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[mellonbread]

Dwarf Fortress breaks ALL of those rules and more, but for some odd reason, it's a damn good game.

Most of the rules of modern game design exist to make games profitable, not good.  Breaking them is often the first step to making something awesome.

[DwarfMeister]

I have tried to get lots of my friends to play it, but in most cases simply opening the game and being totally overwhelmed by the sheer complexity and the large amounts of seemingly random information turns them off almost instantly. And we're talking people who normally won't give up even in tough circumstances.

I had the opposite happen. There's a friend of mine that told me that he wasn't interested, but after watching me play it (and hearing me talk about how in depth it is), he finally decided to play. He's addicted now. Hehehe...

[DwarfMeister]

Most games follow a set of rules when they are programmed. They are designed to be easy to pick up and play, have a ton of shaders and 3d effects, Dolby Digital surround sound, a $60+ dollar price tag, tons of ads to tell everybody that it exists, etc. Dwarf Fortress breaks ALL of those rules and more, but for some odd reason, it's a damn good game. To put it simply, Dwarf Fortress is the Black Metal of video games. How did this happen?

IMO, it is a damn good game, and while it isn't (anywhere near) finished, it is probably the leader in its particular class.  If you released a Doom-like[1] in this sort of state, people would look towards it, then turn slightly to look at one of the many other examples of competition for that genre and tend to wander off in that direction.

Arguably, Minecraft has an overlap in one direction (being a similar sandbox, much better graphics, but lower 'depth' of game-history, which is something we appreciate), but I can't think of any overt copy (with all the attendant problems, thereof) that has been anything like Dwarf Fortress.

And its not being done for out-and-out commercial success, so the usually necessary actions needed to make something a commercial success just aren't necessary (or would cause problems, if done).

And there are plenty of games projects (and world simulators) out there of different types that are "geek supported".  It's not exactly an isolated incident.  It just so happens that I, you, and everyone else who will ever get around to reading these words (and loads of people who won't, but could easily have done) happen to have landed upon Planet Bay12 as some point.  I could just as easily have ended up as The Biggest Fan Of "Rigs And Rods" Evaaarrrr!!!!, in some alternate universe.  (Although, having seen their forums, my use of the word "Evaaarrrr", with or without excessive exclamation marks would have marked me down as overly intellectual insofar as written English goes. )


As for "shiny graphics", if we were so shallow as to only be able to work with shiny graphics, we wouldn't be (or remain) here.  There will always be an anti-audience who can't appreciate the visualisation as it is.  And there is a fringe who highly appreciate the third-party apps such as Stonesense.  Personally, I don't even use non-vanilla tilesets, but horses for courses.


I do think it is a shame that a lot of people I know can't be easily indoctrinated introduced to DF.  But, without being in any way elitists about it, there are definitely sufficient numbers of people out there to give it a fan-base, with the wonders of the modern connected world drawing together everyone in the world who has the wherewithal to appreciate it, and that system works.  If and when it does not it'll either be changed or sink beneath the waves but, just like Earth is neither at the centre of the Universe or even of the Solar System, the fact that we have this focus and can currently enjoy it is not inevitable, but can be celebrated as something happily so for the purposes of the current argument...


[1] Sorry, showing my age here.  Doom (original Doom!) was not even the first FPS of its kind that I played, but it set a benchmark in my life that I can't shrug off...

My brother introduced me to DOOM 2 when I was about 5 or 6. They don't make 'em like they used to...

Give THIS some thought- All video games are nowadays are physics simulators that are colored in by a graphics card.

[JohnieRWilkins]

Dwarf Fortress breaks ALL of those rules and more, but for some odd reason, it's a damn good game.

Most of the rules of modern game design exist to make games profitable, not good.  Breaking them is often the first step to making something awesome.

That's all well and nice but perhaps you and other posters in this thread are being too critical of other video game developers? To be fair, there are no means for any commercial video-game factory to compete with a man dedicating his entire life to making the best game possible. There's no feasible way to compete with that. That's actually why DF is the best game that will ever be. Toady's talent and dedication can't be matched.

[DwarfMeister]

Your GPU sits almost completely idle while playing DF. It's not a matter of computing power, it's a matter of programming time. You could play a mega-graphics DF on a same PC you play ascii DF as long as it had a decent GPU. It's just that Toady would rather spend time developing the game itself rather than the way it is presented (graphics, UI).

Do you think that he could, possibly, work on some kind of OpenGL support after version 1.0 comes out? You know... To keep himself busy for awhile? It' still awesome, nonetheless, so I'd still play it, regardless if he did or not. I wonder what kind of computer would be needed to run it...

Future news report- Government releases classified information on top secret extra terrestrial supercomputer that can run Dwarf Fortress with OpenGL support...

[DwarfMeister]

Dwarf Fortress breaks ALL of those rules and more, but for some odd reason, it's a damn good game.

Most of the rules of modern game design exist to make games profitable, not good.  Breaking them is often the first step to making something awesome.

That's all well and nice but perhaps you and other posters in this thread are being too critical of other video game developers? To be fair, there are no means for any commercial video-game factory to compete with a man dedicating his entire life to making the best game possible. There's no feasible way to compete with that. That's actually why DF is the best game that will ever be. Toady's talent and dedication can't be matched.

And, sometimes, exploding some walking dead with a shotgun blast can be as awesome as DF. Sometimes...

[Starver]

Do you think that he could, possibly, work on some kind of OpenGL support after version 1.0 comes out? You know...

Given the general impression of how long before v1.0 will arrive, I'd be surprised if OpenGL (as we'd recognise it today) would not be considered too archaic a technology to support.  (And that's taking into account that OpenGL is still going strong 20 years or so after its inception!)

[DwarfMeister]

Do you think that he could, possibly, work on some kind of OpenGL support after version 1.0 comes out? You know...

Given the general impression of how long before v1.0 will arrive, I'd be surprised if OpenGL (as we'd recognise it today) would not be considered too archaic a technology to support.  (And that's taking into account that OpenGL is still going strong 20 years or so after its inception!)

He damn well better not use Direct3D!!!

[KoboldWarmonger]

The game is already rendered with opengl..

[DwarfMeister]

The game is already rendered with opengl..

I MEANT in 3D!!!

[Uristocrat]

Most games follow a set of rules when they are programmed. They are designed to be easy to pick up and play, have a ton of shaders and 3d effects, Dolby Digital surround sound, a $60+ dollar price tag, tons of ads to tell everybody that it exists, etc. Dwarf Fortress breaks ALL of those rules and more, but for some odd reason, it's a damn good game. To put it simply, Dwarf Fortress is the Black Metal of video games. How did this happen?

DF isn't just a game, it's a metagame.  That is, a game powerful enough for people to create their own games inside the game.  Other people call games like this "sandboxes" but I'm not sure that quite does justice to the idea.  I mean, many games allow limited versions of this, but games like DF let you go completely off the rails (or more precisely, there never were any rails) and do your own thing in a complex, surreal environment.

At least, that's my take on it.

[terko]

I think you can compare DF to the old Populous. You got a bunch of people, you shape your world and there are some things you simply have to do, but how to do them and accomplish things, that's all based on your ideas, experience and how much effort you want to put in.

But after all: DF is something very own, some already try to copy it (takes a look at Paradox Interactive). But most importantly: no embark is the same as the embark before. And this is something you do not have anymore in all the other games out on the market.

[Waparius]

Honestly the game DF most reminds me of is Ultima IV. There's a hell of a lot in it you can point to and say, "This is really awful and should have been fixed before adding that thing that doesn't do anything", but the game feels enormous in a way a more traditionally-designed game does not.

[Oliolli]

And, sometimes, exploding some walking dead with a shotgun blast can be as awesome as DF. Sometimes...

6 level 6 Supports with AA12s opening fire down a corridor full of Clots with a Fleshpound at the end on Suicidal...

[Putnam]

The game is already rendered with opengl..

I MEANT in 3D!!!

It's already that, too. 40d even had an in-game 3D visualizer.