I've never played the game but love reading about it. It seems that the events that take place in Dwarf Fortress and in Eve Online make fantastic reading. I love that these games exist. I've even thought about purchasing them just to show my support. I'll probably never get to sit down and play them however.

I have done this. I will also occasionally pen an email to developers, musicians, etc, expressing my sincerest gratitude and how much it means to me to see and hear such great work. Yes, these things are real work with deadlines and dealing with unreasonable people. They are also labors of love and passion. Every so often, I get a response back of much the same care and attention that I try to put in.

If the phrase “a society grows richer when old men plant trees whose shade they will never sit in” does indeed ring true, then I think it equally corresponds to the qualities and textures of beauty we as an audience are privvy to that the makers may not be.

Same. I've been a "fan" of both for as long as they've been around, but have always been confident that I liked the idea of the games more than I'd actually enjoy playing them. I'm content living vicariously through the stories.

we used to have a whole literary niche based upon authors retelling their dnd campaigns. i'd love to see similar eve or dorf fort novelizations.

That sort of already exists:

boatmurdered (https://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/)

kruggsmash (https://www.youtube.com/c/kruggsmash)

It looks really nice. One thing though, is that I seem to remember that it used to be single threaded, so it would slow down a lot once your colony had more than 100 dwarves or so. Is this still the case?

My last game got up to over 200 without lag stopping me from playing the game. It's still there, though.

Tragic they didn't go with Mayday's tileset. It was the best tileset, objectively. If you look at its goblin graphics, you'll be instantly convinced, "Yes, objectively, this is the best tileset there could ever be, and I am now a terminal aesthetic realist."

Isn't Mayday himself working on the official tileset too? [1]

[1]: https://goblinart.pl/vg-eng/df.php

Mayday's tileset can't be used, because the whole graphical system is being revamped to better display multiple Z-levels.

Agreed. For me, Mayday's tileset == Dwarf Fortress graphics.

That being said, I'll still purchase a Steam copy when it comes out.

This interview with Tarn Adams (one of the creators of dwarf fortress) is amazing and gives a good idea of the depth and pace of development.

It’s pretty bonkers TBH, I’d love to understand the abstractions and data models involved with software engineering this ambitious.

https://youtu.be/VAhHkJQ3KgY

DF is the most successful roguelike by far. It draws in over a hundred thousand US dollars a year. You are never going to make something as complex as DF "take off" and sell millions as it's a niche topic by design.

Most of the people interested in the Steam release are going to very quickly realize that the complexity and difficulty to learn isn't just in the UI and will probably give up on the game. Which I hope will not damage its reputation.

The topic in general isn’t niche - Rimworld has shown that. The issues around UI and complexity are somewhat self inflicted.

Rimworld isn't comparable to DF beyond some basic shared gameplay mechanics. It plays differently and much more casually, particularly because it doesn't have the pitfalls of trying to simulate so many things.

You'll never have to spend half an hour generating a world, for example, and your control over the game is much more direct.

It’s undoubtedly the same kind of game. The difference is complexity: chequers vs chess.

My argument is that Rimworld has shown that it’s not niche, it’s that DF was completely unapproachable (from the UI to installing it) which is self inflicted.

The fact that they are making it more approachable and available in steam support this. Except they are now playing second fiddle to a large number of games in the same category.

Lots of people here praise DF as some kind of wonder child: the developer doesn’t even use VCS! Amazing!

Except it’s not. It’s a complete failure - we have an incredibly innovative game that the developer has completely and 100% failed to capitalise on its potential. And maybe that’s fine - maybe they don’t want to succeed. But that’s indistinguishable from not being able to.

Whatever the reason, someone else has eaten their lunch - Rimworld is the 14th best selling game on Steam, with between 3 and 6 million copies sold.

Call of duty sold 30 million copies for reference.

I think there's room in the gaming world for both DF and Rimworld.

I don't see it as a problem that DF hasn't sold millions of copies (or any copies?) or that it has taken as long as it has to produce a version with a better gui and fix various performance and menu diving issues.

As I see it the Steam version offers a better UI and performance and fixes some issues, and (hopefully) provides some revenue to keep development going.

Is this through donations? I was under the impression it was entirely free.