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[Diamond]

There is nothing stagnant about DF, it's a young and hip, rigorously developed game. The best thing is that because of it's design it will never have "outdated" graphics or gameplay, so we can expect it to continue being developed for dozens of years. Like UnReal World, that is still being actively worked on after 20 years of existence.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

I was referring to "so how exactly is DF not doomed" or some other stupid thread, found in this board or another. Everyone (well just some people) is whining about how this game is doomed for failure unless:

a. multithreading
b. 64bit
c. open source
d. insert major change to the gameplay here
e. ditto, but for game mechanics

If you don't think it'll last, go off for ten years. Just leave us alone. And I will laugh my posterior off at you when I am playing DF v1.00.00.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I was referring to "so how exactly is DF not doomed" or some other stupid thread, found in this board or another. Everyone (well just some people) is whining about how this game is doomed for failure unless:

a. multithreading
b. 64bit
c. open source
d. insert major change to the gameplay here
e. ditto, but for game mechanics

If you don't think it'll last, go off for ten years. Just leave us alone. And I will laugh my posterior off at you when I am playing DF v1.00.00.

DF would have been doomed it it were a game relying on a traditional business model, that is on attracting new players rather than keeping existing loyal ones happy. As it stands it is "doomed" to remain in its personal niche, which I think is just fine for everyone currently involved.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

...which one could consider stagnant. However, they meant stagnant as in "game's not going anywhere", not "playerbase isn't growing".

Edit: I'm agreeing with you ^ just btw

[Deon]

Are any groups currently working on an open-source fortress-mode game? I know there have been some attempts in the past that didn't get very far or failed to build an active community.

As far as I know, no. No other developer has achieved even an approximate success of the ability of DF to generate interesting fortress mode gameplay situations and stories.

There are other games which are empty from the "procedural" point of view, but have a lot to offer in terms of gameplay still. Rimworld, Gnomoria etc. However they seem very shallow for long term DF players like me. There's no other game I can come back to after many years besides Dwarf Fortress and some undying classiscs.

To each his own.

[Wilm0chimp]

There is the simple problem of how do you come up with ~10 years of solid coding based development, without putting 10 years of work in? Thats why things like goblin camp are ultimately pointless - you can whip up a cheap fort building knock off quite easily, but you can never simulate the complexity of the all the different systems that make dwarf fortress what it is. Not without spending a huge amount of time coding it all.

[Bumber]

There is the simple problem of how do you come up with ~10 years of solid coding based development, without putting 10 years of work in? Thats why things like goblin camp are ultimately pointless - you can whip up a cheap fort building knock off quite easily, but you can never simulate the complexity of the all the different systems that make dwarf fortress what it is. Not without spending a huge amount of time coding it all.

Add more manpower. DF only has a single coder, who also does a number of other tasks (e.g., forum admin, reading every single suggestion.)

[Sean Mirrsen]

Yeah, with a team of some 10 people and starting with a premade engine and some talented pixel artists to outsource graphics to, you could make something like DF in a year or two. Most of DF is simple systems, but layered in such hellishly creative ways that they create the massive emergent world and game that DF is. With DF itself already existing as something to aim for and look to for guidance, a well-meaning and spirited spinoff could entirely be made, if someone were willing to pour money into it.

That there is the clincher, really. Such a project will have to cost money - a decent amount thereof. And given how niche the result would end up being, I doubt anyone would actually do it, even with Kickstarter.

[Robsoie]

The main difficulty for developping an open source world sim+site managerial+survival adventure game is to keep people interested in actually coding it, open source development has always this problem as it's often requiring "retail quality" to build any project but without the financial rewards for the guys working on such project.
Some open source project like Blender or Libre Office had a vast success, because their coders can make a living out of it, but it's more exception than the norm.

Do you really think Toady would have been motivated to make DF his life work if there were not a few very generous people donating him enough so he can make a living out of it ?

That's probably why you see several commercial clones that had some kind of success and no open source clone (out of the already mentionned goblin camp), and even goblin camp only focused on being a site management game, and unfortunately it met the fate of many open source project, it was abandonned (probably related to the lack of financial reward for their developers).

[Willfor]

Also, it could only really come from people who are truly passionate about the project, and have a very specific kind of personality that would drive them towards continuing development as it's own reward. This type of passion often comes from a certain kind of auteur/vision mentality. Things have to be done X kind of way for them. An open source project featuring multiple auteurs is going to collapse in on itself before it gets very far unless the people involved are very used to working with each other, or extremely willing to compromise. Politics is any set of people above the count of 1 with an opinion, and the politics an open source DF clone would involve would quickly bring about its own demise.

Remember, Goblin Camp started because its developer looked at DF, disagreed with its direction, and tried to fulfill a different vision. That already one "I cannot accept what you're doing, and so I'm going to do it differently," before the project had already started. I mean, that's how art often starts, but it's also terrible project management.

So it's not that DF is doomed, it's that the chances of anything like DF succeeding are already stacked so high in the "negative" that so far DF is the only one that's managed to survive infancy so far. And it's because Toady hasn't had to worry about conflicting with anyone else's vision, at least partially.

[KillzEmAllGod]

Toady is pretty much a pioneer, sure there's bugs, lack of multi-threading and not yet 64 bit. There's hardly any other game without its own share of problems, hardly a single AAA title has had perfect performance on release and the content they get after release is abysmal compared to what DF keeps getting. There has been a lot of attempts at mimicking DF, Gnomoria and Rimworld might have been able survive compared to others like towns and of course spacebase df9.

The idea of adding more people to develop Toady's dream would only slow it down and even destroy it because he would have to teach people about the code. DFhack pretty much has a hard time already with them having to map the memory each time there's an update and that can be a nightmare depending on the size of release and the scale of changes.

So far Toady seems to have enough money to keep going and the community keeps growing, as do the features of DFhack which might be due to loyalty to the game and how awesome it keeps getting. No other game will come close to what DF has achieved in terms of pioneering that has been done by Toady and his brother.

[TaigaR]

Why didn't Toady still add Therapist-like native tool? Didn't optimise the game by removing CPU-hungry things, like some utilities for dfhack do? Performance is probably the biggest issue. Simplify many background processes, that don't need to be precise...

[Bumber]

Why didn't Toady still add Therapist-like native tool? Didn't optimise the game by removing CPU-hungry things, like some utilities for dfhack do? Performance is probably the biggest issue. Simplify many background processes, that don't need to be precise...

What's with the past tense? DF is still in Alpha development.

[TaigaR]

Past tense is because all the utilities proven to be quite useful are out here for a while.
So Toady should see people need them. LNP, Masterwork, stuff...

But it is clear that Tarn is afraid of forks. He cares of his dogma and not much of game's prosper.
Cataclysm got a Lot Better after forking, and community grew up.

[Sean Mirrsen]

But it is clear that Tarn is afraid of forks. He cares of his dogma and not much of game's prosper.
Cataclysm got a Lot Better after forking, and community grew up.

Cataclysm is also about as well-directed as a runaway Roomba, still doesn't have even the barest basics of what Dwarf Fortress has in terms of depth (Combat system? Nope. Inventory system? Nope. Weather? Nope. Etc, etc.) despite all of them being at the very least wanted by the players, and despite the nearly dozen of simultaneously active developers it still doesn't manage the same development pace as DF does.

And none of those developers depend on the game as their only source of income, either.

In my opinion, Tarn already benefits from this "forking" you mention. He already has other people create these tools that other people use - DFHack, Therapist, etc. You are asking that he take the time out of doing things with the game that he actually enjoys, and spend it on doing things other people are already doing.

I can't see a single good reason for us to risk Tarn losing his focus on the game he likes to make, thus sacrificing development speed and potentially the game's future, just for the dubious benefit of sparing you the inconvenience of installing some 3rd-party programs and mods. Normally I'd be the first one to say that "devs should not leave it to the modders to correct their mistakes", but in this case even I can see that the alternative to the status quo would be worse for everyone involved.