Incline Will Dwarf Fortress: Adventurer Mode eventually become the greatest RPG of all time?

[PorkyThePaladin]

That's not wrong.
I usually perceive DF as just the strategy/builder game. Roguelike-wise, there are others that scratch that itch pretty well already (and with a modern UI on top), so I simply don't care much about other modes.

There are no roguelikes that scratch that itch. I love playing NetHack (with a graphical interface), which is probably the most complex roguelike outside of DF, or at least one of them, and it is nothing like DF. I don't think you realize the intended scope of adventurer mode. Other roguelikes are/will be but shells of what DF intends to be. Let me run a simple scenario to illustrate. Let's say you are an adventurer and you come to some town in your fantasy world. They give you a task, let's say to take out some evil sorcerer that settled nearby. You realize he is extremely powerful. To defeat him, you try to gather some information about him, to find out his weaknesses. You hear rumors in local villages that he originally came from region A. You travel to region A, and go to the largest library there, located in a massive Fortress that you actually built in a previous playthrough in fortress mode. At the library, you peruse through ancient tomes procedurally written by various scholars over the many years that fantasy world existed. You find some old manuscript that describes an ancient battle, hundreds of years ago, where that same sorcerer was defeated by a warrior using material V, which apparently the sorcerer is sensitive too. Your adventurer travels the world, searching for the rare material V, to collect enough of it to create a weapon. Over his travels, as he engages in combat with other lesser enemies, he invents a new fighting style with swords. He finally comes back and defeats the evil sorcerer, afterwards retiring and teaching his fighting style to others. Are there roguelikes that let you do stuff like this?

 

[thesheeep]

That would be a difference in story, and don't get me wrong, it is impressive if such a thing is dynamically generated.
But concerning moment-to-moment gameplay, I doubt there is too much of a difference. You travel, you loot, you level up, you get eaten by a grue.
I'm not saying it is exactly like another Roguelike, just that I don't particularly care about that mode in DF.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

I'm not sure graphical concerns SHOULD matter in the case of DF. If how user-friendly it's is the only judge, DF would have died many eons ago. It's fueled and driven forward despite all its troubles.

It isn't dead in spite of those shortcomings. There is no telling how large the userbase could become if the shortcomings were dealt with.
Just look at how people flock to games like Rimworld, KeeperRL, Towns, Gnomoria, etc. All knowing DF and looking for a variant of it that can be played without studying keyboard shortcuts for hours.

All fair points.

Don't forget graphical assets can be expensive. The good 2d games first created 3d models and then converted those to the animated sprites for their isometric engines. Maybe this is partial explanation why Tarn used a text engine?

Before DF, there was Slaves to Armok: God of Blood:
http://www.bay12games.com/armok/screens.html

Notice something? It's 3d.

I remeember years ago reading (or watching) an interview with Tarn on this issue. Why is it text? I vaguely remember his answer being something aligning to "Graphics are (or were) too much work." Seems a very ignorant statement to make, until you realize he worked on Slaves to Armok: God of Blood. He may have done it wrong, but he wasn't just another wannabee farting into the wind.

It's a lot easier to do graphics now, but remember DF was started 2004-05. And after all these years Tarn may have failed to make the interface/gfx implementation independent from the rest of the code. That's a failure. But I have some sympathy. Old code can get very mixed up, just like spaghetti. I think this is a big reason companies throw away old code and create new engines from scratch. Programmers (and companies) do stretch the limits of old code to cut spending, but it can only go so far before it restricts you.

Is DF restricted by its text engine? Yes. I'll give you that.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

*snip*
2. In many ways, the true genius of DF is that they were able to push all the crap most devs focus on to the background (graphics, UI, etc) and focus exclusively on the gameplay/systems. This is what allows them, as a tiny 2 person team, to create what's already by far the most complex game every made. I have seen so many indie teams/devs bogged down in stuff like graphics/performance/UI/etc, that I commend these guys for doing it their way. If they create the meat and potatoes of DF, they or somebody else can later add all the other stuff. But if they spent much of the time of peripheral things, it would never get done.

That's what I mostly think. As a longtime programmer, it definitely seems to me graphics/ui take time.

Note that's mostly what I think. Check my post above. Here're reasons I have doubts:
1) I'm not sure a graphical UI is peripheral
2) If time was spent on graphic UI, DF would never get done? Unsure.

Still I think DF's biggest drain in terms of its popularity isn't the graphics or UI, as popularly argued, but its simulation and gameplay. Just the way the game is made and the way it's played probably would exclude it from the majority of gamers.

Give this to Sid Meier--for example--and watch the code get thrown away. He'd just want the IP. He'd have to rework so much of the game just throwing it away and making a new codebase would probably be more cost effective.

 

[Bohrain]

As soon as Toady gets rid of all the placeholder stuff.
Which will probably happen as soon as Star Citizen gets released.

 

[thesheeep]

Programmers (and companies) do stretch the limits of old code to cut spending, but it can only go so far before it restricts you.

Meh.
I'm not asking for a fancy UI.
Keeping the current and just adding mouse support, making everything clickable, border scrolling, etc. would be a huge step forward.
An interface element is just a clickable area of arbitrary size at an arbitrary position. It doesn't matter if it has a graphical representation that looks like a button or two characters like "a)".

Of course, the core problem is most likely that the current code does not have the concepts of "clickable area", mouse position check and so on.
So deep changes would be required either way.

Come on, some more motivation, please!
Who wouldn't like seeing a DF speedrun done with Samba De Amigo maracas?!


Robert Jarzebina Edgy? I don't get that.