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Comment by eropple | Hacker News Reader

> One dot release and we're seeing a mountain of new features.

A "dot release" (who really cares about numbering schemes?) that took ten months and included a number of incremental and ultimately minor features--yes, they sound very cool, but having played it last night they don't change the way the game plays all that much. I like games like this quite a lot, but this is the same cheetodusting that makes people take Linux-on-the-desktop people with all the unseriousness they demand.

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>A "dot release" (who really cares about numbering schemes?)

DF numbers its releases differently than most software. The developers made a list of features ("core components") they would like to implement and the version number increases for each one finished.

So a "dot release" for DF means a significant new subsystem was added. v0.42.1 translates to 42 core components implemented, 1 minor release. The leading 0 means "less than 100 core components finished".

Yeah, I know. The poster to whom I was responding was gleeing about a "dot release" having a bunch of features, and that that's something only a "text-based game" (and DF isn't a text-based game, unless your text-based games normally support tilesets or the IBM upper-ASCII set and run inside of SDL) can do. Which is trivially untrue, both in terms of pumping up the impact of the DF release and downplaying what others do.

Honestly, I'm kind of done with DF until it's more of a game, precisely because of these rabbit holes. I respect what they're doing, but aside from the first "oh, what's new?!" moments, the same core issues with the actual game persist. The "significant subsystems" don't make it play any better, so we're in ant-farm territory and not in a great way.

Well the main attraction is the stories it creates and what you create in game. So I'd say to play Craft the World if you want a DF-like with more direction to it, but DF itself is irreplaceable if you want to do things like attacking Hell with minecarts full of whales for the added mass (and therefore, momentum).

DF is more about the crazy stories that happen when you're, say, draining the ocean to set up those whale traps. Or building a roof over the world, pumping it full of magma, and rigging trapdoors to allow your Orbital Magma Cannon to fry any spot on the surface.

"Well", it's not a complaint about direction, it's more that the ability to create interesting stories hasn't expanded a lot in a long time. Early on in my time with DF, I really enjoyed the exploration, mastering the subsystems involved and developing cool stories out of both my successes and mistakes--but then the mistakes stopped happening because the game ended and it became a time sink rather than a growing and evolving challenge. I have built most of the stupid dwarf tricks (I have an embarrassingly large attempt at a CPU lying around somewhere) because of the lack of breadth to the stories that can be told, but eventually, I very much hit the end of the interesting and challenging things and reached the point of "this would take a dozen hours to do and wouldn't be fun." It's not much fun if you can't fail, and the mastery ceiling of DF is much lower than most people think it is; the self-imposed challenges are artificial ones, and while mechanically they can be interesting, I do not find them fulfilling when I know how it's all supposed to work.

(Minecraft would have this problem if not for the tremendous mod support, Forge, etc. that enables you to make what you want of it. Crash Landing is still one of my favorite things in games--not because of the use of HQM, but rather just the profoundly different environment and options for exploring the same rules in a very different milieu.)

Ah, gotcha.

I haven't played in a while so I'm out of touch as far as figuring out what changes are significant.

I looked over their development page (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) and can't figure out if what's listed as upcoming (job prioritization? taverns? non-player artifcats?) will be major as far game play.

They do list work related to "starting scenarios for your fortresses" which touches a bunch of other subsystems - maybe that will be a large and noticeable change.

Can you explain what you mean? Cheeto dust is bright orange goop that sticks to your fingers. I don’t understand how it relates to “ultimately minor” new game features or “unserious Linux people”.

I figured it'd be obvious in context, but if you've never had somebody way, way too into something and trying to pump up its importance get all spittle-flecked and food-spewy (literal Cheetos, in the case I most vividly recall) at you in person...well, I envy you. =)

"cheetodusting" -- I don't believe I've ever seen that verb before.

> this is the same cheetodusting that makes people take Linux-on-the-desktop people with all the unseriousness they demand.

FWIW I've been running a Linux-only desktop for over sixteen years. I honestly think that it's pretty close to being usable by nearly anyone, and I don't think that's an unserious opinion. It's certainly usable by — and useful to — anyone technical, and that's not an unserious opinion.

The gameplay hasn't really "changed" much at all since its first release, it just keeps getting deeper and deeper (something something z-axis joke), so I don't really understand this complaint. It's the best interactive lore generator ever conceived and this release only adds to that.

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