<!--quoteo(post=1762656:date=Apr 4 2010, 05:21 PM:name=spellman23)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (spellman23 @ Apr 4 2010, 05:21 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1762656"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->One of my first things after getting food supply up and running is have my carpenter build a wooden cage to store all the kitties.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I can imagine it now: "Cat Exports Ltd." - Or rather, <i>un</i>limited with how the silly buggers breed.
Someone needs to kill me for that.
Actually! This reminds me! *Runs to the Youtube video thread*
The cat problem (better known as catsplosion) isn't a bug like melting dwarves is, it's a "feature." It's a variety of systems working as intended which end up resulting in a rather unfortunate situation.
The catsplosion in detail: It's an issue with the pet system. Given that there is at least one adult male and female of a given kind of pet in the fortress, the female will eventually give birth to offspring. Animals are assumed to fend for themselves and thus do not consume food or require any other sort of upkeep, which means that they can theoretically multiply endlessly. This leads to clogged hallways and, even worse, excess processor load due to the calculation of every pet's behaviour. This development can be kept in check by butchering excess animals (with the useful byproducts of this process being meat, leather and bone). This is where the pet system comes into play. Fortress animals can be made available as pets, which allows dwarves to adopt them. If an animal is adopted by a dwarf, it can no longer be butchered. So you just don't allow animals to become pets, right? Well, unlike most animals, you have no control over this process with cats - they are ALWAYS available as pets (in fact, they adopt a dwarf, not the other way around - works exactly the same way, but it's a cute little detail), and thus can turn "immune" to crowd-controlling butchery at any moment. But okay, there's ways of getting rid of excess animals other than butchery, right? Just drop 'em off a high ledge somehow. Or crush them under a drawbridge. Or drown them. Yeah, all of those work, but dwarves tend to get upset if their pets die. An unhappy thought here and there is no big issue, but lots of unhappy thoughts are. And cats tend to favour specific dwarves, meaning that with enough cats in the fort you can easily have several dwarves with ten or more pet cats each. So suddenly you have several dwarves who have each lost many pets and are thus severely unhappy, putting them at high risk of tantrum. And once several dwarves tantrum, the entire fort is at risk of tantrum cascade, which can spell doom to the mightiest fortress.
tl;dr: Cats are easily one of the biggest dangers your fort can face.
<!--quoteo(post=1762422:date=Apr 3 2010, 06:44 AM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Apr 3 2010, 06:44 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1762422"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Not as good as isometric but certainly passable and not far from the current implementation.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The reality is that it is almost impossible to come up with some kind of 3d interface that has the requried information density without investing MASSIVE amounts of time and effort in doing so. Honestly after half an hour of playing DF, the graphics melt away and you just see your little dudes doing their thing.
<!--quoteo(post=1762651:date=Apr 4 2010, 04:44 PM:name=Dirty_Harry_Potter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Dirty_Harry_Potter @ Apr 4 2010, 04:44 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1762651"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Just to be clear, I'm not bashing the game. Though I must admit I too am stumped by the UI, and ASCII graphics, which is why I gave up shortly after trying the game out for a while. But the stories of people's forts I've heard about are just wonderful. I wish I had the 'stamina' to work my way through the learning curve.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Just a few tools, that will help uget through the UI, once they have been updated to work the the newest DF version:
Dwarf Therapist: Allows you to easily manage dwarf jobs among other stuff. <a href="http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=39229.0" target="_blank">http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=39229.0</a> Working, but buggy release for 0.31.01 <a href="http://dwarftherapist.googlecode.com/files/DwarfTherapist-0.4.3.zip" target="_blank">http://dwarftherapist.googlecode.com/files...apist-0.4.3.zip</a> <img src="http://dwarftherapist.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/img/dt_alpha.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Stonesense: Generates an isometric view of your fort in real time :) <a href="http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=43260.0" target="_blank">http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=43260.0</a> <img src="http://i.imgur.com/ttDya.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
locallyunsceneFeeder of TrollsJoin Date: 2002-12-25Member: 11528Members, Constellation
Playing dwarf fortress with ASCII graphics is better in the way reading a book is better than watching a movie. You can let your imagination fill in the gaps and that is why the stories are so compelling. It would have been difficult to do our community story fortress in any other game.
It is bad in the way that you can't easily bring other people into that world. You may be ecstatic that your legendary wrestler tore out a goblin's hipbone in the middle of your massive obsidian engraved fortress and then made a gem encrusted named drinking glass out of it, but all your friend sees is a red 'g' surrounded by some red periods and a 'd'.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Cypher - Whoa, Neo. You scared the bejeezus out of me. Neo - Sorry. Cypher - It's okay. Neo - Is that... Cypher - The Matrix? Yeah. Neo - Do you always look at it encoded? Cypher - Well you have to. The image translators work for the construct program. But there's way too much information to decode the Matrix. You get used to it. I... I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, red-head. Hey, you a... want a drink? Neo - Sure.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to elevate DF's graphics to some sort of ideal state, but once you see more than gibberish on the screen it does gain a certain appeal.
<!--quoteo(post=1763300:date=Apr 8 2010, 06:40 PM:name=locallyunscene)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (locallyunscene @ Apr 8 2010, 06:40 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1763300"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Playing dwarf fortress with ASCII graphics is better in the way reading a book is better than watching a movie. You can let your imagination fill in the gaps and that is why the stories are so compelling. It would have been difficult to do our community story fortress in any other game.
It is bad in the way that you can't easily bring other people into that world. You may be ecstatic that your legendary wrestler tore out a goblin's hipbone in the middle of your massive obsidian engraved fortress and then made a gem encrusted named drinking glass out of it, but all your friend sees is a red 'g' surrounded by some red periods and a 'd'.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Books and films are different things, I like both, for different reasons, neither one is better than the other.
Imagination can apply to any game, it applies to even the most modern games when you have things like a first person perspective, and you only imagine how cool your character looks doing the things you're doing. It can certainly apply to things with SNES level graphics. Graphics do not preclude imagination, at their most fundamental, they enhance it. By communicating game elements to you faster than esoteric symbols and text descriptions, they remove the need to <i>interpret</i> what is happening, and free you up to simply collect the information, process it, make changes, and then collect more information. Or to play the game in other words. Your imagination is the only thing that makes the difference between performing a menial task and playing a game.
<!--quoteo(post=1765640:date=Apr 10 2010, 09:34 PM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Apr 10 2010, 09:34 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1765640"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Books and films are different things, I like both, for different reasons, neither one is better than the other.
Imagination can apply to any game, it applies to even the most modern games when you have things like a first person perspective, and you only imagine how cool your character looks doing the things you're doing. It can certainly apply to things with SNES level graphics. Graphics do not preclude imagination, at their most fundamental, they enhance it. By communicating game elements to you faster than esoteric symbols and text descriptions, they remove the need to <i>interpret</i> what is happening, and free you up to simply collect the information, process it, make changes, and then collect more information. Or to play the game in other words. Your imagination is the only thing that makes the difference between performing a menial task and playing a game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> The thing with dwarf fortress, though, all the information is there. Just like comparing a book to a movie, the book forces you to use your imagination to fill in some holes, but it's FAR more communicative than the film in other ways. Dwarf fortress IS the same situation, it's not that the information is missing, it's just not graphical.
Complaining about dwarf fortress' graphics IS like complaining that your sci fi novel isn't as graphically appealing as star wars is. It's a totally different genere, the complaint ITSELF is nonsensical.
Toady spent 60ish hours a week, for the last year, upgrading from the last version to the current version, in which he changed the way bodies and wounds are simulated, added some universe data fixes, added an advanced medical system, added a new in fort military control system, and allowed for random events to take place underground (with some other stuff as well). If there was art involved in this project he would have to just give up, it wouldn't be possible for one man to write a simulation at this level any more.
It's more like complaining that your scifi book is trying and failing badly to describe something succinctly, and in a way which doesn't require rereading several times in order to make sense of, and outright refuses to just include an illustration.
I.e it's complaining that the novel is badly written and the writer is an obstinate pillock who won't take any steps to improve the way it's written, and instead just decides to add more badly written pages to the book in the belief that makes up for his inability to write properly.
You can write a book that is merely a third person past tense description of a complicated event, but it will be a very boring book. Alternatively you can write it well and not try to describe everything in great detail and instead do what all good books have to do, and ignore the fine details, instead using the limited amount of text you are allowed to describe only the important events. If you try to describe everything else, the book gets dull.
Unless you have something that can quickly and easily communicate a very complex thing (as in a picture) you are limited in the amount of detail you can put in without making your work cumbersome and difficult to read/use/intepret. DF apparently doesn't realise this.
Simple graphics means limited gameplay, complex graphics means more complex information can be communicated in the same amount of time and with the same ease, and thus the complexity of the game can be increased as well.
tl;dr: Dwarf Fortress is hard to get into and hard to control, lack of juicy graphics has nothing to do with it.
It's quite possible to intelligently design a user-friendly interface - interface is not just the menu, look it up - on any platform given some effort. However, we are talking about just one guy here.
No Chris. It doesn't "try and fail" to describe things succinctly, it just (heh, "just") requires you to "learn a new alphabet" to read it. I point back to my earlier skateboarding metaphor: It's hard to learn and you'll get a lot of bruises, but once you know how to do it it's easy. At some point you're going to have to take my word for this, because I'm the one who has actually learned to read the Matrix and I do see all those blondes and brunettes and redheads. Pity they all have beards though. :/
And it's not a matter of "just including an illustration." You're asking him to turn a book into a comic. And further, you're asking this of someone who doesn't really know how to draw.
So, to repeat: DF is hard to get into, but works quite well once you do.
<!--quoteo(post=1765784:date=Apr 11 2010, 12:39 PM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (lolfighter @ Apr 11 2010, 12:39 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1765784"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->No Chris. It doesn't "try and fail" to describe things succinctly, it just (heh, "just") requires you to "learn a new alphabet" to read it. I point back to my earlier skateboarding metaphor: It's hard to learn and you'll get a lot of bruises, but once you know how to do it it's easy. At some point you're going to have to take my word for this, because I'm the one who has actually learned to read the Matrix and I do see all those blondes and brunettes and redheads. Pity they all have beards though. :/
And it's not a matter of "just including an illustration." You're asking him to turn a book into a comic. And further, you're asking this of someone who doesn't really know how to draw.
So, to repeat: DF is hard to get into, but works quite well once you do.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
When you write a book you don't write it using your own rules of grammar just because you don't feel like learning how to use the same language everyone else does, you learn to write it in a language other people can speak, and you don't demand that they learn your own personal made up one.
Similarly, when you make a game, you make it so that as many people can play it as possible, it is a very poor excuse to say 'I wasn't making it for YOU' and it doesn't make the game any better when you give an excuse.
The game could very possibly be made more accessible, I can think of plenty of ways, the only reasons it isn't are incompetence on the part of the developer, or an unwillingness to put the effort into learning how. Basic photoshop abilities and writing a basic sprite based graphics engine are both second year modules at my university, they are not hard to learn. Especially photoshop as that took me about a week.
MonkfishSonic-boom-inducing buttcheeks of terrifying speed!Join Date: 2003-06-03Member: 16972Members
Graphic tilesets in dwarf fortress is like taking a book and then replacing all the words with pictures of what the words are. But only using the same amount of space that the world takes up on the page.
You just end up with an illegible mess that looks worse than what you started out with. You don't need detailed fractal patterns for floor tiles, you don't need poorly rendered pixel pictures of donkeys to show a donkey. ASCII that <b>represents</b> what you're trying to describe is better for DF than trying to over complicate it with blurry, oversized pictures that are harder to understand and process than simple letters.
It's nobody elses fault that you couldn't take a few minutes to actually try and understand the matrix rather than dismissing it outright based on your own crappy judgements. A brown <!--coloro:#663300--><span style="color:#663300"><!--/coloro-->8<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> is a bed. a green coloured full stop is grass<!--coloro:#33CC00--><span style="color:#33CC00"><!--/coloro-->.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> 2 blue <!--coloro:#000099--><span style="color:#000099"><!--/coloro-->~<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> ontop of each other is water and 2 red ones is magma!
It's easier and quicker to read letters than full pictures that fail to represent the letters. That's just cold dorf fact.
<!--quoteo(post=1766177:date=Apr 12 2010, 01:18 PM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Apr 12 2010, 01:18 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1766177"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->When you write a book you don't write it using your own rules of grammar just because you don't feel like learning how to use the same language everyone else does<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Oh how I wish Tolkien was still required reading.
Seriously though, if it's about "basic sprites," use a goddamn tileset. It's not that difficult.
Tilesets are inadequate, as stated they do nothing to improve the legibility of the program, they just change the symbols.
A raster tileset however with better resolution would greatly improve it because you can represent most things easily in a 64x64 full colour square, or even just a few hundred colours.
Things like early HOMM games represent things easily in low resolution with a few strong colours, and have tooltips for anything you don't immediately get: <img src="http://i43.tinypic.com/35b74sg.gif" border="0" class="linked-image" />
That's 640x480 which means ten 64x64 tiles wide, which is slightly less than a low res DF game I think, although naturally as we all have bigger screens than that you could increase the number of tiles visible drastically. Obviously with raster graphics you could make two tilesets easily enough using photoshop's mass conversion to scale them down to 32x32 which gives you twice as much on screen if you need the space, or you could implement a zoom level and switch between them quickly.
The entire point of graphics is that you don't need to learn that two ~ on top of each other is water, because you can instead simply look at the screen and see that it's water. It removes the whole 'see the matrix' rubbish and allows everyone an immediate understanding of the game environment, it's simply better, by every possible measure it is an immediate and major improvement, therefore it should be an immediate and major priority for any thoughtful developer.
Combined with a mouse interface and proper tooltips which follow the mouse for ease of reading, and you get a much better interface that then improves all aspects of the game, because everything is better with a better interface, as the interface is involved in everything you do.
I have read tolkien, it uses standard english grammar, a little old fashioned but not significantly departed from our current language, and certainly not at its time of writing. It makes up a lot of names but most proper nouns are made up anyway because that's why we have proper nouns more or less.
It may need updating in a century or so, maybe sooner if language develops faster than the last century, otherwise it's OK.
Man, how could anyone guess that blue wavy lines are water. They could be, like, bluebirds or something. And since when is grass GREEN? That's just stupid.
<!--coloro:grey--><span style="color:grey"><!--/coloro-->Varied ground tiles on and engravings start obscured off is a terrible set of default values. One thing with the graphics is that they really do tell you a lot of the information you need to know. Realistically, most objects in the world need no status information, or only need detail info. Beings do get a lot of status information (that you need to learn) indicating things about their health, hunger, thirst, etc.
The graphics also don't take very long to learn. The basic things, ground, water, stone, dwarves, are quickly learned. A lot of the other important things should be straightforward, i.e. you build x and a new symbol appears on the screen. Some workshops are a little more confusing than they might be with graphics and creatures can be confusing, but with the variety of creatures possible it's probably only a minor issue.
Finally, the 2d slice system works perfectly fine for DF because very few things really happen in open spaces. The only thing you really miss in DF is seeing what stuff is there on the "ground" when you are in an "above ground" slice. But really, what are you "missing" when looking at a single level slice of a fort? If you are indoors, you'd need to look at a slice to do anything easily.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
For something that is primarily planar, yes I agree, you need slices. But you should be able to see through space. You could largely solve it by simply flagging open air tiles as having the 'translucent' property (each tile gets a new bit of info that says how to handle textures) and if a tile has the translucent flag set, it renders that tile and then looks below it for another texture to render behind the first tile. Open air gets a tile which is a sort of fog texture and which has a very faint alpha channel, so something that has one square of open air between you and it would have a faint foggy overlay, as it looks further and further the fog overlay would get more intense because it's rendering more layers, and eventually at about ten or so, it is just fog and it stops looking after that. If a tile is not marked as translucent it just renders that tile and doesn't look any further, occluding anything lower and keeping the overhead down for more complex indoor areas as it only renders one level at a time (unless you dig out a multi level cavern but I don't suppose many people do that).
Of course this is somewhat inefficient, it would be better to have a proper shader set up to handle air and simply increase the alpha rather than having all this overdraw, and this could also be used for things like water, where it renders faintly until it gets deep enough, for water I would suggest it becomes solid at whatever level is lethal for dwarfs to cross as that's the depth you need to watch out for. But DF is hardly graphically intensive so you could probably get away with the hacky implementation.
The translucent property is also versatile in that if you have a dwarf or some item on a tile, if the dwarf or item texture is set to translucent, it can show the dwarf standing on the tile so you don't need to really make a new system, it would just be part of the standard texture system for displaying one object on top of another.
<!--quoteo(post=1766219:date=Apr 12 2010, 04:00 PM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Apr 12 2010, 04:00 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1766219"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I actually can't see green properly and I'm sure you're not facetious enough to pretend that the DF symbology is entirely transparent on first glance.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> It's nowhere near as opaque as you paint it, either. And yes, being visually impaired will certainly reduce your ability to, y'know, perceive things visually.
<!--quoteo(post=1766177:date=Apr 12 2010, 12:18 PM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Apr 12 2010, 12:18 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1766177"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The game could very possibly be made more accessible, I can think of plenty of ways, the only reasons it isn't are incompetence on the part of the developer, or an unwillingness to put the effort into learning how. Basic photoshop abilities and writing a basic sprite based graphics engine are both second year modules at my university, they are not hard to learn. Especially photoshop as that took me about a week.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> isnt this the entire point they were making for the last fifteen posts that toady could work on graphics/interface but has chosen not to and that we are fine with that decision?
<!--quoteo(post=1766322:date=Apr 12 2010, 07:44 PM:name=Align)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Align @ Apr 12 2010, 07:44 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1766322"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->isnt this the entire point they were making for the last fifteen posts that toady could work on graphics/interface but has chosen not to and that we are fine with that decision?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1766325:date=Apr 12 2010, 08:48 PM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Apr 12 2010, 08:48 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1766325"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You may be, I am not.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> We play DF. You don't. Our satisfaction matters more to Toady than yours does.
MonkfishSonic-boom-inducing buttcheeks of terrifying speed!Join Date: 2003-06-03Member: 16972Members
In lighter news .03 has come out! <a href="http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/df_31_03.zip" target="_blank">http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/df_31_03.zip</a>
Fixes the path finding bugs and makes undead more killable while he works out wtf they're doing to make them so invincible.
<!--quoteo(post=1765749:date=Apr 11 2010, 05:29 AM:name=Chris0132)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chris0132 @ Apr 11 2010, 05:29 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1765749"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It's more like complaining that your scifi book is trying and failing badly to describe something succinctly, and in a way which doesn't require rereading several times in order to make sense of, and outright refuses to just include an illustration.
I.e it's complaining that the novel is badly written and the writer is an obstinate pillock who won't take any steps to improve the way it's written, and instead just decides to add more badly written pages to the book in the belief that makes up for his inability to write properly.
You can write a book that is merely a third person past tense description of a complicated event, but it will be a very boring book. Alternatively you can write it well and not try to describe everything in great detail and instead do what all good books have to do, and ignore the fine details, instead using the limited amount of text you are allowed to describe only the important events. If you try to describe everything else, the book gets dull.
Unless you have something that can quickly and easily communicate a very complex thing (as in a picture) you are limited in the amount of detail you can put in without making your work cumbersome and difficult to read/use/intepret. DF apparently doesn't realise this.
Simple graphics means limited gameplay, complex graphics means more complex information can be communicated in the same amount of time and with the same ease, and thus the complexity of the game can be increased as well.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> No. DF doesn't "Not realize it" the project wouldn't work if that were the scope of it. The ASCII is just as good as tile based representations, an identical amount of information is communicated, and even just "upgrading" to that level of art would lengthen development time by double, and you would gain absolutely NOTHING. Animation would quadruple development time, 3D rendering would bring it to the point of ridiculousness.
"Simple graphics means limited gameplay, complex graphics means more complex information can be communicated in the same amount of time and with the same ease, and thus the complexity of the game can be increased as well."
This statement is half truth. Certain things don't make any sense with simplistic graphics, I can think of hundreds of reasons why I wouldn't want DF style graphics in a shooter... but I've never seen an RTS game as graphically brilliant as most shooters are, however, there are things that graphics do for a RTS game that would also make it non ideal to use ASCII graphics, turret orientation, animation for spells and unit reactions... But that isn't the genre of DF either.
It comes down the the focus of a game. The focus of a shooter is the interaction between the player, and other entities running around in a 3 dimensional world which you must effectively point and click on. The focus of an RTS game is the interaction between entities representing military ordnance of some type. DF has a different focus, the focus is the simulation of a large and elaborate world. Because simulation is primary, entities have a TON of 'stuff'. Most simulators are entirely nongraphical, but DF gives you an interface to view the simulation from and that interface gives you some interesting options for interaction.
It's simply false that the better the graphics are, the more complex the gameplay can be. You can have very simplistic games with very elaborate graphics (like most shooters), and you can have very complex games with extremely simple graphics (DF).
There are areas which better graphics allow for interesting options in gameplay, for example, the turret orientation in an RTS, attack from the front, behind, and what not... but that's just not the kind of game DF is. It has it's priorities, and it's just not really even reasonable to argue that the fact that graphics are not it's priority devalues the game as a whole. There are a million games out there where graphics are the priority. But this is something different, and it's uniqueness is what makes it so valuable.
Comments
Someone needs to kill me for that.
Actually! This reminds me! *Runs to the Youtube video thread*
The catsplosion in detail:
It's an issue with the pet system. Given that there is at least one adult male and female of a given kind of pet in the fortress, the female will eventually give birth to offspring. Animals are assumed to fend for themselves and thus do not consume food or require any other sort of upkeep, which means that they can theoretically multiply endlessly. This leads to clogged hallways and, even worse, excess processor load due to the calculation of every pet's behaviour. This development can be kept in check by butchering excess animals (with the useful byproducts of this process being meat, leather and bone).
This is where the pet system comes into play. Fortress animals can be made available as pets, which allows dwarves to adopt them. If an animal is adopted by a dwarf, it can no longer be butchered. So you just don't allow animals to become pets, right? Well, unlike most animals, you have no control over this process with cats - they are ALWAYS available as pets (in fact, they adopt a dwarf, not the other way around - works exactly the same way, but it's a cute little detail), and thus can turn "immune" to crowd-controlling butchery at any moment.
But okay, there's ways of getting rid of excess animals other than butchery, right? Just drop 'em off a high ledge somehow. Or crush them under a drawbridge. Or drown them. Yeah, all of those work, but dwarves tend to get upset if their pets die. An unhappy thought here and there is no big issue, but lots of unhappy thoughts are. And cats tend to favour specific dwarves, meaning that with enough cats in the fort you can easily have several dwarves with ten or more pet cats each. So suddenly you have several dwarves who have each lost many pets and are thus severely unhappy, putting them at high risk of tantrum. And once several dwarves tantrum, the entire fort is at risk of tantrum cascade, which can spell doom to the mightiest fortress.
tl;dr: Cats are easily one of the biggest dangers your fort can face.
The reality is that it is almost impossible to come up with some kind of 3d interface that has the requried information density without investing MASSIVE amounts of time and effort in doing so. Honestly after half an hour of playing DF, the graphics melt away and you just see your little dudes doing their thing.
<!--coloro:#A0522D--><span style="color:#A0522D"><!--/coloro-->T<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
Oh hell run.
--Scythe--
Couldn't have said it better myself, DHP.
Dwarf Therapist:
Allows you to easily manage dwarf jobs among other stuff.
<a href="http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=39229.0" target="_blank">http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=39229.0</a>
Working, but buggy release for 0.31.01
<a href="http://dwarftherapist.googlecode.com/files/DwarfTherapist-0.4.3.zip" target="_blank">http://dwarftherapist.googlecode.com/files...apist-0.4.3.zip</a>
<img src="http://dwarftherapist.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/img/dt_alpha.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Stonesense:
Generates an isometric view of your fort in real time :)
<a href="http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=43260.0" target="_blank">http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=43260.0</a>
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/ttDya.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
The iso view is nice (mmm extra gravy), but I'm extra happy about Therpist to help manage my jobs. Wheee!
It is bad in the way that you can't easily bring other people into that world. You may be ecstatic that your legendary wrestler tore out a goblin's hipbone in the middle of your massive obsidian engraved fortress and then made a gem encrusted named drinking glass out of it, but all your friend sees is a red 'g' surrounded by some red periods and a 'd'.
Neo - Sorry.
Cypher - It's okay.
Neo - Is that...
Cypher - The Matrix? Yeah.
Neo - Do you always look at it encoded?
Cypher - Well you have to. The image translators work for the construct program. But there's way too much information to decode the Matrix. You get used to it. I... I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, red-head. Hey, you a... want a drink?
Neo - Sure.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It is bad in the way that you can't easily bring other people into that world. You may be ecstatic that your legendary wrestler tore out a goblin's hipbone in the middle of your massive obsidian engraved fortress and then made a gem encrusted named drinking glass out of it, but all your friend sees is a red 'g' surrounded by some red periods and a 'd'.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Books and films are different things, I like both, for different reasons, neither one is better than the other.
Imagination can apply to any game, it applies to even the most modern games when you have things like a first person perspective, and you only imagine how cool your character looks doing the things you're doing. It can certainly apply to things with SNES level graphics. Graphics do not preclude imagination, at their most fundamental, they enhance it. By communicating game elements to you faster than esoteric symbols and text descriptions, they remove the need to <i>interpret</i> what is happening, and free you up to simply collect the information, process it, make changes, and then collect more information. Or to play the game in other words. Your imagination is the only thing that makes the difference between performing a menial task and playing a game.
Imagination can apply to any game, it applies to even the most modern games when you have things like a first person perspective, and you only imagine how cool your character looks doing the things you're doing. It can certainly apply to things with SNES level graphics. Graphics do not preclude imagination, at their most fundamental, they enhance it. By communicating game elements to you faster than esoteric symbols and text descriptions, they remove the need to <i>interpret</i> what is happening, and free you up to simply collect the information, process it, make changes, and then collect more information. Or to play the game in other words. Your imagination is the only thing that makes the difference between performing a menial task and playing a game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The thing with dwarf fortress, though, all the information is there. Just like comparing a book to a movie, the book forces you to use your imagination to fill in some holes, but it's FAR more communicative than the film in other ways. Dwarf fortress IS the same situation, it's not that the information is missing, it's just not graphical.
Complaining about dwarf fortress' graphics IS like complaining that your sci fi novel isn't as graphically appealing as star wars is. It's a totally different genere, the complaint ITSELF is nonsensical.
Toady spent 60ish hours a week, for the last year, upgrading from the last version to the current version, in which he changed the way bodies and wounds are simulated, added some universe data fixes, added an advanced medical system, added a new in fort military control system, and allowed for random events to take place underground (with some other stuff as well). If there was art involved in this project he would have to just give up, it wouldn't be possible for one man to write a simulation at this level any more.
I.e it's complaining that the novel is badly written and the writer is an obstinate pillock who won't take any steps to improve the way it's written, and instead just decides to add more badly written pages to the book in the belief that makes up for his inability to write properly.
You can write a book that is merely a third person past tense description of a complicated event, but it will be a very boring book. Alternatively you can write it well and not try to describe everything in great detail and instead do what all good books have to do, and ignore the fine details, instead using the limited amount of text you are allowed to describe only the important events. If you try to describe everything else, the book gets dull.
Unless you have something that can quickly and easily communicate a very complex thing (as in a picture) you are limited in the amount of detail you can put in without making your work cumbersome and difficult to read/use/intepret. DF apparently doesn't realise this.
Simple graphics means limited gameplay, complex graphics means more complex information can be communicated in the same amount of time and with the same ease, and thus the complexity of the game can be increased as well.
It's quite possible to intelligently design a user-friendly interface - interface is not just the menu, look it up - on any platform given some effort. However, we are talking about just one guy here.
And it's not a matter of "just including an illustration." You're asking him to turn a book into a comic. And further, you're asking this of someone who doesn't really know how to draw.
So, to repeat: DF is hard to get into, but works quite well once you do.
And it's not a matter of "just including an illustration." You're asking him to turn a book into a comic. And further, you're asking this of someone who doesn't really know how to draw.
So, to repeat: DF is hard to get into, but works quite well once you do.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
When you write a book you don't write it using your own rules of grammar just because you don't feel like learning how to use the same language everyone else does, you learn to write it in a language other people can speak, and you don't demand that they learn your own personal made up one.
Similarly, when you make a game, you make it so that as many people can play it as possible, it is a very poor excuse to say 'I wasn't making it for YOU' and it doesn't make the game any better when you give an excuse.
The game could very possibly be made more accessible, I can think of plenty of ways, the only reasons it isn't are incompetence on the part of the developer, or an unwillingness to put the effort into learning how. Basic photoshop abilities and writing a basic sprite based graphics engine are both second year modules at my university, they are not hard to learn. Especially photoshop as that took me about a week.
You just end up with an illegible mess that looks worse than what you started out with. You don't need detailed fractal patterns for floor tiles, you don't need poorly rendered pixel pictures of donkeys to show a donkey. ASCII that <b>represents</b> what you're trying to describe is better for DF than trying to over complicate it with blurry, oversized pictures that are harder to understand and process than simple letters.
It's nobody elses fault that you couldn't take a few minutes to actually try and understand the matrix rather than dismissing it outright based on your own crappy judgements. A brown <!--coloro:#663300--><span style="color:#663300"><!--/coloro-->8<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> is a bed. a green coloured full stop is grass<!--coloro:#33CC00--><span style="color:#33CC00"><!--/coloro-->.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> 2 blue <!--coloro:#000099--><span style="color:#000099"><!--/coloro-->~<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> ontop of each other is water and 2 red ones is magma!
It's easier and quicker to read letters than full pictures that fail to represent the letters. That's just cold dorf fact.
Oh how I wish Tolkien was still required reading.
Seriously though, if it's about "basic sprites," use a goddamn tileset. It's not that difficult.
A raster tileset however with better resolution would greatly improve it because you can represent most things easily in a 64x64 full colour square, or even just a few hundred colours.
Things like early HOMM games represent things easily in low resolution with a few strong colours, and have tooltips for anything you don't immediately get: <img src="http://i43.tinypic.com/35b74sg.gif" border="0" class="linked-image" />
That's 640x480 which means ten 64x64 tiles wide, which is slightly less than a low res DF game I think, although naturally as we all have bigger screens than that you could increase the number of tiles visible drastically. Obviously with raster graphics you could make two tilesets easily enough using photoshop's mass conversion to scale them down to 32x32 which gives you twice as much on screen if you need the space, or you could implement a zoom level and switch between them quickly.
The entire point of graphics is that you don't need to learn that two ~ on top of each other is water, because you can instead simply look at the screen and see that it's water. It removes the whole 'see the matrix' rubbish and allows everyone an immediate understanding of the game environment, it's simply better, by every possible measure it is an immediate and major improvement, therefore it should be an immediate and major priority for any thoughtful developer.
Combined with a mouse interface and proper tooltips which follow the mouse for ease of reading, and you get a much better interface that then improves all aspects of the game, because everything is better with a better interface, as the interface is involved in everything you do.
I have read tolkien, it uses standard english grammar, a little old fashioned but not significantly departed from our current language, and certainly not at its time of writing. It makes up a lot of names but most proper nouns are made up anyway because that's why we have proper nouns more or less.
It may need updating in a century or so, maybe sooner if language develops faster than the last century, otherwise it's OK.
The graphics also don't take very long to learn. The basic things, ground, water, stone, dwarves, are quickly learned. A lot of the other important things should be straightforward, i.e. you build x and a new symbol appears on the screen. Some workshops are a little more confusing than they might be with graphics and creatures can be confusing, but with the variety of creatures possible it's probably only a minor issue.
Finally, the 2d slice system works perfectly fine for DF because very few things really happen in open spaces. The only thing you really miss in DF is seeing what stuff is there on the "ground" when you are in an "above ground" slice. But really, what are you "missing" when looking at a single level slice of a fort? If you are indoors, you'd need to look at a slice to do anything easily.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
~~Sickle~~
Of course this is somewhat inefficient, it would be better to have a proper shader set up to handle air and simply increase the alpha rather than having all this overdraw, and this could also be used for things like water, where it renders faintly until it gets deep enough, for water I would suggest it becomes solid at whatever level is lethal for dwarfs to cross as that's the depth you need to watch out for. But DF is hardly graphically intensive so you could probably get away with the hacky implementation.
The translucent property is also versatile in that if you have a dwarf or some item on a tile, if the dwarf or item texture is set to translucent, it can show the dwarf standing on the tile so you don't need to really make a new system, it would just be part of the standard texture system for displaying one object on top of another.
It's nowhere near as opaque as you paint it, either. And yes, being visually impaired will certainly reduce your ability to, y'know, perceive things visually.
isnt this the entire point they were making for the last fifteen posts
that toady could work on graphics/interface but has chosen not to
and that we are fine with that decision?
that toady could work on graphics/interface but has chosen not to
and that we are fine with that decision?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You may be, I am not.
We play DF. You don't. Our satisfaction matters more to Toady than yours does.
Fixes the path finding bugs and makes undead more killable while he works out wtf they're doing to make them so invincible.
I.e it's complaining that the novel is badly written and the writer is an obstinate pillock who won't take any steps to improve the way it's written, and instead just decides to add more badly written pages to the book in the belief that makes up for his inability to write properly.
You can write a book that is merely a third person past tense description of a complicated event, but it will be a very boring book. Alternatively you can write it well and not try to describe everything in great detail and instead do what all good books have to do, and ignore the fine details, instead using the limited amount of text you are allowed to describe only the important events. If you try to describe everything else, the book gets dull.
Unless you have something that can quickly and easily communicate a very complex thing (as in a picture) you are limited in the amount of detail you can put in without making your work cumbersome and difficult to read/use/intepret. DF apparently doesn't realise this.
Simple graphics means limited gameplay, complex graphics means more complex information can be communicated in the same amount of time and with the same ease, and thus the complexity of the game can be increased as well.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No. DF doesn't "Not realize it" the project wouldn't work if that were the scope of it. The ASCII is just as good as tile based representations, an identical amount of information is communicated, and even just "upgrading" to that level of art would lengthen development time by double, and you would gain absolutely NOTHING. Animation would quadruple development time, 3D rendering would bring it to the point of ridiculousness.
"Simple graphics means limited gameplay, complex graphics means more complex information can be communicated in the same amount of time and with the same ease, and thus the complexity of the game can be increased as well."
This statement is half truth. Certain things don't make any sense with simplistic graphics, I can think of hundreds of reasons why I wouldn't want DF style graphics in a shooter... but I've never seen an RTS game as graphically brilliant as most shooters are, however, there are things that graphics do for a RTS game that would also make it non ideal to use ASCII graphics, turret orientation, animation for spells and unit reactions... But that isn't the genre of DF either.
It comes down the the focus of a game. The focus of a shooter is the interaction between the player, and other entities running around in a 3 dimensional world which you must effectively point and click on. The focus of an RTS game is the interaction between entities representing military ordnance of some type. DF has a different focus, the focus is the simulation of a large and elaborate world. Because simulation is primary, entities have a TON of 'stuff'. Most simulators are entirely nongraphical, but DF gives you an interface to view the simulation from and that interface gives you some interesting options for interaction.
It's simply false that the better the graphics are, the more complex the gameplay can be. You can have very simplistic games with very elaborate graphics (like most shooters), and you can have very complex games with extremely simple graphics (DF).
There are areas which better graphics allow for interesting options in gameplay, for example, the turret orientation in an RTS, attack from the front, behind, and what not... but that's just not the kind of game DF is. It has it's priorities, and it's just not really even reasonable to argue that the fact that graphics are not it's priority devalues the game as a whole. There are a million games out there where graphics are the priority. But this is something different, and it's uniqueness is what makes it so valuable.