Dwarf Fortress Development

I know they don&#x27;t want to open source it, but I wonder if they would be amenable to having a volunteer who would help organize and push the code into a version control system hosted on their private server.<p>In an interview I read, Tarn said something to the effect of that &quot;he was not interested in learning about version control and it would just be a distraction that would take away time from the important work, since the way he works has worked for him for many years&quot;.<p>I can&#x27;t help but think that first, it&#x27;s a bit dangerous way to work, all &quot;past, current and future&quot; state of the project is only in his head and if he happens to become indisposed, the project is very very likely to die (though I suppose there would be hardcore fans willing to reverse engineer it)...<p>Second, it&#x27;s a loss of historical record... imagine in fifty years historians wanting to analyze the project&#x27;s history, it would be so much more useful to have a granular history instead of just a blob of files scattered across thousands of directories...<p>Just look at Unix History repository here for example: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;dspinellis&#x2F;unix-history-repo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;dspinellis&#x2F;unix-history-repo</a> - I think there&#x27;s immense long term value in preserving this kind of archival history.

For all their advancement in storytelling and worldbuilding, it is still <i>so</i> frustrating to try and play DF today. I did not grow up with Roguelikes and ASCII characters or backwards-ass vim-style key-memorization GUI patterns, and the nostalgia that surrounds these things is simply annoying. The noob pack helps but what it really needs is for that isometric graphics mod to become a full UI layer. Mid-90s WinForms would be an improvement over what DF&#x27;s got.<p>It is painful to see people so smart pooh-pooh something so obvious as a <i>useable</i> UI (I won&#x27;t say &quot;decent&quot;, because &quot;decent&quot; nowadays is this brightly-colored material-design garbage) that isn&#x27;t super painful for people who like to come and go.

It&#x27;s funny how you can look at a simple item on that list, say, &#x27;randomly generated musical instruments&#x27; and suddenly imagine a magma-powered tuba that menaces with spikes of microcline and which has an engraving of a dwarf and dwarves in orthoclase and rat leather relating to the founding of Doomedice on the Forgotten Glaciers of Terror in 1387...

This game is the masterpiece life&#x27;s work of one eccentric math PHD developer, and if you have any interest in fantasy or poetry in your soul I suggest you give the game a try. The learning curve is deathly steep, so I suggest starting with the lazy noob pack: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dwarffortresswiki.org&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;Utility:Lazy_Newb_Pack" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dwarffortresswiki.org&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;Utility:Lazy_Newb_Pac...</a> Strike the earth!

The sense of entitlement that crops up throughout this thread amazes me.<p>It&#x27;d be bad enough coming from the people who actually donate the money that adds up to the steady living the Adams brothers earn by their work on Dwarf Fortress. Coming from random Hacker News commenters, many of whom hasten to add that they&#x27;d <i>never</i> play anything with such an awful UX themselves, it is bewildering and disappointing.<p>Isn&#x27;t this community supposed to be above such things?

I find it interesting that there are so many complaints about the UI &#x2F; keybindings. I agree that the keybindings are a bit confusing once your start, but I didn&#x27;t find them to be that difficult to master. No more difficult than say, learning to use Vim effectively.<p>However, certain things do become issues once your dwarf population scales past 15 or so. Checking dwarf occupations manually (e.g., to make sure that there is at least one dwarf who is currently assigned the furnace operator occupation) becomes a pain, so I&#x27;d suggest using Dwarf Therapist [0] to manage that. It also lets you quickly check other things, such as whether any dwarves are feeling particularly sad.<p>Also, I encourage people new to the game to check out some of the stories that the community has generated throughout DF&#x27;s existence. The game&#x27;s ability to generate interesting scenarios that lead to good stories to tell your friends is perhaps the most interesting part of the game. Boatmurdered [1] is a classic. Roomcarnage [2] is currently in the process of being told and is quite good.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;splintermind&#x2F;Dwarf-Therapist" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;splintermind&#x2F;Dwarf-Therapist</a><p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lparchive.org&#x2F;Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lparchive.org&#x2F;Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered&#x2F;</a><p>[2]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bay12forums.com&#x2F;smf&#x2F;index.php?topic=139393.0" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bay12forums.com&#x2F;smf&#x2F;index.php?topic=139393.0</a>

Honestly, I think eventually a central question of our time will become whether or not it is ethical to turn off dwarf fortress.

This game simulates at a granularity that is light-years beyond anything else that exists, so it&#x27;s only fitting that the dev notes should contain goals which are absolutely impossible to imagine in any other game.

Off topic: Using `background-attachment: fixed` for your background image will cause high CPU usage as the user scrolls.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fourkitchens.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;article&#x2F;fix-scrolling-performance-css-will-change-property" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fourkitchens.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;article&#x2F;fix-scrolling-performan...</a>

This article was my introduction to DF when it was originally posted on HN: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nytimes.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;07&#x2F;24&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;the-brilliance-of-dwarf-fortress.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nytimes.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;07&#x2F;24&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;the-brilliance-of-dwa...</a>

I love DF, played it for a long time but haven&#x27;t touched it for last 1-2 years. A feew weeks ago I tried to play it again, I was excited about new features such as libraries and crafting in adventure mode.<p>I first started with adventure mode, and tried to make a conversation with someone... tried. New conversation system is a huge mess. Sure it is much more advanced but interface is needlessly complicated, it takes away all the fun.<p>I just closed DF and didn&#x27;t even try fortress mode after that. I love DF but Toady&#x27;s tastes with ui is too eccentric for me. I hated military UI when it came out and now this.<p>People doing awesome job with DF using reverse engineering. Playing it without dwarf therapist for example would be a nightmare. I wish it was opensource or at least had more modability.

This looks great, but I hope they don&#x27;t fall into the &quot;manual window placement&quot; usability trap.<p>There is a reason the &quot;old-fashioned&quot; tiling window managers are still popular. And today most applications are internally structured via tiling&#x2F;splitters and tabs, rather than individual window placement. Let alone that all attempts for a &quot;web desktop&quot; never took off.<p>Alas, I don&#x27;t know any authorative sources for that, but I bet that manual window placement (and most of the time, also overlapping windows) is a well-known anti-pattern of user interface design.

How plausible would it be to take the generated executables, and get actual, readable code out of them?

Toady should decouple the ui from the game so people could write a nice ui for a change. The only thing which stands between me and the game is the horrible ux.

Once a year or so, I pick up DF and play for a few weeks just to see what has changed. Coincidentally, I just finished my 2016 playfest last month.<p>I am sold on the ASCII graphics, especially once you drop in a decent replacement set. Generating unique icons for all the bazillion different things would be a huge undertaking graphically, and you pick up what things are quickly.<p>Sadly, the UI (and I use the term loosely) is still, well, awful. The menu system makes no sense (sure, you can memorize where something is, but that&#x27;s not what I mean), and the keystrokes seem to be randomized across menus. As others have said, there&#x27;s actually a pretty good game under there these days. It&#x27;s just horrible to interact with.

Love DF. Didn&#x27;t know the community was so vast. Fingers crossed for open source, definitely would add some years of playability for the kiddies.<p>Praise the miners!

If you want to read the best stories the community has gathered from playing this game, here&#x27;s a collection!<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bay12forums.com&#x2F;smf&#x2F;index.php?topic=41896.0" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bay12forums.com&#x2F;smf&#x2F;index.php?topic=41896.0</a>

I am thankful enough to have this incredibly fun game available to me; let&#x27;s hope they can keep improving it.

No offense but trying to read a list with that background burns the eyes

I love the game and have played it many times over the last 5 or so years... But does anyone else feel kind of betrayed&#x2F;insulted that the project is not open source? The team is mostly just supporting 1 or 2 core devs who take years to release new features - and for a while now tools like dfhack are basically required to play the game.<p>The game has a huge community of fans but no one can contribute in any meaningful way. I dunno I find it mildly frustrating.