More Dwarf Fortress, Less The Sims: Medieval

Development
16

Yeah, in some ways DF’s interface gives it an “advantage” in that

  1. the developer can add infinite new layers of detail without worrying about things like “bugs” or “graphics”, and

  2. anyone who fights their way through the interface isn’t going to be fazed by unbalanced or difficult mechanics; it’s a self-screening design.

Stonehearth’s more accessible, so it needs to be more accessible, and clearly explain and indicate to players what’s going on behind the scenes, etc.

Still, though – if they can get Stonehearth to a point where a fort can fail and collapse in the same sort of way Boatmurdered did, they’ll have successfully captured “dwarf fortress with graphics”, imho. In practice, though, that’s going to mean a lot of background work – more enemies (elephants, etc.), more engineering and water flows (dams? Pumps? lava flows?) , more natural disaster type events (FIRE!!!), and the mood spiral (which they’re working on and all this work with relationships and appeal etc. feeds into).

There are a few other things that would be nice to have too – art generation that reflected the history of the fort (say, statue-crafting that imported the image of particular hearthlings doing particular noteworthy things, etc.), maybe a slightly more tactical combat system (say, real formations, hammers with knockback, pikes with longer reach, etc.). Overall though I’ve been watching since the kickstarter and Stonehearth has been making consistent progress all along (even if sometimes it seems like asymptotic progress).

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