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Author Topic: Future of MDF  (Read 9840 times)

lightstar

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Future of MDF
« on: June 28, 2018, 01:43:05 am »

I have been lurking on these forums many years (though I don't participate much), and the progress of Dwarf Fortress and Masterwork in particular has been a pleasure to watch.

Nothing seems to be happening in terms of development (or even maintenance) for MDF - I might be wrong - would be happy there.

So what's the way forward?
Individual mods for vanilla by individual authors. Messy, but at least possible.

Or someone to take up at least the maintenance of MDF. I think that was happening with Meph not around, but with him back, even that is not happening......
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redivider

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Re: Future of MDF
« Reply #1 on: June 28, 2018, 09:11:29 am »

Things come and go, nature does not distinguish between good and bad, that is subjective.
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smakemupagus

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Re: Future of MDF
« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2018, 12:09:24 am »

Individual mods, i guess, unless someone chooses to do it.

Labraid

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Re: Future of MDF
« Reply #3 on: June 29, 2018, 03:18:54 am »

Even maintenance is no small task, considering insane amount of stuff in it. With Meph back one would need to ask for his permission and pretty much promise to dedicate at least some time regularly to this task since it will block others from attempting to do it, unless maintenance project goes full GitHub route to avoid duplication of effort. There is also the thing about some authors withdrawing their permission to use their respective mods in MDF, so even porting to new DF version would probably require removal of those mods.

I am not up to date with how Meph views his literal Masterwork right now or what are his plans for it, so I don't know if getting permission from him is needed or, for a fact, even possible.

That said, all of the above is based on my limited understanding of the subject, don't quote me on that.
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Rekov

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Re: Future of MDF
« Reply #4 on: July 04, 2018, 09:47:21 am »

A while back user: "Amostubal" began his own compilation mod with what seemed to me, similar overall objectives to MDF. I suspect that this is a better route to take than trying to pick up MDF where Meph left off. You bypass the issue of having to decide whether to adhere to Meph's vision or to do your own thing.
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chilller6

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Re: Future of MDF
« Reply #5 on: July 04, 2018, 10:48:30 am »

sorry if this has been said before but i havent been keeping up but I thought Meph's return article he wrote was him coming back to the mod and working on it again?
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Meph

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Re: Future of MDF
« Reply #6 on: July 09, 2018, 05:56:17 am »

Greetings from greece :)

I came back to modding, but got stuck on the insane possibilities that twbt offers for graphics and spend the time I had making new and unique things on that front. I thought i could reach more people that way. I made over 4000 sprites, unique looks for different materials, animated liquids, 300 decorations,... Lot of work ;-)

I had a look at amostubals updated mdf version, but its hard to find and Double-check all the changes.

Overall I think the direction I took Mdf was a lot of work on projects like the individual playable races, that might be unique, but in the end barely used. Most people want dwarf mode, not kobolds, orcs, gnomes, warlocks and the like.

Updating between versions, especially when custom dfhack scripts are involved is insanely work intensive too, mostly due to my inability to write and update these scripts myself. I am/was always at the mercy of participating authors, which is how the gnome and warlock mode got lost between versions.

My current idea is to make a Starter pack, with optional additions that DO NOT rely on any scripts or file changes. Take all utilities and the 32x tileset, then add the most liked features to it, optional of course. No foreign authors, unless someone really insists ;-)

My work, which is the majority of the mdf content is free to use by anyone, but i cant give blanket permission for everything, because people might take content by other authors and miscredit it to me instead... Happened before. :/

Right now I'm mountaineering around Europe, till... October or so. Dont expect anything right now, but I'm always around, reading and making plans. :-)

I dont know how much interest there is for a "New Masterwork 44.12 update" but I could probably throw that in at some point too.

Hope that cleared the situation up a bit.
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::: ☼Meph Tileset☼☼Map Tileset☼- 32x graphic sets with TWBT :::
::: ☼MASTERWORK DF☼ - A comprehensive mod pack now on Patreon - 250.000+ downloads and counting :::
::: WorldBicyclist.com - Follow my bike tours around the world - 148 countries visited :::

billw

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Re: Future of MDF
« Reply #7 on: July 09, 2018, 10:06:28 am »

I dont know how much interest there is for a "New Masterwork 44.12 update"

There is interest :)
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Labraid

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Re: Future of MDF
« Reply #8 on: July 09, 2018, 10:22:27 am »

...
I dont know how much interest there is for a "New Masterwork 44.12 update"...

I'd love to see up-to-date Masterwork again. Dwarf only update is completely fine with me as I have only played other races out of curiosity, and I have enjoyed it, don't get me wrong, but if getting rid of them is what is needed to put the next update within reasonable time frame, so be it.
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Nidor

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Re: Future of MDF
« Reply #9 on: July 09, 2018, 06:52:20 pm »

Overall I think the direction I took Mdf was a lot of work on projects like the individual playable races, that might be unique, but in the end barely used. Most people want dwarf mode, not kobolds, orcs, gnomes, warlocks and the like.

Dang, that is pretty much the only reason I got into MDF was the different races.
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zakhad

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Re: Future of MDF
« Reply #10 on: July 09, 2018, 07:16:35 pm »

Just adding my random 2 pence. Whenever I've been playing DF lately i just run the meph tileset launcher he made. I consider it like a DF-masterwork lite - as it still has some of the stuff, but it really just comes down to purely down to how easy it is to use, minimising the need to edit the raw/ini or w/e. It's not masterwork ofc, but it is a nice lite substitute so ty for doing that meph!
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Metall

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Re: Future of MDF
« Reply #11 on: July 10, 2018, 11:59:53 am »

I get what you mean with how most people would not play things like Orcs and Gnomes and whatnot, so "Masterworking" the main mechanics of Fort Mode with Dwarves, and adding new stuff there sounds like a good idea. Maybe the other races could mostly just be NPCs. More for you to deal with than normal monsters, Goblins, and Elves. Get some Orc tribes raiding your fort and whatnot.

I mostly played Succubi though, so if you do plan on doing a new version, I would be most grateful if you could get Boltguns aid.
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Wyzack

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Re: Future of MDF
« Reply #12 on: July 12, 2018, 02:21:38 pm »

Really sad to see it go down this way but I guess its just the way she goes.

I was under the impression that most people were like me, a favorite main race (for me it was masterwork humans) but would dabble in other fortresses pretty frequently to keep it fresh. Some of my best memories were from Orc mode or the buggy insanity of Warlock mode may it rest in .34 peace, and it feels bad that while they will still exist, we will never see them interact with all the cool new features of the game.

Can't really fault anyone for not wanting to go through the frankly titanic effort of keeping everything updated through broken scripts and new versions of DFHACK that always lag slightly behind the official releases, especially if most people just stick to dorfs anyways, but it kinda feels like the end of an era.

Super big thanks to Meph and Boltgun and Smake and all the other awesome contributors that made this total overhaul such a phenomenon. The only bad thing I can possibly say about my time here is that I fell so in love with playing gun toting humans that I have a hard time striking the earth as dwarves anymore, even with the promise of new features like leaving the damn map outside of a workshop interaction, and sites that pledge themselves to you as the world grows. Hopefully someone sometime will pick up the torch and restore even parts of the Masterwork vision to greener update pastures.

/nostalgic rambling

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Metall

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Re: Future of MDF
« Reply #13 on: July 12, 2018, 10:30:48 pm »

Really sad to see it go down this way but I guess its just the way she goes.

I was under the impression that most people were like me, a favorite main race (for me it was masterwork humans) but would dabble in other fortresses pretty frequently to keep it fresh. Some of my best memories were from Orc mode or the buggy insanity of Warlock mode may it rest in .34 peace, and it feels bad that while they will still exist, we will never see them interact with all the cool new features of the game.

Can't really fault anyone for not wanting to go through the frankly titanic effort of keeping everything updated through broken scripts and new versions of DFHACK that always lag slightly behind the official releases, especially if most people just stick to dorfs anyways, but it kinda feels like the end of an era.

Super big thanks to Meph and Boltgun and Smake and all the other awesome contributors that made this total overhaul such a phenomenon. The only bad thing I can possibly say about my time here is that I fell so in love with playing gun toting humans that I have a hard time striking the earth as dwarves anymore, even with the promise of new features like leaving the damn map outside of a workshop interaction, and sites that pledge themselves to you as the world grows. Hopefully someone sometime will pick up the torch and restore even parts of the Masterwork vision to greener update pastures.

/nostalgic rambling

I fully agree, my own main race (as mentioned before) is Succubi, and I seriously hope Boltgun stays on the MDF project in order to the Succubi fully playable within it.
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Meph

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Re: Future of MDF
« Reply #14 on: July 13, 2018, 01:19:09 am »

Just to be clear, I didnt say I'd remove the extra races, just that I probably wont create more of them.
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::: ☼Meph Tileset☼☼Map Tileset☼- 32x graphic sets with TWBT :::
::: ☼MASTERWORK DF☼ - A comprehensive mod pack now on Patreon - 250.000+ downloads and counting :::
::: WorldBicyclist.com - Follow my bike tours around the world - 148 countries visited :::
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