Dwarf Fortress 2 open beta coming soon (design notes - part three)

Chris had spent half of 2008 personally replying to every abusive email he had been sent by disappointed purchasers of Spore - including the ones I was procedurally generating using the DF2 Markov chain code. I've not included my original email because removing the more extreme expletives renders it unintelligible, but here's the remaining correspondence, for your edification:

It's clear that you have a passionate love of games. It's just you don't understand the pressure we were under, and you have to admit the final result is still impressive.

-- Chris

[text removed]you, you piece of [text removed]. I could do better. In fact I have: [link removed]

Regards,

Andrew Doull

Wow. I don't know what to say except: how can I get involved?

-- Chris

I would like to apologise now unconditionally for anything mean I've said about Chris, or anyone else who worked on Spore. He is an incredibly hard working and talented individual, and I've learned over the intervening years that in any large software project, compromises have to be made. It turns out that Will was right, and was ultimately responsible for the decisions that led to Spore being a less than completely hard core reinvention of every game genre that ever existed. It's just a shame he wasn't involved in DF2, like Chris was.