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[DarrenGrey]

Tarn Adams very graciously joined us for a 90 minute chat on Dwarf Fortress, the community, his lifestyle, roguelikes, cool games, and other general stuff.  You can check it out here:

http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2012/10/episode-49-interview-with-tarn-adams.html

I actually ended up staying on for an extra hour or two chatting to Tarn after we finished the recording.  He's a really nice guy to talk too!

[katana]

Well that was interesting. I think I just realized that toady may be living my dream lifestyle... :c

Toady and I laugh the same way! I don't think it's a very healthy way of laughing.

[Sunday]

Nice!

Fan of your podcast, by the way.

Edit: aaaand, done. Nice. Liked the ending.

[hermes]

Cool interview, thanks!  Not finished yet, but the realism/fun quote thing reminded me of a Sid Meier talk I watched just last week where he says the same thing (at about 6 mins).  That video, strangely, I cannot watch from my laptop but can from my phone.

I'm gonna have to get round to reading them Conan books...

[Azated]

Interesting podcast.

It's good to finally hear his thoughts about alot of the questions we've all had, such as why he doesn't like working with other people. I noticed that he didn't mention the community much though, and I get the impression he's not all that fond of us. It's understandable though, considering the mermaid farming, dwarven childcare, and various other acts of... ah... violence, to put it nicely.

[Drunken]

What did you guys think of the whole windows 8 discussion? For those that can't be bothered listening it is near the end and regards the fact that windows 8 places severe restrictions on what apps can be run in the form of licensing fees and certification. The suggestion was that this could be a threat to dwarf fortress as many win8 users won't be able to play.

I am personally of the opinion that it is all part of a trend in the right direction. PC games are becoming less profitable, meaning big development studios are moving away from the platform in attempt to maintain their multi-million bottom lines. This has opened the stage for independent developers and people who don't require millions of dollars to produce content. This thing with windows is the logical next step, microsoft wants $$$ and they are making changes based on this. DF is already out for linux and my hope is that windows 8 will prompt many small developers to consider also moving to linux. I would have migrated my desktop years ago if there was a good selection of games available. In combination with the fact that steam is making a concerted effort to build a linux presence, I think what we are seeing is the end of windows dominance in the pc gaming market, and the dawn of a new era of open, community driven content that is moddable, cheap/free and packed with new creative ideas and innovations. I support and praise microsoft for helping this process along and will also laugh heartily when it destroys them.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Is there any chance of a transcript? I broke my headset and I'll have to wait until I get paid to go out and buy new ones.

[hermes]

What did you guys think of the whole windows 8 discussion? For those that can't be bothered listening it is near the end and regards the fact that windows 8 places severe restrictions on what apps can be run in the form of licensing fees and certification. The suggestion was that this could be a threat to dwarf fortress as many win8 users won't be able to play. [snip]

I could be wrong here and I haven't even listened to this part of the podcast yet, but isn't windows 8 basically open and it's just that it has an app store built into it?  The way I understand it is anything you can run on Win 7 will run on Win 8 too, DF included.  Stuff that is distributed through the store will, obviously - just like apple or google or valve - be subject to restrictions and whatnot.

[Drunken]

There are two versions, the pc desktop one is as you describe, except according to the roguelike guys it will give the user a big warning saying 'warning, uncertified application' or something like that. The other version for tablet pcs is the one they were complaining about, this disables functionality for uncertified applications so they won't run. Sure it is not really as big of a deal as they seem to be making out in the interview. It is not world shattering or anything. Still, I think my point stands, they are certainly closing the OS a little bit, and every bit helps in the drive toward open community dominance.

[DarrenGrey]

I noticed that he didn't mention the community much though, and I get the impression he's not all that fond of us.

Eh?  Did you listen all the way till the end?  There was a big bit where we discussed the community and he was very praising of the support, ideas generated, work put in on bugs, etc.

Regarding Windows 8, I would advise that you check it out thoroughly before forming an opinion.  There are serious concerns that many restrictions will be placed on desktop applications, and that in future desktop application support will be dropped entirely in favour of the new Windows Store-exclusive interface (as happened with DOS).

[Telgin]

Microsoft would have to be out of their ever loving minds to completely drop support for all of the existing Windows NT kernel supporting programs in the next 20 years.  There's no way that's happening.  Moving toward the new interface is one thing, but dumping support for old applications is another entirely.  The only way this would work is if Microsoft intended for Windows 7 and 8 to coexist as separate product lines for a long time to come, which I sincerely doubt.

I could believe them giving big flashing warnings about uncertified applications, which has its security uses.  Modern versions of Windows do this already in some cases.  Ever seen the window pop up asking if you're sure you want to run an application because Windows doesn't recognize / trust it?  You can check a little box and never be bothered by it again.  I believe it can be disabled altogether, like UAC.  I would be shocked if Windows 8 didn't have such a feature.

In any case, getting back on topic, yes, I'd love to have a transcript of the interview.

[King Mir]

What did you guys think of the whole windows 8 discussion? For those that can't be bothered listening it is near the end and regards the fact that windows 8 places severe restrictions on what apps can be run in the form of licensing fees and certification. The suggestion was that this could be a threat to dwarf fortress as many win8 users won't be able to play.

I am personally of the opinion that it is all part of a trend in the right direction. PC games are becoming less profitable, meaning big development studios are moving away from the platform in attempt to maintain their multi-million bottom lines. This has opened the stage for independent developers and people who don't require millions of dollars to produce content. This thing with windows is the logical next step, microsoft wants $$$ and they are making changes based on this. DF is already out for linux and my hope is that windows 8 will prompt many small developers to consider also moving to linux. I would have migrated my desktop years ago if there was a good selection of games available. In combination with the fact that steam is making a concerted effort to build a linux presence, I think what we are seeing is the end of windows dominance in the pc gaming market, and the dawn of a new era of open, community driven content that is moddable, cheap/free and packed with new creative ideas and innovations. I support and praise microsoft for helping this process along and will also laugh heartily when it destroys them.

The issue is not developers using linux, it's non-developers. The reason that so many big industry games are for windows only is because that's the most popular platform for users. Developers are easy people to convert to linux for their own purposes, but who wants to limit the number of people who can play their game to the smaller group? Now there is a growing trend to make games multi-platform, and that is likely to grow.

[The_Jester]

Listened to the end, enjoyed Toady's discussion on how he has become cave adapted. Impressed that he takes his job that seriously to experiment with dwarven "illnesses". 

[the woods]

I never knew there was a box for Rogue.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think it's cool.

More pics of the manual and stuff
imgur version you can download without going through a bunch of hoops

[MasterMorality]

I laughed harder than I should have at his description of nail physics.