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Q : What’s the biggest refactor/change that you had to make?Ī: There have been some refactors that have lasted for months, redoing certain data structures and so forth, though I’m not sure anything is ever a refactor strictly here since there’s always opportunities to push the mechanics forward simultaneously and it makes sense to do so when the code knowledge is fresh.Īdding the Z coordinate to make the game mechanically 3D (while still being text) was another one, and really the most mind-numbing thing I’ve probably ever done. I’d be hesitant to say I can go in and change stuff faster than they can, necessarily, since I haven’t worked in that context before, but it’s true that I don’t have any team-oriented or bureaucratic hurdles to jump through when I want to make an alteration. Regarding the relative ease of doing things by myself, certainly for me, who has no experience working on a large multi-person project, this is the way to go! People obviously get good at doing it the other way, for example over in the AAA games context, and clearly multiple engineers are needed over there to get things done on time. There are a few really crusty bits that I haven’t looked at since before the first release in 2006. I’d say most changes are focused only on certain parts of the game, so there is kind of an active molten core that I have a much better working knowledge of. Sometimes it takes several searches to find the exact thread I’m trying to tug on when I go and revisit some piece of the game I haven’t touched for a decade, which happens quite a bit. I try to name my variables and objects consistently and memorably, and I leave enough comments around to remind myself of what’s going on when I arrive at a spot of code. Q : What are the challenges in developing a single project for so long? Do you think this is easier to do by yourself? That is, because you wrote every line, is it easier to maintain and change?Ī: It’s easy to forget stuff! Searching for ‘ ’, which is a loose method but close enough, we’re up to 711,000 lines, so it’s just not possible to keep it all in my head now. On the mechanical side of the game, I don’t use a lot of outside libraries, but I’ve occasional picked up some random number gen stuff-I put in a Mersenne Twister a long while ago, and most recently I adopted SplitMi圆4, which was featured in a talk at the last Roguelike Celebration. I use FMOD for sound.Īll of this has been constant over the course of the project, except that SDL got introduced a few years in so we could do the ports. But handling your own engine is also a real pain, especially now that I’m doing something beyond text graphics.

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I’m not sure if I’d use something like Unity or Unreal now if I had the choice since I don’t know how to use either of them. We went with those because it was easier to port them to OSX and Linux, though I still wasn’t able to do that myself of course. I use OpenGL and SDL to handle the engine matters. I’ve been using Microsoft Visual Studio since MSVC 6, though now I’m on some version of Visual Studio Community. Q : What programming languages and other technologies do you use? Basically, what’s your stack? Has that changed over the 15-20 years you’ve been doing this?Ī: DF is some combination of C and C++, not in some kind of standard obeying way, but sort of a mess that’s accreted over time.

Our conversation below has been edited for clarity. If you want more, we also spoke with Tarn on the podcast. I reached out to Tarn Adams to see how he’s managed a single, growing codebase over 15+ years, the perils of pathing, and debugging dead cats. Up until now, he’s relied on donations to keep him going, but he’s currently working on a version with pixel graphics and a revamped UI that will be available for purchase on Steam. He writes all the code himself, although his brother helps out with design and creates stories based on the game.

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For the first four years it was a part time project, but since 2006 it’s been full time. The entire game is product of one developer, Tarn Adams, aka Toady One, who has been working on Dwarf Fortress since 2002. And it all takes place in an ASCII interface that looks imposing to newbies, but feels like the text crawl in The Matrix: craftsdwarf, river, legendary megabeast.

Individual dwarves have emotional states, favorite gems, and grudges. The simulation runs deep, with new games creating multiple civilizations with histories, mythologies, and artifacts.

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It’s a free game where you play either an adventurer or a fortress full of dwarves in a randomly generated fantasy world. Dwarf Fortress is one of those oddball passion projects that’s broken into Internet consciousness.

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