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[dreiche2]

Yes, and a certain fraction of the general activity/interest/demands of the player base and the community in this forum will revolve around the interfaces, much more than it is already the case with the utilities. Thus, even though he can basically ignore these things much as he does now with the utilities, he will have given away control over certain aspects of "his baby". Again, personally I'm not against interfaces, because I know about what great things a community can create. But I think you need to acknowledge that there are certain issues, for which you could try to find solutions. It will remain a trade-off in any case.

Edit: clarification

[Omega2]

Of course. There are always tradeoffs in any options. Keeping the way things are, the game loses potential players due to clunky interface. Adding more modding possibilities, the bug reports trickle in slower after an update.

In the end, regardless of how much we discuss it, it's his choice to make. I'd love to see what people could do with a true API (and I wish I was good enough as a programmer to try my hand at it), but if Toady won't do it, for whatever reason, we'll just have to work with what we already have.

[Syreal]

View the game in Isometric, 3D, first person, or flat 2D tiles depending on what you prefer

Please tell me that was a joke.

[Andir]

View the game in Isometric, 3D, first person, or flat 2D tiles depending on what you prefer

Please tell me that was a joke.

In what way?  If the interface client was split form the engine server then it's totally possible for someone to create any or all of those interface types.

[Capntastic]

Hey Frobozz I've donated a small amount to Toady over this last year and since I'm paying his rent I'm pretty much allowed to just walk into his house and crash on his couch whenever I want?  I mean, I could start moving furniture and around eating his food since I practically own it, right?   Making a donation- out of my own respect and wishes of support- to a remarkable free game developed by two guys gives me free reign over their production schedules and creative control, does it not?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

No, of course not, don't be silly.

[Tormy]

On another note, Toady also says in the interview that he also fears the eventual appearance of competitors, such as someone that would make a similar or better game than him, leaving him "dead on the roadside". Well I'll be straight to the point: I think that's very unlikely. If we take as an example the world of roguelikes, nethack, dungeon crawl, angband, doomrl, all have their loyal following. Even though dungeon crawl has a vastly superior interface to nethack, and some will say, more balanced gameplay, people didn't stop playing Nethack. So as long as he keeps improving the game, I don't think Toady has any reason to worry about his fanbase leaving him.

I'm not kidding when I say this: there are no competitors. The only project at all like DF is JADE, but with no release, it's not a competitor.

JADE? Ive never heard about it, any link to that project?

*edit*
Nevermind search can do wonders. 

[Doppel]

Hey Frobozz I've donated a small amount to Toady over this last year and since I'm paying his rent I'm pretty much allowed to just walk into his house and crash on his couch whenever I want?  I mean, I could start moving furniture and around eating his food since I practically own it, right?   Making a donation- out of my own respect and wishes of support- to a remarkable free game developed by two guys gives me free reign over their production schedules and creative control, does it not?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

No, of course not, don't be silly.

Ironically that Spoiler tag spoiled it all. 

[sorbius]

Toady said, very politely, that he is not going to release any source code at this time and probably not in the future.  seriously, respect his decision, no matter how wrong/naive/stupid/short-sighted you think it is, and drop it.

[dreiche2]

Hey Frobozz I've donated a small amount to Toady over this last year and since I'm paying his rent I'm pretty much allowed to just walk into his house and crash on his couch whenever I want?  I mean, I could start moving furniture and around eating his food since I practically own it, right?   Making a donation- out of my own respect and wishes of support- to a remarkable free game developed by two guys gives me free reign over their production schedules and creative control, does it not?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

No, of course not, don't be silly.

Give the guy a break, it's a difference saying you should have influence on the development on a game because you donated (even if many people would disagree) and what you describe. Also, the post you are referring to is three pages earlier, and not that relevant anyway. Could we stop the hostility?

Toady said, very politely, that he is not going to release any source code at this time and probably not in the future.  seriously, respect his decision, no matter how wrong/naive/stupid/short-sighted you think it is, and drop it.

If one more person mentions source code here I'm going into a fell mood.

[Omega2]

Everybody, repeat it with me:

No one is asking for any source code.

Again:

No one is asking for any source code.

One last time:

No one is asking for any source code.


What's being asked is a more practical (or at least better documented) way to mod the interface. No Dwarf Fortress source-code is involved in that request. No one is asking for DF to become open-source, no one is planning to steal Toady's game. So please, stop mentioning source-code.

[FlexibleDogma]

My 2 cents:
It would theoretically be possible, right now, for memory hackers to read everything in memory and create a full 3rd party interface.  It would require a fairly beefy machine to keep DF and the 3rd party GUI synced and perhaps some other voodoo, but how DF is laid out in memory is fairly well understood by folks who are a lot better at reverse engineering then I.  Of course updates would probably break this client each time they happened, but everyone would know that like they know for all the OTHER 3rd party tools. 

Would this be fundamentally different then using message passing between a DF-Server and DF-Client?  I'm not saying that Toady should spend his time splitting DF into a server and client portion, but should he choose to do so it would most likely increase FPS since the program could be threaded, and it would also create the possibility for third party GUIs to take over the rendering side.  There would be the stock-GUI for folks that love it, and there would be the possibility for people to create all sorts of wild and crazy interfaces should they take the time to do so.  Of course updates would probably break these 3rd party GUIs as well from time to time, but everyone would know that's the way the cookie crumbles.

*shrugs* I just don't think the idea of 3rd party interfaces is abhorrent as some have made it out to be.  Of course, if someone was to DEMAND that it happen, well that would be pretty silly, but I don't see anything wrong with an honest discussion of the idea.

(Note I didn't say jack-squat about open-sourcing the project.  Toady's code belongs to him, and while folks can make suggestions he is ultimately responsible for the direction of the project.)

[sorbius]

um... actually the OP was asking for open source for the UI.  that's where this whole argument came from...  you know from the OP, who started the thread and asked for open source...

[Omega2]

um... actually the OP was asking for open source for the UI.  that's where this whole argument came from...  you know from the OP, who started the thread and asked for open source...

Open-source in the sense that people can create their own interface programs. He probably didn't word himself very well, but as long as DF's data output and input are well-documented, anyone with programming knowledge would be able to create their own separate interface programs without needing to see a line of Dwarf Fortress' source code. It's creating an API people can work on instead of releasing the code.

Take the Source Engine, for example. It's NOT open-source, but it has a collection of tools that allow modders to create and change their own mods. I'm willing to bet 99% of the modders in the Source community have never seen a single line of the core engine, yet they can create things as varied as Insurgency and Dystopia.

EDIT: By the way, even if the client was open-source, it wouldn't do jack. So people have access to a program that has the potential to make pretty colors appear on the screen, but not to the input that can actually make those colors appear, nor how to make them do what they want. It's like having a door: you can decorate and fiddle with it as much as you want, but without its doorframe it's useless in its purpose.

[Torak]

Releasing the interface as a stand alone source would only encourage more people to ask for the game itself's source. It's a domino effect of "He got what he wanted, why can't I?".

[Omega2]

Sure. Valve also released their entire source code after giving people mod tools, right?

Not really, no.

If people ask for the server to become open-source, Toady can just say: "no". No one can force him to release any part of his code, so if all he wants the players to have access to is the client, then that's all he'll give us no matter how much the users scream. Pretty much like it is now, really. Changing his mind once isn't a sign of doing it all the time.