Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Honour3 on January 25, 2012, 06:45:07 pm

Alrighty.

I just thought it may be possible for Toady to hire/acquire 1 helper and go Steve Jobs, controlling every little bit he does and then placing him in the corner on "idle" whenever he wants. But that could take it out of the man, and the figures may not be astronomical enough for Toady to even dare risking what could allow him to work on DF independantly for even a single additional month (in a scenario that all fans die and god himself doesn't personally take over the responsibility to fund him - 99% sure it would happen).

What then do we say about purchasing a "license" to own the game? It's something that people would receive in exchange for donating and even though it would mean setting a figure of some kind (he may not want to put any price to it) it would open up donations from a very slightly different customer.
I am one of those people to be honest, but this discussion may have converted me - at least once I'm employed again.

"License" idea section of the post belongs in the suggestions area, but I thought I'd mention it here for people who read my initial post, of which discussing licensing was a major purpose (originally intending to increase production rate).

You're really missing the point here.  DF is not Minecraft (thank Armok).  DF is not going to be Minecraft.  DF has its own model - Toady works on it, we donate when and what we can.  Toady likes the model.  (Most) DF players like the model.  This has been discussed, to death, many times before.  Why are you so determined to make DF into something it's not?

Most people who make the suggestions related to Toady getting help aren't aware of how many times it's been beaten to death in the past.  Your last sentence, though perhaps accurate, was a bit over the top.

In this day and age, it's uncommon to encounter a person who makes a living doing a job they like in the way they want to do it, so it's understandable to find that many people here, after seeing the development pattern of the game, think they see room for improvement.  I know I did at one time, dig hard enough and you will see me making similar arguments in the past.

In a corporate world, yes, there would be room for improvement, but Toady's an independent operator and happy with how things are working for now.  Maybe some day he might pick up a helping hand.  He has collaborated at least one time before.  I'd like to see Toady pick up a helping hand to port DF into a multithreaded application, however I'm perfectly happy to let Toady make that call if and when he's ready.

*shrug*

Trying to get a volcano on a beach, without being on an island... anyone know a good seed/preferences for this?

Extract the prefstrings from this, and generate new tiny worlds with it, except with one change to allow border oceans.

http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=4521

(The above is the second most awesome map I've ever made, and it consistently generates good maps - the most awesome map I've created was a similar no-dwarves map, which wasn't indicated here as being desired)

Generating a tiny world is really fast, you can generate a whole bunch till you get what you want.

This is a highly volcanic seed designed for maximum minerals, minimal aquifiers, lots of rivers and adding oceans should give you at least a few decent oceanic volcano embarks after no more than a few world generations.

*EDIT*  Adding multiple ocean borders might cause issues, if the maps error out too much, try with only 1 or 2 ocean borders.

*EDIT2*  Actually it looks like there is already a coastal volcano on that map, bottom right.  Not sure if it's fresh or salt water though.

It's all nice and lovely, but seriously, Ponies aren't meant for war. Dwarves eat war. No contest. Also, ponies got magic? Dwarves got demon cat cannons.

Then again, the mobility of dem ponies would probably keep them safe from Dorf attacks.

So, stalemate. The best kind of war.

I am imagining a stalemate breaker.  Pony skirmishers hide in bushes and throw a single sock into the middle of a field with a clear field of view...

I'm waiting for my death pit under the entrance of my fort to fill with magma at .025 fps. I think next time I'm going to have to find a less flamboyant way of powering my pumpstacks. Or maybe dig the pit deeper so I don't have to pump as much.

Save.  Turn off temperature.  Start game, let reservoir fill.  Save.  Turn on temperature.

If you have not already tried this, that is.

  Where else can you guide anywhere from seven to 200 alcoholic dwarves to build a Rube Goldberg fortress with traps that can kill things (especially elves) in thousands of different ways?

<snip>

 I want Toady to be rich, I want a quicker development schedule, I want full publicity, I want every other game to look at DF and many of them to try aspire to make such a great game. This won't happen if it's controlled and progressed by only 1 set of hands.

<snip>

  Toady aparently is satisfied with the way things work now, and his work is moddable enough that a great number of people can take what he has done and run in many different directions with it.

  If Toady wanted to be rich, I imagine he could be making a great deal more money than he is now.  His talent for implementing absurdly complex code in a way that it is user configurable is quite evident.

  IMHO, Toady considers himself to be rich because he makes a living doing something he enjoys doing, and that he can do from his home.  Not a lot of us can say that.

  I play DF on and off, maybe two months a year, three at tops, because I tend to burn out on it after a while, go away for a few months, then return, lurk and post in the forums for a while, then start playing again (rinse, repeat).  I do this with pretty much every game I play, whether it's Wurm Online, Everquest 1, DF, or (currently) SWTOR which I am fairly sure that I'm not going to stick with long after I finish the storylines, because the post-storyline content seems really weak from what I've heard.

  I am highly respectful of Toady's coding ability, and his stick-tuitiveness, and am perfectly happy for him to continue to develop at the pace and manner which he wishes, even though I, like you, sometimes get impatient and want the next cool thing "right naow!"  heh.

  *salute* Toady

slight agreement with Loud Whispers than a hypocritical reply.


as far as getting limbs chopped off goes, it would hurt less to have the entirety of your arm removed violently, then it would to have a cut going from shoulder to wrist.

the reason for this is that the skin has most of your bodies pain receptors, while organs have quite few. this may not seem logical considering that organs seem to hurt more if injured, but that is because they are really ever injured normally.

so overall, from a DF standpoint (assuming DF is semi-accurate on this) multiple skin and fat injuries would hurt a hell of a lot more than a missing limb.

From a real world injury point-of-view I can state that for the first few seconds that I did actually feel pain before the adrenaline and such turned on and the pain turned off when I had my hand mangled, it felt no worse than smacking the hand with a hammer.  I've had more painful headaches.  Now, after the tinyalysis surgery to remove scar tissue from around the tendons a year later (butchered spelling, I'm sure) THAT was brutally painful, easily the worst pain I have ever felt, until I finally got on top of it with pain meds and got to sleep.  The next day I was fine, but the pain the night after the scar removal surgery was atrocious.

Could really make an argument either way for internal pain, but I think the two are differentiable because one was crude blunt trauma followed by a fight-or-flight reaction, and the other was clean surgery with no fight-or-flight adrenal reaction.

For me there was no difference after the first 24 hours after each incident, but the pain levels were staggeringly more intense after the surgery than after the accident.