[HN Gopher] Dwarf Fortress has sold half a million copies
___________________________________________________________________
Dwarf Fortress has sold half a million copies
Author : gabythenerd
Score : 467 points
Date : 2023-01-06 14:47 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bay12forums.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bay12forums.com)
| naillo wrote:
| They deserve way more :)
| devin wrote:
| I purchased a copy and don't even have a windows machine to play
| it on. Cheers to them for their success. It is well-deserved!
| smegsicle wrote:
| no more linux support on classic ??
| INTPenis wrote:
| I used to play DF a lot back in 2009, was a real geek about it.
|
| Then life took over and I lost all the muscle memory.
|
| Since the Steam release came out I've been playing DF almost
| DAILY again. It's so much FUN!
|
| Adventure mode will take the world by storm again, so that will
| probably mean a huge uptick in sales once it's finished.
| WharfWhoretress wrote:
| Have they announced their intent to re-do Adventure Mode also?
| I've heard it both ways.
| Arrath wrote:
| Yes they will be releasing Adventurer mode in DF Steam. There
| is, I've read, some quirk in the Steam store agreement where
| if a game has a free version they must have feature parity,
| so development will focus on bringing the Steam release to
| par with the classic version, and then both will be developed
| in step.
| causality0 wrote:
| I'm so excited to see where they go from here. My fantasy is a
| version of DF where entity movement isn't locked to a grid, that
| would open the door for real animations, smooth movement, or even
| a 3D version.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| None of that requires a non-grid based approach. Many puzzle
| games are grid based but have smooth animation and movement,
| and rendering it all in 3D is pretty orthogonal. The big
| problem would be making the entities non-abstract enough that
| their animations could make some kind of sense visually.
| causality0 wrote:
| _None of that requires a non-grid based approach._
|
| I kinda figured that but I wanted to couch my opinion because
| the last time it came up I got yelled at a lot when I wanted
| the sprites to face right when moving right.
| zhynn wrote:
| They hired another developer for the first time ever, I am
| thinking this will be a huge boost to development speed.
|
| Granted, I bet the source is.... labyrinthine and will take
| quite a while to get up to speed.
|
| Now that they have more than one dev they will probably want to
| use source control...
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| They have a roadmap [0] for DF that, assuming historical
| development velocity, will take another 5 odd years to
| complete. The big upcoming (ignoring the never ending yak
| shaving that tends to lead DF development) is the Myth and
| Magic update. Also, boats.
|
| [0] http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Just did a 7-hour-each-way roadtrip with my 12 year old son and
| my ears were filled by him with the minutiae of Dwarf Fortress in
| both directions.
|
| So I hope the developers are getting paid handsomely, someone
| should be, with that level of intense obsession being produced
| :-)
| Tepix wrote:
| Note that if you buy it on itch.io you also get a Steam key. So
| if you count both separately and add the numbers, you'll probably
| count too many.
|
| Anyway, i bought one of the copies and the game is fun, whenever
| i feel like doing unlimited amounts of micro-management ;-)
| nusaru wrote:
| Thank you. I just now went to buy the game and nearly bought it
| on Steam but I remembered this comment at the last moment.
| rehamelbasha wrote:
| [dead]
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| It's gonna be 500,001 when I'm done with my current game. It's at
| the #1 spot on my Steam wishlist. I try not to buy a game until
| I'm actually ready to play it these days, so it's coming soon
| just not quite yet.
|
| Congratulations on the well earned success!
| karlgrz wrote:
| I got it last week and played through the tutorial and then
| about 30 minutes after that. It's _really_ well done :-)
| lfodofod wrote:
| So uh, what does the kit plane company have to do with all of
| this?
| papercrane wrote:
| KitFox is publishing the game and taking over customer support.
| They probably funded the music and art, but I don't know if
| that's confirmed or not.
|
| It's likely they went with KitFox because they already had a
| relationship. One of the founders of KitFox is Tanya Short,
| who's edited two books on procedural game design with the DF
| programmer, Tarn Adams.
|
| https://doi.org/10.1201/9781315156378
|
| https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429488337
| mysterydip wrote:
| I was just looking at buying these books yesterday, but
| didn't make the connection with the author names! Thanks for
| the tip, definitely purchasing.
| haunter wrote:
| Kitfox Games? They are the publishers
| jyxent wrote:
| I believe they also funded the graphics and music for the
| premium edition.
| sumobob2112 wrote:
| really really really wish that they had kept a mac release on
| steam
| TillE wrote:
| They've said it's coming. No particular timetable, but
| definitely this year.
| piraccini wrote:
| ...or linux. But I guess it should work with Proton.
| dunefox wrote:
| It works very well.
| zhynn wrote:
| I play it on the steam deck, it works. The input is fiddly
| (though there are some impressive community input configs
| that use radial/grid menu popups from the touchpads to issue
| commands), but it does work.
| josephd79 wrote:
| I've seen several post about this game. I'm gonna take the plug
| this weekend.
| samwillis wrote:
| Revenue numbers on that page don't include the Steam numbers
| since the launch in December ~ $15M is revenue in one month!!
|
| To go from $15k to $15M, x1000, in a matter of weeks must feel
| incredible. Particularly after 15 years of hard work.
| agolio wrote:
| If anyone deserve to get rich it's the people that gave away
| their project for free for 15 years turning down multiple
| monetisation opportunities on the way. Very happy for them.
| Next up VLC!
| luxuryballs wrote:
| and it's motivating for those of us (me) who have been working
| on a project and are quite aware that it will take years to
| complete
| make3 wrote:
| yeah this is 100% survivor bias; their success only means you
| can make money with already hugely successful & popular
| projects, it's not indicative that your project will be
| successful or that you're doing the right thing
| luxuryballs wrote:
| but it's an example of someone following through and
| bringing something to fruition, not to imply it means
| you'll get the same sales and reception but working 15
| years on a project is an insane extreme, if he can do that
| I can do a year or two just to say I finished it
| codeulike wrote:
| Watch out for survivor bias tho
| somenameforme wrote:
| Depends on one's motivation. I really doubt at any point
| the Dwarf Fortress guy expected to become a millionaire
| with his game anymore than Notch expected to become a
| billionaire off Minecraft. They pursued the ideas because
| they were doing something that they themselves wanted, and
| enjoy(ed) making.
|
| There are other examples like UnReal World [1]. It's a game
| about surviving in the wilderness in Finland made by a guy
| living out in the wilderness in Finland. It had its first
| release 31 years ago, and the dev is still going at it.
| He's not exactly rolling the dough, but what's better than
| doing what you enjoy and making enough to get by doing it?
|
| Well sure, making _way_ more than you need! But spending
| the prime of your life doing something you love with the
| chance of a nice payday, seems more pleasant than spending
| the prime of your life doing something you dislike but with
| a more guaranteed upper mid payday.
|
| [1] -
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/351700/UnReal_World/
| TillE wrote:
| 80% of everything fails.
|
| It _is_ absolutely possible to succeed as a solo indie game
| developer, even if the likes of Minecraft or Stardew Valley
| or Dwarf Fortress are pretty extreme outliers. But it 's
| nice when they do succeed.
| sph wrote:
| How many of those failing 80% were working as hard as the
| Tarn brothers or Eric Barone? I'd be surprised if 1% of
| them were.
|
| Luck is a big factor, but working hard is an often
| underrated component. Equating game development, or
| anything in life, as a lottery is a terrible mindset to
| be in and sets one up for failure and mediocrity.
|
| Success lies somewhere between cutting one's own losses
| early, and unrelenting stubbornness.
| ido wrote:
| More Like 95%
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| I'd say even that is generous. Especially once you
| consider opportunity cost -- length of development,
| contractor expenses, hardware, lost potential earnings if
| employed, etc.
|
| My VR game eventually sold 130k copies over four years,
| but amortized over 1.5 years of development, $100k
| contracting expenses, $25k hardware, most copies sold at
| sale price, and another partner to split earnings with I
| still would have made significantly more as an employed
| principal or even senior engineer.
|
| As far as indie game success goes, selling this many
| copies puts me on the far end of the percentile scale.
| Oof.
|
| There is of course the non-monetary "compensation"
| aspect. I created something I am truly proud of, tons of
| people have either seen or played it and enjoyed the
| experience, and I crossed a huge item off the ol' bucket
| list. Even if the game had only sold 10k copies, I still
| would have called it a win personally.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| The success of DF should be viewed as the result of
| perseverance in coding and dedication to a community. They
| are pretty much the OG of their niche and have spawned
| thousands of copies but the copies have been the ones to
| fail for the most part mainly due to not sticking with it
| and/or not building a strong community around their
| projects. DF survived pretty much in spite of the actual
| product itself which, while it has improved steadily over
| time, remained almost actively user-hostile with its UI.
| You had to really love the game and the community in order
| to play it regularly. The Steam release is really a
| crowning triumph that will hopefully ensure the legacy of
| the game if not a completely renewed life.
| jyxent wrote:
| Probably a bit less revenue, due to regional pricing and the
| key arbitrage that ends up happening with that.
|
| Still a huge success, though.
| jeffwask wrote:
| Really happy for these guys and the reward for their passionate
| dedication to the game and community.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| And it's 15k divided by 2 before tax isn't it? Pretty amazing
| story of just doing what you love and eventually getting
| rewarded.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Apparently Toady has had several 6 figure opportunities just
| to license the name that he's turned down.
|
| The game is made for the love of making it and what little
| money they made was always just about allowing them to keep
| doing what they love. The resulting good will from their 20
| years of labor and refusing to sell out paid off in the end
| when they needed it. Honestly, I'd have bet that if they
| released the "premium" version for free on bay12 but $30 on
| Steam they'd still make the majority of what they have.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, they've been "comfortable" for years now, the main
| reason to "sell out" if you will was to ensure that health
| insurance would be available.
| nasmorn wrote:
| How can you be comfortable if you don't even have health
| insurance. Seems like an oxymoron to me.
| colordrops wrote:
| When you are young it seems like you don't need it.
| Usually there comes a time though where you realize you
| should have it.
| NoraCodes wrote:
| In America, healthcare (insurance and out-of-pocket) can
| be a major contributor to cost of living for anyone with
| anything more than the occasional cold. It's especially
| bad for self-employed people like the Adams.
| anamexis wrote:
| You seem to be in agreement.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| It reminds me of Justin Hall's story about holding out and
| refusing to sell "bud.com" to Budweiser.
|
| Instead he just hung onto it, and eventually used it for
| his own bud delivery company, once recreational cannabis
| was finally legalized.
|
| He was much happier that great three-letter domain name be
| used for something he loves, strong kind bud, instead of
| something he hates, weak piss beer.
|
| https://bud.com
|
| https://bud.com/history-of-bud-com/
|
| >In 1999 I was contacted by a lawyer Steven M. Weinberg,
| representing Anheuser-Busch, makers of Bud beer.
|
| >We chatted by phone: "So, you're a college student!"
|
| >Actually I graduated the year before.
|
| >He continued: "Well, how does $50,000 sound for bud.com?"
|
| >I replied that $50k should be the interest generated by
| the money someone pays for bud.com. This is a three letter,
| actual word, dot com domain, and if I'm going to see it on
| every beer can you make forever, I should at least be well
| compensated. I remember reading that the marketing budget
| for Budweiser beer that quarter was $16.1 million. BUD was
| the company's stock symbol.
|
| >I wasn't going to sell lightly, and they weren't going to
| bid against themselves, so we didn't get anywhere.
|
| The story about his fight to register the four-letter
| domain name fuck.com is also hilarious:
|
| https://www.links.net/webpub/fuck.com.html
| zamadatix wrote:
| I'm torn on this story. On one hand I'm really glad he
| got to keep using it personally out of the gate and
| eventually was able to later use it again for the intent
| it sounds like he gave when registering, couldn't ask for
| anything more for a short domain.
|
| On the other his reasoning for not selling was really
| unrelated to any of that. His response was standard
| squatter logic - I registered it first and you have a lot
| of money + will actually use it heavily so I'm not
| selling unless it's for tens of thousands of times what I
| got it for. It wasn't like he responded "I think I will
| get more than 50k of use out of it" or "It's more than
| 50k of inconvenience for me to change my email" it was
| straight up "I replied that $50k should be the interest
| generated by the money someone pays for bud.com. This is
| a three letter, actual word, dot com domain, and if I'm
| going to see it on every beer can you make forever, I
| should at least be well compensated". Kind of ruins the
| inspiration when the thing he actually held out for was
| rent seeking.
|
| On the third hand Budweiser is indeed really shit beer...
| expazl wrote:
| That's not squatters logic any more than you're a
| squatter in your own home if you refuse to sell even if a
| generous offer comes along because you value your home a
| lot more than even an above market offer, but you'd still
| likely sell at 100 times valuation. Again, that doesn't
| make you a squatter, just someone holding on to something
| and saying "If you really want this, you're going to have
| to offer me something grand, and I know you can afford
| it, otherwise I'll hold on to it".
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| It doesn't seem like a very similar story at all. One is
| a story of hard work for many years on something one
| loves; the other is cybersquatting eventually (kind of)
| turning into a business?
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| Can't they carry forward the losses from the past 15 years?
| hgsgm wrote:
| Food and rent aren't losses.
| expazl wrote:
| What? A company pays it's workers a salary and that's a
| loss for the business no matter if the people it's paid
| to are using it for food and rent.
|
| If they didn't have any revenue coming in at all, then
| they should have a quite high deficit in the company that
| they can subtract against the income now to reduce taxes.
| berkle4455 wrote:
| $15M * 70% = $10.5M and some percentage goes to the publisher
| they're working with (let's say another 30%) = $7.4M / 2 =
| ~$3.7M each
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| 30% goes to the publisher? What service are they providing?
| pflats wrote:
| 20% is going to the publisher. They paid for the Steam
| version, including hiring the graphics and sound people.
| They're also handling customer support for the paid
| version.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/b0mzog/of
| fic...
| gnarbarian wrote:
| being on steam is pretty valuable. people are more likely
| to buy a game on steam than off of a random website.
| steam will show your game to people who like similar
| games. there are cloud saving features, mod integration,
| updates etc.
| [deleted]
| SXX wrote:
| Of course for legendary game like Dwarf Fortress it
| doesn't make sense and it much lower, but for normal
| indie game 30% is not a limit so most of developers get
| less than 50% of sales after Steam and publisher cut.
|
| Usually % that goes to a publisher depend on stage of
| development, risk publisher taking, whatever you give up
| your IP and your agreement on recuperation. E.g. if you
| keep your IP, but publisher cover most of development
| costs after prototype then they will likely take up to
| 50% after Steam cut.
| SXX wrote:
| Steam revenue share over $10,000,000 is decreased to 25%.
|
| Also it very unlikely publisher get 30% for title like DF.
| More likely there is some recuperation if publisher
| invested into new version and then then 10-15%.
|
| PS: I work in game development.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Having enjoyed DF immensely, for free, in the past, I bought DF
| on Steam to support the Toady One and Three Toe. The UI changes
| make the game much more approachable. It still has a steep
| learning curve. But, I don't need to run a dwarf job manager
| alongside the game. The one thing that I would love to see added
| is the ability to create and reuse blueprints. Third party macro
| tools did this job in the past.
|
| Congratulations on your much deserved success Toady One and
| ThreeToe.
| moritonal wrote:
| So they've used some of this to hire a second developer.
|
| I wish them the best of luck, entering a codebase developed by a
| single dev for 15 years.
| ttctciyf wrote:
| Seems to have hit the ground running:
| https://steamcommunity.com/games/975370/announcements/detail...
| warent wrote:
| I never played this game, but heard it described as "vast".
|
| Was curious what programming language it was written in, and
| instead found this:
| https://www.dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Language
|
| WTF is this game?
| Sharlin wrote:
| And the current languages are pretty much just Markov-
| chain-based placeholders for an eventual much more complex
| system with, presumably, actual grammar and all.
| Procedurally generated for every new world created.
| metiscus wrote:
| Dwarf Fortress is an almost two decade project of
| interactive storytelling in the form of a video game.
| They've modeled the world down to an incredible level
| including personal relationships between people, races, and
| nations, skill growth, a mostly correct geologic model, the
| depth of this game is immense. The lives of each person
| alive in the simulated world are recorded and details are
| explorable etc. They model the languages spoken by the
| various races, basically an incredibly creative group of
| people just recursively modeled the world for something
| like 15 years adding depth where they wanted and the result
| is Dwarf Fortress.
| kibwen wrote:
| Don't miss the investigation into Dwarven grammar:
| http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289
| suby wrote:
| To answer the question for anyone interested of what
| programming language it is written in, Stack Overflow did a
| Q&A with Tarn Adams (developer) where they asked this,
| among other things.
|
| Q: What programming languages and other technologies do you
| use? Basically, what's your stack? Has that changed over
| the 15-20 years you've been doing this?
|
| A: DF is some combination of C and C++, not in some kind of
| standard obeying way, but sort of a mess that's accreted
| over time. I've been using Microsoft Visual Studio since
| MSVC 6, though now I'm on some version of Visual Studio
| Community.
|
| I use OpenGL and SDL to handle the engine matters. We went
| with those because it was easier to port them to OSX and
| Linux, though I still wasn't able to do that myself of
| course. I'm not sure if I'd use something like Unity or
| Unreal now if I had the choice since I don't know how to
| use either of them. But handling your own engine is also a
| real pain, especially now that I'm doing something beyond
| text graphics. I use FMOD for sound.
|
| All of this has been constant over the course of the
| project, except that SDL got introduced a few years in so
| we could do the ports. On the mechanical side of the game,
| I don't use a lot of outside libraries, but I've occasional
| picked up some random number gen stuff--I put in a Mersenne
| Twister a long while ago, and most recently I adopted
| SplitMix64, which was featured in a talk at the last
| Roguelike Celebration.
|
| https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/31/700000-lines-of-
| code-2...
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Take a look at this bug, perhaps it'll give you an idea:
| http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=9195
| zhynn wrote:
| DF is a procedurally-generated colony sim (build a colony
| in the wilderness and survive/thrive/die in an entertaining
| way).
|
| But that's not _why_ it is vast. The vastness comes from
| three main things, I think:
|
| 1. the number of distinct procgen systems. Creatures have
| procgen phenotypes and personalities. The landscape,
| biomes, and simulated geology/hydrology. Biomes. The
| civilizations and simulated history. The names of things.
| Religion, Instruments, cultural songs and dances,
| masterwork items and treasures, legendary forgotten beasts,
| and a bunch of stuff that doesn't come immediately to mind.
|
| 2. the inter-relatedness of the procgen systems. In many
| procgen games, the different systems do not affect each
| other. Systems that affect each other multiply the
| possibilities. And if they all affect each other, it's
| exponential. They all multiply each other. It's hard to
| describe how hard this would be to build in a way that
| wasn't just a mess of nonsense, but they did it by focusing
| entirely on the underlying systems and the UI was
| impenetrable ASCII with baffling UX. That has changed with
| the steam edition.
|
| 3. This game was written by two guys over the course of
| more than a dozen years funded by donation. It is an
| exceedingly rare and towering artistic achievement. This
| game should not exist, and will almost certainly never be
| surpassed (at least not in the same artisanal way).
|
| One of the goals that was mentioned as a north star was
| that they wanted this game engine to be able to generate
| any fantasy story that has ever been told. But that none of
| those stories would be explicitly coded in, the world was
| just capable of making it happen.
|
| You know, I probably could have just linked to their
| roadmap. The game is only halfway complete by the creator's
| opinion: https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html
|
| That will give you some idea of the INSANE ambition of this
| game.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| While you go into detail on the generation of the world,
| I think the simulation is another major factor that goes
| into it.
|
| Once you start playing the game, the level of detail used
| in generating the world is now used applied locally to
| simulating it. An example I like to use is to explain a
| bug where people's games were ending poorly (or with lots
| of FUN in dwarf fortress speak) because dwarfs were
| having mental breakdowns because their pet cats were
| dying. Which was because the game simulated the cats well
| enough that they could get alcohol poisoning and die. But
| why were the cats drinking that much alcohol? Because
| when they walked through dining rooms, the game simulated
| the dwarves getting drunk and spilling alcohol which
| stayed on the floor for some amount of time. If a cat
| walked over it, it got on their fur. When the cat cleaned
| themselves, which was also simulated, they would consume
| some of the alcohol on their fur. The bug was that each
| micro-dose of alcohol from licking themselves was
| accidentally being calculated like a full flagon of ale
| providing the small cat with far too much alcohol.
|
| The level of the world generation with the level of
| simulation create a basis for a fantasy immersion that
| you cannot find elsewhere. The UI limitations, even with
| the steam version, do prevent most from becoming immersed
| into the world, but there seems to be a crowd who are
| brought in by the fidelity of the simulation and who can
| get past the UI that let's them experience something that
| cannot be found elsewhere.
| Arrath wrote:
| Another unexpected interaction (I hesitate to call it a
| bug) that I very much enjoyed was The Possessed
| Adventurer.
|
| You see, in Adventure Mode (akin to a traditional
| Roguelike in your created DF world, rather than the
| Colony Sim that is Fortress mode) you can create a
| character out of whole cloth that gets plopped into the
| world, or take over an extant character created through
| world generation. Either way, both characters are fully
| initialized within the systems of the game, having their
| own personalities, likes, dislikes, quirks, moral codes,
| emotional trauma thresholds, etc.
|
| Well, one player noticed over a few runs that their
| character's eyes were coated with tears. Odd, they
| thought, so they posted on the Bay12 forums about it.
| After some investigation, Toady confirmed that the full
| personality system was still running in the background,
| and the character was effectively possessed by an out-of-
| context demon, the player. The character's consciousness
| was stuck watching utterly helpless as their body did all
| manner of unspeakable acts (assuming the player was
| acting as a typical murder-hobo) that conflicted with
| their innate personalities, were horrified at what they
| saw, and could do nothing but cry about it.
|
| It's absolutely insane, equal parts disturbing and
| chilling and, as far as I am aware, an outcome totally
| unique to Dwarf Fortress created by the ridiculous depth
| and detail of the interwoven systems.
| Scarblac wrote:
| And that several internal organs of a dwarf are simulated
| separately. Some of them are fat, and fat has a
| relatively low melting point. Some rooms got warm enough
| (because lava was running through nearby rock) to melt
| the fat, killing the dwarves.
|
| The bug was, iirc, that the AI didn't route around this
| effect.
|
| Of course, for a long time making rooms like this and
| leading enemy armies through them was an important part
| of fortress defense, because actual militias were so
| bugged at the time...
|
| Also insanely strong carps that drag dwarves into the
| water, killing them. After all, swimming is exercise, it
| trains strength, and carp swim all day long...
| Arrath wrote:
| IIRC, it used to be that very rarely a dwarf might
| survive the process of having all their fat melted off.
| This served to turn them into little Terminators, as they
| had little left that could catch fire again and their
| nerves were cauterized by the experience so they couldn't
| feel pain any more.
| sushisource wrote:
| DF's codebase is honestly the closed-source code I'm most
| interested in seeing.
|
| My expectation is it's just an absolute mess, but I'm so
| curious.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Well they did manage to get this new much improved UI for the
| Steam version, in reasonable time. Seems it's much better
| than I feared.
| sowbug wrote:
| This is an interview with Tarn Adams about the DF codebase:
| https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/31/700000-lines-of-
| code-2...
| umvi wrote:
| Especially since it's developed without Git or any sort of
| version control...
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Well, they certainly didn't need _distributed_ version
| control, but I 'm sure there was _some_ sort of version
| control used, even if it was daily backups, or just copies
| upon copies of files.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I fail to see how "real" version control would
| significantly alter this project. He's a solo developer, so
| the history is likely going to be a linear series of
| commits. That's not to say that there are not quality of
| life gains to be made, but dated backups of the repository
| would be fine.
| Retric wrote:
| It's not that version control is the only viable option,
| just not using it suggests he's not doing many other
| things.
|
| As you say there's quality of life improvements to be
| had. If he's not aware of them I suspect he's reinventing
| the wheel in new and interesting ways.
| echohack5 wrote:
| I love Dwarf Fortress and it's the inspiration for many modern
| simulators (and I put my $30 for Tarn with this release), but I
| do think that Oxygen Not Included, Rimworld, Factorio, et.al.
| have surpassed it.
|
| My main issue with DF is that the main challenge of the game,
| combat, is pretty boring and rife with issues. For example, let's
| say I'm new to the game and want to put some XBow dwarfs behind a
| few fortifications in my base. Will the dwarfs intelligently do
| this when a siege happens? Is there a specific way to tell the AI
| that specific spots are where the Dwarfs should stand to defend?
| No and No.
|
| Instead I will either have to painstakingly set up individual
| zones / burrows for each individual defender or the dwarfs will
| just ignore the fortifications, even if they are in a burrow! And
| they'll just sit there and ignore invaders breaking through your
| kill zone unless you specifically micromanage them into 1-wide
| spaces with fortifications facing the kill zone, and even then
| they might just run outside your fortress on the _other_ side of
| the fortifications so they 're close to where you ordered them
| to.
|
| Rimworld on the other hand, (for all of its flaws around random
| and explosive damage), will at least let you draft a pawn, order
| it to stand behind a wall, and the pawn will get a significant
| cover bonus even without fortifications. They're smart enough to
| lean out and attack on their own too.
|
| I say all this not to criticize DF but to say that the genre has
| come a long way, and I hope that with this success they're
| looking at weaknesses like this in the gameplay loop so that
| folks don't just take 20+ years of goodwill as a replacement for
| the possibilities ahead.
|
| PS: Fuck cancer
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > that the main challenge of the game, combat, is pretty boring
| and rife with issues
|
| It might be the most 'challening' part of the game, but combat
| is not at all why I play the game, and neither are any specific
| gameplay mechanics the reason to be honest.
|
| It's hard to put my finger on _why_ I enjoy the game so much,
| but the fact that the game is about drunken and (mostly) grumpy
| dwarfs building a fortress inside a mountain in a world with a
| generated history and lore has a lot to do with it. The same
| game in a science fiction / space colony setting would be
| entirely unappealing to me for instance.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| > the main challenge of the game, combat
|
| This narrow view is like claiming Minecraft only has about 2
| hours of gameplay, because that's how long it takes to beat the
| ender dragon. It's perfectly possible to enjoy dwarf fortress
| in a completely sealed off fortress.
|
| The problem with every game that attempts to be in DF's genre
| (Rimworld, O2NI, etc) is that, as commercial products first,
| they lack depth. They're built to be a game first and foremost,
| rather than than an art project that's fun to to explore. The
| surface level game mechanics are fun, in many ways improvements
| over Dwarf Fortress's. But they cannot compete with the
| incredibly rich simulation complexity that DF has obtained.
| World generation, history generation, characters with complex
| feelings and motivations, mechanics that interact with other in
| myriad ways. DF is a fantasy world simulator first, and a game
| a distant second.
|
| And that's its biggest strength: compared to other games in the
| genre, DF is infinitely replayable, because there are an
| infinite number of interesting things to experience. Kings
| gaining power thanks to backroom deals with criminal
| organizations blackmailing their competitors, Necromancers
| forming towers to hold their book club meetings where they
| discus "An Analysis of Urist Svolgen's Musings on ovin
| Gentrout's Review of The Secrets of Life and Death", a
| werepanther that repeatedly terrorizes not just your fortress,
| but also all the surrounding sites drowning in a lake because
| they turned back into a human while trying to swim across a
| moat.
|
| Can combat be improved? Of course. But I'll take additional
| mechanics that explode into emergent behavior any day. And I
| would love to find another game that even comes close, but
| Rimworld sure as shit ain't it.
| baby wrote:
| I think to different people their own, but I went with
| rimworld because I wanted to play a game
| zhynn wrote:
| You are correct about logistics, but that is such a small part
| of DF to nitpick on that I have to push back. The logistics
| aren't the Fun part, and no other game has come close to DF on
| the Fun stuff.
|
| DF things that come to mind that no other colony-sim has:
| - 3 dimensions (z-levels) and all of the shenanigans
| (hydraulics, creative traps, etc) that go with them -
| geological and historical civilization simulation -
| the inter-relatedness of the game session to the history of the
| world is a story-generating masterpiece. - The "zones"
| (surface, caverns, spoilery places) and how different they
| feel. Oxygen Not Included does this kinda, but not as deeply.
| - Three different games in one using the same procedural engine
| and world: Adventure Mode, Legends Mode, Fortress Mode (Steam
| edition is currently missing Adventure mode and it will
| probably be a while). - The "flavor" procedural systems:
| Villain, Religion, Instrument/Music, Literature, Forgotten
| Beasts. They don't have tons of impact on gameplay, but it
| makes the lore so much more rich. - Sub-biome
| "surroundings" regions (Good, Evil, Savage, Benign) which have
| large effects on gameplay. Evil areas can be hilarious Fun.
| - the pacing feels just right to me. It's not realistic from a
| simulation perspective (skills increase too quickly, it takes
| very little time to build complex things, etc), but it "gets to
| the good parts" in a very satisfying duration in my opinion.
| The combat takes longer than it should, but then stories can
| happen.
|
| This game is a wonder.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| arketyp wrote:
| Good for them. I'm glad such a personal lifetime project and
| piece of art can sustain in these cynical times.
| tgtweak wrote:
| Not counting the countless countless millions of copies of knock-
| off games sold on many platforms since dwarf fortress began.
| smcleod wrote:
| It's a real shame the steam version is for Microsoft Windows
| only.
|
| I guess I could try running it with Wine but that's not ideal.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| Presumably just "for now"
|
| Plus I'm sure it works fine on Proton
| sphars wrote:
| According to ProtonDB[1], it's rated as Platinum
|
| [1]: https://www.protondb.com/app/975370
| ttctciyf wrote:
| > steam version [...] I guess I could try running it with Wine
|
| Seems like you're not familiar with Proton[0], The "Wine +
| enhancements" compatibility layer that the native Linux version
| of Steam uses to run the majority[1] of significant Windows
| games.
|
| User reports are that DF runs without problems under
| proton[2,3,4]
|
| Anecdotally, as a thoroughgoing and (evidently) shameless
| cheapskate, I can report the free "classic" ascii only Windows
| version[5] works well under stock Wine-staging via apt on my
| Ubuntu laptop.
|
| Having said all that, I share your sadness that a native Linux
| version wasn't released along with the windows Steam release,
| though reportedly it is planned for the future[6,7]
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(software)
|
| 1: https://www.protondb.com/
|
| 2: https://www.protondb.com/app/975370
|
| 3:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zwk7b8/linux...
|
| 4:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zsv6fl/insta...
|
| 5: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/df_50_05_win.zip
|
| 6: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/11/dwarf-fortress-
| release...
|
| 7: References by Tarn Adams to "the ports", e.g.:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/z82m0g/im_ta...
| legitster wrote:
| It's crazy how much money they were leaving on the table this
| whole time.
|
| My mind is trying to wrap my head whether their lives would have
| been better or worse had they done this much sooner. I'm not sure
| I have a conclusion.
| massysett wrote:
| I'm guessing worse: they've had years to refine this game. To
| see an example of what a game without that refinement period
| looks like, just see any early Paradox release.
|
| They can be satisfied that they didn't start charging until
| they had a refined product.
| zhynn wrote:
| Also, they could focus entirely on their own vision for the
| project instead of being totally reliant on delivering for
| the marketplace.
|
| They had "slack" (in the slack/moloch sense) to try out weird
| ideas that may not have been possible if they were relying on
| sales revenue instead of donations to stay afloat.
| Jolter wrote:
| It comes down to your personality, I think. Whether you prefer
| to finish a project and move on, or whether you want to polish
| a product until it's perfect. This is conscientiousness taken
| to the extreme, you could say.
|
| I'm sure their chosen way of working has made them a lot
| happier than launching a half-baked game as "early access" ten
| years ago. Even though that could have afforded them a much
| more comfortable lifestyle, I have a feeling the gaming public
| might have gotten tired of the game and moved on.
| nix23 wrote:
| I just can say....super happy for them they really earned it!!
|
| Polished and free for so many years....excellent!
| aliqot wrote:
| Good. Fuck cancer.
| toto444 wrote:
| I have noticed every time cancer is mentioned there are a lot
| of 'fuck cancer' comments. May I know where the expression
| comes from ?
| praptak wrote:
| I remember an xkcd strip ending with that phrase:
| https://xkcd.com/931/
| lygaret wrote:
| https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/11/11/fuckcancer/
|
| Also, generally, it's a way to express solidarity with the
| reality that a lot of time there's no "hoping for good news",
| "buck up" is a horrible thing to say, and just... well, fuck
| cancer.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| I think until you have someone close experience it you can't
| truly appreciate the sentiment. From my experience, having
| someone go through it is an awful, helpless time. I've heard
| having parents go through alzheimers is similar.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I don't know if it's thought of in popular culture as "coming
| from" a specific source, but I know people have been saying
| it for a lot longer than the internet. It's been
| independently coined a million times at least. It's really
| the only thing you can think to say sometimes to sum up the
| experience for everybody involved.
| nvusuvu wrote:
| There is an unmeasurably large amount of suffering due to
| cancer. Not just from the people that have directly
| experienced it. Watching helplessly as it consumes the bodies
| and minds of your loved ones is devastating. Its likely that
| someone expressing that sentiment has dealt with that
| fallout. My heart goes out to them.
| lkbm wrote:
| Context: One of the developers got cancer, and while he was
| okay this time (health-wise and financially), they realized
| maybe some financial security would be smart given how much
| treatment could cost:
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xypb5/the-dwarf-fortress-cr...
| [deleted]
| robotnikman wrote:
| I'm glad his game was a success on steam, cancer sucks and I
| hope he gets the best treatment he can.
|
| It's always great to hear of uplifting stories like this.
| curiousgal wrote:
| I like how people just take getting bankrupt by medical bills
| as a given now. Cancer is not to blame in my opinion.
| EasyTiger_ wrote:
| Surely this will end cancer
| IntelMiner wrote:
| "Positive sentiments? Psh, sarcasm is way more fun"
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| Wish this was available on an M1!
| jwcooper wrote:
| Having dabbled in dwarf fortress over the years, I think they did
| a really nice job on the steam release. It must have been a
| daunting project to streamline most/all of the features in DF.
|
| Congrats to the team on their success!
| wheats wrote:
| >streamline most/all of the features in DF
|
| What features did they streamline? I thought they just replaced
| the ASCII graphics with sprites and changed some hotkeys?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Cursor-based interfaces was probably a big one. They also
| have things like minimaps, dwarf sprites that reflect
| equipment gender and profession. It's more than just a
| tileset. I think they also made a new jobs template system.
| Arrath wrote:
| As minor as it is, having a settings screen you can tweak
| ingame instead of a .txt config file in the install folder
| you have to twiddle with and then relaunch the game is a real
| nice change.
| seanhunter wrote:
| 1)Labour, as a sibling said. You no longer need dwarf
| therapist to play the game without losing your marbles
|
| 2)Automining veins is now part of the base game rather than a
| dfhack thing
|
| 3)The military UI is still confusing and counterintuitive but
| it's a billion times better than before. I've actually
| managed to effectively train, equip and station troops and
| deploy them in combat without having to check the wiki.
| There's no way I could do that in classic and I've played a
| fair amount of DF
|
| 4)Things like the minecart UX and the thing which specifies
| how bridges open etc are way less confusing than before.
| Small, but there are thousands of UX improvements like that.
|
| 5)Rather than sometimes it's hjkl and sometimes wasd and
| sometimes arrow keys and sometimes numpad and sometimes you
| can select a box and sometimes you select the first tile and
| then the last tile to get a rectangle and sometimes you
| select the first tile and then use hjkl (or sometimes wasd)
| to grow your rectangle to the size you want, now you click
| the first tile, then the last tile. For everything. Building
| bridges, specifying zones, specifying burrows, building
| stockpiles etc, they all work the same. (Ironically there is
| a keyboard cursor if you want that but it is buggy for me at
| the moment.)
|
| 6)The system for worldgen and embark is also a lot better.
| For example you don't have the 3 weird confusing maps any
| more, you just have a big map and if you zoom in you get
| another map where you can pick exactly where you want to
| embark and the size.
|
| 7)Notifications. They all appear on the side in cronological
| order with an appropriate icon, you can hover to get the
| basics or click to see more or interact. Right-clicking
| dismisses them.
|
| I could go on but you get the idea. There are lots of
| examples like this. It's still DF, but at least _playing_ it
| isn 't some Kafka-esque bullshit nightmare.
| bradford wrote:
| There's a massive difference between Steam DF and the
| previous DF that I played (granted, that was probably in
| 2019).
|
| It's a totally new UI between the two versions: it's much
| friendlier to a broad population while still retaining the
| same game mechanics.
|
| [edit] I'll also add my favorite change: performance. Before
| the steam version I always ended up abandoning my fort
| because the framerate just became unbearable. In the steam
| version I have yet to encounter these issues.
| netruk44 wrote:
| I haven't played the Steam version, but it's my understanding
| the menus aren't keyboard-based anymore. That alone is a
| massive undertaking, Dwarf Fortress has an insane number of
| submenus for them to figure out good GUI places for them all.
|
| Everything used to just be in a central massive "press a
| single letter for this specific submenu" sub-screen on the
| right third of the screen, with multiple submenus to navigate
| to what you're trying to do.
| mijoharas wrote:
| Yes, they also implemented a tutorial, which I think is
| new, and reordered and reorganised the menus iirc. (This is
| from memory so I could of course be wrong).
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| All the menus are still keyboard navagable, if you have
| that muscle memory already. I think that's a great touch
| Octopodes wrote:
| Are you certain? I've played the classic version for ten
| years and the Steam release has completely different
| hotkeys, and is missing keyboard control for some tasks
| entirely.
| MrLeap wrote:
| This isn't true, as far as I know. Some menus are, but
| hotkeys have been changed quite a bit. Quite a few menus
| seem mouse only.
|
| I can't ABABABABABAB to add a bunch of beds to a
| carpenter anymore, DD doesn't mine.
|
| The hotkey path for placing doors in the steam version is
| bananas. Still a great game! Hoping there's a mod or a
| patch that lets me use the classic keys with the new
| interface eventually though.
| [deleted]
| Hikikomori wrote:
| You csn select bed and select placing multiple ones now,
| so no need to spam hotkeys.
| Arrath wrote:
| Place, yes. But queuing them up for crafting in a
| workshop is a chore of clicks before you have an office
| set up for making work orders.
|
| Nested menus in workshops get even worse. God forbid
| having to click and scroll Steel -> Weapon -> Battleaxe
| too many times.
| pacoWebConsult wrote:
| Agree there's definitely some quirks with building and
| making things not via work orders. Even for queuing up a
| couple of copper greaves at a metalworker's shop (because
| my king is obsessed with demanding their creation and
| banning their export), I opt for work orders rather than
| going through and selecting armor -> copper -> greaves
| twice.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Or when 20 something dwarves plummet into lave in a
| tragic mining accident and you need to engrave all the
| slabs? awful. On the whole, the UI stuff is a significant
| improvement, though.
| Arrath wrote:
| Yes, there are some definite losses in the move to a
| mouse based interface. I'm glad I had enough of a break
| from my last ASCII DF play, so my muscle memory isn't
| driving me insane. Some of the hotkeys are a little rough
| (requiring a big stretch across the keyboard or two hands
| on the kb but I'm using a mouse now..) and I hope they
| get another pass.
| MrLeap wrote:
| YUP. Critical functions (doors?!) should all be on the
| left side of the keyboard if you're going to make me use
| the mouse.
|
| Wonder if the publishers use DVORAK or something.
| Arrath wrote:
| Whoever settled on B-P-R for doors is some form of
| sadist.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| The real move is to get in the habit of forbidding your
| fancy stuff by default, and then using "closest material"
| and "keep building after placement" for all furniture.
| yAak wrote:
| UX
| Macha wrote:
| One example of "something was a pain in the ass but no longer
| is" streamling is that you can dig a stairway across levels
| and it will put a down stair on the top level and up/down
| stairs on the middle levels and a up stair on the bottom
| level.
|
| In the "the feature is less complex" in the steam version
| (note most of these are still in the simulation, just missing
| from the GUI so inaccessible to the player), some examples
| are:
|
| - Health and body part level damage - Reading historical logs
| - Ammo - Idlers counter
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Is it true that you can't manually choose what kind of
| stairs to place anymore if you want to? I read a Steam
| review that claimed that your stair example is true, but it
| doesn't always work perfectly and there's no way to
| manually specify what kind of stairs you want. Honestly
| kept me from buying the game for now.
| Corazoor wrote:
| As far as I can tell: yes. The top z-layer of designated
| stairs will always become pure down, the bottom layer
| pure up.
|
| But I think you can get around that by designating one
| more z-level than you need, and then removing that.
| Blueprint mode or designation priorities might also work.
|
| Tell you what, I am going to try now, will post my
| results shortly.
|
| Edit: Yes this works. After finishing the designation, it
| will change to the corresponding stair type. By doing one
| more z-level, you move the "down/up only" layer there,
| and can remove it. The designations in the level below
| will not change as a result.
|
| For anyone wondering: Yes, this is still an improvement
| over the old way of doing it.
| burnished wrote:
| Why was that the thing that kept you off? I have not
| played in a while, is it that impactful?
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Well, it is fairly impactful in that if the automatic
| stair generation puts a down stair where an up/down stair
| should have been, there is no way to completely fix it.
| You can build the correct stairs, but it will never be
| carved out of natural rock since that rock has been
| removed. Call me crazy, but that's a distinction that
| matters to me in what is effectively a procedural story
| generator.
|
| More generally, it speaks to a level of sloppiness that
| tells me I'm better off waiting a couple of years. I've
| played a lot of buggy DF builds over the years. It's just
| part of the experience, but I don't have as much free
| times as I used to so I'd rather wait than play through
| the bugs these days.
| scambier wrote:
| There are stairs that only go up or down?...
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Yes. Lets see if I can make an ASCII rendition that
| renders correctly. `-` is level floor, `v` is a down
| stair, `x` is an up/down stair and `^` is an up stair.
| The simplest possible stair connection between layers is
| a down stair above with an up stair below:
| ---v--- ---^---
|
| To make a very tall staircase, you can either stack pairs
| of stairs next to each other (this approach actually has
| some gameplay benefits, but isn't usually necessary):
| ---v----- ---^v---- ----^v---
| -----^---
|
| Or, you can use up/down stairs, which are a single block
| that acts as both an up and a down stair:
| ---v--- ---x--- ---x--- ---^---
|
| In the ASCII game, you had to place all of these
| manually, so you were in full control. In the new Steam
| game, it's my understanding that you just select the top
| and bottom layers for your staircase and it automatically
| builds the "right" stair types for you. The problem I
| have seen reported is that sometimes it will erroneously
| designate something like this: ---v---
| ---v--- ---x--- ---^---
|
| This staircase does not allow dwarves to transit from
| layer 2 up to layer 1, and permanently removes material,
| meaning it's not possible to completely fix the mistake.
| scambier wrote:
| Ah I see, that makes sense to build stairs in a shape of,
| huh, stairs. Thanks for that explanation :)
| flohofwoe wrote:
| I don't know the classic version all too well (because I
| never got into it despite multiple attempts), but the Steam
| release is generally much more approachable (so far I have
| put over 50 hrs into it and love it).
|
| It has a simple tutorial, the interface is fully mouse
| driven, there's sound effects and music, and the tile
| graphics really do a great job to visualise what's going on
| in the game.
| agentwiggles wrote:
| Sounds I need to stay well away from this game for now
| haha, I bounced off Factorio several times over the last
| few years and got wildly addicted to it a couple months
| ago. I imagine a similar fate could be in store with DF if
| I let myself peek in.
|
| I've got a decent run on a side project right now, and I've
| noticed that (no surprise) when I get into a new game, all
| of a sudden all of my "healthy" hobbies like guitar,
| weightlifting, and coding go out the window.
|
| Definitely planning to take a run at Dwarf Fortress
| eventually though.
| wpietri wrote:
| I feel that for sure. Both the risk-of-wild-addiction
| part and the kills-my-other-efforts part. There are whole
| classes of games I don't dare play because they feel like
| being productive/creative but have shorter/better reward
| feedback loops than the things I'd rather be doing.
| theragra wrote:
| Yeah, my thoughts exactly. I'm now writing short post
| each day, and think it is better spent time then playing
| Factorio for two hours, like my friend does.
| jackmott42 wrote:
| That is a non charitable but fairly accurate way of phrasing
| it. I would say more accurate would be to say the user
| interface was completely rethought and much more
| approachable.
|
| I couldn't play the game before, now it is a joy.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| On the other hand, for DF veterans "just replaced the ASCII
| graphics with sprites and changed some hotkeys" would have
| been the most charitable thing they could have done. I
| haven't played the Steam version yet, but my reading of
| reviews gives me the strong impression that they've changed
| so much that I will have to approach it as an entirely new
| game.
| Arrath wrote:
| The labor system is the biggest thing that got refined.
|
| Instead of painstakingly assigning jobs to dwarves in a very
| fine grained process through the labor menu for each
| individual, dwarves are assigned to jobs.
|
| That is, the vast majority of jobs are by default assigned to
| all dwarves, and the game intelligently assigns work based on
| dwarf skill and pathing distance. You are free to tweak labor
| settings from there, for instance by assigning a forge to be
| the exclusive workplace of a legendary weaponsmith and only
| making weapons at that forge, or specializing miners to only
| mine so that they won't find themselves cleaning fish when
| idle between mining gigs. You can also create custom work
| profiles more akin to the old setup, enabling or disabling
| specific tasks and then assign that profile to specific
| dwarves if you want to get so detailed. However I find the
| new system works very well.
| Natsu wrote:
| Usually, I have to worry more about miners hauling the rock
| they just mined to a stockpile.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Is that different from simply making all labors enabled by
| default in old dwarf fortress?
|
| >the game intelligently assigns work based on dwarf skill
| and pathing distance
|
| sounds like mostly what happened before.
| Arrath wrote:
| That's a good question! I am not too familiar with how
| job assignment worked under the hood in classic DF so I
| can't really answer. I'm mostly going off of a devlog and
| a followup reddit post from one of the Kitfox folks.
| Sharlin wrote:
| I don't think the old system cared about either
| proficiency or proximity, it just picked whomever was
| available. Besides, there was no way for the player to
| "make all labora enabled by default" in the previous
| versions, or even "enable/disable one particular labor
| for all", because you could only toggle labors for a
| single dwarf at a time.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| I'm quite certain that proximity has been accounted for
| for many years. Obviously availability was a
| prerequisite.
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| Proximity, yes. But unlike before if you do decide to let
| everyone do everything now you'll still end up biasing
| toward a set of dwarves that consistently gain
| proficiency instead of a freewheeling rotation of
| everyone doing everything and nobody getting good at
| anything.
|
| It is a new paradigm to play through, and the immediate
| reaction a lot of old time players had was negative on
| this, but the idea was that instead of having to
| micromanage every labor for every dwarf, you can just let
| most things be open to anyone and it won't be super
| wasteful.
|
| There are a number of changes like that which are geared
| toward making something less tedious, even if some people
| don't like the the change on principle.
|
| I do think there is a lot of work to be done on the new
| DF but they're out the gate running. Really need to
| implement a system to stop dwarfs from trapping
| themselves, which admittedly was never part of the base
| game but DFhack did a lot of QOL stuff that they should
| really incorporate into this new version.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> I 'm quite certain that proximity has been accounted
| for for many years._
|
| Except for when you desperately need someone to pull that
| lever to raise the drawbridge to head off a horde of
| feral elves, and it assigns the job to a staggeringly-
| sober one-legged basketweaver who's having a party in a
| copse of trees halfway across the map.
| baby wrote:
| Subthread: anyone else wants to join my support group for people
| who don't get these games? I tried rimworld, which seemed much
| easier to get into, and it seems like a sims-like game except
| that unlike sims it's very unintuitive. I've been trying to
| figure out how to enjoy this game the same way I enjoyed sims
| when I was younger, and it dawned on me that I never really
| played sims the "correct" way and rather just did things because
| I wanted to see these things happen in my sims people's lives.
| That makes sense. But what's a colony? What do I want to do with
| that colony? I got confused by the lack of feedback from my
| decisions (or the complexity and depth of every decisions you can
| make) and realized at some point that I was not enjoying the game
| coz I was just trying to figure out the mechanics in order to
| win. Maybe I'm playing it wrong. Maybe the whole point of this
| game is to have some sort of digital terrarium?
| jackmott42 wrote:
| >I never really played sims the "correct" way and rather just
| did things because I wanted to see these things happen in my
| sims people's lives
|
| That is exactly how to play DF. There is no winning. Just do
| what you want, see what happens. I'm working on creating the
| greatest library in the world, hoping to get elven and human
| visitors to learn and contribute even more knowledge.
|
| It does get harder as I get older to enjoy this stuff, but I
| have my moments.
| wkdneidbwf wrote:
| patiently waiting the macos version. i want to play the new
| version so bad!
| helf wrote:
| Tried it under Rosetta2 or whatever it is called?
| SllX wrote:
| Rosetta 2 only translates x86_64 Mach-O binaries to ARM64;
| you still need a Mac version.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| You can run it on m1 under x86 wine via rosetta
| ("wineskin") [0].
|
| Turtles all the way down!
|
| 0: https://macresearch.org/play-dwarf-fortress-mac/
| SllX wrote:
| I'll have to take you at your word because that link sent
| my browser into an endless refresh loop, but that is
| crazy. How is Wine's performance on an M1? Asking for a
| friend.
| coldpie wrote:
| Pretty good. Free trial of a commercial version here:
| https://www.codeweavers.com/ (I used to work there.)
| wkdneidbwf wrote:
| i saw someone on reddit write up getting it working
| repackaging the steam version it with wineskin or
| something like that. it was enough work that i though,
| "meh, i'll wait".
|
| i'm not going to bother with parallels or some other
| emulation solution. i can be patient.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| It's a giant pain in the... Urist.
|
| I did manage to get it running with some weird incantation of
| x86 wine though; it worked exactly once and then not again..
|
| I then just rented a vm from shadow.tech for it instead,
| which works fine. Also works on linux under proton, if you
| have any old laptop in a drawer..
| helf wrote:
| Huh. I haven't used macs daily for a long time. So no help
| forthcoming on that from me lol
|
| I am curious to see how the steam version runs on older
| hardware. I know they have worked a lot on multi threading
| and 64bit.
|
| When I last played it It was still single threaded
| basically entirely and I had to build single or dual core
| systems specifically for running DF.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Apparently the blocker is Apple's binary notarization
| shp0ngle wrote:
| huh, why is that a problem? You can do it from Linux (or
| Windows) nowadays, with some Rust-based thing
|
| edit: this
|
| https://docs.rs/apple-codesign/latest/apple_codesign/
| wheats wrote:
| Has there been any word on a timeline for the MacOS Steam
| version?
| Octopodes wrote:
| It has not yet been addressed to my knowledge, but I'm hoping
| that with an additional developer on board, it will come more
| quickly even if it's not a top priority.
| jmorenoamor wrote:
| I'm really happy for them, a labour of love and passion o er the
| years.
|
| I hope they keep working on it.
|
| Congratulations!
| Sozar2000 wrote:
| [dead]
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