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[RAM]

I can't help but think that that would get too cluttered if you were displaying much more than, say, 30x30 tiles, without the status tiles or the object tiles being difficult to quickly identify. I think that flashing statuses are preferable, though those could be expanded... As for expanding the tile-set, well, it would be helpful on graphic sets, particularly high(relatively) resolution ones, and I would agree that having an option to support such things would be nice, but for the symbolic tile sets it really helps to stick with symbols that the user is already familiar with...

[NW_Kohaku]

With layers for graphics, "flashing icons" can just mean that a red cross icon overlays the dwarf icon, blinking on and off. (Or be offset above the center of the tile, slightly, and not have to conform exactly to the grid, so that you could see the tile underneath without having to rely upon blinking.) This is already done slightly with making red backgrounds mean dead creatures, for example, but with the capacity to do so with more than just a solid background color.

In fact, with Stonesense, you can make labels of the names, happiness levels, or job appear above the icon of a dwarf.  You can see the equipment a dwarf is wearing, and even the color of their beard.  The memory hacking done to get data for Stonesense can also pull up other things, like job data, so you could hypothetically have an option to push-button look at what every dwarf is doing as you see them on the map, rather than having to switch between the units menu and map or else going to each dwarf manually with a look function.

(For that matter, you could just plain have a push-button change in the color-coding of dwarves, so that pressing a certain button changed what color dwarves appeared as from profession class to things like happiness levels or hunger levels.)

[sweitx]

Many of what I liked are already in DFHack (just hope that Toady One is willing to pull it in).
1. Dwarf Manipulator - The in-game/more integrated version of Dwarf Therapist.
2. Rename Building/Stockpile/Zone - Ability to give stockpile/building/zone a new name. Makes managing specialty building/stockpile more easily (for example, I always setup with 2 millstones. 1 for flour/sugar, 1 for dye). Sure, you can use the Label system. But it would be much simpler if you can just see what the building do with the "q" function.
3. Workflow - The #1 things that made my life of building mega structure easier. Since now dwarfs need cloth (3 pieces), drinks, and food, having an automated system to query jobs for you is a god-send.

[falconne]

One non-graphical item that is already in the game that could be spread to other menus is the way we can narrow the work order list by typing in part of the name (e.g. throne, copper, bone, etc.). If this were possible in the corpse and animal lists, for instance, then that would be helpful.

You can get this now with DFHack r3. There's a search function in every screen with a long list.

[Mathig]

Sorry to Necro, but I am done reading threads. I've read this thread and the links there-of, and this one seems to be the best to reply to. I am really curious as to why these AMAZING suggestions are not in the game. Referring to some of Toady's posts, he seems to have several reasonable concerns. However, none of his concerns restrict one potential option. I'm going to "reply" to his post http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=21806.msg237594#msg237594
as if it were an anti-GUI overhaul post, in order to conclude what we, as a community, should do.
1: ...And right now, I have no idea what would happen...
>Well sure. Life is uncertain. However, what danger does helping the community improve a game have? I mean, on the same token doing nothing carries an unknown risk.
2: If more than half the player base comes in off a third party interface
>Proof that helping GUI will double your player base
3: The pressure on me to work directly with them to get the interface out at the same time as the game itself would likely be immense and disruptive, given what little evidence we have from broken utilities.
>That assumes you are capable of speeding up the process. That merely means whatever method we use must be so fast that having The Toady One help won't speed it up one second.
4: First, I don't want to work with other people.
>Easy to implement.
5: If I didn't support it directly, but it was there, I'd still likely make more money, but I'd be unhappy.
>Why? Assuming no one says a word about GUI not being ready etc., where is your happiness lost? Does The Toady One really want to be the Sole Developer of Dwarf Fortress so badly, that'd he would accept making Dwarf Fortress worse than it could be, even if he gets all the credit and money anyways?
6: Given what I've seen here and there, it seems like a full third party interface might develop even without my involvement
>My goal

OK, so how do we come up with a way to improve the interface where The Toady One can't possibly help speed up, where The Toady One doesn't dedicate any time towards improving it, and where the players never complain about no interface updates???

Open Source. We find someone who The Toady One approves of as being respectable enough to safeguard his secrets open up the source code, and decipher everything. Probably multiple people, if they are to do this as a hobby. Those people first run through an old copy of Dwarf Fortress and locate all GUI elements. Then, they create an mod that edits Dwarf Fortress to have an API port to access the GUI. This is the hardest part. Next, The Toady One occasionally logs his changes, maybe on a weekly basis, and uploads them without commentary to the various respectable editors. Those editors, at this point, will be skilled enough at reading The Toady One's code, that even The Toady One couldn't help explain it to them. They merely locate changes to GUI and modify their mod that allows access to an API port. Finally, someone else creates ANOTHER mod using this API mod to overhaul the GUI. They can then work directly with the respectable people to proactively come up with new versions to match game updates.
The Toady One assumes one risk. The respectable people he lets look at his code for GUI elements aren't respectable.
The Toady One must work with the players on one thing. Occasionally backup his data to an external location, and select respectable people, probably from the forums, who he trusts. If he doesn't back up his work, he should. If he doesn't trust anyone, there is really nothing we can do... or is there?

Is Dwarf Fortress ALREADY open source(as in, open up the game file and edit away)? If so, ignore everything I said about The Toady one assuming any risks or doing anything, he already assumed said risks and did such actions, now we get to edit.
If not, does The Toady One already trust anyone enough to let them do this? Secondarily, would they be willing to do this?

Personally, I doubt The Toady One codes in the enigma, and so long as he codes in a language machines can understand, we community members can probably crack it. Once we have the code cracked, and available, finding the GUI elements could take about a month, maybe, and developing the API porting software maybe another month. Developing one of these options of GUI initially for the old variant of Dwarf Fortress might take a week... Following that, it may take some time to catch up to the latest version.

Yes its a stupid amount of work, but think of it this way. What if this 3rd party GUI overhaul makes Dwarf Fortress pull another Minecraft? Imagine The Toady One's delight at seeing his creation go viral... (Well, The Toady One ALREADY inspired Minecraft and tons of other games, so... he may be indifferent...)

[Dyret]

 

[fricy]

/snip

Short: Opensourcing is not gonna happen.
Long: I suggest you read through the latest flamewar on this, it's been only 4 days since this has been discussed. Extensively.

[Mathig]

/snip

Short: Opensourcing is not gonna happen.
Long: I suggest you read through the latest flamewar on this, it's been only 4 days since this has been discussed. Extensively.

After glancing at the OP, that topic is unrelated. That is a suggestion to change the form of development. My suggestion was to implement better GUI by letting select people create a mod that does what The Toady One won't, create an API for GUI revamping.

Besides that, I seriously don't understand The Toady One's point of view on avoiding pressure to work with interface editors. Clearly he is already being faced with pressure to cooperate, why he fears more pressure once he does cooperate is beyond me. While I understand his desire to work on the game as he sees fit, I don't understand the communities compliance with a "Leave the GUI such that millions will ignore the game, because the cover is crumpled" mentality.

Here is another solution that doesn't involve open source or The Toady One. Create a Virtual Computer for Dwarf Fortress that runs off of virtual key-strokes and stores virtual graphics. Then display a new overhauled version that cuts and pastes the pieces of Dwarf Fortress's interface in ways that makes it better. I know this is possible. The only problem with that solution is that I don't personally know virtual computing enough (yet) to do it myself. Unless the game is specifically programmed for Linux, then there are tons of people out there who basically already do this without the GUI overhaul. (WINE) is used to do this for other games...

Never mind, I figured out why The Toady One feels this way... Everyone loves his game so much that they care about it. That leads them to get all emotional and lose that part of their brains that lets them think. Following this, The Toady One has to step in to moderate, and probably spends more time dealing with idiots than working on Dwarf Fortress (I have no idea, but knowing how long moderating takes compared to posts, and looking at The Toady One's posts tells me that he spends WAY to much time dealing with moderating to develop Dwarf Fortress as epic as he should.) I shudder to think how horrible life must be for The Toady One dealing with those people instead of working on his game. Who knows, perhaps if we were more civilized, Dwarf Fortress would be released by now.

Nevertheless, I know there is a solution, because I can dream of a solution. If you can dream there is a solution, and if science does not restrict it, there is a solution.

[Dyret]

Is this some kind of alt for one of the UI-guys from last year? First post, same point, same obnoxious rhetoric (if not for the UI more people than have ever lived would be playing DF right now! I say this because I care about Toady, hurr hurr, all four insane fanatics who play DF right now will love that!) only now with an incredibly misguided grudge against the community?

[fricy]

I said READ through, not glance at the OP and come back and tell me why a gui api is different. because almost everything you can say about the topic has been discussed there. and you are wrong, it's NOT completly different.
and lol, yeah. if a gui revamp is not going to happen, but we are going to solve the problem with wine. sure. why not build a dorfputer and run the game on it? at least that has been demonstrated to work.

[Draco18s]

Seriously, this is a thing.  Click it.

[Mathig]

I said READ through, not glance at the OP and come back and tell me why a gui api is different. because almost everything you can say about the topic has been discussed there. and you are wrong, it's NOT completly different.
and lol, yeah. if a gui revamp is not going to happen, but we are going to solve the problem with wine. sure. why not build a dorfputer and run the game on it? at least that has been demonstrated to work.

-sigh- Not really. Page six and I learned the following... The OP thinks realism and sandbox (art) are antithetic in spite of the real life being a counter example. He wants opensource and collaborative development in spite of The Toady One's desire to do otherwise. He wants frequent releases despite the increasing complexity. He wants Dwarf Fortress to be about bug fixing instead of feature development. And he wants less stone variety.
The next six pages consists of people complaining over whether stone variety is better than stone mechanics. To explain the remaining 6 pages, I'll quote a nice little post on page 6: "Well, ok then.  Read this entire thread, and kinda regretting it now.  I did skip over any post that ONLY "bashed" the op though, because it added nothing to the argument, and is typical internet BS you find on facebook or youtube from kids." Except I read all the bashing... and I can confirm it is pointless.

None of that relates to having a select group of people work closely with The Toady One's code, not The Toady One himself, to develop a mod that creates an API to use GUI for.

Returning to my suggestion about using virtual computing to overhaul the graphics... Since people here are so illiterate, I'll explain the gist behind Virtual Computing...

Virtual computing has been demonstrated, as I am describing it, to work for dozens of programs in the example of WINE(Wine Is Not an Emulator). WINE is a Linux software that converts commands given to it in a Windows Operating system to commands that work for a Linux operating system. The whole point is that games interact with operating systems, not actual hardware, and programs already exist that act as operating systems but aren't operating systems. Thus, the difficulty in redesigning GUI is merely the difficulty in manipulating those emulators to give fake signals that register as real signals to the actual programs. There are dozens of working programs out there that do exactly that. Auto-it is the only one that comes to mind, but any botting software seeks to do this, essentially, and there are hundreds(probably thousands, but that might be an exaggeration) of those. Software like Unity can be used to monitor the screen to be more effective, but I'm fairly certain any programming language can be utilized to reassemble the GUI. Finally, the example of StoneSense would remove any barriers for running the command interface and the mapping at the same time, which I previously thought to be a potential issue.

Anyway, I happen to have not read up on directly programming software like WINE so I can't do this right now to get it over with already, but I'm sure the Linux community has some answers out there already for this on some FAQ questions.

Side note, why does everyone think I am someone else returned with a new account. What, is it that I know too much to be someone who just stepped in? Whatever... Trolls be trolling

[Alev]

I said READ through, not glance at the OP and come back and tell me why a gui api is different. because almost everything you can say about the topic has been discussed there. and you are wrong, it's NOT completly different.
and lol, yeah. if a gui revamp is not going to happen, but we are going to solve the problem with wine. sure. why not build a dorfputer and run the game on it? at least that has been demonstrated to work.

...blah blah blah? blah blah. blah! blah blah, blah...
Side note, why does everyone think I am someone else returned with a new account. What, is it that I know too much to be someone who just stepped in? Whatever... Trolls be trolling

There are a LOT of people who always want Toady to make DF open source, when he has stated multiple times that he will not do it, maybe not even post 1.0.

[Mathig]

I said READ through, not glance at the OP and come back and tell me why a gui api is different. because almost everything you can say about the topic has been discussed there. and you are wrong, it's NOT completly different.
and lol, yeah. if a gui revamp is not going to happen, but we are going to solve the problem with wine. sure. why not build a dorfputer and run the game on it? at least that has been demonstrated to work.

...blah blah blah? blah blah. blah! blah blah, blah...
Side note, why does everyone think I am someone else returned with a new account. What, is it that I know too much to be someone who just stepped in? Whatever... Trolls be trolling

There are a LOT of people who always want Toady to make DF open source, when he has stated multiple times that he will not do it, maybe not even post 1.0.

I don't even care about open source, it was merely the first thing that came into my sleep deprived head after spending hours trying to find answers on the forums. I care about making the GUI work.

Paraphrasing someone else, why hasn't someone simplified this massive debate so that new players can find the current status on the issue? I mean most of the threads are morons flaming someone for bothering to ask the question. Sure, the last time someone asked the question a flame war happened, but starting a flame war to prevent a flame war is hardly logical.

[Draco18s]

Seriously, this is a thing.  Click it.