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[Footkerchief]

I guess I'll post these PMs publicly now that the shit has hit the fan.

I would like to point out that until May 23, 2010, Khazad was just a Visualizer, like many that are in development. it is only very recently that a decision was made to go from being a visualizer, to being a fully fledged game.

Whoever told you that was lying.

Hey Footkerchief, saw you were online and wondered if you'd noticed my earlier message regarding the Path finding project I'm trying to get started.  I'm particularly hopeful that you'll join.  Your clearly a programmer and your continually thinking and posting about the games structure, and frankly your one of the few people who consistently has good ideas (IMHO). 

I've also heard you speck highly of Khazad, and I'll let you in on a little secret, Khazad is intended to eventually be an open-source clone of Dwarf Fortress, the whole fortress visualizer thing is just a toe in the door.  I'd like to have you programming and designing with us on Khazad in any way that you can.

I admit this is super ambitious and chances of finishing are slim.  I'm not going to aim for a rouge like engine though, I'm only interested in Fortress mode so it's only half of DF in that regard.  I can see how you could fell its unethical but the mem-hacking was around before I started and is ultimately not something that's necessary for the project, I could have made my own map generator (I was briefly) but this at least provides a cool tool for people.

My deep concern is that DF is going down an unsustainable path, its turning into an epic-Mad-Libs generator.  The interface is literally a form of abuse and it pains me to see it inflicted upon people.  Thus I really think I'm saving the DF concept from it current implementation and misguided creator.  I know that sounds heretical given the absolutely sycophantic worship that the rule on the forums, but frankly I think I can do better.

[Acanthus117]

:O

[Rose]

Whoever told you that was lying.

right then, I was wrong.

I was basing things off of this PM that I got:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hey guys I wanted to tell you I've got the Khazad project running again.  I'm using a new Ogre/MyGUI engine and a github repository and have the new system running, though its just skeletal at this point i should be able to rapidly port over the old SDL Khazad system and get equivalent 3D Isometric rendering with most or all the old functionality (slicing, shading) within a month.

But from their it gets interesting, I'm committed to making a stand alone game, basically a streamlined, polished, interface friendly version of DF.  I've got a plan for my core feature set which I think is necessary for basic playability, I'm aiming for 6 months to complete them after-which all kinds of 'bloat' can be added.  Have a look.

[link]

I know you guys are really focused on visualizing DF rather then making a stand alone game but I'd encourage you to join me.  Together we can really make an excellent game and do it a lot faster then if we just waited around working on the margins of DF constantly having our work dashed and delayed when new versions of DF come out.  I also read Japa mentioning your looking to use Direct X, both things using Ogre can solve easily.  Your team has done some really interesting stuff with regards to creature sprites, animations and paper-doll image composites all stuff I'd like to use but wouldn't have time for on my own (I planned that for 'bloat' phase).

Now of course you can continue supporting simple 'viewing' of DF for quite some time if not indefinitely, I'm imagining a two 'mode' system.  When the user starts they can choose 'Game' or 'Viewer' each being it's own class, the Game system will call a map generator and implement a standalone game, the Viewer will call DFHack and pull data from DF continually.  But both systems can use common Map rendering systems, image manipulation systems, XML data systems and other lower level stuff.  We get to share the optimization of the Rendering system which is really the BIG enchilada.  I've got a few folks acting as advisers right now with commitments to play test later.  Peterix helped me get set up on github and is going to help with DFHack integration so by combining forces we can save him work by only having to integrate/support one project.  Our combined project would be better able to attract more artists and other developers as well (people always gravitate to active successful projects).

I'm hoping you guys are interested, I really enjoy collaborating with other folks online and think we can do some nice stuff together, I'd really like to get together and talk over Skype, you can reach me at 'kennethferland'.  Hope to hear from you soon.

[peterix]

Hello.
I think I should explain some things here... being banned and unbanned and all that. I'll start with a bit of history.

I'm a linux user and last year discovered DF. The Windows versions had all these cool utilities and visualizers (3dwarf, etc.) and I wanted to have something similar for Linux. So I ported Khazad (then a visualizer) to Linux. The 'Khazad' part was quite easy,  but the memory access needed some extra work. It was just the basic export of raw tile data at first. Let's just say I started expanding that and learned quite a lot about interfacing with opaque binary objects in the process
I did a lot of other work on Khazad *as a visualizer* (some rendering, geometry generation and GUI stuff) and was never really interested in making a clone of DF. Impaler talked about making a game out of it... This accelerated my efforts for separating DFHack (then a simple Export module) from Khazad.

So, DFHack eventually became a separate library. Khazad on the other hand became cluttered with stuff like 'thin walls' and path-finding, which killed it for me really (the burning !!FAST!! map load times I was able to achieve turned into minutes, etc.). I still maintained the parts that used DFHack and fixed a few crash bugs, but you could say my real involvement ended sometime last year... it just became painful to fix segfaults all the time. And it actually seemed pretty much dead.

I still talk with Impaler from time to time, mostly about technical things like how to use git or my opinion on some of his code/designs. The reason why I'm listed as a commiter in the new github Khazad repository is because to "do you want to be there?" I replied, "sure, whatever".

So... what are the goals of DFHack:

• Provide a way to access memory safely. No other tool did that before AFAIK, leading to possible race conditions and other 'fun' stuff. Tools shouldn't cause errors in DF. Also, SDL_NumJoysticks()
• Act as a common repository of methods for interfacing with DF (and possibly other things). I intend to turn it into a generic and cross-platform library for memory hacking, but right now, it contains a lot of DF-specific things.
• I wanted to learn new things and DFHack was a good way to make that happen.

You could call this an API of sorts... although it's difficult to maintain and certainly not API or ABI (lol) stable. It does make some things simpler for people who write tools, because they get commented header files instead of a binary blob and outdated wiki articles. DFHack solves the problems with getting stuff out of a running binary and abstracts away platform-specific bits and pieces (STL objects layout, getting list of Processes from the OS, stuff like that).

He posted a link to the clone as a clone just the other day, and he's been working with Impaler long enough to know where Impaler's coming from.  There was another incident regarding the motives of the DF Hack people a few months ago, but that involved "the DF Hack guys" rather than peterix by name and I don't want to drag in the other party to name individuals.

Yeah. It's on github and hardly a secret. I know where he's comming from and I *think* it's unlikely he'll ever get this off the ground and turn it into something serious. And even then, I don't like the idea of cloning things. So I decided to wait and watch... most of what I've seen up to this point was segfaults... at least I got tired of fixing them all the time.
Cloning DF is IMHO a crazy goal. To whoever thinks this is a good idea, I'll say "knock yourself out" and walk away.

The symbols thing still bothers me.  But again, I don't have the log, so I can't be sure he was involved, and in general a few forumgoers seem surprised he'd be lumped in with ill-natured people.

Well. Symbols. Did you pull that binary already? I sure hope so. What I did was that I opened it in a debugger and suddenly found out that things have names. It could be handy, sure, but I don't think it really changes anything for DFHack. It would if they were in every single released binary... and that's not the case. The symbols provide me with nothing that could make DFHack easier to maintain... rather the opposite really if people use them. It could result in more stuff that has to be updated for every single DF version.
I spoke about the fact with the few people who idle in the DFHack IRC channel. Possibly a mistake, but I was pretty excited by that at the time. Then I told Baughn, who probably told you.
Some clinically insane bastard with unlimited free time could use them to reverse-engineer DF. Meh.

So I'll unban peterix.  I think it goes almost without saying that I placed the two bans while I was angry, and that I'm not convinced my anger here was unjustified, but I'm not clear on some things, so I'll admit I acted somewhat rashly.  He can remake his DF Hack thread if he wants.  I'm sorry I deleted it.

Maybe I should've talked to you earlier, but I didn't want to bother you with this stuff. Guess that didn't work out. Oh well ~_~

[Urist Imiknorris]

Cloning DF is IMHO a crazy goal.

Truer words have never been spoken.

[Dr. Melon]

This is the point where we all send a donation to Toady in spite of Impaler's drivel. Protect the Toad, a natural resource!

[Adultratedhydra]

This is the point where we all send a donation to Toady in spite of Impaler's drivel. Protect the Toad, a natural resource!

[Jackrabbit]

This is the point where we all send a donation to Toady in spite of Impaler's drivel. Protect the Toad, a natural resource!

It's times like these that I desperately wish I could. It's the best rebuttal to crap like Impaler's posts.

Cloning DF is IMHO a crazy goal.

Truer words have never been spoken.

Screw knocking yourself out, you should get yourself checked out because you are either superhuman or certifiably insane.

[Acanthus117]

It's times like these that I desperately wish I could. It's the best rebuttal to crap like Impaler's posts.

I feel your pain.

[peterix]

One thing:
Khazad as of now is hardly a clone of anything. It's meant to be a game *inspired* by DF's Fortress Mode.

[Jackrabbit]

One thing:
Khazad as of now is hardly a clone of anything. It's meant to be a game *inspired* by DF's Fortress Mode.

The PM to Foot of Impaler telling him it's going to be a clone of DF suggests otherwise.

[peterix]

One thing:
Khazad as of now is hardly a clone of anything. It's meant to be a game *inspired* by DF's Fortress Mode.

The PM to Foot of Impaler telling him it's going to be a clone of DF suggests otherwise.

Whatever. I won't go digging in that and play who-said-what. This is how I understood what he told me. Still, not really interested. I'd be interested in having a DF visualizer based on Ogre -- and probably very close to DF's internal representation of the map.

[Jackrabbit]

I'm not very well informed on the situation to be honest, so 'whatever' is the most attractive option for me as well. I think I'll take it.

Whatever, he's gone now and DF still kicks ass. I'm off to start a dwarven convent that advocates eye gouging.

With magma.

[orbcontrolled]

You know, if this guy manages to create anything useful interface-wise, Toady can always steal it for use with DF.

[Toady One]

This is the point where we all send a donation to Toady in spite of Impaler's drivel. Protect the Toad, a natural resource!

Ha ha, don't do that, not for this mess.  I'd like to apologize to peterix.  I can't speak for the other guy, but it was probably Impaler again that had him thinking the DF Hack team was in the wrong place, and I think my conversation with him way back when and the symbols screwup and my general state of mind got me acting hastily toward DF Hack.

There was also more badmouthing associated to #dfhack [...]

I'm not sure what this is about. I did complain about the complexity of some parts of the code...

This was referring to the earlier incident months ago that I've been somewhat cryptic about.  I'm still not sure who was involved.

Finally about the "don't care" line, I don't believe we are a bunch of bastards that only live to fork DF or dig bad things and make fun of them. I do like to see how things work under the hood, but if Toady really doesn't want us to look, I would just stop.

I don't have a problem with any of the existing utilities and if they make the game more fun for people, then that's good.  I guess some of them have raised mixed feelings in me in the past, but I think that discussion has been had and it didn't end with me disapproving of any utility in particular or anything like that.  Regarding the "don't care" line in particular, it did piss me off at the time to think that there was some kind of symbol party around my screwed up exe and I had to hear about it from somebody else.  I understand the fun of seeing all the names, given how hard people have been working on these utilities, and having read the rest of the thread now, I would no longer have put that line in my second post.