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[Mfbrew]

Sorry if this is wildly inappopriate, and I don't mean to start a flame war, but...

I recommend that Toady starts a UI fund.  Something like "when $2000 in ui-specific donations are reached, I'll put ui overhaul at the top of the to-do list"

Before you all go crazy, hear me out.  So I like DF just the way it is, and I don't think the ui needs work, but clearly a lot of people do.   I much rather see Toady work on cooler stuff like armies and bustling cities.  One of the advantages of this project is that Toady gets to work on whatever he's interested in, and it shows through in the loving way every element of the game is crafted.

Maybe by increasing the incentive to do a mini ui-overhaul and having fans put their money where their mouth is, DF can become stronger, more widely accessible, more easily extensible, and less reliant on third party programs (no offense to those who have made them)

[the Dregs]

I already did this! Only it's 20 bucks and my treasurer is keeping it safe in my wallet until after the mouse gets into the game.

[aepurniet]

if toady doesnt want to open an interface (programatically) for the community to get involved in the UI, then i dont think we should use money as a motivator.  i dont really want to put conditions on my support, and instead i am donating for the work toady already did, not any future work he may or may not do.

[StrawberryBunny]

The problem with "radda radda update the interface" is that there's still a lot of features to go in. If Toady were to expend great effort on making most people shut up about how bad they think the interface is, he's going to have to tack on new UI elements when he adds stuff later, which would all in all detract from the UI. In fact, the current UI wonkiness is the product of Toady tacking on UI elements for more features after a UI design. Be patient. Let him fix his features first, then build a UI around the finished product.

[existent]

I like the direction Toady has/has been taken/taking, and I for one don't think there is much to be gained by diluting the game to public opinion. With open-source, the community can create whatever they want, but with your system, people would just be paying someone else to do what they want.

What would government be like if all it took was money to get the law changed in your favor?
Oh.... wait.

[Pilsu]

I doubt the mouse being functional as an input method would be a placeholder.

[Virex]

Why does everyone hate the UI? It's almost as good as Aurora's and a lot better then many modern UI's for games I have come across.

[existent]

Why does everyone hate the UI? It's almost as good as Aurora's and a lot better then many modern UI's for games I have come across.

I agree. There's definitely a few areas where it could use some work, and some things could be simplified, but on the whole I think the UI is pretty solid. 

Personal UI pet peeve: Hitting enter to build my wall, because I'm expecting it to work like Designations, or hitting u to mine, because I'm expecting it to work like Constructions.

[marcusbjol]

Abstracting the UI and letting the end users make it would be the best solution.

As far as DF's UI being superior, I disagree.  Stronghold's UI is much nicer.  Cursor based into instead of info based cursor (I hate having to esc out of k to do v and then reposition the cursor).  Spending 20 min figuring out that a building can be forbidden and had to be reclaimed is lame, the color of the building could just be red to be forbidden and I would have instantly understood it.

This would let Stonesense be an interface to play the game.  The UI commands can be made via xml and focus on what you want instead of what Toady think is best (with all due respect, we disagree in some places and this is fine).

This is an excellent business move as well.  A graphical enduser UI will make DF much more popular and a bigger player base means more revenue.  If you dont like the graphics, use the ASCII interface.

[j0nas]

I've sometimes considered whether an external site with DF bounties such as this one would be a good idea.

It's happened for other projects, someone wants something done, people get together and put up some money, a bounty on whatever they want done.  Some open source programmer hops to it, it gets done.  One example would be http://www.opensourcexperts.com/bountylist.html , and I'm sure there are many others.

Now our problem occurs when we realize that this is not an open source project, there are what, two or three people at most that can influence the game itself?  This limits how far money can go when it comes to influence, because if those few people decide that no, then that's that.  Feature X will simply not be implemented for any reasonable bounty.

It would also carry a feel of ransoming donations.  'You can have this $1000 donation, but only if you implement feature X according to this specification'.

Then there would be the issue of trust.  What's to say the person responsible for such a site wouldn't simply take the money and split, leaving it up as essentially a scam?  What's to be done with the bounties that are never cashed?  Returning the donations would be infeasible, so donate to charity?  After how long?  Does donating to charity make more sense than giving the money to bay12 games anyway, after all they are the reason we even want this feature in the first place?  But if the money is given to bay12 games anyway, where did the incentive go?


Anyway, I didn't mean to derail your thread with a more general suggestion, but I think it's a tricky problem overall.

[Sixteen]

Which part of the UI not being too good are you talking about? Because the stuff about the designate and build keys not being the same can be changed in the Key Bindings under dwarf mode.

[Executer]

I just tell myself that DF graphics are like a storyboard. Once the storyboard is done, you can make the movie if you want, but not before.

As in, maybe once the game's features have been implemented completely, a better UI would come around.  Remember we ARE still in an alpha version right now.

[MaDeR Levap]

Fund? Meh.

Best method is voting for UI in enternal suggestions. Currently various UI suggestons are rather... low. Toady promised he will take at least some attention to top 10 problems.

[Muz]

-1 to this.

Because stifling UI is the most efficient way to seeing DF 1.0 completed during our lifetime. If Toady put a focus on UI, it'd be like Slaves to Armok again.

It's not really an issue of money or what people want to see... it's more of an issue that implementing UI would probably double the workload on some parts, because he'd have to change the UI again on minor updates. I think the Adams brothers have said that they know it's a massive weakness of DF, but aren't working on it just yet.

UI will probably happen as soon as it goes out of alpha. I think the best you could do is sell some "outdated" stable version of DF with graphics, where the graphical UI version won't be updated for the next few years.

[MaDeR Levap]

because he'd have to change the UI again on minor updates.

And again that idiotic myth. Sanely created UI would require at most change to some xml configuration file (or whatever will got used) after changing other things in game. In other words, API is a must, even if only Toady will use it (internal API).

There are carpload of other things in game that are placeholders and will be changed - often multiple times over on way to mythical 1.0. Why not interface?