Here's the whole transcript of the published interview, including LASD's first 7 minutes:
The whole thing doesn't fit in one post, but here's the rest continuing from my previous post. Feel free to alter this transcript, clean it up or whatever. Hope this helps.
[39:48]
(Have you ever thought of going to GDC, the Game Developer's Conference or something, to give a speech about how your games are awesome and how the industry's going in the wrong direction or something? Something horrible like...)
[laughs]-...-they know if they like 'em or not. I don't know what railing against people who are making their own thing...I mean I know there are a lot-...-and it's like, I mean it isn't so much for me anymore, but there have been some cool things I've played recently, uh, I think. I haven't played, I mean I just haven't...I kind of dropped out of the whole gaming thing myself, around '93 was when I really just totally dropped out, so anything after that really hasn't had any influence on me. But there's some interesting thing that we played, I mean I thought... I got a Playstation 2, what, a year or two ago, and I was very impressed visually by games like Shadow of the Colossus and Okami and stuff. But it's kind of a different thing, right. (Right.)... But games are like that. There are so many different kinds and things that, I mean I just couldn't make a game like that cause I don't have the chops for it...and the staff, so it's...it's just I don't know what I would say to those guys, right. I mean, what would I say? I would go there and I'm like, 'Yeah you should make games like Dwarf Fortress,' I don't particularly want them to make games like Dwarf Fortress! I like them to stay away from Dwarf Fortress! [laughs] So that I can continue to eat and stuff. Because if someone made a concerted effort to make a really good game with a lot of money that was like Dwarf Fortress, then I'd be kind of screwed.
Although, yeah, who knows. Yeah so I'm not sure what I'd say. I mean, someone invited me to one of those things. But it wasn't like a formal invitation it was just like, 'Yeah, why don't you go to GDC?' but it was after, I mean it was way after it was prudent to come, and I'm like, 'Oh, well, you know if you email me sooner next year, maybe I'll go, or something.' But I don't really...I mean it's just not something I'm a part of. I mean, even the independent game developer things and so on, I mean people always say, well why don't you submit Dwarf Fortress to uh...what's the big one? (IGF, I think.) Yeah, yeah. Whatever the big one is, the only one that people ever talk about, that one. And, I mean I [thought about it?] at least two years ago, but it's also not finished yet, so, I mean I don't even know what's appropriate there. And I also don't know if they'd even be interested in that. I mean it's like...generally the things that do well there seem to be kind of these platformy, consoley type things, but I really don't know that much about it. Again, it's just not the direction I'm going. So, I don't know. Uh...no one's really that interested in talking to me and I'm doing my own thing, so. Yeah.
[42:42]
(So, are you more influenced by tabletop games, then, rather than video games, since you seem to be stuck in 1993 still for those?) [laughs]
Well no, [my] biggest influences are, and this goes for my brother too, pretty much, although he'll still play games. I mean he likes the Total War games and Civilization and stuff, he'll play those. And the games...I mean my favorite game is Starflight. Uh, from 1987 or whenever the heck that was? It's a long time ago. You have to play the PC one, cause I hear they take the lifeforms out of the console one, so that's really no good. Yeah the lifeforms are awesome. But then there Seven Cities of Gold was a lot of fun...you can't really play it now, I mean there's a lot of bugs and things, but just that whole exploration thing was very inspiring. And then the uh...and of course we played Hack a lot, and so on.
But the tabletop games, yeah we didn't play them that much. We played a bit of D&D, not that much, we played Cyberpunk a bit, which kind of influenced our whole damage system and so on, cause there were no hit points in that game. It was...you know, you'd shoot someone in the arm and then their arm would be injured, and stuff like that. And that kind of influenced the damage system we use. But also...big influences, just books, movies, that kind of thing. Just trashy movies like Beastmaster, Conan and that kind of thing...influence a lot of what we did. And stuff just like, the European myths, that kind of thing. And obviously things like Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion, or however you pronounce it. That kind of thing. Yeah.
(So in 2025, whenever you get 1.0 out, Hollywood producers will just be able to open up Dwarf Fortress, play for half an hour, and then have a script? Just magically?)
Um, well, Hollywood producers are crap movies. If we go back [there are a ton of] sword and sorcery movies that were crap, although I guess they do that occasionally still. Then yeah. Yeah, they'd run world gen, and ideally, ideally, 2025 we're talking about here. You'd run world gen, and when you read the legends, they sound a little less stilted, and it's easier to get from place to place. I don't know if you've looked a the legends screen; when you run world gen it'll give you a run-down of what everybody did, and their life story and so on, but there's just not that many interesting mechanics, so the stories aren't that interesting. And so...I mean...you need stuff to work with, and you also need to present it nicely. So, there are some problems with the English there. That's kind of one of the annoying things is taking, you know, ten events and trying to condense that into a paragraph. We haven't really attempted that yet. And it should be intriguing to try. But yeah...I don't if you've seen some of the stories that people tell about their...not even their own games but just the legends, you know, sometimes people will pick someone out and follow their family, and who they've killed, what their jobs were, where they moved around and so on. Even with that little to work with, you can still kind of come up with a compelling narrative. It's just because everything kind of comes together, and as far as the mechanics we've got, the game doesn't miss everything, so it's all consistent. And in that way, it can resonate more than when you're just following one person going to this place, killing these guys, going here, going there. You know, that kind of thing. You can really follow up on anything that you're interested in.
[46:24]
(So what exactly is your month-end project? Is it always the same thing, or does it switch between things, and is it something secret like 'Slaves of Armok 3' which will have multiplayer Dwarf Fortressing and...)
Yeah, so first-...-because I've got-...-hours on the forum and so on, there's kind of this huge burden there. And I don't want another one. [laughs] So, I [take all the weekends in a] month, and stick those at the end of the month, and that's the time that we're using to...you know we had a lot of ideas, right, we have a lot of ideas. Things just as complicated as Dwarf Fortress in different genres, all over the place...cause it's easier to come up with an idea than to write a game, right. So you know it's...you just end up with way too many. And so the month-end time is the time when we allow ourselves to kind of do what we did when we were kids, just write a game, without any kind of obligation. And if I said...we have settled on one, but if I talk about-...-coming out. And I-...-month-end project that I'm working on completely sputters and just dies, I'm not gonna feel bad about that and no one else should, either. I mean this is kind of my free time.
I am hoping to put a game out...it is a game. It has nothing to do with anything we've been working on. And nothing that has been released, I think, at all, on our forums, or on our site rather. None of those games really have much to do with this one. So that's, you know, new stuff. (So it's gonna come eventually.) Eventually, eventually! Yeah, I mean...I also don't want to set a deadline for myself because...that would be bad. But I mean, it's not gonna be this year. No way. And uh...probably not next year, but uh...2011 is possible. I mean, I can definitely see something happening then. I mean it's not...there's a lot of games people look forward to that take many years to finish. And hopefully this won't be as disappointing as some of those, but uh... And you shouldn't be disappointed because you have no idea what it is, right? So there should be no expectations. And it's just something that'll happen eventually, maybe. [laughs] Yeah...well I'm sorry about that, but it's not something I...for those reasons it's not something I want to go into that deeply.
(What sort of eating habits do you have, since you know, you live alone...) [laughs] That's right. (Who knows where, and...) So this is getting deep now. (Do you have some secret balanced meal that you eat every day that it takes 3 seconds...)
No, no, I'm quite...no. Well, actually no, that...sort of . Let me see, um, cause...it always changes, right, it always changes. Cause I've been eating, yeah no-...- I was, say, 2007, or, I don't know anymore. There was this game I was gonna write. And you know I have those sub-games, right, this really scary, scary crap, on the... Those, you shouldn't read too much into those. Those are things that I put up because I was just in a weird mood or whatever and made some total, total garbage. And so I was gonna write another one in Texas. So I was gonna write this game called uh...Magic Pigs. And it was like...I wasn't like a crazed animal rights activist or anything, but it was gonna be about magic pigs going and attacking farmers, from the forest. Just for fun, right, just a silly-ass game. And the tagline was "Revenge is a dish best served by cold pork." And you would go in and do some kind of whatever, it wasn't really planned cause you don't plan a sub-game you just write it. And so...but, for the graphics for the game, and there were graphics, I went through and looked at all these factory farm pictures and stuff. You know, it was just kind of disgusting. So I didn't eat meat for the project, cause I was trying to get into the frame of mind for the project, which was gonna be written in a week or something, right. And then...so I just stopped as a matter of course, and I didn't eat meat again, and I still haven't. And it's not some kind of moral decision so much as just what happened because I was working on that game, because I was into it or whatever.
And so...recently, I mean I've just been flipping between different things I've been eating. The most recent thing is just rice and bean burrito in the morning, that I make from...I mean I have tortillas that I get, and cans of beans and rice and cook 'em up and stuff. And uh...I eat fruits and vegetables, though not as much as I should. And crap, lots of candy and crap and coffee. And not so much coffee, though I had to do that to switch around my hours. Now I'm not on caffeine so much. I use that as a tool to move my hours around when they get too weird, but I'm not, I don't have to have a cup a day or whatever. And uh...I'm trying to think of what else. I'm drinking grape juice right now as we're talking. But nothing weird or Einsteiny like wearing the same suit everyday so that you don't have to think about it. No, I mean, I spend a lot of time eating. I'm not a giant fatass but I'm not skinny either. So, yeah...that's all I got to say.
[52:15]
(So I imagine you exercise at least a day so you're not just gaining weight continuously. You just go on strolls or something?)
Well...yeah. I used to walk more, but like I was saying this town is not a walking town. I mean, the last time I was walking, someone said that they would kill me. They stopped their car, before they got to the light, and they're like, 'We're gonna kill you!' People from the highschool or whatever. I wasn't scared, really, cause they just seemed like dumbasses or something, but it's just not a walking town. So I stopped walking. I used to walk more, I used to walk a couple miles every day. But, yeah...so I exercise a little bit, not as much as I should. Not very much at all, mostly I sit in this chair that I'm still sitting in right now. But uh...yeah, I'm probably getting more and more unhealthy. It's true, that's true.
(So, would you like to share...what are your two favorite films of all time? Or one?) Oh, I suck. I suck so bad at these questions. (No no no, just name a couple or something, I don't know.) [laughs]
Well-...-were just very inspiring for me. I mean I know there's a kind of a garbage aspect to them, but those were very inspiring. The name Bay 12 comes from the movie Aliens. You have to watch it. And the...I don't know, nothing particularly artsy. My friend in the UK got me into a bit of anime and stuff, and so I like some of those, like the Ghibli cartoons and stuff. And uh, what else? Now I have to say Zardoff's was a funny movie, um...what else. Those are the ones that come to mind immediately. And there's so many movies, though, I mean I've seen thousands of movies but, yeah. I'm no good at favorites questions.
(So you're not just sitting there on the Independent Film Channel watching some Swedish independent film all day long or something?)
No no no, I mean I was dating this girl once that showed me all the...I don't remember the name, like Ingmar Bergman, is that right? Uh, showed me all these, I don't remember, it's the uh...what's his name, Maxmont Sido starred in a lot of those movies. Those were cool. I mean it's not like I have anything against independent film from other countries. But you're right.
(Well, I think that about wraps it up. Thanks a lot for this interesting conversation. Too bad there were a couple cutouts, but pff, it doesn't really matter much. Oh well. Well, it's been very interesting, thanks for your time.) Sure, sure. (Go work some more, let's hope we get that 1.0 by 2025.) 2025, that's right. That's my goal, that's release date. [laughs] (Thanks a lot.) [DF music]
Author
Topic: Dark Diamond interview (Read 36640 times)