Toady did an interview with Penn State's Society of Physics Students discussing Dwarf Fortress, as well as what inspired Dwarf Fortress and what it has inspired. He mentions CE once early on, and a student references it in a question, but at about 1:40:20, he talks about CE and Gaslamp for nearly 60 seconds! Wow! Thought this would interest you guys. Spoiler
We knew about it, but thanks for the heads up I think a few of us had a little fanboy moment when it happened too.
(having only watched from 1:40-1:43) Pretty cool. It is overwhelming to think how much goes into a game like CE and how much content is necessary to take a functional game into a fun game where the variety of events is enough that their interaction is unpredictable and different each time. His mentioning mistakes and backtracking make me wonder how much more gaslamp can get done by the time it takes them to release. It also makes me wonder, almost in awe that the Gaslamp guys can hire a studio full of people and work on a single game for years and have the money to pay everyone a wage that allows them to eat. I know they have dredmor, but how much can that bring in when it goes on sale for $2.50 for all the expansions and steam keeps %30 of that. I have high hopes for you guys! as he says. the newer small studios are taking huge chunks out of the triple A studios, and that is a great thing. I wasn't around for the pre-release videos/screenshots of dredmor but I am excited to be here this time around for the development of CE. Thanks for doing it the journals. And if necessary, we will keep buying copies of thegame (or stuffed diggles) to make sure you guys can eat until it is done
I've always wondered why Toady never tried to expand dwarf fortress by hiring more help and I feel like the biggest thing preventing dwarf fortress from turning into a commercial scaled project is Tarn's own unwilligness to deal with the project management of such an endeavor. It's a bit of a shame that a game of such depth and complexity is hamstrung by the limitations of 1-2 people.
There's a new thread about that every now and then over at Bay12. Most of us, Toady included, tend to agree that DF could be more commercially viable if Toady started to build a team. But Toady isn't interested in commercially viable. He is more of an artist than a entrepreneur. Try and tell a successful artist who makes a living from their work how to draw some day. A tidbit of advice now and then is fine, but tell him to change his entire business model? Ain't gonna happen. He makes a decent living from donations, and he gets to do what he wants to do. Does it really get much better than that? If DF all of a sudden dropped into the toilet, do you really think it would be hard for someone with his coding ability to pick up a solid job? There's no risk for Toady to contuinue doing what he wants, in the way he wants to do it.
He discusses this in the interview. He wants to make DF his dream game, and his career. He has been coding it for 10 years, and he is only 1/3 through his goals for the game. He says hiring a team would slow him down and force him to polish DF, by improving the interface and bugfixing for the next 6 months. Like Farmerbob said, he is content as he is and wants to add as many features and as much complexity as he can to build toward that ultimate fantasy world/game.
So what did he say? I didn't really understand it. Something about that GLG can easily outproduce DF? Also I'm disappointed I expected Toady to look like a dwarf with a mighty beard.
Bro, theres pictures of him lookin' all mad dwarfish. Also, he said that DF has been in constant development for about 8 years and a fair amount of that time was spent rewriting code and tweaking and removing things. He said if someone wanted to remake DF, it would take much less time. Also, I will point out that he claims adding depth takes the same amount of time no matted how much money or resources the developer has access to. If you have a large team, you can work on a lot of things simultaneously, but the coordination will slow things down. If GLG was creating an ASCII game, and GLG was entirely programmers, I'd say they'd have a fair shot of reaching DF's level in 2-3 years. - He said that GLG should be able to make a nice game.
Oh I see know but I wonder happened . Did some kobolds steal his beard? It might explain the slowdown in development. Thanks that's pretty clear now. I have been also wondering about how GLG would create the necessary depth for fun while managing the burdens of 3D. I guess it won't be '3D DF' but more an 'inspired by DF game' which can hopefully serve as a staple for how it's done properly. I'm especially concerned about combat that's pretty critical for me in DF.
It won't be 3D Df because there won't be digging, dwarves, 143234 kind of rock, or foot toe injuries, On other hand there will be cogs, pipes, factories and laudanum. I think devs have made pretty clear that CWE is inspired by DF style of emergent gameplay but by no means are they trying to achieve the same game in 3D.
I like the one level approach better, it means city planning has a lot more meaning, and sprawling, chaotic cities are way cooler than layer upon layer upon layer of buildings That's just personal preference though, a multiple layer approach can make planning and building easier: one layer for factories, one for citizens, one layer with a Purgatory For Lazy Citizens Who Did Not Meet Their Cog-Given Quota For The Day...
An interesting thought. It makes me think about the various definitions of layer / level. I personally prefer giant sprawling single-layer planes myself, but that doesn't mean that single-layer means there can't be other things going on in other "layers" that are only visible to the code. After all, any type of weather would exist in a 2nd layer that wouldn't be accessible to the player. It opens up the possibilities to only build on one level, and yet that one level can be influenced by multiple unseen layers. After all, I love the idea of the Purgatory For Lazy Citizens Who Did Not Meet Their Cog-Given Quota For The Day, and if citizens randomly disappeared into this layer they might come back later as Purgatory Escapees who can cause all sorts of Madness and chaos upon their ascension from the depths...
