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[redoubtable troutbot]

Awesome post. The unrestricted sandbox gameplay and the hilarious stories that emerge when your gargantuan project fails massively due to an sudden unexpected flow of magma and skeletal elk is exactly what I love the most about this game. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've spent about as much time on various forums reading other people's stories as I have actually played the game myself.

The fact that toady keeps ignoring everything modern games has achieved when it comes to interface and user friendliness allows him to concentrate on what makes DF unique, namely the ridiculous depth. Since he's the only programmer, I can't help but think that if he'd spent more time making a nice interface, we'd have less of the tiny details that make the game great. And since the game is very much unfinished, it doesn't make much sense spending time on something he'd probably have to rewrite the next time he makes a major change to the game.

Furthermore, I'd think that adding fancy graphics on top would only obscure that depth. I love having to use my imagination to piece together what the hell just happened to my dwarves, and I doubt any kind of graphics could replace that.

Also, this game totally cured my quicksave addiction. No other game could have me spend loads of time watching my creation crumble before starting over rather than just load an earlier save. That's quite an achievement, I'd say.

[GP Lackey]

I think you've nailed the appeal of a good sim game, Salt.  The sense of ownership you feel over a fortress is gratifying.  Especially when your fortress on a beach has a much different feel from your glacier fortress, and not just because it has a different skin or item set, but because those result in having to react to an environment in a different way, having different resources available, etc.  I'd like to see this pushed further!

What's interesting though is that DF's design is informed by Tarn's longer term goals, I don't think most of what's in DF now is unreachable, and in fact most of it has already been in other games to greater or lesser degrees.

Furthermore, I'd think that adding fancy graphics on top would only obscure that depth. I love having to use my imagination to piece together what the hell just happened to my dwarves, and I doubt any kind of graphics could replace that.

Doesn't make much sense to me.  Graphics would just mean more visual information for conveying what just happened to your dwarves.

[redoubtable troutbot]

Furthermore, I'd think that adding fancy graphics on top would only obscure that depth. I love having to use my imagination to piece together what the hell just happened to my dwarves, and I doubt any kind of graphics could replace that.

Doesn't make much sense to me.  Graphics would just mean more visual information for conveying what just happened to your dwarves.

It might just be me, but I can't see how you could realistically visualize what's going on in my head when I'm playing. And if the graphics advance to such a level where you're no longer forced to use your imagination to fill in the blanks, much of the depth would vanish.

It's like comparing books and movies, I guess.

[GP Lackey]

Two points!

First: graphics don't necessarily need to be realistic.  Just using glyphs that aren't used for multiple objects would be a start.  Visually displaying what a dwarf was wearing without having to scroll through the inventory list might be helpful.  That kind of thing.

Second: It seems a bit like maybe you're misidentifying what it is that appeals to you?  You can't really use your imagination much when you get down to it because DF is a very descriptive game. I mean, okay, it does take some imagination to picture a cat leather loincloth hanging with rings of adamantium and menacing with spikes of bread but its still pretty explicit.  What I mean is the blanks aren't really all that wide when you get down to it!

That said, a lot of the things that people routinely identify as very special features of DF have been done before in other games without people prescribing magical qualities to them!  A lot of the really interesting stuff Adams is developing doesn't really come out in a regular fortress game; the civilization and history generation, for example.

Third (bonus) point: Adventure mode violence is hilarious but I absolutely DON'T want to visualize it.

Sorry for the side-discussion, but I like to talk about it.

[redoubtable troutbot]

First: graphics don't necessarily need to be realistic.  Just using glyphs that aren't used for multiple objects would be a start.  Visually displaying what a dwarf was wearing without having to scroll through the inventory list might be helpful.  That kind of thing.

Oops, totally confusing wording by me, there. I didn't mean realistic graphics, I meant I can't see how such graphics (like what you mention above) could realistically be implemented in a game like DF. I might be overly pessimistic, though, and you do have a good point.

What I mean is the blanks aren't really all that wide when you get down to it!

Well, take this example: There's a little smiley face next to a capital letter 'T'. I examine the 'T' and note that it's missing both its arms. I'd go "shit, he just wrestled that titan's arms off!" and try to visualize that in my head. This is the sort of thing I think would be difficult showing graphically (within reason), and I'm worried that any attempt to do so would just make you settle for whatever the game is able to show you when that is inferior to what you could've imagined yourself.

A lot of the really interesting stuff Adams is developing doesn't really come out in a regular fortress game; the civilization and history generation, for example.

Not yet, no. The stuff he's been working on lately is pretty awesome, like simulating wars and politics and allowing your army to wander off outside into the world map. It all makes sense when you consider that his ultimate ambition is to make a "fantasy world simulator".

Sorry for the side-discussion, but I like to talk about it.

Discussing the various aspects of the game is what this topic's here for!

[Gr.Viper]

I've been trying to get into the game about four times but always get distracted... And purple miasma from the kitchen is always there. Maybe will try adventurer's mode and wrestle some babies into a pulp.
What are the current system requitements?

[redoubtable troutbot]

I've been trying to get into the game about four times but always get distracted... And purple miasma from the kitchen is always there. Maybe will try adventurer's mode and wrestle some babies into a pulp.
What are the current system requitements?

Moving food out of the kitchen and into a stockpile will keep it from rotting

Basically, the faster processor, the better. The wiki recommends

Core2: 1.4GHz or higher
Pentium 4: 3.0GHz or higher
Athlon: 3000+ or higher

You might also want to try version 40d9 if you have issues with performance.

[GP Lackey]

And put your refuse in a room with a door if you can, so it doesn't leak out.

Re: graphics again.  I guess there is a temptation not to look past the sprites at the things they might be representing. You can have all sorts of stats running under the hood but if you just see two sprites bumping into each other it just looks like...two sprites bumping into each other.

Not yet, no. The stuff he's been working on lately is pretty awesome, like simulating wars and politics and allowing your army to wander off outside into the world map. It all makes sense when you consider that his ultimate ambition is to make a "fantasy world simulator".

Yeah, definitely.  Like I reiterated that part twice because I think it has a lot to do with the form the game is in now.  What I kind of want to see is someone try to make a gamier version of DF riffing off just some of the ideas that have come out of it so far.  It would be an interesting contrast.

[battlerager]

The ASCII graphics are ok, I can read them, but the tilesets make it so much easier.

With ASCII, I just cant tell you how many trees there are in an area.
Sure, I recognize a tile as a tree when I look at it individually, but from afar, its just a big clusterfuck.

[GP Lackey]

You know what's handy for that?  Going up a z level so fully grown trees are drawn as rectangles.

[battlerager]

You know what's handy for that?  Going up a z level so fully grown trees are drawn as rectangles.

Cool trick, didnt think of that!

This will be very useful, thanks.

[Tanner]

This thread made me want to try again. I have one question, though. Is it possible to play without a numpad?

[redoubtable troutbot]

Yeah, works just fine. I haven't played this on anything but a laptop. You'll probably want to reassign some of the keys, though, which isn't much trouble.

[Tanner]

That brings me to my next questions: Which keys? Is there a premade config file for this?

[redoubtable troutbot]

Let's see, the ones I've changed are (these keys begin a couple of pages down in the key bindings menu)

Page selector up/down
Move secondary selector up/down
Page secondary selector up/down
Move view/cursor up/down (z)

I think that's it. Note that it won't detect duplicate keybindings and that page up/page down/home/end = 9/3/7/1 respectively for some reason (at least for me). Those are bound to move diagonally by default. So if anything's off, check for duplicates.

I'd send you mine, but they've become rather weird with a bunch of duplicates I've never bothered to fix.

There's also this, dunno if that helps.