{"id":2914,"date":"2014-10-22T19:25:58","date_gmt":"2014-10-22T17:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iimu.kapsi.fi\/limunropellukset\/?p=2914"},"modified":"2014-10-22T19:35:17","modified_gmt":"2014-10-22T17:35:17","slug":"interview-with-tarn-adams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iimu.kapsi.fi\/limunropellukset\/archives\/2914","title":{"rendered":"Interview With Tarn & Zach Adams!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heihoo!<\/p>\n

On aika juhlistaa 200. blogipostia todellisella mahtihaastattelulla. Kyseess\u00e4 on Dwarf Fortressin tekij\u00e4t Zach ja Tarn Adams. Zach piirsi kuvan ja Tarn vastaili kysymyksiin. Haastattelu on englanniksi, mutta mik\u00e4li tahtotilaa l\u00f6ytyy se my\u00f6s k\u00e4\u00e4nnet\u00e4\u00e4n suomeksi tahdon ilmaisujen mukaan (siis jos joku toivoo :). Jos joku lukija ei viel\u00e4 tied\u00e4, mik\u00e4 on Dwarf Fortress, on aika ottaa selv\u00e4\u00e4. Oppisk\u00e4yr\u00e4 on jyrkk\u00e4, mutta palkinto odottaa. Joten ei muuta kuin syv\u00e4\u00e4n p\u00e4\u00e4h\u00e4n t\u00e4\u00e4lt\u00e4<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meill\u00e4 on my\u00f6s uusi visuaalinen ilme ja t\u00e4ysin uusi Google+ ryhm\u00e4<\/a>, joka on avoin kaikille tervetuloa. Google+ vaikuttaa varsin eloisalta roolipeliskenelt\u00e4, joten katsotaan saadaanko sinne jotain aikaan?<\/p>\n

Laitetaan t\u00e4h\u00e4n viel\u00e4 henkil\u00f6kohtainen suosikki Dwarf Fortress tarina: The Hamlet of Tyranny<\/a><\/p>\n

Enempi\u00e4 viivyttelem\u00e4tt\u00e4 haastatteluun:<\/p>\n

\"title\"<\/a><\/p>\n

IN ENGLISH:
\nIt’s time to push things forward. We have a new visual look and we have a new Google+ group<\/a> open for all, feel free to join in!<\/p>\n

To celebrate our 200. blog post and good gameplay in general we’ve had the chance to interview the creators of Dwarf Fortress. Tarn Adams has answerd some question below and Zach has illustrated the interview with a crayon drawing. There are many interviews online about Dwarf Fortress and I wanted to ask questions not directly related to it. If you want to find out more about one of the most interesting games at the moment providing emergent gameplay don’t hesitate tojump right in! <\/a>, the learnig curve is steep, but don’t let it get you, you will be rewarded!<\/p>\n

Here is my favorite Dwarf Fortress story of all time: The Hamlet of Tyranny<\/a><\/p>\n

With out further a due the interview:
\n\"Brothers\"<\/a><\/p>\n

PART I – Something to start with…
\n1. What was your first contact with tabletop role-playing games?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: It was the Dungeons & Dragons red box, though I was too young to
\ntry it.\u00a0 Zach tells me he messed around with it, but we didn’t
\nactually start playing until AD&D came out, which was also around the
\ntime we got our Cyberpunk 2013 stuff.\u00a0 I remember reading through the
\nImmortal gold box stuff before we started playing too, so for some
\nreason we had all those boxes sitting around before we figured it out.
\nReading rulebooks became a habit which lasted long after we drifted
\naway from playing.\u00a0 I’ve read a bunch of Rifts books and have never
\neven tried to play it.\u00a0 Same with Ars Magica — Zach and I ended up
\nreading most of the 5th edition books after running into one of them
\nat random.<\/p>\n

2. Please share a little of your background as a tabletop role-player?
\nYour favorite character? Favorite system? Do you like to be a Dungeon
\nMaster? etc.<\/em><\/p>\n

A: We played AD&D and Cyberpunk with my brother’s friends starting at
\naround the same time.\u00a0 That was while I was in elementary school and
\nmiddle school, and then we played a little bit with a few friends
\nthrough high school.\u00a0 So I don’t have a broad experience with actually
\nplaying different games and can’t really comment usefully on systems
\n— we certainly had more fun with Cyberpunk, and it’s one of the main
\ninspirations behind the sort of wound system you find in Dwarf
\nFortress, or at least the initial push that had us add that sort of
\nthing to our early games.\u00a0 Zach and I switched off the Dungeon Master
\nrole, and I don’t think either of us had a strong preference.<\/p>\n

I don’t remember much about my characters now.\u00a0 I vaguely recall that
\nI had a fixer named Screwdriver that got shot in the head and was
\ndropped out of the game in a permanent coma, after establishing a
\nstreet gang.\u00a0 That was when I still lived in California, so I must
\nhave been 12 or so.<\/p>\n

3. What about computer RPGs? What are your first experiences with them?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: It’s hard to remember exactly where that started, since I’ve been
\naround them as long as I can remember, and it depends on how you
\ndefine them.\u00a0 We always had roguelikes and other games that my father
\ndownloaded from bulletin boards before I was able to play them.\u00a0 One
\nof the earliest ones I definitely remember having in a box was Ultima
\n3 from 1983 or so, though I probably didn’t attempt to play it for a
\nfew years, and I don’t think we understood what was going on very
\nwell.\u00a0 We also didn’t know how to keep saves after death, so we played
\nUltima 3 with permanent death.\u00a0 I remember having our last party get
\nkilled by wild horses in Ambrosia and being upset about it, since we’d
\nhave to start back at the beginning.\u00a0 I don’t think we ever did.<\/p>\n

4. Do you have a favorite computer RPG? What did you especially
\nenjoyed about it?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: Since I’m not capable of narrowing it down further, I’d say it’s a
\nthree-way tie between Ultima Underworld, Ultima 4 and Starflight.<\/p>\n

Ultima Underworld I like in terms of atmosphere…\u00a0 it’s hard to
\noverstate how stunning it was at the time, not just with the
\nintroduction of 3D graphics (with running and flying and swimming and
\njumping in 3D before 3D shooters took off), but also equipment damage,
\nskill building, barter with anybody — then taking all of these
\nsystems in play at once and having you locked underground and having
\nto survive down there.\u00a0 It gets somewhat weaker after the opening,
\nsince there are some gamey quest areas, but I’ve never been more
\nimmersed in a game than when Ultima Underworld was at its best.<\/p>\n

Ultima 4 was fresh because the quest wasn’t about killing somebody or
\neven opposing some hostile power, and you could wander around freely
\ntrying to figure out how to become the avatar.\u00a0 It had a relaxed “open
\nworld” feeling.\u00a0 These two were the only Ultima games I went back to
\ncomplete as an adult.<\/p>\n

Starflight is one of our favorite games because, even more than any of
\nthe roguelikes, it let us see the diverse possibilities of procedural
\ngeneration as children, and in that way probably had more influence on
\nus than any other game.\u00a0 The Dwarf Fortress forgotten beasts can be
\ntraced back right to Starflight’s generated lifeform descriptions.<\/p>\n

5. What kind of part role-playing games have played in your life? How
\nwould you describe their effect and importance (if any) to your life
\nso far?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: The playing and making of games has always been tied up together
\nwith us, and that includes the role-playing games as much as anything,
\nso I’d say they were formative and directly responsible for what my
\nbrother and I ended up doing with our lives.\u00a0 We don’t play tabletop
\ngames anymore, but we still read the books, and we still play some of
\nthe computer games when we can, so they are still important, even if
\nwe are mostly just working now.<\/p>\n

\"starflight-map\"<\/a><\/p>\n

PART II – The meaning of…<\/p>\n

1. Dwarf Fortress is part of the MoMA collection, and for that it can
\nbe defined as art. Do you see yourself being an artist? Or Dwarf
\nFortress being a work of art?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: I never thought about it that way, but the word “art” doesn’t pop
\nup in my thoughts in general.\u00a0 The games are just a thing we’ve been
\ndoing.<\/p>\n

2. Do you see games as art? What defines games as games, and as such
\nwhat defines games as art, or not as art?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: I’ve been told that Dwarf Fortress is a toy instead of a game,
\nbecause it isn’t about winning and losing.\u00a0 I don’t have a working
\ntheory of art or a claim of which, say, movies are covered and which
\naren’t and which movies are “high art” and all that.\u00a0 As far as I can
\ntell, games can check most or all of the boxes that other media check,
\nand more, pretty much, so they can’t be easily dismissed, anyway,
\nwithout looking short-sighted, inexperienced or thoughtless.<\/p>\n

3. What are your views on the relation between mathematics and games?
\nIn what way can role-playing games benefit from mathematics for
\nexample?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: I’d just as soon keep math away from the games I play, though of
\ncourse there’s a difference between playing and designing, or
\ndesigning and programming.\u00a0 Familiarity with linear algebra is really
\nuseful for all sorts of programming problems for instance, and
\nunderstanding probability can help you build up or choose mechanics
\nduring design.\u00a0 We’re trying to keep numbers out of DF as much as
\npossible while you are playing though, since we think it’s harmful to
\nimmersion, to some extent anyway.<\/p>\n

4. How do you see randomization as part of storytelling? “The
\nemergence of a story”? The Open world\/sandbox-experience?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: When we started out, we were making games to play ourselves, so we
\ndidn’t really have a choice but to let the little parts bump around
\nand see how it turned out.\u00a0 We never ended up getting into pre-written
\nstories for our own games even after we started releasing them, so
\nthere are still lots of moving parts and rules.\u00a0 We try to help the
\nplayer piece together what’s going on from a narrative standpoint, but
\npeople do that with their playthroughs naturally, with whatever game
\nthey are playing.\u00a0 Once you open the world up, there are other issues,
\nlike sparseness, measured against the amount of pre-generated content
\nand the diversity of randomized content, and there’s more room to
\nscrew up in dealing with the consequences of player actions.\u00a0 We have
\na long way to go there in Dwarf Fortress, since worlds are very
\nsimilar to each other in most ways, and what’s in a particular
\nlocation isn’t that interesting.<\/p>\n

5. What do you see as the most important tools for creating a
\ninteresting experience for the player, when considering the role of
\ngame designer or a Dungeon Master?
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

A: Wikipedia!\u00a0 I don’t really have a list of third-party utilities or
\nanything like that.\u00a0 I grew up playing and making stuff before
\nutilities were easily accessible, and now I don’t know what’s out
\nthere.<\/p>\n

\"shipfighting\"<\/a><\/p>\n

PART III – The Return of The<\/p>\n

1. How do you see the future of gaming? Are games and\/or playing them
\nchanging and how, and to what direction in your opinion?
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

A: People seem to be using and inventing all sorts of devices, they
\nsay VR is coming back, crowd-funding all over the place…\u00a0 I have no
\nidea what’s going to happen.\u00a0 I’ve never really tried to get out ahead
\nof things, and I just let myself be surprised.\u00a0 I think pretty much
\neverybody is playing games now, at least if they are young enough, and
\nthere are getting to be more kinds of games for more kinds of people,
\nand the pool of potential developers of the future is that much
\nlarger.\u00a0 I don’t know if every direction counts as a direction, in
\nterms of the question, but it’s cool to see.\u00a0 And there’s still my
\nluddite crap for thems that want it.<\/p>\n

2. What are the best and the worst things Dwarf Fortress have brought
\nto your life? Has it made you smile? Has it made you curse?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: I don’t really have anything big to complain about.\u00a0 I curse all
\nthe time, but that’s an integral part of the bug-fixing process.\u00a0 It’s
\ngreat fun reading everybody’s stories, and the dwarf antics during
\ntesting can also be fun.\u00a0 It’s nice to have the freedom to write the
\ngame I want to write.\u00a0 On rare occasions, the fans give us beer and
\ncoffee.<\/p>\n

3. What are the benefits and pitfalls of a life as a game designer in
\ngeneral? How do you see “the game industry”?
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

A: It’s a varied group of people, so it’s harder to generalize.
\nSomebody working at a large company or in school or one of those
\nco-ops is going to have a different set of concerns.\u00a0 For me, it’s
\ngreat to be able to work on the project I want to work on in more or
\nless the way I want.\u00a0 The main issue I’ve had is with scheduling too
\nmuch for a single release, I think, and in general there’s the problem
\nof handling your time if you want to work independently.\u00a0 I go through
\na lot of different systems for doing that just to shake things up.\u00a0 I
\ndon’t know very much about the game industry, and the output is so
\nvast that it’s hard to say one thing or another.<\/p>\n

4. Do you see yourself working on games in the future? Do you have
\nplans for other games that you are working on or planning to work
\nupon? Could you see yourself doing something else than game designing?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: Yeah, I’m going to be working on them for as long as I am able to.
\nZach and I always have some side project or other going, but it’s
\ndifficult to focus on any of them long enough to bring them to
\nfruition with the main project going full-bore.\u00a0 I gave math a shot,
\nand I don’t think I’m good enough at music to make a go at that…\u00a0 I
\ndon’t have any other ideas about what I might do.\u00a0 Hopefully I’ll
\nnever have to think about it.<\/p>\n

5. If you could have any three wishes made true, what would they be?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: The wish corruption game is one of the most popular on my forum, so
\nI think I’ll pass!\u00a0 Let’s just go for the continued health of the cat.
\nThe rest will have to work itself out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heihoo! On aika juhlistaa 200. blogipostia todellisella mahtihaastattelulla. Kyseess\u00e4 on Dwarf Fortressin tekij\u00e4t Zach ja Tarn Adams. Zach piirsi kuvan ja Tarn vastaili kysymyksiin. Haastattelu on englanniksi, mutta mik\u00e4li tahtotilaa l\u00f6ytyy se my\u00f6s k\u00e4\u00e4nnet\u00e4\u00e4n suomeksi tahdon ilmaisujen mukaan (siis jos joku toivoo :). Jos joku lukija ei viel\u00e4 tied\u00e4, mik\u00e4 on Dwarf Fortress, on aika… Continue reading Interview With Tarn & Zach Adams!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,605,602,1,431],"tags":[665,666,663,664],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iimu.kapsi.fi\/limunropellukset\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2914"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iimu.kapsi.fi\/limunropellukset\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iimu.kapsi.fi\/limunropellukset\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iimu.kapsi.fi\/limunropellukset\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iimu.kapsi.fi\/limunropellukset\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2914"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/iimu.kapsi.fi\/limunropellukset\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2920,"href":"http:\/\/iimu.kapsi.fi\/limunropellukset\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2914\/revisions\/2920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iimu.kapsi.fi\/limunropellukset\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iimu.kapsi.fi\/limunropellukset\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iimu.kapsi.fi\/limunropellukset\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}