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That's right

That is right

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Incidentally, has the Stonesense team come up with any clever way of handling Z-level cutaways vs. irregular cavern ceilings?  I think it's going to end up being a major annoyance in both the isometric and overhead perspective.

You could always make 'unimportant' layers transparent.  Determining what is unimportant would be the difficult task.

Quick and dirty heuristic for this: If it's solid rock from the current z level down, and there is an opening within ten floors or so, make it transparent.

[toryoom]

I imagine that most people who are tied to any graphics system/visualizer enough to where they won't use DF without one are among the --I've found, rather large-- camp of people who wouldn't play DF without some kind of visualization above ASCII levels anyway, no matter how much they like the game's premise. So it's probably not a statistic that could relevantly be counted as 'worrisome' anyhow.

...After all --while I'm not trying to bring this discussion up again or anything-- it's worth noting that, while it goes without saying that Toady certainly has the right to do as he pleases with his own projects, it's already been mentioned time and again that with such a choice --rightful or not-- there are bound to be large sums of potential players that are going to be alienated by the decision to push even so much as rudimentary complete tile support to what has, over time, come to seem like the absolute furthest back burner.

My point in bringing that kind of thing up again at all, though, is to illustrate that many of the people who are sticking with old versions of DF because of the Visualizer are likely people who wouldn't even be playing DF at all without the Visualizer. They are part of that alienated group who are otherwise awaiting DF to reach a level where it is represented by some kind of graphics.  ...So I don't think their actions in sticking with an older version should count statistically as a regression that might damage the development of the core DF program.

Just my 2¢.

[peterix]

I thought about doing some form of adaptive layer peeling, where the layers are determined by the structure of the fort.
So say you have a tunnel that runs at constant depth under a mountain face. You want that to be visible at the same time, because a fight might be going on in there... just plain 1 layer = 1 z-level doesn't work in such cases. Same for the varying cavern ceiling height.

Here's an extreme example: a pyramid inside a pyramid inside a pyramid, etc. Slicing by z-level will never let you see the inner pyramids whole.

[Footkerchief]

I imagine that most people who are tied to any graphics system/visualizer enough to where they won't use DF without one are among the --I've found, rather large-- camp of people who wouldn't play DF without some kind of visualization above ASCII levels anyway, no matter how much they like the game's premise. So it's probably not a statistic that could relevantly be counted as 'worrisome' anyhow.
[...]
They are part of that alienated group who are otherwise awaiting DF to reach a level where it is represented by some kind of graphics.  ...So I don't think their actions in sticking with an older version should count statistically as a regression that might damage the development of the core DF program.

It may not seem worrisome to you, but it's worrisome to Toady.
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=21806.msg237594#msg237594
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=21806.msg238694#msg238694

If more than half the player base comes in off a third party interface (and given how much the current interface sucks, and how much it is a source of first time downloaders dropping the game, this is not only imaginable, it is very, very likely), how would it be if it broke at each release?  There's no way to mitigate that without my direct involvement -- imagine a release down the line where you can suddenly move dwarven armies around on the world map, with a tactical view and various options.  That interface can't write itself, and it wouldn't be a quick patch, though certainly dedicated people, assuming that about whoever is maintaining the front-end at that time, can pull things together rapidly.  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's not to say that I often get requests to work with utility writers (other than from the writers themselves, who I generally accommodate), but this would be at a different order of magnitude.

So what's the exact risk there then?  First, I don't want to work with other people.  So, assuming I don't do that, there's now a constant amount of pressure on me and a general disruption in the forums.  The latter could be mitigated with some announcements/guidelines, etc., but the pressure wouldn't go away.  Monetarily, it's impossible to say what on earth would happen, but if I supported the third party interface directly pre-release, I'd likely make more money, but I'd be unhappy.  If I didn't support it directly, but it was there, I'd still likely make more money, but I'd be unhappy.  That's not to say that I don't want to grow the audience and allow more people play the game, but I want to do it in a way with which I feel satisfied, even if that ends up being slower or just plain worse than a hypothetical third party alternative.  If someone, as a potential donor, thinks that's unreasonably selfish, that person shouldn't send me any more money than he or she thinks I've deserved for his or her enjoyment, just like everybody else.  Despite my dedication to this project, I'm unwilling to sacrifice my enjoyment of working on it for anything, including its quality or even its future release if it comes down to that.  That should be plainly obvious.  I'm not a slave.  Of course I do some things I don't like working on, with the interface and more.  I fulfill requests for features I'm not going to use myself.  However, again, the current proposal is of a different order of magnitude, with the potential of ruining it for me, and the end result is completely uncertain.

Given what I've seen here and there, it seems like a full third party interface might develop even without my involvement (rather than the various utilities we have now), but in that case, despite the same issues that might come up, at least it won't be a situation of my own creation that I feel a strong obligation to deal with, although the pressure would still be there.

[Mike Mayday]

If I didn't support it directly, but it was there, I'd still likely make more money, but I'd be unhappy.

Ok, now I'm worried.

[dennislp3]

To a certain extent when it comes to the graphics and how they affect the big picture....I guess you can just say "the damage is done"...the only way to stop this issue and all worry would be for all visualizers and graphic sets to go away

[Footkerchief]

If I didn't support it directly, but it was there, I'd still likely make more money, but I'd be unhappy.

Ok, now I'm worried.

Well, keep in mind that he means a full third-party interface, complete with menus and so on, which is far beyond anything we have now.  Graphics support is still a dev goal:

# Core50, TILESET SUPPORT: Allow graphical tiles to be used for all game objects.

[dennislp3]

True...very true

[Shiv]

Well I'm in the camp that couldn't play without at least Mayday's.  Never tried Stonesense but I will soon as it's supporting the newest versions.

Anyhow, I can tell you for sure that without Mayday's, I wouldn't touch DF.  I can't tell what on earth is going on with just ASCII characters.

[toryoom]

Given what I've seen here and there, it seems like a full third party interface might develop even without my involvement (rather than the various utilities we have now), but in that case, despite the same issues that might come up, at least it won't be a situation of my own creation that I feel a strong obligation to deal with, although the pressure would still be there.

No offense to Toady, but he seems to have been projecting (in the full quote) a bit further than is humanly possible to do anyway, without a rather high margin of possible error in expectations.  Case in point: these comments seem to have been coming off of a discussion proposing his actual (and, in that case, very likely regular) involvement in the creation of an interface ...which --while it would be nice, and everyone involved would likely rejoice if he spontaneously developed a zeal for interfacing, so long as it didn't wholesale kill standard development of the project-- has proven not to be necessary with the current Visualizer. ...A development he acknowledged the possibility of, in the end quote above, along with the upside of that possible outcome for him: in that the pressure of keeping up with the official DF releases from a total left-field interface developer is solely on that developer (and whosoever dains to help them, if it is an open-source community type thing, like Stonesense is). Beyond that,the pressure he expressed anxiousness toward is subjective to the situation, especially since he was predicting feeling it about an as-yet unrealized circumstance.  ...After all, that expected pressure might well be alleviated in part or entirely upon finding that, once the predicted circumstance has come to pass, various logistics that were not forseen prove there was no reason to feel obligated to get any more involved than one wanted in the present developments. (like Stonesense!  

...Basically, that's a long winded way of saying, even granting his point in that quote and at that time, there might not be as much to worry about on that subject as he predicted there would be. There are just too many ways of proceeding that might very well bypass the entire aspect of what he was worrying about --so that the integrity of the core project is left perfectly intact for him.  ...And yet he still retains the extended fanbase of those who want DF with pretty visuals.

[Retro]

I imagine that most people who are tied to any graphics system/visualizer enough to where they won't use DF without one are among the --I've found, rather large-- camp of people who wouldn't play DF without some kind of visualization above ASCII levels anyway, no matter how much they like the game's premise. So it's probably not a statistic that could relevantly be counted as 'worrisome' anyhow.

Personally I don't want a complete third-party interface by which I can play by proxy. When I use Stonesense I freeze DF and just look around. I use visualizers for the rendering, not for necessity. It's just near-impossible to see anything big and intricate across z-levels without a visualizer.

That being said, I'd still play and enjoy DF, I just wouldn't have the impetus to build anything fun and big or mess around with any of my pet project ideas because they all require a visualizer to look nice.

[peterix]

I imagine that most people who are tied to any graphics system/visualizer enough to where they won't use DF without one are among the --I've found, rather large-- camp of people who wouldn't play DF without some kind of visualization above ASCII levels anyway, no matter how much they like the game's premise. So it's probably not a statistic that could relevantly be counted as 'worrisome' anyhow.

Personally I don't want a complete third-party interface by which I can play by proxy. When I use Stonesense I freeze DF and just look around. I use visualizers for the rendering, not for necessity. It's just near-impossible to see anything big and intricate across z-levels without a visualizer.

That being said, I'd still play and enjoy DF, I just wouldn't have the impetus to build anything fun and big or mess around with any of my pet project ideas because they all require a visualizer to look nice.

It would be also very hard to make an external interface. The problem there is that lots of the actual functionality of DF /is mixed/ with the interface code (by Toady or the compiler... hard to tell). You can't replace that without rewriting the functionality or interfacing with it in some really weird way. For example, when you give the miner labor to a woodcutter who is already trying to 'pickup equipment', the *menu* does some deep magic manipulating all kinds of vectors inside the creature and calls something using a function pointer. I wouldn't want to mess with corner cases like that.

So, not likely to happen anyway.

[Jiri Petru]

Well, the quote Footkerchief has posted was written before Toady started working with Baughn on the graphics rewrite, right? Opinions may change, and who knows how he feels after this cooperation. I say, just don't force it and don't think about it. Let Stonesense develop naturally to who knows what end. That is usually the best way.

[jseah]

Got a question for stonesense here:

I like how the thing looks but is there a way to zoom out?  (or will there be a way?)

I would dearly love to be able to zoom out and see the entire mountain at one go. 
Would also make stitching screenshots for a large view not quite a pain as it is. 

[gilrad]

I think a much more relevant discussion would be something like Dwarf Therapist in regards to new releases breaking functionality. Not only has it been shown that there is a large number of people "waiting for DT" before they start any real fortresses with DF, but its been shown that chmod is incredibly fast at repairing basic functionality and running it out the door to meet that need.

Yeah this is really getting off topic, so I'll end it there.