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[Greiger]

Ignoring most of the interface debate and throwing in a "Can't we all just get along?"


Anyway  Scamps is adorable.  And is still entranced by shoes apperantly.  (give Scamps a good belly scratching for me Toady!)

[Areyar]

Wasn't even aware there was an argument. heh.

And yes he is. I just noticed for the first time he has no tail.
Is this a concequence of an accident or is Scamps a mutant?

[G-Flex]

Scamps is just a mutant, yeah. He's supposed to be like that (for certain definitions of "supposed to", at least).

It's weird seeing pictures of Scamps now, since the last time I did, he was still a kitten or close to it.

[Footkerchief]

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.

Toady would be speculating when it comes to the implementation details, yeah, but Kohaku's questions were pretty general (really they were more about inclination and will than about specific features) and I'm interested in hearing the answers too.  Right now, the "Presentation Arc" feels further away than it did back in 2008.  I would love to be able to enjoy Fortress Mode again, but it's not happening without an interface overhaul. 

[MrWiggles]

Scamps is probably a Manx.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_(cat)

I have a Manx kitty.

[Scarpa]

Toady would be speculating when it comes to the implementation details, yeah, but Kohaku's questions were pretty general (really they were more about inclination and will than about specific features) and I'm interested in hearing the answers too.

I second (third, fourth?) this sentiment.

The last thing I personally recall is Toady saying something to the effect of 'when I do it, I will make sure it makes sense' but that's about all. I mainly want to know if everything UI related is going to be deferred for a long time yet, or if there are minor interface improvements coming. Now, that said the last UI work added in was the Military Screens IIRC, and that does not bode well for most people looking for something more intuitive.

[monk12]

Ok, I'm doing some failing at finding the old dev goals. What specifically is entailed in the Presentation Arc?

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

Myself, I think a good way to do it would be to suggest a DF Talk specifically about Toady looking at the suggestion forums and providing commentary on select threads. That way, we get a nice smattering of topics in the talk based on what Toady happens to read, it draws attention to the suggestion forums as a place Toady frequents (which may or may not cut down on some of the "suggestion thread" stuff in this thread), and it means that Toady would be able to give some of the larger, well thought out threads some of the attention they deserve without just saying "NW_Kohaku has the most well developed ideas, so lets just talk about his stuff". It may so happen that that is true, and that it does form the bulk of the Talk, but "well developed ideas" is more democratic that "NW_Kohaku's well developed ideas"

Think I might go make a post to that effect in the DF Talk Topic Discussion Thread.

[NW_Kohaku]

Ok, I'm doing some failing at finding the old dev goals. What specifically is entailed in the Presentation Arc?

It's basically the polish on the interface Toady wanted to do before declaring DF "complete".  Of course, the last time "Presentation Arc" was mentioned, Toady responded with a "the arc system is obsolete", making that all moot, anyway.

Myself, I think a good way to do it would be to suggest a DF Talk specifically about Toady looking at the suggestion forums and providing commentary on select threads. That way, we get a nice smattering of topics in the talk based on what Toady happens to read, it draws attention to the suggestion forums as a place Toady frequents (which may or may not cut down on some of the "suggestion thread" stuff in this thread), and it means that Toady would be able to give some of the larger, well thought out threads some of the attention they deserve without just saying "NW_Kohaku has the most well developed ideas, so lets just talk about his stuff". It may so happen that that is true, and that it does form the bulk of the Talk, but "well developed ideas" is more democratic that "NW_Kohaku's well developed ideas"

Think I might go make a post to that effect in the DF Talk Topic Discussion Thread.

As much as I like the idea that it wouldn't then be all about me, as it's kind of embarressing, I think maybe some more open line of communication might be established with what's on the Suggestions Forum and Toady.

I would think that the suggestions forum (and modding forum) could be a place where we might be able to not just throw suggestions, but also try to work on ways to actually assist Toady in improving the game, even without doing something like asking for some sort of back-door to the game for making third-party GUIs or the like.

There are problems with the current military system that are caused largely by the fact that materials and creature bodies are often dummied out - dogs are so useless now because their bite and jaw and other materials are no different from that of any other creature of their size (basically, a child's), even though canine family creatures' capacity to hunt relies upon the ability to take down large prey through their bite.  Players could probably be applied to a sort of Ark Project to try to make a less-dummied-out set of raws.

Likewise, the Jiri Petru interface thread had a lot of talk about breaking open the game to have an interface, but as we've been talking about in this thread already, it's entirely possible to make some improvements to the interface without actually doing many drastic changes to the way that the game is coded, but simply by changing the way that information is displayed, and the way that players can move from one screen to another or finding ways to standardize controls to be more intuitive. 

If we had some sort of alternate Toady feedback system, especially one that focuses upon encouraging the fanbase to contribute in a way that would actually be productive for the game as a whole, we could probably see more constructive use out of the Suggestions Forum. 

Right now, it just seems like a vacuum to scream into, and while yes, we all know Toady is busy and he's behind on reading the suggestions, at the same time, there's no way to know if he's "I'll catch up once a month" behind or "he even tried reading it since .31 came out" behind.  It's sort of led to people dismissing the entire Suggestions Forum entirely, or treating it as a passive-aggressive joke.

Right now, as with that last link I posted, there are some gripes that are gripes about the game that people feel aren't being seriously addressed without some sort of donations scheme to carrot and stick Toady into what they see as priorities.  (Plus, I managed to stumble across this little gem doing searches on interface to see some previous Toady comments on the topic...)

I think getting Toady to provide some sort of guidelines for getting the forum to work in constructive contributions, rather than assuming any attempt to help the game outside of modding is futile would be able to both assist him in making some design decisions and also possibly redirect some of the frustration and demands for things like opening up a backdoor for third party interfaces that Toady clearly doesn't really want to do.

...

Plus, I'm not sure letting Captaintastic express his open opinions on the Suggestions Forum is necessarily going to lead good places.  He has been less than patient with posters in the past.  (Not that I've been a saint, myself...)

[Kogut]

It is mainly problem with too large community - it is impossible for Toady to even read suggestion forum. And it is clear that "many people want X" is not reason good enough to implement X (see ESV). So - I am just ignoring suggestion forum.

[NW_Kohaku]

It is mainly problem with too large community - it is impossible for Toady to even read suggestion forum. And it is clear that "many people want X" is not reason good enough to implement X (see ESV). So - I am just ignoring suggestion forum.

And that's exactly the problem - after about .31, the suggestions forum largely became a joke to be ignored.  There is no feedback, no care for the ESV whatsoever, most of the long-term posters don't bother even looking at the forum anymore, posting anything related to a suggestion in this thread gets negative responses, and the other option, DF Talk, requires submission of your ideas to Captaintastic, who openly mocks the entire idea of the Suggestions Forum, and DF Talk only even gets run maybe once every four months, anyway, so just put your suggestion thread on hold for four months to maybe get some feedback.

It's basically a giant "Your Ideas And Feedback Not Welcome (but feel free to donate some money)" sign on the front of the community. 

Which is pretty funny, since one of the things that people (myself included) are supposed to like about DF is the community.

Yes, I know this is an awfully big community to be managed by just two people, but maybe there should be a little bit more attention paid towards managing it?  It's why I suggested maybe having another Toady Speaks To The Masses thread that could be used to give some sort of guidance or direction to the creative efforts of the people who want to contribute to the game in means other than just donations. 

Alternately, there's always this... ignoring the entire thread after Retro's original post.

Sure, I realize that Toady is a pretty private person, and doesn't want people looking at his code and all, but letting people help manage things like the forums shouldn't be something he becomes terribly opposed to, especially since he seems to not particularly like having to moderate things very much.

There's just this utter fatalism about so many of these things, where people aren't even trying to get past the impasses, and decide it's better to just let these things stagnate.  We can't talk about improving the interface, we can't make suggestions, we can't talk about how magic will be implemented, etc.

I mean, making my own suggestion, I joke about it being my own attempt to push a boulder up a mountain for the umpteenth time, and just tell myself I'm doing it for the love of exploring the idea, because I can't really expect that anyone but the same half-dozen people who were there from the start will ever notice it, no matter how many different ways I try to stir up discussion about something.  When trying to talk about interweaving the magic system or talking about interface, it brought up plenty of "that's an old fight, don't even try" responses from people who I must assume never read the thread again after posting that.

[Dae]

Well, most of the suggestion forum isn't worth reading. A large majority of threads is about old ideas or things that are already planned. The last constructive suggestion I read was about adding an [EFFECTIVE_STRENGTH] sort of tag so as to have creatures incredibly strong for their size.

Then there are all the megathreads (in which you appear quite a lot), in which suggestions are inspected very deeply, to an incredible level of detail ; the trouble is, we don't know if it will fit into Toady's view for the game nor if it is technically doable.
I'm not sure Toady has each and every detail planned, so there is no way we could know how and even IF it will go in.

Every time I see a giant megathread of suggestions, I feel like I am watching a young child preparing to stay awake all night so as to catch Santa Claus. I feel like I'm saying "Oh, honey, Santa doesn't exist. Take a cookie and go cry yourself to sleep".

This is the cause of the stagnation you're talking about. Someone asked what constitutes a good suggestion to Toady and I don't remember the answer if it was given, and that's the core of the problem too.
Perhaps no suggestion will ever make it in the game as it was suggested, but will bend other thing in Toady's mind so as to make its own little idea-nest in Toady's vision. The trouble is thinking about something that will both not be in the incredibly long list of what is already planned and still be compatible with the game spirit.

[thvaz]

I'm with Capntastic on this. Suggestions forum only exist everywhere on game fora because regardless if the developers will read and use them or not, people will feel entitled to make them anyway. The "suggestions forum" is there so they don''t clutter the rest of the fora with their self-entitled right to make suggestions.

It's basically a giant "Your Ideas And Feedback Not Welcome (but feel free to donate some money)" sign on the front of the community. 

Toady stated that he in fact read the suggestions forums (though often behind), and you should be happy about this, he is an exception to the rule. You should donate because you like the game and wants to see its continued development, not because you want your ideas in. In this case, you should be better writing your own game.

I do agree however with the need of others people moderating the forum. It would stop distracting Toady doing what I really want from him - coding Dwarf Fortress.

[Kogut]

Toady stated that he in fact read the suggestions forums (though often behind)

So it would be great to show sign of it - like "nice idea, similar to mine"/"I think that it is not good thing for DF"

[thvaz]

Toady stated that he in fact read the suggestions forums (though often behind)

So it would be great to show sign of it - like "nice idea, similar to mine"/"I think that it is not good thing for DF"

Not a good idea if he wants to avoid his ass sued off by a jerk. Not that most people would sue him, but there is always the possibility.

[Kogut]

Toady stated that he in fact read the suggestions forums (though often behind)

So it would be great to show sign of it - like "nice idea, similar to mine"/"I think that it is not good thing for DF"

Not a good idea if he wants to avoid his ass sued off by a jerk. Not that most people would sue him, but there is always the possibility.

So maybe only first type of response?