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[Denim Sk8r]

Current plan:

Magic
Items
Buildings
Caves
Combat
Oceans
Climbing
Parties
Character Generation
Eating Drinking

it just seems pretty random to me. I think that party and people interface should come right after towns and such. Climbing should be right before or after caves. I don't think it needs alot of changing just that some things seem to fit together alot better. What fun are caves if you can't climb?

Here's my thoughts on groupings:

Magic
Items

Magic can't really be moved, and it goes well with itmes, for magic items, wands, whatever. Plus I'd like to be not naked as soon as possible.

Climbing
Caves
Oceans

These don't neccasarily come "next" in when I think they should be done, but it's the next group I want to mention. Climbing first so you can run up into trees to escape death, ride horses or whatever. Then caves for some real climbing, things dropping from the ceiling. Giant spidery death around every corner. Oceans actually do fit in here for underground river streams and oceans. It's always wet or damp or something in those places.

Combat
Character Generation

Actual ability to start with a specific person of your creation. Combat seems to fit with this, because it's like related to your certain character concept. Start off as kung-fu master Steve the dwarf, or whatever.

Buildings
Parties

These actually are very related to that last one with combat and char gen. It goes in depth with specifics and interactions.

Eating Drinking

Hi! I don't fit anywhere, so I go at the end. Yeah, this should be later in, since at this point, I guarentee everyone would starve to death. That and water isn't real...

[spelguru]

I should say something related to this post
but I am too tired...
goodnight.

[Toady One]

This is a bit rant-like in nature...

Mayhem Visits the Quaint Thorpe will include some basic conversation interface.

Caves is next to buildings because they are very closely related (almost the same, hopefully), and I want to do one while the code for the other is fresh in my mind.

Looking over it, I think the only difference in your ordering is that climbing is moved up.  Climbing is related to wrestling in the code.  I had originally planned to do climbing, then wrestling, then for some reason I flipped it around.  Maybe just because wrestling has been put off for a long time, and climbing isn't that important.  Almost every game written with caves has done without climbing, so I don't see it as an urgent priority.  I was also going to use the combat release to finish the animations for all of the current actions (many of which are combat related), which will be a good infrastructure to have before climbing.  Although...  it might be possible that tree climbing just springs out wrestling in the combat release.  If you wrestle a tree, you are likely climbing it.  Climbing terrain features is different, although hopefully I can use some carry over from the wrestling code.

In the end, I don't have a lot of compelling reasons for some of the ordering choices, but if it's all going to be done at some point, it won't matter much.  Anyway, here's what's fixed:

Magic 1st (just cuz I'm doing it now)
Items < Buildings
Buildings < Caves
Items < Combat
Combat < Climbing (assuming above)

NOTE:  "Climbing" currently encompasses jumping, flying, climbing, etc.  This leads to:

Oceans < Climbing

because I think swimming should precede flying.  However this:

Climbing < Oceans < Flying

is also a possibility.  Swimming before flying isn't truly compelling, but for some reason I like that better...  it's just the evolutionary order and that might help me code the mechanics better.  Swimming seems more basic.

Parties, Character Generation, Eating/Drinking are all fairly unformed release ideas.  I don't expect them to last without major revisions, so maybe talking about ordering is premature there.  They just aren't remotely ready to be added now.  Character generation is put off because it involves civilizations and history, and I'm sick of rewriting it, so I'm waiting for more backing.

[Denim Sk8r]

keep in mind that I can't possibly consider these things from a programming point of view, just from the idea that they seem to relate better from an outside view.

[Toady One]

Well, yeah.  That's why I posted an explanation of why things are arranged the way they are, especially after I encouraged people to ask me to change the plan around if they had some preferences.  I certainly didn't intend to criticize.

The releases up through Caves are strictly ordered, because of that building/cave similarity I mentioned.  At least my idea now is that caves are just like buildings.  They alter the otherwise smooth landscape according to some set of rules...  a building could have an underground basement that looks almost exactly like a cave.  None of this is coded yet, so maybe it won't work out that way, but the nice thing about this approach would be that it would let me use something like blueprints for both town and cave (and other) dwellers.  Making them build up their infrastructure during the game would then be unified in one general AI routine.  Although there would also be particular bits for each setting...

But in retrospect, the releases after Caves are too far away for me to really be sure how to order them.  Maybe climbing will get moved up.  We can talk about this here and later on.  I think some people wanted the combat release fairly soon as well.

He he he.  Maybe I should get back to work, and make as many of these points irrelevant as soon as possible...  my creatures are on the verge of being melted puddles...