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[Maw]

I hate advertising in video games.  I could never support that.   Although...

On the wall is an image of a dwarf and a cola.  The dwarf is drinking the cola.  The cola is refreshing.

Then you use adventure mode to figure out what cola it's advertising.

Oddly enough, I think I could live with this level of ingame advertising.  Tasteful, not over the top, and can be an in-joke to those in the know.

[salttotart]

On the wall is an image of a dwarf and a cola.  The dwarf is drinking the cola.  The cola is refreshing.

This advertising is satirical and I love it.
However, if he was to use real, present day advertising, I think he would have to go the Fallout 3 route and create a whole backstory like A Canticle of Leibowitz where out of the destruction of a nuclear holocaust life started anew.  He would also have to try and explain why some mutated into dwarfs, elves, and goblins (and orcs, hobgoblins,...).  All this to make the game make sense with the advertising.  I really hope he will never have to do this.   

[SquirrelWizard]

why is it free?

lots and lots of testers who do the work for free.

we basically find bugs and provide feedback at no charge

[Sizik]

I hate advertising in video games.  I could never support that.   Although...

On the wall is an image of a dwarf and a cola.  The dwarf is drinking the cola.  The cola is refreshing.

Then you use adventure mode to figure out what cola it's advertising.

Or turn on SHOW_ALL_HISTORY_IN_DWARF_MODE in init.txt...

[Durin]

A lot of games of about this caliber are free.  There are, at this point, more muds and mud codebases than you can shake a stick at, mostly free.  I've seen muds with very nearly this level of complexity, including in-game construction of objects, buildings, etc.  The beauty of DF is it is solo (thus eliminating the need to tolerate a-holes while playing), and it provides a really unique twist in its combination of rts, simulation, and role play facets. 

The real question is, "why is it not open source?"  He has stated the answer to this in his faq.  He does this as a labor of love and does not want to run it professionally, having to interface with other developers in a professional and competitive environment, having to struggle to maintain his vision of the project and possibly even lose a lot of the monetary support he gets from donations as the project splinters right out from under him.

It will be interesting to see if any game development companies are interested enough in the idea to coax him into developing it for their specific company.  Somehow I think that may be what is in the back of his mind.

I am not anywhere close to the back of his mind, though.

[Dvergar]

why is it free?

lots and lots of testers who do the work for free.

we basically find bugs and provide feedback at no charge

A lot of games of about this caliber are free.  There are, at this point, more muds and mud codebases than you can shake a stick at, mostly free.

Multi-user dungeon games are afaik made by teams and are made all at once and possibly never updated, the number of inactive/deleted MUD huds on a program such a fire-client far outnumber the serviceable onces.

Anyways my point was Toady could probably work as a programmer or even software engineer (don't know his background) in a company and get paid big bucks.  Instead, he does what he likes to do (I would think) and relies on donations, which I admire and respect.

P.S. If Tarn Adam's sole source of income is Dwarf Fortress than it is a no brainer why he would keep the DF source code secret.

[Durin]

A lot of games of about this caliber are free.  There are, at this point, more muds and mud codebases than you can shake a stick at, mostly free.

Multi-user dungeon games are afaik made by teams and are made all at once and possibly never updated, the number of inactive/deleted MUD huds on a program such a fire-client far outnumber the serviceable onces.

It's really not possible to classify muds with a broad brush anymore.

Coffeemud is maintained mostly by one person, and is open source and licensed under the Apache license, meaning you can extend it, run it for profit, etc, even add proprietary elements and charge for that.  No one has come along and stolen Bo's "vision", and I believe he holds down a development job as well.  He accepts donations much like this site does, it seems he is relatively pleased with the project.  One thing I will say about Tarn's insight is that this community seems more tightly knit.  He may well be right about the effect it has on his donation levels.

If one wanted to see the thing get beyond Alpha before the year 2050 though, sooner or later it is going to have to involve a team.

[Skorpion]

P.S. If Tarn Adam's sole source of income is Dwarf Fortress than it is a no brainer why he would keep the DF source code secret.

Not really secret; anyone can dissect the game files with enough skill and the right program. It is, however, copyrighted or patented or whatever you do with code. Mods are just tolerated under fair use.

[Durin]

P.S. If Tarn Adam's sole source of income is Dwarf Fortress than it is a no brainer why he would keep the DF source code secret.

Not really secret; anyone can dissect the game files with enough skill and the right program. It is, however, copyrighted or patented or whatever you do with code. Mods are just tolerated under fair use.

Hehehe... true that.  I'm pretty sure he meant secret as opposed to public in the sense of licensing.  Toady could pretty much publish every word of the code and it would still be illegal to do much of anything with it as long as he retains copyright.

[Sergius]

I'm sure Toady isn't spending the kind of work hours on this game that he would be if he was working full time in some office. He decides how much effort he puts into work. Plus he is enjoying what he does, so I think that has as much to do with wanting to give free stuff to people.

Having a regular job sucks.

[Dvergar]

Having a regular job sucks.

Its not so bad when you are making several times what minimal wage is, which I figure Tarn is getting each year