Proper fix I: make serious profiling and improve inefficient algorithms (pathfinder? iterating over n objects without good reason?)
Being done.
Proper fix Ib: do sth with bugreport 3267 - identified source of FPS loss (and probably there are other reports). http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=3267
Probably being done. Though due to the presumed nature of the beast, probably isn't just one reason.
But is done after adding 12 types of grass. BTW I know about 4 real types of grass.
Heh. There are exactly 1780 report, unassigned bugs. And 1193 resolved - so there is enough work for many years.
Thats poor measure of the bugs being quashed. As the 1780 count, includes the none bugs and various repeats, and there is a similar issue with the resolved count.
What makes it really worse. There is Dwarfu, (s)he closes duplicated bugs, obvious not-a-bug etc. So we can assume that open bugreports are about real bugs and cannot that closed=fixed. In fact in last 25 closed bugreports there are
2x fixed
12x duplicate
4x no change required
7x unable to reproduce
So only about 10% of closed bugs are really fixed (it may be heavily biased, maybe Toady marks bugs as fixed in waves).
I must say: Openttd is able to move around 1000 vehicles on 512x512 map. DF is lagging with 7 (seven) dwarves and one murky pool flood.
Something is wrong. Really wrong.
OpenTTD is a far simpler game that it an out and out clone of a feature complete game. It does have various improvements that I've come to enjoy and relish, but comparing their two dev cycles and paces is out of scope.
I am not sure is it simpler, but being clone really helped. And in fact DFs feature level may be presented as finished game. But comparing development may be not the best idea: DF is not open source, openttd devs can say "all developers, whether core developers or not, do that for their own joy in their own free time. Thus they pick up what they think is the most rewarding and promising thing to spend their time with.". Etc.
I mentioned openttd because I know quite a lot about how it was developed and there is huge difference in devs thinking "This patch doesn't meet OpenTTD quality requirements." vs "18 types of grasses have been added for your bovine animals to graze on with more to come" with multiple waiting gamebreaking bugs on bugtracker.
Of course the dev are primarily focused on bug fixes, optimization and improvements, there isn't much else to do with the game. Its feature complete. What features it has, are far simpler then the current feature set of DF.
There are at least 2 big attempts to include new things - Cargodist (
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=41992 ) and More height levels (
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=40844&start=0 ). And n+ patches.
I am not sure that it has less features - a lot of effort was connected with NTP, NPF, YAPF - pathfinders made to improve efficiency and graphics (it is not full 3d but still more complicated than DF).
Toady however is trying to a much more complicated game. Yes, it could be ran on various simpler systems, but thats not the end aim for the Devs of Dwarf Fortress. The Dev of DF do not just add new features to the game. It goes through various cycles of new features, improvements on older systems, and out right replacing them and there is /constant/ bug fixes.
But in may end in game not runnable above 20 FPS and unplayable due to bugs.
I agree that DF may never be done, but that doesn't seem to be a concern to the Devs. However, I disagree that it'll always be Alpha. The game is not feature compete but, the feature set that Toady and Threetoes want is finite, and to my understanding not growing.
Yes, in afterlife donations are not required. IMHO it will be eternal alpha/beta. This amount of bugs is unfixable for 2 people. Maybe going open source may change sth, but I am not sure (and it will not happen in unforeseeable future).