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[Abalieno]

as far as stone variety, first thing is each stone has a different value so items made out of it may be worth more or less, some are magma-safe and some are not but honestly, I'm much happier with that than 1 magma-safe stone, 1 non-safe stone, 1 type of dirt, 1 type of iron ore, 1 type of copper etc...

This thing about the stones is not a big deal, it's EXPLANATORY of a style of development I criticized.

What I mean is: he was more focused creating all these types than he was interested about modeling them in a way that mattered.

So, those types should be mechanically different, more than they are now. They shouldn't be removed, but improved so that the game behaves consistently.

But in the end I'm criticizing how this was made: because first you should worry about mechanics, and only after that about variety. Instead this is an example of huge variety coming with a priority compared to mechanical variety.

The most important point is another: elegance of design versus feature creep.

[Mopsy]

I have a VERY unpopular opinion:

I think we'd all like to see more frequent updates and polish,

I don't. Not at the expense of the living world, that is. There are many games where people can dick around with things in peace. Toady is trying to take computerized roleplaying somewhere it hasn't been before, and that's more important than some forumite's (all formumites) made-to-measure happy gratis fun time.

I don't think you read that the way I wrote it. I meant as much as he'd like to be OP isn't Jesus in Gethsemane for wanting to see a cleaned up game (which we'll see in the next few weeks anyway,) I wasn't agreeing with colour-coded rocks or whatever.

I didn't read your post as support for OP's position. I wanted to emphasize that it shouldn't be taken for granted that every DF player's greatest desires are shorter development cycles and a more streamlined game.

[BigD145]

Yes, my point is that Toady should work more with them instead of against them. This stuff has to make into the game, not hacked into it.

Toady needs to work on methods to give stuff like Dwarf Therapist access to data, not hack into that.

There's more to people-to-people interactions than just "for" and "against". If Toady were against code injection he'd block it or ban it outright, not give it its own subforum with its own moderators.

[Arbinire]

Ok, I can understand the desire to want a better UI, and graphics integration, and to work more closely with those who have modded such things into the game...but I can't help that you ARE looking at things through rose-tinted glasses about what was and what you are so eloquently demanding now.

You're asking for one man to roof, run electrical and cable, do the siding, and hang the drywall before the framing has been done.  Toady himself has explained a few times in interviews why he's putting off these things and the analogy is apt

[Abalieno]

There's more to people-to-people interactions than just "for" and "against". If Toady were against code injection he'd block it or ban it outright, not give it its own subforum with its own moderators.

You didn't get my point. I didn't mean Toady is CONTRARY to those things. But that those things happen separately from the game.

He should take a pause from development so that he can focus for a while making these things happen, hand in hand. He made a little push a while ago, ported to SDL. As I said, this was the BIGGEST feature for DF.

After these last few years I'm suggesting he spends now a year or two making a better things, taking a break from the feature creep.

[Evaris]

So very true, at the same time I have to partially disagree:  There should be more communication at some level, especially with the modding community.  Take graphics for instance, sure there are a few people who prefer ASCII, but can you honestly say that the majority would prefer it to a tileset, or isometric 3d?  The best thing is the modding community has given options - there is no reason such options couldn't be available to people in the core game.

It's a matter of cost-to-benefit. All else equal, I would love to have a convenient DF API that let everyone view and control the game as they pleased. I think Toady would, too. The problem is that such an API requires significant developer effort to create and maintain, and Toady is already overburdened with work. Furthermore, there are issues with third-party components being seen as integral to the game, creating even more tension between the creator's vision and player expectations. This has been discussed extensively in the past, and my impression was that an API with official support isn't any more likely than the whole game being open-sourced. For the foreseeable future, at least.

Yes let's not make DF go the route of Minecraft or god forbid STARBOUND when it comes to mods. Implementing user mods into the core game should be done rarely, if ever.

What of mods that make sense?  Yes, Toady is overworked.  But that's the nice thing with working with the modding community - most of the work is already done.  The LNP already has support for multiple tilesets that can be changed out at the touch of a button.  Different mods fix a lot of the UI problems, add in mouse support, etc. 

In my opinion, mods which improve a game should be considered and used in the core game to some extent, or at least influence the product, if not be embraced completely. 

[Xangi]

So very true, at the same time I have to partially disagree:  There should be more communication at some level, especially with the modding community.  Take graphics for instance, sure there are a few people who prefer ASCII, but can you honestly say that the majority would prefer it to a tileset, or isometric 3d?  The best thing is the modding community has given options - there is no reason such options couldn't be available to people in the core game.

It's a matter of cost-to-benefit. All else equal, I would love to have a convenient DF API that let everyone view and control the game as they pleased. I think Toady would, too. The problem is that such an API requires significant developer effort to create and maintain, and Toady is already overburdened with work. Furthermore, there are issues with third-party components being seen as integral to the game, creating even more tension between the creator's vision and player expectations. This has been discussed extensively in the past, and my impression was that an API with official support isn't any more likely than the whole game being open-sourced. For the foreseeable future, at least.

Yes let's not make DF go the route of Minecraft or god forbid STARBOUND when it comes to mods. Implementing user mods into the core game should be done rarely, if ever.

What of mods that make sense?  Yes, Toady is overworked.  But that's the nice thing with working with the modding community - most of the work is already done.  The LNP already has support for multiple tilesets that can be changed out at the touch of a button.  Different mods fix a lot of the UI problems, add in mouse support, etc. 

In my opinion, mods which improve a game should be considered and used in the core game to some extent, or at least influence the product, if not be embraced completely. 

Just because you consider them good, doesn't mean I do, or anyone else does. Vice versa as well. Core development is one thing, mod implementation is another.

[Abalieno]

Toady himself has explained a few times in interviews why he's putting off these things and the analogy is apt

Yes, this posts exists as an attempt to convince him that these things can't be delayed even more.

You go on a march, then you stop and reorganize. My opinion is that right now DF has been stretched very thin and could hugely benefit of doing things differently now.

Years of radical rewrites passed. Please take time now for quality of life, cleaning, tightening everything up, and all the small things that make ENORMOUS difference, instead of the enormous things that make no difference.

[Aninimouse]

I do wish Toady would do smaller, more frequent updates instead of waiting forever to push out a lot at once. Maybe stop once in a while to do some heavy bug-fixing to make a very stable version for everyone who doesn't want to deal with bugs.
But that's pretty much the only thing I agree with I think.


And I thought DDA ruined Cataclysm, but maybe that's just me. Granted I haven't played it in a while, I remember while it added some nice variety, it added plenty of stuff I thought was stupid and also made the game incredibly easy.

[sal880612m]

I don't really know what to say but it has been obvious to me since I got into DF that it is supposed to be more about the canvas. I have been lead to believe that is what he has always been trying to do. Now I may not have been around since 2006 but it really doesn't seem likely that the information available suddenly changed just before I got into it. Less so because no one commented on it at the time.

Quite frankly I would rather have longer development cycles. First of any community games life is going to be tied to it's version and while save compatibility may be a thing it isn't always going to be especially since any time Toady would spend trying to make it a thing would basically be wasted and doing it every release would add up very quickly. Needing to scrap all your saves isn't a big deal when there are larger changes and longer development cycles but if he did smaller cycles I could easily see saves becoming outdated very, very quickly. Second any third party applications, or sources like the wiki are going to have trouble keeping up if releases occur too quickly which would likely end up resulting in something polarizing the community further than it already is.

In short I think longer development cycles are better for the game and the community. Maybe not quite two years but I certainly don't want a new version every two weeks or month. For example had Toady released each time he finished one of the following: Multi-tile trees, New personality/dream stuff, revised movement, revised combat, Climbing, Jumping, sites for other races, progress after world gen, revised conversation system. I probably would have only updated 3 of potentially 9 times because of the value I place on things, some people would also probably stop and stick with version X if they didn't like the implementation of version Y until feature A that they really wanted got put in version Z.

On the stone and soil types I support adding them before hand and making them mechanically different at a later date. It is easy enough or at least theoretically possible to flag a predefined stone/soil type to follow a certain mechanic later but it is impossible to add it to the world post-generation.

On mods I am largely against their addition. There are a few reactions I think that Toady should put in like adventuring tanning and leather crafting, sure the reactions are small and anyone who wants to can but given how outsider adventurers are implemented they should be there by default or at least waterskins and backpacks should be more common. Also a way to create an anvil without already having one I modded in the making of a clay anvil cast and set up a smelter reaction to take that and 4 bars of iron/steel to get a new anvil without having on to start with.

[Shinotsa]

There are very many DF clones that offer exactly what classic DF offered, and those developers are shooting to do what you wish with their games. I highly suggest those to you.

[Greenbane]

So very true, at the same time I have to partially disagree:  There should be more communication at some level, especially with the modding community.  Take graphics for instance, sure there are a few people who prefer ASCII, but can you honestly say that the majority would prefer it to a tileset, or isometric 3d?  The best thing is the modding community has given options - there is no reason such options couldn't be available to people in the core game.

It's a matter of cost-to-benefit. All else equal, I would love to have a convenient DF API that let everyone view and control the game as they pleased. I think Toady would, too. The problem is that such an API requires significant developer effort to create and maintain, and Toady is already overburdened with work. Furthermore, there are issues with third-party components being seen as integral to the game, creating even more tension between the creator's vision and player expectations. This has been discussed extensively in the past, and my impression was that an API with official support isn't any more likely than the whole game being open-sourced. For the foreseeable future, at least.

Yes let's not make DF go the route of Minecraft or god forbid STARBOUND when it comes to mods. Implementing user mods into the core game should be done rarely, if ever.

What of mods that make sense?  Yes, Toady is overworked.  But that's the nice thing with working with the modding community - most of the work is already done.  The LNP already has support for multiple tilesets that can be changed out at the touch of a button.  Different mods fix a lot of the UI problems, add in mouse support, etc. 

In my opinion, mods which improve a game should be considered and used in the core game to some extent, or at least influence the product, if not be embraced completely. 

Just because you consider them good, doesn't mean I do, or anyone else does. Vice versa as well. Core development is one thing, mod implementation is another.

There's another issue at hand. When you start integrating mods into your game, it stops being your game and becomes a community effort. I would totally understand if Toady would rather keep the game "all his", and leave mods where they belong: as optional, unofficial content. It is entirely his right as the author.

[Xangi]

There's another issue at hand. When you start integrating mods into your game, it stops being your game and becomes a community effort. I would totally understand if Toady would rather keep the game "all his", and leave mods where they belong: as optional, unofficial content. It is entirely his right as the author.

Yeah that's a good way of putting what I was getting at.

[cephalo]

...and all the small things that make ENORMOUS difference, instead of the enormous things that make no difference.

That's a good quote. I have to admit I am indeed terribly excited about this new release, but I do think some of your criticism is totally legit.

I have a couple of related beefs. Since 31.x, many bugs have accumulated on the bug tracker untouched. We work hard to report those, and there absolutely hasn't been enough bug fixing for many years now. Hopefully this next bug fixing phase will be longer than usual. Open source could fix them all in a month, but I'm not gonna ask for that. There are many reasons not to go that way.

Secondly, cosmetic diversity has indeed been way too much of a focus in these latest cycles. I was not at all excited about making honey, and I'm not at all excited about this huge number of real world plants in the game. I loved brewing longland beer! It's gone now? Awwwwwe. This is a fantasy game. The real world is beautiful and interesting in a completely different way than a fantasy world. It's fun taking a break from the real world sometimes to learn about a fantasy world instead. Gimme back my sewer brew!

I've been reading the dev logs here for long enough to understand what the core goals are, and this kind of noise does not advance the important ones while eating precious time and complicating the debug process.

[Tarqiup Inua]

Noise is something randomly generated bit by bit. (sometimes literally)

When "noise" has consequences that affect further generating (in worldgen more than anywhere else), it becomes representation of chance that - indeed, adds layer of realism into the game.

Yes, when you take a dwarf and randomly generate everything from hair and eye colour to the height, it can be called a noise. But take genetics - traits of parents determine traits of the child. You can't say the child's traits are a noise, they are not completely random.

That is the important thing. Relations between the randomized objects. It may look like a noise when there is random villager living in random country under a random ruler, but since the world around them has some parameters, the king/country/villager have some boards between which they can randomly act and that makes it realistic.

At least in that I believe you are wrong.

EDIT: eh, I overuse some words...
EDIT2: And I, too, believe to have understood your message, and would have, too, liked working hospitals and army training in the 34.11 that doesn't require some very odd approach, but mind - the game is in constant development and since old features are often replaced, not fixing the old bugs saves some time.