Wasn't designed with it in mind? If you think about it, Dungeon Keeper didn't exactly take advantage of the benefits 3D has to offer. In fact, most games consist of 2D gameplay with 3D graphics. It isn't uncommon at all. Thus I don't see how this influences anything.
Of course. In fact I'm playing Evil Genius right now which is similar in that regard. The difference is that those projects had comparatively large budgets with dozens of people working on them. You need coders to implement an animation system. Riggers, texture artists, modelers, and so forth. Dungeon Keeper let you take over a minion in first person view, which (besides marketing) was the reason it was 2.5D (3D w/2d sprites). Other games, like Evil Genius, save memory by storing skeletal animation data instead of pages and pages of 2D animation.
Dwarf fortress has at least two things that make 3D more complicated: 1) multiple z-levels, and 2) hundreds of tiny objects that are easily obscured by each other and walls. That's assuming a team could find and coordinate enough artists to generate the required content.
Like I said in my original post, you'd spend a lot of resources on something that will only add interface overhead.
I've already given examples on what the scope could consist of and still hide the details. If you can be bothered to read them, just scroll back to near the beginning. The example I gave consists of no more ability than if you were to send keystrokes to the game as it stands now.
I did, and I think most people will be underwhelmed. I'd expect a similar thread to this one, actually. (EDIT: I haven't tried it, but just using Win32's PostMessage() should give you this already.) And if you actually wanted access to his data then you'll run into all the issues people have already brought up. Furthermore, you're almost certainly going to run into performance issues because clients will be forced to compromise with their algorithms or ask Toady for more features.
How so? Toady himself has already admitted he probably can't compete with someone else's interface. How would you consider it qualified? And in case you hadn't noticed, there are quite a number of programmers in this community. I'm sure a good number of them are capable of building an interface at least as good as what exists now.
By qualified I mean has studied/experience in design. If you think implementing an interface is the same as designing one then you're wrong. Any programmer can implement an interface; it's trivial in most modern IDEs. It's quite another thing to design a good one. Just look at all the crap software interfaces that are out there!
In fact, a good way of coming up with a bad interface is to presume you know what the user wants. A good way of coming up with a good interface is to iteratively develop a series of prototypes while gathering user feedback. Which is pretty much what Toady's been doing and why I suggest we create a list of things we'd like to see instead of whining for something he's already considered.
I'd just like to add that I don't strictly disagree with third party interfaces; I just think time and resources could be spent more effectively elsewhere.
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Topic: Third party interfaces and "Losing control of the project" (Read 139669 times)