I'll do the rest from where LASD left off, at least to the end of the posted interview. Transcripting away!
Okay, I got nearly halfway through, but now it's bedtime. I put the other guys in (parentheses). Gaps are marked by -...- but I filled in the gaps where possible, marked with [square brackets]. [laughs] generally means the other guys are laughing, though sometimes Tarn joins in as well. Oh, I also put the time in square brackets so it's a little easier to follow long. Someone can continue from here if they like, I won't have a chance to work on it for a couple days.
[7:36]
(So, I imagine that you have a rough idea of how many people are actively playing Dwarf Fortress? Or is it just...since there seems to be a really high drop-off rate, a lot of people downloading it and then playing it for 30 minutes and then realizing this game is impossible without opening up the Dwarf Fortress wiki on the side.)
Yeah...yeah, so there's, I mean the forums seem to have a certain amount of active people, but not all of them are active players. I mean, I guess we can look at what the initial download number...like if I put up a version, and then 'how many downloads were there in the first couple days?' Those are the people that are really following the project, right, and I don't [know how many people that] are following the game, uh and playing it, at a time. Of course there's drop-offs, people added on and so on, there's always some turnover. But that's kind of what we're looking at as far as people that are at least following the game. And each version, you know, it's hard to judge repeats and all that [kind of] thing, but, you know it's in tens of thousands, the number of people that have tried the game. So, if I can't keep more than, [laughs] more than 10%, there's obviously some work to be done but right now I'm just trying to get the basics of the game up and running, and it's nowhere near complete yet.
(So, I imagine you've put a significant amount of time into the game itself just in terms of playing it, as well. Has there been any weird things that have happened to you, that you haven't seen happen to anybody else? You know, something equivalent to the catsplosion that everybody loves so much.)
Well I, I see [laughs] I not-...-the gameplay more than I have, now, but I experience all the bugs you guys don't get to see, right, so just, I mean the most recent one was when I screwed up the organ relations and the brain was plastered on the outside of the skull, and the lungs were like this weird patchy rib-shaped coating on the ribs, cause it just kind of made everything backwards. And when I was testing, I mean I was testing, ok 'how good is a fistfight now?' cause I've totally redone the combat mechanics and so I just wanted to see what was happening. So I had the dwarves fistfighting eachother, and it was not, not, not very survivable, these fistfights, cause they just boxed eachother in the face and would squish their brains, and mess up their lungs and their heart and they'd fall over dead and so on...uh, that was the most recent problem. And you can just go back, any mechanic you can imagine I usually screw it up the first time. [laughs]
[10:05]
(Yeah, so, uh, there are two modes right now, the fortress mode and the adventurer mode, I imagine that right now the fortress mode is getting the most time put into it? Or, are you trying to get it so at one point they'll both be equally enjoyable, or...something.)
Uh, yeah, yeah. So, fortress mode is how the game, I mean the game started with the idea, the very first notion of the game was that you would dig out a little fortress, have some little production, eventually die, and then your adventure would just be kind of this high score mode, where you would go find out little things about your, you know like finding a goblet or an old production record or a diary or something, and as soon as you recover all of the events that happened in that fortress that would kind of the maximum high score. So you would have a potential high score and you can keep running adventurers until you get the maximum high score. That was kind of when it was more of a, a smaller project, that I thought I would finish in two months and then go back to Slaves to Armok.
And so, it became Slaves to Armok instead, so the whole adventurer notion is now holding the entire, like all of our fantasy RPG aspirations are now sitting in adventure mode. So eventually we're going to build that up, and a lot of the items on the Future of the Fortress development list, which is stuff that I'm gonna get to, you know, in the coming...years I guess. But...so say this version comes out sometime this year, I really don't know when it's gonna come out [laughs], but say sometime this year. Uh, that'll, most likely happen, even if I have to delay stuff...then uh, the next, I mean I usually try and do some things on both modes, the dwarf fortress mode is the most popular one and so, it's good to work on that one, work out the kinks in that one, even if adventure mode languishes a little bit. But the things I've got up on the Future of the Fortress page include things like being able to organize your adventuring group when you hire people, to actually have that become an entity recognized by the world. So that you could become a group of bandits or something, and then when you're going and raiding civilizations and so on, it's something that's more meaningful.
But a lot of that needs to be...preceded by army considerations, which is, that's the stuff I'm working on in the version after this one. I'm going to either improve the sieges in dwarf mode, meaning making the armies actually move over the world map, arrive, and then be able to deal with a lot of the ways that people just kind of cheat them right now, with traps and so on. Or, the other option is to have you be able to send out armies from dwarf mode. And as soon as I get that interplay working where the fantasy world, which is now very static, you just have these places, right, but you can't really do much with them. Certainly in dwarf mode you can't do anything and in adventure mode you just kind of wander around and ask people if their parents died [laughs] whatever, and it's uh, not that exciting. That will spring to life, those things will help the world become more coherent. And we can do things like diplomacy, later though, I'm gonna have to put a lot of that off. And once the uh, the world's alive like that, then there'll be more mechanics for your adventurer to interact with, cause right now there's just not enough. You can quest to kill beasts and so on, but nothing's really thinking, nothing's really happening, so I hope to get that up and running, even starting this year when I get the army mechanics up. After this release, the next thing after I stabilize it, there's gonna be a bunch of stabilization releases, but hopefully this year I can get started on the army mechanics, which will be a lot of fun.
[13:50]
(So, you know, the world gen in the game seems rather...coherent and complex, did you put, research into geology or something like that before actually starting to write code for it, or, anything like that?) Yeah. (You did?)
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. Well, I mean research into geology, I mean you don't want to say that I was studying it seriously or something like that, but I basically was just hopping around Wikipedia pages and then going to sources from Wikipedia, like Mindat and stuff, these websites that have stuff on those. I have a few field guides myself but field guides are almost subsumed by the internet now, there's almost no point in having text sources, although I'm sure some people will disagree with me, and be right. But the, it was enough to do things like, uh, I've got the weather simulation, I've got different fronts moving around. This is the most wasted CPU time ever cause, you really don't care. But, I mean, it'll do things like a frontal pass over the mountains, and it'll rain on one side of the mountains and cast a rain shadow over the other side, and that'll effect during the world generation, you know, if there's gonna be a forest there or not. And I just tried to put in as many effects as I could easily, I mean, it even does mountain breezes and sea breezes and so on that you can feel in adventure mode at the right time of day, but it's just, I mean who cares? [laughs] But it's getting there.
You know if I need some mechanics like that later on to do something more meaningful, I always like having a bunch of goop in my fingertips to work with, which is, I mean, part of the reason I'm doing this whole material rewrite, rewriting the bodies and everything, seems overcomplicated, but now things that seemed difficult to do before, like scars and so on, without just setting up some system like, 'oh yeah you've got a scar on your face and it's just a little flag,' now there can be a scar on your face. And it's gonna know which wound it came from, who put it there, how big it is, how long it's been healing, whether or not it's infected, anything about it is just something that kinda actually exists in the world, rather than being an artificial construct put on top of it. And I think of the weather the same way, but that's really not gonna see any use for a long time, until we get to more magical stuff and things like hurricanes and tornados and that kind of stuff, where you can actually see something happening and have it be meaningful.
[16:11]
(So your main goal in Dwarf Fortress is really just to create a living, breathing world...)
That's right. That's right, without it being an MMO, that's right. [laughs] And you know, I mean I like the, I just...yeah, I wanted these kind of ultimate singleplayer game experience in a fantasy world so you're ha-...-play myself, right. That was kind of our thing with my brother and I, we played a ton of computer games. Way too [many], I mean my parents probably could have bought another house or something. [laughs] And uh...not quite another house, but something nice. And the, you know, eventually we were just kind of, I mean we'd always been programming in basic, since we were little little kids. And we eventually started thinking about games sort of in spite of the games we were playing rather than because of them, and just wanted to have something that we could play ourselves without getting tired of it. And it...it takes a lot of sort of dynamic, random things to make a game that you can play yourself. Like if you're gonna make a plot game, you can kind of put it out into the world and have a lot of people really enjoy it, but as far as enjoying it yourself, it would be difficult. If you were following a linear thing, or even if it had branches, you're gonna know what's at the end of every corner. And it's just not gonna be as satisfying. So it's...so we're trying to creat a game that could surprise us. And, it's going alright so far. I think once I get some of those more world interaction events in, which is coming now finally, it'll be really, something we can play ourselves.
Yeah, so that's right...and I guess one more thing to say since I did bring up the MMOs, I mean for us, creating a single player fantasy world...I mean the thing with us there is that you can kind of experience some of these things that are kind of precluded to you if you're playing an MMO, or...like the ability to really change something, or to become the most powerful thing...It's not all about power trips, it's just an easy example...of becoming something at the top, where you control other other things. Right, cause if you're playing with a bunch of people, if they don't...I mean, it's not fun to play as someone's slave, right. So it's something that could be a problem with some of these promises of dynamic worlds in MMOs is that there's always something missing there. I mean I know people have been working a lot on how to get that kind of feel in there, but I don't think, I mean just as a matter of course I'm not sure it's possible. So...I mean single player games have always appealed to me in that way. Um, yeah...so anyway rambling ramble. [laughs]
[19:11]
(But I mean, would you ever see yourself building, you know, a singleplayer game that's very linear, just something that might have the 'best story in the world,' you know, something you could only play once, and at the end of the development cycle you would never enjoy? Or do you always see yourself trying to build these open-ended games that would procedurally generate everything for you?)
Uh, generally that's how I've operated. I mean I've done many, many projects in the past, and I [worked on many that?] of course were scuttled or didn't make it cause I was still learning, [I'm] still learning now, but the other ones are things like just little games, like take a game like chess. I mean it's very complicated but at the same time the rules are simple. So it's something else, that's just a different category, right, it's not about whether or not you're generating a plot, you don't have a plot per se, you just have... (The ruleset.) deep strategies. Yeah. Yeah, and that's a different kind of thing. We messed around with little things like that. But I mean it's not-...-goals, it's not a good use of my time. I mean I like writing stories and things and it's part of the reason I set up the system, or rather we set up this system of rewards for people that donate...can either get a ASCII art reward, which is a story, it's not really ASCII art so much as a few characters that look like they're outta Dwarf Fortress, just like 10 or 11. But the-...-I started out writing some of them as well just to kind of uh, scratch those itches as far as setting up plots and stuff. It's not like they're any good, and it's not like we have time to really think about them deeply, but just to do some stuff like that. Or they can get a crayon art reward, which is just, you know, that's [laughs] that's just...some people like something to have that-...-not an artist, but that's how that is.
But I mean, it's not-...-cause I think there's some things that you can do in that format that you can't do easily with procedural generation. Like, I mean I'm not that interested in symbolism, but if you wanted to do some, it's much easier [laughs] if you're uh, I mean like my symbolism, I'm trying-...-I want so things can be related to a notion like compassion, and I just try and come up with as many mechanics as possible associated to that. And you can set up so many links, but it's not gonna be something that resonates with people as much as a scripted plot. I mean we're basically trying to capture the worst fantasy plots. I mean a plot where you're like 'Oh, did they come up with that in 10 minutes' and you can kind of systemetize it yourself, see all their thoughts, the things that they came up with, and turn that into a mechanic in a game. Those are the plots that we'll be able to capture. Yeah.
[22:10]
(So I mean...you know, you talked about the ASCII art and whatnot, and the community seems to be really strong behind the game...would you have gotten this far without the community?)
Oh no. I mean I would be out of money, [laughs] and I'd be working again. No, I mean it's completely donations supported project and I do it full time now, for the past, what, year, year or so...a little more than a year, year and a half. I've been working on Dwarf Fortress full time. And that's 100% community support for the game. And, yeah...it's great. They've been really good! [laughs] Especially considering how slow the releases have been lately. You know, they're sticking with it. So, no it's really cool.
(So I mean how well did you parents take that? Did you just go up and tell them 'Ok I'm not gonna have fixed income anymore, I'm just gonna go work on my video games...by myself at home.')
Yeah, I mean, they joke around, he was always, you know, kinda interested in practical skills cause he wanted his children to survive and stuff, and so he taught us computers from a very early age. You know, like I was saying, my first memories are like, sitting on my dad's lap doing...for loops and stuff, I mean I just don't remember anything else. [laughs] And uh, there are some pictures of that, too, it's like, oh man, I didn't really know what was going on! But I knew what I was typing, or knew to type things. It was really weird. But-...-So he said he did that, he said he taught us, this is my brother and I both, uh, let us play computer games and taught us how to program little computer games and stuff because he saw, at that time, it was the early 80s, that computers were really gonna be a huge part of the future, right, so he wanted to make sure we knew everything about them and weren't sort of technophobes or anything like that. So, we did get into that deeply, but too deeply really, and became more interested in the games than anything else. I remember these times when I was like 13 years old he'd give me a little kit to build an A.M. radio or whatever, and I just wouldn't even open it. [laughs] It was rude, what I did, I think. [laughs] I just didn't care, didn't care at all about that kind of thing, so it was total failure. But I mean his main thing is that he wanted us to be happy and he sees that we're happy now doing what we're doing, so he's completely cool with that.
I mean they were surprised, because I had actually managed to land a professor job in mathematics, and that had taken, you know if you count the undergrad and grad school, that had taken 9 years of study and preperation. And to finally send out 60 job applications, get one that comes back, 'Yeah, we'll give you a job' or whatever...which is not uncommon, right, it's really hard to kinda, move up each level. And then when I got there I was just miserable. I was totally unhappy doing that. I was already releasing Dwarf Fortress at that time so my first summer there I just went into the chair I was 'Ah, I...I, you know I'm gonna have to leave.' And they were nice about enough to let me stick around for another year teaching. Teaching! No research at all, just teaching 3 classes. And that got me enough money so that I [laughs] I could even get started on this crazy project. And now I'm basically treading water, which is fine with me. I mean it's not a perfect situation but it's not bad either. So, it's good.
[25:32]
(So what's your daily life like, developing Dwarf Fortress? Do you wake up at noon, then just end up falling asleep at 4 a.m. in front of the computer? Just to wake up and do the same thing again?)
[laughs] Nah, it's not quite like that. Uh-...-foil over my window to keep the light out. But, my hours became more reasonable after this last little vacation I was on. Now I get up at 11 a.m. and go to bed at...3 a.m. So, it's almost normal. It used to be 3 p.m. to 7 a.m. and that was just weird. But now, no, I get up, and basically the first thing I have to do is check my email to make sure that there's no uh...conflagration on the forums, or whatever, make sure everything's ok. [laughs] And so on, and sometimes that takes a couple hours, you know, just going through that stuff, or writing a really long forum reply will in itself take an hour, when I'm keeping people up to date and answering their questions. And then, I'll program generally for, what, I don't know what I'd have left by then, like 3 hours or so. And then my brother calls me from his job, where he's still working, and we'll talk for about a half an hour about whatever I've been doing, and thinking about other things, other projects, all that kind of thing. And then, that's a half hour when he's on his break, and then I'll start working again for another 5 or 6 hours until, uh, 9 o'clock or so. And then we usually convene and talk about things again.
Sometimes just watch a show on t.v. or something, like I was saying on my boards, the last [show we watched was called] "I was bitten." It's only had a couple episodes and it's just about people that got these horrible snake bites, right, and spider bites and stuff. But it inspired-...-but it was just horribly graphic-...-compartment syndrome and needing a fasciotomy, which basically means cutting open a swollen limb to relieve the pressure and so on, and now that's in Dwarf Fortress. You can get compartment syndrome, and if you have wounds on that part it'll relieve the pressure, otherwise it'll cut off the blood flow and constrict the blood supply and so on.
And we just keep adding things that we've seen and so on, so we have this kind of cool-down time for a couple hours, where we just...we'll either be planning our project seriously or not, during that time. And then I've got another couple hours at the uh...I'm not gonna make sure this adds up to 16, [laughs] and then there's a nother couple hours after that where I finish up what I was working on for the day, or, a lot of times I'll have some huge number of emails to respond to, or suggestion forum stuff to read. So, I mean sometimes I program as little as 6 or 7 hours a day, and sometimes it's basically, my brother will be doing something else so I'll just be working all day.
And uh...it's...something in there, I don't really have any...I mean I moved around a lot, and I have no friends in this town, I don't know anybody here, and I don't do anything. It's a little backwards. You know this is the town...I've lived in a bunch of places. I've lived in New Hampshire, Texas, California, Washington; this is the only town in America where I have been yelled at on the street this many times. I've been yelled at on the street I think 16 times. People just...I mean I didn't think Silverdale, Washington, where I live, would be quite so...you know, people hanging out of their cars yelling at you. [laughs] I mean, it's just, I mean I-...-rural, farming community in the Midwest or something, or in the South or something, that would be a typical kind of Northern view, or Northwestern view. But it's really here. It all comes back to here. [laughs] Silverdale, Washington...it's just...mind-boggling how much crap people yell. 'Hey stupid...walking?' And when you're trying to [cross the street] people yell out 'run, Forrest, run!'-...-the cars. And I don't have a car. It's just, I mean...I don't know, I don't know. But uh...I've totally forgotten what I was talking about. [laughs]
(That's ok. Well I think uh, we're just gonna take a quick break, and we'll be back in a moment.) [DF music interlude]
[30:33]
(And we're back. Uh, let's see, it's time to ask more random questions about Dwarf Fortress and other things. Um, the music. The music...there's a soothing guitar thing that you can listen to for hours and hours on end. How'd you get a hold of that? Do you know the guy who composed it, or...)
Ah, oh that was me. I play. Uh, a little- yeah. A little bit. I've been playing since, I guess it was October 2003... It was just a kind of a strange thing. My dad has a guitar. I never really learned to do anything with it, but it was always kind of there. And then when I was at a math conference in France, it was the only time I've ever been over there, people were talking about...a couple people there were talking about flamenco guitar. And for some reason I got this bug up my butt and started looking it up on the internet, and I was like 'alright, I'll go buy a guitar' and I did. And so I-...-youtube videos, and so I've never accompanied a dancer or singer, so I wouldn't say I actually do anything like flamenco, but you know, I learned the different rhythm schemes and some of the different ways of playing it, and then I kind of forgot all of that, or stopped doing it. I don't play that many of those songs anymore, I just kind of use the things I learn and just sit there and play. And that was one of the things I came up with. And I've written some other things that are kind of halfway done.
Cause I'd like to have a few more songs, cause I mean as much as some people like it, it does, I mean...people play the game for you know, 80, 100 hours or whatever, and they want something else. [laughs] (Yeah.) It would be good to have some more, although it does increase the download size, and you only have so much bandwidth. But I would like to include some more music. But yeah...it was a lot of fun writing that. I mean I've always kind of been interested in that, in music in general. Ever since I was in elementary school band or whatever. I played the flute back then. And then I...that was from 4th to 8th grade I guess, and then there was something else in there...I started playing the piano when I was around 20. But I'm pretty much strictly on the guitar, now. But I have a bunch of instruments around and so on that I've messed around with. Yeah, and I mean people have offered to write better music for the game and stuff, but it's just one of those things I like to do myself.
[33:09]
(So are you interested in continuing this one-man...or two-man rather, this two-man project, just on for eternity, since...I imagine there must be somebody out there with supposed technical experience that would be willing to help you on things...)
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, but...there are. But also, yeah, we're sticking with just the two of us. I mean, we've been approached by people willing to do, you know, a 3D graphical front end for Dwarf Fortress while you continue working on the back end and so on, that's come up a bunch of times. And it's just not something we're interested in, for a variety of reasons. I mean I don't really want to sell...a computer game, which is what some of that would come down to. I really like the model we're currently working with, cause anyone can play the game. And I don't have to worry about going out of business or whatever. [laughs] Unless people just flat-out don't like the game, then we'll disappear, and that's fine, that's how it should be, I think. But...and there's just, I don't want to get entangled with people, and you know eventually people would...may or may not want money, and people will have rights to various things, and then you have to...Just even if all that's fine, you still have to worry about, well, if I'm working with someone else, who's working on the graphics and so on, I mean that's gonna restrain what I can do (Right, right.) with my little text game, cause they would have to come up with assets for that and so on. And it's just...I like how it's going now cause I can kind of move at...I mean it's going really slow now, but comparitively it's like light speed. Just adding new crap, all the time, that I don't have to worry about displaying all that well.
I mean I'm doing bad for text, of course, sometimes. [laughs] But that-...-it's not... When we had that discussion before about the MMOs and so on, I mean a lot of it just comes down to me just not really wanting to work with people. Uh, I don't know.-...-as well. As much as it might be a surprise to some people, being a mathematician is a very social profession. You hear about people like researching, like 'trapped in his closet for seven years, he came up with a proof for this theorem...' That's very [rare. Mathematicians] just talk to eachother all the time, go to conferences all the time. You have to know what's going on and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people working. And only one person gets to publish the results, so it's...I mean, you can publish them jointly or whatever, and that's when people are talking to eachother and so on. So it wasn't for me. I'd rather stay in my little closet and work on my video games and stuff.
(So you have people now, is that it?) [laughs]
No, no, -...-guess I'm yammering on here, but it's just...I don't really have a lot of people that I know, and I don't really want to work with people on my projects and stuff. I really prefer to work on the projects. I mean my brother and I manage to work on this just cause we essentially share the same vision exactly, that's just how it worked out, so we're able to work on this. I mean it's essentially like talking to yourself or something. Just kind of hashing things out.
[36:20]
(So we always say 'Tarn Adams, creator of Dwarf Fortress.') That's right. [laughs] (But then, you know, you do have a lot of other games on your site. Do you still have a soft spot for those, like Liberal Crime Squad, which is my favorite?)
[laughs] Yeah, yeah, I mean Liberal Crime Squad was originally...the first version was just this two-week joke project. It was like, I had played Oubliette or however you say it, that's a game from 1985. It was kind of like one of those, I don't know if people have played D&D and Telengard and those old games from 1985 or -ish, around that time. Where you'd have this really limited 3 by 3 view and walk around and then you suddenly walk into the next room, and it's like 'You find a level 27 dragon' and it's like 'It kills you.' And you're like, 'Okay...' And that's...I had played one of those games recently, I played Oubliette, which had a kind of nice thing to it where you had a multiple party... I mean you had a bunch of people but you could bring 'em in and out of your group and so on. I guess there are other games like that, like I dunno, Bard's Tale or something. And I [had been watching] just the news and keeping up to date and so on, and listening to the scary radio and stuff like that, and seeing the humor in that. And, yeah, then there's the the whole SLA and Patty Hearst and all that, right. [laughs] There was this...if you read that, if you read the complete story of that group, it's kind-...-and uh-...-I worked with it a bit more. I don't remember if there were three versions total or whatever, but eventually it ended up being a couple months total in the game. And now a group of people in the forums has picked it up, and they've been working a lot on it, they've done more work on it than I have, so. I mean starting from the base of what I set up it's really their own thing now. It's a lot different, I think, than what I created. So I don't even know which one you play. Cause they're different things. I can't...and I haven't played it that much so I can't really speak to theirs.
(So you seem to have a pretty dedicated fanbase out there. Would you ever want to organize some sort of Bay 12 con, similar to QuakeCon or BlizzCon or whatnot, just to see all these people?)
We had one! We had one last year. (Oh did you?) Yeah we had a get together. I mean it was at the Irish restraunt in Seattle, there were uh...there were 12 people there or something. [laughs] Twenty-something-...-another one, on uh...we don't know, we haven't quite settled on it. It's May 9th, I'm pretty sure. There's a thread on our forums. It might change a little bit, but it's May 9th right now. Probably in Seattle, it's not quite settled. And uh...if you're interested, it's in the general discussion, Dwarf Fortress general discussion, there's a stickied thread sitting there where people are talking about that, and you're welcome to come by. Make sure you post there so we know who's...vaguely the number of people coming. But it seems like it'll be about the same size as last time. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. We had a Dwarf Fortress game going on a laptop and people were just messing around and everyone was in good spirits. It was a good time.
[39:48]
Edit: Added another chunk. I'll post the whole thing together when finished.
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