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[Richards]

I've been following progress on Toady's development for the past year and a half and have a growing concern for Dwarf Fortress' future.

Keeping in mind how long past arcs have taken to implement with full month work cycles. At the current rate of the Dwarf Fortress development progress with the end-of-month break the next release should be out by June 2009. Now I do not know what Toady's end-of-the-month project is, but it is certainly not as lucrative or popular as his main project at this moment. There's a depression coming, and if you doubt that then at the very least you know we are in a recession. It's going to get worse. Toady needs all the development time he can get to finish dwarf fortress and implement as many features as he can if development halts for some reason.

I believe development should resume as it last was without a 6-8 day month-end break, otherwise this Army-arc might be only finished come 2010. Please discuss within reason.

 

[Skanky]

1. He is working on the game at the same rate he used to. However, instead of taking weekends off, he 'saves' all the weekends by working continously for the first 5/7ths of the month and takes the final 2/7ths of the month off.

2. Have you heard of burn-out?

[Skanky]

As I stated a while ago, I've been putting off weekends until now so that I can have a fair chunk of time at the end of the month to work on the weekend project without switching gears so often. If you consider this schedule vs. the normal work-week schedule, you'll see DF hasn't been slowed at all (if anything, more DF days in a row helps)...

(DevBlog 22 Jun 2008)

[Neonivek]

Well Mrs. Pervokative you forgot that 20% of people believe Toady is a robot with a perpetual energy core and personality inhibiter software.

[Keiseth]

I think the break is pretty important to one's work. Otherwise the tedium of it will slow you down. With a month-end break, he can go back to Dwarf Fortress with hopefully renewed vigor, rather than being subjected to an endless grind of work. Which sounds very not fun to me.

[Neonivek]

Especially since enthusiasm is very important to Toady's work. His community awareness and attentiveness is one of the many reasons why Dwarf Fortress is good today.

His keep-to-itness has its known limits.

[The Minister]

What Toady decides as his work schedule is his own business and we do not and should not have any say in that decision.

That said, almost all proprietors of successful startup businesses work on weekends.

[Neonivek]

What Toady decides as his work schedule is his own business and we do not and should not have any say in that decision.

That said, almost all proprietors of successful startup businesses work on weekends.

Actually we DO have a say in that decision. Toady can just ignore us.

I am sure if we ALL said for example "Start taking breaks on week ends again or we will stop donating" and meant it... He would.

Of course that is called customer responsibility and frankly no one here has that. "Hey doesn't this shoe fund killing people? AWSOME!". Yet alone enough to use with something as pointless as this.

[talonv]

I think the OP raises a really good point.

It feels like Toady isn't working very hard on DF at the moment - it's hard to say, but when the only real impression we get of how things are progressing is the development log, it's sometimes hard to be confident. I'm really eagerly looking forward to the next release, but I fear Toady is getting tied up with minutae (such as hair and teeth), and saying things like "There are lots of weekend days this month -- as many as possible..." sounds a little like he's lost passion for DF somewhat. I know I don't stick to a strict schedule with a project I enjoy (and I am a developer myself).

The solution probably isn't to work more days, though. Perhaps the solution is to shift focus onto wider-focused changes and even simply make more detailed development logs, so it's easier to see the sheer amount of work going into this.

I don't think this is an isolated sentiment, though. look at the donations for this month. I'm more than willing to donate again; I plan to. I would just be more inclined to do so if I felt there was more passion there.

[Neonivek]

I can just imagine Toady going "Ohh I don't work hard do I?" and then installing a Camera where he works.

Of course I don't know how hard he works, then again I don't code.

[Davion]

It feels like Toady isn't working very hard on DF at the moment - it's hard to say, but when the only real impression we get of how things are progressing is the development log, it's sometimes hard to be confident. I'm really eagerly looking forward to the next release, but I fear Toady is getting tied up with minutae

Good luck with this thread if you're going to start off with something like,"You're not working very hard"; I have to politely disagree with you.

[Capntastic]

He's working very hard on stuff he finds kinda boring, but knows he has to get done before he can properly put in disembowelings and such.    But since you've been reading the devnotes, you know that.

[Pruvan]

Programming is a pain in the ass, tends to not work more than work, is another pain in the ass to find the problems, usually the problems are as ridiculous as forgetting an ';' at the end of a line, you don't see any results until you actually get your stuff working...

It's not easy for poor ol' Toady, y'know. Especially for a game as in-depth as DF.

[thvaz]

You all should be ashamed. Toady works hard and for free. You say you have the right to say anything, but put yourselves in his place. Do you think he's gonna to be happy reading that he isn't working hard enough? I, in his place, would shut down the project imediately.

[talonv]

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that he's not working hard, I'm saying that's the impression that's the impression that could be drawn from the dev log. My impressions may be wrong - I hope they are. I know it's somewhat of a taboo to mention something like this here, although it does give me heart to see people give such a prompt and vehement defence.

Maybe it's just been a bad week for me