Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Zantan]

As I understand it, Toady wants to keep DF closed source, but decided recently to offer up some of its source for the development of the 40dx series by the DF community.  This always struck me as a good idea, and I would like to know if Toady has any intention of doing something similar again?

Also, since most current mods will be incompatible with the new version of DF, how long will it probably take for them to be updated?  There are some wonderful new features which are going to be in the new version, but I'm not sure how I'll feel about playing without mods like Dwarf Therapist which deal with some of the more tedious parts of the game.

[lastofthelight]

Considering Toady's income relies on him  being the God of Dwarf Fortress, I find it unlikely that too much will be outsourced.

[smjjames]

The modders are pretty much on top of any changes in DF. The graphical ones will probably be ok, although depending on how Toady fixes the cat mouth bug, the modders will have to take care of that, plus the new medical profession will have to be dealt with.

At least the mods which are updated often should be compatible with the new version within a week. I think.

[Glint]

Toady probaly will but to a certain excent, enough to keep closed enough anyways

[Bricks]

Dwarf Therapist is a utility, not a mod.  And you'd have to ask whoever is working on it how long it will take them, and even then it's an estimate.

Odds are the source code will never be released for others to contribute to; however, as the game is improved, the ability to mod the game will increase.  Toady will probably at least look at and consider some of the mods; however, there are probably ownership rights issues if Toady uses others' work to finish the game and then sells it.

[smjjames]

I'm kind of wondering more about Dwarf Manager myself.

[Taritus]

Well, thing is, it's not so much that he 'released' the source for the game to anyone.  Toady simply released another small game's source that happened to use the same graphics code as DF does.  Originally Baughn was supplying graphical speed-ups by way of a modified .dll that the game would use instead of what was already on your computer.  Eventually after some talks with Toady, Baughn now sends the updates to him and Toady patches them in.

[Zantan]

The ownership rights thing could get hairy, but something we could always sign away.  After all, this game is expected to be in alpha for an extremely long time, and I don't think anyone is doing modding or utility designing with the hope or expectation of monetary reward.

Here is one of the reasons I made this post:

At the beginning of the summer I decided to start teaching myself perl (later changed my mind to python), and partially inspired by DF, I decided to try to make a mythology generator, which would ideally create an interesting mythology with several actors, important relationships, legendary events and locations, etc.  If it went well, I was considering making a basic game where you could control a diety, and (indirectly), its followers.

I'm not very clear on exactly how Toady has set up the myth generation in DF, but I was thinking that if the DF community asked him what kind of thematic and practical attributes and constraints he wanted on it, the DF community could maybe make a mythgen for DF.  If the result was approved by Toady, it could be incorporated in a later release.  It would also probably be good because at the moment, the religion system isn't very developed, so it would be fairly east to add on right now.  Then, Toady would be able to fairly easily add religious events into engravings and decorations, mythic locations, and other features based on the world's myth system.

It's something that would probably work well with crowdsourcing, because while it would require coding, the majority of the work would be coming up with a complex flowchart of potential events, and as many different ways to describe events as possible (to make every event as unique as possible).  It would also be a way to tap into the enthusiasm of DF fans who don't have much programming/modding experience.

What does everyone think of this?  And what is the appropriate way to approach Toady about this?

[Bricks]

You should email him, in that case.  Probably with a specific case, like you stated.  Though it's a radical departure from changing how the graphics are handled.

I think the best generation for myths, however, is to actually simulate them and make them part of that world's history.

[Zantan]

At his address, or through his account on the forums?

And I would imagine that this would be integrated into the history generation, at least for events which are not pre-history.  It would just be much easier for others to build a myth generator and add it to the history generator, than say for us to remake the way civs interact, since religion is at the moment much less important to history generation than civ interaction.

[Lord Nightmare]

You should email him, in that case.  Probably with a specific case, like you stated.  Though it's a radical departure from changing how the graphics are handled.

I think the best generation for myths, however, is to actually simulate them and make them part of that world's history.

"and ardactus said to the dragon: 'you shall pay for eating the villagers', but the dragon was quick, and soon ardactus had one limb left, his right arm. So ardactus took his severed left leg, and threw it at the dragon. and it smote him between the eyes, the femur puncturing his brain. and the dragon fell down dead with a great crash. Thus one-limbed ardactus was made mayor of the town by the four surviving inhabitants, and lived out the remainder of his days as a great hero."

LN

[3]

"and ardactus said to the dragon: 'you shall pay for eating the villagers', but the dragon was quick, and soon ardactus had one limb left, his right arm. So ardactus took his severed left leg, and threw it at the dragon. and it smote him between the eyes, the femur puncturing his brain. and the dragon fell down dead with a great crash. Thus one-limbed ardactus was made mayor of the town by the four surviving inhabitants, and lived out the remainder of his days falling over and passing out whenever a new adventurer was generated out of the particles floating in the air"

fixed

[Kruniac]

Open source isn't really needed per se. Look at what the community did with Jagged Alliance 2 - they hacked that game's code to peices, and really improved it.

[madrain]

I would imagine that some of his reluctance also comes from fairweather coders who would quickly get bored and disappear, leaving him to try to finish a half-assed job, redo the entire thing himself, or throw it out entirely.  Plus there's the idea of creative control.  If he (and Threetoes) are the only ones deciding what each race looks and acts like in vanilla DF, he doesn't have to fight anyone who wants to remove elven cannibalism, make humans able to turn supersaiyajin, or re-enact the plot of Twilight using dwarves and foul blendecs.

[eerr]

Toady doesn't want to become dependents on plugins for the interface.

If open-sourced, people could easily rip his code, then release their own version of dwarf fort.
Maybe some prominent company in japan or something.