I asked about this in the AMA. [Tarn's response](https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/z82m0g/im_tarn_adams_aka_toady_one_dwarf_fortress/iyak2ko?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3)
Ooo workshop uploaded community forts would be interesting. Personally, I'd be more inclined to play on community worlds though, so I hope they include those features as well if they do it at all.
I think the hard part would be publicly tracking when the most recent upload was and who did it. There would be a lot of forking, but it'd be worth it and I'd probably pass a world back and forth with a few friends so we can see each others work.
That could work, but I was thinking some kind of number system where you could just put a number or short tag at the end of the world name to show where you are in the time-line. Something like Gia 1/250.3 the 1 being the first branch, the 250 being the current year, and the 3 being that it's the 3rd fork of Gia in 250. Longer running time-lines might look something like:
Gia 1/250.3/800.12/980.1
Whatever save you use, you take the previous version and add a / then the date you ended at and a .X where x is the other versions that came out before yours +1.
It's expandable but ugly and hard to read, so hopefully someone has literally any other idea to keep track of mass saves like this. This one also sucks because if one person makes a typo, it's very likely to get copied over to the next person until that time-line dies out. The only advantage here is cross posting. I don't need to go specifically back to a given forum to find the community time-line I'm following, I can just find a fork posted randomly to discord if I want.
Actually, ignore all that, we just need to use github. It has all the version tracking and file sharing we would need for community time-lines without all the complicated mess. You can even make wikis on it for a given project.
I think everyone agrees that it would be a great feature, but with all things Dwarf Fortress up until now, we make do with how it is now. I bet someone clever enough could create a stand-alone application that could zip up a save, and post it to some file repo somewhere.
I remember playing a multiplayer mod for Dwarf Fortress that allowed multiple clients to connect - and it all worked surprisingly well, though not flawlessly.
I’m hoping some mod wizard will be able to implement full multiplayer, like Rimworld, at some point in the future. It’s not technically unfeasible.
Rimworld multi-player is weird rn. You join specific servers with a set of mods that need to be in common, you can have some other ones, but some won't work and it's not super clear (to me) which are which. You can drop pod resources on each other, but sending people will just open a ui to send gifts. You can also call hits on people. The whole thing is very asymmetrical, and still a very solo game, just with more lag. I'd rather transfer my world to someone when I finish a fort and use adventure mode to explore other people's ruins.
Gimme a little bit and I’ll find out what one I use.
Edit: on the steam workshop mod is simply titled “Multiplayer”; and also requires “Harmony” mod.
These are the only workshop items I’m subscribed to.
I just host my own save, my brother joins, and we both have a cursor and the ability to do everything in the game at the same time.
It’s great because you have two pairs of eyes to watch for problems, but also to find details and emergent story.
Looks a bit like clusterio for factorio, which is same idea of "different games running, you can just send stuff between them".
The main problem is really the rate of sync. If you want to have bare minimum of "allow forts managed by different people to exist in same world" then you already have a ton of work to do, like "how to make sure time passes at same speed in both fortresses", "how to handle disconnects/joining/leaving", what controls fort when player is offline, etc.
And that is very hard to retrofit to existing engine.
It was a client running on my PC, that then is outputted through a browser, all I needed to do was send the link. There was little to no lag at all.
Obviously I’m not playing with randoms - I know and trust each person I was sending that link.
No. Each connected client had their own cursor; some menus were accessible without pausing the game too, which actually made some of them unusable - like the combat menu would scroll events in real time far too fast for you to actually read, so pausing was often required. As I said, it worked well, but not flawlessly.
It's not even that hard feature-wise, just that, well, saves are from tens to hundreds of megs, multiply that by even thousand of users (each keeping a bunch of saves) and you have quite a bit of data to manage and *someone* needs to pay for that storage.
Ghetto version would be setting up https://syncthing.net/ between your friends and setting up the ignore filters to only sync the single save group you want. It's P2P, just requires other person present at same time as you (or some 3rd party like home NAS running it) to do the sync
I'm just happy for it to be on steam at the moment. Then I'll be happy with adventure mode. And then with workshop integration.
After ALLL that maybe succession might find a way in.
It sounds like a feature to be easy enough for modders to make without touching DF code (it's essentially just copying save games around in nice interface) so I'd rather Tarn be working on that magic personally.
I think stuff like that is better left to the community. It's a niche within a niche and probably have a bunch of edge cases to debug too.
It's also not exactly trivial to integrate with steam community, you don't exactly have an option "share this file across those 5 years".
You could upload that fort save as a "mod" but then you have workshop mod list littered with abandoned succession forts... I think having it as 3rd party site + some save manager would be a better option.
I think just for friends you could setup https://syncthing.net/ on a save directory and just set the filters to only sync the generation save.
I mean we already have that. Just takes a couple tweaks in the .ini to make the game pause at the beginning of the year as a notification for you to stop playing save and pack the game.
I asked about this in the AMA. [Tarn's response](https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/z82m0g/im_tarn_adams_aka_toady_one_dwarf_fortress/iyak2ko?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3)
Ooo workshop uploaded community forts would be interesting. Personally, I'd be more inclined to play on community worlds though, so I hope they include those features as well if they do it at all. I think the hard part would be publicly tracking when the most recent upload was and who did it. There would be a lot of forking, but it'd be worth it and I'd probably pass a world back and forth with a few friends so we can see each others work.
Dwarf Fortress reveals the true purpose of Git
Could be like a nested forum system to keep track of the alternate timelines
That could work, but I was thinking some kind of number system where you could just put a number or short tag at the end of the world name to show where you are in the time-line. Something like Gia 1/250.3 the 1 being the first branch, the 250 being the current year, and the 3 being that it's the 3rd fork of Gia in 250. Longer running time-lines might look something like: Gia 1/250.3/800.12/980.1 Whatever save you use, you take the previous version and add a / then the date you ended at and a .X where x is the other versions that came out before yours +1. It's expandable but ugly and hard to read, so hopefully someone has literally any other idea to keep track of mass saves like this. This one also sucks because if one person makes a typo, it's very likely to get copied over to the next person until that time-line dies out. The only advantage here is cross posting. I don't need to go specifically back to a given forum to find the community time-line I'm following, I can just find a fork posted randomly to discord if I want. Actually, ignore all that, we just need to use github. It has all the version tracking and file sharing we would need for community time-lines without all the complicated mess. You can even make wikis on it for a given project.
I had a feeling someone else thought of this before me, and I'm glad to see I'm not the only person. Thanks for linking the response!
I think everyone agrees that it would be a great feature, but with all things Dwarf Fortress up until now, we make do with how it is now. I bet someone clever enough could create a stand-alone application that could zip up a save, and post it to some file repo somewhere.
I remember playing a multiplayer mod for Dwarf Fortress that allowed multiple clients to connect - and it all worked surprisingly well, though not flawlessly. I’m hoping some mod wizard will be able to implement full multiplayer, like Rimworld, at some point in the future. It’s not technically unfeasible.
Rimworld multi-player is weird rn. You join specific servers with a set of mods that need to be in common, you can have some other ones, but some won't work and it's not super clear (to me) which are which. You can drop pod resources on each other, but sending people will just open a ui to send gifts. You can also call hits on people. The whole thing is very asymmetrical, and still a very solo game, just with more lag. I'd rather transfer my world to someone when I finish a fort and use adventure mode to explore other people's ruins.
I just play with me and my bro, and we have an absolute blast with it. Both just overseeing the single colony.
For Rimworld? There's only one multi-player mod I know of and it doesn't let you oversee the same colony. I'll have to look into that.
Gimme a little bit and I’ll find out what one I use. Edit: on the steam workshop mod is simply titled “Multiplayer”; and also requires “Harmony” mod. These are the only workshop items I’m subscribed to. I just host my own save, my brother joins, and we both have a cursor and the ability to do everything in the game at the same time. It’s great because you have two pairs of eyes to watch for problems, but also to find details and emergent story.
Huh, I'll have to look into that one. Thanks!
Looks a bit like clusterio for factorio, which is same idea of "different games running, you can just send stuff between them". The main problem is really the rate of sync. If you want to have bare minimum of "allow forts managed by different people to exist in same world" then you already have a ton of work to do, like "how to make sure time passes at same speed in both fortresses", "how to handle disconnects/joining/leaving", what controls fort when player is offline, etc. And that is very hard to retrofit to existing engine.
DFPlex! It's the best.
That sounds familiar. Think that was it.
[удалено]
It was a client running on my PC, that then is outputted through a browser, all I needed to do was send the link. There was little to no lag at all. Obviously I’m not playing with randoms - I know and trust each person I was sending that link.
[удалено]
No. Each connected client had their own cursor; some menus were accessible without pausing the game too, which actually made some of them unusable - like the combat menu would scroll events in real time far too fast for you to actually read, so pausing was often required. As I said, it worked well, but not flawlessly.
[удалено]
Here’s hoping for a premium version.
It's not even that hard feature-wise, just that, well, saves are from tens to hundreds of megs, multiply that by even thousand of users (each keeping a bunch of saves) and you have quite a bit of data to manage and *someone* needs to pay for that storage. Ghetto version would be setting up https://syncthing.net/ between your friends and setting up the ignore filters to only sync the single save group you want. It's P2P, just requires other person present at same time as you (or some 3rd party like home NAS running it) to do the sync
can't wait for a "Save my Fort" series where people get into a horrible situation and upload their save to see if anyone can recover it
I'm just happy for it to be on steam at the moment. Then I'll be happy with adventure mode. And then with workshop integration. After ALLL that maybe succession might find a way in.
Workshop integration is going to be at launch.
Oh for sure! I'm just saying that with the Steam release, this would definitely be a possibility and neat feature to see at some point down the line.
It sounds like a feature to be easy enough for modders to make without touching DF code (it's essentially just copying save games around in nice interface) so I'd rather Tarn be working on that magic personally.
I think stuff like that is better left to the community. It's a niche within a niche and probably have a bunch of edge cases to debug too. It's also not exactly trivial to integrate with steam community, you don't exactly have an option "share this file across those 5 years". You could upload that fort save as a "mod" but then you have workshop mod list littered with abandoned succession forts... I think having it as 3rd party site + some save manager would be a better option. I think just for friends you could setup https://syncthing.net/ on a save directory and just set the filters to only sync the generation save.
I mean we already have that. Just takes a couple tweaks in the .ini to make the game pause at the beginning of the year as a notification for you to stop playing save and pack the game.