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[Stragus]

Based on the code in that project I think it's refreshing to see a guy who codes by introducing all the special cases right upfront, inline, with little or no abstraction where it's not absolutely necessary.
[...]
Unfortunately, AFAICT, Dwarf Fortress is one of those rare one-man projects where you can work yourself into a hole by assuming you don't need any extra abstraction and never deviating from that assumption

That doesn't sound good... I have once been an amateur self-taught programmer (more than a decade ago), coding everything right where it was easiest at the moment. It turned out to be a disaster of apocalyptic proportions, and I have learned that lesson. Sure, I'm also totally against the whole C++ school of thought that everything should be encapsulated in layers of layers, but there's a point where abstractions simplify the code, and they have no runtime cost when done intelligently (static inline).

Speaking of code design, I "accidentally" played with water in DF, and the frame rate collapsed to a point that isn't even funny. This is also not how water behaves! (why does it have the viscosity of ketchup?)

Years ago, in spare time, I wrote a terrain engine with a complete water cycle, true hydrography (undergroud and surface flow), erosion, etc. The computational fluid dynamics had been simplified, linearized and were solved as cyclic tridiagonal: http://www.rayforce.net/newproject024.png
It easily ran in realtime, you could alter the terrain or observe how evaporation/rainfall patterns altered the surface flow and water levels.

So that kind of stuff can be done, and far more. I don't mean to critize too much, but I think Toady could use some help for the physics and optimization...

[gzoker]

"I heard this game [insert subjective opinion], but I feel the exact opposite way about it. So, clearly it must be broken and the developer should fix it according to my suggestions. Otherwise, I will not going to have fun playing the game, and then..."

This argument is always so amusing. Especially, when it's about a niche game for a small audience. Most of the time it ends with "you won't get my money.". But right now, I still don't know what will it mean for the world that the OP has been so thoroughly deceived by these lying cheats who would consider themselves the dwarf fortress community. What will be the end of this argument?

"...I'm not going to play?", "...You shouldn't play either?", "...I will complain more?", "...The world will end?", "I will END the world!", "I will write my own game! With blackjack, and hookers!", "...My Father will hear about this?"

"I'm going to develop a game I would like to play, and I'm going to do it the way I want it."
On the other hand, this is a less common argument. The players are not buying a product; it's a person's vision being shared with them. You can take it as is, or leave it - but complaining about it can be silly at best and annoying at worst. How boring.

"...an interesting story requires adversity." Um, no, not necessarily. What is interesting varies by person to person - there were at least two examples refuting the former statement right in this thread. Even before it was posted! What a surprising turn of events?

"Kogan! What are you doing? Get off that keyboard! Go back to fishing!"

I'm sorry. I was watching stupid dorfs argue in a half finished library [menacing with granite spikes] the whole night, then a few of them drank themselves to death, then a kitten was pushed into a well and had to be saved and then I kinda fell asleep in the middle of writing, and then this happened...

About "The myth of an extremely hard game" and the "Losing is fun" slogan: sorry, but you are in the minority. As long as the majority of potential players are going to give up playing after a few hours, it is going to be considered a hard game. It is not for you (or any one person) to decide.

"Losing is fun". As far as i have grasped it over the years, its meaning is more like "Losing can be fun too", rather than "Only losing is fun".  It's the mentality of the people who can actually enjoy the game for a long time. Telling them that they should give it up, just because you don't feel the same way, well... again, let's stop at "it not being your decision".

There is a lot more to this game other than never-ending struggle easy combat - if you can't accept it as it is, and you can't change it by reason or force, then what do you think would be a reasonable next step for you to do?

[Robsoie]

About "The myth of an extremely hard game" and the "Losing is fun" slogan: sorry, but you are in the minority. As long as the majority of potential players are going to give up playing after a few hours, it is going to be considered a hard game. It is not for you (or any one person) to decide.

But what is the reason people give up playing DF in 42.x , because they find the game difficult in its challenge or because they have difficulty to actually get into for a completely different reasons (visual presentation/interface/whatever else) ?
That would be interesting to know

[Stragus]

Here's a follow-up to the various recommendations of trying the Fortress Defense mod. It's a great mod, thank you for recommending it. I also applaud the work put into it.

It gets fairly intense after 2 years (it seems the author can't really get DF to send early attacks). Although I must say it doesn't only make the game "challenging"... It also makes the game frustrating at the utter stupidity of one's dwarves!

- Military units will charge anything that moves and can't ever withdraw or retreat. I can't express how absurd that is. It makes any kind of tactical maneuvering absolutely impossible!

- While War Elephants were destroying Great Fiend Spiders (two simultaneous sieges), I would have liked my 40 markmen to shoot them safely from the other side of the river... But once the markmen run out of bolts, they all run through the river to club the war elephants with their crossbows, and die awfully. Very clever!

- With a large battle coming up, some dwarves will randomly leave their post to eat/sleep/fetch provisions... even if it means running through the courtyard, seeing the ennemy, charging them alone and getting killed instantly.

- One would like to use choke points against powerful enemies, to benefit from numerical superiority, but that requires awfully precise movement timing. Otherwise, as soon as they catch a glimpse of the enemy, the dwarves will run through the actual chokepoint and end up the ones surrounded by more numerous forces. Where's the "Stand your ground" order?

- I have had a dwarf (high master speardwarf) sleeping in the middle of the courtyard, impossible to wake him up. A large melee battle began right next to him. After a while, a War Elephant (in full steel plate armor) just trampled him. He never woke up.

- I have had my best dwarves too busy eating/sleeping/fetching provisions to help during important battles. It appears impossible to tell them to get into position... and if they later rejoin the squad, they might glance the enemy on the way, charge alone and die.

- Archers running out of bolts, but sitting on a stockpile of bolts, will prefer to climb over a wall and use their crossbows as clubs rather than pick up more bolts. The only way to prevent markmen from getting themselves killed is locking them down in a fully closed container with all doors flagged as forbidden.

- Archers positioned higher up in archery towers must be right next to the wall to obtain line of sight and shoot. That's fine, but they won't move next to the wall on their own and it's impossible to tell them to do so. Additionally, a move order actually means a random point 3 tiles from the given position, including on the other side of the wall.

- Military units will climb on the roof of towers/fortifications to reach an enemy, and if the battle ends when they are still up there, they remain stranded. They will die of hunger rather than climb back down, unless of course they see a new enemy in which case they'll suddenly remember how to climb back down.

Bottom line, it appears the entire battle AI of Dwarf Fortress is awfully buggy. I suspect the game's difficulty is kept low as, if it were more challenging, people would express intense frustration at the inaptitude of the dwarven battle AI (which could be okay if we could manually micro-manage, but we can't!).

"I heard this game [insert subjective opinion], but I feel the exact opposite way about it. So, clearly it must be broken and the developer should fix it according to my suggestions. Otherwise, I will not going to have fun playing the game, and then..."

As far as I can tell, you are trolling. I hope you had fun completely twisting my statements!

I'm sure you already know the game itself is awfully easy, it's the interface that is terrible and totally undocumented in-game. Having to read a whole wiki to figure out how things work doesn't make the game "hard". It doesn't make the game challenging either. But it does make the game very tedious.

In case you weren't trolling and really missed the point, my problem was with the Dwarf Fortress documentation promising a (very) challenging game. As already explained, that is false.

[cochramd]

As far as I can tell, you are trolling. I hope you had fun completely twisting my statements!

Oh, I hate when people hide behind this defense whenever they encounter legitimate criticism of any kind.

[Drathnoxis]

Yeah, I'm having a similar experience. I'm currently making my second attempt at getting into the game, my first failing after about a game year of struggling with the obtuse interface.
I've heard about how difficult the game was for years, and read the delightfully catastrophic Boatmurdered let's play, so I was expecting some good solid challenge. However, I'm 5 years into my fort in a savage biome and the game has been trivially easy. Food and alcohol is ridiculously abundant, my dwarves are all fine, and the most eventful thing was a weretapir killing my broker around year 2. I never even set up my military until year 3 and now I have 30 well trained dwarves that are all naming their stupid weapons without ever having seen battle.

One of my biggest issues is that trading is so pointless and trivial. Anything the caravan brings I can make myself better, the only thing I need from them is wood. Furthermore, everything is so bloody cheap! Right from the start, with one stonecrafter, I've been flooded in goods to trade and now at year 5 I've just been using the caravans to ditch all my less than mastercraft furniture, with boxes and boxes of dwarven treasure just collecting dust. I don't think I've made a single trade deal the entire game that didn't result in the trader making almost 10x profit. And they can carry so much, like a hundred thousand pounds. Rather than the weight cap being the limiting factor it's how much junk my dwarves can haul to the trade depot before the caravan leaves.

I was thinking I'd restart in an evil biome when my fortress becomes a mountainhome, but I'm so bored, I don't know if I can stomach setting up a new fort and waiting for something interesting to happen.

[Stragus]

As far as I can tell, you are trolling. I hope you had fun completely twisting my statements!

Oh, I hate when people hide behind this defense whenever they encounter legitimate criticism of any kind.

Legitimate criticism? Have you even read gzoker's post? Fine! Here, I'll assume he wasn't trolling, and reply more in depth just for you.

"I heard this game [insert subjective opinion], but I feel the exact opposite way about it. So, clearly it must be broken and the developer should fix it according to my suggestions. Otherwise, I will not going to have fun playing the game, and then..."

This argument is always so amusing. Especially, when it's about a niche game for a small audience. Most of the time it ends with "you won't get my money.". But right now, I still don't know what will it mean for the world that the OP has been so thoroughly deceived by these lying cheats who would consider themselves the dwarf fortress community. What will be the end of this argument?

"...I'm not going to play?", "...You shouldn't play either?", "...I will complain more?", "...The world will end?", "I will END the world!", "I will write my own game! With blackjack, and hookers!", "...My Father will hear about this?"

None of that. If you read my posts again, I'm suggesting the documentation could rather describe the game as it is. The "Losing is fun" motto could be true if it were possible to lose. We can't lose in Dwarf Fortress (just wall up the entrance), so surely the fun must be elsewhere, yes?

Putting asides enemy attacks, where are the feared tantrum spirals? You can leave your dwarves an year outside in the rain, sleeping in the grass, eating raw plump helmets, drinking river water, and they don't seem to complain much. This game isn't about the fun of losing, about the challenge of overcoming difficulties. Rather, it's a game to be creative, to build, generating little stories in a procedural universe, where people don't play to "win". So what about describing that instead?

"I'm going to develop a game I would like to play, and I'm going to do it the way I want it."

Okay, where did you get that from? Because I posted a screenshot from my hydrographic simulation & engine written in spare time years ago? I'm not going to write a clone of Dwarf Fortress, I don't have time for that.

"...an interesting story requires adversity." Um, no, not necessarily. What is interesting varies by person to person - there were at least two examples refuting the former statement right in this thread. Even before it was posted! What a surprising turn of events?

You refer to the mentioned stories like the goblin escaping the onslaught by swimming downstream, dodging arrows into a canyon, and bled out/drowned? These are nice side anecdotes, it's extra flavor to give depth to an universe, that's always a good thing. Yet if that kind of anecdote is enthralling enough for you to play just for the story, I probably don't want to hear about the kind of book you read. Also, don't ever try D&D with a good DM, that'll be way too intense for you!

About "The myth of an extremely hard game" and the "Losing is fun" slogan: sorry, but you are in the minority. As long as the majority of potential players are going to give up playing after a few hours, it is going to be considered a hard game. It is not for you (or any one person) to decide.

I'm sure you know people give up playing after a few hours because it's practically impossible to play without reading a whole wiki. Who wants to do that? And if you don't read the wiki, you'll have much fun figuring out what "Process Plants", "Process Plants (Vial)", "Process Plants (Barrel)" and "Process plant to bag" actually do.

Overall, the game itself is probably as hard as The Sims, except with a terrible and undocumented interface.

"Losing is fun". As far as i have grasped it over the years, its meaning is more like "Losing can be fun too", rather than "Only losing is fun".  It's the mentality of the people who can actually enjoy the game for a long time. Telling them that they should give it up, just because you don't feel the same way, well... again, let's stop at "it not being your decision".

Did I tell anyone to give the game up? I thought I had just suggested adapting the documentation to describe reality: it's a building game to be creative, not a challenging game. Perhaps the game will become challenging later on, that would be nice for those who like that.

There is a lot more to this game other than never-ending struggle easy combat - if you can't accept it as it is, and you can't change it by reason or force, then what do you think would be a reasonable next step for you to do?

Nothing! Again, I'll see what they come up with, hoping the next versions are something I would like to play. Yet, once again, it would be nice if the documentation could describe the game in its actual state, so newcomers don't assume the game to be something it isn't.

[Baffler]

It's a small point, but if I remember right there actually is a way to get your dwarves to stand their ground rather than charge. If you use the "defend burrows" order instead of a regular station order to put them in position, they won't leave it for any reason except to resupply. At the very least, it gives you more precise control over where they stand. I only ever use this trick to put marksdwarves in the right spots on the fortifications, but I don't see why it wouldn't work for melee dwarves. I've mostly just designed my defenses around the fact that they'll charge as soon as they see the enemy.

[Salmeuk]

Stragus, this thread happened to spawn a much more interesting discussion over here


Realize that most people here aren't disagreeing with you about the failures of DF as a game. Most of your complaints have been ackknowledged in the past via FOTF posts, df talks, and suggestion threads. Instead, were trying to show you the awesomeness that comes from meeting the game halfway, so to speak. Take the bugs in stride, handicap yourself, roleplay, and you can really enjoy the unique experience that is DF. Moan and wail about how easy it is, play the metagame, refuse to change your expectations of what a game really is, and I doubt you'll enjoy the full breadth of what DF currently has to offer.

In my experience (remember, you're not the first to point out these things), you'll grow bored and move on with your life, then somehow be alerted to an upcoming release and re-install the game. The game itself will remain problematic and ultimately dissapointing, and you'll become frustrated and uninstall. Rinse, repeat, perhaps a few cycles. . .

Then it clicks. 6 years later you see the light. You play DF for the first time in ages, and with all of your accumulated skills things just flow. Your fortresses come and go, but you keep it installed - the urge to play never really leaves your side. There's DF, then there's Stragus-style DF - customized tilesets and modded raws turn the game into a personalized realm generator. Or at least, this might happen. You could keep complaining about "misdocumentation and false advertising" and insulting the entire fantasy genre in bit-by-bit reply posts that should have died in the 90's but are kept alive by escaped lunatics and no-life "forum gods." You get it or you don't, and you either keep trying to get it or you go back to whatever entertained you before.

[mgotthard]

This thread is getting awfully flamey.   
Cool it a bit, eh people?

Personally I love DF, even with all the frustrations of stupid dwarves and convoluted tricks to get them to actually do what you want.  Do I especially care what other people think, though? I guess, enough to try and moderate (i.e. 'calm', 'restrain') an argument....but not much beyond.   

Hell, I've played since 0.34 and never once bothered visiting the circus, despite knowing it's there.  I only just mined my first ever candy the other day.  Different, individual, goals.

[Psieye]

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress! The prior posts have already covered a lot so I'll be brief:

Commiserations for your incorrectly set pre-play expectations. Your initial interpretation of "Losing is fun!" was true in the earlier versions. Not just because of differences in sieges but also due to very memorable bugs (at different points in history) such as OP carp, belligerant unicorns, unkillable undead (undead whales walked on land) and hundreds of giant mosquitos. It still is true if you dig to the bottom of the map, but that's not something intuitive a new player will try out - not when there's so much to do closer to the surface.

It also makes the game frustrating at the utter stupidity of one's dwarves!

It's a large source of the difficulty. The length of the Note to Urist thread is testimony. For certain masochistic tastes, it's a great source of fun to manage these idiots but not everyone shares those tastes. Indeed, a major cause of losing in earlier versions was failure to manage the emotions of dwarves - external adversaries were not required for this. You'd spend hours building an efficient military and defensive architecture then find those soldiers having to fight their fellow residents due to an absurd (from our perspective) scenario.

[MobRules]

"I'm going to develop a game I would like to play, and I'm going to do it the way I want it."
On the other hand, this is a less common argument. The players are not buying a product; it's a person's vision being shared with them. You can take it as is, or leave it - but complaining about it can be silly at best and annoying at worst. How boring.

I don't think I've ever played any game where I haven't thought this at some point. Never actually said it, though. (And while I've poked around with proof-of-concepts for various mechanics and procedural generation ideas, I've never actually done it, either). Thinking it isn't a bad thing -- creativity begets creativity, and seeing one person's vision can spark an idea for your own.

But that's neither here nor there, because that's not what this thread is about. Cary on.

[MobRules]

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress! The prior posts have already covered a lot so I'll be brief:

Commiserations for your incorrectly set pre-play expectations. Your initial interpretation of "Losing is fun!" was true in the earlier versions. Not just because of differences in sieges but also due to very memorable bugs (at different points in history) such as OP carp, belligerant unicorns, unkillable undead (undead whales walked on land) and hundreds of giant mosquitos. It still is true if you dig to the bottom of the map, but that's not something intuitive a new player will try out - not when there's so much to do closer to the surface.

...Indeed, a major cause of losing in earlier versions was failure to manage the emotions of dwarves - external adversaries were not required for this. You'd spend hours building an efficient military and defensive architecture then find those soldiers having to fight their fellow residents due to an absurd (from our perspective) scenario.

Yup. Dwarf emotions were only stabilized in the last couple of updates. Prior to that tantrum spirals were common: one dwarf gets so upset that they start running around breaking things and punching people at random. Some of the dwarfs that get punched are so angry about it that they start running around breaking things and punching people at random. Pretty soon, you don't have any dwarves working, or any breakable structure in tact -- just lots of dwarves running around punching each other. Then the goblins arrive. Then no one will make coffins or carve tombstones because they are too upset. So then the hauntings begin. Which upset the dwarves further...

If that's the kind of "difficult" you are looking for, try an earlier version -- .34, perhaps. Go back even further if you also want schools of carp that will pull dwaves into the river and devour them whole, or huge swarms of giant misquitos, or undead landwhales.

But indirect contol of the dwarves, and the surprizing things the AI does, will always be a big part of the challenge and !FUN!. If you actively dislike that part of the game (rather than just being 'frustrated' by it -- hey, we all are!) this probably isn't the game for you.

[Robsoie]

Past DF version are still very good games and well worth playing for their difference in comparison to where 42.x is currently.

By example, what's to me the more immersive adventure mode services/quests system and overall NPC reactions in 34.11 with some new deeply buried spoiler stuff that do not exist anymore in 42.x in fortress mode

The 0.28.181.40d version that had simpler military system to setup that didn't had the caverns but had other map features instead (chasms, underground rivers) and had the spoiler deep down working a bit differently

The 2D version that had very different gameplay mechanics as it didn't involved the Z level ( last v0.23.130.23a)

for the wilderness danger, there's still modding as already mentionned in this thread.

[Innocent Dave]

"Losing is fun". As far as i have grasped it over the years, its meaning is more like "Losing can be fun too", rather than "Only losing is fun".

YES!  This is the exact, poorly-articulated thought I've been trying to put into words whilst reading this thread.

When I started playing DF, it wasn't because I thought the game would destroy me - it's because I heard it was a game where you can enjoy both the rise and the fall, where those moments when everything goes wrong and your efforts are wiped away are cherished stories, not the precursor to hitting the quickload key.  To me that said "check it: this game is so richly detailed, so insanely nuanced, that it becomes about generating worlds and stories to immerse yourself in, rather than a progression challenge that only rewards success, and can only view defeat as a negative.

Perhaps as a slogan, it could be interpreted as "man, this game will curbstomp you on an hourly basis", but that's just one interpretation, and I think insufficient reason to demand the changing of an unofficial, widely-loved slogan that I personally find quite inspiring.

To back all this up, have a look about the forum - it's full of wonderful stories that often start with "I've had an idea, and it's almost certainly going to wreck everything... but it's going to be amazing to watch".