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[eccentricheathen]

So I dl'ed this game about a year ago, and loved it.  I could tell it was unpolished, but it gave me hours of entertainment.  I was drooling for the finished product.  Eventually I suffered FPS death one too many times, and told myself I'd try it again in a year or so when naturally it would be completed.  How wrong I was.

Why is this game taking so long to make?  I feel bad for the creator, because while he moves at a snail's pace fixing everything in the game, everyone and their mother is reaping tons of money on shoddier but more "complete" clone products.  I know nothing about coding, but it just seems like he's taking the most long-winded way of making a game you can possibly take. 

The real issues in the game don't seem to be getting addressed based on the devlogs, while most of the updates seem obsessed with "tinkering".  The problems that needed to be fixed a year ago were:

1.  FPS death.  As I understand it, this was a result of the insane detailing of the code.  All those calculations going on in the background are enjoyed by about five people.  Stop catering to the engineering school kids, and streamline this for the rest of the planet.  Your bank account will thank you.

2.  The learning curve.  It honestly feels like the creator doesn't want people to play his games, and has devised the most incomprehensible interface to address a sadistic desire to keep people from playing his game.  Once again, streamline it.  Five people will be horrified, the rest of the planet will rejoice.

3.  World creation versus gameplay.  LOOK AT THIS AMAZING WORLD FILLED TO THE BRIM WITH FANTASY, ADVENTURE, AND DIVERSITY!  Now play the game in .0001% of that land.  Do not interact with the outside world, do not allow your dwarves to explore, do not have any interaction with the civilization your dwarves came from.  I realize the "adventure" game allows you to explore the game world.  However only five people play the adventure game.  Most people play Dwarf Fortress to you know, have a Dwarf Fortress. 

I realize that this post sounds like trolling but I'm just very disappointed with the lack of progress in this game.  There's about fifty clones of this game already, and while I've yet to see one that surpasses the original, eventually one of them will and leave this game in the dust, which is tragic because it has such promise.

Again, sorry if I sound like I'm trolling.       

[dukea42]

You have to remember its not a game, its a simulation. It's what toady is good at, and because he does it on his own dime and time, he makes it how he wants. An interview showed him quite content living off sodas and microwave meals in his 1 bedroom appartment coding away looking for neither fame or fortune. I thought I read once he has a 20year development plan.

I too come back each year or so to play the latest builds. I share in how it's annoying that simple bugs in the gameplay part of it get passed over just because toady has felt interested in digging back over that old code when he enjoys working on something new instead.  What helps  for me with making DF a better game versus a simulation platform is all of the mods. Many modders work tirelessly to cover what gaps in gameplay the best they can. I can attest that Masterwork (kinda half mephs work, half compliation of the best mod content) has been lots of fun, but there are several others that also do the same.

If you want something else, you can always try the latest game "inspired" by dwarf fortress before they realize that pretty graphics is not enough to replace the charm of it all.

That's the best I can tell ya.

[Eric Blank]

Bug fixing isn't the highest priority right now because the game/simulation/whatever the hell you want to call it is in the "alpha" stage of development; Toady One is trying to add in all the features, before settling on polishing them up. Since he's a one-man army and doesn't want to have to worry about working with other developers, this takes time. Lots of time. If a bug is really murdering the gameplay currently or causing crashes, it gets addressed in short time, but non-game-breaking bugs aren't that high of a priority.

1 will be addressed eventually, but as it stands Toady needs to apply all the intended features before moving on to the beta stage of development and worrying about makign it more efficient. personally I have no problems with my FPS, because I splurged on an awesome processor.

2 will also likely be addressed (officially) later, when the game is more complete. Eventually there will be proper translated versions done as well, but until the game is near completion, focusing on those many different versions in different langauges will only hinder development. For now you have the awesome community to rely on, with the lazy newb pack and graphics packs and such.

3 is currently being addressed in the upcoming releases. Adventure mode will present a more interactive world, and fortress mode will eventually allow you to shfit your focus to the outside world. For now, it's IN DEVELOPMENT!

[Di]

Well, that's the way of the Toady One. He lives on donations from it but he hardly does this because of money. This and the fact that game is in process of making answer the first two points pretty much.
As for the third position, that's rougelike, the world out there isn't for you only, Shepard, deal with it.
The complexity of the game is what makes it what it is.

[vjek]

Money isn't the only reason to do something.

Often, the luxury of doing it the way you want is all the reward necessary.

[eccentricheathen]

What helps  for me with making DF a better game versus a simulation platform is all of the mods. Many modders work tirelessly to cover what gaps in gameplay the best they can. I can attest that Masterwork (kinda half mephs work, half compliation of the best mod content) has been lots of fun, but there are several others that also do the same.

I am intrigued!  Do you have links to good mod sites?  This sounds like at least part of what I'm looking for...

[Gavakis]

Dont like it?
Leave, dont complain.
Its going to take a long time, we have all been waiting, some more than others.

[Kylarus]

I'm perfectly content that a person with more talent and creativity than me in this field is able to make the simulation/game/program he wants to make and that he is afforded the opportunity to make it his way. I'm even happier that it is something that I can enjoy as well, regardless of whether I enjoy it the way he intends me to enjoy it or not.

As others have said, it's an alpha and Toady is taking care of things in the order he wants to take care of them in. As I recall, interaction with the outside world is going to take the inclusion of several story arcs before your fortress really has a great deal of interaction with the outside world. At moment, the migrants you get are, with exception of starting seven, drawn from the historical legends of the world. IIRC, the next few steps involved trade and economy.

The learning curve, steep as it is, is one of the fun parts of it.

[Aseaheru]

I like the insane levels of coding, the learning curve, etc.

The mighty Toad is not (i think) doing this for money. judging from the article in the NY times hes doing this because of the satisfaction it gives.

its taking so long because of all the coding yet to be added.

[Sutremaine]

I am intrigued!  Do you have links to good mod sites?  This sounds like at least part of what I'm looking for...

Check the modding board. Mods are generally announced on the forums here and hosted on DFFD (Dwarf Fortress File Depot).

[Dyret]

So I dl'ed this game about a year ago, and loved it.  I could tell it was unpolished, but it gave me hours of entertainment.  I was drooling for the finished product.  Eventually I suffered FPS death one too many times, and told myself I'd try it again in a year or so when naturally it would be completed.  How wrong I was.

I know nothing about coding

This is your problem right here. Something like DF isn't going to be finished in a year, or ten, if you expect it to you'll be horribly disappointed. This is also why none of the shitty ripoffs will ever surpass it. I don't even know where you pulled the 'Toady only ever uselessly tinkers' thing out from... The few-months-off next release will include birth, death, succession, traveling armies, a non-retarded stealth system, split combat speed, multi-tile trees and assorted stuff, as well as full-fledged cities for every race, and that's just what I remember.

[Aseaheru]

trade, climbing, sane badguys, non-killing combat, reacting NPCs.

[Thecard]

Yeah, greatness takes time.

And I think the Masterwork DF thread is somewhere in the modding board, you should check there.

[krenshala]

Dont like it?
Leave, dont complain.
Its going to take a long time, we have all been waiting, some more than others.

This gets asked every few months by someone, but thats no reason to be snippy about it.  Its much nicer to just point out Toady's comments about the planned development cycle (20 years, at least) and remind folks its a one-man job running on donations, and not a "nearly" finished product being worked on by an army of code-monkeys at a big(ger) development house.

Sure, we're a dysfunctional family, but we should still be nice to each other!

[Nonsequitorian]

The thing is, no clone can possibly surpass dwarf fortress. Maybe when we called 1st person shooters Doom clones, they surpassed doom, but there's a difference between doom with a doom-clone and dwarf fortress with a DF-clone. Doom was never the most complicated game in the world, its clones didn't have much to live up to in terms of complication and thus they succeeded, becoming even better.

DF, arguably, IS the most complicated game in the world. That learning curve problem you see we don't (as already declared by Kylarus). You play a DF clone, and it's not as much an equal game as it is the pre-birth bloody water and embryo of DF. The graphics hurt the clone. The easy interface hurts the clone. Many games claim to be hardcore, but DF was born hardcore. The others merely imitate it.

Toady One is showing us his dream. Maybe his dream isn't everybody's dream, but for the people who share a similar dream it's the best dream out there. Sure, many people give us dreams just as good. We read Tolkien and the like, or any liturature for that matter. But that's a different kind of dream. Not worse or better, but not what Toady is giving us.

I don't think it's right to call other clones shitty, but they're just games. We who play DF have ultimately stopped playing a game. You can read stories from the forum, and they wont even sound like it came out of a game. The first part of my hoping-to-be epic poem was more or less straight out of a couple sessions. Yeah, I took poetic liberties, but it's still the same story. Many games are called an experience. Not many truly are. Dwarf Fortress is, and what's more it's your own. It's not one with a specific ending written by payed writers, but something you make for yourself. DF is only what you make of it, and every update lets us make even more.