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[Exponent]

As an outside observer of this thread (well, not any longer), I would like to point out that the analogies really are starting to break down, just like they generally have a tendency to do when overused.  I would recommend attempting to come up with some newer, more accurate analogies, or simply dropping that method of argumentation altogether.

[Davion]

As an outside observer of this thread (well, not any longer), I would like to point out that the analogies really are starting to break down, just like they generally have a tendency to do when overused.  I would recommend attempting to come up with some newer, more accurate analogies, or simply dropping that method of argumentation altogether.

Perhaps a Hitler reference.

[Omega2]

As an outside observer of this thread (well, not any longer), I would like to point out that the analogies really are starting to break down, just like they generally have a tendency to do when overused.  I would recommend attempting to come up with some newer, more accurate analogies, or simply dropping that method of argumentation altogether.

Perhaps a Hitler reference.

You know who used a lot of analogies?

That's right!

Godwin's Law, everybody loses!

PS: the drama is becoming almost palpable...

[Davion]

It has begun! The gloves are off!

[Jifodus]

Here's the Proof-Of-Concept access & render of Dwarf Fortress's internal screen buffer.

http://www.geocities.com/jifodus/console.zip

And a quick screen cap:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[MMad]

youre not anonymous.  youre in someone else's house.  act like it.  you're playing with toys that they built, in their generousity, to ammuse you.  the toys would still have been built if you personally hadnt been fawning over them.

I can't speak for the original poster, but personally I just want DF to be the most it can be. If some way could be found for Toady to be comfortable with having other people design, implement and iterate the interface while he continues improving the actual game mechanics, that would seem to me to be a win-win scenario both for him and for us - the game would improve faster, more users would be attracted to a DF with a better interface, more donations would likely be the result and make Toady's financial situation more secure, and DFs future more secure as a result.

Sure, there are many obvious problems with the plans discussed here, but I think the intentions are good. I don't think there's a widespread sense of entitlement in this community, I know personally I'm just worried that the grand vision will eventually come to nothing for whatever reason - DF is just too cool not to exist.

At any rate, discussing possible scenarious and approaches doesn't hurt.

Pro-Tip: discussing the interface is utterly and absolutely pointless at this point in time.

Toady knows it sucks, Toady intends to fix it. Wait until he does, wait until he's done, THEN complain about the result so he can improve it.

I disagree - right now is the *perfect* time to discuss what we want and hope for, and to toss around ideas and suggestions. I'm sure Toady has his own plans and thoughts on the matter, and he'll do what he wants to do regardless of what we write here, but at least there's a possibility we can give him some good ideas before he starts rewriting the entire interface. When the whole thing is finished and released, well, THAT'S when it'd be too late to suggest fundamental and radical changes like the stuff in this thread.

Actually, that problem already happens to an extent. Some people like playing the game with mods, and quite a few people will only play with tilesets (which are effectively interface mods). Every now and then a new version comes along and breaks both mods and tilesets, and their dedicated users would most likely wait until those are fixed before playing again.

I'm certainly in that category. I absolutely cannot play the default ASCII tileset (I've tried, even after playing a fort or two with a graphical tileset and getting used to the game) and so I didn't try any of the new versions at all for over a week. So yeah, it already happens to an extent, and it's definately a real concern. Any server/client solution like the API stuff suggested in this thread should take these "logistic" concerns into account.

There are developers who constantly sacrifice their creativity, talent, and vision for mere money. We call them console developers.  We all know how that goes, we all know what happens. They make money at the cost of their very souls.

In defense of my entire industry: we're not obsessed about money, we just want to continue making games. If you work with a team of 100+ developers on a multimillion dollar project and it doesn't make a profit, well, you'll not be making games with your friends anymore. We love making games, and we quite often make the games we love. But since we're not living in Happy Sunny Candy Land, we have to turn a profit. Doesn't mean you have to make shitty games, nor it is an excuse for doing so - it's still possible to truly innovate - but accepting and conforming to the realities of the world, including the conventions of modern console games, doesn't make you a sell-out. Just like Toady wouldn't be a sell-out if he was forced by a lack of donations to prematurely start working on the interface in order to attract more users.

Making a subversive and innovative game is just the start; turning it successful and popular is the true measure of success, IMO. I think this thread is mostly just an attempt to in some small way help that happen.


(edit - typos)

[Torak]

In defense of my entire industry: we're not obsessed about money, we just want to continue making games. If you work with a team of 100+ developers on a multimillion dollar project and it doesn't make a profit, well, you'll not be making games with your friends anymore. We love making games, and we quite often make the games we love.

Which company do you work for?

[Anu Necunoscut]

Making a subversive and innovative game is just the start; turning it successful and popular is the true measure of success, IMO. I think this thread is mostly just an attempt to in some small way help that happen.

That's where we split the difference.  To me, DF is already successful.  I don't have to wait for some arbitrary number of downloads or dollar signs to decide "ah, now it is a success!"  It is a success to me simply by virtue of being a beautiful, brilliant game.  Now maybe you meant it would be better for Toady if more people downloaded and therefore donated--that's true.  But much of the brilliance of DF comes from the unique perspective of the author, and if he has no interest in becoming a factory foreman delegating away important parts of his game to other hands (however capable), I'm not going to gainsay him.  If being confronted with such managerial tasks and becoming dependent on outside modders would cause him to lose interest in the project, that would be far deadlier to the game than the current interface.

We already have people who say they stop playing the game the instant their favorite tile set doesn't work, and tile sets are at least somewhat peripheral.  An interface is something integral, something one has to dedicate time to learning when playing a complex game.  If several popular interfaces spring up that people become attached to, what happens if Toady does a major overhaul of the game workings (like the z-level update)?  He either spends extra effort to ensure backwards compatibility with popular mods, or they will require heavy reworking.  People used to them aren't going to be happy that their favorite interface no longer works, and the modders who need to make monumental changes aren't going to be happy either.

Further, there's no refusal of these undoubtedly well-intentioned requests for more access that doesn't sound dickish.  It's no fun for anyone to say essentially "no, F off, I don't want your help" time and time again to a community that's steadfastly supported one's project.  My guess (a totally uneducated one) is that Toady will ignore this thread for that very reason.

[Andir]

Here's the Proof-Of-Concept access & render of Dwarf Fortress's internal screen buffer.

http://www.geocities.com/jifodus/console.zip

And a quick screen cap:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Source and all... You my friend, are a hero.  Excellent example.  This could easily be turned into many things...

[Exponent]

We already have people who say they stop playing the game the instant their favorite tile set doesn't work, and tile sets are at least somewhat peripheral.  An interface is something integral, something one has to dedicate time to learning when playing a complex game.  If several popular interfaces spring up that people become attached to, what happens if Toady does a major overhaul of the game workings (like the z-level update)?  He either spends extra effort to ensure backwards compatibility with popular mods, or they will require heavy reworking.  People used to them aren't going to be happy that their favorite interface no longer works, and the modders who need to make monumental changes aren't going to be happy either.

The majority of people who wouldn't play a game when their preferred interface quits working wouldn't have played the game to begin with, at least not long enough to wish to donate.  There will probably be a few people who are exceptions to this (they would have played the vanilla game, but after getting familiar with certain third-party additions, are no longer willing to play the vanilla game), but I'm going to guess that this won't apply to most people, and thus is more or less irrelevant.

Additionally, modders who find that their utilities, interfaces, or whatever else are broken after a major reworking are very likely to complain.  Chances are, they'll be excited about all the new stuff that Toady has added, and will be more than willing to update their own tools for their own use as well as for others.  In fact, that's already how it seems to work.

I'll grant that many of the people using these tools will be some mixture of disappointed, annoyed, frustrated, bummed or impatient, but as with my first paragraph, I suspect that the people who experience those feelings strongly enough to discontinue playing or to not donate when they otherwise might have are people who wouldn't likely have played the game very long anyway.  The others won't let the emotions affect them too much.  They're not going to (and haven't been known to, as far as I'm aware) take it out on Toady or the new version that broke everything.  And they're not going to take it out on the authors of the third-party tools (though they might get a little impatient with them).  And if the wait for the fixes looks like it will be indefinitely long, they're likely to just start playing vanilla DF again anyway.

In short, the vast majority of people who would be lost due to version change incompatibilities of third-party tools are the people who wouldn't have been gained in the first place without those third party-tools.  Thus the increased availability of third party tools would not noticeably hurt Toady's efforts in the way that you described. Or so I claim, at least.

[numerobis]

I don't believe Stalin has been mentioned yet.

I'm not going to go back and find the link (someone already posted it), but this very issue was discussed earlier in some detail.  I would love to see an API for the graphics, and Toady was indeed receptive to the idea.  However, it would be effort on Toady's part, and Toady would then have a more or less explicit requirement to keep the API stable enough so that the dominant third-party UI can run on it; in other words, he'd start to lose control.  Also, the API would have to be quite detailed to be useful, at which point it gets not entirely ridiculous to substitute in an open-source backend to the open-source UI, at which point Toady is written out of the loop, at which point he's stuck working for the Man instead of the Toad.  So it may be in my short-term interest to get an API so we can all collaborate on uber-awesome UIs, but it's not in Toady's.

I've thought about what would be required to reimplement DF from scratch but better, and, given the design work that Toady has done, it's not nearly as hard now as it was for him -- though it still would be a big undertaking.  But we'd end up with a Gnu Fortress that emulates what's currently in place and then stagnates for lack of direction.  I'd much rather get a flawed Dwarf Fortress that evolves under Toady's full-time, single-minded, insane leadership.

Not to say that I don't want a shiny UI to view my herd of ponies.

[Nukeitall]

Bah, nevermind.

[DJ]

Also, the API would have to be quite detailed to be useful, at which point it gets not entirely ridiculous to substitute in an open-source backend to the open-source UI, at which point Toady is written out of the loop, at which point he's stuck working for the Man instead of the Toad.

Sure, if you're willing to pour half a decade's worth of sweat and tears into it, you could make something similar to DF backend. But an open-source UI wouldn't be of much help when it comes to cloning the actual game logic. For example, it would tell you absolutely nothing about AI.

Anyway, the only real danger I see here is somebody making an interface that becomes immensely popular and then gets bored with maintaining it. The interface gets broken with an update to the game, and since there's nobody to update it a lot of people are left stranded without an interface they're used to. This could be somewhat alleviated by forcing the interface to be open source, which would mean that anyone could take over if the original programmer gets bored. But it's still not bullet proof. A lot of people write code that's hard to read, so it may happen that nobody can make any sense of the popular interface's source code. That, and there's the aforementioned problem of delays in bug reports.

[Mr.Person]

I don't believe Stalin has been mentioned yet.

I'm not going to go back and find the link (someone already posted it), but this very issue was discussed earlier in some detail.  I would love to see an API for the graphics, and Toady was indeed receptive to the idea.  However, it would be effort on Toady's part, and Toady would then have a more or less explicit requirement to keep the API stable enough so that the dominant third-party UI can run on it; in other words, he'd start to lose control.  Also, the API would have to be quite detailed to be useful, at which point it gets not entirely ridiculous to substitute in an open-source backend to the open-source UI, at which point Toady is written out of the loop, at which point he's stuck working for the Man instead of the Toad.  So it may be in my short-term interest to get an API so we can all collaborate on uber-awesome UIs, but it's not in Toady's.

I've thought about what would be required to reimplement DF from scratch but better, and, given the design work that Toady has done, it's not nearly as hard now as it was for him -- though it still would be a big undertaking.  But we'd end up with a Gnu Fortress that emulates what's currently in place and then stagnates for lack of direction.  I'd much rather get a flawed Dwarf Fortress that evolves under Toady's full-time, single-minded, insane leadership.

Not to say that I don't want a shiny UI to view my herd of ponies.

If he mad eone, Toady has no requirements to keep the API backwards compatable. I'm certain he woulld try to keep it backwards compatable when possible, but he's not FORCED to, just like with saves. He also needs to do zero documentation for the API itself. The raws were undocumented and every tag is on the wiki. It wouldn't take long for the community to document it in some way.

Toady might just ignore the whole discussion

He should.

So you want Toady to hold his fingers in his ears and go "LA LA LA I CANT HEAR YOU LA LA LA"? Why wouldn't you want Toady to read this? Even if he disagrees, knowledge is power.


Even if we had an open source frontend (which wouldn't be guaranteed, even if Toady made an API,) why the fuck would anybody make a brand new backend from scratch? Admittably, some people are open-source nuts, but I doubt anybody is that crazy. There's very little to gain from that.

[Nikov]

I hope Toady allows third party interfaces through whatever means he is comfortable with. I want to see more gamers enjoying this fine piece of digital art through the windows created by its longstanding community. I especially hope as Dwarf Fortress' fan base expands, Toady can enjoy more donations from players who would have been discouraged by the ASCII interface.

I would personally enjoy a good, standardized interface. I'd like to have easier controls and more information in less keystrokes. I'd like the game's front end to be combined into one big window which can show any dimensions of tiles and may even have side-scrolling. I'd like to use the mouse more, and would especially enjoy a good array of sound effects.

However if a new version comes out, I would still play without my 3rd party front end. I'd tell panicking forum goers to just stick with the old version if they must wait for the 3rd party developers to repair their programs.

I wouldn't view those third party developers to be higher in creativity than Toady regardless of their product, and if those communist rat bastards stole his source code and started sharewaring themselves I'd crush their lying throats beneath my paratrooper boots.

But all in all I really do want what's best for Toady's project, which in my opinion, is interface improvements. I consider things like caravans, persistant trade resources and army deployment small improvements in a game of this scale in the face of a problem like the existing interface.