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Author Topic: This is a fantastic game but it's time to get with the future!  (Read 10067 times)

Damiac

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Re: This is a fantastic game but it's time to get with the future!
« Reply #60 on: November 14, 2012, 01:41:38 pm »

I was under the impression that stonesense only gave screenshots, not allowing you to actually play in isometric.  Am I incorrect? If so I might have to grab DFHack and give it a try, right now the only 3rd party tool I use is Therapist.
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AutomataKittay

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Re: This is a fantastic game but it's time to get with the future!
« Reply #61 on: November 14, 2012, 01:45:33 pm »

Oh, you can't play -within- stonesense, you did asked about visualizing structures :D

Though some players does play with it on and uses DF to set things up and stonesense to look at things. It did refreshed well enough when I used it back in 31.18 that I could use it to set things up nicely visually and see things moving.
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Damiac

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Re: This is a fantastic game but it's time to get with the future!
« Reply #62 on: November 14, 2012, 03:30:22 pm »

Ah, good to know.  Thanks for the info
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SharpKris

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Re: This is a fantastic game but it's time to get with the future!
« Reply #63 on: November 14, 2012, 08:14:16 pm »

I for one have no need for better graphics. the games i play the most are DF and ADOM (who really should get more attention)
but i do think that toady should get more people to help him code. hell i think programmers would fight to the death with socks as weapons for the honor
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Bolzan

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Re: This is a fantastic game but it's time to get with the future!
« Reply #64 on: November 15, 2012, 12:11:47 am »

Having DF in 3D and having it go mainstream would make it the Doom/Quake of our generation.

I can already imagine the news about it...

"Authorities have been in an uproar over a highly controversial game know as "Dwarf Fortress", which contains... Wait, WHAT?"
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Callista

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Re: This is a fantastic game but it's time to get with the future!
« Reply #65 on: November 15, 2012, 12:16:27 am »

3D would make it worse. Lots worse. As we have it now, the symbols give us an easy-to-read view of exactly what is where, and the organized grid of ASCII or tiles makes designing and building very straightforward. If you tried to make it look more realistic, you'd need lots more space for each tile. Your screen would cover maybe a 20x20 tile area, which is not nearly enough to see a large area of the fort at once; or, if it could cover more, the graphics would be too small to identify effectively, unlike letters, symbols, and simple icons, which are easy to identify even if they are small.

Then there's the problem of processing power. Dwarf Fortress already uses up a lot of processing power without graphics, and most games use up most of their processing power on graphics. In order to increase the graphics in Dwarf Fortress to even 2000s standards, you would have to simplify the game, making it much smaller. No more 100 z-levels on a four-tile embark; now you have twenty. Did you want two hundred dwarves? Too bad; your limit is now thirty. Sure, you could--and probably would--reprogram the game to run on newer machines, but there's only so much you can get out of that. Eventually, you have to start cutting content, removing possibilities. Temperature, weather, and cave-ins would probably be the first to go. Units would have to default to hit points instead of complex skin, muscle, bone, and tissue layers. Contaminants and syndromes would vanish, probably replaced by a generic sickness/poison system.

Yes, you could turn Dwarf Fortress into a high-graphics game; but that's already been done. It's called The Sims, and while it's fun, it doesn't have magma.

As for DF going mainstream--nothing wrong with that. The more the merrier. It's already fairly popular. But not at the expense of turning it into something much less unique and interesting.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2012, 12:20:20 am by Callista »
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pivole

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Re: This is a fantastic game but it's time to get with the future!
« Reply #66 on: November 15, 2012, 07:15:46 am »

I think it may have been mentioned, but making DF 3D would require the thinking up of a vertical scale. And then seeing Forgotten Beasts crawling down the woefully small corridors somehow.
Processing power aside, it would be hard to make it visually logical.
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Damiac

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Re: This is a fantastic game but it's time to get with the future!
« Reply #67 on: November 15, 2012, 08:26:00 am »

Toady doesn't want to work with other programmers.  So no matter who wins the sock fight, he says no.

Having the visual processing in 3D doesn't mean you couldn't have that other stuff in the background.  It's not like you can see the complex muscle tissue injuries and beard length on the little smiley faces you get now.  That's a nice little made up scenario about the sims, but what ass did you pull it out of?  Remember that this game uses only 1 processor core, so, theoretically, you could have graphics run on the other core.  So the performance hit might not be as bad as you are making out.  You may have a good point that it'd make it damn hard to tell what was going on, but I would think you could use zoom levels to deal with that.

I really don't get the argument that 3D exposing the glaring logical flaws is a problem with 3D.  Those obvious flaws exist whether or not you render them in 3D.  A 3 story tall giant fitting into a small hole makes no sense whether I see a little symbol representing the giant or a fully rendered 3D giant.  I'm pretty sure Toady plans to address those issues at some point (multi tile creatures), even if he doesn't plan to make the game's visuals any better.

The reason we can't have 3D is mainly that developing such an engine would take away from developing the game.  And then any future developments need to also go through graphics development, further slowing things down.  I would much rather have more features than 3D graphics, and it would make the game unplayable for people with less powerful computers.

I just don't get why people insist on making these nonsense arguments against 3D when there are perfectly good ones which have already been stated.  It's not because of your hipster notions of being anti-mainstream...
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adecoy95

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Re: This is a fantastic game but it's time to get with the future!
« Reply #68 on: November 15, 2012, 02:20:12 pm »

Long story short: If you want "User friendly GUI", leave now. It will Never happen.

would be nice to at least get good mouse support one day
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misko27

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Re: This is a fantastic game but it's time to get with the future!
« Reply #69 on: November 15, 2012, 03:42:15 pm »

Toady doesn't want to work with other programmers.  So no matter who wins the sock fight, he says no.
I know, I said this earlier, what with the Toady being Batman as a side job and such. The point being, He will make it the way he likes if the whole wide world played or no one played it (although he would also look into lucrative side-jobs). Really, how it strikes me is he using his coder talents and mathmatical skills to make a game, and people happen to like it and send him moneys.
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Viking

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Re: This is a fantastic game but it's time to get with the future!
« Reply #70 on: November 15, 2012, 08:31:49 pm »

When I read the thread title I thought this was going in the "DwarfSpaceFortress" direction.
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DG

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Re: This is a fantastic game but it's time to get with the future!
« Reply #71 on: November 16, 2012, 05:09:08 am »



This would be nice.
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