English right after the link.
This one was made for my indie gaming blog, in pt_br:
http://indiegamers.com.br/2013/01/08/entrevista-com-tarn-adams-o-criador-de-dwarf-fortress/- What is your motivation to work as a game developer? How did it start?I've been writing games since I was a little kid. My dad wanted my brother and I to be familiar with computers, so he started us up with BASIC around the time we entered elementary school. Aside from all the PC games, we were also surrounded by console games, and it was just natural to go into writing games for us.
- How many games do you have in your portfolio? Do you have plans to produce more titles?We put out about 15 games on the web page, most of them very small, before we released DF. We'd written literally hundreds of things,
small and large, before that, but we weren't releasing anything in the 80s or 90s. The existence of the web page is kind of a fluke by itself. We have side projects that we are working on now, but we don't have any specific release plans.
- Your actual business model is based in donations. Can you make a living out of it?Yeah, we're doing okay. The amount of money I'm making now is about the same as my salary at my old job, but it's being used to support two people instead of one.
- What do you think of this surge of indie game developers? Is there space for everyone to show their products?No, I think it's getting to the point where people are being crowded out, sometimes for no good reason. How bad it is depends on the platform and the genre. I think it's cool that a lot of people are working though.
- Do you have any words to those who want to start working as indie developers?It depends on what they want to get out of it. I don't know enough about the business side of things to be of any use. I'd tell people to try to work on unique projects, since that's what I like, but if they were so inclined, they would already be doing that.
- Do you have plans to enter in beta stage, or are we talking about an eternal alpha game?It's certainly going to be an alpha for a long time. I think the phrase "eternal alpha" brings some baggage with it that might not
apply to DF even now, but that might not be for me to say.
- Why dwarfs?That came out of the origins of the game as an accident more or less. DF was originally Mutant Miner, about human miners digging for mutagen
cannisters to grow extra arms, and then it became a fantasy game about mining and dwarves were a natural fit. Then it became our main fantasy game (taking the place of Armok 1), and so dwarves are the focus of our main fantasy game.
- Oh, and why ASCII art?Faster development, mainly. Armok 1 was bad 3D and development was slower.
- Every creature in DF has a unique profile with personal tastes. Do you have plans to improve even further their AI?Yeah, all of that stuff will be expanded over time. The next release sees some development in shorter-term emotions and so on.
- Do you have plans to change the interface to something more mouse oriented?Nope. There might be more mouse support, but I doubt it'll take over.
- Do you have plans to make lighter versions of DF for smartphones and tablets?It might happen once those things can support it, but the display on phones is probably too small. If the platform moves to support the current DF, DF might be ported, but I don't have time to support vastly different versions.
-How do you define fun in Dwarf Fortress?He he he, it is amusing when things go very wrong. People have fun in various ways -- there's the "losing is fun" motto, but that isn't
everything.
