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[Zasir]

According to the article the "random people in Berlin" were roguelike developers.  The only name I recognized off-hand was Jeff Lait, the creator of POWDER, roguelike for the DS.

I would suggest that DF is not a RTS game.  It appears to be real-time because it flows so quickly, but play may also be advanced step-by-step a la turn-based games for maximum precision.  And issuing orders while paused, though that is also possible in some true RTS games.

I think we'd all agree that, hopefully, DF is a harbinger of a new genre of games, "fantasy world simulators," to quote Toady's capsule description.

[qwertyuiopas]

There won't be enough quality games like it to me a genre.
Dwarf Fortress will beat %90 of all of them in every single way, and the rest in at least half of their features.

Thus, DF-like will refer to any game that ignores supreme graphics instead going for depth.
A modern FPS with 1990's graphics, but proper physics and limb loss could be considered a DF-like by that standard, since it doesn't impress people with the graphics.
Then you could link DF-like and roguelike as roguelikes predating DF-likes but being a much more limited category.

[penguinofhonor]

This list reminds me of the idiots that were the original surrealists.

They invented surrealism, and decided that they could limit a damn art form to their "club", and they had all these obnoxious rules that you had to follow if you wanted to call your paintings surrealist.

If you want to know how stupid they were, Salvador Dalí (the most famous surrealist) got kicked out of their "club" and therefore didn't count as a surrealist by their standards. Yet he is the most famous example of a surrealist if you ask anyone today.

It appears that history is repeating itself with roguelikes. Video games are an art form, and you can't just categorize them like you categorize rocks or whatever. As far as I'm concerned, DF is a roguelike, an RTS, an RPG, and a thousand other things. Just because it doesn't follow some rules set by some elitist jerks doesn't mean it's not a roguelike.

[McDoomhammer]

This list reminds me of the idiots that were the original surrealists.

They invented surrealism, and decided that they could limit a damn art form to their "club", and they had all these obnoxious rules that you had to follow if you wanted to call your paintings surrealist.

If you want to know how stupid they were, Salvador Dalí (the most famous surrealist) got kicked out of their "club" and therefore didn't count as a surrealist by their standards. Yet he is the most famous example of a surrealist if you ask anyone today.

It appears that history is repeating itself with roguelikes. Video games are an art form, and you can't just categorize them like you categorize rocks or whatever. As far as I'm concerned, DF is a roguelike, an RTS, an RPG, and a thousand other things. Just because it doesn't follow some rules set by some elitist jerks doesn't mean it's not a roguelike.

Indeed.

A recent issue of PC Gamer UK describes Hinterland openly as DF-like in a preview.  Even mentioning "Losing is Fun".

[penguinofhonor]

Yeah, I just had to jump in with my extensive knowledge of miscellaneous facts that I can use to relate to nearly any discussion.

Maybe I should check out this Hinterland thing. I've seen threads about it, but haven't really read much.

[McDoomhammer]

Oooh, do another one.

[Soadreqm]

I find this kind of defining somewhat redundant. Should developers actually strive to make games like Rogue? Rogue is Open Source, you can freely distribute it. Just release the original game again, if it's the pinnacle of game design.

Although definitions don't actively hurt me either. I'm quite cabable of playing games that are not roguelikes, and if some people in Berlin want to make a list of things they feel belong to a roguelike, there's no reason to stop them. I can always ignore them if I want to.

[Neonivek]

I would suggest that DF is not a RTS game.  It appears to be real-time because it flows so quickly, but play may also be advanced step-by-step a la turn-based games for maximum precision.

Real Time Strategy is only an infinate number of steps happening within a certain timespan no matter how advanced it is.

Turn based basically means nothing happens until the turn is done (Don't ask me about ATB... I have no idea how to explain that). RTS means that for the most part the game plays without your input.

In Fortress mode, unless you paused it. The game will go on without you. (though you can set it to a turn based mode by pausing it and pressing . a lot)

[Tormy]

Dwarf Fortress will beat %90 of all of them in every single way, and the rest in at least half of their features.
Thus, DF-like will refer to any game that ignores supreme graphics instead going for depth.

Yeh, and isn't it weird, that 90%+ of the gamers prefer to play with simplistic games, even if we talk about the strategy genre itself?
I'm pretty sure that DF wouldn't be popular even if it would have awesome 3D graphics, it is just way too complex already for most of the gamers.
[Not to mention that games are focusing on multiplayer in the last couple of years, but that's understandable..]

[subject name here]

I guess it's because DF requires you to read an entire Wiki and/or have aspergers to really grasp it properly?

[McDoomhammer]

Well, look who's back.  Okay, show of hands- who, like me, doesn't have aspergers and didn't read the whole wiki?

[Earthquake Damage]

I think he was exaggerating.

[Sukasa]

I haven't read the whole thing and I don't have aspergers.

I've only read three quarters of it.

[subject name here]

I think he was exaggerating.

Exactly, but I won't let that fact stop people from taking it personally. I've seen the problems a lack of empathy can cause.

[vallannion]

I'd like to clarify a few things. I'm active on r.g.r.d (the major roguelike development usenet group, where most of the talk about roguelike development is) and although I didn't go to IRDC, I know a few things about it.

Firstly, just because a game misses a few factors, doesn't mean it is not a roguelike. The definition is based on an earlier one, which you can find at http://www.roguetemple.com/roguelike-definition/.

And I quote: "Roguetemple presents you a small and comprehensive list of several factors for evaluating the roguelikeness of a game; those may help you get an idea of what a roguelike is."

The whole concept of high and low value factors only makes sense if you are only using some of them.

Secondly, I wouldn't call them a bunch of random people. Among those who went there was (as mentioned before) Jeff Lait of POWDER fame, Kornel Kisielewicz and Mario Donick of Lambda Rogue among others. In addition to this 2 crawl stone soup developers turned up and one member of the nethack devteam. This is definitely an important segment of the roguelike community. And once they had finished the conference they turned the definition over to the many members of rgrd(where there are developers of various *bands, ToME, some variants of nethack, ADOM (in the past) and multitudes of developers of small roguelikes) for critiquing.

Thirdly: why do people call DF an RTS? For one thing it isn't really real time. You can choose to advance frame by frame. It's just that if you want to you can run the frames as fast as they can go to speed it up. That doesn't sound like an RTS. An RTS is designed to run at real time speeds, constant speed and to make you act in real time. Once you remove that pressure you no longer have an RTS.

Just my 2 (Zimbabwean) cents worth.