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[Lord Darkstar]

Calhoun, this thread shows that there are people that are truthfully saying that the new features and interfaces are not making DF more fun. Maybe those people will adjust (I hope so!), and maybe some of the things bothing players will be fixed/corrected soon.

I think 0.31 is going to be a lot more fun for me then 0.28 was, which is why I am slogging through it. But I do find the early game to be more challenging than it used to be. And that can make the experience "less fun". I wonder how much that is going to turn away new players?

[Mohreb el Yasim]

Ok, this thread is sounding exactly like the forums for every single bad beta test I've ever been in.  "WTF this sucks what were the devs thinking putting it up like this" "IT'S JUST A BETAAAAAAA IT'LL GET BETTERRRRRRR" and then it doesn't because the beta tests actually do usually turn out to be pretty close to the final product and all the "just wait it'll get better" people slink away never to be heard from again.

For my part, I can see how the military improvements could be better than the previous system, but it also overcomplexifies things.  Sometimes you just want a woodcutter to take his axe and go smack some beasties who are scaring the fisherdwarves, without going through all sorts of paperwork involving who's allowed what equipment beforehand.  Until that becomes possible, it's more of a hindrance than a help.  I don't WANT to have to set up training sessions and barracks  and duty rosters and so on, I just want "You, you, and you, grab a weapon and go stand guard there until I tell you otherwise".  The current military interface completely gets in the way.  It makes difficult what should be easy.  Until that's resolved, it's a problem.

The caverns and so on are a net plus but it wouldn't have taken that much to add them to 40d.  The materials and layers system, I have not seen any evidence at all that it was worth all the time.  Lots of really odd bug reports and claims that it's just that the raws aren't set up right yet, but until I actually see results where the raws are set up correctly and it works right, I'm reserving judgement.  40d worked fine in that regard.  To the point where I've been wondering to myself what it would take to do a rollback to 40d's system and just tack on the caverns.

In short, it's not at all clear that this IS the right track for the game in terms of fun and functionality.  And yes Toady will do whatever the heck he wants with it.  But open discussion of the issues people have can only clarify the situation.

i quote this because it was the most funny of replys i found, yes i know that Rolly is a well known game-maker programmer how knows how to REALLY make games, and he also knows wich parts are worth and not worth to be added in, it is even more evident because of the fact that he knows that beta=alpha and the equation is solved ...
so just to say df is not a fortress making game, nor an adventuring game it is one of the only in the kind of fantasy-universe simulator games, and that is why it is mostly loved i suppose, for details wich were nicely added since last version, material acting as material, creatures as creatures, even more and more precisely, and i don't agree that it is bugged because it was relised, and we should have waited so we would have a bugfree version, it is not how it works ... bugs are found in testing, so one man alone never can test everything, i think everybody working in programmation (or industry in general) would agree ...

[Diablous]

frankly, what i don't like is the new site finder - exactly, that it won't allow me to look for the old familiar features like magma, bottomless pit and underground stuff. heck, it looks pretty useless now, as no matter what i do it only allows me to search for a river, which i can do singlehandedly without the stupid finder... that just does not feels right. and screw the military, i couldn't even resize the game window, while 40d* allowed that! so what i saw in the first 5 minutes of gameplay was that the new version is worse than the old one, and i really do hope it was only bugged like that, not changed like "no more resizing windows and magma pipe searching in the site finder for you forever mwahahah!"

Since magma and the underground stuff is everywhere the site finder is kinda pointless. As for resizing, that was part of the d# series and the code for that was made by Baughn, not Toady. He was planning on merging the d# code before releasing, but because everyone kept clamoring for the new version, he put it off. He plans on starting the merge soon. You'll have it back.

[Grumman]

Can anyone argue that any of the new features make the game worse?

Yes. Removing a simple yet functioning military system and replacing it with one that one that doesn't work properly. Removing channelling functionality without fixing the AI problems that make that channelling functionality neccessary.

Really, my main annoyance is that from the outside, it looks like Toady's release schedule could be greatly improved. If you've got a modular design and you're slowly replacing old, functioning components with new, buggy components and then new, functioning components, you really need two supported versions at any one time: the stable, only-things-that-work release (40d), and the bleeding edge, beta-testing-the-new-component release (31.0x). The problem is that the releases are so far apart that there is stable functionality (like the new underground) which should be in a stable release, but isn't.

[Diablous]

Can anyone argue that any of the new features make the game worse?

Yes. Removing a simple yet functioning military system and replacing it with one that one that doesn't work properly. Removing channelling functionality without fixing the AI problems that make that channelling functionality neccessary.

Really, my main annoyance is that from the outside, it looks like Toady's release schedule could be greatly improved. If you've got a modular design and you're slowly replacing old, functioning components with new, buggy components and then new, functioning components, you really need two supported versions at any one time: the stable, only-things-that-work release (40d), and the bleeding edge, beta-testing-the-new-component release (31.0x). The problem is that the releases are so far apart that there is stable functionality (like the new underground) which should be in a stable release, but isn't.

The series of updates Toady planned would each break save compatiblity. To make things easier, he did it all at once. There should be a more rapid release schedule. We're already on the 2nd bugfix release.

[Rollory]

i quote this because it was the most funny of replys i found, yes i know that Rolly is a well known game-maker programmer how knows how to REALLY make games, and he also knows wich parts are worth and not worth to be added in, it is even more evident because of the fact that he knows that beta=alpha and the equation is solved ...

As it happens, I got my start in IT working in the computer game industry for three years as part of various development teams.  Not that it matters.  I provided specific evidence for why I have the view I do.  You didn't argue against any of those points.  Do they not understand evidence where you come from?

[Rollory]

ITT:

People complain about bugs in an alpha game, which hasn't gone through numerous bugfix releases like 40d had. Which they are comparing the stability / mostly bug lackingness.

You (and everyone else making similar arguments) have completely, utterly, totally missed the point.

I have been playing this since some of the earliest 2D releases.  I know what buggy software looks like.  I also know what badly designed software looks like.  Bugfixes do not fix bad design.  Bad design can not be covered up by bugfixes.

The military system is hard to use.  The combat system is giving nonsensical results in relatively straightforward experiments.  The concern is not that there are bugs; I remember the sleeping-dwarf bug from the first 3D release.  Things like that were obviously going to be fixed inside a few weeks, it was just a matter of noticing them.  In this case, it isn't that it's an oversight, it's that it's been deliberately coded a certain way, and that certain way doesn't necessarily work very well.  There's a limit to how much fundamental behavior can be directed by bugs of the "oops I missed that" nature as opposed to "oops this whole thing was a bad idea and doesn't work".

Some of it may be obscured by bugs.  It is possible that combat oddness will be fixed once correct values have been populated through the raws, and a few odd errors in the code are found and fixed.  Hopefully that is all that is required.  Right now I see no strong evidence either way, and that alone worries me - the product of a year and a half of work ought to be clearly visible in terms of results, instead of obscured in FUD.

As for complaining about a free product, there's nothing wrong about that, and only somebody who's never made anything could possibly object.  Creators never have a completely objective view of their own work, they NEED feedback. 

[Rotten]

he's also seriously weakened DF standbys: marksdwarves, wardogs and traps.

That was kind of the point...

You shouldn't be able to carpet your entrance in magical solely-enemy-targeting traps, massive amounts of war dogs or marksdwarves behind unbreakable fortifications. It screws up game balance and makes things far to easy.

Yeah, it's an "alpha release" (although I'd claim such labels are weird within the context of DF),

How is a label stating that Dwarf Fortress is nowhere near done weird at all? Go read the dev log, 31 out of 100 cores (core components of the game) are considered 'done' by Toady, and many of those (like fire and the endgame) are still begging to be improved upon (and some, like abandoning, I think Toady has already said he will revisit). Basically, the game is not even 1/3 done, much less in beta and a feature-lock. Just because the average Bland of Bland 14: Bland of the Bland commercial FPS is rushed out the door in a few years, most spent on 'revolutionary graphics', doesn't mean that a game which spends a longer time in development should be considered past alpha and thus bug-free (not that beta implies that, but OT). Personally, I will be very sad the day DF stops getting new features.

I agree that not even Dwarf Fortress is above criticism, and  I've leveled a bit of it myself, but from my point of view, the only criticism that the OP offers is 'buggy' and 'too hard' before calling a year (more than? When was 40d released?) of work by Toady an 'insult'. Sure, maybe this release wasn't Army Arc or god mode, but it was a massive effort that added a great platform for expanding the game more easily.

No work is above constructive criticism.

Fixed that for ya. And emphasis.

This essentially sums up the meaning of my entire post.

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Busy thread.

Creators never have a completely objective view of their own work, they NEED feedback.

I think almost everybody in this thread agrees with that, could you guys stop beating a magma-incinerated horse? What we're saying is that Toady would prefer CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, not person after person after person saying that the game is now 'horrible', an 'insult to the fans' and 'ruined', step back, and realize that 40d had a year to be fixed, and .31 has been out less than a month.

[G-Flex]

How is a label stating that Dwarf Fortress is nowhere near done weird at all? Go read the dev log, 31 out of 100 cores (core components of the game) are considered 'done' by Toady, and many of those (like fire and the endgame) are still begging to be improved upon (and some, like abandoning, I think Toady has already said he will revisit). etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

That wasn't my point. The thing about DF is that it's also intended to be playable while in alpha, which is probably odd when compared to most "alpha" releases. I'm not saying that it's some terrible thing that the current version has problems; that's expected and fine. What I'm saying is that each major release, despite being "alpha" releases, are still worked into what is meant to be a playable game relatively free of major bugs.

I'm not saying the game is feature-complete enough to not be an "alpha", just that it differs considerably from the type of development that warrants such labels. There are more/different considerations involved, especially since the game is released as an ostensibly-playable product during the "alpha" cycle. You could even consider each major release set to have its own alpha->beta->relatively complete sort of development cycle to it.

[Cardinal]

I'm sad that I'm flying.

Seriously, the military change needed to happen to make it work in a larger, more parametric framework.  Re-creating the "you, you and you, grab an axe" functionality is interface work, and doable, and will likely be thrown in quickly, given how Toady responds to feedback.  The materials rewrite is cool and fun, and I'm sure the immortal ash and bronze creatures are simple enough to solve (likely in the form of some kind of overall structural integrity causing catastrophic failure, something necessary for all manner of later emergent gameplay).  The game's on track, it's fun, and I hope melting rain functionality still exists and gets attached to particularly malevolent forgotten beasts.

[G-Flex]

The acid-rain stuff would be easy enough to integrate into sphere-afflictions and such when they happen, I think (well, aside from the problem of fatty tissue melting at the drop of a hat, but that's even easier to fix, being a raws problem), and that would be great. Arbitrary-material rain, and that sort of thing.

and I'm sure the immortal ash and bronze creatures are simple enough to solve (likely in the form of some kind of overall structural integrity causing catastrophic failure, something necessary for all manner of later emergent gameplay)

FWIW, this stuff matters for more than just weird creatures or future emergent systems; the problem also presents itself in the lack of serious wounds caused by cumulative less-serious wounds (think: fistfights and the like), and the fact that creatures like skeletons, zombies, and other things that don't need organs or blood to survive can be set on fire and stay like that forever (try dropping one in the arena magma, you get an eternal flame).

[Cardinal]

FWIW, this stuff matters for more than just weird creatures or future emergent systems; the problem also presents itself in the lack of serious wounds caused by cumulative less-serious wounds (think: fistfights and the like), and the fact that creatures like skeletons, zombies, and other things that don't need organs or blood to survive can be set on fire and stay like that forever (try dropping one in the arena magma, you get an eternal flame).

Yeah, the much-maligned hit points of simpler systems, while mostly wrong, do represent an underlying fact about damage, especially to people but also to structures.  There are a few elegant ways to do it, so that you're not just dropping an integer health on something that overrides the cool body part system.  Still, I like the idea of unkillable creatures.  If they could be somehow tied up and locked in a dark place somewhere, then that would be a great feature.  I mean, heck, the number of stories with mythical creatures that are tied up and hidden away somewhere is right up there with the number of Tiger Woods mistresses.

[G-Flex]

Unkillable creatures are a neat idea, but not ones that are unkillable when it doesn't make sense or isn't intended.


We don't really need "hit points" back, just some general sense of wounds accumulate successively, to the degree that successive "fractures" can result in a sever, depending on how deep those fractures are (and to generalizes this to blunt attacks, a notion that shattering/fracturing something a bunch of times can result in complete nonfunctionality of the part).

[blackmagechill]

I love listening to the stuff in the new release, especially all the parts about the megabeast fun. I'm going to download it for megabeasts, but play 40d because I started with it.

[Earthquake Damage]

I'm going to download it for megabeasts,

You should download it for the underground, not the megabeasts.  The new underground has me salivating over the eventual Adventurer Skills arc already.