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[Granite26]

I don't think I agree with you...

The complete and total lack of any reason whatsoever on your part kind of stifles argument here.

I think that UI being sucktastic is probably a significant portion of the reason that it hasn't been stubbed better than it has.

It's not an argument, it's just a difference of opinion, lest the opposite opinion be considered largely monolithic.

I could dig up some dev comments, but that's work, and uninteresting work that wouldn't really gain me anything at this point.

[Corona688]

Ah, the thing is, I don't think its even remotely true and have read things that suggest its not.  Painting yourself into a corner with a fancy UI before the program's features and interface have been frozen is apparently why armok I died, and is the stated reason for why the UI is not being worked on now.

Of course, one could assume he's lying or covering up, but I think its better to take a less paranoid view.

[Granite26]

Ah, the thing is, I don't think its even remotely true and have read things that suggest its not.  Painting yourself into a corner with a fancy UI before the program's features and interface have been frozen is apparently why armok I died, and is the stated reason for why the UI is not being worked on now.

Of course, one could assume he's lying or covering up, but I think its better to take a less paranoid view.

I'm not saying it's the reason, just that it makes it easy to decide it needs to wait

[Muz]

As a programmer, I've almost always worked on UI as late as possible. It's just a lot more convenient that way. Don't need any fancy reasons for it.. it's just the obvious thing to do. Why choose the paint when you're still building the house?

I enjoy watching the DF development model. Yeah, I think that 'alpha' is a lie.. DF in its current form is as playable as many commercial games. But having so much on the devlist to look forward to.. that's probably the equivalent of several sequels to some games.

I really want to give Toady a lot of money for the awesome development model, once I have some. There's something... brilliant about it all, but I just can't see it. It's like something that should be taught, something that should be simplified into a bunch of theories and a formula to be taught to new entrepreneurs-programmers. But for now, it's still a work in progress, like watching a great artisan carve a statue without following the rules and guidelines other people made up.

[Corona688]

I'm not saying it's the reason, just that it makes it easy to decide it needs to wait

Good reasons are like that, yes.

[ArkDelgato]

Of course, one could assume he's lying or covering up, but I think its better to take a less paranoid view.

So Toady was the one who faked the moon landing!

[Armok]

As a programmer, I've almost always worked on UI as late as possible. It's just a lot more convenient that way. Don't need any fancy reasons for it.. it's just the obvious thing to do. Why choose the paint when you're still building the house?

I enjoy watching the DF development model. Yeah, I think that 'alpha' is a lie.. DF in its current form is as playable as many commercial games. But having so much on the devlist to look forward to.. that's probably the equivalent of several sequels to some games.

I really want to give Toady a lot of money for the awesome development model, once I have some. There's something... brilliant about it all, but I just can't see it. It's like something that should be taught, something that should be simplified into a bunch of theories and a formula to be taught to new entrepreneurs-programmers. But for now, it's still a work in progress, like watching a great artisan carve a statue without following the rules and guidelines other people made up.

Quoted for truth.

[LordZorintrhox]

I think Muz is on to something here.  It seems kinda like reverse capitalism.

Rather than producing something other people want and them giving you money for it (what you want), Toady seems to be simply producing something he wants and the consumers happen to pay him.  So Toady just does what needs to be done because he is doing for himself, and we get awesome out of it.

Now, as for the development process itself, that is hard to get a bead on unless you are in the game industry, which I am not.  BUT I do get to watch the people in the game design major do...whatever the hell it is they think they are doing.  And it isn't pretty sitting over here on the computer science side of things.  Basically, they have no idea.  The teachers, who are purportedly from the game industry, also have no idea.  No one knows how to make a game; I don't know how to make a game.  Literally the basic plan is this:

1) Pick an idea out of friggin' nowhere
2) Write an elaborate and hefty document that details everything you want but give no one any idea on how to implement it, and certainly give no thought to the notion that it has to be implemented
3) Make game

Because of this, if you will notice, the credits for a game are usually one-sided: you've got a staff of thirty 'artsy' creative types making art, levels, etc., and a small nucleus of only a few programmers doing the actual engine writing part.  NOW, I am not saying that art doesn't take a long time and a lot of people, I am the art head for a game project.  But it is not a good way to design a game when the largest portion of the staff doesn't know Ruby from Python.  Hell, it gets worse when the two sides don't talk to each other.

Why?  There seems to be an artificial divide in the game dev world between the expressively savvy and the technically savvy.  Why do so many programmers dislike UIs?  Because it is expressive; I know when I am in programming mode, I am totally like "why can't they just friggin' use the command prompt for everything?"  Same thing for the artsy team: the programming is a technical mire of complex inter-relationships that express nothing, they only allow things to be expressed.

The sad part is that the two sides really don't know how close they are to each other.  Your programmer can write the skeletal animation code that makes a mesh move like real muscles and the rag doll physics to make the body move like it was real, whereas your 3d artist can make that mesh look and move well because he knows how muscles work.  In the end, it is really the same thing and the two have a lot of common ground, but they don't talk about it.

Toady gets around all that BS simply by having only himself and no bloody publishing company telling him what he is doing.  The creative team and the implementation team are sitting nice and cozy in one head.  Well, plus ThreeToe, but they're brothers.  Whatever magic is going on in that pair's craniums is beyond any class anyone can take on game development, because it can't be taught.  They didn't seem to start with much of a big plan, only the idea "let's make a game, the kinda game we like to play."  It is like Tolkien and C.S. Lewis's thing about "writing books we like to read because no one else writes them."  I am not trying to draw comparisons on awesome here, only methodology.

Hell, the first thing they tell you in game design is, basically, pick a genre.  Both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and Toady and ThreeToe took that very notion of genre and said "fuck you."  Is DF an RPG or a city sim?  Is LotR a fantasy novel, or an epic saga*?

The really interesting thing is that somehow by ignoring the presentation of the game, Toady has made the presentation the forefront of development.  Freeing the game from the framework of a genre or an interface idea or a specific 'game mechanic' lets the game be whatever it needs to be as it evolves.  That is the only lesson I can gleam from bay12 that can be written down on paper.

*I am talking literature here, not praise.

[Footkerchief]

Iterative design is the ONLY way to make a good game, and as much as one might argue that he is using an iterative design in DF he's clearly got it in his head that the UI is not part of the game and he can do that 'water-fall' style at some far distant point in the future.  This is simply insane from my point of view, the interface is the MOST important part of a game.  I can only conclude that Toady hates writing UI, most programmers hate writing UI's because they are fundamentally ugly at a code level and not 'creative'.  Toady just codes the 'fun' parts and ignores the rest, it's his project of course and he can do what ever he wants.  But I don't see why people donate to a project ware the development priorities aren't for the audiences benefit.

You've brought this up before and I'll say again what I said then.  As Toady as said many times, the Arcs -- including the Presentation Arc which I think you're referring to here -- are NOT waterfall cycles.  They're not going to be implemented in one giant push.  They're released in bits and pieces with major bugfixes in between, just like always.

Painting yourself into a corner with a fancy UI before the program's features and interface have been frozen is apparently why armok I died, and is the stated reason for why the UI is not being worked on now.

You're conflating UI and graphics a little too much here.  Toady has talked about graphics as one of the causes of Armok I's death (along with overemphasis on bottom-up game design), but graphics are only a part of UI, and most of the people in here are referring to other aspects of UI such as menu structure.

And menu structure is being worked on right now in a big way, in case anyone hadn't noticed.  There have even been tangential upgrades like grouping the VPL list into sections.