But some of that doesn’t even have to do with complexity, but with inconsistency. Stuff that is obviously the result of a system developed of patches rather than builds.
Some things are just convenience items that shouldn’t be impossible with existing code, but don’t make sense in absence. I can view artifacts in a simple listing, but if I want to locate them, I have to back out and hunt through the inventory - which itself would be vastly more usable if it had some form of filtering and categorization …
That same goes for viewing and locating dwarves.
That’s a fairly good statement of my position. DF is like folk art; sometimes ugly, often jarring but containing a charm and freshness that arises from the fact that it isn’t polished or steeped in 'correct" procedure.
A long while ago when I was a grad student I did some hobby programing of a much less ambitious but similar nature (baseball simulation). In the past 10 years or so I’ve dabbled in writing IF. In both cases much of the fun, for me at least, was in working with the code as it came up. In both cases I stopped because I realized that the options were to head in the direction Toady is demonstrating or to turn it into real work, stop treating the process as more then half the fun and do it right. Ultimately I didn’t want to go either route so I dropped the projects.
Someone steeped in correct software development might not find that to be a valid distinction since to them writing bad code is probably close to a painful experience. But for a code tinkerer, a code boffin, a code McGyver the path Toady is taking isn’t that hard to understand or sympathize with.
Which changes nothing about how horrible parts of the UI are. Yet somehow DF Tycoon has little appeal to me.
Well put.
I’m certainly not defending Tarn’s priorities. I wouldn’t ever take a ‘features above all else’ approach to any of my projects. It’s sort of interesting to watch though. Niche userbases are much more loyal and adaptable than I ever thought possible.
I’m just pointing out there’s a point at which DF’s featureset becomes so large that it’s infeasible for polish to take place. If DF hasn’t reached it already, it will eventually.
DeepT
3124
What I do not understand is why another gaming company hasn’t done a DF rip-off with a good UI. There are lots of companies out there making very derivative games in markets saturated with other derivative games. You do not even need to be a genius game designer. Just download DF play it and write your game design document. Start with a small group of coders to implement the game engine to run your world and once that is done spin up with the artists and GUI development team. You will be printing your own money before you know it.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with programming in that fashion. As long as your code is readable it doesn’t really matter. It does pay to have modular code, but that shouldn’t really be an issue these days with modern languages. Besides, writing modular code requires minimal effort and can be really handy when you come back in a few years and are able to extract that algorithm and put it into your new code with minimal effort.
The real problem is the game runs like a dog. I can’t play it on my Q6600 as it gets bogged down, before I can really set up a decent size fortress. As a programmer who has studied a bit of computer science, it can be quite frustrating. I’d like to know what’s sucking up all this processing power. The dwarfs themselves are fairly simple compared to the Norns from the creatures series, which would happily run on a low end pentium. I’d presume he’s doing something weird with path finding, but as stated earlier, reducing the path finding load doesn’t really help.
rezaf
3126
Deep games aren’t made any longer and/or don’t sell, that’s why.
Even (at their core) pretty simple games such as Master of Magic or X-Com have always been greatly simplified in their mechanics when somebody attempted a remake because, hey, those things are too complex for modern gamers.
If no company is willing to make such game, which should (try to) remake a monster like DF?
And even if one did, I think you’re underestimating the “write your design document” part. Also, DFs own design document is IMMENSE, so which part do you want to remake?
rezaf
ShivaX
3127
There have been a few attempts, but invariably people screw it up or realize its too hard.
Yeah, remember that game release recently, Dungeons? Supposedly the successor to Dungeon Keeper? Turned out to be… well… utter crap.
RepoMan
3129
Wait, what? DF has a design document? Can’t find any such thing on bay12games.com. The features page is… well… not immense, at least bytes-wise :-)
Also, BAAA ha ha ha HAAA! Toady has a great sense of humor :-D
Edit: Never mind, the upcoming task list is considerably more voluminous. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t done all that yet, it still counts as a design document!
Toady ain’t gonna change no matter how the vanillas and developer-by-numbers rage, because he has the manner of one fey and menaces with spikes of code.
So go back to raging about Elemental or something, or else the Royal Guard will hit you with obsidian swords.
I thought it was the UI he was menacing us with.
rezaf
3132
I dunno where it’s located these days or if Toady has outright removed it, but there used to be a massive document with numerous interconnected goals (I think he calls them arcs), their details and implications.
rezaf
Ya, here you go:
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html
Reading all that sure makes it look like the game will be a life time project if it’s a one man show.
Arbit
3134
In the NYT article he gave an estimate of 20 years for version 1.0. He’s been working on it for ~10 years. I assume releasing version 1.0 wouldn’t preclude patches, possible content expansions, etc.
So yes, it’s a lifetime project.
Heh, I think I remember seeing that on a different site a few years ago…
Also, based on the NYT article, I can’t tell if this is meant to apply to the dwarves or to Toady himself:
Bloat170, ROOM CLEANING, (Future): Cleaning rooms more responsibly, perhaps before sleeping.
Spam
3137
path finding
Yeah, that’s my only real issue. Lots of people have written artifact quality pathing implementations. He should probably break that part out to a dedicated core or three, or provide enough dox to allow others to implement it.
Also, I’m pretty sure some of you guys are underestimating the complexity of this simulation by an order of magnitude or three.
e: artifact quality = BAD in this context. expensive in time and resources and good for nothing but attracting unwanted (usually negative) attention
I dunno… Sounds like most single people I’ve known. The bombed out bedroom, unfurnished flat & empty fridge bits, I mean.
He can’t / doesn’t want to provide docs on his code. A year ago (or so) he left debug info in his release executable. Someone immediately took advantage of this to start programming a few tools, ToadyOne got very angry, wrote a long rage post and banned the guy.
This said, yes, moving pathing to another thread should be relatively easy and it would help a lot. Not gonna happen, though. He specifically said so (maybe he’ll change his mind when his game will be sluggish on even the fastest single core on earth).
@MostlyTigerProof : I can’t post PM yet, but you’ve got mail :)
Jeez, is it just me or is Mr. Timecube getting steadily more pissed? I hadn’t looked in a while and I don’t remember quite so much red or so many obscenities. Don’t get me wrong, I remember a lot of obscenities, but not that many.
Perhaps someday soon I will go there and it will be basically a wall of “SHIT DAMN DAMNED FUCKING DAMN SHIT DAMN DAMN FUCKING TWELVE DAMN SHIT FUCKING HOUR DAMN SHIT SHIT ROTATION” – actually I suppose it already is that.
Now I wonder what that guy looks like.
Edit:
Yeah, that’s about right.
