UCSC CMPM 147 Generative Design, Tarn Adams Guest Talk November 2019

[@mulkytool]

I know nothing about game design yet I can listen to this guy talk all day.

[@ceselb]

I could too. But the uneven sound levels really makes me nuts.

[@xDMrGarrison]

Me too lol, I was listening to his talks long before even playing his game. (started about 2 weeks ago)

[@willmungas8964]

2:03 “In 138, the Torments of Equality accept an offer of peace from the Pregnancy of Rawness” lmaoooo I love this game

[@Yubey934]

why would you disable the like/dislike bar? Nobody can hate Tarn Adams

[@ruadeil_zabelin]

It might also be youtube doing it if the video is marked as intended for all audiences and things like that. KZbin does a lot of weird stuff

[@fluffydishwasher]

@@ruadeil_zabelin true

[@ruadeil_zabelin]

Apparently it's removed everywhere on youtube now. I think you just were one of the first people that had this "feature"

[@tenhovergonha7692]

Its globaly disabled since Biden took the elections.

[@jamoecw]

@@ruadeil_zabelin this was disabled by the owner and not YT.

[@DrunkTigerGrill]

In 50 years DF will be taught in schools. We are watching history in the making folks!

[@ridespirals]

the talk was great like always but I haven't seen one where he's gotten to take questions and that part was especially great. I hope we get to see more stuff like this I could listen to him talk about how the game is built all day

[@inthefade]

I hate that you can barely hear the questions. Big oversight on the editing and production.

[@TimmacTR]

This guy is a genius, or an artist, or both..

[@Robert-vk7je]

He is the god of his own world. :)

[@Teadon86]

I think it is sad that people forget that his brother Zach Adams is part of the development and has been part of developing games with his brother Tarn Adams since childhood.

[@TimmacTR]

@@Teadon86 Well, they're both geniuses, it's just that Zach doesn't appear much in public

[@Hawkido]

@@TimmacTR Zach is the Story and Lore Genius, Tarn is the Math and Logic Genius. Two sides of the PB&J of Awesome.

[@Fuchsia_tude]

Yes.

[@Kram1032]

What an execellent talk! Beautifully in-depth, and great questions from the audience at the end to boot

[@kosnk]

Tarn and Zach are just amazing. Thank you

[@ValeryPetrov1]

Thank you for the talk and for giving Tarn a platform! This game and it's creators sure deserve as many attention and praise as possible.

[@enkephalin07]

"There's absolutely no reason to make a large world." Tarn said 3 years ago. Actually I'd been making large worlds with max history length for 5 years prior, and my reasons for doing so then are unchanged. It produces richer world histories with more active personalities that you can interact with, that you can influence, but will ever be out of your control. These are fundamental building blocks for stories you could not have anticipated, no matter what you're able to do to change the world.

[@IAm18PercentCarbon]

Envy these students getting to learn from one of the true legends of game development.

[@honthecorn2764]

I love herring his thought presses it shows how he makes the game so complex

[@alanb8127]

I had no idea this talk was happening... If I known I definitely would've gone. Dwarf Fortress is such a fascinating game

[@ss-oq9pc]

This was great but I wish there had been more on history generation.

[@baltakatei]

A small bias of probabilities of rare events happening more often to entities in the game that the user pays attention to would go a long way towards sparking a player's inner storyteller. Dwarf Fortress does this by presenting the player with so many unique permutations of ordinary entities that each unique configuration feels rare and special; statistically, DF sessions are not surprising if you hold all the game mechanics in mind. However, most players aren't interested in memorizing the wiki, so they're in a state of constant surprise. As long as the surprises don't sour into frustration (e.g. 2022-12 Steam version doesn't let me build up/down stair constructs to extend a downstairs upward, wth), then the tongue-in-cheek "!FUN!" make for good stories. Stories are born when plans go awry; frustration is born when the story is unlikely to entertain people you love.

[@shadejodoin6683]

You can absolutely construct an upstair on a dug downstair, at least at the time of writing. All you have to do is construct stairs as a construction beginning from the Z-level of the downstair and up to the Z-level you desire. Ensure you build up instead of trying to dig up, and click on the accessible level of the downstair then move upwards - not the other way around.

[@HenricWallmark]

I had the same issue until I found There’s one stair tool in Mining menu and one in construction.

[@TheR971]

He's the Donald Knuth of video games. DF is still easier than writing a tex macro though.

[@ryap1]

Really cool talk.

[@brynnplant]

This stuff is just so interesting. The cool thing is a lot of the concepts he discusses are so simple and obvious at their core that it's not as hard as you'd think to follow along.

[@hugoalvord2779]

I love this guy 🥺

[@rottenpoet6675]

Listening for Toady for hours....relaxing

[@KiloShank]

I just made a Demigod in adventure mode, covered him in brown recluse spiders, slapped a mason and demanded his pouch, and named it the bad bad balls before smashing a bird to death with it.

[@nicolasgalipeau3632]

Why the dislikes it's weird? This was amazing!

[@benjiusofficial]

This reminds me of Keith Burgun's 'Clockwork Game Design'.

[@KoRMaK1]

who added the soundtrack at 1:09:00 and was it diegetic to the room

[@jakeely1180]

its the sound of dwarf fortress launching.

[@jackalexandroff4550]

did anyone find out what that game, or tech was called? 1:01:13

[@baltakatei]

01:19:00 ⚠️ Headphone warning. ⚠️

[@spaceminivanwanter]

It’s on Steam now!

[@CYI3ERPUNK]

words from a genius of game design ; a living legend

[@calebmullan4593]

His slides look like he made them in MS Paint, and I love it

[@sechmascm]

It's not just that it looks like. It is made in Paint. He has another talk where he makes a reference to that

[@enkephalin07]

An adventurer isn't exactly ground up in gears, because in Adventurer Mode the player has more agency than other units around them. Non-player units may be capable of the same behaviors as the player, yet they won't actually engage in them. NPC's who agree to join the player lose more agency because there are more behaviors they won't engage in, and more behaviors they're compelled to. Certainly a lot of narrative emerges from a party composition, but it's still constricted more than necessary for gameplay.

[@narnbrez]

Interesting dutch angle lol

[@Woodythehobo]

great talk. its a shame many of these developer conventions have audio issues.

[@Komplexitet]

Tarn Adams is awesome

[@20xy94]

1:10:25 when the strange mood hit

[@stephenharperisgay]

14:50 avoid unnecessary detail

[@atillacodesstuff1223]

Tarn is the king of geeks and the underworld :D

[@Lightning_Lance]

59:06

[@Kyleology]

27:00

[@isaacshultz8128]

He's an amazing speaker

[@eugkra33]

fucking cats clean themselves in this game, and get their paws dirty? Eye lids are actually used for cleaning eyes???

[@chasegimbel1904]

Wait till he finds out each creatures body parts are simulated down to the individual finger as well as fat muscle skin and bones being simulated

[@chickennoodles5265]

Brilliant dude but his mind is all over the place. I can't follow his talks at all.

[@Walter5850]

seemed very well thought through and concise to me ?

[@mistry6292]

@@Walter5850 op is probably a brainlet

[@chasegimbel1904]

You can’t follow this? It was pretty straightforward, good luck If you ever end up in college

[@rionhunter]

I have mad respect for Tarn, but he really needs to reel in his 'uh's and 'ums' because it's in the dozens per minute my golly - though the one just after 4:03 was pretty funny

[@john.d.rockefeller2538]

Some people just talk like that, their mind is running slower than their mouth I guess.

[@dntbther9298]

@@john.d.rockefeller2538 it is actually the reverse. He has too many ideas simultaneously, so he has to filter and choose one. Add anxiety and stress and it's worse.

[@ChimeratAlpha]

33:48 And that, right there, is why I hate STEAM. It's also to be released on itch.io (DRM-free), and yet, likely due to the same terms that prevent devs from posting links to STEAM _and_ GOG on their official websites, Mr. Adams here only ever calls it the "STEAM release".