The release of a player-made plugin for ULTIMATE INDIE GAME Dwarf Fortress stirred brief debate amongst the hemispheres of the RPS Hivemind. “Worth remembering: it’s a visualiser”, attack-thoughted node-designation GILLEN. “It does at least run as the game is playing”, hypno-suggested node-designation MEER. “WE/I LOVE DWARVES. WRITE ABOUT DWARVES WRITE ABOUT DWARVES WRITE ABOUT DWARVES”, then throbbed the Mind in spiky unison. For yes, while it is enormously pleasing, Stonesense is not a graphical engine that replaces DF’s (in)famous ASCII appearance. What it is an add-on, displaying an isometric, cartoony image of the state of your stone-centric world alongside said ASCIIosity in something like real-time.
Clearly, it’s not quite what we’ve all been praying for – but it is, at last, a chance to see quite what your elaborate structures and dynasties look like as you play. Video below. Watch it, with your eyes.
It’s probably the least compelling commentary I’ve ever heard (and it times, so mumbly as to be incoherent), but hey, it’s Dwarf Fortress. Slick presentation would be all wrong.
Obtain Stonesense from right here. It’s open-source, which means you can tweak or add to it as you like – and even provide extra sprites’n’stuff to the community.
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I like it with ascii-ish tiles better.
I absolutely hate this sense of entitlement fans can have. Tarn Adams is making a freeware game – donations are voluntary – he has no obligation to the fans. You wouldn’t ask an author or an artist to “open source” their project if you were getting impatient with how it was going, or how long it was taking*. Detractors should also bear in mind that he takes community suggestions on board and often implements them.
The only thing that will get him to focus on aesthetics and usability is the eventual drying up of cash. It’s bound to happen, especially if this release stretches on till March. People will get tired of waiting, and there will be fewer interviews for publicity.
He needs to bring DF into modern times (at least 1995 times!) and give the game a better interface and solid mouse support if he wants to keep a good stream of newcomers and possible supporters. He could outsource these tasks, but that has to be up to him.
*Admittedly, there are probably George RR Martin fans who would disagree with this.
Context, dear man. The majority of Roguelikes are open source, DF looks and feels roguelikey, ergo, people feel it is natural to suggest open-sourcing as path to "fix" problems they see.
Books are rarely open source, so no-one thinks to suggest making them so as a solution to problems. (Even GRRM fans; hasn't everyone given up on the next book being written before the heat-death of the universe?)
I may be in the minority of this thread, but I like the interface. Does the interface take a good amount of time to learn? Yes. I’ve learned it (took me about three days) and it comes almost second nature. Is the ASCII off-putting to people? Yes. I, personally, love the ASCII. This is why I still play Slash’EM in ASCII. Is the game confusing? Yes. And, you know what, it is better for it. I know we are getting used to games holding our hands and making it easy for us to play, but I grew up on games that were hard and I miss those days.
As far as the ‘he should open source the game’ argument. I think this is crazy. Open sourcing DF would not allow the devs to develop the world they want, would deprive them of their income, and might cause the game to be less coherent in the long run. Would you ask the makers of other games to open source them? How about Ben There, Dan That? The game is buggy, certainly it should be open sourced? And before you think I’m against open source, I’ve been working in the computing industry for a long time and almost everything I work with daily is open source; I just don’t think that people should have to open source their stuff if they don’t want to.
I understand tha fans that wish this where open sourced, even these that vocalize that desire. I understand the dev, that don’t really want to move there, hell.. is his game, his thing, and is made out of how him want to make things.
Probably the community sould make his own thing, from scractch.
I remenber something similar with MoonEdit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoonEdit
Years laters we have things like Etherpad
http://etherpad.com/
http://wave.google.com
There are ideas that are soo good, that leting die in the hands of the original author is madness, but It take the efforts of other poeple to recreate the idea from scrach elsewhere, or it will die.
Now, If you visit the page of the original author and download it, you will see that has not changed almost nothing from 2005 / 2007.
Toady could end as another Tom Dobrowolski. A guy with a good idea, that is big than one man.
It should also be noted that if the dwarfs are the thing putting you off, it is very easy to mod the game so you can play as a human/elf/goblin/orc whatever else you want and build a fortress that way (or town whatever)
That makes me want to create an above ground gated community for Goblins.
I modded in the ability for my dwarfs to make chocolate :P Nothing goes with rum like chocolate.
Did you add a chocolate tree?
Finally I can actually understand this game enough to play it! Thank you RPS!!!
Once you play the game for a while you learn the interface and a majority of the hotkeys. When this has happened, you can press tab and remove all the menu from the screen, never to be needed again.
I also don’t see why everyone wants mouse support so much? Give it a month, and you will have memorised all the hotkeys and gotten the hang of using the keyboard. A mouse won’t help you speed things up, or make anything easier at all.
PS: use shift+move cursor to jump a dozen or so tiles. Good for fast movement and lot more people than you’d think don’t actually know about it.