Bay 12 Games Forum

Nice guide. You should check out the wiki - it's got guides that have been worked on by many people over periods of years. I think you'd enjoy editing it.

NAAAARGGH

alcohol does not explode

people, please stop posting about it as if it does

Dwarf fortress is single threaded I believe.

That doesn't matter. At all.

In layman's terms, the main boost to speed that one gets with a newer processor these days comes from the much greater efficiency with which the processor is designed.

The logs are actually saved in /gamelog.txt, I think - and that can be faked, with a little difficulty.

I don't suppose you have an earlier save, Meanmelter?

I'm almost with the OP. The interface could use a little reorganizing, so that the letter names were more consistent... but it's quite fast as it is, and mouse support wouldn't really help most people. Once you've played for a while, the keyboard is *really* fast.

ooookay. I think I'll just stop trying to do this. I had an unknown number of arbitrarily named *.map files, and I wanted to automatically discover all of their names so said names could be presented to the user. Since I'm going to totally redo this system, and since it currently works as long as I don't put everything in a jar, it's probably best not to spend too much time on it.

This is my only remaining question: "I tried to do some javadoc comments, but when I run it from the command line it doesn't like that my .java files are sometimes encoded in UTF-8 w/o BOM - the only Unicode format I've gotten javac to accept."

Again, thanks for the help!

Savok, you don't think the code is great ? Well maybe not looking at it from years of experience or anything, but it takes most people alot more then a few weeks to learn to code somewhat effectively on their own.

Threading, Using Polling, Integration between UI and game-logic. The fact that you care about that's great and its a good thing to think about, But remember its your first small project. Don't be to hard on yourself.

And its great to see a good attitude on the project with regards to it as a learning one. You might need to learn a bit about algorithms before fully attempting it though.

I just took the opportunity to check out your code Savok. Definitely ahead of the curve for someone with your experience. If you keep writing java (and you should, even if you pick another language to learn and use as well), you should get used to adding javadoc comments to every class and method. This has two advantages, it can help you keep your own code strait for yourself, and it can be used to automatically generate a javadoc website explaining your interface when you get to the point where you are going to want to work with others on a large project.

:D *encouraged*

I tried to do some javadoc comments, but when I run it from the command line it doesn't like that my .java files are sometimes encoded in UTF-8 w/o BOM. (since I'm working with CP437, I have to use a bunch of unicode characters, which are then translated to CP437 for output. This would actually be pretty easy to expand to all of Unicode if I had a tileset.)
I've gotten my most recent work to a point where it's not too embarrassing to show to people; if anybody actually wants to see it (and by the download counter on the last one, it seems they do), they can find it here (source files are inside the jar - open it). I've edited the OP to reflect this.

If you don't mind, I have a short java question whose answer I couldn't find from hours of searching: If you've compiled the program to a .jar, how do you get a list of the files in the .jar? Since the program doesn't know what files are in there and it wants to dynamically load them, this is troublesome.

As long as it doesn't use the name, it's fine with me, legally speaking.  Overall, I think if you're going to put this much effort forth, it's important to strive to do your own thing, but I imagine that'll happen during the course of a long project in any case.

Thanks. I hope you don't mind me quoting your PM here.

I also think that deciding to program a DF-like for your first big programming project is like deciding to climb Mt. Everest after you've learned a bit of mountain climbing, but you're the only one who knows what you can pull off!

Yes I did read the OP, and I am saying that you have only a few weeks of experience, I looked at your code and its quite good for someone of your experience. But at the same time, DF has taken years of development. Even imitating something like it would be a difficult task, and probably not need the speed advantage of C. What do you plan to do, Pathfinding is a given, but what else, are you going into water-simulation, How advanced would the AI be. All I'm saying is that imitating DF would be an extremely complex project.

SECONDEDIT: Sorry if the post sounds like its criticising your skills too much but I tend to get pessimistic of new programmers trying to recreate something that has taken people with alot more experience years to do

That code looks good to you? Thanks, I guess. ...I thought it was embarrassingly inept. I mean, srsly, I'm getting input solely through polling! No use of threads! I have terrible design-with-an-eye-towards-the-future in most of the files; I'm just getting back to the game logic code after revamping the interface, and it's so bad I'll just have to totally rewrite it!

If I try to climb Mt. Everest and fail a tenth of the way up, instead of hiking all over, say, Appalachia, then... well, the metaphor breaks down here, but I'll have something much greater. And - I think that, if Toady, self-taught programmer, can do it, I can too (however blasphemous that statement sounds); it's a question of how much time I have to and want to spend.

REPLY TO SECONDEDIT AS LABELED WITH THE CAPSLOCK KEY ON: It's okay. I'll probably fail.

Also:

If I get as far as pathfinding and The Pathfinder Project bears fruit, I'd love to be able to use it. Would this be impossible or cause a significant speed penalty if I used Java?

Still interested in the answer.