DFtalk transcript snippet

C....



59:53 T: Yeah, I mean..

C: there needs to be some sort of culling would be nice

T: yeah, every step it's something like space, space, space, step;  space, space, space, step;  space, space, space, step;  space, space, space, or whatever to clear out the text. and ah,

C: and that could be boiled down to "you hear numerous conversations", "people are whispering in the corner"

T: but if you don't hear tidbits of them then you don't really pick up stuff, I'm trying to think of in a 3d game they get this for, it's not free obviously. there's lots of effort that goes into it, but they essentially get this  for free where you're walking through the space, you can see where the important person is that you want to go to and while you're walking there there's all kinds of people and you can hear the the conversations that are closest to you, and of course the barks and things are set up so that you hear important tidbits or whatever and that's something that we can try and model, I mean this is not impossible to model at all, like you can do a distance calculation for so it just moots the closest conversation, but then if like  2 or 3 things are said it just picks one of them we can just put ellipses on both sides of it, so that you're walking and you're like "farmer says ... the troll under whatever ..." and you're like "oh ok, I don't need to talk to the lord of the mead hall anymore because this peasant has exactly the shit I'm looking for." and then just like be a pest and bug them about their goal, and ah there might even be funny things that come out of that, like if it elides enough of the conversation so that we think they're talking about one thing, but they're actually talking about something completely different/ ah you go bother them /there's all sorts of cool things that can come out of that. These are all solvable problems but that, what I just said s not 10 minutes of work like, just getting/arranging these things it's like a bug triage thing. you have all of these things you can do to make the game more approachable we'll just have to keep working at it. but yeah, so

1:02:03 C:so many topics where it's just like "why haven't you done this yet?" "why don't you do this ...?" it's just how it all works

T: Yeah, it's ... it's a process.

[LAUGHTER]
T: we're certainly in a different mode of operation now, so people who are in team "don't add features, fix shit" which is, you know, an important team .. ah they're going to get some, some attention. team no new stuff, yeah that's happening now.

C [sarcastically]: but what about team adventure mode and team tac-nuke?

T: well yeah, as we've talked about we've got stuff coming for team adventure mode, we've got stuff coming for stuff team army fighting, we've got stuff for whatever ah small continuum of team villains that's been created. ah, all coming after the steam stuff is supposed to, and ah, that's a lot of people and then you know, tarn's personal team, team myth and magic gets to have their day, [CHUCKLES] I'm working to be on that team for twenty years, and now we'll be here finally.

C: is battle champs going to get a steam release?

T: ah, battle champs is important work [1:03:26] but sadly I would rather do kobold quest first, um

C: Yeah, that's the one

T kitchen animals and little insects that ???? and so forth

C there should be the best of bay 12 steam compilation

T: yeah, I mean, yeah it's you could just hide it in dwarf fortress

C: I don't think you could put liberal crime squad on there though

T: it's.. it's.. um...

C [CHUCKLES]

T: I mean it's relevant enough, ah. you could put it there. I mean, maybe we put it on itch, we're gonna have an itch release

C: oh.. good

T: put LCS up on itch, and ah, ... let it riiiide.

Yeah, ... it's a strange game, it's interesting too because way back in 1992,3,4, when the seeds of those games were planted and then they got released 2003-4, something like that, the word 'liberal' and 'liberal crime squad' ... ah.. is not used the same way anymore, right? Liberal now means centrist, right?

C: yeah

T: um, and of course there's the whole economic theory side of it, which is kinda related  ... to that part of it, and now people use 'progressive' or ... um

C: leftist...

T: ..'leftist', or you know..

C: ..but I don't..

T: socialist and etcetera

C: hrm... I've thought about the liberal crime squad agenda for quite some time and how they're, you know, against nuclear power, and similar things and they ... you know. it's just another case of "no-one passes the purity test".

T: yeah... I mean it's not ... I mean, I was .. a younger person when I wrote that, but also, yeah, its difficult to come up with a....

C: ...

T:.. it's like..

C: ...but also I don't think, I don't think that LCS is necessarily supposed to be ... 'correct' in any way.

T: well, I mean, it is what it is..

C: ..yeah..

T: ..which is a stupid thing to say.. but it's ah, yeah, no I mean it's supposed to .. neahh.. it's difficult cuz you're like ... I mean obviously your hearts on one side and not the other. but it's not like they wern't not like a caricature of the SLA as well, right? so it's like...

C ..yeah..

T: ..ah... which is ... I mean, yeah I'm not sure you can caricature the SLA cause it was .... already ...

C: ...has anyone contacted patty hurst [???]....

T....it's completely over the top....

C:.. to get her to play this?

T: ah, that would be rude, I think. ah...

C:... I... ehh, yeah, but, hrm... hrm...

T: ... I mean.. it was odd.. like ... .... like... I actually went to the hearst castle on one of these kinda dwarf fortress speaking things when we were down at ah... ah... cal-poly.. in san louis at this... ???? just give a talk about dwarf fortress to the academic people down there 1:06:26  ... and ah, ... but they're like "y'know we could just take"... ahh.." a bus to hearst castle", and that was one of the days. At [CHUCKLES] this event, or whatever, ah.... and there's damn[?] zebras there. the zebra heard.

C: Ooohh.

T: ah, and, uh yeah I guess there just, they're just .. all sorta descended from these william randah hearst ..ah... zebras. it's a very kinda like thrown together place of all different sorta art styles and things. but yeah, a lot of it was kinda cool, up there. I don't remember who administers it now, it's not a holly private thing, it's a state park in some sense. I mean, there's all sort of weird nebulousness to it that I don't remember, but. so yeah. it was pretty fun. zebras and things. yes. natural cycle of [???] zebra [???]

C: .. Yeah.

T: and goats, lots of goats, like hundreds of them. this kinda goat area. Yeah, no. It was cool for that kinda thing.

But yes, so yeah no. Lots of future for the bay 12 catalog. [CHUCKLES] such as it is. ah.. I don't need most of those things posted places cause it was garbage, but that's ok..

C.. Yes...

T: .. people ...

C:  ... you can't find Armok anywhere, can you?

T: you can get it 1:07:48 on , ah, we just don't link to it I think, cause it was confusing for people, but you can go to bay12games/armok and it's still available, and ah...

C... alright everyone, you know what you have to do.

T: [LAUGHS] if you want....

C: .. I want to see youtube videos, twitch streams...


T: [???] remember does the magic even work... cause we had a version where you could teleport people's noses... to like different parts of the map, and you could strip people's skin off, and it would update the textures and things. I don't remember if that's in the current version you can download, it was such a ... churn of mess.. you know.. ah. we only finally got dwarf fortress to the point where we're not too far away from being able to do that stuff. we've got tissues now, we've got some magic stuff, it's really just .. probably add that in a day the way that shrine stuff went.. um.. probably add .... body part teleportation in a day, but it'd need the right context. Like who is the body part teleporter? and is there anything you can do...

C:/.. some sort of malevolent goblin ... wizard. ....

T: [CHUCKLES] Yeah they have the whole demon thing, right? and they've, so they re tied in with bad.. bad. bad.bad. critters. bad critters. even though the goblins themselves are not ... not necessarily bad critters, there's a whole discourse[?] on that, should we... were should we go with that? ah, as it stands, ... you know, having...

C.. there should be like ... goblins that have broken free, you know?

T: .. so they can right? they can move in with the human towns and stuff. I've a...

C.. I always see goblin dancers, I'm like "wait... Hold up,

T: [CHUCKLES]

C: ...somethings not, ... oh well, I guess we all learned a little bit about prejudice today."

T: Yeah, .. I noticed there is ... yeah... . There's something we wanted to look at right? what if they were immortal, what if they couldn't get diseases, and we'd[?] starve, what if they were not altruistic. that's the part that zeroed out on them, right? they don't get the warm fuzzy feeling you get when you help your .. neighbor or whatever, but yeah, I mean, it didn't feel like leaning into a direct stereotype or whatever.. but.. perhaps it is.

um, I don't really know. but it's ah.. it's tricky in general, ah. course our main sort of approach is going to be just procedurally obliterate all canon [1:10:16]  [CHUCKLES].

C: Of course...

T: [LAUGHS], that's kinda the myth and magic release is setting us on the road of ..like.. you know what if you generated a game without dwarves.. without goblins, or elves, or any of the...

C: ...I...I...

T: ...[????] stuff...

C: ...I...I.. one of the things I want so badly is more procedural civs, like I want to play.. you know.. human peasants, I want to be elves and weird animal men and all of those things, I want to... make a mastaba out of mud bricks, and...

T:... lots to do..

C:... I want to play the Sumerians.

T: yeah, we will [?????] ...all sorts of things that we ...need..to do. and we'll get to some of them. it will be grand[?].

C: I'm terrified that someones gonna correct me and say the Sumerians didn't make mastabas and [????] the Mesopotamians or... something. so please....

T:..... yeah well I mean there's ...

C:.. do that, ..

T: ... [????] people....

C:...correct me.

T: [CHUCKLES] people are fond of point out how many years are we talking about there, versus how many years... ah.. that we count in the current era, like 2000 is nothing. right? [CHUCKLES] there's a  whole lot of little details that we don't know and that you could be mistaken about... it's hard to keep track of everything.

Yeah, so we need stuff. Stuff and things. More stuff and things...

C: It continues always.

T: of course now we're back on team new features.

C: yeah

T: um.. and yeah, it's hard t get away from team new features, but ah, it is, that's part of like when we're talking about the steam release, and what the work has been like and so forth, I mean that's....just for myself, that's kinda the biggest... sort of psychological change, right? is being .. um.. dedicated and trying to build up the dedication and enthusiasm for something that's different than what I had been doing, ah. that ah, and I've found that I do just still need outlets 1:12:25 so just work on little side projects, none of which have seen the light of day. [CHUCKLES] we were talking about, you know, kobold quest and battle champs and things, um.... we used to do more of those, and then things got more serious of course, and then we stopped having those, but we still work on them, and just can't kinda round the corner to get one posted, pretty much. ah, we'll see if that ever changes.

Yeah, it's been good, doing space, doing stuff in space. dwarf fortress hasn't taken space away from me yet. it will, [LAUGHS]

C: ..wha?

T: [LAUGHS].. When we get to the Planes release, yeah, you're gonna be....

C: ..oohhh, yeah....

T: .. spelljammin' or whatever, right? I don't know much about the spelljammer setting, but certainly ... ah.. fantasy....

C: .. but that's...

T.. discovery...

C: ..that's when we get the tac-nukes.

T: Yes! finally, we can nuke them from orbit. but it'd be like planar nuking in your.. crystal.. sailboat.. or whatever.. ah.. but it's more or less the same.. the same thing. I'm sure some of the planes that are generated would be "nuke from orbit" candidates 1:13:33  um. may even have weird parasitic aliens on them, and you may have colonized by.. by either accident or because you were greedy and you wanted to bring the parasites back home. Ah, you know. Typically stuff.

C: That's how it goes.

T: well that's definitely[?] how it goes.. ah, and ah, yeah, yeah. I mean, immersion[?] in the economy of xenomorphs or whatever. and you can..

C: use every part of them, like a buffalo

T: Yeah, and there are some parts too. There's some parts for sure. Mostly crab legs, do people eat the face ... like the, what are they called, facehuggers or whatever? is that widely explored in fiction? the culinary options from facehuggers? because they do seem like crab legs.....

C: I'm sure there's like a .... in one of the crossover comics or whatever...

T:L Yeah,

C: cause there's like....

T:it's like deadliest catch or something, right? you just have the people out there going -- it's very dangerous job, of course, it's like deadliest catch the crab fishing show, but ah, you go out and get .. um.. get facehuggers. and have em in the pots and things, bring em back and get twenty-five dollars a facehugger or whatever? and then you've got happy families at red face hugger restaurants [CHUCKLES] celebrating their family events.

Important work in dwarf fortress is headed in right...

[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]

C: well it seems like every thing is chugging along nicely on team dwarf fortress. Everything is teams now.

T: [LAUGHS] that's right, that's right. Yeah,we are teams. I don't know where the release dates fit in, are we like team fortress 1.5, or 3.5, or 0.5, I have no idea. But...

C: I couldn't tell you...

T: it's all ..

C:... it's true...

T: 1:15:30 yeah.... it's a good time for fortresses, always will be. Hopefully until humanity get's their shit together, then we don't need fortresses anymore. But um, until then, until then.

C: that's a philosophical...

T: yeah if you want to credit it as such, that's real generous of you, bu ah..

C: but what is a fortress? how do we... how would Socrates define a fortress?

T:...yeah.. I don't know much...much..much about that, but there is room for fortresses in the future, when we're trying to protect our health and wellbeing against exigent circumstances, and if we're talking about the betterment of humanity they don't need to be from .. ah... human source. so we've scoped out like asteroid fortress..

C:..Yeah...

T..and hit by a comet fortress

C: ... yeah and you know,.. practice safety, in whatever way you feel is best,..

T:.. that's right.. yeah..yeah..

C: ..it's a dangerous time out there...

T: ...yeah yeah, still cutting down trees, very dangerous job. And yeah, for the dwarves too, I assume. Yous till occasionally hear about people who are crushed by trees in dwarf fortress.

C: Yeah, that happened to me recently..

T: [Laughs]

C: Well not me, but one of my dwarven underlings.

T: Yeah it's[?] another sketchy addition to the game, but you know, you make do. That's what the hospital is for. ????? is where the hospital is for [1:16:57]  . good business for every medic. [LAUGHS]

C: anything you'd like to say before we sign off?

T: Yeah, so ah, I think we're just going to keep chugging along, keep posting updates, you can go look at the steam news to see some shiny pictures, you can look at the dev log to see shiny pictures as well, still doing future of the fortress Q&A, and yeah, just keep on watchin and we'll get it done, and you can play it, and then we can play the next one too. Anything you'd like to say?

C: Yeah, go ahead and follow me on twitter, @Capntastic, I also have a patreon set up with the same name, which helps support me and my creative hobbies during this time, this age of strife, during the world kinda being on fire, and that includes this podcast. So. Thank you very much.

T: Alright, so good to hear you, talk to you next time, everybody can listen next time on another episode of dwarf fotreess talk

C: Do we have emails, for the future? can people email us still?

T: Ah, yeah, I mean, yes. That is a small embarrassment that we'll have to sort out. During our six year hiatus, occasionally we would still receive Q&A emails, and ah.. that obviously .. we haven't received one for at least a year or something and, pretty much, the few that we received, you know, it's just, the game has of course moved on, and .. so we basically don't have questions now, and ..so.. if you send a question to toady1@bay12games.com with the subject: question for df talk, then we will be able to address it, in this exciting new era of actually engaging with people, and not ignoring them, and doing the things we should be doing!

C: [in affected voice] On the air..! sendin your spiciest stories

T: [Laughs] yeah we should do dramatic readings at some point... I'm not particularly good at it, you know...

C: [in affected voice]... I never thought it could happen to me...

T [CHUCKLES] more than make up for the stories being funny. well yeah! good to be back together talking and episodes and things.

C: back in the saddle, back in the minds

T: Yeah, ?????,  for sure.

C: Well thank you so much for joining us today.

T: Yeah, it's going to be exciting to listen to the banter just fade out and the music...

[MUSIC FADES IN]

...comes up

C: We are untrained, unprofessional,

T:.........

[MUSIC]


......


[SILENCE]

....

T: got this purring cat sitting behind me on the back of the chair now, he's taken to doing that the last year or so, just running into the room and jumping on the back of the chair and then just laying there, and either purring or howling. We're in the purring phase now.


[SILENCE]


T: [SINGING]: Where did cathy[?] go? where .... [etc]

[DISCORD DISCONNECT SOUND]