Reply With QuoteI dunno... Sounds like most single people I've known. The bombed out bedroom, unfurnished flat & empty fridge bits, I mean.Originally Posted by extarbags
Yeah, that's my only real issue. Lots of people have written artifact quality pathing implementations. He should probably break that part out to a dedicated core or three, or provide enough dox to allow others to implement it.path finding
Also, I'm pretty sure some of you guys are underestimating the complexity of this simulation by an order of magnitude or three.
e: artifact quality = BAD in this context. expensive in time and resources and good for nothing but attracting unwanted (usually negative) attention
Last edited by Spam; 07-27-2011 at 03:13 PM.
I dunno... Sounds like most single people I've known. The bombed out bedroom, unfurnished flat & empty fridge bits, I mean.
He can't / doesn't want to provide docs on his code. A year ago (or so) he left debug info in his release executable. Someone immediately took advantage of this to start programming a few tools, ToadyOne got *very* angry, wrote a long rage post and banned the guy.
This said, yes, moving pathing to another thread should be relatively easy and it would help a lot. Not gonna happen, though. He specifically said so (maybe he'll change his mind when his game will be sluggish on even the fastest single core on earth).
@MostlyTigerProof : I can't post PM yet, but you've got mail :)
Jeez, is it just me or is Mr. Timecube getting steadily more pissed? I hadn't looked in a while and I don't remember quite so much red or so many obscenities. Don't get me wrong, I remember a lot of obscenities, but not that many.
Perhaps someday soon I will go there and it will be basically a wall of "SHIT DAMN DAMNED FUCKING DAMN SHIT DAMN DAMN FUCKING TWELVE DAMN SHIT FUCKING HOUR DAMN SHIT SHIT ROTATION" -- actually I suppose it already is that.
Now I wonder what that guy looks like.
Edit:
Yeah, that's about right.
He sure doesn't like the number 1 (or white/black/jewish/gay/deist/adult/.. people)
(be damned for making me read his ramblings again)
"Seek in haste to attend a lecture by Dr. Gene Ray,
Cubic and Wisest Human - His Wisdom is Awesome. "
Last edited by Serial Kicked; 07-27-2011 at 03:38 PM. Reason: citation
Is there anything else to that story? Did the tools get developed, did the other developers do like Toady wanted and ignore that code or did they take advantage of it like a sane human?
True, but mechanics are part of the problem. Z layers are a good example of this. The interface took a huge step back from being able to quickly comprehend the overall situation to have to page through the view and mentally put the pieces together. I can't really think of an adequate UI for a 3D cave system short of new technological breakthroughs. It does make for a more interesting world though.
2D strategy games had a similar problem, back in the bad old days of brick-sized pixels. The solution was to provide a secondary miniature overview of the game area, where various types of information could be hilighted and/or turned on and off.
A minimap displaying 10'ish player defined z-levels as hilight-/toggle-able wireframe would accomplish much the same thing.
EDIT: Of course, a fully realised holographic display would be even better. Though I kind of doubt DF would take advantage of something like that, if it was possible.
I don't see the problem with z levels and interface.
1) Limit view to the current z level. This make everything clear.
2) Button to toggle "fuzzy view of other levels". This enable/disable a fake deep view. Where deep is represented with different colourd tiles for "empty". So you can somewhat see the shape of a hole in the ground. In a way similar at how you can enable/disable the view of other z levels in X-Com.
I've been giving coy glances towards Dwarf Fortress for maybe 3-4 years now, and wanting to try it out, because it's pretty much right in my ball park. The problem has always been the UI and I simply don't have the time or energy to go through the ordeal of learning it. Yeah.. not a hardcore gamer, but I do love world simulation games and DF seems unique right now. Except there's this other game called Goblin Camp.
So, Goblin Camp (main dev seems to be a finn!) seems promising, but I haven't really spent that much time with it yet, and I'd love to hear the impressions from more seasoned DF players. Is this even close to what DF is? Here's a bunch of tutorial Youtube videos which I think gives a pretty good idea on how the game plays:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2lLY_OIyK0 - Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEH37o6Z0eo - Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSLLMdJl1pg - Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBcxhNUDcIY - Part 4
I am not asking for a full smooth UI, but consistent hot-keys, basic mouse controls for selection purpose, and a few filters to sort dwarves/items, aren't tied to Z layers and should be trivial to implement and will make things ten time simpler for anyone from the newbies to the veteran. Oh well..
Sadly I don't remember the details exactly and most of the topics have been deleted in a spirit of transparency. AFAIK, most developers complied with Toady's request. Except one of the author of a 3D visualization tool (or/and DFHacks). He was also a rather loudmouth regarding the UI and the general game's direction. After being banned, he started the Khazad project (khazad.sourceforge.net), but the thing doesn't seem to be active anymore.Is there anything else to that story? Did the tools get developed, did the other developers do like Toady wanted and ignore that code or did they take advantage of it like a sane human?
The only surviving topic on the official board is this one "bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=58796.0" but the first post has been edited to be more friendly.
One dude in that thread "I program using emacs in a terminal and I got problems learning the interface".
I feel vindicated, since I got soo lost the first time I tried to use emacs, that I killed the computer to exit it (removing the electricity cord) . vi is soo much easier to use!.
Last edited by Teiman; 07-28-2011 at 07:04 AM.
If you want to learn DF, get the version Calistas used in his tutorials and play through those. Seriously. They're fantastic. Them plus the DF wiki = you can learn within a few hours.
Goblin Camp vs DF is like comparing Minecraft Classic to Minecraft. It's just not the real thing dude, you're missing out on so much.
Goblin Camp isn't as advanced, certainly - but the beauty of the open source means that it has potential far beyond the limitations of its sole executor.
It has much less momentum than I might have liked to have seen - but given that I haven't put any work into it yet, I don't quite have much room to judge.
On the other hand, it's been in development for one year instead of ten, and development should move a hell of a lot faster with more than one person working on it,
Edit: although the "future plans" section of the Goblin Camp site seems to indicate that DF isn't really the direction it's heading.
emacs has a vi mode. Every time you press a key it beeps, and you can't quit.
:)
That's the problem with open source projects. They tend to advance at a glacial pace.
I grabbed vanilla DF and the Lazy Newb pack and I am wondering why the play window is still so amazingly tiny. On vanilla, as Toady intends it, DF takes up approximately 20% of my screen real estate. The tilesets in Newb bump that up to about 1/3rd (all of it horizontal). Do I need to edit ini files to improve that? Why isn't that option in the LNP? Confused.
If Toady plans another ten years of development, at current res improvement rates I forecast the DF window appearing the size of a small stamp on your monitor.
Yes.
Who cares.Why isn't that option in the LNP?
It's been configurable since your tutorial, which as I recall included instructions on setting this.If Toady plans another ten years of development, at current res improvement rates I forecast the DF window appearing the size of a small stamp on your monitor.
Actually, that is an option in the LNP. One of the things the LNP dialog manages is INI settings, such as X and Y dimensions of the window. Which can be either in tiles or pixels. In any case, if you're running in windowed mode, you can always drag DF larger once it's running, just like any other program in Windows.
Last edited by Gus_Smedstad; 07-30-2011 at 05:23 AM.
For a long time now you can just increase the window size by grabbing the corner, no need to set up the resolution in the ini...people should really stop giving advice when the last version they played is from 3 years ago.
In Lazy Newb make sure you are running the lazynewb executable not DF proper. Choose your stuff hit apply on each tab before navigating off.
Aha! Ok thanks. I just have reason for not wanting to touch the ini file that I will explain later. Will check out dragging etc.
You can also zoom in / out using the mouse wheel, if i recall correctly.
Man, you guys have saved my balls. Drag the edge, zoom, it makes vanilla DF quite playable! Thanks a ton.
Hmm, when I last ran DF the game was very quick when I had 7 dwarfs. It currently.... isn't? Hmm.
Last edited by Calistas; 07-30-2011 at 05:53 PM.
What sort of rig do you have?
Did you use any sort of reveal tool? Did you embark on an ocean or a location with alot of visible z levels right off the bat?
There's now a whole world underneath your feet, though I'm not sure when the cpu starts to simulate it.
Also check FPS cap in lazynewb or ini
Last edited by Wolff; 07-30-2011 at 08:47 PM.
Is there a cross-sectional rendering of the underworld generation?
I found Minecraft's snakework of tunnels to be incredibly interesting, I wonder how DF looks.
Wolf, it was a steep river valley, perhaps that didn't help. I have a Asus G-somethingorother gaming laptop. G73 I think.
Waterfalls? They are pretty but oh the cycles. As long as you have a decent machine you should be fine. I think world size also may play into it, but check the fps cap as well.
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF...zing_framerate
Pogo, you can you dfreveal (part of lazy newb pack) to see how the tunnels are. There are worldgen setting that make them more open or more tunnely. They span multiple z-levels.
Ta for tips. Hmm. The default DF dwarf setup is a little weak, isn't it? Two miners minimum is so much nicer. And damn I need to learn about bees and wool and all that new stuff!
Ya I almost never use the default setup. Typically for non crazy evil maps I go
Miner 5
Miner 5
StoneCraft 5
Carp 5/Lumberjack 5
Farm 5/Brew 5
Doctor/Broker/Miner 1
Mason 5/ Architect 5
Leader/Miner 1
Dump the extra axe, replace any steel with iron, 2 cats, 2 dogs, enough food and booze to last till end of summer in case my production gets messed up.
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