I'm still pissed about the fact that they essentially gave the finger to everyone who has been long-term supporters - when they added the G to their UI, they essentially scrapped the old. In favor of a mouse-driven design, they dropped the old, keyboard-driven UI.
Long-term supporters, in this case, means people paying, and not insubstantial amounts either - before they partnered with Kitfox, they used to publish how much they were receiving. Tens of thousands of $ a month, mind you. For monthly contributions at that level for many, many years I would expect at least a nod - instead they straight-up told everyone they'd abandon keyboard users, a decision later recanted.
That said, Dwarf Fortress holds a special place in my heart. Only regret I have is that I didn't track how many hours I put in. In excess of 10k, I'm sure.
I was under the impression that the classic keyboard-only version was kept up to date with the Steam version? They're both on patch 53.16[1][2] which was released simultaneously on 8/5, so it doesn't look to me like keyboard-only is forgotten or left behind unless I'm missing something.
Sadly no – the current 'classic' is just the Steam game without the steam features AIUI – i.e. still the mouse-oriented UI. 0.47.05 is the last keyboard version AFAIK.
Ah I see, I misunderstood. I just tried the latest classic version and it was all mouse. I agree then that it's disappointing as someone who has played both versions
So, the developer updates both the free version and the paid version with the latest features (the only difference is the free version is sans GUI), and continues to serve the older free keyboard only 0.47 version on his website, and I'm supposed to be upset by this? Because he dropped the keyboard UI feature?
This DFHack command just toggles the 'enable keyboard cursor' feature. The issue is that the new keyboard cursor only works under specific scenarios, like designating digging sites. I don't think there's a way to use the keyboard cursor for everything like in 0.47.
(I agree with your broader point that it's not reasonable to be angry at Bay12 for dropping this feature.)
I think it is fair for die hard fans to be annoyed if they paid to support and that way triggered a timeline where devs drop features they like in favor of friendliness to noobs. When economics kicks in, there's more money to be made from noobs.
Also it's not either or. If it is paid or free it's irrelevant. For example even if you pay, the seller doesn't owe you anything than what you paid for. And by contrast with totally free software we still file tickets and want things.
We can be frustrated by somebody's actions knowing we can't really demand something.
They complain there are few Mac players on Steam. Well, I'm not going to buy it if it doesn't run on the desktop OS [1] i use most, duh.
[1] My Linux boxes are headless. And the windows boxes I have to RDP into them. That may work for a game with a beginning and and end via Steam streaming or something, but not for a forever game you just keep around.
While individual game developers choose whether to support macOS, the broader phenomenon of developers dropping macOS support is Apple's fault. They either have no interest in being a serious gaming platform, or else they've made catastrophic missteps in their quest to stay relevant for gamers.
I don’t think it has anything to do with their gaming specific capabilities, just their general philosophy matches poorly with the games industry.
Apple insist on having their own apis and they don’t maintain compatibility for older software for very long, these 2 facts explain things fine on their own. Game devs don’t want a major support burden, they’re happy to patch here and there but constant dropping of apis or even architectures is a lot to handle. The bigger impact is that macOS ends up with a lot less old games that still run, if you need a critical mass of games to become a gaming platform, that constant bleed of legacy games will always slow macOS down.
As for gaming specific features, Metal is a perfectly fine api whose only real problem is that it’s different from the other platforms. Maybe not the best, but certainly not terrible. They also have a really nice capability floor, it’s practical to make a modern game work on any Mac from the last X years (maybe the neo complicates that a bit).
There’s probably a few gaming specific capabilities they could improve on, mouse input especially, but that’s never been the real issue.
1. They don't exist, so if you own the game you still want it to work on your computer without maintenance updates
2. They still exist, so they don't want to have to update it every year because they can use that effort on making a new game and continuing to exist while still being able to sell from their existing catalogue because it still works
Either way it's in a game developer and gamers interest to have stable platforms
Yes, I can sort of understand Apple's argument that people should be running an email app that's been updated in the last 20 years, but I don't think it's defensible for software like games (or any offline productivity software, for that matter).
They've said that Rosetta 2 will stick around for games after it's phased out for other software, but it's hard to give much credence to that. Wouldn't be enough to make me want to bother publishing or buying games on Mac. They've dropped OS 9 compatibility (after having Classic), they dropped PowerPC support (after having Rosetta), they dropped x86 support after years of the OS supporting both 32 and 64 bit. And if they're keeping it available for games why not let me run other Intel Mac software?
Hard to imagine Rosetta 2 sticking around more than a couple years when Apple gets bored of supporting it.
Optimization and bug hunting makes supporting multiple graphics api's a pain. I really don't understand Apple's stubborn refusal to make vulkan drivers. Between Apple and the better performance on SteamDeck, I can see PC game developers seriously considering Vulkan over directx.
Sony's PS3 is an interesting comparison. It had some borderline ridiculous hardware by the standards of console development. I mean that both as a positive in terms of theoretic capability, and as a negative in terms of practical usability. Sony had a huge market, so I think they were banking on developers bending over backwards to build things to the strengths of the PS3 which would be such an undertaking that it'd almost undoubtedly have left the PS3 version of stuff as definitive, and other platforms operating as second class citizens. Unfortunately for them developers took the path of least resistance and ended up doing the exact opposite.
If game devs want to reuse their Vulkan code on Apple device, they can use MoltenVk or the more recent KosmicKrisp.
> Optimization and bug hunting makes supporting multiple graphics api's a pain.
The problems usually lurk in the graphics drivers, and not in the 3D API layer (e.g. optimization and bug hunting isn't much difference even when your code only supports a single API, and especially Vulkan drivers from different vendors may behave wildly differently on Windows, at least compared to D3D).
> I can see PC game developers seriously considering Vulkan over directx
Lol. That train has left the station long ago (around the time when Stadia was shut down, Vulkan saw a small uptick because of Stadia, but that soon fizzled out). Games need to support multiple 3D APIs anyway once they release on consoles. One or two more for the PC and Mac version doesn't make much of a difference (and most games are built on top of an off-the-shelf-engine anyway).
When a game glitches because of a driver bug, its the game developer that gets the bug reports (and the heat) and often has to isolate the problem to convince the gpu driver-team to fix it.
You may note that I specifically said "PC game developers" Your whole but consoles argument, completely misses the mark.
> When a game glitches because of a driver bug, its the game developer that gets the bug reports (and the heat) and often has to isolate the problem to convince the gpu driver-team to fix it.
Exactly, and having a Vulkan-only codebase won't make that problem go away. And IME it's much more likely to encounter vendor-specific driver issues on Windows Vulkan drivers than for D3D drivers.
Vulkan drivers on Linux are in a much better shape because they are centralized under the MESA project (except NVIDIA's drivers, which also have significant behaviour differences to the MESA drivers, at least in the window system glue).
> You may note that I specifically said "PC game developers" Your whole but consoles argument, completely misses the mark.
Why should a game developer support the tiny Mac market, but ignore the much bigger game console market though? From a business perspective, Mac support simply doesn't make sense, it's too much hassle for too little return (and the hassle isn't about the different 3D API, Metal is actually one of the best parts of the whole Apple developer ecosystem).
The drivers for D3D and Vulkan are separate, so supporting both opens you up to a whole new slew of bugs.
Mesa is largely an Umbrella. While some of the code is shared by in large, AMD works on radv, intel works on vulkan-intel and of course Nvidia work's on its own proprietary driver rather then very limited NVK.
Many games are first released on PC and only ported if they get big enough. So there are no considerations for cross-platform support in the original development.
I was a quarterly(-ish) contributor for years. There was no way for me to justify buying anything when they announced dropping keyboard support, when I've spent years developing muscle-memory to their (admittedly insane) control scheme.
Also - I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that running DF through a terminal is (was...) possible if you're not using a graphical tileset (perhaps even with... ha)?
The sad thing is that current Macs are perfect machines for DF. The recommendation was always to get as fast a single threaded machine as possible with the biggest cache. Even the least expensive Macs are monsters in those regards. The game is more multi-threaded than before but still is dominated by single threaded performance.
And I do use that option, as i said, for games that you play in finite sessions and that have a beginning and an end.
Also as I said, I don't use it for forever games (mmos or endless simulators like DF) by choice. My playing pattern for those is not finite and relatively long sessions. I fire them for a short break, do something in them, close them and move along.
If you have to turn on a separate box for that half your short break is gone with booting and shutting down. And you may lose interest before the other box is finished booting.
Same for running games under crossover. Start crossover - SLOOOW. Wait for the game to start through the layers of emulation - SLOOW. It's fine if it's a weekend and I want to play say Dishonored [1] for a few hours. It's not fine if I want to spend 20 min improving a build in Minecraft and then go do irl stuff.
[1] Dishonored is an example of the type of game I'd jump through hoops to play. I've always streamed it actually. No idea how it runs in Crossover.
What benefit does a native build have over proton? I used to care more about it on Linux, until I realized that "native build" probably means "doesn't work." I can only imagine this being much worse on a niche gaming target which there are extremely few users making (and voting for) bug reports.
Tack on having to pay Apple to play in their shitty ecosystem and it makes complete sense.
Wine/proton as a gaming ABI/runtime is perfectly fine, Microsoft used to do a lot to maintain backcompat and that spirit has clearly distilled into proton: it even runs games Windows is unable to (most recent example of mine is Black and White).
On macOS, it often means the opposite. Natively compiled games like Portal 2 stopped working when Apple depreciated 32-bit libraries and transitioned to Metal.
This is why Proton is so important, since the games are theoretically supported forever as long as you port the DXVK/Wine backend to the latest APIs.
macOS is also just a proper PITA through and through. I'm annoyed that I can't play it on my m4 but I also understand that supporting macOS has always been a nuisance.
If I were making games I wouldn't support it either. Apple does just about everything to not support backwards compat.
It’s kind of insane that we can play windows x86_64 games on macos arm almost perfectly. I got a bit annoyed with it being slightly jank and built a (linux) gaming pc for my kids in the end but it worked fine for most things for a while.
> There were official native MacOS builds and now there aren't
They probably stopped supporting macOS when Apple introduced the notarization bullshit. Can't blame the DF team tbh, macOS is a royal PITA to support (even without notarization), Apple doesn't mind breaking stuff from one OS release to another.
I still remember getting support mail every time Apple released an OS update. For a week or two there'd be reports of things crashing randomly with stacktraces that didn't seem to make much sense.
One of reasons why I stopped trying to make mac/ios apps.
I understand why they did it - medical emergencies and all. Have to pay the bill somehow. But yea, 0.47.05's still my go-to. Just can't vibe with the new UI/keybinds.
Old controls were on their roadmap for a long time, but the benefit from their perspective shrinks as time goes on. I doubt we'll see it at this point.
It wasn’t “tens of thousands a month” outside of some exceptional months. IIRC usually it was in the single digits which is not fantastic for a two people in the US
Adding a G to the UI is 'giving the finger' to their old players? When they include support for ASCII-like tilesets so you can play the exact same way? "Gamers" are the most entitled people on earth, I swear
It makes me sad to think about. I would love to get into the new UI, but the immersion just won't come back. My muscle memory, hands firmly on the keyboard, is too persistent, and playing with the new UI feels like stumbling around and misclicking.
What you are asking for is completely unreasonable. There’s no way that one programmer can maintain two completely separate UIs. Keep in mind that they could not simply “add graphics” to the existing interface, they had to write a completely new one that was not based around fixed–size character cells.
Wasn't the graphical interface 95% outsourced to others? And originally the graphic version was suppose to be layered on top and leave the underlying version of the game barely touched from the player's side. It was even touted as an excuse at the time to fix some of the keyboard shortcuts that were inconsistent among different submenus, and certainly not to eliminate or supersede keyboard interfaces.
Programmers and artists at Kitfox helped, but no, 95% of the work on the UI was not outsourced. Perhaps if you add in all of the countless time spent drawing sprites for all of the creatures in the game.
And your understanding of “layering” is simply wrong. The _game_ is the same underneath the UI, aside from the new features that have been added and the bugs that have been fixed, but the UI was ripped out and rewritten. It could not be any other way. You are correct that the goal was not to eliminate keyboard–driven interfaces, but the rewrite did completely replace the entire UI with something new. And that new UI does not have the same structure as the old UI.
For example, in the old UI you used to have to first enter the “designations” menu and then choose “dig”. So digging had the keyboard shortcut ‘d d’. To place buildings you typed ‘d b’ to “designate buildings”, and to “designate stockpiles” was ‘d p’.
But now these three things are all at the top level of the menu, so simply typing ‘m’ for digging, ‘b’ for buildings, or ‘p’ for stockpiles is all you need to do. (Digging cannot be on ‘d’ because the view is now moved using the WASD keys.) There is no designate menu any more. The old keyboard shortcuts are simply meaningless.
If you prefer different keyboard shortcuts then you can customize them. One of the features of the rewritten UI is that there is also a new UI for customizing the key bindings.
Dwarf Fortress used ASCII graphics & KB controls because that's what was cheap and fast to implement. Tarn & Zach always wanted proper graphics & mouse support, and has always been the vision from day one.
>Long-term supporters, in this case, means people paying, and not insubstantial amounts either -
You clicked on a button that said "support", where it was explicitly pretty much a tip jar, and now you feel entitled to keyboard controls ? You're full of shit.
Is it really that bad? I haven't played since the GUI update but was thinking about getting into it again because I still have years of muscle memory from it. But if I am forced to use the mouse im not sure I even want to bother. There is absolutely no way I could play the game at the same speed I use to if I have to resort to mouse-only features.
IMO, the steam release is not very good. Especially if you had been used to using the top mods that existed before the steam release for ease of control.
I have to agree. Sure, the new GUI is a some kind of accessibility improvement over the old, but is seriously underpowered for e.g. any kind of repetitive tasks (which are not atypical in DF). Most annoying is the fact that even though a fair number of keyboard shortcuts exist, a full pipeline often does not. It's barely more efficient to use the keyboard since you'll still have to switch over to the mouse every second action.
I know that the keyboard features are coming at some point, but I doubt it's a very high priority. My hopes rest on the modding improvements; once the UI becomes moddable, the old one is recreated in an instant. Until that, I'll stick to the trusty 0.47. (I have bought the "new" game to show support and thank for all the earlier work, of course.)
The new GUI is... not great. But the UX old UI was downright awful. There were like 5 different paradigms how to use individual screens, not just layouts, completely different ways to navigate and interact with controls.
After couple tens of hours you memorized the arcane keyboard invocations to do what you wanted, but it never felt intuitive.
You dont want to know your hours. Perhaps my greatest shame is the number of hours i have spent on factorio. I was afk for much of that (letting the factory run) but ... i would not want other people to see the number.
Long-term supporters, in this case, means people paying, and not insubstantial amounts either - before they partnered with Kitfox, they used to publish how much they were receiving. Tens of thousands of $ a month, mind you. For monthly contributions at that level for many, many years I would expect at least a nod - instead they straight-up told everyone they'd abandon keyboard users, a decision later recanted.
That said, Dwarf Fortress holds a special place in my heart. Only regret I have is that I didn't track how many hours I put in. In excess of 10k, I'm sure.