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Author Topic: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress  (Read 51322 times)

Sergarr

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #315 on: July 10, 2014, 11:27:02 am »

I think there won't be such big breaks inbetween releases, because the current release had the biggest and most complicated feature implemented. From now on it should take less time.
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Abalieno

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #316 on: July 10, 2014, 12:42:10 pm »

But after two years having trees that drop inedible and unusable fruit is a bit of a disappointment still.

Ah yes, this is an excellent example of what I mean.

Not about the disappointment, but the fact that even the fruit is now another incomplete, non-predictable system that you'll have to look up on the wiki to figure out why the fruit can't be eaten.

Hence my legitimate request: please take a break now, because we left SO MANY systems behind that are in a similar state, as well the game would immensely improve with even a little bit of Quality of Life types of improvements.

As other have said Toady has a tendency to address show stoppers after release, but then everything else is mostly "fine". Sure, the game needs moving toward its goals, but the risks of not reaching them are even higher if a little love isn't given to all the parts.

The "push and pull" is the perfect image. You need to balance how much new stuff you put in, as well how you reign everything under control. Can't just push, and can't just pull.
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Mictlantecuhtli

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #317 on: July 10, 2014, 12:54:12 pm »

Okay
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Henny

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #318 on: July 10, 2014, 01:04:46 pm »

Not about the disappointment, but the fact that even the fruit is now another incomplete, non-predictable system that you'll have to look up on the wiki to figure out why the fruit can't be eaten.
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palu

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #319 on: July 10, 2014, 01:26:55 pm »

It was inevitable.
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misko27

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #320 on: July 10, 2014, 01:33:18 pm »

The ruffling of feathers: Inevitable.
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Abalieno

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #321 on: July 10, 2014, 02:17:39 pm »

Ignore everything he says just to create meaningless strawmans and bullshit arguments to support a premise with literally no foundation other than things that have been pulled out from under over and over and over again. No, do go on speaking of these "SO MANY systems" not being well-done, despite not being able to describe a single one that hasn't been acknowledged, planned, or actually expected to be done differently by Toady later on when things like making cave-ins more of a thing is more of a priority.

Other people here have mentioned more specific things.

The purpose of this thread wasn't in-depth analysis, but to describe the overall trajectory of the game across many years. Hence, examples are examples, the point is that I'm not alone thinking the game seriously need a much bigger focus on the half-broken stuff than what Toady has demonstrated to give in the latest years.
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GavJ

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #322 on: July 10, 2014, 02:21:17 pm »

Quote
No, no. Ignore the fact that he stated that the feature wasn't finished because he wanted to push out this update in order to prevent a hype-bubble from exploding.
To be fair, popping a hype bubble by releasing non-existent (yet) features doesn't really seem any better than popping a hype bubble by taking too long. So I wouldn't really tout it as "the only PR decision that made any sense" or whatever.

But on the other hand, who gives a crap if fruit is edible now or a week from now. It's a trivially academic curiosity of Toady decisions at best. Worth pondering for maybe 30 seconds.

Even if he took 2 years and you aren't sure what he was doing all that time, if he then follows that up with 1 month of furious feature-heavy programming and finishes all his loose ends, then the result for the player is the same -- XYZ many features. After 2ish years ... + 1 month. The distribution of exactly when features were completed within that total time seems fairly irrelevant to us.
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GavJ

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #323 on: July 10, 2014, 02:32:43 pm »

Summary, in my opinion: You had one or two good points, and then you drowned them in a sea of silly trivial distractions of the other 27 ridiculous points.

Fortunately Toady seems like a super calm, zen guy, who is able to cut through bullshit pretty efficiently, and I'm sure he already made up his mind about whether any of the halfway reasonable ideas resonated with him, or not. And the thread has served it's purpose. Probably quite early on.
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Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.

Mictlantecuhtli

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #324 on: July 10, 2014, 02:34:49 pm »

I still think the OP should make his streamlined version of DF with the best features.
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reality.auditor

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #325 on: July 10, 2014, 04:06:45 pm »

Why expend effort fixing a non-gamebreaking bug in a section of code that you know is going to be refactored at some point in the future?
If that "point in the future" is five+ years or something like that, then yes, there is good reason to expend effort [1].
If that bug influences other things and interacts with them in unpredictable ways then yes, there is good reason to expend effort [2].
If that bug will be covered by another layer of newer bugs as Toady further tinkers with this section of code then yes, there is good reason to expend effort [3].

[1] It simply pays off.
[2] It makes developing/modifying/refactoring OTHER sections of code harder, as they have to deal with cranky behaviour of section that is supposed to be refactored five years in future, not now.
[3] It makes harder to develop further game in general and prolongs disproportionally future debugging effort.
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palu

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #326 on: July 10, 2014, 05:14:41 pm »



Seeing as I was ignored and people are making better points than I could.
       

Let me grab some of that.

*munches on popcorn*
Oh good, more people joining me.
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Elaxter

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #327 on: July 10, 2014, 05:44:51 pm »

I'm tired of this thread.
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Aninimouse

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #328 on: July 10, 2014, 05:46:10 pm »

I'm pretty surprised by how far it's come.
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Toady One

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #329 on: July 10, 2014, 05:51:57 pm »

Well, this is kind of broken down now I guess, in terms of the exchange of ideas and so on.  Reportey too.  Feel free to continue threads of the discussion in new threads if you can keep it together.
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