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[Psieye]

So stuff is broken, a bunch of stuff needs other stuff to unbrokenify, and bugs? its that pretty much it, Psieye?

From our perspective. From Toady's perspective, all the stuff in your sentence above is like a dog next to the elephant that is all the stuff that's missing.

[MaximumZero]

Indeed. The devlogs are chock full of wonderful stuff we still haven't really thought about the implications of.

[FleshForge]

Err, the game is billed as ALPHA; and actually that's pretty conservative, considering how stable it really is and how many working features are in it.  I've paid for dozens of commercial "final" games that were way behind this one.  So some stuff doesn't work, if it really bugs you, stop playing and come back when it's in late beta or final release state.

[Sordid]

Err, the game is billed as ALPHA; and actually that's pretty conservative, considering how stable it really is and how many working features are in it.  I've paid for dozens of commercial "final" games that were way behind this one.  So some stuff doesn't work, if it really bugs you, stop playing and come back when it's in late beta or final release state.

Agreed wholeheartedly. But a "final release state"? You think there's ever going to be such a thing? Given the scope of the project, I don't think there's ever going to be a final version. Sure, Toady may abandon it someday or get hit by a bus, but DF will never really be finished. Even if he manages to put in everything on the list, by the time that's done he'll have accumulated twice as many additional ideas. I do hope he keeps going for good many years yet, though. Watching DF grow is a fantastic adventure, there's nothing else quite like it out there. Go Toady!   

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Agreed wholeheartedly. But a "final release state"? You think there's ever going to be such a thing? Given the scope of the project, I don't think there's ever going to be a final version. Sure, Toady may abandon it someday or get hit by a bus, but DF will never really be finished. Even if he manages to put in everything on the list, by the time that's done he'll have accumulated twice as many additional ideas.

Toady has stated that once he finishes 100 core goals, that will be v1.00. Of course, it won't be done then, but it will be "finished" in the technical sense.

[Psieye]

Toady has also stated this is his life project. Think decades, not years.

[Tylui]

Toady, I must say, I love the "Create New World" simplification.

[Jiri Petru]

Is it possible to somehow backport a new save (.14) to an older version (.12)? I need Stonesense! 

[metime00]

I love these new simple parameters for world gen! I'll get to using them once more civilization stuff is put in!

Thanks, Toady!

[timtek]

Sure, Toady may abandon it someday or get hit by a bus, but DF will never really be finished.

You better knock on some wood right now you bastard! :p

[akinzle]

Toady One, you are a god amongst men, and that's not just the rum talking.

[MaDeR Levap]

There lies the thing - in Toady's eyes, fortress mode as we know it is horribly incomplete and that bugs him more than what bugs we see at present.

Yeah, I agree this is probably what Toady think.

Given some features can't be 'fixed' until other features are added in,

That is what placeholders are for. When adding interdepedent thngs, better to think thorougly it, especially if it have to work in intermediate state.

it makes sense to add the new content and only fix the critical bugs.

Errm. No. I am programmer and please believe me when I say that kind of logic is suicidal in long term.

Why?

Big working system can only be created from small working system. If you will try to create big system from buggy small system, you will (not if, not may, just WILL) introduce some very, very serious problems to deal with sooner or later. You always create new code standing "on shoulder" of old code. You will write new code that deal, use or workarounds bugs. It can be even dependent on old behaviour. After sufficient time, fixing old bug will break many, many things in both old and new code. And you are in world of hurt.

If you will cycle it a few times, eventually project will be totally unmaintanable and abandoned.

[Malorn]

I think part of the issue is that when coding new features there are large parts of code that need to be rewritten entirely.   Thus it seems like wasted effort to recode code that will have to be recoded anyway when the new features are added.  This avoids the 'bug cycle' MDRL describes.  At least if you write your code properly without too many call-backs.

Also Toady clearly knows what he is doing since dwarf fortress is how many years old now?  If he was going to give up, we would have seen long 'breaks' from coding where he said something about 'just feeling tired' and 'deciding what I really want from DF'.

We get releases every month or so, with some serious changes in each release.  Bugs do get fixed, for example the bed-bug and the mechanism zoom-to problem.  As far as I can tell, there is nothing to complain about right now.  All the complaints seem to be about future problems that are inevitable.  I'll complain when these problems actually happen, since until they do we have no way of knowing if they will.

[Psieye]

Big working system can only be created from small working system. If you will try to create big system from buggy small system, you will (not if, not may, just WILL) introduce some very, very serious problems to deal with sooner or later. You always create new code standing "on shoulder" of old code. You will write new code that deal, use or workarounds bugs. It can be even dependent on old behaviour. After sufficient time, fixing old bug will break many, many things in both old and new code. And you are in world of hurt.

Agreed, but regardless of whether we think it's right or wrong, wise or not... this is what Toady is doing. He already faces some of these problems and doubtless more will show up. But this is the way he wants to do his life project.

So ends another discussion.

[VWSpeedRacer]

How about reading in the proper thread for that: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=66525

It's freaking alpha software.

Take it down a notch for Armok.