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[MMad]

The world generation is one of the unique aspects of the game, and having people watch a new world being created step by step is, IMO, a good and representative first experience of the game. But on the other hand, if it takes a long time it might be a good idea to allow players to skip it by loading a default world. I guess the decision should be taken based on how important one would judge these two aspects to be.

Regardless, more explicit clarification of what is going on in world gen would of course always be a good idea.

[zwei]

The world generation is one of the unique aspects of the game, and having people watch a new world being created step by step is, IMO, a good and representative first experience of the game. But on the other hand, if it takes a long time it might be a good idea to allow players to skip it by loading a default world. I guess the decision should be taken based on how important one would judge these two aspects to be.

Hmm, interesting point.

What is better experience - go though generating world, picking embark, choosing embark party and finally starting game.

Or, "play now" button that throws you directly to game in default world, on default location with default starting build.

[GoldenH]

Some kind of non-procedurally created world with fewer civilizations ( and with real names perhaps, not just "Nouverber the verb of verbing"), clearly distinguished biomes and a built-in tutorial could be a good start yeah.

About the download size... the file is like 5.5 mb now. Apart if you're still on a dialup connection, that's a pretty small download, even if its size were to be doubled.

I am on a dialup connection, but you also have to consider it from Toady's perspective, each time a new version comes out everyone downloads the whole thing again. So not including a world (which can be several megs) can help with that.

[zwei]

Some kind of non-procedurally created world with fewer civilizations ( and with real names perhaps, not just "Nouverber the verb of verbing"), clearly distinguished biomes and a built-in tutorial could be a good start yeah.

About the download size... the file is like 5.5 mb now. Apart if you're still on a dialup connection, that's a pretty small download, even if its size were to be doubled.

I am on a dialup connection, but you also have to consider it from Toady's perspective, each time a new version comes out everyone downloads the whole thing again. So not including a world (which can be several megs) can help with that.

I imagine torrent would be appropriate distribution tool in that case. Yay for actual legitimate use of torrent!

[Nexii Malthus]

What? Genning the world was the most amazing phase as a new player to me. Just watching the game make an entire world, watching a bunch of ASCII letters move and form continents, mountains, oceans, glaciers, rivers, trees, then civilizations. It is a rare tense moment in gaming that is hard to replace.

I think the world genning could be a bit more updated to allow us to see the world in different forms while it is being made, such as the heightmap, temperatures as it starts other stuff like the histories.

[orbcontrolled]

Honestly the thing that kept me away from worldgen for so long (much preferred using the world provided by the complete and utter newbie tutorial) was the sheer number of decisions I was being asked to make before I had any knowledge at all of the game.
I don't think it's necessary to include pre-generated worlds though, since they can gen almost identical worlds with the right seed.
I would have been perfectly happy with a tutorial that tells me "Enter this exact seed", "Embark in this exact place" and "Take these exact resources"¹. I can follow instructions well enough to do all that stuff, my only problem was having to make any important decisions before I've even played the game.
It took a dozen or more aborted fortress attempts (learned savescumming early, thank you very much lack-of-quit-button!) before I was confident enough to actually generate my own worlds, because it took that long for me to actually know what I wanted in the first place.


1. Right after it gives step by step instructions on installing a graphics pack! Thank god d16 actually allows you to resize/zoom the screen. It took me weeks to learn how to do that in 40d, and until then I had to use Multires whenever I played just to be able to see what was going on.

[Tilla]

I think a default world would be OK, but I don't think a  tutorial with blinking menus and text boxs would work while or be easily programmed in the game.

I wonder, does Toady intend to keep the game using raw bitmaps for maps? You could save a lot of space and lose no data by moving the whole kit and kaboodle over to PNG

[HAMMERMILL]

Maybe a better solution would be to modify the "Create new world now!" so that its smaller, 65x65 world with more variation and relevance to a newer player. The default world it cooks up now is kinda clumsy and boring, huge oceans and huge stretches of boring, awful, un ideal example of a world.

 It should be modified after the sort of world gens players cook up for themselves to maximize the the number of better embark sites and create a world that usually ensures all of the races surviving worldgen with a strong dwarven civ that has access to all the cool stuff a player might want to import. It should have almost every terrain type from deserts to forests to glaciers and, It should also be somewhat predictable in its outcome so that generic advice can be followed.

Anyways, I think improving the default world gen would be the best idea. It takes some serious effort and time to create a world to specifications thats a bit overwhelming for a new player. While the current default world gen parameters generate crappy worlds nobody here would want to use.

[JoRo]

I think a default world would be OK, but I don't think a  tutorial with blinking menus and text boxs would work while or be easily programmed in the game.

I wonder, does Toady intend to keep the game using raw bitmaps for maps? You could save a lot of space and lose no data by moving the whole kit and kaboodle over to PNG

Every version that I've used has shipped with a "compress_bitmaps.bat" that converts all the bitmaps in the folder into png, though it could just run automatically.