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Author Topic: Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress  (Read 1836 times)

tNok85

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Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress
« on: May 10, 2010, 02:51:50 pm »

Hey all,

Been a DF player + lurker here for a long time. Read through your BYOND threads, and it's very interesting. Decided to look into it myself, and it seems fairly simple to create your own game. (Been messing around with it today) Already have experience with Python and C++, so this seems like a piece of cake relatively speaking.

I was thinking... a lot of people want a multiplayer Dwarf Fortress. Of course, it's never really going to happen. But what if we made a game inspired by Dwarf Fortress to run on BYOND? Start up a game, load up a map with your fellow Dwarfs and strike the earth. It would be great to try to implement as many features as possible, with the basic ones first. Mining, woodcutting, harvesting food to begin with.

If this was created, would anybody be interested in playing? I have Windows box hosted at a datacenter in New Jersey that has ~1200GB/month bandwidth, with ~100mbps up and down, so perma-hosting would not be an issue.

Problems:
It's a pretty big undertaking.
Some of the mechanisms in DF are incredibly complex.
Every dwarf would have to be a real player (unless from a caravan - if I get that far).
Tilesets: I love the Mayday pack, and it would be trivial to import it, but I'd need to get permission (obviously) and if that's not possible, I'm not a great graphics artist - would certainly need help with that.
You'd need to trust people you're playing with - if stuff like lava/flooding works eventually, it'd be way too easy for a griefer to come in and kill everybody.


Any thoughts? Ideas? Contributions? What are the most important features you'd want first? :)



Note: I understand that ideas are easy, everybody has them. If there's any interest... I'll get a rudimentary working version and post a video of it. (Preferably something that has at least mining)
« Last Edit: May 10, 2010, 02:57:32 pm by tNok85 »
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Pathos

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Re: Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #1 on: May 10, 2010, 02:57:23 pm »

Hmm... You might like to take a look at Cowed / Dungeon Master on BYOND as examples of what I think you're going for, here. Respriting Cowed might work, but I'd rather not have a game based off of it since I'm not sure the code would be able to stand up to a single server perma-hosting.

I'm willing to try my hand at making .dmi files (or recolouring, if it comes to that) if you want to make something of it, but I'd be useless on the coding front.

Oh, and my suggestion would be not to really make it a "Dwarf Fortress BYOND game", but more of a "B12G community BYOND game" which has the Dwarf Fortress flavour to it.
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tNok85

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Re: Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #2 on: May 10, 2010, 02:59:16 pm »

Hmm... You might like to take a look at Cowed / Dungeon Master on BYOND as examples of what I think you're going for, here. Respriting Cowed might work, but I'd rather not have a game based off of it since I'm not sure the code would be able to stand up to a single server perma-hosting.

I'm willing to try my hand at making .dmi files (or recolouring, if it comes to that) if you want to make something of it, but I'd be useless on the coding front.

Oh, and my suggestion would be not to really make it a "Dwarf Fortress BYOND game", but more of a "B12G community BYOND game" which has the Dwarf Fortress flavour to it.

I prefer to start from scratch with most of my coding. It avoids a lot of messy 'who owns what' and such. (ie. less drama, seems to be a problem with BYOND)

And yes, agreed, absolutely not a DF BYOND game, but "B12G community game with inspiration from DF". Patent pending on that catchy name. :)
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Pathos

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Re: Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #3 on: May 10, 2010, 03:03:48 pm »

I prefer to start from scratch with most of my coding. It avoids a lot of messy 'who owns what' and such. (ie. less drama, seems to be a problem with BYOND)

And yes, agreed, absolutely not a DF BYOND game, but "B12G community game with inspiration from DF". Patent pending on that catchy name. :)

You should still have a look at them, if you haven't already. =p Hazordhu (or whatever it's called) too. They have a few nice ideas.

B12GCGWIFDF - It's catchy.

Well, I'm expressing an interest in it, so chuck together a tech demo. ;D
« Last Edit: May 10, 2010, 03:06:25 pm by Pathos »
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LeoLeonardoIII

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Re: Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #4 on: May 10, 2010, 03:39:30 pm »

Short sessions would probably work best. The expectation that the fort is going to fall horribly every couple days.

It would certainly be entertaining.
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Pathos

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Re: Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #5 on: May 10, 2010, 04:15:20 pm »

Short sessions would probably work best. The expectation that the fort is going to fall horribly every couple days.

It would certainly be entertaining.

This.

I do think, however, that it needs some long-term advancement system. Maybe getting legendary in a skill should give you the ability to get a special hat or some crap like that, and it should carry over sessions / world restarts.
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PenguinOverlord

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Re: Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #6 on: May 10, 2010, 06:20:29 pm »


You'd need to trust people you're playing with - if stuff like lava/flooding works eventually, it'd be way too easy for a griefer to come in and kill everybody.
I'd suggest a private server and Admins to solve that. Also, I won't play unless the name is B12GCGWIFDF.
Edit: Also, Dungeon Master is open source, look into that if you need some sort of inspiration or something. I don't think the owner of Dungeon Master will mind, since it is open source, but it could cause BYOND drama.
« Last Edit: May 10, 2010, 06:26:13 pm by PenguinOverlord »
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LeoLeonardoIII

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Re: Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #7 on: May 10, 2010, 06:25:17 pm »

But no, see, the magma is part of it! It's okay to magma everything! Because the fort tantrums down and we start over!
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SIGVARDR

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Re: Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #8 on: May 10, 2010, 06:38:43 pm »

Im thinking you might be able to cobble up something like 2d Dwarf fortress,have some very basic mining,Food production,carpentry and masonry,military and some baddies.start simple,if that can be called remotely simple.Don't try and delve into too much too fast.Liquid flow models I.e. water and magma would be big challenges,try just making them generic and not too complicated,at first.and start with one z level,more can come later.
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tNok85

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Re: Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #9 on: May 10, 2010, 06:48:12 pm »

Thanks for the feedback/input all.

Been working with DM (Dream Maker) and it's making sense for the most part now. Looking over the source code of some other ones to get a better feel for it.

Will update when I have something to update you with. :D
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Dr. Johbson

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Re: Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #10 on: May 10, 2010, 07:13:00 pm »

If you want more code to look at, The SS13 code-people might be able to help you at, I know for a fact we have a couple cool sources up there, and I don't think you'd mind you having it.
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Pathos

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Re: Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #11 on: May 12, 2010, 05:58:12 pm »

So, how's B12GCGWIFDF's tech demo coming on?
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woose1

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Re: Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #12 on: May 12, 2010, 07:33:40 pm »

We could use the TOME4 engine, as it supports ASCII graphics.

EDIT: Nevermind, I don't think it supports multiplayer. Bollocks.
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Soulwynd

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Re: Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #13 on: May 12, 2010, 07:45:57 pm »

I -was- making a mud that had DF elements. I have made muds that had a lot of them already, including digging, building, ascii top-down view, etc etc. I just never released any, but I kept a lot of the code.

It's not hard to do, to be honest. I still have a plan for a sort of multi-player DF simulation. It's not one that is supposed to be played, but rather watched daily. I need to work more on it before showing anything off.

If you're actually going through with this project, feel free to contact me for help.
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Orb

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Re: Idea: Multiplayer inspired by Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #14 on: May 12, 2010, 08:07:31 pm »

This sounds awesome.

For two reasons.


1. A very fast host who is in the U.S.  :D


2. The fact that I will be able to use magma in a MMO, for not just avoiding..... ;)


Im all up for this idea. As long as it works on a dial-up connection, and doesnt have terrible "ME noob, me start with magma cannon, me kill you, hahha" moments everywhere, I will likely love this game.


Sadly, I cant code, but im good at suggestioning ideas....XD
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