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[G-Flex]

Yet more useless details while half the game play remains broken, I do not find this encouraging

Yes, because the (substantial and consequential) changes to creatures and the entire military and position overhaul don't matter at all. You keep thinking that.

When he's going through important stuff he's going to do the less-important stuff too. If he's fixing bodies up for a good reason, he's also going to throw in this stuff while he's at it. He's actually trying to be thorough and do things right instead of half-assing every development arc under the sun first and then hopelessly trying to do them more completely later.

[Fishersalwaysdie]

I could search wikipedia for a shade of green that fits my eyes, but I don't really want to do that, now do I?

[Thndr]

[COLOR_PATTERN:IRIS_EYE_SLATE_GREY]

Slate grey, but brown/red seems to leech out from around parts of the center.

Haven't really bothered looking in a proper mirror ever, so it could just be reflection of the light bouncing off my skin. Although people in school often got confused by that feature and said my eyes were brown.

Who knows. All I know is my eye doctor (a specialist due to my horrible, horrible eyesight) says they are hazel (grey)

[Impaler[WrG]]

Yes, because the (substantial and consequential) changes to creatures and the entire military and position overhaul don't matter at all. You keep thinking that.

No frankly they don't, not when the rest of the game has so many flaws and bugs that need to be addressed, Eye color doesn't improve the game one iota and the new creature-body-assemblages is at best a very minor improvement, what ever bugs it fixes could easily have been whacked in isolation and new bugs will inevitably be introduced with such an overhaul.  Its a lot of time sunk for very little value returned.

When he's going through important stuff he's going to do the less-important stuff too. If he's fixing bodies up for a good reason, he's also going to throw in this stuff while he's at it. He's actually trying to be thorough and do things right instead of half-assing every development arc under the sun first and then hopelessly trying to do them more completely later.

I am so sick of the slavish worshiping of waterfall methods, everything Toady dose is not automatically right, and in this case the design philosophy is clearly wrong.  DF is a fun game not because of its development model but in spite of them, waterfall methodology which preaches never writing the same function twice means the design is inflexible and unable to adapt to good or bad game-play found through the course of development.  All successful games are created by refinement, a crude but modular system is built and then its parts of improved and tweaked bit by bit with maximizing immediate playability as the main goal at all times, you must be willing to re-write code from scratch and nothing is ever 'written to be final', code is only finalized after it passes muster in game play performance. 

A small independent donation supported project like this needs to focus on bug fixes first and foremost, no one wants to donate to a project which won't fix bugs, and secondarily focus on feature that have the most game play adding value, and eye color ain't high on that list.

[Footkerchief]

^^^ How can you possibly shoehorn Toady's style into the waterfall model?  He's been gutting the entire material system and you're accusing him of not being willing to rewrite code?  He's openly said many times that most of the game systems will be fully revised before the game reaches 1.0 -- when he writes code that's meant to last, it's done with the goal of avoiding immediately foreseeable rewrites, not avoiding rewrites completely.

[Impaler[WrG]]

While their is indeed a willingness to re-write code and I wasn't trying to imply that Toady doesn't re-write code when necessary I was mostly trying to refute G-flex who clearly seems to think code should never be re-written.

But Toady dose follow a waterfall style of implementing sub-systems in massive 'Arcs' and critical things like UI are pushed literally YEARS down the line under this mentality.  That's what I consider water fall, its especially bad when the feature creep is clearly faster then the actual development, DF is like 4 years old and at this rate presentation will never be reached.  If your going to have a 'never ending development' model then it needs to be developed holistically with playability maximized at all times.

[G-Flex]

The fact is that if Toady is going to work on something like materials, or bodies, or whatever, it's a HELL of a lot more efficient (most likely) for him to just do the whole system and get it done in one go instead of doing it eighty billion times with as many save compatibility breaks and rewrites.

Speaking of which, what makes you think he's not willing to rewrite code? Have you been paying no attention to what he's doing? He already IS gutting and replacing what previously amounted to placeholder systems.  I'm not saying that code shouldn't be rewritten (it's what he's doing for chrissakes), just that it wouldn't be terribly efficient to rewrite the same damn thing a plethora of times because he jumps all over the place in development. DF involves a lot of game systems working together, and it makes sense for him to focus on certain things at certain times rather than jumping all around with no clear path to what he's doing.

[Footkerchief]

But Toady dose follow a waterfall style of implementing sub-systems in massive 'Arcs' and critical things like UI are pushed literally YEARS down the line under this mentality.  That's what I consider water fall, its especially bad when the feature creep is clearly faster then the actual development, DF is like 4 years old and at this rate presentation will never be reached.  If your going to have a 'never ending development' model then it needs to be developed holistically with playability maximized at all times.

I'm pretty sure Toady never considered the arcs to be something that you sit down and code from beginning to end, waterfall-style.  Or if he did, he's certainly given it up by now.  I mean, look at dev_next, there are currently several major arcs that are being developed in bite-size increments, plus miscellaneous core items.  There have even been incremental improvements in UI, like grid size (yeah, it doesn't work for all the interfaces, but all the new interfaces make use of it properly).

[Omath Erius]

Well, having read almost none of that:


Since the Army Arc inevitably lead to a save compatibility break, which we're experiencing right now, Toady iss trying to do as many other save-breaking things as he can right now, so that we don't have to constantly start new fortresses every time a new version is released.

Body parts, military orginization, and custom nobility just all happen to be save-breaking events.

[KaelGotDwarves]

I'm pretty sure I remember Impaler doing a similar concern troll thread awhile back about the direction DF was heading.

Just ignore it.

[Footkerchief]

I'm only replying because I sympathize with those concerns to some extent.  It's just important to understand that Toady seems to sympathize too -- he's said Armok went off the rails due to overemphasis on bottom-up world design, with an even more universal material system and so forth, so he's now conscious of the hazards of that approach (and how to tiptoe around them, presumably).  He's taking more of a middle path than people are giving him credit for, what with all the Real Gameplay coming up in this release.

[Deon]

I don't think that Impaler is trolling, he just says directly his thoughts which come to our mind too. We want the ability to send armies on the world map! We want the ability to control squad members! We want to affect the world!!!!!111
Etc.

For sure we want it as soon as possible. But, mr. Impaler, we should consider that Toady is not working for a company and the only thing which makes him to continue to develop the DF is his own will and maybe a routine he got used to (to work on, to earn money).
Still if he hadn't such a "toad" in his head which guides him we coudln't have DF in the current stage. There's definitely some plan in his head which can be altered by our suggestions a bit but which cannot be broken. So let's hope we get our desired changes eventually but for now we should await for the material/detail arc.

And while this is a small change gameplay-wise, I consider the upcoming release as a very great achievement, since as a man who likes to mod new items/creatures/stuff I would like to have current smelter reactions fixed/altered/spreaded to other worksops etc..

So, this release is gonna be a heaven for modders and will make deseases arc much MUCH closer (after this you will be able to have a desease which turns your eyes white and makes you insane... Yay zombie virus! Etc.) so while it doesn't add a lot by itself in your point of view it will unevitable lead to possibilities of better changes.

So don't complain xD.

[G-Flex]

Well, having read almost none of that:


Since the Army Arc inevitably lead to a save compatibility break, which we're experiencing right now, Toady iss trying to do as many other save-breaking things as he can right now, so that we don't have to constantly start new fortresses every time a new version is released.

Body parts, military orginization, and custom nobility just all happen to be save-breaking events.

This is pretty important.

Also, like I've said, a lot of "fluff" pieces just happen to be part of the more important pieces; for instance, body stylings are pretty important (especially later on), and trivial stuff like eye color is a very small part of that.


Honestly, though, if anybody is going to defend Toady's development style accurately, it's going to be him. It's not like we know what's going on in his head... at least not that much.

[Orange Drink]

i like how dwarves can now have frushia eyes.

[Patarak]

I'd have to say I would think that adding these details such as materials and body assemblage are actually very important; it's like people were complaining when Toady spend 200 dev items making civilizations and roads and stuff. While it didn't add a great deal to the game at the time, it has in itself opened up possibilities for the army and caravan arc. The new wound system is adding to the army arc by itself and is further paving the way for the combat arc. It is true that adding eye color is in fact pretty superficial, but if you look at how the code looks like it's being set up, it wouldn't have taken long at all to implement.