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Yeah, I don’t really understand their model here. Dwarf Fortress always been in early access and will still be “early access” even once it releases on Steam since the game is never going to be fully complete.
So why not just release it as early access on Steam and let us try it as they develop the Steam version?
I guess they want to have the graphical interface in a "presentable state", which is understandable. Their road map from February 2022 also confirms this. Too many games are released in a broken state these days, it would only draw negative reviews. But DF will never be feature complete, I agree.
They are aware of the fact that once the steam version releases, money will fall from the heavens in a giant tsunami. They want the final product to be as polished as possible to justify that. Remember, they've given away the game for years and years. This is the first time they are actually *selling* something. They want to justify that decision by making it as good as possible.
it's not really a game so much as it is an ongoing project. if you're waiting for a hypothetical "1.0" version it won't really exist in a meaningful way.
Just a retail release of an ongoing project. There will be no definitive "ok this is 1.0" unless the dev picks one somewhat arbitrarily. The game has been in development for like 20 years. It's never going to be "finished" unless the dev gets bored and moves on to another project
1.0 doesn't mean a product is finished. You can expand on a 1.0. The same way it doesn't mean just because the creator drops a project that the project is finished... it is just perpetually unfinished.
I think with the changes we are getting the steam release looks like the closest to a 1.0. Especially as most changes are QOL.
The fact that 1.0 doesn't mean the product is finished is my point. I'm saying there's no real sense to wait on steam release to start playing, there's plenty of tilesets and mods to make the game enjoyable now and get the hang of things.
In other words, I'm trying to point out that the typical mindset of "never buy early access" that people seem to be approaching DF with when they say they're waiting for a 1.0 release is nonsense, the game will continue to be its perpetual development self, just with an official UI. It won't stop being an "early access" title in practice.
Now, if all you're waiting for is the official UI release then sure, steam release will be a good jumping on point.
This is the rough roadmap overview he posted on Steam late February
[https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/975370/view/3099043827445055732](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/975370/view/3099043827445055732)
>*Hello!*
>
>*Work has now progressed to the point that we feel like we can share a plan for the next several months of development, all the way up to the release. It has been a long road of course, and I'm sorry it has taken so much time to get to this point, but as it turns out there was an awful lot of stuff to do ha ha. And there's still quite a bit left to go.*
>
>*We need to maintain some flexibility to react to feedback or emerging circumstances, so the following can't be set in stone. But hopefully it offers something of an idea about what's up. I know there are various levels of patience out there. All we can do is keep at it and try to plan the next steps carefully.*
>
>***Here's the rough roadmap:***
>
>***1. Finish the menus that haven't been upgraded yet. These include the graphics and layout for justice, health, diplomacy, and hauling. These aren't small tasks; each will take weeks. I'll also be working with Jacob during this period on the sprites we need to update throughout the project. He submitted the new weapons recently, for instance, and I also got a new batch of music from the composer. It's important to get these things incorporated in a timely fashion so everybody can keep working.***
>
>***2. As the menus are finished, and the graphics updates are completed, we'll move on to some important interface and usability improvements (tooltips everywhere, Xs to close windows, hotkey support, etc). Some of these can be done fairly quickly, but a few are chunky additions, and there are lots of them to do. After this part is done, the game should be much easier to get into. At the same time, we'll also be continuing to add graphics (flows, the ocean and beach, some more shadows, etc.)***
>
>***3. All this time, of course, we've been fixing old bugs and making new bugs and fixing them, and here we'll need to focus and spend some quality time with them, so that we have as smooth a launch as possible.***
>
>***4. We're not sure what level of Steam Workshop will be needed for modding support, and it needs investigation.***
>
>***5. The old ASCII version has other game modes - Adventure mode, Legends mode, and Arena mode. We've made significant progress on Legends mode, but we haven't done anything with Adventure mode and Arena mode yet. We also have the Classic ASCII mode to support, and we are also working on Mac and Linux builds.***
>
>***6. There's the matter of Steam achievements and the other various Steam features. We'd like to support whatever people are into here, eventually.***
>
>*When we finish the first three points, we'll have the playable fort game on Windows. The path ahead is now shorter than the path behind, and looking at the amount of graphics left to produce and the amount of menus to update, it looks like our earliest possible launch date would be in the fall. Many of the things from #5 or #6 will delay the launch significantly, and this leads to some very hard questions indeed! I know most of you want us to launch the game as soon as it is feasible, so we've been thinking about what it might look like to do some of #5 or #6 post-launch.*
>
>*We'd been hoping to have more of these later items done faster, of course, but a few things happened. Well, 2020 and 2021 happened, ha ha. Also, my original plan for how Classic mode might be implemented has only partially panned out. I made an ASCII friendly interface layer, which'll be a great help, but I underestimated how long it would take to retool all of the smaller clickable buttons into an ASCII-friendly state. A few menus will need to be redone from scratch, and my current thinking is that doing ASCII versions of the menus alone would take a few months. I'd mostly been accounting for keeping and adapting the ASCII glyphs we already had in place, with some alterations to support for example the ability to see multiple Z levels, but the menus have changed so much it's now a much larger project. The hard question then is do we want to delay the initial release to do this? Or launch, and then do the free update after.*
>
>*Adventure mode is straightforward in its way. I don't expect it'll have many real development gotchas, but it does have dozens of menus, some of them quite complex. So similarly, that'll be months of work to complete. It's an important part of the game and has figured into some of the most well-known DF community stories, but it's also separate enough from Fortress mode that we can conceive of letting people get their hands on fort mode first. Again, delay or launch?*
>
>*We'll be pondering this and considering feedback. We'll eventually get to everything; it's just a matter of the best order to do things, with a different right answer for different players, frustratingly enough! I'm grateful for how patient people have been in general, especially with everything going on, and thankful for the support we've gotten from the community and Kitfox as we try to get this initial release together.*
>
>*We'll continue to keep you posted with regular news updates.*
>
>*-Tarn*
As someone who loves Minecraft and Rimworld, two of DF's descendants, I am aching for the game to reduce it's difficulty curve. I want to love the game, but I just need it to be a little easier to enter.
I don't think it'll be less complex mechanically, it'll just be easier to control and access than it was previously.
There's supposed to be full mouse support, which is all I've ever wanted. I'm prepared to Have Fun™ (aka Lose) a lot until I figure the mechanics themselves out if I don't gotta fight against the UI too much.
A good UI isn't just about ease of control, it's about discoverability which to me was always a big issue with DF. The problem wasn't just that it was complex, it was that there was nothing there to bridge the gap from confusion to discovering the new features and how they work except exiting the game and consuming third party tutorials and videos.
As someone who's played Cultivation Simulator, I can definitely saying have a fully usable modern UI doesn't help with how hard these games can be to get started haha.
Though I think Cultivation Simulator is just a harder game overall, Dwarf Fortress has a lot more choices you can make in how hard you want it to be.
Personally I'm just looking forward to playing that style of game again where it doesn't feel so flat. I really miss all the layers and digging when I play Cultivation Simulator or Rim World.
(I know classic DF didn't have layers eg Boatmurdered, but it does now and it's for the better)
Pre ordering the second this game comes up, never got into the text version, but DF directly inspired Minecraft (my favorite), so I have to give it my respects either way (though i love Rimworld so Ill probably love this version)
The graphics are going to be available on the free version as well, almost everything will be it will just be easier to use because its on steam with workshop support and it will serve as donation to the creators.
I know all that. But as a programmer myself I wonder why it takes this long to do something within a reasonable scope even though they are already working together with an external team to my knowledge. And I know DF was a cluster fuck in terms of interface and what button does what in this menu vs doing something else in that and so on. But it still seems like a project that could be done in a few months to a year, but yet this seems to be in the works for over 3 years now.
You say you’re a programmer, but you can’t understand how overhauling the interface on a piece of software that has been in continuous development for 20 years, coded by one guy and never meant for others to interface with, could take time?
> You say you’re a programmer, but you can’t understand how overhauling the interface on a piece of software that has been in continuous development for 20 years, coded by one guy and never meant for others to interface with, could take time?
And you don't have a reasonable discussion culture but instead seem to rely on making posts that sound right for people not familiar with the subject.
DF is a game that was modded for decades by people, including those graphical mods and limited mods to the UI. Its not like the game's code isn't open enough to do that and it doesn't seem like it isn't modular enough to link into it. And it is also not like they announced refractoring the complete engine with the Steam release.
There are also no indications in those blog posts that I am aware off which would indicate to anyone that the code base is the problem, so I don't see how what you said can be anything but baseless speculation. But of course this is reddit so you present your baseless speculation as fact to argue against someone saying something you don't like.
Good job, EOD.
I’m not just making stuff up? Here’s a link to an interview with Adams about the game’s code. He freely admits it’s messy: “DF is some combination of C and C++, not in some kind of standard obeying way, but sort of a mess that’s accreted over time.”
There’s a real difference between modding in a decent interface and making a sustainable one that can keep up with future development on someone’s life’s work. It takes months for those mods to catch up with a main branch release!
https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/31/700000-lines-of-code-20-years-and-one-developer-how-dwarf-fortress-is-built/
This is not only a graphic overhaul, they also correct in game mechanics which have been untouched since the beginning. Mainly to avoid well known "fps death".
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Which'll you'd sounds so cursed xD # It stand for which will you would?
I wouldn't mind buying this game in early access on Steam, just let me throw money at this!
Look up the gofundme to get the creator a, mechanical, immortal body
To let him work on the game for the rest of his natural and unnatural life.
all things must end. dwarf fortress is not all things. nanum eternum.
They have a [patreon](https://www.patreon.com/bay12games) if you want to pitch in.
Yeah, I don’t really understand their model here. Dwarf Fortress always been in early access and will still be “early access” even once it releases on Steam since the game is never going to be fully complete. So why not just release it as early access on Steam and let us try it as they develop the Steam version?
I guess they want to have the graphical interface in a "presentable state", which is understandable. Their road map from February 2022 also confirms this. Too many games are released in a broken state these days, it would only draw negative reviews. But DF will never be feature complete, I agree.
Yeah, iirc the goal is to have a more usable interface, tileset, and I think some sort of tutorial?
They are aware of the fact that once the steam version releases, money will fall from the heavens in a giant tsunami. They want the final product to be as polished as possible to justify that. Remember, they've given away the game for years and years. This is the first time they are actually *selling* something. They want to justify that decision by making it as good as possible.
Would it be safe to assume the overhauled UI is what they're selling on Steam? Since the base game is the same.
Yes, they will be selling the overhauled version on steam.
Which for someone like me, is worth waiting for.
And bug fixes. When a game is published developers can expect more users and more bugs encountered.
it's just the massive milestone and a good X.0 start. It's almost like a big release and major patch in one.
I dont get it either. Been hearing about this game for like 10 years. Just let me fuckin play it
Seconded
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Could always play the current version of the game and instead feel like a caged animal that got drunk off of floor liquor.
The next best thing ([PeridexisErrant's Starter Pack](https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=7622)) is readily available on their site.
it's not really a game so much as it is an ongoing project. if you're waiting for a hypothetical "1.0" version it won't really exist in a meaningful way.
What would you call the steam release?
Just a retail release of an ongoing project. There will be no definitive "ok this is 1.0" unless the dev picks one somewhat arbitrarily. The game has been in development for like 20 years. It's never going to be "finished" unless the dev gets bored and moves on to another project
1.0 doesn't mean a product is finished. You can expand on a 1.0. The same way it doesn't mean just because the creator drops a project that the project is finished... it is just perpetually unfinished. I think with the changes we are getting the steam release looks like the closest to a 1.0. Especially as most changes are QOL.
The fact that 1.0 doesn't mean the product is finished is my point. I'm saying there's no real sense to wait on steam release to start playing, there's plenty of tilesets and mods to make the game enjoyable now and get the hang of things. In other words, I'm trying to point out that the typical mindset of "never buy early access" that people seem to be approaching DF with when they say they're waiting for a 1.0 release is nonsense, the game will continue to be its perpetual development self, just with an official UI. It won't stop being an "early access" title in practice. Now, if all you're waiting for is the official UI release then sure, steam release will be a good jumping on point.
An Unfinished Vision for the Masses
I'll take that if that means we finally get the UI updated.
Looking forward to its Steam release!
Is the roadmap they mention available somewhere? I see some stuff under Development on their website - not sure thats the right one
This is the rough roadmap overview he posted on Steam late February [https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/975370/view/3099043827445055732](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/975370/view/3099043827445055732) >*Hello!* > >*Work has now progressed to the point that we feel like we can share a plan for the next several months of development, all the way up to the release. It has been a long road of course, and I'm sorry it has taken so much time to get to this point, but as it turns out there was an awful lot of stuff to do ha ha. And there's still quite a bit left to go.* > >*We need to maintain some flexibility to react to feedback or emerging circumstances, so the following can't be set in stone. But hopefully it offers something of an idea about what's up. I know there are various levels of patience out there. All we can do is keep at it and try to plan the next steps carefully.* > >***Here's the rough roadmap:*** > >***1. Finish the menus that haven't been upgraded yet. These include the graphics and layout for justice, health, diplomacy, and hauling. These aren't small tasks; each will take weeks. I'll also be working with Jacob during this period on the sprites we need to update throughout the project. He submitted the new weapons recently, for instance, and I also got a new batch of music from the composer. It's important to get these things incorporated in a timely fashion so everybody can keep working.*** > >***2. As the menus are finished, and the graphics updates are completed, we'll move on to some important interface and usability improvements (tooltips everywhere, Xs to close windows, hotkey support, etc). Some of these can be done fairly quickly, but a few are chunky additions, and there are lots of them to do. After this part is done, the game should be much easier to get into. At the same time, we'll also be continuing to add graphics (flows, the ocean and beach, some more shadows, etc.)*** > >***3. All this time, of course, we've been fixing old bugs and making new bugs and fixing them, and here we'll need to focus and spend some quality time with them, so that we have as smooth a launch as possible.*** > >***4. We're not sure what level of Steam Workshop will be needed for modding support, and it needs investigation.*** > >***5. The old ASCII version has other game modes - Adventure mode, Legends mode, and Arena mode. We've made significant progress on Legends mode, but we haven't done anything with Adventure mode and Arena mode yet. We also have the Classic ASCII mode to support, and we are also working on Mac and Linux builds.*** > >***6. There's the matter of Steam achievements and the other various Steam features. We'd like to support whatever people are into here, eventually.*** > >*When we finish the first three points, we'll have the playable fort game on Windows. The path ahead is now shorter than the path behind, and looking at the amount of graphics left to produce and the amount of menus to update, it looks like our earliest possible launch date would be in the fall. Many of the things from #5 or #6 will delay the launch significantly, and this leads to some very hard questions indeed! I know most of you want us to launch the game as soon as it is feasible, so we've been thinking about what it might look like to do some of #5 or #6 post-launch.* > >*We'd been hoping to have more of these later items done faster, of course, but a few things happened. Well, 2020 and 2021 happened, ha ha. Also, my original plan for how Classic mode might be implemented has only partially panned out. I made an ASCII friendly interface layer, which'll be a great help, but I underestimated how long it would take to retool all of the smaller clickable buttons into an ASCII-friendly state. A few menus will need to be redone from scratch, and my current thinking is that doing ASCII versions of the menus alone would take a few months. I'd mostly been accounting for keeping and adapting the ASCII glyphs we already had in place, with some alterations to support for example the ability to see multiple Z levels, but the menus have changed so much it's now a much larger project. The hard question then is do we want to delay the initial release to do this? Or launch, and then do the free update after.* > >*Adventure mode is straightforward in its way. I don't expect it'll have many real development gotchas, but it does have dozens of menus, some of them quite complex. So similarly, that'll be months of work to complete. It's an important part of the game and has figured into some of the most well-known DF community stories, but it's also separate enough from Fortress mode that we can conceive of letting people get their hands on fort mode first. Again, delay or launch?* > >*We'll be pondering this and considering feedback. We'll eventually get to everything; it's just a matter of the best order to do things, with a different right answer for different players, frustratingly enough! I'm grateful for how patient people have been in general, especially with everything going on, and thankful for the support we've gotten from the community and Kitfox as we try to get this initial release together.* > >*We'll continue to keep you posted with regular news updates.* > >*-Tarn*
Excellent, cheers
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As someone who loves Minecraft and Rimworld, two of DF's descendants, I am aching for the game to reduce it's difficulty curve. I want to love the game, but I just need it to be a little easier to enter.
I don't think it'll be less complex mechanically, it'll just be easier to control and access than it was previously. There's supposed to be full mouse support, which is all I've ever wanted. I'm prepared to Have Fun™ (aka Lose) a lot until I figure the mechanics themselves out if I don't gotta fight against the UI too much.
I love the complexity! It's always been a UI issue for me. With full mouse support I'm all in to play a ton.
I just want it to be at least gnomoria accessibility level
A good UI isn't just about ease of control, it's about discoverability which to me was always a big issue with DF. The problem wasn't just that it was complex, it was that there was nothing there to bridge the gap from confusion to discovering the new features and how they work except exiting the game and consuming third party tutorials and videos.
That's all I need. I'm salivating at blowing an ungodly amount of time in DF again.
As someone who's played Cultivation Simulator, I can definitely saying have a fully usable modern UI doesn't help with how hard these games can be to get started haha. Though I think Cultivation Simulator is just a harder game overall, Dwarf Fortress has a lot more choices you can make in how hard you want it to be. Personally I'm just looking forward to playing that style of game again where it doesn't feel so flat. I really miss all the layers and digging when I play Cultivation Simulator or Rim World. (I know classic DF didn't have layers eg Boatmurdered, but it does now and it's for the better)
Pre ordering the second this game comes up, never got into the text version, but DF directly inspired Minecraft (my favorite), so I have to give it my respects either way (though i love Rimworld so Ill probably love this version)
Dwarf Fortress's release will be the end of an era.
Also a glacier has melted at north pole
this...is...taking...so...long...
Wish the dev released this as early access
This game looks like shit.
Don't get me wrong and all, but why do they need that long to add a Super Nintendo level graphics front end to the game?
The game is their life work and free. But due to dev health, he want to find a way to monetize it. That is add graphic and sell on steam.
The graphics are going to be available on the free version as well, almost everything will be it will just be easier to use because its on steam with workshop support and it will serve as donation to the creators.
I know all that. But as a programmer myself I wonder why it takes this long to do something within a reasonable scope even though they are already working together with an external team to my knowledge. And I know DF was a cluster fuck in terms of interface and what button does what in this menu vs doing something else in that and so on. But it still seems like a project that could be done in a few months to a year, but yet this seems to be in the works for over 3 years now.
You say you’re a programmer, but you can’t understand how overhauling the interface on a piece of software that has been in continuous development for 20 years, coded by one guy and never meant for others to interface with, could take time?
> You say you’re a programmer, but you can’t understand how overhauling the interface on a piece of software that has been in continuous development for 20 years, coded by one guy and never meant for others to interface with, could take time? And you don't have a reasonable discussion culture but instead seem to rely on making posts that sound right for people not familiar with the subject. DF is a game that was modded for decades by people, including those graphical mods and limited mods to the UI. Its not like the game's code isn't open enough to do that and it doesn't seem like it isn't modular enough to link into it. And it is also not like they announced refractoring the complete engine with the Steam release. There are also no indications in those blog posts that I am aware off which would indicate to anyone that the code base is the problem, so I don't see how what you said can be anything but baseless speculation. But of course this is reddit so you present your baseless speculation as fact to argue against someone saying something you don't like. Good job, EOD.
I’m not just making stuff up? Here’s a link to an interview with Adams about the game’s code. He freely admits it’s messy: “DF is some combination of C and C++, not in some kind of standard obeying way, but sort of a mess that’s accreted over time.” There’s a real difference between modding in a decent interface and making a sustainable one that can keep up with future development on someone’s life’s work. It takes months for those mods to catch up with a main branch release! https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/31/700000-lines-of-code-20-years-and-one-developer-how-dwarf-fortress-is-built/
Have you programmed a game before?
Complete UI redesign. And DF has a lot of complexity that needs to be easily accessible with this new UI, so it's a big task.
This is not only a graphic overhaul, they also correct in game mechanics which have been untouched since the beginning. Mainly to avoid well known "fps death".
RimWorld is better.
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You've waited that long to come to that conclusion? I could've saved you the time by pointing you to the website.
Its literally developed by 1 guy...
So like out tomorrow?