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[MrWiggles]

I keep hearing complains about the military UI, but outside of no documentation I found it fairly navigational. I'm not sure if this is due to my experience with the of the UI though.

My complain, is that there are various times when I dont know what I am adjusting. That annoys the fuck out of me, and again the lack of constancy.

[kcwong]

One problem with third-party user interfaces is that damn near everyone would wind up using them.

... because they are great? Then I see no problem having them.

Even if a decent API is used, things would break between versions, leading to (sometimes large) gaps in time between a new version of DF being released and the third-party UIs catching up.

This is very annoying for the community, at least.

With proper data structure and API designs, you will more likely just have unsupported features (like a new workshop showing up as a featureless cube in StoneSense).

Poking around in memory and updating it is far far more likely to cause DF and utilities to crash.

In other words, there's some inherent instability in having people rely on third-party software that needs to be updated regularly. It winds up being frustrating for the players, and frustrating for the community in general.

That's because some people think dealing with the default GUI is even more frustrating. Ever tried adjusting the labor lists of 30+ migrants?

To that end, I think the best solution is for the game itself to have a decent user interface at some point. I agree that the new military controls are the straw lead weight breaking the camel's back at the moment. I don't think a perfectly sustainable long-term solution is necessarily the best or most urgent thing to do right now, but things need to be workable and remain that way.

I read MagmaWiki about the new military interfaces before I even downloaded 2010... so to me the military controls aren't THAT bad... it's just all the bugs that must be fixed. To me the most horrible aspect of DF's UI is the labor list and unit list. I wasn't using Therapist before 2010, I just kept my population cap small. After trying Therapist once with 2010, I won't ever play without it. The pain caused by the default UI is too intense, overshadowing any good new features.

Also I have a feeling that Toady belongs to the programmer stereotype that doesn't like testing and making UI... so if he create the API, he won't have to deal with it anymore. But I also feel his reluctance to do so... he seems to want to do everything by himself.

[G-Flex]

That's because some people think dealing with the default GUI is even more frustrating. Ever tried adjusting the labor lists of 30+ migrants?

This is why I think the focus needs to be on improving the existing UI, not extending an API to third-party UI developers. I'm not saying it doesn't need work, just that that work would probably best be spent on the first-party interface.

I read MagmaWiki about the new military interfaces before I even downloaded 2010... so to me the military controls aren't THAT bad... it's just all the bugs that must be fixed. To me the most horrible aspect of DF's UI is the labor list and unit list.

The military controls are worse in a very important way: No feedback. If you do something wrong with the military and something you do doesn't work, you have effectively no way to know why unless you puzzle it out for yourself.

[MrWiggles]

I play with out a third party app. Outside of being time consuming, I dont find adjusting evening a hundred dorfs labors to be that hard.

[zwei]

The military controls are worse in a very important way: No feedback. If you do something wrong with the military and something you do doesn't work, you have effectively no way to know why unless you puzzle it out for yourself.

Yeah, it is bad. "Huh, i added them to squads, how come they still look like civilians. Hey, that one is hauling stuff? WTF?"

Not to mention that doing very basic stuff (basic draft-n-kick-ass) is disproportionatelly more dificult in new version. gone are days of 'v'-'a' (kick ass) 'v'-'a' (back to civilian life)

One problem with third-party user interfaces is that damn near everyone would wind up using them.

...

In other words, there's some inherent instability in having people rely on third-party software that needs to be updated regularly. It winds up being frustrating for the players, and frustrating for the community in general.

Well, it has already happened. Quite a few players need Therapist, quite a few want Stonesense on side.

We even have 'API' that needs to be updated: DFhack (wtb: dfhack edition of current therapist). New version break utilities and people wait for them to resume working.

All in all, whether Creator wanted it or not, can of cats was opened already (or is it worm is out of the bag?). When someone introduces people to DF, he gives them four links: homepage, wiki, therapist and stonesense.

Integrating killer features of utilities is simply logical step to bring this back under control where utilities are really just utilities, not must-haves.

[MrWiggles]

I also dont find it that hard to set up a make shift squad to go kill the occasional insane dorf or battle goblins. It does take longer, but not all that much. What through me off first was the order screen.

[Rose]

now it's just create squad, then s-a-k-l-mountaingoat

then s-a-o to get back to work.

[sadis]

One problem with third-party user interfaces is that damn near everyone would wind up using them.

...

In other words, there's some inherent instability in having people rely on third-party software that needs to be updated regularly. It winds up being frustrating for the players, and frustrating for the community in general.

Well, it has already happened. Quite a few players need Therapist, quite a few want Stonesense on side.

We even have 'API' that needs to be updated: DFhack (wtb: dfhack edition of current therapist). New version break utilities and people wait for them to resume working.

All in all, whether Creator wanted it or not, can of cats was opened already (or is it worm is out of the bag?). When someone introduces people to DF, he gives them four links: homepage, wiki, therapist and stonesense.

Integrating killer features of utilities is simply logical step to bring this back under control where utilities are really just utilities, not must-haves.

Difference between DFHack and proper API, is that Toady would be himself responsible for workings of that API. So the pressure would be on him. And based on his comments about this subject, it would considerably lessen his satisfaction of working on DF. And I don't think any of us wants that.

Ps. I have never linked Therapist or Stonesense to anyone, mainly because I rarely use them myself, but also because I think that my friends are capable of finding those themselves if that's what they want to use, and digging information from community (both through forums and wiki) is a very good lesson to learn up front.

[Thief^]

now it's just create squad, then s-a-k-l-mountaingoat

then s-a-o to get back to work.

You sure that's not an emacs keybinding?

...sorry.

[frightlever]

If Toady was worried about game updates breaking interface options if the API changes, forcing add-on maintainers to update before their utilities work with the new release then, (takes a breath), doesn't that point to, ironically, having a beta release (of his alpha software, I know) that's open to the coding community so they can have things up and running for the "real" release.

I commend individuals that can micro-manage the settings on a hundred dwarves without complaint, but we aren't all zen masters. I'd have a hard time playing without DT.

I think I had the military interface mastered after a couple of forts and the squad system seemed to work fine. The trickiest part was layering armour but that generally worked, maybe with an extra set of chain mail every so often on a dwarf running around clutching an armful of weapons, though god forbid he should pick up a quiver once in a while.

As for games like DF - I tried Tropico 3 after someone on these boards mentioned it. Nothing like as deep as DF, but...

You have individual citizens with different needs, waves of immigrants, foreign powers to deal with and buildings with inter-connected dependencies, eg I was scratching my head figuring out why workers were building shacks instead of living in the fancy apartments I was building, until I realised I needed garages next to habitations or else the workers were forced to walk to work, and instead of doing that they preferred to build lean-to hovels. Pretty neat game actually.

I'd almost suggest that someone involved in Tropico 3 was a DF fan. Or maybe the original (ten year old?) game had all that as well. In any event, these games are coming. Like I said before, there's a window of opportunity that's closing.

[Praetyre]

As a Tropico fan, I can tell you the original game, while lacking cars (and thus, garages and big roads), is near identical to the third, to it's very great credit. There is an unfortunate trend towards the dropping of existing content in favour of gimmicky, buggy commercialized garbage which requires hundreds of dollars and the patience of 10 saints to acquire even a quarter of the content of the original classic in sequels to old simulation games in a failed attempt at appealing to both old fans and casual gamers, which ends up frustrating the casual gamers with it's bugs and alienating the longtime fans with it's hollow, soulless attempts to equal the timeless charm of the original and it's bastardization and dumbing down of a game from an era where things were more than "Bang bang bang".

But, rambling aside, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who thought there were some similarities, in the depth of individual control and management. Tropico and Dwarf Fortress have both been compared to the Sims, so perhaps there we have a common ancestor.

[ggeezz]

Difference between DFHack and proper API, is that Toady would be himself responsible for workings of that API. So the pressure would be on him. And based on his comments about this subject, it would considerably lessen his satisfaction of working on DF. And I don't think any of us wants that.

Well, here's where we would need some input from Toady.  The nice thing about DFHack is that Toady didn't have to write it.  Zero Toady-time invested.  And the worst is that Toady didn't write it.  By not providing access to anything, he's actually provided access to everything (I doubt Toady would make an API to heal/hurt dwarves or create magma, but when others resort to memory hacking they might as well).  And it's not as stable as it could be and it breaks with every version.

But how much time/frustration would an API cost Toady?  Only he can answer that.  It depends on how the code is structured.  If the interface is abstracted away from the rest of the code, it shouldn't be a large problem since the API can call the same functions the UI calls.

If the UI isn't abstracted from the rest of the code . . . I think it would save Toady a lot of headache if it were (though I realize, he knows far better than my guesses.)

[ggeezz]

First, it's possible to create an API (for DF) where most of it has a very low chance of changing and if it does change it's probably because it's no long applicable, so there's no reason to be attached to it.

Second, people are already attached to Dwarf Therapist et al, and an API would make them far less brittle.

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)

Somebody reported a post in this thread...  it didn't really matter which one.  A bit of chilling would be good.  There are a few people that have failed to chill.  There are quite a few statements here I'd respond to in person myself, and some very sharply, but internet discussions are more fragile and more prone to derailment.  So I'll try to stick to what seems to be the core of the matter.

Which for me (and granted, I'm picking a recent post -- I've read the thread, but don't remember when this came up first in this thread) is along the lines of what Jamuk said.  I'm being asked to assume risk.  I don't accept assessments of the risk as extraordinarily slight -- I've seen no sound basis for those assessments here.  I also don't think the currently proposed licensing/obfuscation method of putting the cat back into the bag would work -- with a principal downside being that it requires me to turn into an asshole who, after initially sanctioning the process, breaks everything that people have been working on.  Publishing an API and then trying to reel it back in just seems completely unworkable and irresponsible to me.  So the point is to assess risk upfront and then make a decision I can live with.

And right now, I have no idea what would happen.  This isn't the same as leaving my math job or adding the Z coordinate.  The first was a decision I had to make personally for my quality of life, and the second was a calculated risk which I didn't really have strong misgivings about (though some people are still pro-2D version, I think I can get most of them what they want over time in terms of gameplay difficulty, etc., though it'll never feel like it's quite on that rail again most likely).  Do I accept that third parties could improve the interface?  Of course.  Do I think I could do better than a third party myself, even over time?  No, not at all, though I can certainly improve on what I've got now to a large degree even without external input (which I, of course, love to receive).  So, initially, there's some attraction to the third party interface idea.

However, reflecting on the position I'd be in, there are things not to like about it.  How many threads were there about broken utilities when this version came out?  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.

Incidentally, in the proposed model, I still don't think I'd be able to bring code back in to the core project -- the first Kobold Quest port attempt showed that people bringing in code don't necessarily check or care about the licenses of the code they are swiping, and I can't assume that responsibility for them (it has stuff from Wine which shouldn't have been there).  Problems come up here with tilesets and so on too -- I know there've been a few cases where a contributor used somebody else's art and then it was put in a game, causing some legal trouble, though I don't have them at my immediate disposal.

I may have missed a lot, both problems I'm not thinking of and ways to handle them, since this gets complicated and is, due to lack of information, somewhat unspecified, but that's what I've got right now.

Spoiler: followup (click to show/hide)

I tried hard to put myself in your shoes and see things from your point of view, but apparently I failed to understand one thing (correct me if I'm wrong): the general atmosphere of the forums and feedback you receive from players is an integral part of your happiness. I was imagining that you could just let the mess settle down by itself after every release, but since I am not this forum's moderator, I can't really tell how it feels to have a big mess of threads about stuff not working.

It generally sucks to have a bunch of people complaining that things don't work, especially when there's something I can do about, that is, work with the interface modders more closely, having in this scenario sanctioned third party interfaces and released a public API.  It's the pressure that would make me unhappy.  It's good when the forum people are happy, but that wasn't what I was getting at so much.

When you speak of pressure, are you picturing direct pressure? I have a hard time imagining people screaming at you on the forums, except maybe for the occasional moron that can be ignored. Wouldn't people rather be putting pressure on the third-party developers to update their interface ASAP? But maybe you'd feel pressure nevertheless because you dislike seeing that people cannot play the game.

There would be direct pressure on me to work with third party developers -- this isn't about screaming.  This thread itself is direct pressure to work with third party developers (or at least get the ball rolling).  That isn't to say I disagree about you posting it.  I'm simply stating what it is, and I think that yes, there'd be a lot more of this, a lot more I'd have to reply to, and a lot of...  pressure.  Additionally, I'm not just talking about external pressure, in fact, principally not -- having created the situation, I would feel some obligation to make it run as smoothly as possible, and I would rapidly become irritated by this, because it's some of my least favorite kinds of work.

One thing I'd like to point out, though, is that you seem to think that a single interface, "The front-end", would come out of third-party development. Even though that's possible, open-source usually seems to bring diversity (look at the number of linux distros), especially in a single-player game where people don't have to use compatible clients, so they can play together. So I think we'd likely see an improved ascii client, a 2d tiles client, an isometric client, a 3d client, and maybe several of each one. In my view it would distribute the uproar, so that at least not everybody would be complaining about the same thing  . But I don't know if you see that as a relief.
[emphasis added]

He he, of course not.  It's worse actually -- more parties to work with.

Lastly, I may have a good way of mitigating the breakage of third-party clients at every release, without requiring your direct involvement. Assuming that you develop your own open-source interface at the same time as your closed-source server, you would likely publish your interface changes to a public SVN server. You would probably do it incrementally, at the rate of one or several commits a day - akin to backing up your work whenever you've made a step. In that case, you can bet that enthusiastic developers will watch those changes keenly, to see what's going on with the interface. This means that third-party client makers will already know that moving "dwarven armies around on the world map, with a tactical view and various options" is coming for the next version (from your very detailed dev notes), so they'll have time to plan which kind of interface they want to provide for that. And since they'll see the necessary code changes evolve gradually, because you'll always need an up-to-date interface for bugfixing, they'll be able to follow closely your development. They might have to adapt to your last minute changes, but otherwise I believe that the days of bugfixing prior to release could be enough for some of them to finalize their clients on time.
Now of course, you have to feel comfortable with that way of working.

Yeah, this somewhat mitigates breakage with those third parties that are active and approaching the situation with some dedication, but the trade-off of working with my day-to-day changes under that sort of scrutiny is definitely a minus for me, and I don't think it could really happen in a vacuum without questions about changes and so on, or without me feeling like I have to provide some sort of documentation as I add things.  I don't know if that sounds like quibbling, but I can't easily overstate how much I hate managing code or collaborating on code or anything along those lines.

Additionally, I think breakages would still happen, especially when staff leave projects hanging (work obligations, got tired of it, vacations, etc.), and it wouldn't change the fundamental situation I'm imagining, although in the case of project abandonment or delays with staffing, where there isn't pressure to work with the (missing) people in question, it's more the pressure to incorporate changes back into the base API, which as I stated in my previous long post, I wouldn't be able to do without potential legal problems.


I don't mean to write as if I'm sure about any of this, but once I drop this bomb in my project, I can see every day becoming "oh man, what a goddamn hassle" instead of what I've got now, which has less of that.  Again, I think the OP is justified in starting this thread, so I'm not raising that as an issue, but I've also spent some hours in here, reading posts and composing these replies.  That stuff just starts to magnify, and I'll either end up ignoring people I don't feel like I should be ignoring, or not ignoring people to the detriment of the core game itself and my own well-being.

What I would like to hear from Toady is what kind of graphics he has in mind for when he gets to the interface overhaul. That way we could at least prepare some sprites ahead of time and have nearly complete graphics sets as soon as the version with the new interface comes out. I personally waste a lot of my free time doodling in GIMP, so I might as well do something useful.

Depending on the stage of the interface overhaul, ultimately I'm going to be support 2D tilesets (probably in dimensions of multiples of 4 because I'm lazy with image file headers).  So if you want to draw up some 32x32s or something, you won't be wasting your time, I think.  It should be fairly straightforward to support single z-slice isometric stuff as well, once I get that going, since I'd just have to change the print locations and print order, though transparency decisions are probably annoying, and it's slightly more annoying to get multilayer isometric stuff going, since people are going to want various options about display there, so I don't really have a clear opinion on the future of isometric.  The support for a resizeable viewport/window is definite, but nothing has been decided on layering there (for instance, critters walking over grass tiles, that kind of thing -- people will want more and more out of this system, such as inventory and wound displays, and I'm not sure where lines will be drawn, or where it will bog down, anyway).

Also some earlier stuff:

Spoiler: part 1 (click to show/hide)

This has come up before, but I don't remember if I've actually entered into a discussion on it.  As it stands, without knowing much about it, my issues are as follows:

It seems like I'd have to publish all my class definitions to make this practical.  I don't anything about reverse engineering, but it doesn't seem far from opening up the source at that point.

The class definitions would also not document and otherwise support themselves, and there would be pressure on me to do so, which is not a one-time cost.

In fact, if a third party front-end becomes popular, I think I'd be forced into relationship or even a state of dependence on the third party that I'm not comfortable with.  And I don't think we can just gloss over version compatibility.  Ignoring it or handling it before releases -- either approach has ramifications for me.

Certainly players would benefit from having third party front-ends.  They'd benefit from open source and third party back-ends too.  If it means cutting myself out of my own game, I'm not going to support it.

I also don't know anything about scripting, and it's tough for me to say whether time spent learning a scripting language, implementing scripts and supporting third party front-ends is better spent adding modestly to the interface myself.

Spoiler: part 2 (click to show/hide)

"You break everything, we fix it, it's all good."

I don't think it's that simple.  Even the utilities that people use cause some grief when they are broken -- it would be far worse for a popular front-end.  If the majority of the player base has to wait after each release for third party fixes to a broken front-end that may or may not even happen, it puts a lot of pressure on me to resolve the issue by working more closely with the third party, a completely unknown entity that happens to maintain the front-end most people use.  It would be difficult for me to retain my independence once in that position.

I think somebody mentioned in an email discussion I had that in that case I should just incorporate some of the more popular aspects of third party interfaces back into the main release in order to avoid forming that kind of tie and to avoid serious bumps in playability for front-end users after each release, but I don't know the legal ramifications of that, and my first impression is that I'd be setting myself up for trouble, though some major publishers seem to do this without issue from what little I know about it.

I can vaguely see how something could be set up to automatically prepare a lot of this now, but it still seems like the functions etc. that are created would need to be documented to be useful, especially if the front-end needs to be patched quickly.  If variables are removed or changed around, it seems like the incompatibility for front-ends relying on a previous version of the automatically generated system could be pretty severe.

Thanks for posting this again.  I think I originally found it when you posted it somewhere else and it is the most enlightening posts on the subject so far.  What I'm wondering is if/how Toady's opinion has changed over the last few years.  I remember reading in an old interview that he was "worried about" or disliked (or something) mods/utilities that were close to full UI replacements, but now he seems OK with utilities like Therapist.

As he predicted, the interfaces are here despite the lack of an API, and I assume the pressure is here as well.

The question is whether the pressure from Therapist et al, not to mention this Impaler debacle, are now more than the (estimated) pressure of maintaining an API, and which risk is now greater (having an API or not having one).

[Siquo]

Having an API won't stop people from doing what they're already doing now, hacking into the memory.
What it does do is transfer responsibility to Toady, responsibility he said he didn't need, and would take the fun out of working on DF.

He has the luxurious position of being able to do what he loves for a living, and is able to say no to (the speculative) mo' money that an API might bring. I don't think there is "pressure" as such. If random people start shouting they want an API, he can say "no", and get on with what he likes doing. I'd like to plead to Toady to ignore us all, and keep on having fun 

[cephalo]

Having an API won't stop people from doing what they're already doing now, hacking into the memory.
What it does do is transfer responsibility to Toady...

That's the part I disagree with. It only ever has to be as much responsibility as he wants it to be. Once you get a solid framework going, I'm thinking it would be low maintenance, and he can take all the time he needs to get to that point.