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[steakbbq]

I really love dwarf fortress but I feel like toady is smothering it with his own selfishness. I have seen the kind of money he makes from donations, not sure of anything recent but he made 15k in donations in one month a couple years ago. If he really loved this game he would take that money and invest it into hiring coders that could really make this game into something epic.

I can understand that he wants to do it his way or w/e but there is so much shit that is just not getting done because its only 1 person working on it.

I dont event trade because I dont feel like scrolling through a list of a thousand different things I dont even want to trade for. The ui is horrible. Every different screen has a different way it works. This is just terrible bipolar coding. He doesnt care about that though, he would rather add necromancers. As I see it this game is going no where fast. If he were to open it up and become serious it could be one of the most amazing games ever.

I have this picture in my head of a 3d world where you dont have to use your imagination like a tool. You have to use your imagination WAY to much for this game. Combat is stupid, it needs more feedback. I can imagine a game where you see the creatures swinging and hitting or missing limbs, limbs being cut off, heads bashed in and not just some bullshit blinking squares..

I know I will probably get flamed but I dont really care.

Toady you are ruining this game.

And for those of you that say, its his game he can do what he wants.. that may be the case but 90% of people that start a business are fired from their company within the first 2 years because they start destroying it.

Just saying, if this was a company you started and you were doing things the way you are, You would be ejected from the company faster then you could collect your unemployment check.

Do you think he would try to sue or something if someone made a game just like dwarf fortress?

[Neonivek]

Do you think he would try to sue or something if someone made a game just like dwarf fortress?

To my knowledge no.

But good luck. A LOT of people have said this but they are all dead... DEAD!

[steakbbq]

I am a little less ticked off now, I read the article done for the new york times and I can really appreciate what he is trying to do.

I just have this picture in my head of how much more awesome this game could be with a professional team backing him.

Maybe eventually I can make my own version of DF

[Bohandas]

And for those of you that say, its his game he can do what he wants.. that may be the case but 90% of people that start a business are fired from their company within the first 2 years because they start destroying it.

That's WHY he is so adamant about limiting Bay12 to just him and his brother. He's not STUPID like the people in your example, because he chose a business model in which his business is not publicly traded or primarily owned by some venture capitalist and thus it is impossible for him to be forced out.

[simonthedwarf]

You cant pressurize Art and expect it to be high quality, spontanous and a inventive experience within a commercial business model.. you can't divide a whole and redirect parts of it to something else and expect it to be the same, aspire to the same.

You can't say "Well if.." because its pointless in this case, other than half-hearted scorning attempts at swaying one person's point of view

Make peace with yourself and your expectations. I've only played df for around three months. I too have gone through this phase of madness, of despair.

Knowing the video game industry, and I suspect both you and me have some knowledge of it, mr steakbbq, since we both get inspired and hungry for more DF by playing the game, you have to admit that "big game corporations" dont neccessarily mean "good game corporations".

There's no straight line between $ and $$ that equals heightened quality. Maybe those little quirks we like in DF are not only the efforts of one man, but derived from his special traits as well. We can multiply manpower and resources, but we can't really pay to multiply a vision, or the speed of which a vision becomes a part of DF. Time is money, but you can't really buy time!

If you want DF to get released faster.. make a clone of Toady One. Toady Two!

I mean if you're really wanting to bring in the big bucks

[Fairin]

obvious troll is obvious

if you don't like his vision, feel free to move on

i'd love an update. i'd love this to be 3d

not to mention multiplayer

ascii graphics are not my thing either but that's what graphic mods are for =(^.-.~)=

but telling a man his dream is wrong cause hes not doing it your way...

[Neonivek]

obvious troll is obvious

Please lets not devolve into this kind of conversation.

He's not STUPID like the people in your example

Such as that.

Look the complaint that Toady is limiting his game's potential by not using the donation money to hire some professionals (Ignoring that they would eat their way through it quite fast...) is a legitimate one and should be respected as a valid veiwpoint if you agree with it or not.

Don't get me wrong, Disagree, heck strongly disagree... Just chill out.

[Urist Mcinternetuser]

I disagree with you when you say he is ruining the game. Sure with other developers he could work faster, but he would also have to pay them, and he doesn't seem to earn that much via donations. Also he is making some clear progress, especially with towns, which is a good base for other features. Wait, holy shit March 28th, I guess I didn't realize how long it had been?

[sockless]

He's not a troll, he's making a perfectly sensible suggestion, or to him it is.

I have this picture in my head of a 3d world where you dont have to use your imagination like a tool. You have to use your imagination WAY to much for this game. Combat is stupid, it needs more feedback. I can imagine a game where you see the creatures swinging and hitting or missing limbs, limbs being cut off, heads bashed in and not just some bullshit blinking squares..

You probably don't read many books then...

I hate to be an arse, but Toady doesn't make that much money, 15k in a month was a once off.

Also, what Toady is doing is coding in all the aspects of the game, then coming back to fix some of the more fundamental issues with the game, or at least that's what it looks like. Toady couldn't possible afford to hire a team of programmers, he gets less money from donations than he'd need to pay just one programmer, never mind himself.

You need to think of DF as a work of art. Imagine if Michelangelo had help painting the Sistine Chapel, imagine if De Vinci had help painting the Mona Lisa, imagine if Beethoven had help composing Fur Elise, Chopin with Fantasia. You get the picture. This game is essentially Tarn Adams' life work, his odyssey, his epic.

Toady wouldn't care if you made a clone, hell, look at Goblin Camp. Toady doesn't do this for the money, he just doesn't want people claiming his work as theirs, so feel free to get inspiration from the game, but give due credit.

You don't want to make a clone anyway, you want to make a DF-like game, like how Goblin Camp is DF-like, but very different at the same time.

[peskyninja]

Toady you are ruining this game.

If you think toady is ruining the game,study and become a math genius yourself then create a game,stop complaining about how late the update is,Toady is never late!

I have this picture in my head of a 3d world where you dont have to use your imagination like a tool. You have to use your imagination WAY to much for this game. Combat is stupid, it needs more feedback. I can imagine a game where you see the creatures swinging and hitting or missing limbs, limbs being cut off, heads bashed in and not just some bullshit blinking squares..

Young people,always impatient...This game still on alpha.
 

I know I will probably get flamed but I dont really care.

And if don't care why the heck you wasted your time, by writing, and my time by reading this?

I just have this picture in my head of how much more awesome this game could be with a professional team backing him.

Try searching this: Brook's law.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later"

And finally,why did you posted this on the suggestion area?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Yes, Toady One has good months. However, he also has bad months, and a lot of average months. He isn't living in a mansion eating syrup roasts and occasionally typing a few lines of code, like the OP seems to suggest (albeit perhaps on a lesser scale). He works hard and makes a living.

But let's imagine he tried that. Hm, someone once compared his programming style to ripping apart the code and putting it back together. That doesn't sound like the kind of thing the average professional programmer would find easy to get through. Oh, and the programmers would possibly try to insist on stuff like a less steep learning curve/less goriness/etc, to make it appeal more to a wider audience and not "taint" their name. Oh, and t would also make DF no longer a one-man operation. Minor thing, I guess, but still...

In short, I can't think of a good reason to do this, and can think of good reasons not to.

[TheSummoner]

Toady you are ruining this game.

And for those of you that say, its his game he can do what he wants.. that may be the case but 90% of people that start a business are fired from their company within the first 2 years because they start destroying it.

Just saying, if this was a company you started and you were doing things the way you are, You would be ejected from the company faster then you could collect your unemployment check.

You say that as if it's a good thing. Dwarf Fortress is Toady's brainchild. His vision, his project, his creation. His priority seems to be keeping creative control over the game he came up with and built from scratch. So long as he can maintain that control, the game remains pure to his idea of what it should be. If his way of assuring he keeps control is to singlehandedly develope the damn thing and devote countless hours of his own life to bettering the game, so be it.

DF is far from perfect... There are plenty of bugs (though none make the game unplayable) and the interface definately needs some work. It's also an alpha... An unfinished game... One that we're lucky to even have the ability to play at all considering how early in development it is. You don't like the ascii graphics? Either download a graphics pack or suck it up. Personally, I prefer them. A bunch of g's and k's and e's running around attacking smiley faces is better than squinting to try to make out the difference between a bunch of tiny 12x8 pixel sprites. And yes, you have the option of changing the tile size (I personally use a 12x12 tileset because I prefer things to be square), but the larger you make them, the less you can see in the game world at any given time. Graphics do not make a game good, and whether or not you like the default ascii is not a valid argument against the game. Combat is fine. Have you ever played a RTS? The way combat is handled in Fortress mode isn't much different. Hell, atleast DF has the novelty of using a complicated wound system rather than going a hitpoint system where there is no difference between full HP and 1 HP.

Who the hell do you think you are to say he's ruining the game?

[Bohandas]

Toady you are ruining this game.

And for those of you that say, its his game he can do what he wants.. that may be the case but 90% of people that start a business are fired from their company within the first 2 years because they start destroying it.

Just saying, if this was a company you started and you were doing things the way you are, You would be ejected from the company faster then you could collect your unemployment check.

You say that as if it's a good thing. Dwarf Fortress is Toady's brainchild. His vision, his project, his creation. His priority seems to be keeping creative control over the game he came up with and built from scratch. So long as he can maintain that control, the game remains pure to his idea of what it should be. If his way of assuring he keeps control is to singlehandedly develope the damn thing and devote countless hours of his own life to bettering the game, so be it.

That's what I said. By not being beholden to the stockmarket or some faustian compact with some venture capitalist(s) or software comglomerate he ensures that he cannot be put into a situation in which he can be kicked out of his own project.

[EnigmaticHat]

You should play the original Armok.  It was like DF, except fully 3D, and Toady abandoned it (as far as I can tell) because it was a mess that was very difficult to add anything to.  The simple graphics let Toady (and modders) work quickly because every new creature or item doesn't require an entire new 3D model, animations, and textures, on top of all the detailed body definitions the system already requires.

Besides, Toady isn't working slowly.  Big development teams with millions of dollars of funding often work for years to produce nothing more than an incremental improvement on a system that already existed (example: pretty much any conventional FPS in the last few years).  Toady, on the other hand, is working on his own with modest income and no existing engine, and he's already accomplished several things that would be remarkable in any other game.  If any game had featured DF's detailed medical system, or a randomly generated fantasy world with simulated geography and history, or a system that lets a single modder turn a fantasy game into a modern zombie apocalypse, at the time those features were in DF, it would have been lauded as innovative even if the rest of the game had sucked.  DF has all of those things, and they're just bullets on a long list of features.

The conclusion I've reached is that Toady's way is better, and if he tried to do things like everyone else did we'd end up with another pretty, mediocre copycat game with a fat price tag.

[TomTheDwarf]

maybe if this was a company like that then he would be kicked out. but it isn't. this is his personal project, that he does because he loves to. he does what he wants. and if he was replaced, then not only would those new people make it something you pay for, and make it less original. And please be more respectful.

EDIT: you have to use your imagination way too much? wow.