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Post by WickedCrustacean on Aug 5, 2014 21:38:36 GMT -5
As some of you might recall, I am closely following the ongoing development of this game for a while now. By this point, after 8 years of full time development and 12 years of development overall, it's undoubtedly the most complex video game/simulation ever made, and it's still probably decades from being complete. Recently there have been some cool new developments. The two devs have released the latest version of the game, on which they have worked for over two years in mid July. www.bay12games.com/dwarves/The new version includes a ton of stuff, but its general focus is to make the procedurally generated worlds come alive, as various civilizations, towns, bandits and cults dynamically set goals for themselves and go about achieving them. Much of it is still only the foundation for later code additions, but already, people should notice a lot more stuff going on in Adventurer mode for example. As expected, with such a huge update, there have been a ton of bugs and other problems, so the devs have been cranking out patch releases, about 5 so far already, and they are not done yet. Another really cool thing is that the community continues to come up with all sorts of useful tools and modifications for the game, which in turn lead to other cool stuff. There has been a graphic visualizer for Dwarf Fotress called Stonesense for several years now, which let the player see what's going on in the world with actual simple isometric graphics (the main game itself is currently represented in ASCII). But now, someone else has created some other tool which allowed this Stonesense mod to actually be incorporated into the game itself, and work not only as a visualizer, but as a full graphic interface, through which the player can see the world and also input commands and so on. There are still bugs they are working out with that, but for the first time ever, DF might have an isometric graphic interface. Here is a sample image from the Stonesense interface: Attachments:
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Post by Taibi on Aug 8, 2014 15:07:21 GMT -5
Awesome, thank you for keeping us updated. I have to admit that the old visuals turned me off, I just could not keep my focus long enough. This is much better.
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Post by WickedCrustacean on Aug 8, 2014 20:46:15 GMT -5
Yeah, I first heard about Dwarf Fortress a looooong time ago, either from the old thread on the old forum by Devercia, or somewhere else, but I couldn't handle the ASCII graphics at all. People say you get used to them over time, kinda like reading a book, but I dunno, never had the patience for it. So I first got into DF by using graphical tilesets, my favorite was Phoebus's: www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=137096.0Lately there is another maybe every better looking one called Obsidian, but it hasnt been updated for the latest release yet: www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=126934.0These tilesets just replace ASCII characters with small graphical tiles representing things in the game. So it's still overhead 2D, but much prettier, and easier to tell. This Stonesense isometric stuff would be a whole step above that though. I am waiting for when they update it for the latest version so I can try it out.
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Daedalus
Barfly
Probably Lurking
Posts: 182
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Post by Daedalus on Aug 22, 2014 20:29:53 GMT -5
This is great news! I've been looking forward to have a graphical interface. This may be what gets me back into DF. I loved the concept, world generation and depth, but the poor interface and micromanagement really hold it back.
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Daedalus
Barfly
Probably Lurking
Posts: 182
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Post by Daedalus on Aug 22, 2014 20:47:19 GMT -5
I noticed something interesting in the changelog: The developers used the five-digit ISO format - I like the way that Tarn and Zach Adams think. I think that it's a useful reminder of the time scales that we should be considering. The decisions that humans make are largely short-term focused and selfish. I don't personally use the five-digit date, but I like the idea. If you're interesting in learning more about the organization that promotes the use of the five-digit date, you should check out the Long Now Foundation's 10,000-year clock. It's a true marvel of engineering - if you like gears, durable machinery and/or precise timekeeping, you're gonna love this thing . The Foundation is dedicated to encouraging long-term thinking and responsibility - I think that their message is very valuable and should be heeded.
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Post by WickedCrustacean on Aug 22, 2014 23:34:42 GMT -5
Haha, leave it to the guys with a 30 year development plan to use 5 digits for the year. I dunno, the Y2K thing was understandable, people were using 2 digits for the year only 50 years or less before it would change, but planning ahead for 8000 years seems a little off. I am also waiting for the Stonesense guys to update that stuff to the latest version, I can check it out, but seems like they are waiting for Tarn Adams to complete the bug fix releases first, and once that stabilizes, they will try to update their stuff for it. Meanwhile they are working on graphical assets for it, like new multi-tile trees and such. Here's a preview screenshot they posted recently, looks really cool:
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Post by WickedCrustacean on Jan 25, 2015 3:11:12 GMT -5
So the devs finished cleaning up the massive 2014 release for now, and moved on to other stuff. Which happens to be really cool. They are introducing taverns/inns and temples to the game. Temples will be pretty simple for now, just a space you designate in fortress mode for religious dwarves to go and worship in, more advanced functionality will be added later on in subsequent releases. But they already started working on the taverns and associated stuff. These will be available both in player fortresses and in the outside world in adventurer mode. The last dev blog update details how they are adding poetry, music, and dancing to the game, with appropriate skills. As everything else in DF, this will be fairly complex, with different skills for different intruments, and these things will have "forms" determined by their associated culture. So a player character or an "NPC" can learn some poetry form and then develop a skill in it, and produce poems of appropriate quality. Really interesting stuff, especially considering the tavern ties to this forum of ours, and also how we talked a while back about social skills in Star Wars Galaxies. DF is, of course, a completely different beast, but still, can't help but find this amazingly cool in an open world simulator. Also, one of the main contributors to Stonesense, the isometric DF visualizer (which produced the images earlier in this thread) has started another project, a full 3D visualizer/DF front-end done in Unity. It will initially use the same sprite graphics as Stonesense for creatures at least, but have the 3D options like camera control, different perspectives, zoom, etc. Later on, they might also go for 3D models for creatures, although at this point it sounds very labor intensive. www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=146473.0
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Post by WickedCrustacean on Aug 8, 2015 16:15:05 GMT -5
Check out this image of a first person view in Dwarf Fortress, thanks to the Arnok Real time DF Project which is made by one of the fans who is creating a 3D graphic interface for DF in Unity. Amazing. Attachments:
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Post by WickedCrustacean on Apr 14, 2018 18:23:37 GMT -5
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Post by Taibi on Dec 6, 2022 12:38:39 GMT -5
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Post by WickedCrustacean on Dec 8, 2022 12:33:37 GMT -5
I bought it on Tuesday. Not going to play yet, think I will wait until Adventurer mode is out, but I do want to reward this guy for plugging away on what is a really a universe simulator. The potential scope and ambition of this game is insane.
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Post by Taibi on Dec 9, 2022 12:24:35 GMT -5
The game has sold 160,000 copies in the first 24 hours on Steam.
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Post by WickedCrustacean on Dec 17, 2022 20:38:20 GMT -5
That's awesome, couldn't happen to a better game.
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Post by Taibi on Jan 27, 2023 13:33:37 GMT -5
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Post by WickedCrustacean on Apr 17, 2024 13:50:34 GMT -5
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