Hi!
I am the creator of DwarvesH. And since the very idea of me "creating” something is debated here, I thought I'd join the conversation. I only just found this discussion on the forum with some help.
It would be easy for me just to give my view on the subject and be done with it, but I would rather like to have a dialog. But first there are a few things that I must specify.
DwarvesH is in no way a rip, hack or some of the other words used of Dwarf Fortress. I did not reverse engineer anything. It does not communicate with DF, no data is loaded and generally I don't even have DF installed on development machines and where I do have it I had it for long time before starting development for my own personal enjoyment. I have been known to enjoy games like DF and ADOM. I do not load raws and even when adding items identical to DF I do not look over raws. I take all information from DF wiki, but I can read a raw if needed. I never saw DF code and I'm pretty sure that anybody, even without programming background could tell the two apart. Why am I so sure if I never saw the code? I think that DF is C and DwarvesH is C++. Even if this is not so, my style of writing C++ is both instantly recognizable and not widely used. I have very high level of C++ code, with strong emphasis on templates and metaprogramming. It is “proper” C++, not C with classes. I don’t use the standard library, but other third party libraries that have their own unique conventions.
So basically what I am saying is that all code, data and assets except for the Stonesenese tiles (by the way, my code is in no way similar to Stonesense either) are 100% fresh and created for this project. Their “physical” representation that is. I am not talking about IP yet. While I am sure that some of you will remain skeptic about this, let me assure you that things like thing don’t stand up to technical scrutiny. Get a technical comity together and they give you the verdict after analyzing both projects, either by source or by binary. Or just a random dude versed with reverse engineering and disassembly of compiled code.
Second, this is not DF clone. I have no intention to release with DF elements. It will be a game in the same underrepresented genre. There are at least 3 important parts of a project like this: the engine, the mechanics and the content. I am at the first part, coding the engine. The engine cares a little about mechanics and does not care about content. But it needs them when it is running. I need a large set of content and sample data to test my engine and having content that I am familiar with makes things a lot easier. This is why I am using DF data for my own personal use.
This intro is far too long. Let me try and answer a few questions from the forum and address some issues. I am so glad that this thread is not 300+ pages long as the Stonesense on is. Let me apologize right now for how long this is going to be. I am sorry to occupy so much place, but there is no way around it as I would like to address most concerns at once. But I want it to be a dialogue, so if you want to read everything or parts of it and want to say something, please do!
First instinct says no.
It seems to have graphics, and that means a much slower dev cycle. It can't compeat with DF for content. It also makes life either harder, or straight out inpossible for modders, and the abilty to rapidly mod the raws is a key feature of DF.
Now let's watch the rest of the video.
Second instict says no.
Although it is some what of a clone, like you said. It does use a lot of terms that DF uses, and game play looks familiar. Seeing those dwarves dig out those rooms was like watching the imps in dungeon keeper. Still, graphics dilute depth. In th comments somebody asked about a 3D engine, and the maker said it was in the cards.
Graphics do not slow that much the development cycle, but 3D graphics do! The 3D engine is the new default one and I am not showing it yet until I pretty it up a little.
I am a little bit confused by your statement of making modding difficult. From the ground up, DwarvesH has been designed with an editor. This is what I use to enter the data. The editor is a lot easier to sue than having to learn to read raws and edit them by hand. It is not that feature rich yet and it won’t allow grandma to make mods, but it is simple yet powerful. The only problem that you might have with it is trying to escape the limitations of the engine and editor. Things that I did not code. You can’t build a floor from mushrooms or use a rabbit as a melee weapon or anything out of the ordinary. When I envisioned my project, I thought that it would be fun to one day release it and have some DF fan mod all the DF content into the game out of his free will because he or she misses the DF content. It wouldn’t be that hard with my editor. I never wanted to do it myself because it would be weird to copy all the content and release it officially. And after the backlash that I have been experiencing, even if I change my mind about the subject and I have an army of people demanding this mod, I will not make it myself.
So in conclusion modding should be easier unless you want to do a total conversion that breaks past the limits of the genre.
Development has just started, maybe in time it could be as complex and wonderful as DF but i kinda dont like how his dwarves move at blinding speed...
What I like though is the mouse support....
Blinding speed is a feature, not a bug. Walking is not interesting, doing stuff is. There is a complicated time compression algorithm involved that does not force you to wait after you dwarves. I’ve detailed it in my blog, but long story short: actions that take hours or days can be shortened to fractions of real life seconds. The speed of the game changes dynamically to make the fastest action manageable. In 5 minutes of game play a few days or years can pass. Days if are micromanaging a lot of short tasks, years if your highly automated fortress is building a mega project.
I love the mouse support…
Nonetheless I like that UI. Carving things like statues right out of the rock instead of in a shop is a nice touch, too.
Good UI is a key mission statement of DwarvesH. The game might turn out to be bad, I don’t know, but the UI is going to be stellar.
As for the carving out of things in place, even though I went to great lengths to make things like in DF while I am coding the engine, some things have changed. It would have been a lot easier to make 20-30 random plants and name them “asdf”. There are a lot of small changes that are hard to see if you don’t have access to the game. As time passes, these changes will become more apparent in screenshots and videos.
Why do I get the idea that this is a fake clone created just to troll us?
If this is the case, then it would be and awesomely elaborate troll
. Posting for months on a blog, with increasingly more complex pictures and videos and tons of text. I applaud such a troll! I don’t like trolling, but if such effort went into a trolling attempt, it is infinitely more impressing than “lol, yu pruject suck0rs!!!!!” . Of course, in this case I am not trolling you. Or am I?
it may have something going for it, i can see this being a formidable competitor against dwarf fortress in 2 or three years.
I am only worried about developing something fine right now and do not have a release schedule, but years it is. Something as complex as this can’t be finished in months by a single person.
Lol, I think the only thing Toady will care about is how much of your "from scratch using Stonesense and every term and design from the first 20 minutes of DF" is coming directly from his code. Because signs point to "a lot." I find it really hard to believe he was lazy enough to just call his mushrooms "Plump Helmets", but motivated enough to write his raws.
As said in the intro, no code, data or any resource has been taken form DF. There are no raws involved. And it is not laziness. Doing content at such an early point in development would be waste of time. There is no guarantee that the final product will have plants at all, not to mention “plump helmets”. As for plump helmets, I have formed quite a strong bond with these purple mushrooms from playing DF. I would like to keep them as a tribute or homage to DF, even if I end up changing everything else.
If it's real, the more the merrier.
I think it's rather unoriginal to go with *another* dwarf fort, though. As in, the inspiration is really obvious.
He should change that bit. If it was up to me I'd recommend him to make a sci-fi themed game (something on the lines of "Outpost meets Dwarf Fortress"). That would be nice.
DF is in a genre that is IMO underrepresented. If there are a bunch of games in the genre that I am not aware of, please point me in the right direction. For me, it only makes sense to expand upon this genre.
There will be no sci-fi theme though. But besides dwarves, I have hobbits, demons and mages planed (a race of mages, not an occupation).
As for demons, you will be able to start either a new demon fortress or get a fully functional one and attack a dwarven fortress. Even your own! I would also like to be able to change sides at will, one minute playing as dwarves, one minute as demons. Of course, a seasoned player will be able to tell the outcome of the battle after 10 seconds in the stockpile and army screens for both factions, but that does not mean that this mode won’t be fun.
I'm not going to bash it because its similar to dwarf fortress, but because its a blatant clone. The guy literally just took stuff from DF and made another thing like it, except it uses an isometric interface. While I usualy am all for indie game development (even more when its inspired by DF), it doesn't look like the guy put any effort on this apart from basic coding. Basicaly he just got tons of the most basic elements from dwarf fortress and copypaste'd them on a prettier interface, IE its not a new game, its def a clone.
Assuming its not fake, its not hard to see this guy selling it for gullibe people minecraft style.
Not put any effort except in the coding? Well, you have no idea how much effort went into coding and making sure that the engine runs smooth on any machine. Having 30 FPS on a dirt cheap netbook without hardware graphical acceleration? Smooth scrolling? Making sure that the game uses under 128 rams even on huge maps? Saving those huge maps with thousands of object and dozens of properties each on disk in around 60 KiB? Doing in 2-3 seconds? Figuring out how to rewrite the whole thing with a 3D engine? Compared to this, doing my own original item list and mechanics is a piece of cake.
I also don’t get why the Minecraft crown are gullible? First of all, I don’t think that Minecraft is a DFclone. It is not enough of a game and has nowhere near the depth of DF. I consider it a different genre. And just because you enjoy a certain type of game won’t make you gullible.
Which this guy seems completely oblivious too, even in spirit. That's why I'm annoyed.
Doubled by the fact that, without using Stone Sense, he wouldn't even have anything to show people right now. It's like "Hey, see how well I can put other people's work together with my UI?"
Sure I would. Would it be as pretty or recognizable as with Stonesense tiles? No. Would it be identical in functionality? Yes. I got permission from the authors of Stonesense to use the tiles. While I think they gave me a general permission, I only wanted it for demo purposes. I needed to use something now for screenshots. And I did include disclaimers clearly stating the origin of the tiles up until the moment I got permission. Then I stopped because pasting the same block of text everywhere makes things hard to read. Doing my own graphics would have not made any sense. Again with the early stage of development. If I have done my own graphics, it would have been in vain since now I am doing a 3D engine. Maybe a month from now it will be 4D. Also, out of the seven or so tile sheets, only one contains actual graphics featured in Stonesense. The rest can't be found there, but are left over tiles.
And I hope I am equally good at putting together my work or somebody else’s work in the general context of what my abilities are.
That's not going to stop me from going "so what have you actually done that's original, besides your splash screen?"
The splash screen is not original. It is a placeholder made with out of the box assets from the Irrlicht toolkit used until I get my own dwarves. I should be more careful with politics. But keep in mind that everything that I put out there is to support my development blog. The project does not leave my machines and is not meant to, so I can use any asset. You are free to paint a 100% Mona Lisa replica in the privates of your home. I’m sure a lot of hobby painters have done this with different popular works of art. And you are free to brag to people about it. Only when you try to distribute it the question of ownership arises. My blog is not about "hey, check out my awesome new and original awesome game that totally doesn’t steal from DF". I am documenting the process of development and since some people might read that, I am trying to make it ever so slightly entertaining.
If this guy is actually legit, then maybe it was a little premature to start showing off his excellent copy/pasta skills before he'd gone back and done the actual work that constitutes an original idea. But for someone that sees this project "going in any directions", seems awfully suspect that it shows up here, posted by an EL, instead of in the main DF forums?
EL? Is that Escaped Lunatic? I do not know what these forum titles imply. The reason I don’t post about my project on the forums is clear and simple minimal decency. While my project is not about being a DF clone, it is in the same genre, a genre best represented by DF as far as I am aware. You do not barge into the local best watchmaker’s house to announce and promote you new watch making workshop and claiming that your watches are better. If you are invited to talk about it on the other hand…
The only reason I have a forum account is to keep in touch with the people from Stonesense. And on that thread, I tried to avoid talking openly about my project.
Max makes a good point too. Toady isn't really capable of defending his work the way other developers are. It sort of seems like sometimes people are ok with that fact, and figure "hey, if I have fun, who really cares?" I sort of figure, as fans of this hobby, we owe Toady a little more respect than that.
I mean, the guy even hints he may at some point decide to earn money off this. If that's not insulting to someone who creates for a living, what isn't? If he's actually using Toady's code and wants to make money off it....it's basically Khazad 2.0.
I think we are both in the same pot here. What makes me better able to defend my work? First of all, I would like to spend 100% of my free time dedicated to this project actually working on it, not having to defend it. I have great respect for both the creators of DF, and what better way to show my respect than to promote their genre?
Is there a Khazad 2.0? I am not aware of such a thing. Or was this a figure of speech to illustrate a clear lack of originality in an idea. I explained above about all code being original. I did find the project (Khazad 1.0?) with the help of this forum, and I'm sure that I can do better, even if those few screenshots I found look promising. Anyway, first time I hear about it.
That is reverse engineering. He has seen DF, now is trying to figure out the code behind it. Thats reverse engineering. Breaking into things and trying to decompile the code so you can rip parts out and use them for yourself, is... Hacking? Well not realy, but close.
As said, there was no reverse engineering. It is the same as if you played a game, got a good feeling of what is going on by playing, then went home and started to reproduce something similar. No decompilation or exposure of any level to the game that you have been exposed to. It is like seeing Notepad, going home and writing you own Notepad. You are trying to make an editor of you own design, which may or may not turn out to be similar to Notepad, not figure out the code behind one and replicate that code. Gaining understanding of a game mechanic by exposure to it is a different story.
I would really like to believe there's someone out there that wants to break DF down for noble, fun reasons, and not just to capitalize on Toady's work, make their name as a game creator or eventually whore it out for dollars. Unfortunately, in this guy's case, he's not doing much to allay my concerns. He's not presenting it as a Dwarf Fortress Science Project. Were this not the indie scene, he would already have a lawsuit pending.
First of all, whatever this is or what you are thinking of my project, it is a project of fun for me. I am having trying to reach something that is technically quite impressive, even though it is not that apparent from a few short videos. I have no idea what I can do to lift you concerns or what I did to produce them. While I did not call it or consider it a science project, it could very well be one in its current form. Also, there is no need for me to make a name for myself with this project. And selling something you worked for, even if when working on it you had no desire to sell it is not whoring yourself or your work out. It is just selling something.
Well that's really the question, isn't it? In my mind, showing something that uses as much of DF as his current showing does, just for the sake of putting yourself out there, isn't a good idea. It's not exactly professional, even in the indie world. (In the MOD world that's completely acceptable.)
Doing that and then mentioning your future, purposeful ambiguous financial motives at the same time is a terrible idea.
Well in the world where your value is defined by the code you write, I think it is a good idea. Promoting by it, not so. But I am not promoting, I am documenting. It is professional as the quality of code is excellent in my humble opinion. And everything is reasonably bug free an stable. And the interface is ugly. I am aware of it. I have some awesome looking mock ups for a new interface. I’ll get to it when I feel like it. As I am documenting there is no pressure. The only pressure is to get finish my meshes so I can start posting screenshots again of the new 3D engine.
As for "purposeful ambiguous financial motives", they are not "purposeful", just ambiguous. I don't know what the future of this project will be. But potentially making money is not in itself condemnable from any point of view.
Except in that case, DF isn't showing the game industry how to do it at all, because that's not how DF does it. There's also the fact that DF is very much a niche product. I don't see it being as profitable as something like, say, Minecraft, because it simply isn't as accessible. Niche products do not do well on the market if they need to make significant money, especially in the gaming industry. I'm not implying that being a niche product is a bad thing, just that there's a reason games these days try to appeal to virtually everyone.
I am well aware of the niche appeal of such projects and it doesn't bother me. Actually, I have some original ideas I don't want to talk about right now which are technically stunning if you are a programmer interested in simulations. So if nothing else, I have quite the tech demo brewing here.
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 have touched upon this in the pages above, but this would be a great place to tell you what I am doing right now. You will hate it
. I am starting from a few dozens of objects created by the editor, then procedurally trying to generate 20000 unique items in game. And all are from DF! Then I'll add them all to a map, with between one and 30 of each, getting well over 200000 items. And then see if it all runs smoothly, doesn’t eat up all the RAM or just plain crashes (the most likely outcome). Then I’ll fix everything.
Well, I think it's not actually going to matter, since I believe this guy will give up once he realizes that it took Dr. Adams like six years of working on this thing as his day job to get where the game is now. 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! 
I realize it is a long time commitment.
And no, dwarves do not move one by one. It is time compression doing its magic. I talked about this before. When all 7 dwarves are busy cutting out the soil wall, time moves very fast. It takes hours to dig out a single cell, yet seconds of real time. When one dwarf finishes his task, he starts walking. Time slows down, to accommodate his walking speed. A dwarf could traverse the entire map a few times before the second one finishes digging. So while one of your dwarves is walking, the rest are still digging. Te system is designed to move as slow as to make your shortest task observable on screen. This also means that taking a single step does not take minutes of in game time. It only takes a second. The effect is weird and it can be a confusing feature.
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?
I don't have prepared fly brains in my game. And no flies. Bugs I do have, but they are my own bugs
.
For example, it also almost looks like this clone supports dwarves picking up multiple objects at a time. Can't say for sure though.
No problem here. Dwarves can pick up multiple things at a time, or more precisely one by one in the same tile or different tiles. The scheduler can handle it. It does not work for large objects like logs though because they are too heavy. Dwarves have inventory space and as long there is space, they can pick it up. This means that a dwarf can cut down a bush, take the resulting plants to a table and eat it without going through a bazillion stockpiles, involving a kitchen, a cock, a hauler and manual tweaking of labor. As long as you don’t want to! And no, visual inventory browsing is not done yet but planned.
It seems to me, that eventually DF may spawn a host of DF likes, we've already got at least 2, probably more. What dissapoints me with both this game, and goblin fortress, isnt borrowing the world sim, or colony mangement idea, but that they didnt consider using a new setting. Why not trying making a DF like game about drilling into asteroids to build a space colony?
Logistics. A good part of the charm of the genre is its realism. It is a simulation. Doing something sci-fi would be very complicated. You can make a lot of useful things from wood and stone. See history. It is reasonably realistic. On the other hand, simulating advanced technology is extremely complex. “And now, gather the results of 200 different factories, thousands in number and create your silicone chip factory! Good! Now make 40 more different factories and soon you’ll have a computer!” sure, you can make it simpler, but space stations and colonizing does not involve simple things.
It's exactly that bolded part that bugs me. A professional, even doing amateur work, would have asked. He's all "Lalala doing this, hope you don't care, lalalalala."
In my interpretation I think I am saying exact the opposite of shutting my ears and going "lalalala". I am not "ripping" anything and I don't need permission to create a game in the genre. No one owns a genre. But out of respect for the creators of DF, I added that I might tweak the formula to seem less of a competition if they feel like I am serious threat for their quality of life.
I think the biggest thing that bothers me isn't the fact that he copied so much, it's the fact that he didn't acknowledge everything was inspired by DF until someone brought it up in the comments. That seems a little underhanded to me, and it gives the impression that everything he has on there is original and made by him. That not being the case, he's pretty much being dishonest.
But I have to agree that if something good comes out of this, more power to him. I just dislike how he displayed "his" new creation without even a mention of what it was copying. I think that's the main reason everyone's getting overly dramatic, here, not because some guy decided to copy everything about DF, slap on some graphics and post it on YouTube. He passed off creativity as his own (Or appeared to) until accused of copying.
I was clear about my intentions in the first post. It is clear that I am inspired by DF. It says so on the banner, the first thing you see on the blog. With a large font. On every page! The difference is that you see it a blatant and shameless clone, while I don't. I can't very well start every post by explaining the context of the project. YouTube page is there to serve my blog. People started to ask about features so I took time, added a few features that were not planned yet to get a reasonably long video and posted in on YouTube.
And there were disclaimers both on the blog and on YouTube about the tiles from Stonesese. From day one, not after somebody mention something in the comments.
I predict that this man will be strung by Dwarf Fortress fans, for all the town to see.
If my rhetoric gets off the ground I highly implore this act.
I am not sure I understand what you are trying to say here.
This isn't actually a clone though they've just modded DF slightly, how long do you think it would have taken to actually program a game this similar to df? obviously they just stole code if not the entire game with very slight modifications .
I didn't steal anything. I am not a thief and this can be easily proven. Also, such accusations are pretty serious and you can't throw them around, especially if the scenario you are giving is highly unlikely. There is no way for me to get the code. All code and files are original and done for this project. Except for Stonesense tiles. And even they are similar just by content. The makeup of the tile sheets is completely different.
ugh, i used the wrong term, he hasn't stolen the code he's just taken the game and modded it, theres no way a single person could have reverse engineered so much of DF in a few months, even toady needed more than that to get the 2d version to the point of open beta
Sure there is. And in my free time, while holding an actual job, having normal social obligations for a person of my age and playing video games as a hobby.
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Topic: Dwarf Fortress Clone? (Read 69542 times)