
Dwarf Fortress in 2013 - akg
http://gamasutra.com/view/feature/195148/dwarf_fortress_in_2013.php
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baddox
> As for [porting to the] PS Vita, he notes that "if someone approached us,
> we're not giving the code to anybody for any reason, so it would have to be
> something we could compile ourselves."

Just imagine how good this game and community around it would be if it had
always been open source. Just imagine how much money they could raise in a
Kickstarter to simply open source everything.

~~~
IgorPartola
Open source games are rarely very good. There are exceptions (looking at you
NetHack), but this is the one area where "give away software, sell support"
does not seem to work. Then again, I wish more games were open sourced a la
Quake after their sales start declining.

~~~
jmduke
Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup is an open source game (and not open source in the
sense of "you can look at our code but don't expect us to value your input",
open source in the sense of "make pull requests!") and it's probably the best
game I've ever played. I don't think I disagree with you, though: the reason
it works so well for Stone Soup is because the game lends itself to personal
extension (it's a roguelike, so you're dealing almost exclusively with game
logic).

~~~
Legion
I so badly want to learn how to _really_ play roguelikes like DCSS. I've never
gotten past the wander-around-first-few-levels of NetHack and DCSS. There's so
much there!

~~~
lifeformed
You should start with Brogue
([https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/](https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/)).
It's a roguelike that manages to be accessible without compromising the core
elements of the genre. The interface is great and it actually looks quite
beautiful with its lighting system. The design has been streamlined,
simplified but not dumbed down.

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zyxley
I will continue to have no interest in Dwarf Fortress until it has an actual
UI instead of whatever insane random combinations of controls the developer
felt like adding on any particular day.

~~~
rorrr2
That's one of the reasons why Minecraft is so much bigger than DF.

These guys just don't get it. DF can be SOOOOO much better, yet they are
working on adding features instead making the game better.

~~~
MereInterest
Here's the difference: DF is Toady's baby, his life work. Toady has the idea
for it, and he does not want anyone else working on the code. Minecraft
started out very rough around the edges, and only started polishing it once it
had already hit it big and he could hire other people.

With a one-developer game, you don't spend time polishing things. You bounce
around different areas, adding things as you wish. Letting yourself get bogged
down in polishing details that aren't exciting makes you start looking for
other things to do, losing interest in the project altogether.

~~~
gnarbarian
A perfect analogy! Toady's baby is legally blind, is very dumb, is very slow,
speaks 4 languages in different contexts but none fluently, is very ugly, and
is not fun for 99% of people who play with it.

There are cures for all of these problems, but he refuses to treat or allow
anyone else to treat his baby.

~~~
eropple
It's fun enough for enough people, myself included, for him to live off the
project. And that's enough for him.

~~~
d23
For now. What happens when interest slowly peters off as the current fanbase
gets bored or distracted with other areas of their lives?

~~~
eropple
...then he does some user-facing stuff to lure them back and add new ones?

This project isn't some attach-rate-obsessed no-value-add startup. As long as
he can pay his rent, he doesn't need to make anyone happy but himself.

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erichurkman
I have not played in quite some time, but if you are looking at playing: after
you get the rough hang of things, make sure you look for mods. Specifically
bug-fixes. There's a (small) community around the `dfhack` tool that fix a lot
of game-breaking bugs. Masterwork [1] is a comprehensive mod that lets you
turn off some of the "flavor" in exchange for a more performant game (about
25% or so). For example, the default game has dozens of types of leather. Do
you really care if your dwarf's mitten is made of cow leather or bull leather?

[1]
[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=125633.0](http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=125633.0)

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ghotli
I've said it before and I'll say it again. One of the central philosophical
questions of our day will become whether or not it is ethical to even turn off
dwarf fortress.

~~~
InAnEmergency
That was one of the taglines for SimCity 2000: "If this game were any more
realistic, it'd be illegal to turn it off."
([http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/198648-simcity-2000/images/box-11...](http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/198648-simcity-2000/images/box-116830))

~~~
sb057
So that's why they dumbed down Simcity 5!

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

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jmduke
Prior discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5982459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5982459)

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d23
Okay, new idea. What if he did a Kickstarter for $500k for additional high-
quality devs to come on the project for a year and focus on 1) improving the
UI and 2) improving performance. That's it. No promises of additional
functionality, no open-sourcing to make Toady feel like he's given up his
baby.

Given the cult following of the game and the people who would like to play it
but are otherwise frustrated, I doubt they'd have trouble reaching the limit.
The press they'd get just from announcing would give them a boost as well.

~~~
eropple
He doesn't _want_ more developers. He is happy with the project as it is. It
is his life's work, so to speak, and he is content with progress happening
over the span of years.

I don't understand why this is such a hard concept for some people.

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kornork
Every time I see threads like this, the comments are all about telling the
developers what they should do. The developers make enough money to survive,
seem perfectly happy, and are working on exactly what they want. They aren't
in a situation where they owe the community something more than what they are
already doing. Why are we trying to solve their problems?

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drewhk
They should not focus on interface at all, but provide a socket and a protocol
to communicate with the engine. Then the community can build fancy clients,
mods, whatever.

