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[nbonaparte]

I agree that a direct discussion of NW_Kohaku's ideas would be interesting and rewarding. Toady, what say you?

[G-Flex]

I think that a lot of people have potentially interesting things to say, and that Who Gets To Talk To Toady shouldn't be decided via some weird forum popularity contest based on who talks the most about his own ideas (which isn't to say anything about about NW_Kohaku's ideas; I just think this is extremely silly).

[NW_Kohaku]

... I'm honestly not sure whether that was serious or not, but I don't think we should be creating anything that could be considered an "elite club", myself.

EDIT:
Although I recognize it was a complex question, what I asked was also something that many people have been discussing for quite some time now.  At best, the Footkerchief fairy appears and graces the threads with select Toady quotes, and links to previous discussions.

Those quotes are a couple years old now, and the game has changed since then, and so has DF to a degree.  It's reasonable to expect that Toady has grown as a developer and changed his mind about a handful of his earlier ideas.  Which ones, I don't know until the question gets asked.

If the stocks screen has been changed, or is being changed in the course of the next set of releases, it's reasonable to speculate that he has changed his mind on how best to have the game interact with the player on at least some levels, and it's worth knowing how far he's willing to go with that trend, so that it can shape what sorts of avenues forumgoers who want to contribute through the suggestion threads travel down.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

I think that a lot of people have potentially interesting things to say, and that Who Gets To Talk To Toady shouldn't be decided via some weird forum popularity contest based on who talks the most about his own ideas (which isn't to say anything about about NW_Kohaku's ideas; I just think this is extremely silly).

it's not really that, it's just that i think he has some merit for actually taking his suggestions seriously and doing his homework, this often makes his suggestions and questions a bit... unwieldy, though, so the only way to address them properly would be with a dedicated interview. i understand how that might go against the democratic values, though

I guess PM me about it if it annoys you and you want to say so, though, as this topic really doesn't belong in the FotF thread.

i thought i had made it clear that it doesn't annoy me at all, as i said, i think your ideas deserve some atention

[NW_Kohaku]

I guess PM me about it if it annoys you and you want to say so, though, as this topic really doesn't belong in the FotF thread.

i thought i had made it clear that it doesn't annoy me at all, as i said, i think your ideas deserve some atention

Errr... I expanded the scope of that "you" to mean anyone in the thread, even if I guess I didn't make that explicit.

[carebear]

Does anyone know if anything has been said about whether the new version will include fixes to the Truetype font feature?

[Mel_Vixen]

Lets hope so but iirc the code for the fonts was from a third party (baughn?) so it might be less easy to fix it without the person who has written the code.

btw. I am not against Therapist or tilesets i was just saying that these things arent necessary to play the game in a proper way. I can see therapists usefullnes thought.

[Jiri Petru]

The real problem with the interface argument, any many others, is that it always hits the impenetrable wall of the alpha counter-argument. "It's an alpha, therefore we don't need to fix it yet." "Fixing the interface in alpha would be a detriment to further development." Etc. etc. Which is technically correct but...

...Dwarf Fortress is not an alpha. Not in the typical sense, where alphas are a shortish (say, a year) time frame with a definite end. Dwarf Fortress is expected to reach version 1.0 in about 20 years (?) which stretches the definition of alpha quite a bit. While some people are happy to judge the game by alpha standards, many others (me included) do not. By all normal standards except the official numbering, Dwarf Fortress is a released product with an established player base that just keeps getting further "expansion packs".

The problem here is simple. I think noone would mind accepting the "alpha argument" if there was an end in sight. Something like: "I'd love to finish the caravan and army arcs, after which I'll proclaim the game beta and will focus on polishing more." I've bought and supported many games with development models like this (Mountain Blade, Minecraft) and unlike Dwarf Fortress, people seemed quite happy with the deal and didn't moan. But the point is that all of these had attainable, near ends to the "testing" phase. Mountain Blade, for example, keeps getting updates and expansions up to this day, but it did reach version 1.0 a couple of years ago and did go through a polishing phase before going on with expansions. It could have been alpha even now, sure, but the developers wisely decided against it, to the benefit of all. But if you have a project where the alpha is supposed to take 20 years, it is basically meaningless and only leads to frustration.

The deal here is that Dwarf Fortress is a unique project in the sense that Toady doesn't really care about the player base, and instead does it for himself. I can't compare it to anything because I don't know about any similar project like that. And I'm not mad at Toady either, it's his game after all, but you can't be surprised that people keep bringing it up.

TLDR version: for god's sake, stop using the alpha argument already. A 20 years long development arc is not an alpha, no matter what the official label says!   

Also: The development schedule needs some serious rethinking.

[Mel_Vixen]

Uhh Duke Nukem forever was for over 10 years in alpha too. nuff said *runs to hide somewhere*. 

[hermes]

I agree that a direct discussion of NW_Kohaku's ideas would be interesting and rewarding. Toady, what say you?

Really?  And again... Really?

Everyone, the Scamps included, is aware that DF needs an improved interface and I'm pretty sure asking Toady about it is going to get such a speculative response on his part because there are a million and one ways to improve it so unless he's sat down and finalised everything he's gonna program, even he won't know what it's going to be like.  Sure he can talk about the generalities of what they're thinking about, or what could possibly happen - but so has the forum - many, many, many times - and there are enough Toady comments on the subject scattered around the place to give this info anyway.  So what's the point? 

This discussion is best held in the already excellent threads where speculation and advice remain where they should.  I've never seen Toady ever give definite answers to anything that's not more than a few weeks away in development.  As is quite right.

[Phmcw]

Personally I think that the problem would be solved by allowing modder to tinker with the interface more. And that could be done without much work on toady's part.

[Areyar]

The deal here is that Dwarf Fortress is a unique project in the sense that Toady doesn't really care about the player base, and instead does it for himself. I can't compare it to anything because I don't know about any similar project like that.

Aurora, the spreadsheet X4 space empire sim which requires a 50" screen.
Steve also does it for himself, even more so! And does not care about user-interface at all. But that is okay, because he does not ask for any donations.

[Magentawolf]

Perhaps not necessary, but Therapist doesn't really add any sort of functionality to the game, it doesn't really "cheat" unless you make it, it just serves to help format your information to make it more readily accessable.  It's a major help in sorting information so that you can make informed decisions.  It gives you information in seconds that would take five, ten minutes of scanning the unit lists and writing down information about dwarves that you would have to do without it because that information requires digging through many pages of interface with no help from any sort of cursor memory or easy sorting in the units screen. 

Exactly this. If there was a 'Z->Health' type screen that gave an overview of exactly what labors were assigned to what dwarves, I could stop using Therapist. It was so frustrating trying to remember if anyone had a skill enabled or any experience with said skill, and then manually search through every bloody dwarf to find out.

[G-Flex]

Yep. The fact is that DF is very information-dense, and a lot of that information can be effectively tabulated, and can/should be managed better than it is now. The simple value of providing summaries and tables of information cannot be overemphasized here.

[de5me7]

ive always backed what i think is toadys view (it came up in some of the earlier DF talks) that upgrading the interface would detrack from new features that he would rather do. because I'd personally rather see new features etc, over interface overhall.

but the posters above make a compelling arguement.

Therefore, i'd like to see Toady, not immediatly drop everything for interface, at least put it on the dev page, with a brief on what changes he will make. My guess is that any GUI improvements will have to be targeted at specific areas. For example, the military interface was revised for 2010. Im not sure that the military GUI should be revised again for the sake of pure GUI improvement, because it will probably get changed again with the army arc. Stocks on the other hand maynot be changed radically for several years, and may warrent a GUI lift.

Part of the GUI challenge, is that the game is A: as already said very information dense, theres more data for the player to browse than in some 4x games. B: no mouse and popup windows, C: ASCII only display. I personally happy with ASCII only and no mouse... actually i dont why im typing all of this most of its covered else where and in this thread etc http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=34949.0

in short i agree