Tarn Adams

Tarn Adams
Born	(1978-04-17) April 17, 1978 Silverdale, Washington, U.S.
Occupation	Computer game programmer
Years active	1996–present

Tarn Adams (born April 17, 1978) is an American computer game programmer, best known as the co-creator of the computer game Dwarf Fortress in 2002 along with his older brother Zach, which is known for its intricate details and persistent world generation and attracted a cult following. He learned programming in his childhood and with his brother, has been designing computer games as a hobby since. He quit his first year of a mathematics post doctorate at Texas A&M to focus on game development. He founded the company "Bay 12 Games" with his brother, and started a website on which he posts freeware games developed by them, most notably Dwarf fortress, on the website's forums, he is known as 'Toady One'.

Early life and family

Tarn Adams was born in Silverdale, Washington, the younger of two children. His father, Dan, worked at a waste water treatment plant and used to manage data. Tarn credited his father for teaching him to code and his closeness to his brother Zach, due to their family's constant shifting due to their father's work. In high school, he formed a close friendship with Alan Ames, who is an aerospace engineer and a supporter,

Tarn has said that his earliest memory of learning programming was when he was six, his father taught him to make a 'For' loop. His father, Dan had to write software to manage the data of his treatment plant. He and Zach grew up playing computer games and, with notebooks in hand, drawing their own renditions of the randomly generated creatures they encountered and logging their journeys in detail. Tarn coded animations, and in fifth grade, wrote his first animation game with his brother Zach. In an interview with The New York Times, explaining his reluctance to socialize, he said, "I was a get-home-from-school, get-on-the-computer kind of kid." Tarn said that the main reason they started writing games was to be able to play them themselves, as complicated and unpredictable behavior guaranteed replayability.

In high school they created a spacecraft game that simulated sections of a rocket blowing off with accurate physics and released their first publicly available game on America online. In sixth grade, they started their first fantasy game called dragslay written in basic. It consisted of encounters leading to a final one with a dragon. A few years later, he rewrote it in C language, and later, it featured minute details and kept track of populations of units in the world generated. He has cited books, movies, pen and paper role-playing games and other computer games during his childhood as their inspiration for various games developed. They have made many small games before they started their website.

He has said that Dungeons & Dragons and J.R.R. Tolkien interested him but was never a fan. Besides Dungeons and Dragons, he liked indie games like Cyberpunk 2020. An interviewer had pointed out about his preference for living in minimal conditions and sleeping during the day while programming at night.

Education

He got a degree in mathematics at the University of Washington. The final year faculty named him best math major. Later, he applied for his doctorate at Stanford University. Completed it in 2005 with his dissertation called "Flat Chains in Banach Spaces", published it in The Journal of Geometric Analysis and started his post doctorate in Texas A&M, which was his goal since his undergraduate days.

During his first year at Stanford, he was under pressure and the professional environment and competitiveness affected him negatively. This was due to conflict of interests concerning studying mathematics as well as developing video games. This stressful situation is said to have left him depressed and he also admitted to having a brief encounter with drugs. During his post doctorate at Texas A&M, he decided to leave during the first year and is said to have broken down in the head of departments office. He left in 2006 after receiving a stipend, to devote full time to develop Dwarf fortress which was till then only a hobby. Regarding this, he told The New York Times, "At the end of a math problem, you have a paper and maybe you publish it, and the paper can be a building block for the edifice of mathematics, but to me that’s not so important. But working on a problem and having a game when you’re done? That’s pretty damn cool."

Works

Tarn with his brother had started a company called "Bay 12 games", where they posted freeware games and began to have a small following. Tarn assumed the name 'Toady One' and his brother 'ThreeToe'. His background in mathematics helped in algorithms with spatial considerations. His skill in programming along with Zach with his studies in ancient history and creative storytelling, together they designed and developed various projects.

After the game dragslay, which was similar to the adventure mode of Dwarf fortress and had a persistent world map including creatures and towns, during his time at graduation, they both started working on another adventure game. This is when they made their fantasy games focus on world generation. Also playing the game Ultima inspired him regarding world development. For four years, after working on the adventure tile and rendering it in 3D graphics, It was called Slaves to Armok:God of Blood, where "Armok" was the name of the deity in it and actually got it's name from the variable "arm_ok" which was used in dragslay to indicate how many arms were left on a particular unit. Tarn told The New York Times that during the game and in between battles,"you could zoom in on your character, and it’d tell you how curly his leg hairs were, and the melting and flash points of various materials, It was insane." It was put on their website in 2000 and the random story generator was originated by both of them writing stories together. By 2004, the game featured a lot of complicated aspects and it being in 3D, compounded the problems the project began to face. Finally, Tarn announced in 2004 on his forums that he was going to shift from Armok to Dwarf fortress.

While not working on Armok, he also worked on some other small projects during graduation and some of them he released on his website. Mutant Miner was a game which he developed and was inspired by Miner VGA. It was a turn based game where players had to look for minerals and dig out tunnels while dealing with threats. He found the need to be able to manage many such miners and to not only have a high score list but also store more minute details, which was the beginning of the Dwarf fortress project. Side projects like Corin and Kobold quest were made in a few days and Squiggles was made in three hours. There are games such as Liberal Crime Squad and WWI Medic on his website.

Dwarf fortress

Main article: Dwarf fortress

Dwarf fortress was started as a side project to Armok on October 2002. Hack was the influence of it with it's randomly generated levels, mechanics and primitive graphics. He credited Dungeon and Dragons, works of Tolkien and Conan as being the inspiration of the game's world. Its title is Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress. After starting the project, most of the features that were thought of were implemented to this project rather than, at that time's main project, Armok. It kept growing and Armok went into difficulties due to its 3D graphics and it was abandoned in favor of Dwarf fortress. Since this wasn't rendered in 3D, Tarn was more free to develop it with more possibilities. It was released in 2006, when his following was relatively small.

It is a colony-building management game where players start with a small group of dwarfs and gather resources to build a sustainable fortress while creating a utopian society, defending against invaders besides wildlife being a constant threat and dwarfs going insane due to the lack of alcohol. His brother, Zach did the story writing and mixing up various factors in the whole history generator including world generator and body part models. The game builds a history for each new world, gives each player a unique legacy to build on. The feature of goblins hanging the skins of their foes on their towers was from a book on Assyrians which was found by Zach. The characters in this game are generated having a unique personality which involves factors such as traits, physical appearance likes and dislikes and each of their anatomy is described in clinical detail, such as bone size, muscle and fat tissue and various organs that are important in combat, which is described in violent details. Tarn has said Cyberpunk was his inspiration for the wounding mechanism. Alan Ames, Tarn's close friend since school told The New York Times, "The processing power that Dwarf Fortress uses is on the same scale as modern engineering software for designing aerospace hardware. You have more complicated simulations in Dwarf Fortress than when you model the aerodynamics of a wing."

Recognition

Tarn is primarily known for creating Dwarf fortress and is known for its cult following, having received popularity in spite of not being owned by any company. The fans formed a community and it is been growing, have maintained a wiki for the game, podcasts and meetups. On his Bay12 forums, he takes suggestions from them. One fan has claimed to have made 'a crude but functioning' computer within the game. While another has compared the game with its ASCII graphics to reading a book and "You can let your imagination fill in the gaps." In 2006, a saga called "Boatmurdered" where fans passed around a single fortress and each played the game and saved it before sending it to another, was portrayed in detail from its start to destructive end. This spread around gaming sites and boosted the game's popularity. The success of Minecraft, which is said to be a user friendly version of Dwarf fortress, the world-building game which bears similarities with his work, has in turn introduced new players to it.

He maintains that he has no plans to charge for the game and is content with paypal donations from his fans saying, "I like that it's free, and if you care about it, you pay," and is happy as long as the game is self-sustaining. He has said that he had a few donors who never played the game and were there just to check the stories. In an interview, He has stated that he rejected an offer from a major developer and an offer to license the name Dwarf fortress. Concerning releasing the source code of the game, He said that he would likely do that if financially secure. Tarn has mentioned that he has not paid much attention to the gaming industry in the past years, and is happy to implement whatever ideas he comes up with unlike working in the industry which he called "soul crushing". He has said that he isn't interested in the various new games released since their mechanics doesn't interest him and further said in an interview with The Escapist, "From what I've seen from the transcripts from these conferences and stuff, mainstream developers really are trying to do all kinds of interesting things, but their most important thing always has to come back to the money... It's kind of depressing. I'm not going to sit here and toot my horn, but as far as design is concerned, I just think that I've happened to fall into a little sweet spot where I get a lot of freedom, but I guess the cost is my livelihood." Tarn has shown dislike for massively multiplayer online games. He has also further said that popular games are addictive because they make use of a compulsive hoarding trait of people in terms of getting points or collecting things turning the gamer into a slave, something he has stated that he used to value but not any longer.

Tarn and his brother routinely give out short stories or crayon art requests to their donors. These stories are written by Zach and the crayon art drawn by him and colored by Tarn. These gifts are said to make the game feel more handcrafted and personal. Since they lack an advertising medium, they are very appreciative of journalists and bloggers who cover his work.

In 2013, The New York Museum of Modern art featured it in a design exhibition.

External links

• Official Bay 12 games website