Comment by flurb
9 hours ago
I'm still pissed about the fact that they essentially gave the finger to everyone who has been long-term supporters - when they added the G to their UI, they essentially scrapped the old. In favor of a mouse-driven design, they dropped the old, keyboard-driven UI.
Long-term supporters, in this case, means people paying, and not insubstantial amounts either - before they partnered with Kitfox, they used to publish how much they were receiving. Tens of thousands of $ a month, mind you. For monthly contributions at that level for many, many years I would expect at least a nod - instead they straight-up told everyone they'd abandon keyboard users, a decision later recanted.
That said, Dwarf Fortress holds a special place in my heart. Only regret I have is that I didn't track how many hours I put in. In excess of 10k, I'm sure.
I was under the impression that the classic keyboard-only version was kept up to date with the Steam version? They're both on patch 53.16[1][2] which was released simultaneously on 8/5, so it doesn't look to me like keyboard-only is forgotten or left behind unless I'm missing something.
[1] https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
[2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/
Sadly no – the current 'classic' is just the Steam game without the steam features AIUI – i.e. still the mouse-oriented UI. 0.47.05 is the last keyboard version AFAIK.
Ah I see, I misunderstood. I just tried the latest classic version and it was all mouse. I agree then that it's disappointing as someone who has played both versions
They chose to have social security over a keyboard only interface for a game they continue to publish for free.
I understand why they did it - medical emergencies and all. Have to pay the bill somehow. But yea, 0.47.05's still my go-to. Just can't vibe with the new UI/keybinds.
Old controls were on their roadmap for a long time, but the benefit from their perspective shrinks as time goes on. I doubt we'll see it at this point.
They also dropped the Mac version.
They complain there are few Mac players on Steam. Well, I'm not going to buy it if it doesn't run on the desktop OS [1] i use most, duh.
[1] My Linux boxes are headless. And the windows boxes I have to RDP into them. That may work for a game with a beginning and and end via Steam streaming or something, but not for a forever game you just keep around.
While individual game developers choose whether to support macOS, the broader phenomenon of developers dropping macOS support is Apple's fault. They either have no interest in being a serious gaming platform, or else they've made catastrophic missteps in their quest to stay relevant for gamers.
I don’t think it has anything to do with their gaming specific capabilities, just their general philosophy matches poorly with the games industry.
Apple insist on having their own apis and they don’t maintain compatibility for older software for very long, these 2 facts explain things fine on their own. Game devs don’t want a major support burden, they’re happy to patch here and there but constant dropping of apis or even architectures is a lot to handle. The bigger impact is that macOS ends up with a lot less old games that still run, if you need a critical mass of games to become a gaming platform, that constant bleed of legacy games will always slow macOS down.
As for gaming specific features, Metal is a perfectly fine api whose only real problem is that it’s different from the other platforms. Maybe not the best, but certainly not terrible. They also have a really nice capability floor, it’s practical to make a modern game work on any Mac from the last X years (maybe the neo complicates that a bit).
There’s probably a few gaming specific capabilities they could improve on, mouse input especially, but that’s never been the real issue.
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I was a quarterly(-ish) contributor for years. There was no way for me to justify buying anything when they announced dropping keyboard support, when I've spent years developing muscle-memory to their (admittedly insane) control scheme.
Also - I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that running DF through a terminal is (was...) possible if you're not using a graphical tileset (perhaps even with... ha)?
The sad thing is that current Macs are perfect machines for DF. The recommendation was always to get as fast a single threaded machine as possible with the biggest cache. Even the least expensive Macs are monsters in those regards. The game is more multi-threaded than before but still is dominated by single threaded performance.
You might be interested in running games from your headless boxes with this: https://github.com/hgaiser/moonshine
Mac gaming is a pain in the **. It's Apple's fault. It's fine they can't justify the maintenance.
The game runs fine in Proton, including with dfhack. You can probably get it working on your Mac with a tiny bit of Crossover/Wine/GPTK tweaking.
That's missing the point. There were official native MacOS builds and now there aren't.
Can't be too mad about it though, it was free back then too.
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Is it really that bad? I haven't played since the GUI update but was thinking about getting into it again because I still have years of muscle memory from it. But if I am forced to use the mouse im not sure I even want to bother. There is absolutely no way I could play the game at the same speed I use to if I have to resort to mouse-only features.
What you are asking for is completely unreasonable. There’s no way that one programmer can maintain two completely separate UIs. Keep in mind that they could not simply “add graphics” to the existing interface, they had to write a completely new one that was not based around fixed–size character cells.
Wasn't the graphical interface 95% outsourced to others? And originally the graphic version was suppose to be layered on top and leave the underlying version of the game barely touched from the player's side. It was even touted as an excuse at the time to fix some of the keyboard shortcuts that were inconsistent among different submenus, and certainly not to eliminate or supersede keyboard interfaces.
It makes me sad to think about. I would love to get into the new UI, but the immersion just won't come back. My muscle memory, hands firmly on the keyboard, is too persistent, and playing with the new UI feels like stumbling around and misclicking.
I know what you mean, but I have been playing since 2008? and the last few updates have been pretty great.
Yeah my biggest issue has been that none of my muscle memory transfers over and it adds another hurdle to ever getting back into the game.
You dont want to know your hours. Perhaps my greatest shame is the number of hours i have spent on factorio. I was afk for much of that (letting the factory run) but ... i would not want other people to see the number.
The new updates got me back into dwarf fortress. I'm sure there are more players now then ever before.
I don’t understand. I don’t know what “added the G to their UI” means.
Also sounds like they added back the keyboard support so there’s literally no issue?
> In excess of 10k, I'm sure.
Sure sounds like you got your moneys worth.
Ui+g=gui. As in since they added graphics
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