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[Jemeni]

Hey guys, I'm trying to think of ways of making Minecraft more DF like(shoot me if you don't like it) and I think that this is the best place to put this topic
I'm curious about what are the core elements of this overly complex game?
Who knows if I'm successful maybe we can play a better game (imagine seeing all of your nobles and goblins burning in magma and seeing that bronze colossus's head flying across the land with a fluffy wambler right behind it).

[Gatleos]

Are you... modding Minecraft? Programming your own game? What do you mean, exactly?

[Jemeni]

Sorry if that wasn't clear, I'm modding minecraft. I don't have the drive to make my own game.

And I'm trying to figure out what gameplay elements make dwarf fortress well dwarf fortress. I'm not sure how to explain further. I just want to basically make minecraft more like dwarf fotress as many people over in the minecraft community have asked for it and I think I can do it.

[C27]

How many possible ways does the Minecraft engine provide for things to go spectacularly, horribly wrong? There's your answer.

[Jemeni]

True true. Although I believe that thats a setup that the player creates trying to abuse the system.

[C0NNULL]

I had looked into Minecraft a bit before I found home/DF, so I only have the general idea of the game.

You are asking for the core elements of this game in ways that are probably really hard or simple to explain.

If I've got it right, both are sandboxes and you can dig and build, &c. So, what are you missing in MC?

Does MC have fingers and toes? Spleens? (Vanilla or modded.) Can a nut-job get married to a drunken fool who has a friend, and then see said friend die, and tell his wife about said tragedy, thus causing the wife to go insane and try to kill her child, (for which offense she'll probably get hammered)?

Read some of the stories in the Hall of Legends to see some of what makes up the core of this game. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=89305.0

There are 3d-ish viewers here for those that want it. (Stonesense, Overseer) Neither are an interface, mind you, and apologies if you knew that.


And I am semi-new, and have never set things up to go horribly wrong/modded. Things just go majestically wrong as a matter of course.

[Jemeni]

Sorry to anybody that took offense to the player being the root of the collapse of course.

And I thank you very much as I believe that will help greatly.

From what little input I have though it seems that the best part of the game is not something that was intended, but all the stuff that goes horribly wrong. If that is the case then I know where to start looking and implementing features.

[Scarpa]

Dwarf Fortress has emergent behavior, and I think that is the root of it's appeal for most beyond typical sandbox features. It is certainly a common cause of !!Fun!!

[dorf]

What mode will you try to incorporate in MC? Adventure or fortress mode?
Fortress mode seems hard to manage in MC. How would you handle the camera view and dorf management?

[Buttery_Mess]

What does OP mean 'overly complex'? If anything, DF isn't complex enough.

[MrWiggles]

Well, DF aims to be a fantasy world simulator.

In Fortress mode, you create your own fortress, and manage it from the ground up. You deal with the issues that arrise. Most of them are predictable but their extract details will very enough, where it causes you react.

It has emergent unexpected behavior, that keeps you coming back to it. These things keep popping up on their own.

Like, I was watching a kitty once, it followed its dorf to its bedroom, stayed in the room for a bit, and went away afterward.

Then there was a dog, whose owner died. The dog went to the spot, where the owner died, their room, and to his grave. And it just made me sad to see the doggy do that.

Then more recently, I had a cage of birds. They fly around the room they were in. That was unexpected but cool. Then I started to notice, that the number of birds of lowering. I couldnt figure out why. Little bit later, I notice a cat in the room. So I watched. A bird would fly out, the cat would hunt it. I just marveled at that behavior. It was awesome.

So on so on

The game allows for to have so much freedom, from its depth of continuing growing details. And even though you can predict, handle in large sweep what the game provides, its the details that you cant predict, that causes the fun.
=======
But yea, I dont think you can do that in Minecraft at all. It lacks the capability for the complex reactions. It lacks the depth. It cant even handle water very well. It can barely do biomes.

[Jemeni]

Ok so you guys are all saying that DF is so complex for MC...right now...But what about the older versions? Could someone who has played a very old version tell me some things about the gameplay.

I don't believe that a DF and MC hybrid wouldn't work. In fact I believe that it would be very hard to do and would require a very in depth knowledge of both games and the mechanics behind them to do so, which would take a long time and a lot of motivation. At first it could just start off as a single player game with no NPC's then as a system is worked out more complex and DF style(including the idiocy) dwarves could be created and successfully integrated in the game.

The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.

[dorf]

I don't know what kind of modding freedom you have in MC (from what I've seen, quite a lot?), but I'm sure you could translate quite a few DF aspects over to MC.
The main question is, are you willing to devote time to it?

I suppose you could start with spawning a woodcutter dwarf (I've already seen AI woodcutters on youtube) and indirectly telling him to cut down trees.
Implement stockpiles (use chests?).
Implement the carpenter profession and his workshop.
Construct a workshop.
Make a wooden door.
Construct a wooden door.

If you can integrate these goals nicely, I'm pretty sure you can get quite far with this idea!

[Jimmy]

Part of what makes DF so appealing is the control system. Not the physical UI (we all agree it needs major work) but the core of playing as the spirit of the fortress, queuing orders and watching as your dwarves follow or fail to follow them. Minecraft is a first person Lego sim. You can mine, you can build, there's magma and water in both, but that's where the similarities end.

I think the most defining difference between the games is style. DF aims to have incredible complexity and cater to the target audience of one person, Toady. Minecraft is a team effort and aimed at becoming a commercial success, using simple controls and rich graphics. Nothing wrong with enjoying both, each has a place on my desktop, but trying to build DF inside Minecraft is like trying to build a nuclear reactor inside an Easy-Bake oven.

[Jiopaba]

but trying to build DF inside Minecraft is like trying to build a nuclear reactor inside an Easy-Bake oven.

That was beautiful.

Still, nuclear reactors are actually very safe these days.  I don't think it quite encapsulates just how likely your fortress is to meltdown and kill everything at any given point.  Perhaps an old Russian nuclear reactor?  Or a magnetically-contained block of antimatter six inches to a side suspended in vacuum.