Questions and answers from Tynan.

[OldFilthy]

So far I've only been able to watch streams, and I'm loving the direction you've taken for this game. I've always wanted to play dwarf fortress but it's user interface was too much of a hurdle for me.

To go into detail, I could never grow food correctly and my dwarves would starve.

Do you think you'll be able to create a simulated world to rival DF, or will time and budget hold you back ultimately? I'm sure some things you'll have to avoid because there is such a strong XCom/Jagged Alliance vibe being generated, but will the wild life be hungry, will there be more things to craft, will colonists have more personality traits and will there be pets?

[Tynan]

DF will be hard to approach; they've been working on that sim for over 10 years and they spent no time on graphics. It's probably won't get quite to that level in the same way as they do (e.g. tracking whether your left sock is dirty). However, I think RimWorld will definitely rival DF in terms of experience quality, especially when you consider how the AI Storytellers will affect everything. And everything you mentioned could very well get into the game.

[Semmy]

DF will be hard to approach; they've been working on that sim for over 10 years and they spent no time on graphics. It's probably won't get quite to that level in the same way as they do (e.g. tracking whether your left sock is dirty). However, I think RimWorld will definitely rival DF in terms of experience quality, especially when you consider how the AI Storytellers will affect everything. And everything you mentioned could very well get into the game.

i was just typing that d-;
Will update the start post sometime today or tomorrow.

[OldFilthy]

DF will be hard to approach; they've been working on that sim for over 10 years and they spent no time on graphics. It's probably won't get quite to that level in the same way as they do (e.g. tracking whether your left sock is dirty). However, I think RimWorld will definitely rival DF in terms of experience quality, especially when you consider how the AI Storytellers will affect everything. And everything you mentioned could very well get into the game.

Thanks for taking the time to reply, I'm looking forward to the balance you finally settle on. And while I hope you don't feel that graphical fidelity is one of your higher priorities, the changes you've made so far are looking fine.

[DIEHARD24]

Hi all

My best regards to Tynan! Surely, RimWorld is the best sandbox game i've played ever!

Some stupid question:

Do you still need an artist? I knew some skilled 2d-artists, they making a really beautiful things in sci-fi theme.

With best regards, Konstantin
Ukraine, Dnepropetrovsk.

p.s. sorry for my bad English

[Goeshi]

How soon after the KS can we access the pre-alpha? The finish time is ripe for a potential evening of gaming for me, but I appreciate these things take time to set up.

[Semmy]

How soon after the KS can we access the pre-alpha? The finish time is ripe for a potential evening of gaming for me, but I appreciate these things take time to set up.

hints at the search button

here is a direct copy
Release date

So I want to get the game to you guys as fast as possible. However, unfortunately business concerns are getting in the way.

I emailed Kickstarter about timing, and they told me I won't get a full backer report from them until the full two weeks after the project ends!

I was a bit surprised. I knew that they took two weeks to actually transfer the money, but I thought I could get a backer list sooner than that, since they charge most cards earlier. This was a poor and wrong assumption on my part; I should have checked before. Sorry.

What this means for you is that you probably won't get the game until mid-November. I'll be looking at ways to get this bad boy out ASAP but that's the date for now.

The good news is that this means I'll be able to pump up the first public build more for you guys. I'm hoping to have you cooking and eating any creature that walks, from squirrel to muffalo and beyond, as well as storing things in proper stockpiles.

[yabbadabbado]

No, it is messed up,because they charge earlier, and they clearly should be able to send payed list ASAP. Sigh..

[Thubin]

No, it is messed up,because they charge earlier, and they clearly should be able to send payed list ASAP. Sigh..

Yes, but that's the real world for ya. We all need to be patient 

[Nukeman0]

I have a question about the profile titles...

I bought the game through kickstarter (the influencer tier). Since the tier was including all previous tiers, I would get a special kickstarter- title on this forum.

My question is just how i get this title? i haven't read about it im my mails, or heard from it anywhere else. Does it at all exist yet? Or is it that i didn't get the title anyway?

Hope anyone can help. Its just a title, but fun to have anyway.

[avall]

Can anyone tell me why after a while when u get nice base and so on events stops hapening, no shipps, flares, only raiders from time to time?

[Konman]

Hi,

My question is purely a technical/developer question. I hope it hasn't already been asked... Apart from all the marketing effort and effort regarding managing the fanbase, it is blatantly obvious someone has been VERY busy creating an actual game from a technical viewpoint.

I mean behind all the magic that is RimWorld, there are path finding (A*?) algorithms, AI state machine engines, particle engines, procedural generated terrain, physics engine???, sprite animation??? etc (god only knows what else) all happening in the background and it all comes together as a cohesive whole so brilliantly. How does one person find the time to write a book on game design and develop an Alpha product so polished and also network to find skills like musicians etc. It boggles my mind

My question is... Tynan did you develop all this stuff by yourself or do you have technical assistance? Also which technologies did you use? Unity, XNA?, MonoGame? C#? I backed this project as an influencer just to get insight via the RimWorldPrototypePack as to how this great game came to be.

Otherwise I am totally emersed in Rimworld and sometimes not knowing how the magic happens is also bliss. Kudos :-) Cannot wait to see how this game grows in the future.

Konrad

[Exiled]

On the Kickstarter you posted potential future plans, but stressed that it's not a roadmap. Do you plan on releasing a public roadmap with the scope of features that are possible with your updated budget?

I have to say that this is one of most gratifying projects I've ever backed. As someone who liked the concept of DF but didn't have the patience to get into it I'm completely enamored by even just the pre-alpha. You've done a terrific job so far and I expect great things from this game.

[Tynan]

Hi,

My question is purely a technical/developer question. I hope it hasn't already been asked... Apart from all the marketing effort and effort regarding managing the fanbase, it is blatantly obvious someone has been VERY busy creating an actual game from a technical viewpoint.

I mean behind all the magic that is RimWorld, there are path finding (A*?) algorithms, AI state machine engines, particle engines, procedural generated terrain, physics engine???, sprite animation??? etc (god only knows what else) all happening in the background and it all comes together as a cohesive whole so brilliantly. How does one person find the time to write a book on game design and develop an Alpha product so polished and also network to find skills like musicians etc. It boggles my mind

My question is... Tynan did you develop all this stuff by yourself or do you have technical assistance? Also which technologies did you use? Unity, XNA?, MonoGame? C#? I backed this project as an influencer just to get insight via the RimWorldPrototypePack as to how this great game came to be.

Otherwise I am totally emersed in Rimworld and sometimes not knowing how the magic happens is also bliss. Kudos :-) Cannot wait to see how this game grows in the future.

Konrad

Well, why thank you. As for how all this is done by one person (and it is), all I can say is that it's taken me about 12 years (ages 15 through 27) of continuously working on game projects, often alone, to develop the required skillset and integrate it. Writing Designing Games was an important crystallizing process, and working at Irrational for four years really helped too, especially with social/political skills. And of course my own modding and indie game efforts left me able to do the basic sound editing, art, and so on required in addition to the game design and coding.

There actually isn't a physics or sprite animation engine. Call this task prioritization - one skill I think is really really important that's helped me on this is knowing what needs to be worked on and what can be ignored. The game doesn't really need sprite animation, so it doesn't have it. That said, it does have an AI tactical system and an engine for accurately calculating shot hit percentages (and reporting them), and lots of other fun technologies. The rendering is a blast; it actually splits the world up into 17x17 chunks through multiple layers and renders them individually to cut down on the number of draw calls. There's also some cool stuff going on with lighting calculation and display (using a vertexmapped mesh sheet with a special multiplying material), and keeping track of a reachability map to solve the worst-case unfindable path problems with A*.

As for coding, it took like a year after leaving Irrational before I hit my stride for reals. There were actually other prototypes before Wizard University. Several, in fact, stretching through half a year. I didn't include them because they were so bad and not closely related to RimWorld.

Technically, the game is in Unity, written in C#. These technologies have been very, very helpful. Both are very well-designed, and both remove a huge amount of development drudge work. Do note that I don't use Unity's GameObject/Monobehaviour object/component system at all, however. I rolled my own of that just because theirs is a bit too mushy and much too poor in performance to handle all the interactions in RimWorld, and because they're not designed for a lockstep tile-based game.

[Tynan]

On the Kickstarter you posted potential future plans, but stressed that it's not a roadmap. Do you plan on releasing a public roadmap with the scope of features that are possible with your updated budget?

I have to say that this is one of most gratifying projects I've ever backed. As someone who liked the concept of DF but didn't have the patience to get into it I'm completely enamored by even just the pre-alpha. You've done a terrific job so far and I expect great things from this game.

There won't ever be a roadmap because the concept is incompatible with my process. I like to work adaptively, taking into account information as it arises and pivoting direction as necessary. It's the only way RimWorld has gotten as far as it has. If you look through the prototypes you can see the pivots and what caused them; had I ever created a roadmap, this would never have been possible.

A key part of this strategy is not planning, because overplanning is destructive for all sorts of reasons. I actually have several chapters in my book about this. There's also a bit about it in Update #1 on the Kickstarter.