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[cochramd]

Nah, it's probably not kids. My money's on smug millennial hipsters.

So, literally, kids.

[90908]

Nah, it's probably not kids. My money's on smug millennial hipsters.

So, literally, kids.

I, as a wildly hormonal 14 year with self esteem issues, can say that we disowned those guys years ago.

[Urlance Woolsbane]

A few more things:

In my experience, doomsayers in fandom tend to be a bit old-guard. They're familiar enough with past travails to fear their reoccurrence. The same holds true for Dwarf Fortress,  I think. FPS problems don't usually manifest right off the bat. You have to play, and be able to play, a fair while for them to crop up.

Surely someone addicted (for want of a better word) to the mechanical merits of modern gaming wouldn't be terribly keen on DF in the first place?

Finally, dismissing complaints about FPS as superficial is really rather unfair. Unlike graphics, no amount of imagination will make Dwarf Fortress run faster. Just because one is satisfied with DF's performance doesn't invalidate the complaints of others (complaints which, I hasten to point out, I don't currently share.)

[quekwoambojish]

A few more things:

In my experience, doomsayers in fandom tend to be a bit old-guard. They're familiar enough with past travails to fear their reoccurrence. The same holds true for Dwarf Fortress,  I think. FPS problems don't usually manifest right off the bat. You have to play, and be able to play, a fair while for them to crop up.

Surely someone addicted (for want of a better word) to the mechanical merits of modern gaming wouldn't be terribly keen on DF in the first place?

Finally, dismissing complaints about FPS as superficial is really rather unfair. Unlike graphics, no amount of imagination will make Dwarf Fortress run faster. Just because one is satisfied with DF's performance doesn't invalidate the complaints of others (complaint which, I hasten to point out, I don't currently share.)

I don't believe FPS issues are superficial. I actually really dislike how sometimes my computer can grind to well below 10 FPS at times when I approach immensely populated places in adventure mode, or when I decided to try making a huge waterfall in a 10 year old fortress.

Most FPS issues can either be mitigated by getting a better PC for DF's computational needs, or by playing conservatively with fluid/item/worldgen management and pathing. On my laptop I won't get near rivers, on my desktop I'll build over rivers all decade...

It's the same as playing games like Fallout 4 on my laptop vs desktop...Just because my laptop doesn't run it nicely doesn't mean the game is bad, it means I need a better PC or in the other case just because I spawn 1000's of highly rendered enemies on my desktop, doesn't mean my desktop has to run perfectly either.

I do agree though that if core elements of gameplay make it unplayable due to fps even on good systems, then it's a problem, but those issues we've got to expect to get worked out from a constant on progress title

[DG]

Dwarf Fortress is an ambitious game so it's easy to become impatient for what it aims to be once you've become familiar with what it currently is. What it ultimately aims to be has never been done before so it also lends itself to the argument that it can't actually be done, never mind by two brothers.

I think that predictions of doom, and the related calls to scale back on additions to concentrate on polishing what is already there, stem mainly from impatience and pessimism. But I'm only guessing, because I haven't made predictions of doom and I don't think DF should be less ambitious, so I can't speak directly for people who do.

[Putnam]

It's probably just one person or a small group of people raiding the forums in an attempt to get a rise out of us. In all honesty, Toady dying is a much greater threat looming over us than anything they've mentioned. I made a graph of percentile DF completeness vs years Toady has been working on DF, put logarithmic and power trend lines on it (because it sure as hell didn't look linear), grabbed the trend line equations, punched them into Wolfram Alpha and solved for percentile DF completeness=100. The power trend line predicted that DF will be complete in late 2085, while the logarithmic trend line predicted it would be complete in 2860. However, I suspect that over the next 3-5 years Toady is going to drop some big stuff on us like the myth generator he's been talking about recently and that will speed up progress so that we see DF completed in 10-20 years down the road.

Linear doesn't seem too bad, and that predicts 2044.

[cochramd]

Linear doesn't seem too bad, and that predicts 2044.

It took Toady 3 years to reach v21, and now nearly a decade after v21 we have v42. Linear equation this ain't.

[Untrustedlife]

Linear doesn't seem too bad, and that predicts 2044.

It took Toady 3 years to reach v21, and now nearly a decade after v21 we have v42. Linear equation this ain't.

.21 was the first release in general so we treat it as 0 and toady had been working on the concept since his childhood they even refer to dragslay  as the first version sometimes . It was also before they had a version system that used percentages. In general df has been pretty linearly developed since the first release each year going up about 3% and development is getting faster and faster.Sso another 20 years will likely mean version 1. The z level release and the world activation releases took 2 years and went up about 6% each.

[Untrustedlife]

To the pessimists out there, let toady develop at the pace he wants I would rather it takes awhile then be  low quality the doomsayers have the potential to lower the quality by worrying tarn which is why they need to be mitigated. People like this have ruined other games by destroying the developers motivation.Toady is aware his project is ambitious , and he has said he has the motivation to finish it. But the community has to be a community of motivators not demotivaters.


Toady if you are reading this I implore you to develop at your own pace your game is awesome don't let these people ruin it by making you develop "faster".I don't care if it takes even 30 years I will keep supporting you no matter what.

[cochramd]

.21 was the first release in general so we treat it as 0 and toady had been working on the concept since his childhood they even refer to dragslay  as the first version sometimes . It was also before they had a version system that used percentages. In general df has been pretty linearly developed since the first release each year going up about 3% and development is getting faster and faster.Sso another 20 years will likely mean version 1. The z level release and the world activation releases took 2 years and went up about 6% each.

Fair enough. When I changed the data so that v21 was the zero point, a linear trendline (which predicted v100 being released in the late summer of 2042) became the best fit. I'm still sticking with my 10-20 years prediction, though, for the following reasons:

• I suspect that once all the "foundation" pieces are laid down, (which I would guestimate to be somewhere around v60 and v75, but perhaps even as early as v50) all further updates will be small and quick relative to their percentile value, meaning that progress will accelerate as we get to the end.
• The last update introduced music, dance, poetry, knowledge and religion in earnest, making it quite an important chunk of foundation.
• The mythology generator is also one of these very important foundation pieces (and probably a very big one), and since Toady's been talking about it recently I'd wager it'll show up in the next update.

I'm talking about things I know nothing about, though, so feel free to correct me if you know me to be wrong. And besides, none of this detracts from my original point, which is that Toady dying is legitimately the biggest threat to the future of Dwarf Fortress that looms over us.

[quekwoambojish]

Toady dying is legitimately the biggest threat to the future of Dwarf Fortress that looms over us.

Toady's mortality mustn't be the end of his legacy. With modern sciences such as cybernetics, cloning, and online dating apps, we have the technology to mitigate our losses from his untimely end.

[cochramd]

Toady dying is legitimately the biggest threat to the future of Dwarf Fortress that looms over us.

Toady's mortality mustn't be the end of his legacy. With modern sciences such as cybernetics, cloning, and online dating apps, we have the technology to mitigate our losses from his untimely end.

Toady hasn't got time to date, and even if he did there's guarantee that his child (or even his clone for that matter) would grow up to have the same genius and spark that makes Toady as good as he is. Furthermore, right now cybernetics isn't good for much more than prosthetic limbs, and that's not the sort of injury that would stop Toady anyways. Let's face it, if Toady got hit by a bus today it would be game over for Dwarf Fortress.

[Arbinire]

eh, honestly these posts are nothing new.  I've been playing for about 7 years now and actively posting for 6 and they always crop up and it's the same 3 arguments everytime.  FPS, Graphics, and UI.  I don't understand the why though, if they're shilling for other games, it's not like there's anything really in competition with DF.  I think more than likely it's, and I really hate saying this cause it's so often overused, an issue with entitlement.  People want what they want and they want it now, and when they can't have what they want right now, they tend to create justifications for why it should be otherwise the sky will fall.  I blame the microwave.

[RedWick]

eh, honestly these posts are nothing new.  I've been playing for about 7 years now and actively posting for 6 and they always crop up and it's the same 3 arguments everytime.  FPS, Graphics, and UI.  I don't understand the why though, if they're shilling for other games, it's not like there's anything really in competition with DF.  I think more than likely it's, and I really hate saying this cause it's so often overused, an issue with entitlement.  People want what they want and they want it now, and when they can't have what they want right now, they tend to create justifications for why it should be otherwise the sky will fall.  I blame the microwave.

I'm a 10 year veteran of DF and I approve these comments.  Toady is happily making the sort of game he loves making.  He's engaged with the community and manages to stay sane.  And despite any nay-saying about the bad UI or graphics or feature creep or whatever, his formula is working.  He's somehow making a living by providing DF for free, which honestly is the real magic here. 

[cochramd]

FPS, Graphics, and UI.

Of these 3 things, I only consider FPS to be something I have an ax to grind about, and I don't consider it to be Toady's fault. It's just the reality of playing DF on a 6 year old computer. I remember struggling with the interface when I was a beginner, but I'm no longer a beginner. And graphics....pah! You may as well point out that beef is made from cows to a hamburger aficionado as you would point the graphics of DF to a DF player!

Really, if I were to gripe to Toady about anything that is in fact his fault, it would be that he hasn't made Modest Mod a part of vanilla DF and hasn't made farming more of a challenge by fiddling with the growth times of crops. While the fact that I can just download Modest Mod and simple farming mods and mod the milk and wool myself prevents me from ever getting really angry about this, the fact that these changes can be achieved with simple raw editing (meaning that it would be almost no work at all for Toady to make them part of DF) makes me....I don't know how to describe it....idealistically angry about it?