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Author Topic: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress  (Read 51169 times)

Skuggen

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #300 on: July 10, 2014, 01:33:53 am »

I'm actually fairly happy with the way it works now; Toady works on adding new features and fixing the worst bugs, while third-party tools smooths out the roughest edges.

Granted, it does make it hard for new players to get into it. I gave up on it the first time I tried.
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Musaab

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #301 on: July 10, 2014, 01:38:10 am »

While I believe that he should continue the dev style that he prefers, a prolonged period of bug fixing would be greatly appreciated.

Uristsonsonson

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #302 on: July 10, 2014, 01:50:05 am »

I think that's understandable.  The sheer number of unresolved reports on the bug tracker is daunting, and yeah, many of the game's systems are a shambles.  You may be able to persuade Toady to spend a little longer on post-release bug-fixing, but eventually he's going to need to focus on new features, to sustain the community's interest and his own.
More big, incomplete features seem to only build big hype and then big disappointments. I'm just saying that NOW we are at a point where I don't think Toady can actually avoid taking care of what he left behind.
I don't really see him avoiding anything. Going by today's dev log, he's already started hammering away at the worst bugs people have found. So... yeah. I don't see why you're demanding that he do bug fixing while he's doing bug fixing. It seems like what you're actually angry about is that he's not working to your expectations, which tells me that you might not understand exactly what the project is about. He's building the game he's always wanted to play, and is generous enough to let you play with what he's made so far for free and with no strings attached. It's actually kind of awesome if you think about it. I might even donate this coming paycheck just to say thank you.
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Symmetry

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #303 on: July 10, 2014, 04:47:01 am »

Dude, optimization is saved until near the very end of development, that's practically software design 101; optimizing prematurely makes it significantly harder to make further changes without screwing things up.

Knuth needs to be keel-hauled for saying that.  I wish he'd publicly apologise so people understand it just doesn't apply to modern cpu architecture.

For example, if DF had been designed from the start to be multithreaded that wouldn't be premature optimisation it would be a solid design decision taken at the correct time to hit the performance goals.  Optimisation in modern software isn't unrolling loops or adding hex float tricks, it's laying out memory efficiently so everything always fits in the cache and minimising branches so the cpu never predicts incorrectly, and using memory on one core at a time.  The only way to do those things is from the start deep in the design of the software, and it doesn't make it hard to make further changes it makes it easy to add new code that will perform well.

If you leave it to the end you have dozens of systems that all need to be relaid out and read each other's memory and write to each other's memory and it's effectively a total rewrite.  And adding multithreading at the end is always, always, always the wrong decision.  Toady has said he won't add it so that's not relevant to DF, but it does illustrate the point that "making things faster" is not what Knuth was talking about when he used the word "optimisation".

yeah ok, derailed.  I have a thing about people quoting knuth.
Abalieno has said his bit, some people agree, some don't, some use passive aggressive comments to ask the thread to be locked.  I feel I should reply to footkerchief as he spent the time replying to my post earlier.  I think the gist of it was that we shouldn't say there was nothing done on fort mode, and that the mind rewrite was needed for job priorities.

Well yes, things were done on fort mode and the short hand of "nothing new in fort mode" is not true.  But after two years having trees that drop inedible and unusable fruit is a bit of a disappointment still.  And again on the job priorities, it's a disappointment because however much work went into the backend the feature isn't there.  I personally find it hard to believe the entire mind needs rewriting to allow dwarves to pick their next job from a prioritised list rather than a hardcoded ordered list .  But in any case that's two features that (to return to the OP) are noise in the game as they're confusingly incomplete.

This returns to the point raised earlier weighing lots of quick releases against one long release, in these cases we have the worst of both worlds where the release took forever but we have two incomplete half done features.  You can see the questions in the forum already about "how do I eat apples?".  As I've said, if Toady enjoys it and is making money that's all cool and I'll do something else until there's a release I'll enjoy playing.  But raising the point that the dev priorities are giving the game a confusing feature set seems fair.
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Skuggen

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #304 on: July 10, 2014, 05:00:25 am »

I don't really agree that it's confusing, though, because I've always gotten the impression that this update will be felt most in adventure mode.

But it also seems to me this will have a significant impact on fort mode in that the world will still evolve while playing. I mostly just play fort mode myself, but I still think there's plenty in this release I'll have a ton of fun with.
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Chaos17

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #305 on: July 10, 2014, 08:21:10 am »

As a "new player", I agree that the modders need more support because they made so any cool mods that helped a lot a newbie like me to get into the game and manage it. I would've not needed of mods if the UI was cleaner, more polished and support the mouse.
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MaskedMiner

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #306 on: July 10, 2014, 08:23:01 am »

I started out playing this game in 2011, never needed mods or tilesets and only thing i needed was to check one tutorial video series to get started and understand what is going on.

But yeah, its amazing how these types of threads keep popping up and everytime exact same conversation happens between people <_< Seriously, EXACTLY THE SAME. Even this "I don't need mods to play the game!" thing.
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de5me7

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #307 on: July 10, 2014, 08:48:27 am »

Begone fear!
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palu

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #308 on: July 10, 2014, 08:54:36 am »

Long live the cause!

This thread is now another DF2014 conversation thread

It was for the best.
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Hmph, palu showing off that reading-the-instructions superpower.
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reality.auditor

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #309 on: July 10, 2014, 09:57:50 am »

Let's be clear, I'm not criticizing the presence of all those rock types. I'm criticizing that the UI differentiates them visually as if that difference is crucial to the game. Whereas it's irrelevant.
I think this will solve your problem.
Quote
I always loved the detailed geology in the original game. That is why each gem has an element associated with it for a temporary stat boost.
So red gem makes you immune to fire and green gem immune to poison. Here, you have your "visually different = significant to gameplay".

Protip: reality does not color-code anything for your convenience... ::)

There ARE things in DF that either have useless complexity or said complexity is not accessible for various reasons (that can cause serious consequences, like hard to detect bugs). But complaining about stone color is just plain simply ridiculous, on par with "DF2014 is just modded DF2012".

Dude, optimization is saved until near the very end of development, that's practically software design 101;
Yet Toady said he will optimize calendar as almost literally next thing he will do. ::) Oh, and another protip: with DF there is no end of development. It is perpetual alpha.

I don't see why you're demanding that he do bug fixing while he's doing bug fixing.
I do not know about Abalieno, but my gripe with Toady is that he considers bugfixing very low priority. He does it seriously only some time after next major release (in other words right now - this is why it sounds like "demanding that he do bug fixing while he's doing bug fixing").

Soon enough (in few months at most) we will be back to business as usual: Toady happily introduces new bugs implements new shiny features and players are left to deal with bugs that was not considered worthy fixing during post-release period for next year or two. Or more.
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Are weapons like the least lethal thing in DF?

miauw62

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #310 on: July 10, 2014, 10:10:00 am »

Tolkien [...] The Silmarillion.
Wait, are you saying Toady is going to die, and DF will be finished and published by his son?

Simile - sometimes they take us to unexpected places  ;)
It seems rather likely that Toady will die, yes. :V

As a "new player", I agree that the modders need more support because they made so any cool mods that helped a lot a newbie like me to get into the game and manage it. I would've not needed of mods if the UI was cleaner, more polished and support the mouse.
That's not really mods. Mods are things that change the gameplay, these are just utilities to make things easier.
« Last Edit: July 10, 2014, 10:18:01 am by miauw62 »
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cephalo

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #311 on: July 10, 2014, 11:05:10 am »

I do not know about Abalieno, but my gripe with Toady is that he considers bugfixing very low priority. He does it seriously only some time after next major release (in other words right now - this is why it sounds like "demanding that he do bug fixing while he's doing bug fixing").

Soon enough (in few months at most) we will be back to business as usual: Toady happily introduces new bugs implements new shiny features and players are left to deal with bugs that was not considered worthy fixing during post-release period for next year or two. Or more.

Yeah, I have a big beef with this too. If Toady was a perfectionist we might not even have dwarf fortress, but I would very much like to see more priority on the bug fixing. The healthcare system introduced years ago was a great idea, and is fun when it works, but it is absolutely riddled with crippling bugs and weird design flaws going back to 2010.
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SmileyMan

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #312 on: July 10, 2014, 11:15:42 am »

Why expend effort fixing a non-gamebreaking bug in a section of code that you know is going to be refactored at some point in the future?
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Minepow2

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #313 on: July 10, 2014, 11:19:41 am »

Long live the cause!

This thread is now another DF2014 conversation thread

It was for the best.

It was inevitable.  *munches plump helmets*
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No comments to be found here! 

It was inevitable.

Footkerchief

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Re: Toady, a little rant on modern Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #314 on: July 10, 2014, 11:25:47 am »

Why expend effort fixing a non-gamebreaking bug in a section of code that you know is going to be refactored at some point in the future?

As far as I know, the current healthcare system is largely considered feature-complete for v1.  It certainly got more dev time than a typical placeholder would.
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