Dwarf Fortress: Very Ambitious Roguelike

Serial_Kicked · 2011-07-27T15:29:06.000Z

He sure doesn’t like the number 1 (or white/black/jewish/gay/deist/adult/… people)

(be damned for making me read his ramblings again)

"Seek in haste to attend a lecture by Dr. Gene Ray,
Cubic and Wisest Human - His Wisdom is Awesome. "

Morberis · 2011-07-27T16:54:40.000Z

Serial Kicked:

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 :)

Is there anything else to that story? Did the tools get developed, did the other developers do like Toady wanted and ignore that code or did they take advantage of it like a sane human?

fenrir · 2011-07-27T22:56:56.000Z

Disconnected:

The problem you’re having, at least as you describe it, isn’t with the scope of the mechanics. Rather, your problem is the interface doesn’t provide you adequate control.

True, but mechanics are part of the problem. Z layers are a good example of this. The interface took a huge step back from being able to quickly comprehend the overall situation to have to page through the view and mentally put the pieces together. I can’t really think of an adequate UI for a 3D cave system short of new technological breakthroughs. It does make for a more interesting world though.

Disconnected · 2011-07-27T23:12:14.000Z

2D strategy games had a similar problem, back in the bad old days of brick-sized pixels. The solution was to provide a secondary miniature overview of the game area, where various types of information could be hilighted and/or turned on and off.

A minimap displaying 10’ish player defined z-levels as hilight-/toggle-able wireframe would accomplish much the same thing.

EDIT: Of course, a fully realised holographic display would be even better. Though I kind of doubt DF would take advantage of something like that, if it was possible.

Teiman · 2011-07-28T00:19:27.000Z

I don’t see the problem with z levels and interface.

Limit view to the current z level. This make everything clear.
Button to toggle “fuzzy view of other levels”. This enable/disable a fake deep view. Where deep is represented with different colourd tiles for “empty”. So you can somewhat see the shape of a hole in the ground. In a way similar at how you can enable/disable the view of other z levels in X-Com.

mixuk · 2011-07-28T02:50:07.000Z

I’ve been giving coy glances towards Dwarf Fortress for maybe 3-4 years now, and wanting to try it out, because it’s pretty much right in my ball park. The problem has always been the UI and I simply don’t have the time or energy to go through the ordeal of learning it. Yeah… not a hardcore gamer, but I do love world simulation games and DF seems unique right now. Except there’s this other game called Goblin Camp.

So, Goblin Camp (main dev seems to be a finn!) seems promising, but I haven’t really spent that much time with it yet, and I’d love to hear the impressions from more seasoned DF players. Is this even close to what DF is? Here’s a bunch of tutorial Youtube videos which I think gives a pretty good idea on how the game plays:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2lLY_OIyK0 - Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEH37o6Z0eo - Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSLLMdJl1pg - Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBcxhNUDcIY - Part 4

Serial_Kicked · 2011-07-28T02:53:43.000Z

I am not asking for a full smooth UI, but consistent hot-keys, basic mouse controls for selection purpose, and a few filters to sort dwarves/items, aren’t tied to Z layers and should be trivial to implement and will make things ten time simpler for anyone from the newbies to the veteran. Oh well…

Is there anything else to that story? Did the tools get developed, did the other developers do like Toady wanted and ignore that code or did they take advantage of it like a sane human?

Sadly I don’t remember the details exactly and most of the topics have been deleted in a spirit of transparency. AFAIK, most developers complied with Toady’s request. Except one of the author of a 3D visualization tool (or/and DFHacks). He was also a rather loudmouth regarding the UI and the general game’s direction. After being banned, he started the Khazad project (khazad.sourceforge.net), but the thing doesn’t seem to be active anymore.

The only surviving topic on the official board is this one “bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=58796.0” but the first post has been edited to be more friendly.

Teiman · 2011-07-28T03:09:09.000Z

One dude in that thread “I program using emacs in a terminal and I got problems learning the interface”.

I feel vindicated, since I got soo lost the first time I tried to use emacs, that I killed the computer to exit it (removing the electricity cord) . vi is soo much easier to use!.

chequers · 2011-07-28T06:42:39.000Z

mixuk:

I’ve been giving coy glances towards Dwarf Fortress for maybe 3-4 years now, and wanting to try it out, because it’s pretty much right in my ball park. The problem has always been the UI and I simply don’t have the time or energy to go through the ordeal of learning it. Yeah… not a hardcore gamer, but I do love world simulation games and DF seems unique right now. Except there’s this other game called Goblin Camp.

So, Goblin Camp (main dev seems to be a finn!) seems promising, but I haven’t really spent that much time with it yet, and I’d love to hear the impressions from more seasoned DF players. Is this even close to what DF is? Here’s a bunch of tutorial Youtube videos which I think gives a pretty good idea on how the game plays:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2lLY_OIyK0 - Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEH37o6Z0eo - Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSLLMdJl1pg - Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBcxhNUDcIY - Part 4

If you want to learn DF, get the version Calistas used in his tutorials and play through those. Seriously. They’re fantastic. Them plus the DF wiki = you can learn within a few hours.

Goblin Camp vs DF is like comparing Minecraft Classic to Minecraft. It’s just not the real thing dude, you’re missing out on so much.

zengonzo · 2011-07-28T08:19:41.000Z

Goblin Camp isn’t as advanced, certainly - but the beauty of the open source means that it has potential far beyond the limitations of its sole executor.

It has much less momentum than I might have liked to have seen - but given that I haven’t put any work into it yet, I don’t quite have much room to judge.

extarbags · 2011-07-28T08:54:03.000Z

chequers:

Goblin Camp vs DF is like comparing Minecraft Classic to Minecraft. It’s just not the real thing dude, you’re missing out on so much.

On the other hand, it’s been in development for one year instead of ten, and development should move a hell of a lot faster with more than one person working on it,

Edit: although the “future plans” section of the Goblin Camp site seems to indicate that DF isn’t really the direction it’s heading.

Fishbreath · 2011-07-28T09:00:26.000Z

Teiman:

I feel vindicated, since I got soo lost the first time I tried to use emacs, that I killed the computer to exit it (removing the electricity cord) . vi is soo much easier to use!.

emacs has a vi mode. Every time you press a key it beeps, and you can’t quit.

:)

DocLazy · 2011-07-29T07:33:52.000Z

zengonzo:

Goblin Camp isn’t as advanced, certainly - but the beauty of the open source means that it has potential far beyond the limitations of its sole executor.

It has much less momentum than I might have liked to have seen - but given that I haven’t put any work into it yet, I don’t quite have much room to judge.

That’s the problem with open source projects. They tend to advance at a glacial pace.

Calistas · 2011-07-30T04:44:35.000Z

I grabbed vanilla DF and the Lazy Newb pack and I am wondering why the play window is still so amazingly tiny. On vanilla, as Toady intends it, DF takes up approximately 20% of my screen real estate. The tilesets in Newb bump that up to about 1/3rd (all of it horizontal). Do I need to edit ini files to improve that? Why isn’t that option in the LNP? Confused.

If Toady plans another ten years of development, at current res improvement rates I forecast the DF window appearing the size of a small stamp on your monitor.

chequers · 2011-07-30T04:57:08.000Z

Calistas:

Do I need to edit ini files to improve that?

Yes.

Why isn’t that option in the LNP?
Who cares.

If Toady plans another ten years of development, at current res improvement rates I forecast the DF window appearing the size of a small stamp on your monitor.
It’s been configurable since your tutorial, which as I recall included instructions on setting this.

Gus_Smedstad1 · 2011-07-30T05:09:52.000Z

Calistas:

The tilesets in Newb bump that up to about 1/3rd (all of it horizontal). Do I need to edit ini files to improve that? Why isn’t that option in the LNP?

Actually, that is an option in the LNP. One of the things the LNP dialog manages is INI settings, such as X and Y dimensions of the window. Which can be either in tiles or pixels. In any case, if you’re running in windowed mode, you can always drag DF larger once it’s running, just like any other program in Windows.

Wolff · 2011-07-30T05:11:09.000Z

For a long time now you can just increase the window size by grabbing the corner, no need to set up the resolution in the ini…people should really stop giving advice when the last version they played is from 3 years ago.

In Lazy Newb make sure you are running the lazynewb executable not DF proper. Choose your stuff hit apply on each tab before navigating off.

Calistas · 2011-07-30T11:41:51.000Z

Aha! Ok thanks. I just have reason for not wanting to touch the ini file that I will explain later. Will check out dragging etc.

Serial_Kicked · 2011-07-30T13:56:35.000Z

You can also zoom in / out using the mouse wheel, if i recall correctly.

Calistas · 2011-07-30T17:38:00.000Z

Man, you guys have saved my balls. Drag the edge, zoom, it makes vanilla DF quite playable! Thanks a ton.

Hmm, when I last ran DF the game was very quick when I had 7 dwarfs. It currently… isn’t? Hmm.