[HN Gopher] Dwarf Fortress: An actual look at graphical improvem...
___________________________________________________________________
Dwarf Fortress: An actual look at graphical improvements
Author : skibz
Score : 248 points
Date : 2020-03-26 16:30 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (steamcommunity.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (steamcommunity.com)
| raytracer wrote:
| Don't let Dwarf Fortress put you off ASCII graphic games if Dwarf
| Fortress is the first you've played. I tried DF a while back but
| didn't have the time available to get comfortable with it.
|
| I found Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead much easier to get into. As a
| new Cataclysm DDA player I spent most of my time learning how to
| survive in the early days of a zombie apocalypse. Finding food,
| learning how to craft weapons, what the zombies are capable of.
|
| In one game I found a large mansion in the woods. There were a
| few zombies inside but not too many to prevent me from clearing
| it out. I set up camp in one of the bedrooms. The mansion had
| loads of food, water, materials for crafting. Good times!
|
| Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead https://cataclysmdda.org/
| tveita wrote:
| I didn't know they were doing a graphics update, this looks
| great!
|
| It will be interesting to see what they do with the interface.
| I've thought before that a complete mapping and redesign of all
| Dwarf Fortress screens and actions would be material enough for
| an entire thesis on UX.
| jshaqaw wrote:
| One day when I am retired and my kids are grown up I will have
| the proper bandwidth for DF and play it. Until them I am an
| admiring fanboy from afar.
| gorogue wrote:
| Ditto. I would love to give it the attention it deserves, but
| unfortunately...life.
| koverda wrote:
| One thing worth checking out if you're looking for DF-Lite with
| nice graphics: Odd Realm.
| empo_simo wrote:
| fortnite is better
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| There is already a pretty excellent 3D isometric front end for
| Dwarf Fortress. The name eludes me but it's well known within the
| community.
|
| However - I found that many parts of Dwarf Fortress disappointed
| me (and I was hyped as heck to play it - given that I'm a fan of
| Nethack, DCSS, Cataclysm, and basically any rougelike or
| rougelite). The game just feels extremely unfinished. Adventure
| mode is a total joke. Performance is totally garbage. The creator
| refuses to open source his game (no one will laugh at you man!).
| The documentation is horrific (no one quite knows how some of the
| BASIC SKILLS work or what they do)
|
| It's got the potential to be a true gem, but right now, it's like
| an uncut diamond in the rough.
|
| Might as well just play Rimworld. Rimworld solved every single
| problem that Dwarf Fortress had and its world is more compelling
| to me.
| jointpdf wrote:
| > _...3D isometric front end for Dwarf Fortress_
|
| There is more than one mod in this category, but you may be
| thinking of Stonesense:
| https://dfhack.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/stonesense/d...
|
| DF is a bit rough as a casual gamer (me), but don't many game
| designers consider it the greatest game ever made? The
| complexity of the underlying system of simulation is mind-
| boggling, especially for a two-person project.
| bmn__ wrote:
| > pretty excellent 3D isometric front end for Dwarf Fortress.
| The name eludes me
|
| http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Utility:Stonesense
|
| It's not a complete front end. It cannot control the game, just
| provide a visualisation of the world.
| golergka wrote:
| I spent significant time in DF in the early part of 2010s, but in
| the end found that it's just too much to micromanage - the game
| (at the time, at least) didn't offer much help with it, and after
| awhile, all the clutter really got in the way.
|
| If you like this kind of game, but would want something not as
| demanding, try Rimworld. Out of all dwarffortresslikes (I don't
| think that calling them Dward Fortress clones is fair), it's got
| a good amount of polish, reasonable 2d graphics (nothing too
| fancy, but looks nice) and most importantly, you don't feel as if
| you have to manually tweak every little thing. You still can, you
| just don't have to.
| hu3 wrote:
| Rimworld is easily moddable with C#.
|
| And there's a vibrant mod community:
| https://discordapp.com/invite/rimworld
|
| I've created a few simple mods and it was a pleasant
| experience.
| bbrazil wrote:
| Seconding this. Out of all games in that general category
| Rimworld is scratching my DF itch, without me having to dig all
| the way back into full DF complexity.
| bllguo wrote:
| the key thing about rimworld for me is the multiplayer mod.
| there are many things i am willing to sacrifice for that
| experience.
| jredwards wrote:
| I've spent more time with Rimworld than any other game I've
| ever played. Between the vibrant mod community and the recent
| re-engagement of the original developers, it continues to grow
| and change, offering new experiences alongside the classic
| ones. Every colony I build is different. I will forever
| treasure this game.
| jtolmar wrote:
| I never thought the ASCII graphics were a big problem in Dwarf
| Fortress; once you get used to it using a bunch of symbols as
| decoration, almost all the weird stuff ends up being things you
| placed yourself. On the other hand, the complete lack of UX
| consistency - whether a given submenu will use primary/secondary
| cursor keys, nested menus, or a pile of hotkeys - is a lot harder
| to deal with.
| Supermancho wrote:
| It's a lot like languages that refuse to change syntax (Erlang
| vs Elixir, both still not that great on syntax) because it's a
| luddite adherence to cultural experience or thinking.
|
| It shows a disregard for users and a self-imposed barrier to
| adoption. DF is horrid for usability. Just because I can
| screenshot notepad, print it out, and send mail on a turtle,
| does suffice to say I support an e-mail feature. Military squad
| mechanics are as byzantine as you can get.
| macintux wrote:
| Erlang has a very concise syntax that takes about a half hour
| to teach. "Not that great" is a very subjective observation.
| xsmasher wrote:
| The 3D package "Blender" bit the bullet and revamped their
| entire UI over the course of many years/releases to (1) bring
| it in line with other applications (ctrl-c, ctrl-v should
| work everywhere) and (2) make more options visible in the UI,
| so that they were discoverable. It's been wildly successful.
|
| I hope Dwarf Fortress will have a similar refit over time.
| yew wrote:
| I always find this topic interesting, because it shows such a
| diversity of... aesthetic instinct? If you ask a dozen people
| why they don't like something that's known for being divisive,
| you can easily get a dozen different, incompatible answers.
|
| People talk about the subjectivity of beauty, but I've never
| felt like the sheer _polarity_ of opinion gets enough
| emphasis...
|
| (For the record: Dwarf Fortress's controls never bothered me,
| and I've never been able to play without a tileset. The same
| for NetHack and other ASCII games.)
| zionic wrote:
| I completely disagree. The ASCII "graphics" (if you can really
| call them that) are a huge reason why I've never even
| considered playing it. I've read all about the mechanics, and
| they're interesting. I just don't understand why anyone would
| spend so much time developing so many intricate features when
| the presentation is so poor.
| II2II wrote:
| I also found the presentation distracting and the mechanics
| interesting, and I am quite accustomed to games that are text
| only. Simultaneously decoding glyphs and figuring out
| mechanics felt like more effort than it was worth.
|
| While I cannot speak for the developer, I can understand why
| they would go that route. Unless you have an interest in
| computer graphics, implementing them can be dreadfully dull.
| Unless you have an eye for design, creating the various
| graphical elements can lead to some interesting results.
| VonGuard wrote:
| Because gameplay matters 10X as much as graphics.
| fishmaster wrote:
| Gameplay only starts to matter once UI and graphics are
| appropriate.
| [deleted]
| OscarTheGrinch wrote:
| Can confirm this assertion. I spent years building pretty
| games, but often our games are trounced by a rival with by
| with crappier graphics and better gameplay.
| jers wrote:
| I would normally agree, But hard to understand visuals (not
| intuitive) might discourage new players from trying the
| game. Those that do try the game will have a large
| cognitive load just to understand what is going on, and
| therefore will be unable to focus as much on the gameplay
| (that df is know for). So potential players and new players
| would be most affected.
| kibwen wrote:
| I don't fault you, but let's be charitable to Tarn here: the
| austere style is deliberately _because_ he didn 't want to
| spend any more time than necessary on the graphics, when what
| interested him most is the systems and the simulations
| (remember that DF has been a solo passion project for well
| over a decade now). His experience making the precursor to
| Dwarf Fortress (which is technically the second game in the
| series) is what led him to this conclusion, so it is not
| borne out of ignorance.
| outworlder wrote:
| > I just don't understand why anyone would spend so much time
| developing so many intricate features when the presentation
| is so poor.
|
| Why do you think they had time to develop those features in
| the first place?
|
| I'm itching to know how they are going to come up with
| graphical representations for all the randomly generated
| forgotten beasts. A character is abstract, but when you have
| a drawing, it conveys more meaning. I wouldn't be happy with
| a dragon picture or similar, while the forgotten beast was a
| corrosive gaseous entity.
|
| The presentation may be a bit busy at times (if you embark on
| a forest, for instance), but it is otherwise fine.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| > I just don't understand why anyone would spend so much time
| developing so many intricate features when the presentation
| is so poor.
|
| I think this is a general feature of software that is very
| 'techy' for a lack of a better term. Dwarf Fortress is a
| pretty niche, hardcore game and people who build this sort of
| stuff don't always have the best sense of what a UX design
| ought to look like that appeals to the general user. A lot of
| Linux desktop software is like that too.
| dmos62 wrote:
| To me this is like saying you don't like books because
| they're black and white. With ASCII I've some textual
| description of what an object looks like (say, dwarf), but
| most of it is filled in by my imagination, and it does a much
| better job than any artist, and it's more dynamic, adapting
| to my mood and what I'm experiecing. Talk about high-tech. A
| tileset puts a great constraint on that. If there's a choice
| between ASCII and tiles, I'll always choose ASCII.
|
| Dwarf Fortress UI ergonomics is another story.
| csours wrote:
| In a book, I don't have to make the words do anything.
| Also, I've spent my whole life learning English vocabulary.
|
| I could spend some more time learning the DF glyphs, but a
| picture is worth a thousand words.
|
| I killed the Balrog in uMoria* back in the day, so I'm not
| a stranger to ASCII graphics. The difference between rogue-
| likes and DF is the extremely huge variability in the
| glyphs.
|
| Edit: To continue the comparison to books, Dwarf Fortress
| is like an interactive textbook, Roguelikes compare to
| genre fiction.
|
| *I'm a dirty save-scummer, but I still put in a bunch of
| time.
| Natsu wrote:
| The thing is, it's really not. Granted, I always used the
| Lazy Newbie Pack which gave you basic tiles, but once you get
| used to ASCII, things tend to be a lot easier. Also, this is
| a detailed simulation, so things move a _lot_ faster if you
| 're not spending CPU on graphics.
|
| Remember, each creature has a bunch of parts with individual
| health, each tile can get stained by various materials (that
| can spread disease) and everything is made of various
| materials with all sorts of mostly-realistic properties. I
| mean, DF is the _sole_ reason you can find the solid density
| of Saguaro rib wood on the internet and the value came from
| an empirical test of a small cube of Saguaro rib wood. It 's
| in the DF raws.
|
| So yeah, you might enjoy DF with a tile set like the LNP if
| you like the mechanics. But it's a super-complicated game so
| it takes a while to learn to control things, to learn the
| requirements to make various items, etc. It's not a game for
| everyone, you do have to sink quite a lot of time into
| learning it to enjoy it.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Also, this is a detailed simulation, so things move a lot
| faster if you're not spending CPU on graphics.
|
| Nonsense. Rendering a grid of 2D tiles is exceptionally
| fast, so much so that converting font data into tiles is
| how you make text grids go faster!
|
| And even if you do have a slow method, you can just run it
| on a different thread.
| herpes wrote:
| Dwarf Fortress is single threaded, and likely to remain
| that way for the foreseeable future.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The simulation is single threaded. But a rendering thread
| that only needs to copy a kilobyte of data each frame?
| Trivial.
|
| Also hopefully there's a pathfinding thread at some
| point.
| bmn__ wrote:
| It may be trivial to you, but it is abundantly clear by
| circumstantial evidence that ToadyOne is not a good
| programmer. This is beyond his means, otherwise it would
| have already been added.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| There's no benefit to it. That's the much simpler reason
| it hasn't been done.
|
| The things that would actually help to split out are also
| the things that would be difficult to split out.
| seanhunter wrote:
| "this is a detailed simulation, so things move a lot faster
| if you're not spending CPU on graphics"
|
| Consider Battlefield or COD Warzone, which simulate the
| effects of actions by multiple players (including
| projectile travel) in real time and still manage upwards of
| 100FPS of near photorealistic graphics.
|
| Or factorio, where people build insane megafactories with
| millions of machines in them and yet performance is great
| and the graphics will still show you the shadows of clouds
| passing overhead.
|
| Dwarf fortress is a very interesting game and a very deep
| simulation, but the idea that it's such a detailed
| simulation that graphics would not be possible is just
| untrue.
|
| Honestly the UX in dwarf fortress is generally just
| insanely user-hostile and graphics are only a tiny symptom
| of that. And I say this as someone who plays and enjoys the
| game - I've had forts with upwards of 100 idiots^Wdwarfs in
| them, magma moats, breaching multiple cavern layers,
| surviving necromancer seiges etc. But every time I play I
| have to go through that thing over again where I try to
| figure out how to assign a pet to a person, when I set up a
| military squad getting them to wear the right equipment is
| a total chore, minecart UX is completely baffling. Also the
| simulation is very detailed but kind of broken in lots of
| annoying ways, like female dwarfs randomly dropping their
| babies while working, forgetting where they put them and
| then freaking out, random tantrum spirals because someone
| went out in the rain and so just decides to murder their
| colleagues etc.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "so things move a lot faster if you're not spending CPU on
| graphics."
|
| Thats why most have a GPU and that is why there are graphic
| engines, who do the rendering only of what is needed and
| produced by the simulation. So no, unless DF uses the gpu
| for simulating which I doubt, better graphics will not
| really affect simulation speed, if done right.
|
| But yes, that is much harder.
| bmn__ wrote:
| DF employs OpenGL for rendering, see file
| df_linux/g_src/renderer_opengl.hpp, so the GPU will be
| used if appropriate drivers are installed. "Text" tiles
| and graphics tiles are equally fast - they are always
| bitmaps under the hood, see df_linux/data/art/*.png.
|
| There is also an ncurses renderer with plain Unicode text
| output for use in a terminal emulator which may be GPU
| accelerated, but most term software is not.
| jtolmar wrote:
| > Also, this is a detailed simulation, so things move a lot
| faster if you're not spending CPU on graphics.
|
| Pretty amusingly, DF used to spend most of its CPU on
| graphics. There was a graphics rewrite at some point that
| fixed it.
| bmn__ wrote:
| https://github.com/Baughn/Dwarf-Fortress--libgraphics-
|
| This was not written by the game's author, ToadyOne, but
| someone else. ToadyOne complains that he cannot
| understand the code anymore. For this reason, he will not
| open the source code again until he is dead.
|
| https://www.pcgamesn.com/dwarf-fortress/dwarf-fortress-
| sourc...
| LoSboccacc wrote:
| graphical tileset have been around since way back tho https:/
| /dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Graphics_set_...
|
| and the ux is not going to change radically.
| kibwen wrote:
| In addition to DF I also play Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, a
| venerable (and actively developed!) roguelike with the classic
| ASCII look, and I'd like to present a counterpoint: once it
| became possible to play DCSS online using the graphical tiles
| interface rather than the ASCII look, new players
| _overwhelmingly_ prefer the graphical. Stats that I have seen
| indicate >95% choose the graphical tiles.
|
| I myself still play both DCSS and DF in ASCII mode, but it seem
| reasonable to presume that the reason that old hands like us
| are fine with the ASCII look is because everyone who wasn't
| fine with it has self-selected themselves out of the sample. If
| their goal with the DF Steam release is to bring in new players
| (and compete with the likes of e.g. Rimworld, whose players are
| accustomed to graphics), then I see this as a sound decision.
|
| (And of course, seconded that DF's nonsensical command UI is
| going to continue to stymie their efforts here.)
| jtolmar wrote:
| I play DCSS in tiles mode and DF in ASCII mode. It's not that
| I think graphics are a bad usability feature, I just think
| they're over-emphasized because they're the first thing
| people see.
|
| Adding graphics to DF means more new players give it a try,
| but most of them are going to bounce off of the wildly
| inconsistent menus. It's an acquisition funnel thing; the
| total players will be incoming players times the percent that
| are okay with the graphics times the percent that are okay
| with the menus. My assertion is just that in DF's case the
| menus have room for a bigger lift, because they're really
| that bad.
| mwaitjmp wrote:
| The military menu was always the one which I had difficulty
| with, training and equipping dwarfs, etc.....
| jghn wrote:
| Anecdata, but even for Rouge in the early-mid 80s I had a
| version of Rogue on our Mac. It had graphical glyphs for
| everything. I loved that much more than the classic ASCII
| graphics when I'd dial into my Dad's work computer & play
| that way
| crooked-v wrote:
| Not to mention the lack of mouse support.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Native yes, but I think DFHack enables that... or
| DwarfTherapist
| pasabagi wrote:
| I think there's a big diference - in DCSS, it's extremely
| important to know whether that 'g' you're looking at just
| some random gnoll, or crazy Yiuf. In dwarf fotress, it's
| pretty rare that it really matters. The ascii graphics are
| also a bit nicer - especially when it comes to stuff like
| drawing walls.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Similarly, Cogmind's success is partially because it learned
| all the hard-won lessons on good game UI of the last decades,
| plus the importance of a fancy tile-set:
|
| https://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/
|
| It does, however, also have the fanciest abstract ASCII
| graphics I've ever seen.
|
| (the other reason is that it's just a damn good game)
| VectorLock wrote:
| Never knew this game existed. Love the aesthetic.
| robohamburger wrote:
| I like how the ascii graphics look better but the fact that
| they are not square drives me crazy.
|
| I used tilesets when I was learning the game which I would
| recommend since it can be a lot to take in all at once.
| bmn__ wrote:
| http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Tileset_repository#Sq.
| ..
| TylerE wrote:
| The complete refusal to integrate any sort of meaningful mouse
| support is mind boggling.
| Lockyy wrote:
| The graphical version will have mouse support.
| danso wrote:
| Yeah that's the issue for me. I don't mind interpreting ASCII
| characters, but the UI/menu navigation feels intimidating.
| Rimworld will (I assume) never be the type of indepth
| simulation that DF is, but it spoiled me with its point-and-
| click GUI
| rstupek wrote:
| I don't know if a point and click GUI precludes the depth
| of DF. If anything some things should be much easier to do
| with point and click. Factorio combines keyboard with point
| and click navigation and it has some depth to it.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think good mouse support wouldn't remove the ability to
| navigate menus using keystrokes - but for tasks like
| drawing out farms, the dig squares for a residential
| block or dragging and dropping workshops into the right
| place... that's where I think it'll shine.
|
| I don't dislike the keyboard approach used right now but
| DF hack and it's digging templates has clearly
| demonstrated that folks feel the lack of good dig
| designation sorely.
| danso wrote:
| I agree! I hope that's something the developers
| (eventually) builds out, as (hopefully) the Steam release
| brings in much deserved and new revenue.
|
| Tangentially, I remember the MoMA devoting a large chunk
| of a wall in its video game exhibit to the Dwarf Fortress
| ASCII display. The graphical tiles look great but the
| sheer density of ASCII definitely had retro appeal.
|
| https://www.moma.org/collection/works/164920
|
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/zokuga/6090624165/
| cjhveal wrote:
| I personally agree. A lot of those disagreeing with you find
| the ASCII graphics to be a barrier to initial entry, which is
| true, but it is a barrier that you can overcome quickly and
| feel quite comfortable with. On the other hand, having spent
| many hours with the game, the UX issues you mention are what
| block me from building fluid muscle memory and being able to
| really get into the game.
| fishmaster wrote:
| Nope, I tried it several times and I just can't stand ASCII
| graphics. I'd rather play Dota or anything else instead.
| cjhveal wrote:
| Fair enough-- for me a lot of the joy of the game is in
| using it as a collaborative story teller and filling in the
| gaps it gives me. Having underspecified graphics gives me
| more freedom with my mind's eye, but I can understand that
| not everyone approaches it the same way and wouldn't get
| the same out of it even with a lot of effort.
| outworlder wrote:
| Graphics is not the main issue here.
|
| There are other issues that are much more important. Like the
| jobs interface. I don't want to have to run Dwarf Therapist
| alongside it, when games like Rimworld and ONI manage just
| fine.
| Octopodes wrote:
| I've been playing for some time using dfhack's "autolabor"
| feature, and it streamlines things immensely.
|
| Granted, it ends up essentially just turning on every
| profession for every dwarf, but it's still possible to
| restrict workshops to certain dwarves. For example, you
| might have a carpentry workshop set to produce endless
| amounts of wooden shields, but only allow skilled
| carpenters access to it.
| wmil wrote:
| Well there's that moment of panic where you aren't sure if it's
| a group of goblins or goats.
| danaris wrote:
| Personally, I grew up playing Angband and Nethack with ASCII
| graphics.
|
| I still play DF (and DCSS, for that matter) with graphics. It's
| just so much easier to parse, doesn't require me to spend
| months "getting used to" the ASCII display (in addition to the
| rest of DF's arduous learning curve), and it's prettier to
| boot.
| gnulinux wrote:
| Completely agree. ASCII graphics were completely fine, if not
| desirable. I loved playing DF but I also hated it at the same
| time because of the inconsistent UI. wasd vs. ijkl vs +- vs
| arrows vs ... almost nothing made sense to me until reading the
| manual. Granted, the game is fun enough that I always read the
| manual, but a good UI is intuitive UI. I hope this new effort
| fixes more than just graphics. I can't care less about ASCII vs
| pixel graphics, but UX needed to be improved imho.
| rstupek wrote:
| I agree that the graphics (with mods) were acceptable but the
| inconsistent UI made it more difficult than it needed to be.
| Some of the AI could use some tweaks as well. It definitely
| is a fun game (dropping lava on an orc/troll army and
| watching them run was awesome)
| gnulinux wrote:
| Never really advanced that much in the game to fight orcs.
| I just set up some good looking magma smelters, smelted
| whole bunch of jewels and sold them to caravan and elves
| and stuff. This was many years ago, I remember having a lot
| of fun, but also how excruciatingly tedious everything was.
| I remember setting dwarf tasks (allow/disallow) required a
| lot of micromanaging and DwarfTherapist didn't work well in
| linux. Regardless, amazing game, I hope devs solve the UX
| issue. I'd probably buy the game the day it's released.
| rstupek wrote:
| Perhaps you put your fortress down in a place with no
| enemies... most games I would have to immediately setup a
| system to keep enemies out or they'd massacre everyone
| pretty quickly! Once I had a dragon come and lay waste to
| everything, burning down all of the trees outside and
| setting fire to all the hapless dwarves.
| gnulinux wrote:
| No, I would normally disable invasion. When I enabled
| invasion, I'd just lock my dwarfs in my fortress and not
| leave the fortress for a season and eventually goblins
| abandon the invasion. I just never figured out how to
| prepare an army and attack, so figured, I'd much rather
| focus on things like farming, smelting, jewelry etc.
| tarboreus wrote:
| You can just put down stone traps and it will kill 85% of
| invasions. The rest you can create a drawbridge or
| something and pull it up if you see an enemy you can't
| deal with. Closing yourself off also means you can't
| trade, generally, so it's good to leave your fortress
| semi-open.
| kd0amg wrote:
| If you use cage traps instead, you can set up a target
| range to train your crossbowdwarfs.
| rstupek wrote:
| The problem with traps that kill, when I've used them, is
| the cleanup aftermath where your dwarves will go crazy
| from having to cleanup the remains and reset the traps!
| whatsmyusername wrote:
| Presentation still matters. It's why I have 1100+ hours in
| Rimworld and about 8 seconds in Dwarf Fortress.
| dpc_pw wrote:
| Came here to say the same thing. I know that ASCII is repuslive
| to a lot of people, but personally the UX inconsistency is kill
| the game for me. Every single thing in the game seem designed
| with a completely different UX idea, to the point it's almost
| impossible to build muscle memory.
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| I don't mind ASCII graphics in general -- I used to play a lot
| of Rogue, Angband, and Nethack -- but DF is just so dense that
| I found it bewildering.
| tialaramex wrote:
| I'm torn here. I really agree with you about UI consistency as
| a priority but the restriction to typically a few dozen symbols
| in such software is ultimately too much and I think just adding
| graphics is the practical way forward.
|
| The graphics serve the game, that's critical. If there was a
| choice between a fantastically complicated ASCII-only Dwarf
| Fortress and a graphical version with half the features, that's
| a clear win for ASCII DF. But here the only downside to
| graphics is that they're very slightly more effort on some
| systems and the pay off is that the game is better in practice
| even if only slightly.
|
| In these present circumstances Board Game Arena
| https://boardgamearena.com/ is getting lots of extra attention
| because those of us used to playing board games socially can't
| go to someone's house to get infected with this virus and
| incidentally play board games. So we have to find another way
| (to do the latter obviously).
|
| Sites like Tabletopia virtualize the physical environment of a
| board game. A game that comes with forty wooden pieces now has
| forty 3D objects. Can you stack this cow on a house? Tabletopia
| doesn't know what rules are, so sure, just grab the cow 3D
| object and balance it on the house. This is amusing for a few
| minutes, then you realise it's every disadvantage of playing a
| "real" board game, but without any advantages. Who got most
| settlements in this game of Clans of Caledonia? Well, let's
| painstakingly count the 3D pieces, then argue about it. Over at
| BGA there's no problem, the machine is implementing the actual
| game (not just providing a generic 3D simulation) and so it
| shows exactly how many settlements you have at all times.
|
| The trade offs are different than for being there in person,
| but since we cannot be there in person it's an easy win right
| now for Board Game Arena in the opinion of myself (and
| apparently thousands of other people since they're having to do
| emergency scaling to handle several times more players at once
| in their lobbies).
| xyzal wrote:
| In case you dislike Steam, take note Dwarf Fortress Premium is
| also available at Itch: https://kitfoxgames.itch.io/dwarf-
| fortress
| d4mi3n wrote:
| Nice to see the classic getting some modern graphics. I love text
| based games, but something as complex as DF really benefits from
| graphics that can make it easier to determine what is going on on
| the screen.
| nomel wrote:
| My main DF consumption is through Kruggsmash
| playthroughs/stories on Youtube [1], so I don't live it, but I
| know I would would enjoy watching the game more if I knew which
| of the more than 30 creatures the "C" that I'm looking at
| represents [2].
|
| [1] Kruggsmash:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaifrB5IrvGNPJmPeVOcqBA
|
| [2] Creature characters:
| https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Creature
| [deleted]
| starpilot wrote:
| Next step: going 3d
| http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=167533.0
|
| A raytraced DF front end would be breathtaking.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Get someone to write a DF to Minecraft map converter and then
| use Mineways to export to Blender? (Admittedly, this won't be a
| real-time affair...)
| bmn__ wrote:
| only works on old versions
|
| https://github.com/TroZ/DF2MC
|
| https://github.com/Thutmose/dorfgen
| nineteen999 wrote:
| I wonder how this will affect the performance; last time I played
| DF it was pretty much single-threaded and the performance would
| tank noticeably once your colony grew to around 100+ dwarves.
|
| Granted, it's been about 10 years since I played it.
| empath75 wrote:
| I don't think the graphics will add significantly to the work
| the simulation is doing.
| bootlooped wrote:
| Seems like simply upgrading some of the characters to equivalent
| emoji would have been a big improvement. I know many people don't
| like emoji, but for the most part they are pretty universal and
| easy to understand.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| This is not really needed. The game doesn't actually use ascii
| output, it renders the text (windows terminals would probably
| be too slow), and it supports graphic packs than can show the
| dwarves as actual pictures of dwarves. The biggest problem is
| when a glyph is reused for multiple things, as in that case the
| graphic has to pick one of them or stay generic.
| bmn__ wrote:
| > The biggest problem is when a glyph is reused for multiple
| things, as in that case the graphic has to pick one of them
| or stay generic.
|
| Solution: https://github.com/mifki/df-twbt
|
| This is included in various content packs, so setting this up
| manually is optional.
|
| > The game doesn't actually use ascii output, it renders the
| text (windows terminals would probably be too slow)
|
| Linux and OS X terminals are fast enough. The init.txt
| setting [PRINT_MODE:TEXT] switches the renderer to ncurses.
| gbrown wrote:
| This has been essentially the tileset approach for a long time.
| archgoon wrote:
| Dwarf Fortress strikes me as a game that would benefit from a
| strong engine / UI split, with an API for querying the world
| state.
|
| That said, DFHack is probably sufficient for this purpose.
|
| https://docs.dfhack.org/en/stable/
| Octopodes wrote:
| I haven't used it, but Dwarf Fortress Remote for iOS seems to
| accomplish this somehow; the whole UI is iOS native.
|
| Obviously there's no official API, but the developer has
| somehow managed to achieve something similar.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dwarf-fortress-remote/id100366...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Eagerly awaiting the graphical version to finally be available on
| Steam so that I can buy it and throw some money their way.
|
| I know the regular version has been available for free forever,
| but the ASCII graphics have always been a turn-off. I'm not
| opposed to MUD-style graphics in general, Dwarf Fortress is just
| so _dense_ with stuff that I found I spent most of my time just
| trying to figure out what was going on.
| yaur wrote:
| IMO trying to decipher those glyphs is near trivial compared to
| trying to manage what your dwarves are doing in a moderately
| sized fortress without Dwarf Therapist. In order to play it
| (which I haven't done in a few years TBH) you either need to be
| willing to push through some abstruse UI choices or use third-
| party tools. Those ASCII graphics just serve as a warning of
| what's to come.
| silveroriole wrote:
| Why didn't you install a tileset? Most people don't play with
| ASCII nowadays.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Sloth, admittedly. I could probably look up how to do it, but
| the guys explicitly announced they were going to put the game
| on Steam and add a proper graphical overlay so that they
| could start charging for the game (IIRC they announced this
| decision because a family member has medical bills they need
| to pay, or something).
|
| So, I'm just waiting for them to fulfill their end of the
| bargain. Then I will pay.
| stevens32 wrote:
| If it's encouraging at all - after some hours into the game the
| ASCII actually starts looking like what they represent, enough
| that even when you see a new character given its context you
| can figure out what it's meant to represent without really
| thinking about it.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| It's a bit like the Matrix. At first it's an overwhelming
| amount of mostly tiny green symbols and after a while things
| make more sense.
|
| I'm definitely looking forward to this graphical version,
| though. And hoping that one day the game will even support
| multiple threads, but that's probably wishful thinking.
| danaris wrote:
| It's not terribly difficult to add a graphical tileset to the
| free version, and there are a variety to choose from on the
| bay12games.com forums.
| lawlessone wrote:
| Same, i would have given them money years ago but always had
| issues with Paypal
| bbeekley wrote:
| They have a Patreon now. I recently started supporting them
| there.
| rstupek wrote:
| The biggest single thing DF can do after graphical improvements
| is fixing the performance, perhaps make it not single threaded.
| I've been able to get past the graphics, and work through using
| the keyboard menus, but having the fortress come to a screeching
| crawl when there's a ton of things going on is when I stopped
| playing.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Being able to run mid-/end-game in grand strategy games
| (Crusader Kings 2, EU4, Stellaris, Civilization) at a fast
| speed single-handedly got me to finally build a desktop PC.
|
| I bought the best single-threaded CPU perf I could find at the
| time (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html) and put
| it in the smallest case that could support it.
|
| End-game Crusader Kings 2 takes two seconds to simulate each
| day on my 2017 Macbook Pro. My desktop PC can simulate half a
| year in that time. I can also play on the largest Stellaris
| galaxies.
|
| Sooo much more enjoyable when you can run a simulation as fast
| as you want. Now I can actually finish games instead of bailing
| at mid-game when things start to slow down.
| MperorM wrote:
| I picked up dwarf fortress 7-8 years ago when I was in eighth
| grade, and have been playing it on and off since. Performance
| is always what kills the game for me.
|
| The game is supposed to be hard, but if you at all know what
| you're doing it's very easy to keep your fort well, and the
| only real risk of losing your fort is from you intentionally
| doing stuff that puts your fort at risk. You literally can
| defeat entire enemy armies by capturing them all with cage
| traps, for example.
|
| This I can forgive.
|
| Dwarf fortress is all about the crazy stupid ideas you can come
| up with after all. Want to build any interesting structures?
| Prepare for your dwarfs to get stuck every conceivable way one
| could possibly get stuck trying to build a simple wall. It can
| be incredibly tedious to accomplish something that ideally
| shouldn't take more than a few simple commands.
|
| All of this I could live with. The performance without fail is
| what eventually kills my will to play. Want to do cool stuff
| with magma? Watch the game slow to a crawl. Want to run a big
| society? Watch the game slow to a crawl. Want to do anything
| remotely interesting? Watch the game slow to a crawl.
|
| People go to obscene lengths to keep their performance, such as
| generating atom smashers that will 'delete' unwanted stuff from
| their fort completely, so the game stops wasting energy
| rendering 5000 rocks and how each dwarf is reminded about their
| childhood traumas as every rock reminds them of how their
| father died from a falling rock.
|
| This game is so close to being great but falls short at the
| very last mile because the basic gameplay is fundamentally
| flawed. This is a simulator first, game second and it shows :(
| rstupek wrote:
| Yeah trying to build structures where the dwarf decides he
| can't build it because a rock is in the spot he's supposed to
| build on and that rock is assigned to be used on another
| section of wall is very frustrating. Having to continually
| revisit builds was laborious.
| ahefner wrote:
| Concerning it being a simulator first and a game second,
| that's definitely true, but it makes me wonder if the very
| old 2D versions (before there was a Z-axis or fancy worldgen)
| was more enjoyable as a game. I didn't start playing until
| after those versions, but I get the impression there was a
| lot more consistent narrative as to what you discover while
| tunneling into the mountain, as opposed to so much depending
| on the worldgen.
| gnulinux wrote:
| It seems like factorio is very well optimized and is single
| threaded (as per devs). Even when you make a ginormous factory,
| everything works mildly fine on a good laptop. I think
| dwarffortress mechanics is a bit more complex than factorio's
| in terms of computation, so maybe some parallelism can be
| utilized there. But it seems like as long as you optimize well,
| single thread goes a long way.
| waiseristy wrote:
| Maybe something to do with the pure voxel nature of DF.
| Pathing, liquid flows, etc. Factorio has a lot of pathing
| requirements, but everything is so much simpler when it's
| strictly 2D
| Tyr42 wrote:
| I think this is only possible because factorio has a team of
| very dedicated programmers who care about performance. Tarn
| is one guy, and I don't think he's going to be able to pull
| out a comparative level of performance.
|
| I mean, the pipe performance fix took one factorio dev half a
| year. I feel like having no forward motion apart from
| performance for that long might demotivate tarn, and that was
| just for one subsystem. In a game which already invested in
| multithreaded performance.
| robinhoodexe wrote:
| I personally limit my fort to 60 dwarves (not including
| children) in the config file. Makes managing a lot easier as
| well and I find 60 is enough for 2 squads and most of the
| professions.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-03-26 23:00 UTC)