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> Anything worth doing takes a lot of work, and Dwarf Fortress is no different. It really is a matter of putting in the hours.

And this is why, fascinating as it sounds, I'll never play Dwarf Fortress. I already have a job, and I get paid for it not only in satisfaction but also in money. It's awesome that they're able to devote their lives to their artwork, and I like reading about it from time to time, but in the end it's an unappealing value proposition for someone with limited time.

I agree 100%. I am very fascinated by Dwarf Fortress, but with a full time job, a family, and hobbies, I only spend a few hours every other week playing games. I donated money to them, but every time I think about actually starting to play I get intimidated by the incredibly steep learning curve. There are many other games that I can start playing and having fun immediately

That being said, I'm glad that I donated. I feel that I've gotten my money's worth just from reading about it every few months and knowing that I am supporting indie game developers. Hopefully at some point it will become more user-friendly so I can actually play it. Or maybe I should drop some hobbies...

Does anyone know how long it takes an average new player to get to the point where Dwarf Fortress is more fun than confusing and frustrating?

Honestly, just put in one long day. Throw 8 hours at it and by the end you should be having fun. Honestly. it only takes an hour or two to get going and learn the basics. The complex things are around specific functions, like military management, or the complexity comes from a task being difficult, like irrigation. Honestly, I fell in love with the game on the first day, and it took me a week or two to really learn the ins and outs so that I could begin doing complicated stuff. Again, a lot of the difficulty isn't from the UI, it's from the fact that finding out how to manage things is tough, and the fact that some of the things you're expected to do are extremely difficult to pull off, even if the UI were great. Perfect example is dealing with an acquifier: you have to dig a large, 3d plug into the ground: like a vertical box. You dig it out, but leave it connected by a small piece of land, then you dig out underneath it completely for a few Z-levels, then you dig out the last piece holding it up, and it drops into the Acquifier, making a sort of horozontal bridge layer through which you dig a staircase to the area under the acquifier.

Or, like me, you just turn off acquifiers in the Lazy Newb Packs launch options. Newbs should probably also turn off invasions.

Finally, a quick hint to help your fort flourish: ALWAYS kill the elf traders. You get all their stuff, and they never invade or get angry. They tend to come back again, actually, bringing you more cloth and food for free!

I tried the newb pack not too long ago... the experience was too clunky for me. The graphics packs are nice but they always feel incomplete... and even when I had this nice visualization (in a separate window...) it would frequently crashed and I really wished taht I could interact with the game with it.

Yes, they're artists and this is their art, but software rarely -- if ever -- exists in isolation, yet DF acts like it does. You've all these nerds with too much time on their hands building all this ridiculously complicated infrastructure just to play the game in a way that is more comfortable, when instead the DF guys could simply allocate X amount of time and then be done with it. And this isn't a demand that the DF guys make the UI better, just a wish that they would put in a minimal amount of effort so that the community could hook in their own GUI code with a minimum of fuss.

Besides, I write code and debug fussy computer shit all day for work. Games shouldn't require that kind of advanced hackery just to play.

And who cares if they're artists? Neither the artist nor his art are immune to criticism (or, wishfully thinking, critique).

Well, that's something I think the Adams brothers consider to be work. They aren't into doing work. They're into doing the fun stuff. Maybe that's immature and not to the liking of the audience, but once again, the whole point is that they don't care about the user. Frankly, that's a good thing, kinda like a film maker not caring about the mainstream audience, or making an accessible film. Like Harmony Korine...

And how is that mode of expression anything higher than selfish indulgence?

In cinema that sentiment has resulted in some of the most vapid, unwatchable trash ever created. In music this results in experimental, unlistenable noise that never seems to appeal to anyone enough to be self-sustaining. It's like an emotionally repressed teenager crying out, "you don't understand my pain, man! you'll never understand!" We do understand, we've all gone through it, and we've moved on.

If DF's creators want to be avant garde, then fine. But it is a lonely, and possibly pointless path, and again a damn shame, because oh how amazing it would be if it weren't!

It is ABSOLUTELY selfish indulgence. And plenty of people love every bit of it. Just because you find these sorts of things devoid of meaning does not mean they are meaningless to others.

Game development, these days, is so focused on hand holding, genre, and accessibility that it is only by truly following ones heart that something unique and new, like Dwarf Fortress, can be created.

Plus, it's still not verion 1.0, so who knows, maybe someday they'll fix the interfaces! But since other things are always in flux, it'd be a premature optimization now, anyway. Those pave the road to Balrogs, or something.

The game is over a dozen years old and from what I have experienced seems relatively complete. Sure, it's not 1.0, but at this point it is not hard to envision a functional ncurses-like interface built around the concepts that DF's current UI establishes, to say nothing of more exotic (or modern) alternatives.

But, as you say, it's their project. They can do with it what they want. I can sit here and critique and wish it were better, and you can defend it, and together we change nothing. I just really want to play a game as inspired as this in a way that doesn't require the kind of devotion and study this game does, because its a friggin videogame and I need to devote my studyin' time to shit that actually matters (to me, touche).

(And besides, I think we human beings have a fetish for complexity that we really could do without)

> The game is over a dozen years old and from what I have experienced seems relatively complete.

The original link for this thread is basically a huge list of the things that are not yet implemented.

Complete for a game, that is. All the pieces are there, the interactive feedback loop is in place, and one can currently get lost in it for hundreds of hours, should they so choose. That is a complete game to me.

The rest of that list? Stretch goals. Or the entire vision. What, you think I've never seen that list? It's a big list, and it's stupid because it is so impossibly long. The entire vision is never 1.0...

The version numbering scheme for DF is based on a percentage of desired features that have been implemented. The most recently-released version of DF is 0.43.04. It's not even half-way done!

So, guys create a ton of work for themselves and post up a public tracker. They scope the game to be WAAAY larger than what it could reasonably be, but this scoping allows its creators to put up this multi-generational progress bar that slowly-but-surely inches to completion, and in the process eke out a meager living. The elation, when that progress bar does move, is borderline orgasmic.

I call BS

Not everyone is out for a big score, and not all plans are short term.

They've already been working on it for a dozen years, so what's another dozen?

Anyway, back to the UI: they can rethink or polish it in the run-up to 1.0; no need to spend too much time on before then.

I wouldn't generalize that any deviant, avant garde self indulgent artistic work that doesn't care about its audience and doesn't care about maintaining some conformity is necessarily "unwatchable" or "unlistenable" trash. I personally think that sometimes it's not such a pointless path, and helps push the boundaries of art, of what is accepted, and is essential in bringing new ideas forward.

It prevents everything from having the same esthetic and feel. The graphics of DF is also what makes it unique from the rest.

"Selfish indulgence"? What game did we make?

Several. But they never went anywhere, because they were never more than selfish indulgences. To say nothing of other art...

I think we should choose better words than "selfish" for the personal choices of people who make games that they give away for free.

Also, only the fool thinks nearly all art is worth it, or that nearly all art can be "spiritual". Art is 99% crap and 1% gold -- whether music, or the visual arts, or the performing arts, or code -- and DF is one of the few cases in my mind that lands in both categories.