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[ravaught]

I don't understand what game source, forks, creative control, debugging, UI, begging(the good kind if someone doesn't know what I mean to convey), donation systems, or what DF is.

Regards,
Tony

That's what I read.

You know, my post was at least thoughtful and well thought out. I also didn't stoop to mocking or insulting anyone. Yes, I understand game source code/forks/creative control/debugging/UI's are. Toady is not the only game dev on the planet, and DF is not the only game out there.

Your argument(or rather mocking criticism that is completely lacking an argument) about donations is rather funny, though. See, if DF and the 'donations' that it brings in was not Toady's sole means of support at the moment, then you might very well be correct in that I am mistaken about the donation system. I haven't read or heard Toady begging.  I have seen him ask for money and offer something in return. By definition, that is not begging. It's bartering. It's trading services and/or goods for money. In short, it's business.

Lastly, what DF IS is a bunch of code assembled in such a way that it performs specific operations. What DF means is different for everyone. For Toady, it's his life's work, his hobby, his income, his passion, perhaps even his dream. I can't say because I am not him and I can't put words in his mouth. For me, it is a simulation game that I thoroughly enjoy, enough so that I am willing to give my hard earned money to support it. For others, its a way to kill some time an unwind. It's different for everyone, just like most games.

So, FallingWhale, please make a logical, rational, reasonable reply. You don't have to agree with me, but comments like that are .. well.. juvenile.

Regards,
Tony

**edited for typos**

[FallingWhale]

I have been reading over these posts, and I see a lot of truth and a lot of garbage on both sides of the fence. So, let's see if we can do some sanity checking here...

First, let's get this out of the way, as it is DF WILL be stolen. It is not a question of if, it is a question of when, and that is if NOTHING  changes. I looked at the DwarvesSH sight and it is quite obvious that project is going to die a horribly ugly death, but it only serves to prove the OPs point that Toady Keeping the cards close to his chest solves nothing. Regardless of whether Toady is closed source, open source, a AAA Publishing Company or the Lone Ranger, if someone wants his code, they will get it. Pure and simple. That is not even an argument.

That also eliminates a few other arguments, such as forking. Footkerchief, I hate to break it to you, but your argument on this has already been shot in the foot. Forks have cropped up and failed already. They will crop up again and fail. And they will keep doing this until someone succeeds BECAUSE THE SOURCE IS ALREADY OUT THERE. It may not be pretty, and it may not be the latest and greatest that is available, but its roots are already out there. The only way to stop that is to have a dev cycle that is rapid enough to leave them choking on your bits wondering how the hell you did it, and to have a game that is so blindingly awesome that creates its own gravity, drawing "potential fans" in.

I also agree with the OP that the dev cycle will continue to slow until it simply stops. No matter how much resolve Toady shows, that is inevitable. I have nothing but respect and admiration for the man, but I have not succumbed to hero worship yet. As a game designer, I can still look at this project objectively and see with a fair amount of certainty what the future will be for it if the path doesn't change.

Toady doesn't want to work with other people. Wonderful!! But ultimately, HE ALREADY IS!! So that argument loses all weight. He works with this community. He works with his alpha testers. He works with the people doing the DF Talks. He works with the large volume of people submitting feedback and bug reports. He works with the media when he does an interview. All this crap about 'Toady is an island' and 'DF is Toady's Baby' is garbage to begin with. Toady quit being an island the instant he took the first suggestion or criticism or bug report regarding DF. And DF quit being 'his baby' the second he took a dollar from anyone as a contribution. Toady is the driving force and retains creative control. Super, but all that other is a load of forgotten beast extract.

Toady is a self-employed entrepreneur. Toady is selling a product, even if only via donations. Telling yourself and others anything else is a lie. Toady gives out free samples of his product in order to generate enough interest that not only will more people play, but more people will donate. The only difference between his model and that of publishers like Zynga is that Zynga gives you in game items for your 'donations' and Toady gives you art. And even that is not 100% true now since he added creatures to the game in exchange for donations.

DF is Toady's BUSINESS. You say as much when you call it his livelihood. If this is his life's work; if this is his livelihood; and if this is his business, then in his head it has to become larger than himself and his own preferences or personal grievances about working with others. That is not a criticism against Toady, it is just the way the world works.

Not only that, but from a more human and objective standpoint, no one in their right mind would expect that the contributions will remain at this same level or better for the rest of Toady's life. That means that either Toady has to sacrifice his life on the altar of DF, or he will eventually have to find another means to support his life.(Wife/Kids/Cars/House/etc) They may not be that important to him at the moment, but to expect that he will never meet someone and get that familiar urge to settle with someone is as ludicrous as it is shortsighted. To expect that this person or change in lifestyle, whomever and whatever it may be, will not only support the growing expenses but still willingly allow Toady to sacrifice all of his time to DF is equally ludicrous and shortsighted.
By identifying these future problems and setting things up in such a way that he is prepared not only financially, but time wise, Toady will be protecting his 'life's work' and his livelihood while opening up the possibility for him to have a life outside of DF.

I guess to wrap this up, I will say this. I have great respect and admiration for Toady and his ability as a one game designer to another. However, he has made the choice to step into the realm of being a professional game designer, and that means he has to be objective and critical, not only about his game and his vision, but about the methodologies he uses to make them a reality. A great game is not about the code, or the designer, it is about the players. Players are a notoriously fickle bunch, and things like long dev cycles, bugs, poor UI's, and such will eventually take them elsewhere, no matter how much they may love the game. 

Regards,
Tony

At this point no one wants to spend the weeks it would take to figure out Toady's code then decompile it. Handing someone the code would just make it easy enough to be worth stealing.

Those aren't forks nor is the source out in the open.

The dev cycle is not slowing down as much as I think you believe it is. The focus is actually moving to things you aren't looking at. And given the fact that you've only been here for a few months you seem to be missing how much slower this used to be. Unless you are a designer at Valve, or place of similar mentality (which I doubt) you wouldn't understand what's going on here.

Okay, here's where you cross into 'you are moron(technical term of course)' territory; relying on other people as bug testers has nothing to do with creative control or letting others code. How you made that connection after claiming to be a game designer is beyond me.

Micro transactions have nothing to do with how donation supported games work; once again doubting game design job. To get pedantic he's selling drawings not a game.

He feels no need to make DF bigger than himself, his brother, and his helper monkeys. Why do you think he would?

Frankly none of us know how he wants to live, he does say he's happy, and I can believe that. You seem to be missing what people will do for their masterwork.

Yes, after 6 years of improved game we're all going to leave because the UI is awkward if you haven't used it before.

You know, my post was at least thoughtful and well thought out.

No, it was long winded, condescending drivel.

[Starhero]

Wow.....

Really, I am not sure how to state what I want to state.

This ,was not only the most interesting, but by far the most calmly ,almost but never quite flaming, thread I have ever seen in the entirety of the internet.

Which to me, means something....it means you lot are my cup of tea.

There are facts in this thread, but there are also facts we all need to just accept.
Toady is not getting a a dev team
Toady is not open sourcing DF unless something tragic happens, or he actually gives it up for what ever reason he thinks is legit enough for him.

Guess what? THAT'S OK!

Toady may view this as a business now, as one before stated, but I am sure this was just a project long ago, for what ever reason it was he started it; Wanting to play a game that didn't exsist? I have those moments also, but I lack even the slightest clue on how to go about trying to make the game I  wanna play.

Toady, did it seems, and we have to admire that. Well you don't have to, I really couldn't care less what you admire, but I do. He also seems to have the willpower to make it happen, and to TELL HIS OWN FANS NO! You might not like that, but in the end we will all be enjoying whatever he calls 'completed'.

Is there the fear of a copycat? Hell yes! Is it high? Hell no! Why? The same reason someone else posted, it would need to be as complex as DF and no AAA publisher is gonna wanna work on that, AND have flashy graphics with a short dev cycle. It's just not gonna happen until we can actually tell our computer build the dream game for us, which is probably not in our lifetime, or his for that matter.

Indie devs will get annoyed, frustrated, depress, or just plain out bored in trying to do all of what he is doing.
There will be spin offs tho, and some will be dam good! But nothing will kill this community, unless it has the same complexity as DF + modding. That again is a lot of work. We will all come back to DF in the end, Tarn "Toady" Adam's Dwarf Fortress. Not EA's, not paradox's GoD.

BTW this is not unheard of, indie devs not doing anything with other people.

www.wurmonline.com

That is a game that is, eh...minecraft on crack if you will with out the aesthetics of MC.
It's where Notch came from actually, the last thing he worked on. I watched this game since 2004 popping in it from time to time to see what has changed and the progression...Then about 2 years ago I started playing it hardcore with some friends.

Guess what? The server side code is only to be seen by the creators eyes who is rolf. Hell that is the reason why notch didn't wanna  work with him anymore! So he quit.

Numerous times (as with here) have fans and nerd fans tried to volunteer to help with the game, to fix terrible bugs, to optimize.
Numerous times has the community asked for Rolf Janssen to PLEASE higher a server side team, hell even a good client side team.
Wurmonline has been around for 8 years! It's not dead! There is ONE copy called Xyson. HELL THERE EVEN IS A PRIVATE SERVER... seriously lacking in updates though.

DF is safe, I don't question it, right now at least. If Tarn believes it is in danger, I am sure he will think of something to save it. If not, OH WELL! This is his game, he can do what he wants. He made this FOR HIMSELF! If a game comes out that is exactly like DF but is also 3000x times better, I think he would finally have the game he wanted to play, and so maybe, DF WILL die or better yet become OOS.

Other point: I agree this game needs some serious polishing, there are bugs, there is definitely performance issues.

Now, don't you all have a fort to take care of?

BTW: I read this ENTIRE thread, every last word. Again this was the most entertaining intellectual forum thread I have ever seen on the internet. Kudos!

I would like to also state that I do agree this game needs a dev team, or at least voluteers. Open source...well...Though I have learned somethings from this thread about some differnt licenesses, I would still not wanna release my life's work for someone else s creational pleasure.

This is just how humans work....we are greedy and like thing the way we want them. This isn't inherently evil,selfish or wrong.

[jhxmt]

Toady's desired outcome: enjoy working on DF.
Current status of outcome: being achieved.
Need to change: nothing.

Players' desired outcome: varies, but the open-source/get-a-dev-team side's desired outcome appears to be a finished game.
Current status of outcome: unlikely to happen for years.
Need to change: possibly open-sourcing or getting-a-dev-team, or any of the other previous suggestions in this thread.

...which is where the disconnect is.  Because Toady's goal appears (quite laudably) to be "enjoy working on this wonderfully spiderweb-complicated piece of art", which he's achieving.  He doesn't need (in terms of achieving this goal) a dev team, or to go open source, or to care about pale imitators or forks, or even maintaining the player base he currently has.  He just has to care about working on the game.  Even if it gets massively, hugely, overly complicated and cumbersome to update over time, he may not care - the act of working on it is what he enjoys.  That's it.  End of line.  And good for him for that.

Sure, eventually that enjoyment might result in the game being 'complete'...for a given definition of 'complete'.  But really, I doubt that will happen - and I actually think that's a good thing.  Given that someone else referenced Leonardo da Vinci earlier, this quote seems apt: "Art is never finished, only abandoned."

[ravaught]

At this point no one wants to spend the weeks it would take to figure out Toady's code then decompile it. Handing someone the code would just make it easy enough to be worth stealing.

Apparently the OP felt up to the task. Also, there are things like non-disclosure agreements, copyright laws, usage licenses and things for a reason.

Those aren't forks nor is the source out in the open.

I didn't say that the clones, or ripoffs were forks. I said that the argument against forking was invalid because the source code can be decompiled from binary that has been released to the general public. While a fork might crop up due to creative differences if Toady released source code under a GNU/GPL, forking would not be an issue with a well written license(since by definition forking uses some/all of the original source code, it would be a copyright violation and licensing violation, both of which would leave the person doing it open to litigation). Derivatives, cloning, copying, or otherwise attempting to recreate DF is already an issue. My point was that while Toady is truly inspired and no doubt a genius, there is nothing that one genius working alone can create that 50 genius's working together can not reverse engineer, recreate, and make better in less time with fewer bugs. And trust me, AAA developers have plenty of geniuses lying around. GoD may not have the complexity of DF, but it doesn't need to. Only a very, very small minority of gamer's are actually that concerned with the complexity if the complexity takes away from FUN. And if the complexity is bug riddled, graphically unappealing, and saddled with a admittedly terrible UI, the vast majority would gladly give up the complexity to get those other things right. DF is, and always will be IMHO an amazing game. Simply phenomenal. But if the vast majority of players can not break over the hurdles to actually get to where they are having FUN, then there is a problem.

The dev cycle is not slowing down as much as I think you believe it is. The focus is actually moving to things you aren't looking at. And given the fact that you've only been here for a few months you seem to be missing how much slower this used to be. Unless you are a designer at Valve, or place of similar mentality (which I doubt) you wouldn't understand what's going on here.

It has been nearly a year since the last release(March of 2011). While that is not an extremely long time, it is pretty long in the terms of the game industry, when the majority of games are COMPLETED in cycles of 1-3 years. I am not saying that Toady should, could, or must release a completed game. I am saying that because it is a one man Dev team, and because of the complexity of DF, his dev cycle will get slower, and slower. And even if he does get back on track with releasing relatively often, at some point he has to make a trade off between time spent fixing bugs and time spent making more cool stuff. Personally, I would like to see Toady creating more cool stuff. Again, just my opinion, you don't need/have to agree with/like it.

Okay, here's where you cross into 'you are moron(technical term of course)' territory; relying on other people as bug testers has nothing to do with creative control or letting others code. How you made that connection after claiming to be a game designer is beyond me.

I never said that Toady has given up creative control. I said that working with others as bug testers, alpha testers, and the media means that he IS WORKING WITH OTHERS despite claims that he doesn't want to work with others. Letting others code also does not mean that Toady has to give up any creative control, or that he has to accept any inferior coding style. That is what SVN trunks and branches are for. No code that was not explicitly approved by Toady would ever have to be added to the trunk. What it WOULD do, is allow people with perhaps more experience in certain types of solutions to present their solutions to Toady. In essence, Toady would be increasing his knowledge base. I am not even saying he has to do it, only that it would be a wise decision IMHO. 

Micro transactions have nothing to do with how donation supported games work; once again doubting game design job. To get pedantic he's selling drawings not a game.

Yes, he sells drawings and story lines, but you also seem to have missed that he sold in game creatures to sponsors. Micro-transactions do not necessarily have to be for in game items. They can also be for meta-game items of for merchandise whose proceeds go to support a FTP game, such as the artwork. At best, Bay12Games could be considered a not-for-profit organization with Tarn as its salaried president. But even that designation is beating around the bush of what it really is, which is a business. When you sell art(products), story lines(services), and in-game items(creatures/digital products), and give away something else for free, that is still a business. In fact, it is almost the precise business model of every FTP/micro-transaction game on the market. Again, this is not a slight or a criticism. It is a business decision that I can respect and get behind because you are letting your audience pay what they think the game is worth.

He feels no need to make DF bigger than himself, his brother, and his helper monkeys. Why do you think he would?

I didn't presume to put words in Toady's mouth. I stated that DF needed to become bigger than himself because it is his livelihood, because there is a need to secure that livelihood and lifestyle for the future if that is what he wants to do for his life. Basically, rather than wait for the shit to hit the fan and all of a sudden DF come to a screeching halt(something I assume would not make Toady happy), I am asking whether his dislike for working with others is more compelling than ensuring the survival of his whatever-you-want-to-call-it(insert significantly important aggrandizement here). Planning ahead to make sure you have room to survive if you trip is not a bad thing.

Frankly none of us know how he wants to live, he does say he's happy, and I can believe that. You seem to be missing what people will do for their masterwork.
Yes, after 6 years of improved game we're all going to leave because the UI is awkward if you haven't used it before.

As stated in a prior post: That's just my opinion though. You don't cook in another man's kitchen and tell him he bought the wrong food. Toady will rise or fall by his own choices. If he can not, or will not, or simply chooses not to work with any of the people willing to support his dream by giving him their time and expertise instead of their money, that is on him. In the meantime, all any of us can do is sit back and enjoy the ride while it last, and give Toady whatever support he will accept for as long as he will accept it.

If you don't get what that means, it means that I will continue to support Toady no matter what he chooses to do, but that I would much rather see him succeed and be happy than fail and be miserable. I do not agree with his methods, but they are HIS methods and DF is HIS creation. I can still tell him respectfully that I disagree. I can argue the validity of certain points, and try to persuade him to see reason. But, at the end of the day, if he comes at me with a battle-axe with beer and spittle in his beard telling me to stfu because he doesn't wanna hear it anymore, I will.


And lastly, even when countering your arguments or disagreeing with you, I did not need to stoop to calling a moron, insulting your intelligence,  or anything of the sort. Show the same respect you've been shown. Disagreements can still be handled with some measure of civility.

Regards,
Tony

[Maklak]

It would be kinda nice, if people could submit patches and bug-fixes, while Toady One works on new features. 

There are two problems I see with open-sourcing:
1) He would be annoyed by merging all those patches. He needs to enjoy his work to continue.
2) What he is doing at the moment works for him, for now at least. Once he goes open source, there is no turning back, and there is at least some possibility of bad fallout from that.

As to programmers in DF community, they tend to quit after a few years. For example Dwarf Therapist is orphaned at the moment. This means whatever programmer / graphics volunteers team Toady One managed to get, would be prone to dissolving.

[Montague]

Just a thought, but Dwarf Fortress has caught other game developer's attentions. I understand one company offered to buy the rights to the game from Toady but he naturally declined.

I wonder if it's not a matter of time before an actual software game company, or an open-source project doesn't develop something very similar to Dwarf Fortress and we won't all fuck off and play that instead.

Maybe he could sue or something. Thing is, I wonder if the current pace of progress of the game is going to satisfy people years down the road or people will even still be interested in the game before it's complete?

[Starver]

The dev cycle is not slowing down as much as I think you believe it is. [...]

It has been nearly a year since the last release(March of 2011). While that is not an extremely long time, it is pretty long in the terms of the game industry,

A quick point here, in that you're comparing apples and oranges.  One year (just less than!) since the last minor release (twenty months since .31.01 came out) compares favourably with the 19 month end-of-.28 to start-of-.31 timing (and add a couple more months for the start-to-start timing).  Not that this means much, because there was obviously a longer time "sitting in .31" with improvements (and fixes), and it's actually hard to quantifiy the relative effort applied to each transition, even.

And, yes, a year might be considered a long time in certain parts of the gaming industry...  But by "industry" I'm talking those AAA shops to whom multi-man-hours-per-hour can be applied to problems (even with down-time, vacations, working on other projects eating into any particular team's work).  Given that he is working on his own (give or take, and not wishing to denigrate ThreeToe/Baughn/us-lot-as-playtesters-and-so-on), it compares well to those.  And how long did (thinking up a random example) Battlefield 3 take?  Let's see..  Published October 2011.  Battlefield 2 was June 2005.  Of course that was a completely different program, but they must have been starting on the development at around the time (if not before!) B2 came out.   EA "Digital Illisuions" has developed (as far as I can see, given it started with the original 1942 version) all the BF series (and expansions, and the I'd-forgotten-about-it Battlefield 2142 from 2006, so maybe that was when DF3 started, instead), which appears to be a majority of their recent output.  Number of employees is listed as 280, last year, and shall we say that 25% of those are coders, to be conservative?  Still, the man-hours potentially applied to BF3 is massive, even ignoring the artwork and level design aspects which aren't a concern (save for the procedural "level design" within DF) in any comparisons.

If you don't feel comfortable with the version .31 transition to its successor being compared to BF2 (or 2142) to BF3, look instead at the "series" cycle of BF1942 from 2002 to the present day in Digital Illusions' man-hours (albeit less employees then, but still more than their original 'dorm room' endeavours in 1992) with .21 having been released in 2006, development stated as starting in 2002.

Still apples and oranges.  But it's worth at least looking at this comparison.  And I've deliberately not mentioned the (at last out of Development Hell, but not at all out of Critical Reception Hell) Duke Nukem Forever.  I would have considered that a low-blow.

Perhaps more comparable is... I dunno... UFO:AI?  Based upon (and thus already conceptually formed, in a large part) the XCOM series, has the last stable release dated at 14 months ago, and still giant holes in it (last time I played it).  And that's an open source project.  Of the kind you'd prefer DF to be.  But maybe it doesn't have a Toady-like lead, so I'm perhaps being unfair on it.

Transcendence?  version 0.5 released 1995, Version 1.0 released 2010.  (Oooh, version 1.0 is out?  I must download it and see.)  Designed by one person, I think, but with a similar heavy emphasis on user/community modability, last time I was anywhere near it.  Still not directly compariable, but does at least colour the situation a little brighter for DF, right?


I'm sorry, but I disagre with a lot of your points, but I have difficulty compressing my arguments, there's just so much to be said.  I've held off replying until now and I've had to abort my attempt to counter you pint-by-point for TL;DR; reasons (you finding it TL and DRing it, I might say).

Also: @Starhero...  I actually find this one of the more combative threads around (barring the occasional Pathing Optimisation one, sometimes, when someone repeats what's been said many times before... ) But as long as you're happy, you're welcome!


@Montague: I'm happy with the pace (if you haven't gathered that already) and given a choice of keeping with DF or going to an obvious rip-off, I'm provisionally sticking with this one, and can't see too many reasons why this plan will change.  That's even before payments are considered.  Of course, everyone is different, and Y(collective)MMV.

[Starhero]

@Starver

Off Topic: I am not forum person, I post when needed to post (EG with minecraft, a good portion of the mods had/have issues and some people are too lazy to post the bugs, I feel I should since I am using it)

For me to dive into something that might even slightly be drama infested usually takes a lot, but it seems that at least the most part of this thread is at least TRYING to come up with legitimate information backing them. Unless on a technical forum, this is usually unheard of. Then again, this is a game that appeals to those that have an IQ higher then 100.

On Topic: More to the point, this is all moot anywhoo. We can influence only so much of this game. Anymore then what Toady wants would then make the game not his.

"But I want the Lexus that my neighbor has!" Does that mean you sit with him every day trying to convince him to give it to you? I am sure he is gonna say no repeatedly.

Might not be a good analogy, but it still works.

Things will change, I am sure, yes I believe that the game will become considerably slower as more things are added and things like MT will be needed eventually for instance. But if we keep going with OSS requests, we might actually get what we wish for, and honestly.....Be careful what you wish for....I think that is the fear everyone really should have.

[RavingManiac]

Let's all just calm down, and start playing the new version, kay?

[Starver]

New Version!

(Sorry, probably repeating loads of other people on other threads, but I even looked specifically at the News lines earlier this morning, and yet the first clue I get is actually from your post. )

[Particleman]

Goddamnit man, another one of these threads?

I'm seconding this so fucking hard.

[Richard]

Toady's desired outcome: enjoy working on DF.
Current status of outcome: being achieved.
Need to change: nothing.

This is the best summary as to why DF will not be open to other developers for the foreseeable future.  As much as I would like to see some much needed code optimization and possible multi-threading to speed up end game fortresses, it will not be happening.

[Starhero]

Toady's desired outcome: enjoy working on DF.
Current status of outcome: being achieved.
Need to change: nothing.

This is the best summary as to why DF will not be open to other developers for the foreseeable future.  As much as I would like to see some much needed code optimization and possible multi-threading to speed up end game fortresses, it will not be happening.

Agreed on the reason, but I disagree when it comes to MT. I feel eventually either he will have to, or by that point it will be released..OR quantum computing will be out.

Regardless, only time will tell what will happen. Debating it, and cutting each others throats ( and throwing the odd ball insult at Toady) will not change a dam thing. If it was going to, it probably would have years ago.

Side comment but felt that since I said quantum computing, this is SLIGHTLY related. Did you know scientists have completely recreated a rats brain virtually and the "virtual" brain cells are actually replicating? One this excites me! Artificial intelligence is just that much closer ( and yeah i mean REAL AI not this horse shit we call AI). Second, this scares me....skynet anyone?

[Farmerbob]

Zarat, I am afraid that you are making two bad choices here.

1) You are talking about Toady to us, not to Toady.  If you criticize someone with other people, in their earshot in real life, it typically doesn't go over very well.  I don't see Toady raging about this, but you have most likely just poisoned any possible starting point for a conversation between you and he.  You might manage to recover from this by asking for thread deletion and seeing if you can send a couple emails with some concrete examples of how Toady could guarantee continued control over his pet project while still allowing it to grow.

2) You have indicated that you are going to decompile.  With Toady's reluctance to share code, do you imagine he's going to be happy with this statement?  Again, ask for thread deletion, IMHO, and apologize to Toady, then see if you can engage him in conversation privately.  Honestly after two gloves to the face, I doubt you're going to get far, but Toady might be willing to listen, because it seems as if you might have some clue about what you are talking about, even if you have zero tact.

*shrug*