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[noodle0117]

Considering the rate at which technology grows, and assuming Toady continues to develop the game on a regular basis, what do you guys think Dwarf Fortress will be like 10 years later?

[Hiiri]

Agh, it consumes the universe, DF becomes self-aware etc etc.. I think there have been plenty of topics on this already

[Vercingetorix]

Shoot, I can't predict what it'll look like in ten months, let alone ten years.

[Chessrook44]

Still ASCII characters running around, I'd say.

[Grimlocke]

Very much depends on how well the games original desing works out, according to Toady it will soon show some of that with one of the later caravan arc updates.

Though graphics wise, mostly the same. Unless Toady finishes before those 10 years and decides to improve the graphics a bit.

[Orkel]

Highly doubt DF will be in development in 10 years anymore. But who knows. I'm expecting DF to reach its peak (version 1) in 5 years or so but only time will tell.

[Ahrimahn]

Slaves To Armok: God Of Blood 3: Dwarf Kingdom: Histories Of Greed and Hard Work.

[Jeoshua]

I'd say that in 10 years, Dwarf Fortress will have been completed.  It will be a 2d ASCII game overlying a volumetric 3d world represented in blocks.  Toady will have thought of everything you could realistically do in the world, and the difference between Fortress and Adventure modes will merely be whether you're playing The Hand Of God or a specific individual... but you'll be able to do the same things either way, and in certain circumstances jump between modes.

Start a Fortress, populate it, and hone it until it is self-sufficient.  Then, once a Land Holder comes you'll have the option of turning the government of the fort over to them, "NPCifying" the fort and allowing you to select an individual Dwarf to become a Wanderer, Scout, or Beast Hunter as the case may be.

There will be many 3rd party utilities and interfaces that spring up once Toady has decided he is done with the game in full and releases as much of the API as he feels is necessary for people to continue modding the game.  Mods at this time will be very extensive, and will range from simple tweaks to complete conversions of the game.  The base game's simulationist tendencies will make it lend itself very easily to conversions of all kinds, from Fantasy to Post Apoc to Sci-Fi, anything so long as it takes place on the surface of one planet/world/dimension.

As far as the 3rd party interfaces go, there will be, after a number of years once active development of the engine ceases, Isometric frontends for Fortress Mode, and possibly first person conversions for adventuring.  The First person modes will seem to be quite simple at first, due to the turn-based environment and block-based volumes.  However, since development of them will be every bit as much a work of love that the making of the game itself was, they will be very functional, and probably play alot like the old Ultima Games... only with more depth.

So basically the game itself will take on more complexity and depth, but graphically will stay much the same, with the possible exception of showing more z-levels at once time and divorcing itself from the 16-color ANSI-like mode it's in.  I'd like to say that it will become Truecolor Unicode TTF based, but that might just be a dream.

[Capntastic]

Toady's gonna rebuild everything from the ground up in VRML

[EmperorJon]

10 years? Hmm, caravan arc might be finished by then. 

[Capntastic]

I'm expecting DF to reach its peak (version 1) in 5 years or so but only time will tell.

As someone who's been here following development since 2006,

[NW_Kohaku]

Let me see, the caravan arc will take at least a year, the military arc and personality rewrites and other odd things Toady has been brooding over combined should take another 2.  All the adventurer stuff on the devpage, probably another year on top of that.  Then we get into the ESV stuff.

I'm going to say that Toady finally reworks the stacking and hauling system, which takes a year, and then spends the next two years debugging all the problems that caused, maybe reworking fluids or pathfinding at some point around there, as well.  (After all, the jump to .31.01 involved a year and a half rewriting material properties and body types that changed a basic under-the-hood function of the game, and only adding a few new functions to the game, and then he spent about a year working on nothing but crashbugs those changes caused without adding much of anything new to the game until 31.18...)

Take up the leftover two years on other ESV-related topics.  I expect the mechanics like moving fortress pieces and farming are going to be coming sooner than some of the other ESV stuff, because Toady has been dropping lots of hints about reworking those two things lately.

So basically, I expect Toady to be about halfway through the ESV-related stuff, and only mostly done with the "Short-Term Goals" on the "new" devpage in 10 years.

All throughout this time, once every three months, a topic about "where will the game be in 10 years" will come up, and people will talk about the game gaining sentience, and how it will HAVE to be done by that time.  We will also still be arguing over what the magic system should involve, and there will be fierce arguments over whether dwarves should be steampunk or not.

[Jeoshua]

Dwarves should not be steampunk, in the sense that they should not be Victorian Autocrats who use Steam-powered everything to do things.  They should, however, use steam powered crafts, and be very mechanist in nature.

The difference is in the feel of the game, not in their level of tech.

[Cruxador]

Dwarves should not be steampunk, in the sense that they should not be Victorian Autocrats who use Steam-powered everything to do things.  They should, however, use steam powered crafts, and be very mechanist in nature.

The difference is in the feel of the game, not in their level of tech.

Steam power is not slated to go in any time soon. When/if it eventually does go in it will be optional due to the large amount of people who don't like it. Same as sewage.

[Dakk]

Actualy toady stated he's not interested in adding stuff like steam or firearms. Altough I think he mentioned adding explosives.

Guns existed way before steam was used as a power source, and gunpowder existed way before it was used in firearms, which I think fits into the tech era Toady wants DF to be limited to.