Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 ... 101 102 [103] 104 105 ... 136

Author Topic: What turns you off about DF?  (Read 313080 times)

Double A

  • Bay Watcher
  • GWARRRRR
    • View Profile
Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1530 on: August 24, 2010, 12:52:25 pm »

I'm not good enough to defend against goblin sieges or even some ambushes, but no goblins is boring.
Logged
Please, take a moment of silence for all the venerable old threads rendered unintelligible by the Great Photobucket Dickification of 2017. So much was lost.

SirHoneyBadger

  • Bay Watcher
  • Beware those who would keep knowledge from you.
    • View Profile
Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1531 on: August 30, 2010, 10:55:54 am »

Personally, I don't think ToadyOne gets enough credit for what he's accomplished with the game already. I don't want to go rabid fanboy here, but considering the sheer size and scope of the Dwarf Fortress program (there's code in the game that makes whales beach themselves, did you know that shit?), and all the code that must go into it, I can kind of sympathise with the slowgoing user interface. It's clunky, sure, but I don't think it'll stay that way, once Toady has the rest of the game where he wants it to be.

Dwarf Fortress is, well, kind of his occupation. You go to the pharmacist if you need some medicine, and you go to ToadyOne if you need some Dwarf Fortress. There's not really another source. Sure, there's other medicine out there, but only the right kind is gonna make you well.

As for me, I really wish there was better mouse support. The lack of it makes it hard for me to play DF at work (yeah, I'm spoiled). Considering all the mouse detracters out there, I can't even be sure that I'll ever get it, even if ToadyOne's great grandchildren are still hacking away at DF in a hundred years.

Maybe that's the solution to the manpower problem. Maybe we need to hook Toady up with a babymama?
« Last Edit: August 30, 2010, 10:57:41 am by SirHoneyBadger »
Logged
For they would be your masters.

Footkerchief

  • Bay Watcher
  • The Juffo-Wup is strong in this place.
    • View Profile
Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1532 on: August 30, 2010, 11:16:34 am »

It's clunky, sure, but I don't think it'll stay that way, once Toady has the rest of the game where he wants it to be.

That's probably a pipe dream.  The wrestling screen is critical for testing and debugging much of the new combat system, but that still didn't provide enough impetus for him to de-clunkify it.  I see no reason to believe that UI will ever become anything but last priority.  And UI will just get more discouraging to work on, the longer it's put off, since the amount of work will become more daunting.  "Broken but good enough" seems to be DF's future.
« Last Edit: August 30, 2010, 11:24:35 am by Footkerchief »
Logged

nil

  • Bay Watcher
  • whoa
    • View Profile
Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1533 on: August 30, 2010, 11:31:40 am »

It's clunky, sure, but I don't think it'll stay that way, once Toady has the rest of the game where he wants it to be.

That's probably a pipe dream.  The wrestling screen is critical for testing and debugging much of the new combat system, but that still didn't provide enough impetus for him to de-clunkify it.  I see no reason to believe that UI will ever become anything but last priority.  And UI will just get more discouraging to work on, the longer it's put off, since the amount of work will become more daunting.  "Broken but good enough" seems to be DF's future.
On the other hand, Toady has talked of and demonstrated a willingness to be moved to action by the Eternal Suggestions voting, and "abstract the interface" is at 13 and rising (and three of the suggestions above it are already being worked on to at least some degree).  I agree that Toady isn't likely to fix the interface himself, but I still have hope in his abstracting it and letting the userbase fix it for him at some point in the not-incredibly-distant-future.

The Architect

  • Bay Watcher
  • Breeding supercows. What I've been doing on DF.
    • View Profile
Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1534 on: August 30, 2010, 11:38:35 am »

I don't know; Toady did once say that he wants to have the majority of the features done before he addresses the UI. What I gathered from the rest of the statement was that he does not want to work up a UI, only to have it become obsolete (and thus amount to wasted time) when he adds more features.

I find the new combat and schedule control system to be a promising sign that he is indeed committed to making the UI more workable in the future, but a very discouraging sign that he's not very apt when it comes to implementing UI. He should ask the community for suggestions of what we would like to see when he is ready to update it.

Finally, the UI is what is preventing me from playing at the moment (along with a few bugs). I found the effort to reward ratio to be unsatisfying during my last project. I designated the poo out of some walls for long periods of time, and still found myself a short way along the path to completion. I have some suggestions for how to fix the building designation problem simply and permanently, but this is not the place.
Logged
Dwarf Fortress: where blunders never cease.
The sigs topic:
Oh man, this is truly sigworthy...
Oh man. This is truly sig-worthy.

nil

  • Bay Watcher
  • whoa
    • View Profile
Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1535 on: August 30, 2010, 11:46:00 am »

I don't know; Toady did once say that he wants to have the majority of the features done before he addresses the UI. What I gathered from the rest of the statement was that he does not want to work up a UI, only to have it become obsolete (and thus amount to wasted time) when he adds more features.
Well, this is why I have hope for abstraction; I'm no programmer but my thinking is that it should be possible to set up some sort of raw-like system that allows Toady to easily implement quick-and-dirty new interface features, which can then be refined by modders.

A look at this thread (and pretty much any one like it) shows that the vast majority of issues people have can be resolved down to just a few problems.  Documentation is probably best handled by the community, and the end game problem is already partially solved + will get even more solved as the army arc continues.  Improving the processing speed would probably be a nightmare, which leaves the interface as the "low-hanging fruit."

I mean, fuck, if the interface is bad enough to hold back a player as hardcore as you...

Footkerchief

  • Bay Watcher
  • The Juffo-Wup is strong in this place.
    • View Profile
Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1536 on: August 30, 2010, 12:34:24 pm »

On the other hand, Toady has talked of and demonstrated a willingness to be moved to action by the Eternal Suggestions voting, and "abstract the interface" is at 13 and rising (and three of the suggestions above it are already being worked on to at least some degree).  I agree that Toady isn't likely to fix the interface himself, but I still have hope in his abstracting it and letting the userbase fix it for him at some point in the not-incredibly-distant-future.

He does pay attention to ESV, but he's not likely to do the "Abstract the interface" item.  He's expressed a lot of misgivings about the idea:

Anyway, yes, this has been suggested before and Toady has made a couple direct responses.  Any supporters of the idea should definitely read these:

Spoiler: response (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: followup (click to show/hide)

Also some earlier stuff:

Spoiler: part 1 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: part 2 (click to show/hide)
Logged

The Architect

  • Bay Watcher
  • Breeding supercows. What I've been doing on DF.
    • View Profile
Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1537 on: August 30, 2010, 05:26:44 pm »

Well, it all boils down to what it always has:

This is Toady's project, of which he is very, very fond. It's his Opus. Anything that lessens his enjoyment or risks taking the project away from him so to speak (no longer being his project in all respects) is to be avoided. It's a very understandable point of view.

I personally think he has the right idea on this subject. I wish Toady had someone who was both close to him personally and as dedicated to the project as he is, who would be able to support him and help him at every step of the way. I think that such a close partner on the project (friend, wife, etc) would be fully qualified to take on a huge majority of the part of the work that he finds non-fulfilling without taking away any of the magical quality that his own masterpiece has for him. By that I mean sorting through endless repeating suggestions, messages, and forum topics. I know his brother is with him on this, but it seems from my limited point of view to be less of an all-in, "this is what I'm excited about and doing as the focus of my life right now" way.

So, Toady, on a less serious note, maybe you should go wife shopping ;)
Logged
Dwarf Fortress: where blunders never cease.
The sigs topic:
Oh man, this is truly sigworthy...
Oh man. This is truly sig-worthy.

Josephus

  • Bay Watcher
  • The Immortal Historian
    • View Profile
Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1538 on: August 30, 2010, 05:32:18 pm »

He's married to his work.
Logged
Solar Rangers: Suggestion Game in SPAAAAACE
RPG Interest Check Thread
i had the elves bring me two tigermen, although i forgot to let them out of the cage and they died : ( i was sad : (

NerfJihad

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1539 on: August 31, 2010, 06:01:37 am »

Are called shots ala the wrestling menu too much to ask? If I want to just end things quickly with an enemy, I don't want to bash ribs and guts and fingers and eyes, lemme crush his head with the warhammer and call it good.

<_< on the offchance that I've missed a well-documented area of the game, I apologize and would like to state that I did indeed check the wiki before posting.

Kudos to Toady on this project, it's an incredible testament of coding prowess to brute-force a core-i7 (8 cores @ 2.0ghz) machine with 8gb of ram into a slow, wheezing demise due to the number of things running simultaneously. Adventurer mode is the only way I've managed to overload my machine. Then again, I wanted to play with actual rivers that were wide and deep and awesome to behold, so I made 'large regions' with 100's of z-levels of depth, so I guess i get what I pay for.
Logged

ungulateman

  • Bay Watcher
  • [PREFSTRING: haunting moos]
    • View Profile
Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1540 on: August 31, 2010, 06:49:18 am »

Are called shots ala the wrestling menu too much to ask? If I want to just end things quickly with an enemy, I don't want to bash ribs and guts and fingers and eyes, lemme crush his head with the warhammer and call it good.

<_< on the offchance that I've missed a well-documented area of the game, I apologize and would like to state that I did indeed check the wiki before posting.

Kudos to Toady on this project, it's an incredible testament of coding prowess to brute-force a core-i7 (8 cores @ 2.0ghz) machine with 8gb of ram into a slow, wheezing demise due to the number of things running simultaneously. Adventurer mode is the only way I've managed to overload my machine. Then again, I wanted to play with actual rivers that were wide and deep and awesome to behold, so I made 'large regions' with 100's of z-levels of depth, so I guess i get what I pay for.

There's your problem. That's barely 25% stronger than my 5-year old laptop. DF cares about sheer processor strength as opposed to number of cores.
Logged
That's the great thing about this forum. We can derail any discussion into any other topic.
It's not an embark so much as seven dwarves having a simultaneous strange mood and going off to build an artifact fortress that menaces with spikes of awesome and hanging rings of death.

Thief^

  • Bay Watcher
  • Official crazy person
    • View Profile
Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1541 on: August 31, 2010, 06:53:11 am »

Kudos to Toady on this project, it's an incredible testament of coding prowess to brute-force a core-i7 (8 cores @ 2.0ghz) machine with 8gb of ram into a slow, wheezing demise due to the number of things running simultaneously. Adventurer mode is the only way I've managed to overload my machine. Then again, I wanted to play with actual rivers that were wide and deep and awesome to behold, so I made 'large regions' with 100's of z-levels of depth, so I guess i get what I pay for.

There's your problem. That's barely 25% stronger than my 5-year old laptop. DF cares about sheer processor strength as opposed to number of cores.

Wrong. CPU speed stopped going up years ago, ~2.0-3.0GHz is normal. What's been going up is instruction processing efficiency, cache size, (integrated) memory controller speed and number of cores. The last doesn't affect DF, but the rest all do. His i7 will get much much much more performance in DF than your laptop.
Logged
Dwarven blood types are not A, B, AB, O but Ale, Wine, Beer, Rum, Whisky and so forth.
It's not an embark so much as seven dwarves having a simultaneous strange mood and going off to build an artifact fortress that menaces with spikes of awesome and hanging rings of death.

SirHoneyBadger

  • Bay Watcher
  • Beware those who would keep knowledge from you.
    • View Profile
Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1542 on: August 31, 2010, 07:59:05 am »

A few thoughts:

People, in my opinion, should probably give up on any big hopes of Bay12Games doing any significant outsourcing, or making DF an open source project. There isn't much incentive for either brother to ever do so, and doesn't seem to be any will or desire.

I don't see anything in those statements/follow-ups that precludes ToadyOne working on the interface, himself, at some point in the future, though... Infact, I recall him suggesting that if he ever needed a large increase in donations, that that's the first thing he'd be likely to turn to.

So I feel it's probably a matter of his priorities. Interface wouldn't be easy for him to do, and it's not his favorite thing, so it's low on the list right now.

Will it be the same situation 10 years down the road? How about 20? All we have are guesses, and I'm guessing that at some point, he might get the urge towards a more polished product, because that might be what gives him satisfaction, at that point in time.

Might.

It's his perogative, and that's ok, because having DF "under one roof" has so far resulted in a great game. In any case, a happy ToadyOne is better for everyone than an unhappy ToadyOne.

He hasn't shied away from grungework in the past or present, though, so if he ever decides that the time is right to improve the interface, I feel confident he wouldn't drag his feet. He also reads and replies to a significant amount of Forum posts, so he attaches enough importance to our opinions and sentiments to make himself aware of them. If he feels he isn't entirely up to a given task on his own, he knows that we exist as a source of inspiration.

For that matter, creating DF has to be a learning project. Might there someday conceivably appear a desire to take what he's learned and create a 3rd edition of Armok from the ground up? This scenario would then actually be simpler for Bay12Games to follow through with, than it might for another company, since there would be no question of legal rights or ownership of the title, and everything that falls under it.

Another point in the favor of keeping DF firmly and entirely in their hands.

Might not someone simply offer Toady a large chunk of cash, along with a request (as opposed to a demand) to improve any given aspect of the game? Without other strings attached, or undue arrogance on the part of the donator, such a thing might become a pretty powerful motivation, since it wouldn't threaten his ownership of the game, or ability to make choices about it, and it also wouldn't detract from the donations of others, or general opinion.

Has Toady ever suggested he was above crass bribery an occasional exercise in enlightened materialism?

Toady's basically said that as long as he can earn a living at it, and as long as it's something he still wants to do, that he more or less intends to keep working on Dwarf Fortress, or atleast Bay12Games products, for the rest of his working life. Considering that he's a little younger than I am, and the nonphysical nature of the job, that could be a very long time.

Plenty of time for hope for a decent mouse interface:P
Logged
For they would be your masters.

MaDeR Levap

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1543 on: August 31, 2010, 08:47:56 am »

I am sure that will be Chapter III. Ti will begin just after Chapter II (DF) will turn into such buggy, spaghetti mess that further work would be impossible. I really hope that he will learn from Chapter II mistakes.
Logged

Eugenitor

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1544 on: August 31, 2010, 10:23:23 am »

Dwarves demanding to stand to the west of everything they do is really starting to grate on my nerves.
Logged
Pages: 1 ... 101 102 [103] 104 105 ... 136