[HN Gopher] Dwarf Fortress Update - Tutorials and Tooltips
___________________________________________________________________
Dwarf Fortress Update - Tutorials and Tooltips
Author : capableweb
Score : 197 points
Date : 2022-06-08 13:44 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.kitfoxgames.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.kitfoxgames.com)
| xwdv wrote:
| Personally I don't care about the graphics they are cool but the
| one feature I wish DF would have instead is being multi threaded
| to take advantage of modern processors with multiple cores.
|
| There comes a point where you just can't play anymore because
| everything is way too fucking slow.
| outworlder wrote:
| Simulations are notoriously difficult to parallelize. You
| always have a bunch of things all dependent on the results of
| one another.
| kibwen wrote:
| Sadly this will probably never happen. Tarn is no slouch as a
| coder, but he's an old school C programmer working on a
| massive, legacy, single-threaded C++ codebase. Introducing
| useful and stable multithreading to similar codebases has taken
| teams of programmers years to achieve.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| I heard the pathfinding is slow, and that's almost readonly
| and very parrallel. So a model where the game only threads
| this part might be a first step.
|
| Talking as someone who knows nothing from the codebase here,
| of course.
| mabbo wrote:
| Dwarf Fortress has always been a brilliant lesson in UX.
|
| It answers the question: what if you had a great product, but the
| user experience was the worst possible choice in every single
| way, but all functionality still existed and worked?
|
| It turns out some people will _still_ use the product.
|
| I'm excited to see what happens when the UX is also reasonable.
| joemi wrote:
| It might not be the best UX, but it's certainly far from the
| worst.
| mabbo wrote:
| > but it's certainly far from the worst
|
| I'm scared to ask this, but what is _worse_?
|
| And I say this as someone who has lost hundreds of hours to
| Dwarf Fortress.
| joemi wrote:
| I guess it kind of depends on how you mean it, but I think
| there are many worse things... I've used software where
| actions that should be a single step are two or three steps
| (like a "click OK and now confirm that you clicked OK" for
| an inconsequential step out). I've played games with
| intentionally difficult UI, like QWOP. There are a few
| Windows computers at my work which are a bit older and when
| you go to open a program, nothing apparently happens, so
| you instinctively click again, and again nothing happens,
| so you either click again or wait a while, and then finally
| your web browser (or whatever) opens, but you get several
| windows open since you clicked it a few times, and this
| happens every time, just due to the way the UI delay
| happens. Also, there are experimental designs like
| https://userinyerface.com/ which illustrate brutally
| terrible UX.
|
| So, in my experience, the Dwarf Fortress UX is definitely
| complicated and isn't easily discoverable, but at least it
| does what it's supposed to. It doesn't infuriate me the way
| that some things (especially truly poorly designed things)
| do. This is why I claim it's far from the worst.
| 542458 wrote:
| Aurora 4X is pretty bad - it's as confusing as DF, but much
| more clumsy to use. Some dungeon crawl games have
| incredibly opaque UIs. System Shock 1 (non-enhanced) feels
| really, really terrible now, but I'm not sure it was as bad
| at the time.
|
| I'm not sure those qualify as worse than DF though. Depends
| on your definition of worse, I guess.
| izend wrote:
| Much fewer users though... If Dwarf Fortress magically had the
| UX they are working on now back in 2012 it would be worth at
| least $50million+
|
| Now, the fact they skipped working on the UX until now allowed
| Tarn to implement very difficult crazy features Z-level
| fortress layers and Fluid Dynamics.
| ctvo wrote:
| > If Dwarf Fortress magically had the UX they are working on
| now back in 2012 it would be worth at least $50million+
|
| And how did you come up with that 50 million USD number? Is
| it multiplayer? Can a major corporation use it to target a
| young audience demographic? Will there be a mobile version or
| micro transactions?
| kjs3 wrote:
| If it had all that, someone would say it was worth $1b+.
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| >the fact they skipped working on the UX until now allowed
| Tarn to implement very difficult crazy features Z-level
| fortress layers and Fluid Dynamics
|
| Not sure how seriously this was meant, but I unironically
| agree. I learned, _while still in college_ , never to mock up
| a "working" polished UI lacking all the complex backend, just
| to show the client how it'll look when it's done. To the non-
| computerati, the metaphor is a tradesman working on
| renovations. If you don't make development versions look
| _and_ feel like crap, the normies won 't accept that it's not
| "almost ready".
|
| Tarn's priorities here drive away most people, and filters
| for the sort of person who thinks "modern graphics library"
| means "ncurses".
| bombcar wrote:
| The Z-level stuff is so ingrained into me as a default (I
| started playing just before it was added) that it's amazing
| to think that some of the most famous DF stories are from
| before it was added.
| NhanH wrote:
| So what was it like before the Z-level stuff? Only the
| surface and one level below that?
| Arrath wrote:
| Pre-Z DF was basically a side-scroller. Surface was map-
| left, there was a cliff face, and the further map-right
| you went was 'deeper'
| jtolmar wrote:
| The left was outside, the mountain face was basically a
| vertical line, and all the things we associate with
| "deeper" were found further and further to the right of
| that line. Some ways in you'd find an underground river
| (which floods when you first find it), then a chasm
| (enemies spawn from here), then a magma river, [spoilers
| for ancient versions of DF start now] eerie glowing pits,
| and finally adamantine. Finding adamantine made the king
| show up and demand you mine more and more adamantine, but
| the more you mined the more likely you were to have your
| fortress suddenly end in a cutscene.
|
| All these fixed elements gave the game a specific
| progression of increasing rewards and challenges, and a
| guaranteed story arc for the whole fortress.
| drewcoo wrote:
| https://www.dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Bloodline:Boa
| tmu...
| danaris wrote:
| From what I've seen, it was fully 2-D: the "surface" was
| to the left, then you hit the mountain face, and the
| further to the right you went, the deeper you were, until
| eventually you breached the proverbial Hidden Fun Stuff.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| No, the surface was at one side of the map, and you kept
| tunneling through to the side
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| What is the z-level stuff? Haven't you always been able to
| move through layers up/down?
| bombcar wrote:
| Nope, that was added in Dwarf Fortress in 2008 (and it
| was a huge change at the time).
| Arrath wrote:
| Sometimes I miss the predictable and ensured progression
| as you tunneled into the mountain and got farther from
| natural light.
|
| Underground river -> Chasms -> Magma -> Bad Things(tm)
| jml7c5 wrote:
| I almost prefer it, I think! It felt much more like a
| proper story game with a challenge rather than the modern
| result of "The Sims, but dwarves". A single Z-level may
| be too austere today, so perhaps a modern iteration could
| use the same layout but with three or four Z-levels. I
| wonder if there's a way to replicate that today with some
| map editing...
|
| The real trouble I had with the old versions was the
| inability to build walls. As I recall, once you dug
| something out it was dug forever.
| bombcar wrote:
| It used to be you could be almost completely safe if you
| just stayed in the upper z-levels and didn't dig too
| deep, but with the caverns update you now can find
| various types of fun imported directly to your back door.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Sometimes you have the fun, sometimes the fun has you.
| AngryData wrote:
| When you generate your world you can change the amount of
| layers per layer zone.
|
| I don't know the minimum off hand but it is probably
| around 6 normal stone or cave levels, minus the levels
| used for open sky space and magma sea which I don't know
| the minimum for. Trees are multilevel now and I don't
| know that they will grow on a single layer.
| jeffwask wrote:
| > It answers the question: what if you had a great product, but
| the user experience was the worst possible choice in every
| single way, but all functionality still existed and worked?
|
| I feel like this describes every Bethesda game.
| sliken wrote:
| I've seen terrible game UIs, but DF seemed to take it to a
| new level. Like say for instance a dozen or so ways to select
| units.
| Arrath wrote:
| Are there still, like, 3 commands to look/inspect/view
| contents or did those finally get condensed?
| sliken wrote:
| Heh, dunno, never got into it, but was curious. Been
| following progress, and plan to tinker once the steam
| version with a full GUI have been released.
|
| The blog updates have been amusing, things like dying
| cats from soaking up too much beer in the pubs. Various
| bugs and non-bugs that result in crazy events. Many
| amusing stories, etc.
|
| I love the idea, but didn't want to invest that much time
| in learning the UI.
| gs17 wrote:
| If we're thinking of the same interactions, the current
| (texty) version still has those.
| ZetaZero wrote:
| There is a reason why Tarn asks for donations every month,
| and Notch is a billionaire.
| sliken wrote:
| Indeed, they moved from occasional donations to steam in
| an effort to get a reliable income stream and be able to
| afford health insurance.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Because people love 3d real time first person games?
| EnKopVand wrote:
| I was under the impression that people use their own UIs on top
| of it. Sort of how some people use the fumbbl client.
|
| Which are sort of effective ways of "outsourcing" the UI
| development on projects where you don't have the funds (or the
| talent) to make a great UI.
| bombcar wrote:
| The _graphics_ people often change, though technically the UI
| would remain the same (keyboard characters, etc).
|
| However, there are additional tools that let you do "bulk
| actions" by directly editing the Dwarf Fortress memory while
| it is running - these are technically a UI bypass.
|
| The actual UI is just difficult to learn but once you do it's
| surprisingly easy to use - it's consistent in its own
| inconsistent way.
| jandrese wrote:
| I would think things like Dwarf Therapist are a good
| example of the community trying their best to improve the
| UI despite the roadblocks put up by the developer.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, what we need is DFaaS, where the engine is
| converted into various API calls and anyone can make a
| front-end for it.
| lom888 wrote:
| I am a DF obsessive. Many thousands of hours spent
| playing the game over the past 12 years, it is my
| favorite game by far. I've also had numerous abortive
| attempts to learn how to code. It humbles me to think
| that people find the UI so difficult to use that they'd
| sooner spend time coding another one.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is the problem - those who can code usually end up
| learning DF "well enough" and many of those who complain
| about the UI wouldn't even play it with another UI. I
| personally never really found the UI that big of a
| hindrance; it's like learning Lotus 1-2-3 shortcuts.
|
| This "sell it on steam with a GUI" is actually brilliant,
| because lots of people will _buy_ it and some will play -
| but it gives those who like the idea but don 't actually
| want to play an excuse to give Tarn money.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > and many of those who complain about the UI wouldn't
| even play it with another UI
|
| I feel like that's a stretch. Just look at how many
| people play Rimworld, which has a fundamentally similar
| concept but much, much easier to understand UI/UX.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| I think he should sell it but open source it enough to
| allow mods or an engine rewrite. I think capturing his
| creative output w.r.t. game inclusions could still make
| him some money.
|
| The game is kinda gimped because he doesn't know how to
| multithread it.
| [deleted]
| cyberpunk wrote:
| dfremote was close to this, it was very nice on my ipad
| with the apple pencil. Sadly we've not had updates in
| some time and I think the developer has moved onto other
| things [0].
|
| 0: http://mifki.com/df/
|
| edit: In that with dfremote, df itself runs in a docker
| container on a server somewhere, and the UI is running
| entirely on your ipad.
| AngryData wrote:
| Personally I like the dwarfhack version that allows you
| to use a Dwarf Therapist style ui within the Dwarf
| Fortress UI without leaving game focus.
| simonw wrote:
| I first learned this lesson from Napster ~1999/2000.
|
| The Napster UI was terrible - almost completely
| incomprehensible. And everyone I knew, including my least
| technical friends, was using it. Because getting music for free
| was worth dealing with any UI.
|
| Second time was MySpace customization: you had to paste your
| own CSS into the "about me" profile box! And people figured it
| out, because having a custom profile was desirable enough that
| it was worth it.
| tomcam wrote:
| There's some kind of lesson we maybe haven't absorbed
| properly. Millions of people learned crazy shit like WordStar
| before Word, then MS-DOS before Windows, and then building
| websites by hand using HTML. Millions.
|
| Of course I completely recognize that improved software
| increased these markets by orders of magnitude, but to this
| day I remained fascinated that regular people managed to use
| such primitive tools for so long.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Was it? I hardly remember, but searching for old screenshots
| from the time, it seems pretty straightforward... are those
| later clients already? Did you have any particular gripes?
| montagg wrote:
| It's one of those stories people can turn into whatever
| conclusion they want:
|
| - DF is still a great game, so good UX in games doesn't mean
| anything.
|
| - DF is still a niche game, so good UX in games is essential.
|
| Caveat: I'm a UX designer who absolutely loves DF and is
| saddened by how many people may never find out how great it is.
| Natsu wrote:
| The original DF UI reminds me of vi, both good and bad.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Well, what's interesting is that Rimworld has a good UI/UX and
| has the same formula/gameplay loop at DF. Last I remembered, it
| had _the highest_ user rating on steam for awhile. Many,
| including myself, consider it as one of the greatest games ever
| made.
|
| DF is also occasionally listed as a contender for "best game
| ever made" - but the fact that it's inaccessible will always
| force it to be obscure and nearly mystical among gamers. I'm
| also convinced that the modding community in rimworld has
| overtaken its DF equivilant, meaning that modded rimworld is
| probably more filled with content (and therefor, emergent
| possibility) in 2022 than DF-with-mods is...
|
| ---------------------------
|
| I always thought that Dwarf Fortress should be compared to
| Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (CDDA) on the UI/UX front.
|
| I think CDDA is the gold standard for ASCII/CLI/TUI style of
| control - and I find that I can extremely quickly do things in
| that game all on my keyboard, almost like a tiling window
| manager.
|
| I'm sure this sort of nirvana is possible with Dwarf Fortress
| (with the LNP) - but I was unable to achieve it, despite having
| sunk over 500 hours into rimworld and nearly as much in CDDA
| before playing DF.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| I've played RimWorld modded to hell and back, and got maybe
| 20% of the way towards vanilla DF. That's not to diss
| Rimworld of course, it's probably my favorite game and has a
| different focus than DF. But in terms of pure emergent
| complexity, Rimworld has it incidentally and DF has
| essentially nothing else.
| lazzlazzlazz wrote:
| They're doing a better job that I expected. Very happy to sponsor
| this project on Patreon.
| cletus wrote:
| I have enormous respect for the systems, complexity and emergent
| behaviour (eg [1]) that these two guys have created over
| _decades_ at this point and continue to create.
|
| But I just cannot get into DF in the way I would like. Even with
| Dwarf Therapist, custom tile sets and so on it's still a
| management nightmare. I am told some people just have a lot of
| idle dwarves. It always struck me as there were too many dwarves
| before you've created any sort of structure.
|
| I got to a point where I needed a militia to defend against some
| monster and that was going to be a whole new system I'd heave to
| learn, assign dwarves to, suplly and manage and I was like "this
| is too much".
|
| I know failure is the default mode (and some consider
| inevitable). It's a cool feature that if you play again on the
| same world you can find your old ruins.
|
| I wish this were in a form where a community could contribute to
| and build this out because I think it could really help. I
| understand these guys derive an income from it and I support them
| in that. It just seems like there's so much missed potential
| here.
|
| Some good iconography would go a really long way. If dawrves were
| wandering around with symbols above their heads showing they were
| hungry, thirsty, sad or whatever without having to inspect them
| you could communicate a lot of information. You might be able to
| see you have a food shortage problem or why dwarves have wnadered
| off looking for food. Or even that they're just bored.
|
| If you were looking at dwarves you could see that they're your
| militia or your farmers or your miners. Not visually conveying
| information just seems like a massive missed opportunity.
|
| [1]: https://www.eurogamer.net/why-dwarf-fortress-started-
| killing...
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Check out Rimworld for something more digestible
| outworlder wrote:
| My problem is a very close one - handling the waves of migrants
| the game throws at you. Even with Dwarf Therapist, there's just
| way too many jobs to keep track of. I'm kinda ok with idle
| dwarfs if everything is being attended to. I would generally
| take idle dwarfs and turn then into a militia.
|
| It seems my fortresses start to break down at around the 30
| dwarf mark, but after 10 it already starts to run not-
| optimally.
|
| Had better luck with Rimworld as generally it takes a while to
| build your numbers.
| bombcar wrote:
| There's a config option to limit the total max number of
| dwarves, which can help (though mainly on peaceful or similar
| starts - obviously you can't fight a war without dwarves).
|
| I believe the dwarves now will flash some various icons (in the
| text mode they'd flip between the dwarf character and a
| downwards red arrow, for example) but it's usually when they're
| almost dead of whatever it is.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Losing is fun!
|
| https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Losing
| feoren wrote:
| > It always struck me as there were too many dwarves before
| you've created any sort of structure.
|
| Agreed, which is why the first thing I build in any new
| fortress is a giant wall around my fortress with only one way
| in: a long retractable bridge over a giant pit of death. When
| new migrants arrive before I'm ready, I flip the switch as
| they're crossing the bridge. Rather gruesome, but I do get all
| their stuff and my fortress gets a reputation for being
| dangerous, so fewer migrants show up.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| See this is why DF absolutely should not be fixed. What would
| it be without a murderdrawbridge?
| synu wrote:
| That's a nice looking tile set. Did they update the default at
| some point?
| Shared404 wrote:
| I believe this is for the Steam release, which will have a
| graphical default tile set iirc.
| juice_bus wrote:
| This is for the steam release of Dwarf Fortress - it is getting
| an official UI overhaul!
| sprkwd wrote:
| Do we have a release date for this yet?
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| I don't think so. I am on their mailing list.
| alexktz wrote:
| Breathes loudly in Factorio and Rimworld noises until
| then.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Aiming for August, or so I've read
| AngryData wrote:
| No but they seem to be progressing at great speed, atleast
| that is my impression from the reading the dwarfortress
| main blog for years.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| It's interesting to keep seeing DF evolve over time. It wasn't
| that long ago that I remember DF was ascii-only, and starting a
| new game took several pages of explanation and setup. It seems
| like they've streamlined and improved a lot.
|
| I think there's still a ton of room to go moving foward, UI/UX
| design is really hard and the problem of keeping a system
| flexible and configurable while also easy to use is no simple
| task.
| roblh wrote:
| For all the dwarf fortress fans out there, check out Songs of
| Syx. It's still early access, but it captures a lot of the same
| appeal with a slightly more streamlined interface. All built by
| one dude as well.
| gabythenerd wrote:
| It actually looks pretty good! Definitely will give it a try,
| kinda looks like Rimworld.
| [deleted]
| LanternLight83 wrote:
| Those who prefer to listen to their articles and news can find
| Blind's coverage this post here:
|
| https://youtu.be/PT7adnfzmSU
|
| https://youtu.be/QdDxuU0rVvE
| royaltjames wrote:
| Feelings rant:
|
| I've played DF since just before the massive z-level update
| (2008?) - I was living in a girl's college dorm with my
| girlfriend and her roommate's boyfriend that was living there
| turned me onto DF and Fallout, etc.
|
| DF has been the one thing I have turned to over the years as a
| therapeutic device when I'm in deep depression and meds/therapy
| doesn't feel like it's doing it: the function of procgen
| obscurity, guided freedom of choice, and even the simple
| repetitive mundane nature of it that doesn't _feel_ like it (even
| the looped guitar track) helps me really get through some dark
| days.
|
| I'm worried seeing the steam updates like Tarn is begrudgingly
| making UX/UI changes for "the people in our community that can't
| handle ASCII" when he is obviously NOT a UX/UI guy (evidenced by
| the product of DF itself). The textbox styling look like he's
| just adding bland graphics as #goodenough.
|
| If they patreon'd a $100/month tier where I could support a team
| to help translate his brilliant spaghetti into clean, streamlined
| frictive processes (militia workflow having broken defaults,
| navigation, etc), and maybe even some devs to optimize his legacy
| code so embark can handle larger complex sites and maybe CO-OP
| (come on I can dream). So much of the flow has always felt like I
| have to do this because this is how it is done in DF.
|
| tldr: I am worried Tarn is not a UX guy, begrudgingly building UX
| for DF, when he (and WE) are missing out on a massive opportunity
| to build something with less friction and more [FUN].
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| I was under the impression that Tarn's getting outside help for
| the Steam Version's UI.
| drakythe wrote:
| Tarn is not doing the UX outside of any back end coding changes
| needed. Kitfox games is doing the UX, which is why this blog
| post isn't on Tarn's site. As I read the blogs I believe he is
| giving input and making code changes to support information
| retrieval, but he isn't the one actually doing the UI and
| Graphics.
| royaltjames wrote:
| Oh thank the gods
| kibwen wrote:
| Tarn is outsourcing the UI and art. I think the art looks
| fantastic, better than any DF tileset I've seen.
| Romanulus wrote:
| leephillips wrote:
| From the point of view of someone who basically never plays
| computer games and has almost no interest in them: if I _were_ to
| start playing a computer game, this would be the one. I find this
| project fascinating. However, if I were to play a computer game,
| this would probably be the worst choice, because it would
| probably be too interesting and suck up too much time.
| rav wrote:
| The development of Dwarf Fortress has been fully funded by
| donations for well over a decade I believe. I used to donate but
| I stopped when I was saving up for a home. It seems their
| financial support has been declining since 2020 - maybe it's time
| for me to start donating again.
|
| Donations from the beginning in 2007 through to 2021:
| http://www.bay12forums.com/smf//index.php?topic=179406.0
|
| Donations in 2022:
| http://www.bay12forums.com/smf//index.php?topic=179926.0
| xbar wrote:
| Thanks for reminding me to do my part.
| kirillbobyrev wrote:
| I really hope they would release the game on Steam soon so that
| people would just buy the game and the donations won't be
| necessary.
|
| I understand that they might want to polish it but I'm not sure
| if polishing is actually worth. The original game has been
| continuously getting updates IIUC, so it might be totally OK to
| release sooner and then use the same model in Steam.
| Jochim wrote:
| > I understand that they might want to polish it but I'm not
| sure if polishing is actually worth. The original game has
| been continuously getting updates IIUC, so it might be
| totally OK to release sooner and then use the same model in
| Steam.
|
| I think the platform shapes the user's expectations of what
| is acceptable though. If I buy a game on Steam I expect a
| certain degree of polish when I download it. If I were to buy
| the same game on Kickstarter I might not even expect to be
| able to download it for a few months/years. If someone
| donates to Dwarf Fortress, they probably already like it in
| it's current state and want to see where it goes.
| kirillbobyrev wrote:
| That makes a lot of sense, but I feel like Steam's "Early
| Access" is exactly for that. I can't speak for everyone but
| I often buy games there just to support the developers and
| don't expect it to be a success (maybe it turns out to be
| good, maybe it doesn't; either way, it's too early for a
| "full experience").
|
| Maybe it changed lately, but plenty of astonishing games
| came out of "Early Access" while being rather unimpressive
| (though promising) at first.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Apparently they plan to release on steam in August.
| standardUser wrote:
| I like how they've made it look like a game.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| A management simulator disguised as a game.
| natly wrote:
| I wish people actually did this with real mundane excel-like
| work tasks.
| bergenty wrote:
| It would be awesome if we could get to a point where with
| some combination of GPT3+Dalle2/Imagen we could feed it a
| task and it would spit out a game version that accomplished
| that very thing.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Bah! Lipstick!
|
| The pig is the game.
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(page generated 2022-06-08 23:00 UTC)