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[PlumpHelmetMan]

Sorry, but none of this is quite terrible enough.

To heighten the sense of immersion in a fantasy world, we need to eliminate an English-translated "common tongue" entirely, with each civilization instead having a procgen language which is different in each world (this also means communication between civs will become a lot more difficult, likely leading to more frequent warfare). And yes, the UI will be translated into whatever language your current civ/adventurer happens to speak and you'll almost certainly need to devote hours of game time and mental energy even beginning to decipher enough of the basics to get on with play.

Even the menu text will be displayed as a different procgen language (which may or may not even be one found in any of your current saved worlds) each time you launch the game. In short, all real-world language text found anywhere in the game needs to be altered.

[King Zultan]

You know what would make that better if there was no a way to translate the language, and if you combined it with keybindings that changed every new game.

[Mr Crabman]

The glyphs for the languages will be randomly picked from Unicode (as will the keybindings), and you'll need to input that exact binary signal for the appropriate symbol to use the keycode. Better bust out those custom keyboards.

[Uthimienure]

The glyphs for the languages will be randomly picked from Unicode (as will the keybindings), and you'll need to input that exact binary signal for the appropriate symbol to use the keycode. Better bust out those custom keyboards.

Using a chart that shows the machine-language value of each symbol, require the user to input keyboard commands using only 1's and 0's.

[A_Curious_Cat]

These 1’s and 0’s must be keyed into the computer similar to Morse code using a randomly chosen key on the keyboard that changes with each key press.

[BlueManedHawk]

The glyphs for the languages will be randomly picked from Unicode[…]

Better yet, just generate random images for the glyphs.

[Starver]

Toady switches development into being (re)written entirely in APL...

[King Zultan]

Toady rewrites all of the games code in DOS and the game can only be obtained directly from Toady on a set of 5 ¹/₄ floppy discs.

[brewer bob]

Toady rewrites all of the games code in DOS and the game can only be obtained directly from Toady on a set of 5 ¹/₄ floppy discs.

If it comes in a proper box with a printed b&w manual (maybe including a cloth map and some trinket), then hell yeah.

[Mr Crabman]

So this thread has been pinned for quite a while: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=178034.0

The twenty-eighth one has been posted.

There is only one logical conclusion. He should change his username to "Twenty-Eighth One".

[PlumpHelmetMan]

The DF calendar has 28 days in each month. It's a sign from the Toad himself!

[Uthimienure]

The UI should operate only by asking the user T/F questions, e.g.,
DF "Issue a new order?"
User "Y"
DF "Bring up the unit menu?"
User "Y"
DF "Search in the unit menu?"
User "N"
At which point the game quits because the answer "No" is not acceptable.
So the user restarts the game.
Repeat the above.
In the raws, the default may be changed from "N" to "Y", but not both.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Iirc, Toady One has said that DF is kind of an art project.  To really make it a piece of art, he needs to reimplement it in Piet.

[☼Obsidian Short Sword☼]

He should rewrite the entire game as a bunch of xml tags. The players then have to write their own parsers

[brewer bob]

Nah, the entire game should be re-written in BASIC and the code released as a type-in program which appears as an ongoing series in a printed computer magazine.

And each issue of the magazine (released quarterly) has only one page dedicated to the code.