Bay 12 Games Forum

people who say 'there might be a god or gods, I'm not sure either way' are called Agnostics. Not sure why, not sure who came up with it.

Agnosticism is a philosophy that deals with more than just gods.  The word itself stems from the greek "gnosis", which means knowledge.  Agnosticism deals with truth and certainty - not just in religion, but in everything.  It allows for the possibility that we are wrong.  If you jump off a building you'll fall to your death....probably...  All evidence points to that conclusion, but there is a very small possibility that some random/freak gust of wind might save you, or a passing roc, or whatever.  Doesn't mean an agnostic is going to go around jumping off buildings because they don't think they'll fall.  Just means that they're willing to admit that there is a possibility that you wouldn't fall to your death.

Most folks in America, if you get right down to it, are religiously agnostic.  Most folks will admit, regardless of which way they're leaning, that they can't be 100% certain.  You can be an agnostic theist (I think there's a god, but I can't be 100% certain) or an agnostic atheist (I don't think there's a god, but I can't be 100% certain).  As such, calling yourself an agnostic is almost useless.

There is no scientific evidence either for or against the existance of any God. Nothing in modern science eliminates the possibility of God creating it all.

Science is all about repeatable tests and predictions.  You have a theory.  You make a prediction based on that theory.  You run a test.  If you predicted correctly, that aspect of your theory looks good and you can test something else.  If you predicted incorrectly, that aspect of your theory needs to be revised somehow.

This means that talking about scientific evidence for or against gods is about as sensible as talking about the proper way to install a banana in your new computer.

Religion isn't about testing anything.  Religion isn't adjusted when your predictions come out wrong.  Religion is about following a specific set of rules regardless of what is going on around you.

How do you scientifically test that a god exists, when every time your test comes back negative the answer is simply "God did it."

Atheism is a religious viewpoint since you're have a stance on the whole creation of the world thing.

Atheism has nothing to do with the creation of the world.

Atheism is the belief that there are no gods.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Where the world/universe came from is not addressed in atheism.  If there are no gods it could not have a supernatural origin, but whether it was a big bang or quantum fart or whatever else is an entirely separate discussion.

I still think it's a stupid belief, but hey, whatever they want to believe. As long as it does not influence any non-believer's life. That is, total secularity for everything effecting the people rather than only the believers.

The problem with this is that religion causes people to do some really fucking stupid things.  And lots of innocent/uninvolved people get hurt.

Which isn't to say that we'd be living in a utopia if all religion went away...  But I firmly believe that religions and religious thinking cause far more harm than good.

I'm not talking about fringe nutcases who decide they're talking to Jesus and go on a killing spree.  But people who happily mutilate generation upon generation of children because some dusty old book says so.  Or folks treating women like cattle because god said so.  Or going to war because somebody claims their imaginary friend is better than your imaginary friend.

Quote from: Tsarwash on November 11, 2010, 07:45:59 am

I would like the position to be reversed

It is reversed. To be frank, I think to suggest that it isn't is an extremely ignorant statement to make. You appear to be letting the actions of perhaps less than one percent of the religious population sway your views, as I've never met anyone in person who acts the way you describe.

It is not reversed.  And I'm sick of religious folks claiming that I'm stepping on their toes with my atheism (no, I'm not claiming that's what you're doing) when, in fact, it's their religious beliefs constraining my actions.

Take a look at the whole gay marriage battle.  Sure, there's some generic cultural "gay is icky" milling around...  But it's largely fueled by religious folks who can't handle change.  And even the generic "gay is icky" is largely based on religious teaching.

Hell, to be completely honest, there's no good reason why the government should even care how many people I marry.  Make me buy the right licenses...  Tax us accordingly...  But who cares what your dusty old book claims about how many men can marry how many women?

How about what things consenting adults can do together?  Plenty of states have laws against sodomy, or even fellatio and cunnilingus.  Those laws are based on religious views that enjoying sex is a sin and the only reason to have sex is for procreation.  No, folks don't generally worry too much about those laws...  But there have been some fairly recent cases where folks were arrested for practicing safe, sane, and consensual BDSM.

And then there's prostitution, which is largely illegal.  Generally due to fundamentally religious issues.

And there's all the obscenity laws which generally boil down to religious issues.

There are some states where it is illegal to sell alcohol on Sunday...  And other counties where it's illegal to sell alcohol at all...  Both obviously stemming from religious beliefs.

Abortion is another great topic.  Regardless of whether you agree with it or not, it is going to happen.  And religious opposition continues to make it difficult and dangerous - leading to far more deaths than are necessary.

Sex education in general is suffering horribly due to religious opposition.

You can call it "Cultural Beliefs" if you want...  But that doesn't remove the onus from religion.  These "Cultural Beliefs" are inspired by religious indoctrination.  The only reason anybody thinks it should be illegal for two guys to get married is because they've had two thousand years of listening to priests tell them it's a sin.

Sorry all, I don't think I was clear enough in my original email.  Let me try and clarify.  Only the seasonal save "saves" the game.  If I click on save and exit I am booted out to the main menu however when I attempt to load the game I just saved it is non existant.  I can only load from the previous seasonal save.   Let me give you an example....

I start a new game, I play through one season and I get a seasonal autosave ("save 1").  I'm mid way through my next season and I need to stop playing.  At this point I have two choices

a) keep playing until my next seasonal save
b) click "save and exit" which in reality kicks me out to the main menu and means when I next play I have to load "save 1"

Surely this isn't working as intended?

I think part of the problem is that you're being a little too vague or general for us to really understand what is going on.

You should have a folder somewhere like C:\DFStuff\data\save\region1\

That's your "main" or "working" save.

There's also a C:\DFStuff\data\save\current\ that is pretty much useless.

Seasonal autosaves will get tagged with the year and season, like C:\DFStuff\data\save\region1-aut-2010\

If you load up the \region1\ game, play for a while, and then save - that \region1\ save gets overwritten.  There will be no \region2\ or \region1-newsave\ or anything like that.  Just plain ol' \region1\ - but it should be updated with all the stuff you did during your last play.

So...  Say you open up \region1\ and build a new bridge.  Then save.  Then load up \region1\ again.  Your bridge should be there.

If you open up \region1-aut-2010\ play for a bit, and then save - \region1-aut-2010\ will get overwritten.  You don't get a new save.  The save you loaded gets overwritten.

If you open up \region1-aut-2010\ and play long enough to get another seasonal autosave, it'll be called \region1-aut-2010-win-2010\ - that season/year tag gets appended to the name of whatever you loaded.  Even if it already had a season/year tag.  DF doesn't care.

If you open up \region1-aut-2010-win-2010\ and play long enough to get a seasonal autosave it'll be called \region1-aut-2010-win-2010-spr-2011\ - you get the idea.

So...  The question is...  If you open up \region1\ and build a bridge.  Then save.  Then open up \region1\ again.  Is your bridge there?  Or not?

To be fair, there is probably a bias on this forum with regards to how easy we'd tend to find the interface.

But it's primarily the interface that's at issue here.

The game itself really isn't that hard.  It's the interface that makes everybody freak out.

If this game was built with shiny graphics everywhere and friendly buttons that you could point and click, nobody would be complaining about the learning curve.  You'd still lose a couple forts getting started, but that's true of pretty much any game.  How many times did you lose the first time you played C&C, or Homeworld, or Warcraft 2, or whatever?  Dieing/losing is part of the learning process, and it's expected.

It's the whole ASCII interface thing that is the problem with DF.  People fire up the game and they don't see cute little dwarves, goblins, and kittens running through a fortress.  They see a wall of text.

And it isn't even that the UI is all that cumbersome...  You've got, basically, nested menus.  Look at pretty much any 4X title and you'll see the same thing.  Nested menus, or nested interface screens.  EVE's got a much worse UI (absolutely everything is done with a right-click) and it's all shiny and graphical.

The problem is purely the wall of text.

It isn't hard, it's intimidating.  People are frightened away from it.

It doesn't take a whole lot of effort to learn what the different symbols mean.  No more effort, really, than learning what the different units look like in any game.  It doesn't take a whole lot of effort to learn which command is in what menu.  No more effort, really, than learning the UI of any RTS or 4X game.  And once you've done that, DF isn't any more complex than Starcraft, really.

Well, it is...  But in an emergent way.  It isn't complex to build a working fort.  It's fairly simple to do that.  But it can be complex to build a megaproject, or get various advanced bits to play nice together, or deal with the new bugs introduced in various patches.

The learning curve in DF really isn't as steep as people think it is.

The game is intimidating, initially, due to the interface.  Once you get over that, though, and start messing around - you'll see that it really isn't that complex.

It doesn't take a whole lot of learning to get a basic fort up and running.

Yes, if you decide to start playing around with machinery and traps and the military and doing cool stuff like that it'll take longer to learn...  Hell, folks who've been playing for years are still learning new things...  But that's not learning to simply play the game, that's mastering the intricacies of the game.

Take a look at something like Starcraft.  It doesn't take long to learn how to just build a base and kill the other guys.  But if you want to be competitive in multiplayer it is going to take a lot of learning.  Again - that's not learning to play, that's mastering the intricacies.

Yes, I agree that the UI could be improved.  But I'm not sure you really need much more of an in-game tutorial.  It's a sandbox game, there is no "win" condition.  Most of the fun comes from your mistakes, and learning from them.  Take away those mistakes and you take a lot of the fun out of the game.

And, to be completely honest, I usually find in-game tutorials more annoying than anything else.

I usually look through the key configuration to figure out what button does what, and then go to on-line documentation like wikis to learn things I can't pick up on my own.

In-game tutorials are either too brief to be useful, or too extensive to be tolerable.

I think I'd most likely use it for a more dwarfy entrance to my fort.

To hell with a pansy door or drawbridge...  I could have an entire section of the cliff face slide open to reveal the entrance to my fortress.  Or maybe the entire entry hall could act as a giant door/trap - shift a 10x3 corridor down 1z to open up a hallway entrance to my fort, shift it back up 1z to crush whatever is inside.

DF is initially very intimidating.  It doesn't matter if you're looking at the pseudo-ASCII-GUI or a tileset...  It's overwhelming.  All the various designations and constructions and workshops and buildings...  Figuring out how it all fits together...  The first time I fired up DF it looked genuinely impenetrable.  Like I'd need a big ol' "For Dummies" book just to get started.

Once you get over that initial hurdle and start playing, however, it actually makes a good amount of sense.  It isn't really that complicated.

You can dig out a small fortress, farm/brew/whatever underground, and seal yourself in without too much trouble.  Sieges don't matter.  You can build a drawbridge if you really want to let migrants/traders in.  And you can just keep ticking away year after year...

But that gets kind of boring.

So then you get the brilliant idea to start playing.  Maybe I should build a military to deal with these invaders, rather than just closing the door...  Or maybe some fancy traps...  Maybe I should see what's in the caverns below...  How about using magma instead of coal?  Let's see how these pump things work...  And maybe I can trap and train some animals...

And that's when you hit the real learning curve.

Just getting a functioning fort isn't that hard, barring any early disasters and/or stupidity.

Getting a fort that's interesting enough to keep playing...  That's where the Fun comes in.  That's where you accidentally flood the place 12 times over when you're trying to build your first pump stack.  Or burn all your dwarves alive the first time you tap a magma pipe.  Or build your bridge backwards, or forget to link it to a lever, and somehow allow the invaders free reign of your fortress.  Or you dig a little too deep and suddenly you've breached a cavern you didn't know existed and you've got a forgotten beast eating your dwarves.

Like life, but without headaches and better karma.

This, basically.

I don't want some never-ending paradise.  Without any struggle the rewards don't seem nearly as good.  But it'd be nice if things were a little softer around the edges.  Not quite as harsh.  A little more forgiving.