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[Shades]

What I don't get is why Toady doesn't get someone to make some semi-decent 3D graphics and a half-decent GUI for the game. .

I think mostly because that doesn't interest him. He's making enough to make the game he wants to make and thats enough for him. I would love a decent interface too. (I'd accept a decent ascii interface mind you....)

It just pains me that Minecraft is hugely popular and a Game of Dwarves will likely rake in lots of money too, while DF will always be the bastard child and will never get much attention until the above things improve.

Considering the state of most triple-x titles I'm happy DF is not following that route. It would be nice to see the game get the kudos it clearly deserves but considering the number of game devs on these forums maybe it already does.

[LoSboccacc]

you can't have appalling 3d until you make the transition between one tile and another gradual, instead of having movement quantized at one tile size

and half assed 3d like nethack pseudo3d won't help anyone that's not already in our tile based mindset.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

a side note:
dwarves move at different tile at their own time, doing turns in moving and such, and actions happen according to dwarves velocity, so no smooth tile transition is not a reachable goal.

[Shades]

you can't have appalling 3d until you make the transition between one tile and another gradual, instead of having movement quantized at one tile size

To be honest you can achieve this visually while the game still kept you on one square or the other internally. Creatures already have a unique movement speed so the whole system is already setup to do this.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

It is about the time someone took the core concept of DF and you know, made an actual game out of it.

May your game sell buckets, and may every bucket be deduced from Toady's donation income.

Because DF isn't an actual game.. Your second statement's a bit asanine, if you mean what I assume you do [for instance, you probably just put deduced there for vocabulary fun]. A game about Dwarves =/= DF. Wish for success all you wish, but not at the expense of a truly deep game.

But jackass-ery (above) aside, this does look rather pleasing. I love me a good Paradox production, if it's not hurried to hell and back before being released in a beta state, which I need to patch/mod for the next 5+ years to play correct. Just sayin'. But this seems like it diverges from the usual Paradox formula, we shall see.

[LoSboccacc]

you can't have appalling 3d until you make the transition between one tile and another gradual, instead of having movement quantized at one tile size

To be honest you can achieve this visually while the game still kept you on one square or the other internally. Creatures already have a unique movement speed so the whole system is already setup to do this.

no: if the game assumes that creatures move one at a time, and each creature has a different turn speed, then you cant just collect the movement for every creature at that turn and smooth them out and draw them concurrently.

also, as it is the game becomes mindnumbling boring at 10fps. imagine if it where to take 1 second to each game upadte because of drawing smooth frame transition

[Meta]

Also posting to follow.

As someone else was saying before, DF's existence won't be threatened by this game, as nearly all of us here are supporters of DF and are still buying other games.

I watched the trailer. The only thing who seems off for me was the overall slowness of the dwarves. We want 100 FPS, not 5.

[Mokkun]

Hmm, Looking forward to the demo, Looks promising.. But, after other DK-lookalikes (*chough*Dungeons*chough*) Ill try the demo before buying.

[Aklyon]

Whats a chough?

What I don't get is why Toady doesn't get someone to make some semi-decent 3D graphics and a half-decent GUI for the game. *I* don't mind the game in ASCII and I can play it just fine, but the general public can't. And before you go that I want to dumb down the game and DF is a niche game, DF will always be a niche game due to its complexity. But the complexity should come from the mechanics with are actually providing enjoyment, not from the learning cliff that the graphics and UI currently pose. Instead of the hypothetical 0.000001% playing, graphical improvements might get 0.1% of the people playing, which is a massive improvement.

Last year was in my opinion spent on all kinds of unnecessary candy, that in my opinion did very little to nothing to make the game more appealing or even more fun to play

Like its been said before, theres still things missing and/or misplaced from the UI, and its not finished enough for retooling it to be worthwhile yet. It'll get better eventually.

[woose1]

Whats a chough?

Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax, a sub-species of jackdaws prevalent in southern Eurasia and North Africa.



It's also the noise that one makes when coughing with your teeth clenched.

[Hyndis]

It looks a bit like Evil Genius, which was a very underrated game.

Evil Genius was Austin Powers meets Dungeon Keeper, where you would build an evil lair inside a volcano, while building an elaborate base full of minions, and ensure your minions were happy, productive, and healthy by building all of the appropriate buildings for them.

Of course you would need to defend your island lair against pesky British secret agents, which could be done through a combination of raw military firepower, excessively elaborate and needlessly complicated traps, or by hiding behind casino to pretend you're a legitimate business.

If its Evil Genius, with dorfs, and with randomly generated stuff that would be pure gold. I'd buy it as soon as pops up on Steam. 

[Hyndis]

Last year was in my opinion spent on all kinds of unnecessary candy, that in my opinion did very little to nothing to make the game more appealing or even more fun to play.

Sadly, I do have to agree with this. IMO, Toady spends way too much time, years of time even, working on stuff that the player generally will never interact with. A year of work that will barely be noticed could be far better spent on the low hanging fruit. This would be bug fixes or UI improvements. Practical things that would get much more bang for the buck, or much greater impact on the game for the amount of time spent working on it.

I think DF is a far superior game to Minecraft, however Notch scored the big haul because Notch was focusing on practical over the more esoteric.

I adore DF and think DF is a beyond outstanding game, but I'm just saddened at how niche it is. It a brilliant gem that seems to be hidden away intentionally, so that it will never get much of a following so long as remains utterly unapproachable unless you're willing to put in some serious time learning how to play and reading the entire wiki.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Last year was in my opinion spent on all kinds of unnecessary candy, that in my opinion did very little to nothing to make the game more appealing or even more fun to play.

Sadly, I do have to agree with this. IMO, Toady spends way too much time, years of time even, working on stuff that the player generally will never interact with. A year of work that will barely be noticed could be far better spent on the low hanging fruit. This would be bug fixes or UI improvements. Practical things that would get much more bang for the buck, or much greater impact on the game for the amount of time spent working on it.

I think DF is a far superior game to Minecraft, however Notch scored the big haul because Notch was focusing on practical over the more esoteric.

I adore DF and think DF is a beyond outstanding game, but I'm just saddened at how niche it is. It a brilliant gem that seems to be hidden away intentionally, so that it will never get much of a following so long as remains utterly unapproachable unless you're willing to put in some serious time learning how to play and reading the entire wiki.

Entirely wrong choice of discussion in a topic that isn't about DF. Just sayin'.

Besides, half of General is full of the same types of pseudo-negativity. Let up. This wait is nothing compared to the agonizing almost two years we waited for Z-axis's. But this topic is about the Paradox Game, once again.

[Goron]

I have plenty of friends that play minecraft and other games like that, but refuse to play complex games like DF or Ultima Online because they lack basic 3D graphics, don't have a decent UI and controlling them is highly infuriating. While these people can be pulled over the line with such a little investment of effort.

It just pains me that Minecraft is hugely popular and a Game of Dwarves will likely rake in lots of money too, while DF will always be the bastard child and will never get much attention until the above things improve.

Ultima Online, complex? I put 12 years into that game with up to 7 active paying accounts at one time and at no time did I ever consider that game complex:-)
UO lost its steam early when EQ came out with a carebear ruleset that catered to people that wine and cry when they died. Graphics, interface, and UI had little to nothing to do with UO's decline (and note, it was a decline; meaning, UO was at one time a top dog). It was gameplay fundamentals. but I digress...

DF suffers from the problems you write (but I would argue that graphics is actually one of the smaller problems...). you struck true with targeting UI and control! I love DF, but honestly have not played in many many months solely due to the fact that setting up an army is a pain in the ass. That is it. That is the ONLY reason I don't play. The un-intuitive, confusing, and annoying control required to do that just makes it not worth my time anymore. It is not being able to do even the most basic actions without a step-by-step instruction available that turns people away.
I *like* complexity. I play complex, micromanaging games for fun. But when said games are so poorly designed from a usability standpoint the fun is destroyed. I still play Aurora, and there are no graphics! oddly enough the game is quite accessible to me, though. Control, UI, and usability for the win.

As you say yourself: Minecraft is popular.
Does it have good graphics? No. Does it have decent graphics? No. Do most people I show it to immediately criticize the graphics? Yes.
but it is still popular.
Is it easy to use? Yes. Can an 8 year old successfully play? Yes. Is the gameplay fun? Yes.
That is why it remains popular.
The *gameplay* wins it for those that give it a try, and the ability to experience that gameplay (the usability) is likely what keeps people playing. The open ended imagination orgy it induces, accessible with just a few buttons, is the key selling point, not graphics or simplicity or whatnot.

A Game of Dwarves will win or lose based on gameplay and design.

People here like to whine about big budget graphic games too much. But when you REALLY look into it, there are a TON of big budget cutting edge graphics games that BOMBED. Why? They sucked. The gameplay sucked, and more often than not, the interface or control sucked.
Gameplay and UI win, not graphics. People need to stop pretending otherwise.
Again, I digress...

DF is bastard child because it deserves to be bastard child. It doesn't take a shower or brush its teeth; so, except for its best, devoted friends no one wants to get near it, or stay near it. I agree, it is infuriating. You said it yourself, people COULD be pulled over with little investment or effort! But don't blame the game, other games, or the players for that... blame the developer that *doesn't* make that little investment. And since it is only that developer that suffers or succeeds with financial success, it is ultimately more confusing than infuriating, to me...

So as long as Thorwaldsson here takes the time- puts in that little investment- to make the game accessible and it is fun (has gameplay), it should do swimmingly. Sure, that may mean the devs have to pause during their awesome streak of implementing great ideas to say "hmm, maybe we should actually take the time to implement this function *well* rather than just keep cramming good things into this". Because a whole ton of great features that are near impossible to use ends up sucking a heck of a lot more than a few great ideas that are easy to use. And even better, a whole ton of great ideas that are easy to use!

Oh, and Toady doesn't charge, so it kind of makes sense that these games that actually make an effort to make money make money (oh gawd noes, Goron just endorsed 'big business' strategy as a winning strategy to make money! Everyone should yell at him, despite the fact that he is (historically) right, because evil big businesses are evil! ... [please don't yell])

[NotAQuisling]

Can we please talk about the actual topic instead of df?

Also I'm interested in how they're going to make 2 things occupy the same tile.
You never really think about how 90 dragons manage to fit into one spot.

[Microcline]

I think that because of its emphasis of gamism over narratism and simulationism it's going to be competing more with Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius than DF.  As a theme dwarves are well suited to this concept, although at this point I am beginning to grow weary of their overuse and think that it would be more interesting to tread new ground like Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius did.  That said, whether it succeeds or fails depends on how much it can contribute to the genre.

As I have little to go on, my only advice at the moment would be to change the main page art.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Dreamworks face is something that should remain endemic to kender and poorly rendered talking animals voiced by has-been celebrities.