Comments on: The Dwarf Fortress Graphical Itch

By: Yaro Kasear

Yaro Kasear — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 20:34:09 +0000

My gripe with Dwarf Fortress not being open is its a royal pain in the butt to get working in 64-bit Linux even with multilib. If DF were open source one could simply BUILD the game to work with the versions of the libraries it depends on that are ON YOUR SYSTEM, not just the Toady One’s.

Also, the negative comments toward open source are pretty undue and incorrect. Not everyone who would want to get the game’s source code necessarily wants to just make it 3D, nor would making it 3D really hurt the game, it is certainly NOT the open source community’s fault Toady can’t program 3D games to save his life.

I don’t find graphics to be that important, but that’s not really a logical argument against opening the source code. I agree its his choice, but even if he open sourced his game, he wouldn’t lose control of it like a few posters here seem to have gotten in their heads.

Sure, there will be forks, but if Toady manages to keep DF GOOD, he won’t have to worry about people leaving his game in droves for a code fork.

And then maybe SOMEONE can fix the godawful interface controls, since apparently Toady isn’t even bothering with that.

Though, mostly, I’d liek it open source simply so I can actually make the game RUN without having to hack my Linux box to pieces just because Toady has an awkward Linux setup.

By: john kricher

john kricher — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:04:51 +0000

[...] be published) (required) Website. Users familiar with web markup can use the following tags in …The Dwarf Fortress Graphical Itch | Rock, Paper, ShotgunI should probably point out that this particular post is entirely referral-based thanks to this post [...]

By: Chuck U. Farley

Chuck U. Farley — Sun, 24 May 2009 04:21:19 +0000

Toady doesn’t need to open-source the code. He needs to support “hooks” such that graphics and sound specialists can illustrate dwarf fortress.

the “tileset” is a good start, but since characters are reused for multiple objects, it’s not enough. the “graphics tileset” is a step up, but it’s only for creatures.

what’s needed is:

1. a global registry of all graphically distinct phenomena, such that a “tileset” can be made with not just 256 characters, but one character for each phenomenon – even those that share the same character.

2. a global registry of “events” (e.g. “carpentry workshop construction complete”) which in the standard distribution do nothing, but which graphics and sound experts can use to illustrate the game with sounds, animations etc.

By: MisterG

MisterG — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 05:30:47 +0000

The game is fine with Mayday’s graphic packs. If you can’t get into the game because of its graphics, then I really don’t know what to say.

Go play something that’s choking on the bloom that the developers force in it, leave Dwarf Fortress to people who actually like games.

By: chris

chris — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 01:59:27 +0000

Im new to this but i think a small textbox explaing options in the game , that appears during the game would help heaps

By: ry

ry — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 10:45:10 +0000

given that the guy who wrote DF released older games source once they were finished, he’ll hopefully open DF when he’s happy with it and we can enjoy the fruits of his labours is in a slightly more user friendly way.

By: Mike Mayday

Mike Mayday — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 21:02:27 +0000

Well, if you had the display on the whole screen (as opposed to just a portion in the middle), it would have more than DF has now.
I think that DF displayed on the full screen (1280×1024 instead of 1280×400) would look TOO busy. Though maybe not.

By: Vaevictus

Vaevictus — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:41:00 +0000

I hope everyone realizes that that image is 20×20 … and DF is 80×25… literally 5x more information on the screen as is, than with the isometric view. This is why many of the roguelikes remain ascii or similar graphics, because any other graphics mode would almost mandate less detail and complexity. These graphics look great and all, but would make DF *LESS* usable. You’d spend 5 times as much time scrolling around.

By: Turgid Bolk

Turgid Bolk — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:14:26 +0000

“Sam says:

I have to say, what I don’t understand is the naked hostility to people who want things Open Sourced…

Toady’s problem, and the reason why he gets so many requests for open sourcing of DF, has nothing to do with people being “lazy” or “wanting the easy route”, and everything to do with the established culture of roguelike games development.”

Dwarf Fortress is not much of a “roguelike,” though. One small part of it is. Adventure Mode. But it’s a whole fantasy world simulator. In any case, I suppose you’re right. But the game is very modifiable as it stands, and gets even more moddable as development continues. You can’t change the code, but you can customize your experience quite a bit already.

By: Andrew Doull

Andrew Doull — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 03:07:39 +0000

Got to second GRANDMA OF DEATH’S NIECE on the Tarn Adam’s interview being well worth a listen to. Given the nature of RPS, I’m surprised that the interview link isn’t up on the front page in massive blinking highlights.

He’s already stolen a big part of the thunder on a piece on failure in games that I was planning on writing.

By: kricher

kricher — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:53:39 +0000

It’s not really ‘graphic-less’, there’s just no transition from square to square. Your guy is in this square, when you hit the up button he is in the up square. The graphics do not translate smoothly, but it’s not like squares are huge. It’s exactly the same environment as every final fantasy game up until 10. The only difference is that your legs don’t wiggle when you translate a square.

I kid, I’d love an isometric view. FFTactics is probably the standard I’d want any sprite graphics to follow up on in that vein.

It took me maybe 5 hours playing df before I got really used to the ascii graphics set. Then i modded the graphics and it took me 10 hours to be able to tell wtf was going on. Now it’s all, ‘redhead, blonde, brunette’ to me

By: GRANDMA OF DEATH'S NIECE

GRANDMA OF DEATH'S NIECE — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:43:00 +0000

http://www.frontrowcrew.com/?p=491
This interview, done the other day, explains all!