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[mareck]

I have loved DF for a very long time.
I dont really spend much time here on the forums anymore.
I built my mods,  added my forbidden races and exotic meats. 
I have enjoyed my time with my outdated version.  (What was stolen with my laptop and research last week  )

But these days I see a great many games that are copying the idea in newer engines like gnomoria.  A cheap knockoff.

This made me think; aint it time for dwarf fortress to Go BIG?  To step into the larger commercial world?
To rebuild the whole system into an new Modern UI. 
And to spend the time not to add new features but to stabilise all existing ones. 

Then this game would rule its margin in the gaming world for many more years!  (Thats my feeling.)

This game has an history, great moments and stories. 
It would be great if it keeps on existing for the wider, newer generation. 

[AutomataKittay]

Been asked before and the answer's nope. Toady One don't want others working on his personal vision of what DF should be. He don't feels comfortable working with others either on it.

Beside comercializing would ruin that vision, I think he's pretty happy to work on it without others 'helping'. Same with open source, he don't want to degrade his work's quality.

At least that's what I understood him wanting from some older threads. There're not much game-breaking bugs, considering it's complexity, either.

And, really, I think DF's as big as it can get right now in term of playerbase, with how complicated the engine can be

[ExecratedDwarf]

The game is still so early in development that asking people to pay would turn off a lot of new players. But most importantly this game isn't gnomoria. This game has more features and depth than many commercial releases. Most of the game is stable, and to stop now to focus on refining the game would leave a lot of blank space. If you find yourself growing bored, I suggest either taking a break or trying to do something new in-game.

[dancing kobold]

what?

why do you want something that is free to begin to cost money?
also why would you want Toady to stop adding features? i get that there is some bugs but the biggest one's are fixed now and then while the smaller one's are well.. unnecessary to fix as there will always be bugs and the game most go forward.

more important to add gameplay features than UI stuff in my opinion as there is a lot of things which can be improved before he finish the game.
 

[katana]

Some people don't seem to understand that getting a big publisher or being famous (even to people who don't really play videogames)  isn't the goal of every game developer.

[AutomataKittay]

Some people don't seem to understand that getting a big publisher or being famous (even to people who don't really play videogames)  isn't the goal of every game developer.

Sometimes it's even actually worse for some creators because of pressures and being put under microscope and being squeezed out!

[Starver]

If anyone has any figures about how many "add this feature now!" thread-starters there are and how many "let's get what is in now working 'properly'" thread-starters there also are, I'd be surprised if they don't compare well within an order of magnitude, despite often imploring that the other practice is halted while their own chosen one is pursued.

(Ok, so I've no idea where "GUI improvements needed!" comes, in that above choice.  Adding better interface, or making what background workings there are 'better' interfaced before anything more is added?)


Personally, can I fall back onto the "It's Toady's baby!" old faithful?  As long as Toady is doing what he's doing, I can't see a problem.  If Toady decided to change the way he does things tomorrow, that's his prerogative.  If worst comes to the worst and it's no longer the game I liked, I still have the current version and some prior ones as well.  (At least until he sends out the new DF-killing Internet Worm to destroy all old copies, but even then I might still have a copy on an off-line machine that should escape anything but an EMP pulse[1], general disk faults or a PEBCAK incident.)


Anyway, don't let me stop anyone making further "Toady should..." posts, just I don't think it'll necessarily happen (much more than it would have done without such requests/demands/suggestions).  Reminds me of the old thing about the whole head of the Spanish Inquisition (non-Pythonic version), which I shall (probably badly) quote, thus:

Torquemada!  Do not implore him for compassion!
Torquemada!  Do not beg him for forgiveness!
Torquemada!  Do not ask him for mercy!
Let's face it... you can't Torquemada anything!



[1] Not wanting to give future-Toady any ideas, should he go all Machiavellian and decide to retrospectively withdraw his freely offered IP through force of dwarf-guided nuclear weaponry.

[0cu]

I was very disappointed with the path Notch has chosen for Minecraft. I don't want the same thing to happen with DF. So, no.

[Lamphare]

I enjoy the little niche here, with DF as it is, and probably what it will be.
Going big implies all sorts of things. Other than Toady's(and Threetoe's) "Life's work" as mentioned above. Going big and commercial means accelerating the production, and bringing the certain low tide of players' and/or investors' attention to come sooner, which is harder to get through, than what it is now: updating moderately slowly but steadily. Just as you are tired of playing the current version, the hope of upcoming major updates arises.
And for a great game DF is, commercialising is almost sure to bring prominent sum of new(er) players to it, whose passion for a game would dull over time, as we always do =)
That with the forthcoming emergence of future games in the same category, as what has been seen late days, e.g. Gnomoria, A Game of Dwarves and possibly Castle Story, The Dig-build-drink-fight-n'-lose-for-fun type of games. That means at certain point, a vaccum of new player would come for DF, and as most commercial game would come to a silent death, I suspect that would be true to DF if it commercialise, and such death might very well come much earlier than what would be a 1.0 finale down the current course.
And speaking of the crowdfunding thing, the projects' failing rate is simply too high. As much as a half on Kickstarter.

All in all, I wish Toady good health and don't change mind. So DF would be a game to play for my lifetime.

[i2amroy]

I would like to double what AutomataKittay said, in that Toady doesn't want to go commercial. For anybody who doesn't know or has forgotten, there have been multi-million dollar offers by various companies to purchase DF from Toady, even keeping him on as a programmer/project manager, and he has turned them all down. Toady has set this game up as his life's work, and the fact that we get to play it as he builds it is just a lucky break on our part that also happens to provide Toady with a free method of bug-checking and feedback.

[Lamphare]

I was very disappointed with the path Notch has chosen for Minecraft. I don't want the same thing to happen with DF. So, no.

Selling a million copies isn't really a bad thing though.
Except for playing multiplayer mods aren't possible in anytime soon, Minecraft seems to be on a good track.

[0cu]

I was very disappointed with the path Notch has chosen for Minecraft. I don't want the same thing to happen with DF. So, no.

Selling a million copies isn't really a bad thing though.
Except for playing multiplayer mods aren't possible in anytime soon, Minecraft seems to be on a good track.

Money isn't everything.

[Lich180]

I was very disappointed with the path Notch has chosen for Minecraft. I don't want the same thing to happen with DF. So, no.

Selling a million copies isn't really a bad thing though.
Except for playing multiplayer mods aren't possible in anytime soon, Minecraft seems to be on a good track.

I can't say Minecraft has improved very much, if at all in the last 2 years I've had it. Sure, some things are added, and are pretty cool, but its usually nothing a modder hasn't done already (pistons, etc.) And the huge influx of players led to a HUGE detriment on the community as a whole.

Thats part of the reason I decided to play Dwarf Fortress - I had seen it on TV Tropes, read Boatmurdered, and finally decided to try it. After playing a bit, I tried Minecraft a bit and found it lacking in a certain element... I have had more fun being mauled by random animals and attempting to stave off chaos than building massive structures and having them griefed/underappreciated.

And anyways, I say let Toady make his game the way he wants it, its already more complex and fun than any big name titles I've played in the last 6 years. Its only gonna get better from here on out.

[katana]

I was very disappointed with the path Notch has chosen for Minecraft. I don't want the same thing to happen with DF. So, no.

Selling a million copies isn't really a bad thing though.
Except for playing multiplayer mods aren't possible in anytime soon, Minecraft seems to be on a good track.

Not really. Development seems to be retardedly slow (yay redundancy) and in general, even the creator admits that the code is horrible. Almost all fun comes in the form of mods. Client mods aren't officially supported, and then the fact that variable names will change every update isn't helping the modders either.

[zahmir]

I still am really confused by people who want the game to be something it's not.  It's free, it's horribly buggy and massively complex. That's Dwarf Fortress and we love it, not in spite of its flaws, but because of them. 

I also have to say that it speaks volumes about a man who does what he does because he loves doing it, not because he's in it for the money.  Working on making dwarves jump is enough to make this man happy. So why should he sell himself out, get millions of dollars which he'll spend on...?  Money does not always bring happiness.

If you like the game, great. If you want it to be something it's not, just leave.