Idle Thumbs 242: A Simple Goat

[Jake]

Idle Thumbs 242:

A Simple Goat

For many, this is the season of cheer and joviality, a time best spent close to family and loved ones. For others (like Nick Breckon), its the perfect time to dip a first toe into Dwarf Fortress and disappear from this world altogether. Plus, Chris shares his experiences with the top-down shooter Helldivers, and we take a look back at Star Wars games of the 1990s.

Games Discussed: Helldivers, Dwarf Fortress, Star Wars Rebellion, Star Wars: X-Wing

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[rdc]

Oh man, I spent so many hours with Star Wars Rebellion. I doubt I would have if I couldn't turn off the C3PO voice updates. 

[SuperBiasedMan]

Oh wow. My copy of Broken Sword had the same problem... But I never figured it out til listening to this podcast just now.

[Turgid]

George Lucas and Frank Marshall at the premiere:

 

 

(skip to 1:18)

 

Here's the Fallout 4 isometric thing. http://kotaku.com/fallout-4-re-imagined-as-an-isometric-game-1728145213

 

Dwarf Fortress is indeed programmed and designed by Tarn Adams, affectionately known by the community as Toady One. His brother Zach (aka ThreeToe) does additional design and playtesting. So that's two more amphibian connections in this show!

 

DF's interface is pretty atrocious, and the gameplay is overcomplicated and you need a lot of community help to figure it out. But it is a brilliant in-depth basebuilding sim game, under the spike-encrusted surface. Fortunately the community has done some work to make it more accessible.

 

By the way Nick, the game is pauseable real-time. So while the interface is slow until you learn it, you're not meant to be setting stuff up while the game is running. Pause it and designate your stuff and assign labors, etc. Then let it run for a bit, then pause again to set up buildings, etc. You have all the time in the world to sift through menus. Eventually you memorize the tree structure and can type v-p-l (or whatever) to pull up the labor menu automatically, but even then I'd never attempt to play it real time.

 

(Side note, Dwarf Therapist removes a lot of tedium when it comes to setting labors for dozens of individual dwarves. It might clear up some issues on why certain jobs aren't getting done, if you run into that. http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Utilities#Dwarf_Therapist )

[feelthedarkness]

Man is that the billionaire's nightmare or what? Having George Lucas invite you over for a private one on one viewing of his brutal wooden love stories. does he fill those with frivolous cgi critters? do the actors have to try to avoid bumping into the invisible greenscreen furniture? 

[feelthedarkness]

also has anybody downloaded Totally Toadz to check for Frog Fractions 2 status?

[Ben X]

That Lucas/Marshall encounter was a lot less weird than the Thumbs painted it! The interview leading up to that was pretty excruciating, though.

[Nappi]

I remember being really confused about Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi as a kid. "Teräs käsi" means "steel hand" in Finnish (except that it should be "teräskäsi"), and I couldn't figure out why the Finnish distributor (or whatever) would translate only part of the name into Finnish. I'm not sure if the reality is less weird, to be honest.

 

Anyway, if the Star Wars pronunciation corresponds to the Finnish one, then the name should be pronounced more or less like it is spelled (with "ä" corresponding to the "a" in "hat").

[tabacco]

Dwarf fortress is one of those games I always want to play in theory but am put off for the same reason I refuse to use vim.

[Turgid]

The official word is that the interface will be addressed once the main features are in. But there's no point working on the interface now when it would have to be redone when major features get added anyway. (People have been requesting this periodically since the game was released.) Toady is aware of the issue and it will get fixed...eventually.

 

I expect Version 1, released sometime in the 2040s, will be a glorious joy to play. Fortunately in the meantime we have DF-inspired games like Craft the World, Rimworld, and even Goblin Camp, that are really learn-able and usable.

[Korax]

Ugh, here I was, listening to the podcast while killing time until I finally went to see Star Wars this evening, and you had to go and ruin it for me! You're the worst, Chris.

[Jake]

  On 12/27/2015 at 2:46 AM, Korax said:

Ugh, here I was, listening to the podcast while killing time until I finally went to see Star Wars this evening, and you had to go and ruin it for me! You're the worst, Chris.

its hard to know if this is a joke or not with Star Wars stuff.

[Vasari]

Helldivers went under the radar for alot of people when it came out on PS4. It's a shame because that game is brilliant fun. The Magicka DNA is definitely present; I think what Chris was going to say before he got side-tracked by Super Earth is that the stratagems work like Magicka spells where you input a combination of buttons on the D-Pad to call in different abilties, for example a reinforcement drop to bring back dead players is "Up Down Left Right Up". This is also how you activate objectives like oil drills, and just like in Magicka it's very easy to get these combinations wrong in the heat of battle.

 

The other point about Helldivers is that EVERYTHING has the potential for friendly fire. For example, the drop pods you can call in to reinforce or resupply can land on top of a player. The mech you can call in and pilot will squish any friendly players that get too close. The automated turret that targets enemies doesn't care if a player is standing in its line of fire. And the nuke you use to destroy enemy nests (called the Hellbomb) has to be activated manually, has a five second detonation timer, and sprinting out of the blast radius takes about four seconds. Since all four players can call reinforcements on a personal 30-second cooldown, the game is happy to let you die over and over again because it's simple enough to have another player bring you back. That ends up being the reason that singleplayer is so dull; playing alone just gives you one automatic reinforcement, but the thrill of the game comes from four idiots all trying to do their cool thing at the same time and inadvertently blowing each other up. Which come to think of it, is the same elevator pitch for Magicka.

 

I don't know how the population is on PS4 anymore, but I imagine it's had the same trouble as any downloadable console game that relies on matchmaking, so I hope it finds a second wind on the PC.

[SecretAsianMan]

I was surprised to hear Chris talking about Helldivers.  I've been wanting to play it since it was announced but I don't have a PS4.  It's definitely meant to be played with other people.  There are a number of stratagems in the game that are designed around having more than one person, such as a 4 person vehicle or an assisted reload of a heavy weapon (you can reload it yourself but it's much faster if someone else does it).  A number of us have been playing it on Steam if Chris or anyone else is ever interested.

 

Helldivers is also the game that finally made the Steam Controller click for me.  It took some messing around with settings to make it effective but I'm really starting to like that thing a lot more.

[Vasari]

  On 12/27/2015 at 10:03 PM, SecretAsianMan said:

Helldivers is also the game that finally made the Steam Controller click for me.  It took some messing around with settings to make it effective but I'm really starting to like that thing a lot more.

 

I started playing tonight on the PC since the podcast got me in the mood, and I've found the PS4 controller to be far better than the Xbox gamepad. I haven't used a steam controller, but if you have the option I'd recommend trying one of those alternatives.

[SecretAsianMan]

I've heard that stratagem input on the Xbox controller is tricky since the sequences use D-pad input and the Xbox controller's D-pad is absolute crap.  I have my Steam Controller setup with the left pad mimicking a D-pad and it works almost flawlessly (the main drawback is that you can't really feel the directions with your fingers so it takes some getting used to at first).  I also have a few actions mapped to the rear paddles so I can aim and do something else simultaneously.

[Korax]

  On 12/27/2015 at 3:12 AM, Jake said:

its hard to know if this is a joke or not with Star Wars stuff.

 

A real Star Wars fan would know whether or not it was a joke. I decided to go anyway and see if I could salvage the experience, but nope. Good money and time down the drain because all I could do was sit in the theater and fume about Chris' callous disregard for the sanctity of my Star Wars experience. His reckless spoiling of an insignificant detail amounts to nothing less than a viciously targeted personal attack on me, somebody he doesn't know.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I guess I should say that yes, it's a joke, just in case my self-aware off-the-deep-end invective doesn't make it clear. It's a pretty good movie, and I barely even noticed the thing Chris talked about, despite expecting it.

 

YOU MONSTER

[Gormongous]

  On 12/27/2015 at 10:03 PM, SecretAsianMan said:

I was surprised to hear Chris talking about Helldivers.  I've been wanting to play it since it was announced but I don't have a PS4.  It's definitely meant to be played with other people.  There are a number of stratagems in the game that are designed around having more than one person, such as a 4 person vehicle or an assisted reload of a heavy weapon (you can reload it yourself but it's much faster if someone else does it).  A number of us have been playing it on Steam if Chris or anyone else is ever interested.

 

Yes! I try to 'dive every night and it's great fun.

[Valorian Endymion]

DF, despite begin intimidating, is a great game - I remember once, early on, that one of my dwarves enter in a tantrum and after invading someone else workshop to craft some strange item he decided to attack people around. Once he finnaly down, I didn´t exact how bury or remove his corpse and everybody was complaning about the miasma, so I had to wall around the place he died closing that workshop forever.

[Corelli]

The great thing about the DF controls is that they actually tell you something very important about the game: that the Dwarves are not under your control, that they are their own "things" living their own lives and that while you may be able to direct them, they have no particular compulsion to always follow you. In short, they are emancipated, to a degree. Many other aspects of the game are out of the player's control, and even out of the creator's control, owing to the procedural generation of content.

 

It's not often that the process of learning a game's controls so effectively illuminates what the game is about. I think it's pretty cool.

[Problem Machine]

  On 12/27/2015 at 3:12 AM, Jake said:

its hard to know if this is a joke or not with Star Wars stuff.

Poe's law

[DukeofChutney]

Since the new release I've started playing Dwarf Fortress again. Going pretty well so far, and I like the new additions. My dwarves now compose bad poetry, its like fantasy teenage angst! Also there is a tavern which is neat. I've been playing DF on an off since around 2007 so if anyone needs learning hints i might be able to help. The hardest thing is probably getting farms working, particularly for a new player.

[robotslave]

Hoo boy, am I ever looking forward to what this forum's DF UI apologists have to say when Nick finds himself in need of a dwarven military for the first time...

[Jake]

  On 12/30/2015 at 12:18 AM, Problem Machine said:

Poe's law

Oh my god.

[unimural]

I'm also really looking forward to Nick's experiences with Dwarf Fortress.

 

However, I do understand if we won't get (m)any. Hopefully the kind reader will ease things for Nick. While perhaps not a common view, I think that Dwarf Fortress isn't that complicated, nor is it that complex, as such. The big difference is that the primary objective of Dwarf Fortress is to be a simulation, not a game.

 

When it comes to complexity, I think it could be compared to some citybuilders, e.g. Children of the Nile. The economic chains are mostly reasonable. Mine the rock for ore, which is smelted into bars, which is then worked into a tool or weapon, which is then used. However, to set any of this up in DF you have to do a ton of work. Because what you're doing, is, in my opinion, more about setting up the simulation so that this economic chain comes about, rather than setting up the economic chain itself. Instead of building tools, you set up the conditions so that the ai agents (aka the dwarfs) can produce the tools if you request them. And the real issue with DF is that the interface is really poor at handling the scope of the simulation. It's just bad at it. The first time you get over 20 immigrants and try to find meaningful things for them to do you realise the value of Dwarf Therapist.

 

Now, I love Dwarf Fortress. Specifically, I love two things about it. I love the expressiveness of the simulation, the story generator aspect of it. The moment I truly fell in love with DF was when I managed to build my first kind of successful fortress, and how it was undone by a dwarf triggering a tantrum when his pet cow drowned. The cow had been pushed off of a bridge by a dwarf already throwing a tantrum, because I was unable to provide him with the materials for his artefact. The craftsman was easily subdued by the guard, but the owner of the cow was unstoppable monster, destryoing property and killing everyone trying to stop him. The rotting corpses of their friends drove the rest of dwarves crazy.

 

The second thing is, I love fiddling around with the simulation. The Rube Goldberg machine -aspect of it all. That it is a creaky machine that can fail unless you build failsafes. And even then it can fail. I love the concept that you have so many things you fiddle around with. And I like that fiddling. Trying to optimise those ever-partying dwarfs into a simulation that progresses mostly in the direction I want it to go to. But I don't think anyone is denying that the interface as it currently is, is rather cumbersome, especially the bigger your fortress is.

 

If the simulation fiddling aspect of the game doesn't appeal to you, I think it doesn't matter in the least how much you enjoy the story generation aspect of it all, you will bounce off of Dwarf Fortress. The insanity of it all must appeal to you as well.