Talk:Dwarf Fortress/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: ChrisGualtieri (talk · contribs) 15:52, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'll review this. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 15:52, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just a few questions first. Why is the adventure mode section so sparsely covered? Does it not have many complex interactions, quests, unique play mechanics and activities? What about the comparison of the passage of time between these two modes? There is at least one factual error. Dwarf Therapist has "10 classes" not Dwarf Fortress. "Adamantine" could use an explanation. Gameplay seems excessively wordy even for this game - you sure you cannot make more sense with fewer words? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:07, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

1) I agree it's not covered adequately, however I doubt I'll be able to find more good sources covering it. If I recall correctly, there are two sources which solely discuss the mode--I'll see if I can extract more information from them. 2) Time between the game modes? again, the sources didn't cover this but I'll see if I can dig out anything. 3) Yup good catch, I blindly copied that from the source, I've addressed it. 4) Isn't Adamantine covered enough? it talks about its properties, extraction process and where it is found. Anything else? 5) Ahh gameplay, that's something I need your help with. I'm stumped as to what to remove, I even thought of the extreme solution of creating a subpage Dwarf Fortress gameplay and summarise it here. Can you point out instances where it can be trimmed or removed? Thanks for taking up this review. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:39, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've done a search for sources again but found nothing. Unfortunately, Adventure mode or the passage of time are not covered further by any sources that I've come across. Even the handbook which I have (Getting started with Dwarf Fortress) does not cover Adventure mode. Currently that section to almost fully sourced to "Dwarf Fortress: The Detailed Roguelike That's Easy To Play" from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Maybe later someone might publish something as the game develops, I'll try to keep a watch. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 14:15, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As a reviewer, the only real issue is the sheer depth of gameplay elements, but a page dedicated to gameplay elements would not survive. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and the primary value is boiling down complex points without getting into really niche details. Most of these details are not "gameplay", but explanations of mechanics. And can pass into their own section with less scrutiny. Also, much of the details are really needlessly worded. The Biome system can be represented in a single table like this. Word clean up and simplification to remove redundancy is easy for most parts of the test.

Here is an example:

The first step in Dwarf Fortress is selecting the "Create New World" option, which has various customizable options. The player can adjust certain parameters like world size, history, in addition to number of beasts, natural savagery and mineral occurrence. The world gets generated with continents, oceans, histories involving gods, people and randomly generated mega-beasts or "Forgotten Beasts".[8] Only one game at a time can be played per world. The history parameter sets the amount of pre-generated simulated history, thus making the process take longer but ending up with a world with more legends and ruins of civilizations. The world is viewed in ASCII visuals and constantly changes as the generation progress goes on. In the map, certain symbols represent roads, hills, towns and cities of the various civilizations.[6]

I reorganized some details and removed things that would be explained later. This includes the basic options, but also more advanced controls without deviating from the purpose of the section. The details of what is generated raises questions and bring up more information of "what are those" before describing how the world is even made. Here is a condensed reading that conveys the information pertaining world generation without confusing the reader.

The first step in Dwarf Fortress is generating a playable world.[8] Only one game at a time can be played per world.[6] The player can adjust certain parameters governing the world's size, savagery, mineral occurrences and the length of history.[8] During creation, the ASCII visual representation of the world and changes throughout the generation progress as indicated by symbols representing roads, hills, towns and cities of the various civilizations.[6]

This going to actually be the focus of my review and changes. I am not sure I can remain as a "reviewer" when I am going to end up condensing the largest chunk of the page and still be a valid reviewer. So I am not sure how to proceed. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:50, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You can proceed by making me do the work, right? So I need to split game mechanics from the gameplay elements...that would mean having a separate section on world generation split from Gameplay--this just covers the current subsections "Overview" and "World generation". The new "World Generation" section would be outside the Gameplay, but I can't think of a proper order for it. The rest of Gameplay, according to me, doesn't have the game mechanics problem; so there we have the task of finding areas which need to be trimmed. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:46, 21 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Though I'm no longer very active on Wikipedia, I am watching this proceeding out of interest. ResMar 04:50, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I read the previous review when I was working on this; I thought you'd be interested and considered notifying you but saw that you weren't active any more. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 14:32, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've had little choice, but to fail the article because the issues are too great and the article is too imbalanced to be within the GA criteria. The gameplay elements comprise the bulk, and that is probably to be expected with such a game. Though I think it is not concise or clear while at the same time being heavily dependent on the materials. I am not able to be both a reviewer and major contributor, so I've decided to fail it and move to address the issues as an editor. This will likely make it to GA on the next attempt. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 23:58, 15 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm...okay. I look forward to seeing your edits here. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 13:57, 16 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]