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[Andir]

That just means he's lazy. That is no excuse.

I'm a programmer and I'll tell you... There's something to that lazy thing.  If I had to develop everything I did from scratch I'd never get anything done.

[Max White]

That just means he's lazy. That is no excuse.

Well, their is. Making the game, and making the game content are seperate activitys. If he is just making sure all of the programming side of things works before he gets started on he's flavor text, that is fine. If he is taking all of toadys content, no so fine.

[G-Flex]

I think it's more along the lines of "I'm gonna make a similar game to DF, but I don't want to spend time making my own plants, etc, before the engine is finished."

I think it's a little too charitable to assume that he's only ripping off style and content as placeholder material. That's not usually how things go.

There's such a thing as placeholder content. Maybe he's holding off on putting together a load of new plants, animals etc after he's got the game to the point where it's ready for general release? Not that there's very much in the raws that Toady can claim copyright on in the first place, excepting the cavern creatures, some of the plants and maybe the languages at a stretch.

I think he'd have a decent claim on the whole of the content being protected. I mean, it's one thing to throw in plump helmets (or any other singular thing) as a reference, but it's another to, say, copy every plant and animal wholesale.


If he's even copying things like "prepared fly brains" as someone else implied, then... I honestly don't know why. Why would you want to emulate the bugs of another piece of software?

[Soadreqm]

If he's even copying things like "prepared fly brains" as someone else implied, then... I honestly don't know why. Why would you want to emulate the bugs of another piece of software?

Insects aren't visible, but the meat product list at around two minutes looks very familiar, with entries such as

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• horse meat
• prepared horse brain
• prepared horse heart
• prepared horse lung
• prepared horse intestines
• choped[sic] horse liver
• prepared horse kidney
• prepared horse tripe
• horse sweetbread
• prepared horse eye
• prepared horse spleen

repeated for several more animals. That scroll bar looks pretty tall, too.

[G-Flex]

I know we use the term "clone" a lot to describe games inspired by other games, but sometimes wannabe indie developers try to do it a bit too literally. In other words, instead of the line of thought being "this concept is neat, but I could implement it better or do something different with it", it's seemingly "I like this game, so I'm going to copy it wholesale and change what I don't like".

[burningpet]

I bet that at its beginning minecraft wasent too diffrent than infiminer.

minecraft, the name itself is a ripoff, sorry, spinoff.

if he stays at the ripoff stage, then he has nothing going for him. if he expands in other directions, then he could be the one making the mainstream DF. time will tell. i am abit skeptic.

[Jake]

I think he'd have a decent claim on the whole of the content being protected. I mean, it's one thing to throw in plump helmets (or any other singular thing) as a reference, but it's another to, say, copy every plant and animal wholesale.

Excepting cave creatures, most of the edible crops and a few miscellaneous things like beak dogs or fluffy wamblers, the flora and fauna featured in DF are either real or from classical mythology and thus public domain. If it contains any of the above if and when this game is available for download, that's a different matter, but until then he's bending the rules a little but not doing any actual harm.

[G-Flex]

Excepting cave creatures, most of the edible crops and a few miscellaneous things like beak dogs or fluffy wamblers, the flora and fauna featured in DF are either real or from classical mythology and thus public domain. If it contains any of the above if and when this game is available for download, that's a different matter, but until then he's bending the rules a little but not doing any actual harm.

I'm obviously not talking about public domain things, here. I'm talking about the things named or conceived by Toady, and there's plenty of that to go around (many of the more fanciful or demonic/"warped" creatures, most of the plants, the language files, etc.). This is only considering the content that is directly ripped from DF; making the game a carbon-copy in terms of features, right down to the terminology used and everything else, is just as lazy, ass-backwards and disingenuous even if it wouldn't make a clear case in court.

[Leafsnail]

I dunno, does he at least credit and say he's asked permission for these things?

[finka]

Heh, did you notice in the video how all the dwarves move one by one? When more dig-designated rocks became exposed, everyone stopped mining to wait for another dwarf to run to from the entrance to the mine. It was so cute!

There's more to that than meets the eye, though.  The dev explains: they're using a non-uniform time scale.  It's not that the other dwarves stop, it's that a dwarf can walk to the newly exposed designation so fast that the other dwarves have no time to do any mining during the walk.  While someone's walking the frames are only game-seconds apart; when they stop, the time per frame reverts to two game-hours.  Pay attention to the clock in the video.

But yeah, the effect of this is that only one thing actually happens at once, unless you happen to luck out and get multiple orders of the same time-scale simultaneously.  I'd guess that, as a result, any attempt to make a fort with many dwarves in DwarvesH would die a time-segmentation death, much like DF is vulnerable to FPS death. 

(Hello, all!)

[Soadreqm]

There's more to that than meets the eye, though.  The dev explains: they're using a non-uniform time scale.  It's not that the other dwarves stop, it's that a dwarf can walk to the newly exposed designation so fast that the other dwarves have no time to do any mining during the walk.  While someone's walking the frames are only game-seconds apart; when they stop, the time per frame reverts to two game-hours.  Pay attention to the clock in the video.

Huh. An interesting approach. Yeah, time-intensive jobs taking ages to complete if you have a lot of dwarves, or are just trying to multitask, sounds more or less inevitable.

And I still think it looks silly.

[Shootandrun]

I don't think it is so bad... Of course, it's basically DF right now, but he said he was gonna add more things... So, why not? Give him a chance. It's not like manic digger ("I copy every thing minecraft is doing, without even hiding it"). If in two or three years it's still the exact same thing, I am gonna be really angry but right now, lets let him alone and hope he will do something cool.

[squeakyReaper]

Looks cool.  Definitely liking the UI improvements, and it has potential.  Right now I'm irked by the extreme Dwarf Fortress base w/ stonesense tileset, but I'm in the "placeholder" camp.  I'd like for him to change it sooner or later, but even if he doesn't I'm cool with it as long as it's fun.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so long as it's not a parody in its quality.

Not liking it being isometric though...  Stonesense is pretty to look at, to marvel at your amazing for making skills, but playing in it is a bit iffy...  That being said, keep it up Stonesense team, watching it play in live action would definitely be fun!

[Sowelu]

I like seeing where the mouse interface is going.

One issue here:  Yes, he's ripping off DF badly.  But if he does some totally common-sense interface things that Toady just hasn't gotten around to, then when DF implements those obvious features, will DF be said to rip off this guy's work?  For example, it also almost looks like this clone supports dwarves picking up multiple objects at a time.  Can't say for sure though.

[Argembarger]

Let's say he does decide to make this a DF clone rather than just an interesting little project.


Toady has around, what, a decade's headstart on this game over anyone else?

And any clones like this are aiming for the UI, and playability and such.

Toady will obviously still focus on mechanics and features.

There may be a bit of a broken base, perhaps, if the clone game gets big enough

But I would see it becoming something like a DF Lite, for the people who can't stand, or aren't ready for, or just want to take a break from the real thing, and want to take a break and mess around with a simpler version of the same thing.

Heck, it may even be the halfway-home to help lessen the lurnin' curve a bit.

But these are all pretty big if's.

If this guy's as fanatical of a programmer and game developer as Toady, I don't see why he wouldn't just go make his own original project, anyway.

And that's the only way his project would be able to compete with DF: if he was as dedicated as Toady. And significantly more talented and tireless, to catch up with all the years of programming Toady's done.


Nah, I'm not worried for DF or for Toady.