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ToastyPotato posted:So I am guessing that at this point, the only reason DF refuses to modernize it's appearance and interface is out of that stubborn indie mentality where accessibility = "a bad thing"? And no, Dwarf fortress isn't graphical yet because toady wants the actual engine and gameplay done before he bothers putting anything shiny on it. He's adding so much stuff (eventually) that he doesn't want to have to go back every version to change art stuff because something is different now.
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Jun 25, 2012 20:27
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Yes, but it's not like he can't come up with a framework that keeps art assets compartmentalized and not require a rewrite all the time. You know, like every other game in existence. His excuse is the same for the shoddy menus which can also be made to not require recoding every time he updates the game.
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Jun 25, 2012 20:35
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Drone_Fragger posted:And no, Dwarf fortress isn't graphical yet because toady wants the actual engine and gameplay done before he bothers putting anything shiny on it. He's adding so much stuff (eventually) that he doesn't want to have to go back every version to change art stuff because something is different now. Uhm no Dwarf fortress is never going to be 'graphical' toady has stated that the game will be staying the way it is in terms of ascii/tilesets quite a few times I believe.
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Jun 25, 2012 21:03
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ToastyPotato posted:So I am guessing that at this point, the only reason DF refuses to modernize it's appearance and interface is out of that stubborn indie mentality where accessibility = "a bad thing"? No, it's because it's a one-person project, and he can only work at one thing at a time. Which is kinda worrying as I see that Gnomoria only has a single coder too, so I hope that he doesn't fall into the same trap. Speaking of which, the Gnomoria dude seems to operate on the opposite paradigm: Design a usable UI and graphics engine (by the way, I dig the 8-bit aesthetics), and then build the gameplay on top of that. My only issue (which it seems that other people also have problems with) is that the top square of the "selection cube" is aligned with the bottom square of the "cube" behind it, creating a some confusion when designating areas. I hope that the designer will implement a rudimentary top-down mode to help with this problem.
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Jun 25, 2012 22:20
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Is there an easy way to dispose of dirt clumps? I've been designating a storeroom outdoors that holds nothing but dirt clumps and having all of my gnomes just move dirt from where I'm digging to that storeroom, but that takes up a lot of their time.
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Jun 25, 2012 23:30
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Blunt Force Trauma posted:Is there an easy way to dispose of dirt clumps? I've been designating a storeroom outdoors that holds nothing but dirt clumps and having all of my gnomes just move dirt from where I'm digging to that storeroom, but that takes up a lot of their time. When a major dig is going on I place temporary stockpiles for rocks and dirt right there. So the gnomes will stack them up really quickly, and then I just delete the stockpiles and they cart the stacks of dirt and rock away to the storage. Goes much faster. Just gotta make sure to have your temp stockpiles have a higher priority. I use a similar trick when harvesting a bunch of unstackable stuff. Always have a few crates lying around, and when its time to chop down an entire forest, just make a high priority stockpile there and the gnomes will bring the crates and put all the wood into them. Deleting that stockpile and making another one, same size, at your base usually results in them carting the, now full, crates back. But it is finicky as gently caress, sometimes it will all just go to hell. Loving the game so far, could basically call it an early beta with all the content.
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Jun 26, 2012 02:40
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A very useful addition to this game would be a list of your gnomes that you can sort by their level in each skill. It would be much easier than trawling through your new batch of Gnomads every season and trying to remember who is best at what so you can assign them jobs.
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Jun 26, 2012 03:36
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im a girl btw posted:A very useful addition to this game would be a list of your gnomes that you can sort by their level in each skill. It would be much easier than trawling through your new batch of Gnomads every season and trying to remember who is best at what so you can assign them jobs. Like Dwarf Fortress's Dwarf Therapist? I haven't played GF, but this tool is almost mandatory for keeping your fortress organized in DF. Anyway, I'll also be taking a look at this game when I get home today.
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Jun 26, 2012 18:21
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Wow, wasn't expecting to see a thread here! I guess you can say this is partially goon-made, as I'm the artist working on this. Admittedly DF wasn't a thing I was super familiar with, I tried it a few years ago and gave up after a few hours. I hadn't actually played this properly until after the alpha was released because I was so apprehensive of the DF-like premise, but it completely hooked me and now I struggle to spend more time working on it than I do playing it. At the time I took the job, a good 50% of the assets had already been done by a previous artist, to the degree that it was too far gone to reasonably start over from scratch while remaining productive, so I chose to adapt to his style and finish off the job. But I'm glad they seem to be getting a (mostly) positive reception!
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Jun 26, 2012 22:10
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Gay 4 Marblez posted:At the time I took the job, a good 50% of the assets had already been done by a previous artist, to the degree that it was too far gone to reasonably start over from scratch while remaining productive, so I chose to adapt to his style and finish off the job. But I'm glad they seem to be getting a (mostly) positive reception! For curiosity's sake, would you be willing to point to an example of an asset done by the previous artist, and an example of your adaption? I can't tell where the seam is, but I'm still a little curious to see where it is all the same.
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Jun 26, 2012 22:54
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Sputnik posted:For curiosity's sake, would you be willing to point to an example of an asset done by the previous artist, and an example of your adaption? I can't tell where the seam is, but I'm still a little curious to see where it is all the same. The soil, clay and stone were done by a previous artist. There was a grass set done by yet another artist, which totally didn't match - think grainy generic green texture. The current grass is a set I made. I also made an alternate stone set that looked a lot more "sedimentary", but Rob preferred to have a single stone set and I thought the original graphic suited a "generic" rock more than my sedimentary one did. At some point I want to make a few alternate blocks/floors for the existing stone and soil. The gnome is also another one - it was already defined and all I had to do was split it up and draw clothes, hairs and accessories for it. The generic short hair with parting was the "original" hair, all the others are done by me. Really stretching my memory now - the held axe graphic was by the older artist, and the sword, pick, hammer and battleaxe (which isn't in yet) were done by me. I think that's most of it!
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Jun 26, 2012 23:39
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That's awesome, thanks a ton for sharing the inside secrets! Neat to hear!
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Jun 27, 2012 00:08
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Dude awesome to hear that a bit of graphical development is being done by a Goon. I really hope the game takes off because I love the idea of DF but could never enjoy myself with it because of the UI. Here's to hoping things go well! Disappointing Pie fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Jun 27, 2012 |
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Jun 27, 2012 00:15
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I actually like the grass texture a ton in this game and wish other stuff looked as good  please come back Gay 4 Marblez
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Jun 27, 2012 00:25
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Pretty awesome stuff, and I'll be grabbing this a bit down the line. I hope that maps will eventually have an option to choose a drop off point, as well as have the terrain generate mountain where stone is much more accessible. I think it was a little ridiculous to dig down 10 or so levels until I hit a kind of stone to get workshops going.
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Jun 27, 2012 00:25
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PROTOSTORM!!! posted:Pretty awesome stuff, and I'll be grabbing this a bit down the line. I hope that maps will eventually have an option to choose a drop off point, as well as have the terrain generate mountain where stone is much more accessible. I think it was a little ridiculous to dig down 10 or so levels until I hit a kind of stone to get workshops going. Availability of resources seems to be really luck based. Some worlds have tons of stone just inside mountains at ground level, other times I've had to dig a few levels for it. Metal is really hard to find (usually), which makes it difficult to get a military started. Mine usually consists of one guy with the starting armour and weapons and a couple of gnomes with clothes and torches.
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Jun 27, 2012 02:49
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im a girl btw posted:Availability of resources seems to be really luck based. Some worlds have tons of stone just inside mountains at ground level, other times I've had to dig a few levels for it. Since you mentioned that, I know that it's an alpha and all but does anyone else think the difficulty curve is a bit off? Goblins attacked me fairly early into my base building and I didn't have anywhere near enough time to dig down to decent metals to defend myself while building up my food and drink supplies and trying to keep my gnomes happy. -Edit: Also Gay 4 Marbelz are you the guy whose working on Starbound also? Disappointing Pie fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Jun 27, 2012 |
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Jun 27, 2012 02:57
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I am 
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Jun 27, 2012 03:33
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Disappointing Pie posted:Since you mentioned that, I know that it's an alpha and all but does anyone else think the difficulty curve is a bit off? Goblins attacked me fairly early into my base building and I didn't have anywhere near enough time to dig down to decent metals to defend myself while building up my food and drink supplies and trying to keep my gnomes happy. The best thing you can do while preparing for gnome invasions is to light up all the areas of your fortress (esp in the mine) as goblins can spawn anywhere in the dark, and then just defend or even block up the main entrance. Once you build a great hall you'll get invaded often
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Jun 27, 2012 04:33
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ToastyPotato posted:So I am guessing that at this point, the only reason DF refuses to modernize it's appearance and interface is out of that stubborn indie mentality where accessibility = "a bad thing"? From what I gathered, Toady's code is a lump of chewed bubblegum and rubberbands, and all the inane "Ten layers of skin, fat and muscle, excluding the nerves of course" on every_single_fucking_creature in the world, it would be pretty much impossible to code it into anything else than ASCII. Also the vast sea of dribbling spergmeisters hating anything that even resembles a game. Nebelwerfer fucked around with this message at 09:08 on Jun 27, 2012 |
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Jun 27, 2012 09:04
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Nebelwerfer posted:From what I gathered, Toady's code is a lump of chewed bubblegum and rubberbands, and all the inane "Ten layers of skin, fat and muscle, excluding the nerves of course" on every_single_fucking_creature in the world, it would be pretty much impossible to code it into anything else than ASCII. Also the vast sea of dribbling spergmeisters hating anything that even resembles a game. It's not impossible at all - hell, look at Stonesense and Dwarf Therapist, whcih do what they do just by hacking into and reading the memory in which the game is running. The problem is that without Toady opening up a way, there's no way to create a third-party program that issues commands to the program, so Stonesense can't be turned into a full interface. And Toady just plain has no interest in doing something better himself. Indie Charm, I guess.
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Jun 27, 2012 09:16
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He is afraid that if he opens up the code, someone will steal his precious multiple skin layer or eyeball-cleaning eyelid algorithms. Or that whole history generating gimmick that amuses you the first time, but has zero bearing on the gameplay experience eventually (other than producing some weird results that look more like bugs than actual history). Well, I have to admit that the landscape generation of DF is pretty cool, but at this point I am pretty sure that there are a lot of open algorithms on doing that, so I really don't see him protecting any actual assets. Dwarf Fortress was born inside the Model Train Ghetto and doesn't plan on ever leaving.
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Jun 27, 2012 09:53
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My problems with these DF clone projects is they always fail or slow and shrivel long before they reach the playability of something like 4 year old DF. It's like these projects start up because people get excited to make a graphical DF then realize it took DF a lot of builds to get where it is today and give up.
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Jun 27, 2012 10:08
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MikeJF posted:It's not impossible at all - hell, look at Stonesense and Dwarf Therapist, whcih do what they do just by hacking into and reading the memory in which the game is running. The problem is that without Toady opening up a way, there's no way to create a third-party program that issues commands to the program, so Stonesense can't be turned into a full interface. Yeah, I kinda should have said "no feasible way to actually pull it off" as I remember my CPU dying off when I found a huge underground waterfall, many levels deep last time I played it. And the world creation, while awesome, larger worlds even at that state take lot of resources to create. That said, I'd be happy with even the half of what DF offers if it had decent GUI. Severed limbs and ability to tear your foe's head clean off with your bare hands should be one of those features, though. 
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Jun 27, 2012 10:13
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Nebelwerfer posted:Yeah, I kinda should have said "no feasible way to actually pull it off" as I remember my CPU dying off when I found a huge underground waterfall, many levels deep last time I played it. And the world creation, while awesome, larger worlds even at that state take lot of resources to create. Yeah, but that's all from the simulation, and that's all there already whether there's an ASCII gui or a real rendered one. Rendering is a piece of piss compared to the DF simulation. Like I said, look at Stonesense - that already does it. Doing a real front-end would not increase the drain on system resources by any measurable amount. It's already throwing it all towards figuring out how the temperature disseminates amongst the rock for each frame of falling water and every dwarf checking if it's quicker to walk to the bottom of the caverns and back with each step, and won't change with whether that's presented in letters or sprites. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 10:41 on Jun 27, 2012 |
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Jun 27, 2012 10:38
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randombattle posted:My problems with these DF clone projects is they always fail or slow and shrivel long before they reach the playability of something like 4 year old DF. It's like these projects start up because people get excited to make a graphical DF then realize it took DF a lot of builds to get where it is today and give up. And yet I found this one more playable than the current version of DF, with less than a year of development from scratch. No, seriously, I installed this game, started a new fortress, had my gnomes dig, haul, build, along with other gnome-related activities with just a few clicks, without having to do through endless wiki pages or master those elusive "shortcuts" that somehow make DF bearable. Let me say this again: This game is playable. Dwarf Fortress is not. Yeah, subjective opinion, I know, but even though there was a time were I had a fully fledged fortress with metal industry, traps and 200 dwarves, I just simply can't bear to bother with Dwarf Fortress any more. I always get sentimental, install Lazy Newb Pack, start a new game, find the perfect spot, and just when I am about to break ground I just give up because I don't want to put up with it's poo poo. I too tried other DF clones and was disappointed, but this one has potential. Nebelwerfer posted:That said, I'd be happy with even the half of what DF offers if it had decent GUI. Severed limbs and ability to tear your foe's head clean off with your bare hands should be one of those features, though. And you don't have to be tangled in the details to implement those things. A limb on the ground is just as severed whether it's the result of a painstakingly implemented algorithm involving the effects of an axe head going through layers of armor, skin, muscle, bones, and who knows what else, or just a modified roll on a results table. Personally, if we are going to have realistic details in such a game, I would much rather see a more complex industry and crafting system in place, which will be much more relevant to my gameplay experience than the physics of dwarven guts popping out of wounds. Edit: vvvvvvvvv Yeah. I would love it if this game would offer a good modding system (or even go open source) at some point so I can go all  on the crafting system.
Rexides fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Jun 27, 2012 |
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Jun 27, 2012 10:40
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Rexides posted:Personally, if we are going to have realistic details in such a game, I would much rather see a more complex industry and crafting system in place, which will be much more relevant to my gameplay experience than the physics of dwarven guts popping out of wounds. Agreed. If you're going to have complexity, have it in a place where it might lead to interesting emergent effects and ways of doing things. (And speaking of playability, if it doesn't have it I hope this game implements an in-game equivalent to Dwarf Therapist soon, that'd be essential)
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Jun 27, 2012 10:43
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Wait, so this is dwarf fortress with a friendly user interface? Cool, I should try this out.
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Jun 27, 2012 10:52
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Gnomoria v0.8.3 released General: Peaceful mode option when creating a new world Underground enemies no longer spawn in areas that don't have access to gnomes (ie no surprise monster closets) Temporarily disabled rain Right click cancels selection. Clicking again cancels action. Holding shift while selecting locks the selection to the same plane Dig ramp down selection is always locked to the same plane Reduced audio file size Art: Added item tiles for pickaxe, felling axe, sword, hand axe, hammer and shield Added equipped shield and hand axe Added wood door, stone door, bandage, statuette and commemorative coin tiles Updated wheat and strawberry Bug Fixes: Crash on alt tab and other windows drawing on top of the game window Crash when a goblin dodges a trap Crash when characters are missing in text Crash with loading equipped items and resaving Crash trying to butcher corpses that have decayed Conflict when generating new nav graph IDs after loading a game Bug when loading items that were created from butchering Gnomes trying to use items they didn't have access to and no longer working Items sometimes being on a different cell than it thinks Digging stairs down on top of a mine job eventually mined out the stairs Spawning golems of all material types instead of 1 random
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Jun 30, 2012 02:01
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One thing I'd like to see modified is how gnomes approach digging/building tasks. If I want to flatten some land down I can't just highlight the entire layer and have them dig it, they end up trapping themselves on isolated sections of ground, which then requires building a ton of stairs and crap to get them down and fix it. Having them actually dig from the inside out, or evenly left to right would be much more convenient. Those UI tweaks in the new version are great, the less needless menu-diving, the better. Hotkeys for contruction and digging would be awesome.
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Jun 30, 2012 02:11
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You can do Dig-Dig Ramp Down over a large area and it will take out the floor layer without stranding anyone. Then you can remove those ramps and repeat to flatten mountains. Just make sure to remove any trees or plants on the tile first though, or you won't be able to ramp them.
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Jun 30, 2012 03:19
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MikeJF posted:Agreed. If you're going to have complexity, have it in a place where it might lead to interesting emergent effects and ways of doing things. You say this like it isn't already the case. The whole "DWARVES HAVE 20 LAYERS OF FLESH WHAT THE HECK!!" thing already means that combat is both gruesome and hilarious in equal measure, and that some critters are more difficult to deal with than others without needing any HP type stats or otherwise.
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Jun 30, 2012 03:23
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For some reason, Desura isn't updating to the newest version. edit: Ah, Desura has a lengthy verification process. Guess we may not see it til after the weekend, that's a pity. nightwisher fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Jun 30, 2012 |
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Jun 30, 2012 03:38
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Desura usually takes a couple days to update.
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Jun 30, 2012 03:39
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As someone who could get partly into DF (to the point of having a few forts of around 100 dwarves, but never really doing cool mega-projects or having cool stuff for my people) I'm pretty excited about this an will give the demo a spin when I get home. If it's remotely good I'll buy.but actually was quite good with the interface but some of the tedium was just beyond my level of gently caress-giving. Near the end of my DF days I was literally embarking with JUST an axe and a skill loadout geared towards foraging and hunting. Fake edit: I did do ONE mega-project, actually. On one such embark I had an above-ground fortress along a river, and there was a lava pipe on the other side diagonally, so I built pumps and a lavaduct to carry it over my walls and into my fort. Manually operated, though, so I had to keep an eye on things while filling it...
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Jun 30, 2012 04:33
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I tried out DF back when it didn't really have much gameplay beyond making a fortress and finding a secret demon thing, and one of the problems I ran into was, after a while, my fortress became sort of self-sustaining. Unless I actively tried triggering an invasion, the challenge died off as soon as the fortress got basic workshops and some trained fighters going for it, and the game became ASCII minecraft once the fortress became self-sustaining. I'm aware that DF has added a lot more things to it to make it interesting, but does this game have challenges that it throws at you once the settlement is established and running smoothly?
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Jun 30, 2012 04:46
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Control Volume posted:I'm aware that DF has added a lot more things to it to make it interesting, but does this game have challenges that it throws at you once the settlement is established and running smoothly? Not yet AFAIK. So far I've been attacked by goblins, harder goblins, golems and even harder goblins. It seems like once you designate an area as your great hall you start getting attacked more frequently and I've had goblins kill 6 or 7 of my gnomes (out of ~30) and slaughter all my yaks in one go before. This is partly due to enemies getting the jump on you at the moment, there's no cue that you're being attacked until you see "Cecil has bled to death"
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Jun 30, 2012 05:08
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I'm definitely interested in this game, as since others have put it, it's like a more accessible Dwarf Fortress, but I find myself holding off on purchasing. I'm a little worried that it won't be finished, for lack of a better way of putting it, because there's only the one person actually coding it. That kind of setup works for Toady since he clearly has a track record for sticking with DF, but also because DF is free. I guess what I'm asking is, since I played the demo and enjoyed it for the most part, should I get Gnomoria despite the uncertainty of its future development and the associated cost? $10 or so doesn't sound like much but I'm keeping expenses like this tight so I'll have a larger pillow of funds for school in the fall.
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Jun 30, 2012 06:33
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The update just hit Desura, the interface changes are a relief. Not as much menu-diving to get things built now.
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Jun 30, 2012 13:51
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Kaelitz posted:I'm definitely interested in this game, as since others have put it, it's like a more accessible Dwarf Fortress, but I find myself holding off on purchasing. I'm a little worried that it won't be finished, for lack of a better way of putting it, because there's only the one person actually coding it. That kind of setup works for Toady since he clearly has a track record for sticking with DF, but also because DF is free. I guess I'm biased - I like to think Bob's my friend and we talk a lot in private about development, it's very clear that he considers this his life work and wants the chance to be able to continue adding to it indefinitely. He left his job almost a year ago to work on this full time, with no funding or guarantee it'd be success. I'd think that would show his level of commitment.
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Jun 30, 2012 13:57
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