As you can see from my profile number I was part of the first "wave" that contributed spreading then word about Dwarf Fortress when it started to surface. I also remember that I helped hosting mirrors when Toady needed to relieve the load on the site. So I'm one of these oldies, disgruntled players that now is going to tell you how things were so much better at the time.
Albeit, I'll doing this by pointing at solid motives, and explain why it's more an objective thing than it is about personal preference and rose tinted glasses.
Things WERE indeed better at the time. Here's why.
First generation Dwarf Fortress (or at least the 2006 incarnation, that I think was the first to really go public) gained its popularity because it was basically a "canvas" that a player could use to draw his own art. The essential part of the game was building a fortress in a unique style and share on forums these big screenshots showing these HUGE fortresses. It was a visual spectacle. Sharing screenshots was as big part of the experience as playing the actual game.
This was the time when Dwarf Fortress was in what specifically I consider its golden age. Bug fixes happened very quickly and we were getting new releases every few days, if not every day. Toady would talk about what he was adding or fixing, and you'd get to test it the next day. Feedback would be incorporated and you could see the game improve constantly and make big strides forward. Following its development was rewarding, because you got to contribute, see it growing constantly, and enjoy the game because it was already extremely playable and even polished (to some extent). Features would go in, and if something didn't work it was quickly fixed.
Then it was the time of the first big hiatus. I don't remember how long it took, but it brought the z-depth and it brought the possibility to enlarge the client window. Imho, the latter is the biggest feature.
The thing is: the z-depth brought a lot to the game, but it also took away. I would never say that the game was better without the z-depth, but it certainly made the game lose something. The fact is that 2D ASCII isn't suitable for 3D depth. This is a fact of game design, not opinion. 2D is perfect for abstract representation, so it's perfect for top-down view of a management game. When you add z-depth, you're instead going against the nature of your medium, and adding a complication that you can tolerate, but not overcome. But this is not the actual issue. The core of the difference between classic DF and modern DF is that the classic one was about the art on the canvas, whereas modern DF is more about the canvas than the art.
In classic DF the layout was always essentially the same. There were only a few variables that would change, like the wildlife population, but the canvas was the same, and your fortress was always fully contained on the same screen. You got everything at a glance. Now instead, and it is positive in many ways, the canvas determines how you play, and your fortress is shaped by the environment as it is shaped by you, the player. The thing is: it also lost some of that original charm and broke some of its parts that before worked so well.
What I mean here is that you have to understand the tension there is on the game design level between these two opposites: from one side there's player control, the sandbox you shape any way you want, making your game and gameplay style totally different from how a different player does it. From the opposite side there's the game's own impositions, that restrict player's freedom and force him adapt to the game's own demands.
So, sandbox and realism are almost antithetic. In sandbox you want control and freedom, without the game forcing you to constantly change your plans. In realism you want to "game", because you play the world and against the challenges it throws at you. You still have some freedom, but for the most part the focus is on reacting to the world, more than creating and shaping things the way you plan.
Meaning that Dwarf Fortress is inherently made of conflicting interests and it will always struggle to keep all kinds of players happy. And in trying to overstretch, it also risks breaking (without a direction that is more savvy than it is just hopeful and utopian).
Looking at some external forums, I'm noticing my jaded (but still extremely excited) reaction to the new release is actually quite common: a lot more than two years passed from the latest version (that wasn't limited bug fixing) but we don't see a whole lot, and this new rewrite surely broke a number of things.
The problem here is twofold, and here I hope Toady considers these points:
1- I believe the game saw a MUCH more significant, tangible and positive development when it was done through small, incremental, almost daily updates, with plenty of community feedback, compared to this new style of total rewrites behind the scenes that take years to complete and then lots more to hammer into a playable, enjoyable state (if ever). Imho, open source would push DF to a whole new level, but beside that I hope Toady still consider more going into a more collaborative development and frequent releases.
2- The game was also more polished, consistent, free of bugs and better designed overall. While I LOVE detail and absurd depth, DF transformed into a feature creep that horribly damaged the game and its potential more than it helped it. The sprawl is literally incoherent, and this direction isn't going to help fulfilling the vision, it only chases catastrophic utopias.
Having direction meas you evaluate the complexity of a feature against its actual impact. And there are features in DF that took an insanely long time to develop and that are almost completely irrelevant. Or, simply put: please focus on what actually makes the game better and more enjoyable, instead of chasing after the virtual world chimera. There is a limit to what you SHOULD model, even ideally.
I have a VERY unpopular opinion: the most famous stories about DF are merely the emergent product of BUGS that are then "explained away" through imaginative stories by the players. This isn't good AT ALL.
The game acting spectacularly incoherent isn't something to applaud to. This is identical to popular youtube videos showing how some physics game engine breaks in some games. It's similar to all those famous Skyrim glitches. They are good for laughs, but they aren't examples of a good game. DF is often broken in various ways, and players play with bugs more than they play with features that behave correctly.
Imho, DF realizes its ambition and its potential when it functions consistently and coherently. If there's a bug that makes some goblin invulnerable and, so, into some legendary monster, this isn't praiseworthy. This is just a broken game. If two dwarfs get locked into eternal wrestling fight, this isn't "epic", this is just a terrible bug.
So, simply put, DF is in a state where it's WAY PAST the point where it needs more features creep and instead need to start fixing and polishing what is already there.
PLEASE stop going into years of rewrites that break the game even more, and spend the next couple of years to actually make a GOOD game. Almost polished I'd say. There's stuff needed that could be done in days if not hours, and that would improve the experience immensely.
The UI needs cleaning. It needed cleaning EIGHT YEARS AGO. It needs cleaning more than it needs EVERY other new feature. Modders need better support instead of wasting so much time trying to hack into memory. DF needs, right now, focus on usability more than it needs to model the dwarfs individual fingers or arm hair.
I'm reading that in this new version the game now randomly generates metals. Fine. Are they mechanically different? This is the question. If they aren't, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.
DF doesn't need more "noise". It doesn't need simulate depth when this depth is faked. It's not like it's such a simple game that NEEDS OBFUSCATION. We have like hundreds types of materials and colors on screen. ARE THEY MECHANICALLY DIFFERENT? Nope. Noise on screen. Different text that behaves mechanically the same. This is utterly stupid. If you put on my screen different types of stones then I pretend that they differ in something tasngible. That they have a point. Otherwise it's noise, not music.
Even if you WANT those types, and are absolutely contrary to remove that. That's good. For me it's the same. But mechanics NEED GO FIRST. First you make things have a functional impact in the game, THEN you add them. You can't simply add the stuff because you plan six years later to actually start coding how they work. It's just a terrible way of doing things.
You have five mechanical variations? Then you add five types in the game. When you have more you add more. But you can't have in the game five mechanical variations and then add hundred types that all work exactly the same.
DF has still immense potential. DF is still the better game ever made, already. IN SPITE of horrible mistakes and terrible choices that Toady made along the years. This rant is made in the hope it's possible to minimize some of those bad choices and maybe reach the potential more effectively, and faster.
If Toady instead spends the next couple of months to fix bugs only to go back into hiatus to rewrite some bigger system, then I'm skeptical we'll even see another version. Much less a worthwhile one that we can be legitimately excited about. For every 10 features added, 20 break. Please invert this trend.
Please go back to 2006 development style with frequent releases and more community involvement. For the foreseeable future and beyond.
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Topic: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress (Read 51157 times)