe. I tried, I really tried. I wanted to understand it. I wanted to like it.
It just seemed like Too Much.
For those of you who grok it, all the more power to you.
Yeah, I DO get grumpy about it. Because it’s annoying. It’s like hearing someone say “Rocket science sucks. I won’t bother learning it because the UI is terrible!”. If DF had the world’s most elegant interface then people would realize that it’s not the interface that is hard to grasp, ITS THE ENTIRE GAME. Once you wrap your head around all the crazy shit going on, the interface makes a lot more sense. What is so hard about arrow keys and hotkeys? Really advanced stuff to tackle. Yeah.
If you’re not willing to put in the time and effort to get your mind around Dwarf Fortress, then it’s not the game for you. Period.
And I should probably stop talking about it in a thread that’s not about it.
:(
Well, it’s relevant in the sense that the marketplace is primed for an indie game that can achieve some of what DF does, but in a streamlined package. There’s not enough info on this game yet, but those underground screenshots don’t really show anything using traps or customizing your spaces or antyhing like that.
LOL. Just lol. Just because something it’s easy to describe, like this: “What is so hard about arrow keys and hotkeys?” doesn’t mean it’s actually easy. For exmaple “Hotkeys” could describe both “3 or 4 hotkeys”, and 300 and 400 keyboard combinations.
It’s like saying “what’s hard about playing piano it’s only stroking some keys. Pfft.”
And it’s not only about being easy or hard to memorize, it’s not about if it’s easy or hard, it’s about if it’s good. There are other easier, more elegant and useful methods.
And finally, saying the game it’s not for people who can’t put time and effort in it is incredibly stupid.
If it’s was a better game, with better graphics and UI and tutorials and ingame help, the time and effort needed would be much smaller, making it then a game for lots of people, even if the game is exactly the same at the core.
Wait a second…Turin Turambar was the guy in the Silmarillion who murdered the son of Mim the Petty-Dwarf in an outlaw ambush, followed Mim to his home and essentially enslaved him and his family, and finally murdered Mim too for daring to “betray” him. And you’re named after Turin Turambar.
So, obviously, you’re just inherently a dick to dwarves. Therefore, who cares if you can’t learn DWARF FORTRESS?
Well, this certainly looks interesting. I’ll be keeping an eye on this, but I think those that are expecting DF with graphics will be rather disappointed. In fact, I think the game might end up suffering from that comparison, if that’s what most people are expecting. As someone said earlier, we’ll be lucky if it has 10% of the depth DF does.
Still, a Dungeon Keeper/Evil Genius kind of thing with dwarves sounds like something I’d want to play.
I just read it last year for the first time and I am FIRED UP MOTHERFUCKER! They should make a Silmarillion movie instead of that gay hobbit shit.
I wonder if DF need so much CPU because is solving a problem that need so much CPU or because is (probably) poorly programmed.
Perhaps a simulation like DF need a lot of CPU horsepower to run, and that don’t allow for much else graphically. So perhaps a graphic DF sould be built very differently than how most videogames are built.
I think it’s a little bit of both. I don’t doubt for a second that Dwarf Fortress is CPU-intensive, due to the sheer amount of stuff that it’s modeling at any given second. But it’s also my understanding that the code at this point is horribly non-optimized, probably due to the piecemeal additions made over the years (I’m not a programmer, but I seem to remember having heard something like that from someone who was presumably smarter than I).
Looks neat.
I am sure the whole CPU problem with DF is all the path finding for all the objects every frame. I am also sure that problem could be greatly alleviated by better programming. One thing to notice his how DF runs when you have a new fort and just 6 dwarves. Once you start getting a lot more along with critters and whatnot then you it will start to crawl.
I forgot I made a thread for this game. A preview
http://games.on.net/2012/10/like-the-sims-only-with-more-beer-beards-and-violence-hands-on-with-a-game-of-dwarves/