Great! Adventure mode has the deepest combat system ever. So much so the community created a form of martial arts called Kisat Dur [External Link] on top of it.

Adventure mode dovetails with Fortress mode really well. Everything visitors to your fortress talk about, people on your fort write about, and things referred to in artwork like engravings can be visited, met, or fought. Adventurers can be brought to your forts, retired, then unretired when you need an adventurer to go off and do something. That includes crazy animal people adventurers. The mode is an extremely open sandbox, so it helps to use legends mode at the start of a world for inspiration for goals - maybe using the external legends viewer [External Link] which is like an encyclopedia for the world with graphs and stats.

Intro [External Link], tutorial playlist [External Link] on Blindirls channel. Kruggsmash [External Link] has illustrated playthroughs set to music on Fortress and old era Adventure mode like The Watchful Eyes [External Link].

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I mean that's how I'd think if I was an evil CEO like John Riccitiello.

Your comment reminds me of this quote from a previous round of controversies last year:
https://www.pcgamer.com/unity-ceo-sparks-fury-by-saying-developers-who-dont-consider-monetization-are-fing-idiots/ [External Link] :

Come on Game Dev twitter; why are we pretending that we're only just now realizing John Riccitiello is the evil CEO that he is? We've known this for *Decades*, the dude ran EA. EA! Do better!July 14, 2022 [External Link]

Quoting: TermyI really hope they aren't really expecting anyone to buy this sorry excuse of an explanation?!

Quoting: StalePopcornIf you thought we think you're stupid—lemme hold my own beer…!

Also

John Riccitiello thinks I'm an idiot. I think he's a little greedy capitalist pig who only cares about money. I'm so tired of people like him ruining things I love.July 14, 2022 [External Link]

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Quoting: Nim8

Quoting: BrokattGodot's engine license is MIT, meaning that a company can come along and take massive amount of contributions to the Godot engine from the more social companies, and then build on it without releasing the engine tech in return : https://godotengine.org/license/ [External Link] . Crytek suffered from this ..

I don't really see the connection between Godot and Crytek. ..

I meant it as a practical example in society, where a lot of work is shared - and there is no reciprocity - for what ever reason. And how it results in duplicated work - social inefficiency. I was talking about the social phenomenon.

I recalled reading about the Crytek case in the news some time ago, but Ananace mentioned, in the post which I then liked, that during the discovery phase of the trial it emerged that Star Citizen had in fact sent their bug fixes and optimisations upstream as they agreed to, but presumably Crytek missed it. That's correct right? (I can't find a source talking about discovery with a casual google). So that's seems fine?.

The basic philosophy of opensource is reciprocity - share and share alike as CC licenses put it. It's a basic part of how a group species like humans evolved and succeeded compared to solitary species - it allows members of the species to specialise enough to understand and manipulate nature, safe in the knowledge that others specialise in other areas give back to the greater whole.

Recent developments in the game industry shows people learning about social concepts that the Open Source movement revolves around. This is despite the anti-social proprietary model promoted by Microsoft and their Windows ecosystem. The emergence and success of middleware engines shows the value in avoiding losing lifetimes of professional work to duplication. The gradual increase in sharing of code - by for example Crytek, Lumberyard, and Unreal Engine - shows the benefits of sharing tech.

What's missing with shared source arrangements like Unreal Engine's, is enforcing reciprocal sharing, with copyleft licenses.

Another issue with Unreal Engine is, even if a huge game project gives back improvements worth 1-2% of the total dev budget, they won't get a 1-2% cut of future revenue - even if Unreal Engine pays them a lump sum in return. Unreal could make far more money from the contributions from multiple games than the profit of the game that made the improvements (the game could also be a financial loss despite being technically good).

[quote=Nim8]

Quoting: BrokattStar Citizen got away with not giving code back by "switching" to Amazon's copy : https://bit-tech.net/news/gaming/crytek-sues-cig-rsi-over-star-citizen/1/ [External Link] . Star Citizen eventually settled out of court with Crytek, presumably when they got enough money to cover damages.

What do you mean "got away"?

If you read the article, the claim was that Crytek shared the source code to the engine and gave technical assistance in exchange for getting back modifications. And Star Citizen didn't give back the improvements. A quick search gives this [External Link] article that links to the original claim [External Link] :

"Section 7.3 of the GLA states that "[a]nnually during the Game's development period, and again upon publication of the final Game, Licensee shall provide Crytek with any bug fixes, and optimizations made to the CryEngine's original source code files (including CryEngine tools provided by Crytek) as a complete compilable version."

Quoting: BrokattI can only assume you have some sort of hidden agenda attack CIG. That's fine by me as I don't care for them. I don't care for Crytek either. I my opinion Crytek dug their own grave and have only them selves to blame for their misfortune. If CIG in the future should fail there will be books written on their many mistakes and dubious business strategies

Actually, since CiG are crowd funded - they aren't as motivated by share holders and corporate greed..yet. I like Star Citizen generally. Although their marketing tactics [External Link] to persuade individuals to give huge amounts of money for starting ships is dodgy, and may even promote grindy game design at launch to justify the crowdfunding price: I mean it would be odd if a very expensive ship was grindable in a perceptively short time. They also seem [External Link] to have some sort of microtransaction for in-game currency even after launch, that will certainly compromise game design. They have seemingly not ruled out further monetisation of gameplay.

From an Open Source point of view there's limited socialness in Star Citizen as a project. Even though everything is crowdfunded and all "risks" are taken by those funding - presumably any future profits made go to a limited number of owners? And apparently some company [External Link] brought a 10% stake and board seats in return for small $46 million in funding [External Link]. These funds should have just been crowdsourced, or loaned with a maximum limit on payback - rather than give away a percentage of profits in perpetuity and have to think of shareholder interests from outside the space genre while doing game design. $46 million is less than 10% of the current $ 600 million [External Link] crowdfunding alone. And even though the 10% shareholder gets seats at the board, the people who crowdfunded don't get 90%+ more seats to balance it. Star Citizen should see if the investor is amenable getting his return for his money in the form other than a percentage of the project and board seats. For example a large fixed sum given gradually as profits come in, or just simply give back 10% of the projects current worth to him ($60 million).

In addition, devs who created Star Citizen don't have an arrangement to receive compensation for any low pay, with interest and inflation on top. Traditionally game industry devs are underpaid [External Link] compared to other engineering industries, terribly underpaid early in their careers, and may work very long hours so the payment per hour is low, not to mention bad workplace conditions at the whims of management and owners.

Devs also don't have an arrangement to reap the fruits of their work with a share of the profit, unlike at a company like Valve. This is even though the Star Citizen project was crowdfunded, and funders would prefer devs get profit, if funders were to sacrifice their share of the profits. There's also no guarantee excess profits will go towards devs in the form of more jobs - at least 10% will be taken out of the gaming industry by that investor. The rest is at the mercy of the values and vision of who ever owns Star Citizen.

A Valve [External Link] type project structure where revenue is distributed to devs based on contribution is better. And a copyleft engine license should exist for a project that was crowdfunded to the tune of half a billion+ dollars.

However, compared to all else that goes on in the industry - with share holders taking billions out of the gaming industry each year and predatory monetisation on top - Star Citizen isn't that bad, at least so far.

This drama was a long time ago when both Star Citizen [External Link] and Crytek were managed badly, and also had their own lack of funding compared to what they were trying to do. But those issues are pretty common in the closed source gaming ecosystem, and the structure of companies and ownership.

Funding issues are exacerbated by consoles walling off the gaming industry. Star Citizen, at least initially, will likely miss out on revenue because a massive portion of the gaming ecosystem is walled off by Sony and Microsoft, with a large cut for publishing.

In a world where consoles weren't walled off, consoles would be binary compatible with desktop code, like the Steam Box is. And game projects could release independently whenever they could get code performing well on a set of hardware. Star Citizen [External Link] should run on latest gen consoles even now. Games would also be able to release using their preferred store. That store should ideally be a cooperative non-profit opensource project. One which should have an opensource game recommendations and discovery system similar to the Valve algorithms, set to criteria created by completely independent academics, reviewers, and players.

As it is, there's a lot less exposure for crowdfunding projects because consoles are walled off, even more so when console users who hear about crowdfunded projects can't run the early access versions, or even the launch version. I mean Microsoft gave up [External Link] 10 million+ sales of just 2 games by using them as XBoX exclusive ammunition in their war with Sony.

With the current situation, it's the people working on game industry projects, related hardware projects, and their families, that suffer - not to mention the public who ultimately give 100% of the money in the game industry, and society that suffers whatever the long term social costs (a non-predatory game has some worth?) are of having games (entertainment/art) that are less inspiring, inferior, less accessible, expensive, and predatory.

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This tech feels somewhat too close to Microsoft. Also, while these developments are nice sounding in the context of Unity, they aren't revolutionary for opening up closed console ecosystems to Open Source development or anything - these virtual machine applications [External Link] aren't fast. They're intended for lightweight games. There's a reason heavy engines are done in the normal C/C++ binary way.

The wider issue is Microsoft's strategy of Embracing, Extending and Extinguishing by "generously" volunteering to create new standards and APIs where they are influential, have total control, hold patents over projects, or which just seek to fragment even if it's with a subtle malicious license, in order to hinder independent opensource movements.

Microsoft licensed the upstream code to MonoGame/FNA under their MS-PL license 1 [External Link] 2 [External Link] , which is designed with the aid of their lawyers to fragment the opensource movement:
https://lwn.net/Articles/254717/ [External Link]

... is bizarre. You're allowed to distribute derived works freely, under BSD-ish terms (basically preserve copyright notices). ...

The catch is, *if* you distribute the source, you must distribute it under the MSPL license.
You *can't* combine it into a GPL project. This seems designed gratuitously to break GPL
compatibility [External Link].
...
The licenses may be open source, but they're almost transparently designed to impede code sharing with other free/open source projects...which is one of the hallmarks and great strengths of the movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework#History [External Link] :

..Microsoft and their partners hold patents for CLI and C# ..

While the patent trolling avoidance in MS-PL is nice, of course Microsoft and Co. could also have just formally released their patents into public domain like e.g. NASA does [External Link].

...

Remember C# and dot net were originally attempts to extend and fragment the prevailing open standard.

On API's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft [External Link]

The Windows API is so broad, so deep, and so functional that most independent software vendors would be crazy not to use it. And it is so deeply embedded in the source code of many Windows apps that there is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system instead... It is this switching cost that has given the customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO (total cost of ownership), our lack of a sexy vision at times, and many other difficulties [...] Customers constantly evaluate other desktop platforms, [but] it would be so much work to move over that they hope we just improve Windows rather than force them to move. In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago.

This paper covers Microsoft's strategy in some detail, of interesting read generally:
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4144&context=sis_research [External Link]

Extend:

Extend: Microsoft extended HTML/CSS/JavaScript by creating DHTML, and Java with C#, while its SMB was extended by others into SMB2 and CIFS.
...
Phase 2: Microsoft Embraces and
Extends Java
Potential conflicts were apparent even before Sun’s press release hit the news wires. At the very same Microsoft strategy workshop in 1995, Bill Gates famously announced the company’s intent to “embrace and extend” Internet standards. After describing Microsoft’s approach to spreadsheets (Excel with respect to Lotus 123) and local area networking (Windows NT’s built-in functionality with respect to Novell Netware), Gates (1995) applied the same logic to the Internet: “So [for] the Internet, the competition will be kind of, once again, embrace and extend, and we will embrace all the popular Internet protocols. Anything that a significant number of publishers are using and taking advantage of we will support. We will do some extensions to those things” (III).

Fragment:

...offered a superset of Sun’s Java functionality: the ability to writecross-platform Java applications, as well as to take advantage of “native” Windows features. However, the J++ product manager acknowledged the potential incompatibility that might result: “In some cases, it will break the cross-platform nature of Java. In some cases, it won’t” (CNET, 1996b).
...
Internal documents revealed during the United States v. Microsoft antitrust trial suggest that this was part of a coordinated strategy to “Let [the] Java class library space fragment, so that ‘write once, run everywhere’ does not happen (Algaze, 1996). In July 1997, Microsoft explicitly indicated that it would not distribute JFC with its next release of Internet Explorer, choosing to promote AFC instead (IV) (Wingfield, 1997).
...
Microsoft eventually paid Sun $20 million to settle the lawsuit and terminate its license agreement. Microsoft proceeded to develop C#, a Java-like programming language, as part of its .NET programming framework, abandoning even minimal efforts at cooperation with its Silicon Valley rival (I).

Show true values when people don't fall for it:

Microsoft appears to have not anticipated the degree to which Sun would fight its efforts to extend Java, as it had done with other rival standards before. In the face of this opposition, Microsoft abandoned its embrace and extend strategy and shifted back to direct rivalry.

Our examination of Microsoft’s responses to nearly a dozen such efforts over a 15-year period suggests that at least two distinct forces are at work: the desire for legitimacy among a community of adopters, and the desire to leverage the underlying technology while establishing a new standard under a firm’s own control. Legitimacy is primarily about strategic perception, while leverage is about technical reality.

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Quoting: soulsourceI might misremember, but didn't Toady switch to clang++ for the Windows built too, back when df was ported to 64bit?

Tarn uses Visual Studio, from what I remember from interviews on Blind's channel (by Tarn [External Link] , Putnam [External Link] ) recently and, 2021-ish interviews on stackoverflow [External Link] on how Tarn manages a codebase that's 700,000+ lines of C/C++. He could be doing release builds with an external compiler like Clang. But I doubt it, as Putnam, the new programmer and former assembly level DF modder, mentioned having to clear up things related to switching compilers when porting to Linux - and I doubt it was a Clang to GCC switch.

If Liam has access to both Windows 10/11 and Linux OSes on the same machine, it will be worth an article if there's a measurable difference. If compiler flags are set well for both builds, any difference could be due to compiler and/or OS efficiency. GPU isn't likely to bottleneck FPS on DF.

DF is used in benchmarks by major CPU reviewers like this [External Link] or this [External Link].

That sites' benchmarks seem to use the time taken for world generation with about 250-500 years of evolution (same seeds [External Link] helps). But trying the same large-ish fort and comparing FPS without input will also work e.g. fort saves from DF file depot [External Link]. Worldgen benchmarks should give pretty much the same results in the free Classic versions as Premium, as rendering is mostly irrelevant, if Liam doesn't have DF. Future benchmarks will probably use Classic for ease of access. The exact release matters, as new versions are being optimised.

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Quoting: Keiya

Quoting: Nim8For example, apparently the console SDK's are distributed only under certain conditions, governed by a non-disclosure agreement. If they don't give the SDKs to people using GPL licenses, when actually it's none of their business who owns the code and who else has rights to it, then it is a matter for the trade regulatory authorities.

So you want licenses for what you're allowed to link against and redistribute ruled invalid? You realize that would destroy the GPL, right?

No. I mean Microsoft or Sony may simply be not handing out the SDKs with the system APIs to people they don't like (i.e. GPL users). And maybe also handing out SDKs only if people sign NDAs. NDAs could include any type of condition including discrimination against GPL users. If they're doing things like that, then that is a big trade regulatory issue that needs to be fixed. From the GPLv2 side everything is great.

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Quoting: Keiya

Quoting: Nim8Licensing for closed source games with UPBGE is simple.. : https://upbge.org/docs/latest/manual/manual/release/licensing.html#standalone-games [External Link] and https://www.blender.org/support/faq/#gnu-gpl-2 [External Link]

... until you want to do console ports, in which case you have to rebuild the entire thing in a different engine. The GPL is, unfortunately, a nonstarter for commercial game development because of the markets it cuts you off from.

(There are plenty of commercial games that don't target consoles. Some won't work as they're suited to complex mouse and keyboard input.)

There's nothing in GPLv2 that UPBGE and Blender uses that prevents it being run on closed source operating systems - GPL code can link to closed operating system libraries which is why GPL is fine on Windows: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#SystemLibraryException [External Link] . GPLv3 contains an anti-Tivo-isation clause which can go against consoles, but this does not apply to GPLv2.

Things are fine from the GPLv2 side.

If Microsoft and Sony choose to try to prevent GPLv2 software from going on consoles, while allowing completely closed source software that gives others no rights or access to modify, on the basis they can't stand downstream people having the freedom to modify software like a comic book evil character, then that's a matter for the trade regulatory bodies that apply consumer law : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trade_Commission [External Link] and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_protection#Consumer_law [External Link] .

Plenty of art and animation running on consoles were created in Blender, and UPBGE is often used to quickly visualise game levels within Blender (like: [1 [External Link]] or [2 [External Link]] ) before being ported to a closed source game engine. It's absurd if Blender/UPBGE aren't allowed on consoles, so it's a regulatory issue to be fixed.

For example, apparently the console SDK's are distributed only under certain conditions [Edit: i.e. console manufacturers seem to not hand out SDKs with system APIs etc. to people they don't like based on willingness to agree to arbitrary conditions], governed by a non-disclosure agreement. If they don't give the SDKs to people using GPL licenses, when actually it's none of their business who owns the code and who else has rights to it, then it is a matter for the trade regulatory authorities [to stop discrimination based on software philosophy].

Once trade regulatory problems are resolved GPLv2 and Blender/UPBGE will be fine.

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The other opensource game engine that should get support is Blender's game engine, whose current iteration is called UPBGE [External Link].

Long term UPBGE is probably the most promising game engine. Because no matter what other open-source or proprietary engines do or say, they don't have the sheer convenience and production efficiency for artists that being integrated into a modelling and animation tool does. With the other major modelling and animation tools being privately owned, they won't be turned into game engines.

Licensing for closed source games with UPBGE is simple. It just requires having the stand alone Blender game player load an external blend file which can be under any license : https://upbge.org/docs/latest/manual/manual/release/licensing.html#standalone-games [External Link] and https://www.blender.org/support/faq/#gnu-gpl-2 [External Link]

Godot's engine license is MIT, meaning that a company can come along and take massive amount of contributions to the Godot engine from the more social companies, and then build on it without releasing the engine tech in return : https://godotengine.org/license/ [External Link] . Crytek suffered from this when they licensed CryEngine to Star Citizen - Crytek had a deal where, in exchange for opening the source code and assistance, they'd get access to bug fixes and optimisation improvements made by Star Citizen. But Crytek was in financial trouble and sold a copy of their engine to Amazon, who released it for free with an unethical anti-competitive restriction (that games that uses it have to rely on Amazon's Twitch / AWS integration IIRC). Star Citizen got away with not giving code back by "switching" to Amazon's copy : https://bit-tech.net/news/gaming/crytek-sues-cig-rsi-over-star-citizen/1/ [External Link] . Star Citizen eventually settled [External Link] out of court with Crytek, presumably when they got enough money to cover damages. The popular Apache licenses pushed by big stock exchange companies have similar issues to MIT.

Blender's license forces companies to share the tech, and prevent countless professional lifetimes worth of work re-inventing wheels. The success and domination of middleware engines shows the value of not duplicating work. And even Unreal Engine shares code these days, but doesn't require companies to share back what they build on top.

The only way people who actually make games in the game industry will be more free of corporate greed and share holder manipulation is to have tech under Open Source licenses. And to do a Valve [External Link] and get rid of shareholders taking money out of the company by acting as more of a group of developers and distributing revenue based on peer assessment of contributions - while doing game funding through Early Access or other crowdfunding.

The loss of a formerly-leading and user-friendly game engine to the darker forces that negatively impact so much of the gaming industry..

In the long run successful privately owned tech Companies eventually get brought up by stock exchange giants. Well intentioned CEOs and managements aren't worth much in the long term, as eventually they get bored, retire, or otherwise move on.. and you get less ethical management as replacements.

Epic, the owners of Unreal Engine, eventually sold out to the dark side, and a bunch of senior figures left in disgust : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games#Games_as_a_service_and_Tencent_shareholding_(2012%E2%80%932018) [External Link]

Unity got taken over by a former EA CEO : https://www.pcgamer.com/unity-ceo-sparks-fury-by-saying-developers-who-dont-consider-monetization-are-fing-idiots/ [External Link]

It's just a matter of time until proprietary middle-ware companies let you down.

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Is DF faster on Linux native than Windows now for same fort? Linux will be compiled on opensource GCC or Clang. Windows will be proprietary Microsoft MSVC 20xx. Worth making an article if it is, as DF is used for benchmarking CPU by major sites like AnandTech.

Liam:..working in parallel on different parts of the game like the adventure mode

Yeah, I think a lot of media for steam didn't really mention DF project is trying to create simulated worlds you can interact with like a holodeck from Trek with lots of modes of interaction. And fort mode is just one where you play as a central planner. Eventually DF will even have a mode where you play as a deity.

Dwarf Fortress is amazing, and made by probably the smartest person in the gaming industry. Tarn Adams has a PHD in math and was apparently the best math major at his university without needing to take notes [1 [External Link]].

Jordicoma:..difference with the steam release and the free version. The free it's on text mode but you can have graphics with themes

Just the "premium" art and music pack.
The free version can be modded with graphics/music. But IIRC most modders are holding off releasing tilesets to make sure devs get enough money. The Steam release was only done due to health concerns and lack of free healthcare in US[2 [External Link]].
That's also the reason why DF is not already released as opensource. Devs are quite opensource friendly otherwise from what I read. They've said if they were financially secure to pay living costs and retirements etc. they'd actually go opensource, and give away unneeded money [3 [External Link]] - DF is set to become FOSS under the care of the Museum of Modern Art if anything untoward happens to them [4 [External Link]].

If you're thinking of trying the premium or free version, most info is on the Dwarf Fortress wiki [External Link]. DF hack is a mod bundled along with the install and has a lot of tools and extra UI for information. Ideally DF is supposed to be played by deciding on what type of adventure you want to have, then generating worlds with detailed options, evolving it while looking through faction setup and legends mode to see what's going on in detail for inspiration for goals, selecting the best world, and then finding an embark site that looks best.

There are good youtube tutorials, Dwarf Fortress news & dev interviews by BlindIrl [External Link]. DasTactic [External Link] has a DF playlist where he goes through thought processes for each action. Kruggsmash [External Link] does playthroughs with custom illustration and music that show some of the narratives DF can make. JustDon'tDie [External Link] is also good.

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Games are mostly targeted at whatever the console specs are, and should scale up/down to what ever a 'mid range' PC is. Having lots of pixels on a screen burns through quality of graphics.
See stream stats for an idea of what people actually have: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam [External Link]

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