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[GHudston]

Honestly, all I want is for Toady to divorce all objects from the ascii tileset in the same way that dwarves, animals etc. are handled. I know that's more work that I make it sound, and I know that it will likely have some effect on performance but I think it would be more than worth it. It would go a long way to making graphics sets feel more complete and less like a half finished work around.

It's not fancy graphics that I want, just better readability. Graphics sets are great as is, but that's not to say that they couldn't be a hundred times better if their creators were given the tools.

Of course, if this never happens, I'm still happy. I think we all are, really. People don't have heated discussions like this about games they don't love.

[Gatallorsith]

I haven't seen much flaming or hate. :|

Neither do I...It's incredibly hilarious (and annoying) to hear those two or three continuously cry for the lock of the thread when It has been a perfectly fine discussion.
Idk what the rules are here, but I've yet to see a forum where you lock threads cause someone doesn't like the topic of discussion.

[Lexx]

Personally I think UI functionality and ease of use should be higher priority than graphics. I do agree though that any improvements to letting modders have more ability to make their graphics sets better would be awesome. Phoebus or Ironhands sets are an awesome level of detail even as is. Given the complexity of the world they are working with.

[crazysheep]

As far as I can tell it's only 1 person asking for a thread lock, which you can safely ignore.

On the other hand, as far as the discussion is concerned, unless there's anything revolutionary that you're sharing with us, a large chunk of the posts in here have essentially explained why 1, the graphics issue isn't gonna be resolved in the near future, and 2, why having this thread is essentially moot.

That's my 2c on this topic anyway.

[Gatallorsith]

As far as I can tell it's only 1 person asking for a thread lock, which you can safely ignore.

Actually I counted three (users)
And no, I can safely ignore It the first time but when It gets repeated in more than 6 posts it starts to get annoying.

On the other hand, as far as the discussion is concerned, unless there's anything revolutionary that you're sharing with us, a large chunk of the posts in here have essentially explained why 1, the graphics issue isn't gonna be resolved in the near future, and 2, why having this thread is essentially moot.

That's my 2c on this topic anyway.

The only thing you did was share your view\opinion on the matter, as I did (answering back too). You cannot speak for Toady (actual opinion) and I can't as well.

bye

[The_Jester]

Its unfocused productivity that has a low return that mildly annoys me. Its just because there is so much brilliant work being spent on something that will have little return, when instead if that same amount of productive work was used in other ways, it could drastically improve the game in players interact with on a more regular basis.

Its the low hanging fruit principle. Work on the easy stuff first. Most bang for your bucket that way.

There are plenty of roguelikes (including Diablo clones, as Diablo is only rogue with a pretty UI) in the world, but dwarf mode is unique as far as I can tell.

Even if you aren't excited about the adventure mode prospects of what he is working on right now (which lots of us are), you have to be excited about what it means for fortress mode. This is the beginning of bringing the world to life around you. Currently the world stops moving as soon as world gen in fort mode, fixing that will have huge benefits for fortress mode. Just think of it: your dwarf civilization gets in a war with humans, whose massive army cuts through every dwarven settlement around until it ends up at your fort and you realize that your liaison's request for weapons and armor maybe wasn't as ridiculous as you thought. Or you get tired of that goblin civilization seiging you every winter so you decide to preempt them and send an army of candy-coated axelords to knock on their front door (which they are actually going to have because of what Toady is working on right now).

[Manveru Taurënér]

...
The only thing you did was share your view\opinion on the matter, as I did (answering back too). You cannot speak for Toady (actual opinion) and I can't as well.

bye

People linked quotes from Toady's own view on part of the issue, so in that sense we can speak for Toady, yes

[CarrKnight]

I, for one, love Toady approach of focusing on world building and micro-interactions on which the gameplay is based. Which is exactly why we would be better off with a new graphics "engine".
I cringe everytime Toady has to waste time designing gameplay interface that could have gone in adding stuff into the world.
It would be fantastic, IMHO, to leave the frontend of the game to the community and just focus on the world, the dwarves and the booze.I imagine something like an official DFHack we could use to build GUI on top of. Toady could keep his code closed and continue to be the complete owner of DF, it would still be HIS vision. All we'd do is to interface to it. He'd own the world, we'd just provide viewers.

Yeah, in the short run development would slow down.  Which is why a kickstarter (or whatever) could provide funds to Toady that he'd lose from a lull in updates.

[Hyndis]

I don't see anything hostile going on this thread. Its just a discussion about the merits of focused development vs more unfocused development.

I'm a big fan of focusing on the practical, and I freely admit that. I also subscribe to the 80/20 rule. Getting it 80% done takes only 20% of the work. The remaining 20% takes an additional 80% of the work.

In other words, this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle#In_software

That also works out for simulating things. "Close enough" may be better than 100% accurate. A "close enough" system makes a lot of abstractions behind the scenes, but the results are about 80% accurate for only around 20% of the work.

While the math probably doesn't quite work out this way, you could get 1 thing done 100% accurately. Or, using the same amount of time and effort, you could get 5 things done 80% accurately. If you're building a simulation to land a rover on another planet, you had better be sure everything is 100%. But this is a game. Games always make allowances for gameplay as well as system resources. A game does not need to be 100% accurate with all things at all times.

Fully accurate weather and temperature, as well as pathing are massive resource hogs. I do not claim to know how DF does these, nor do I have a proposed fix for it, but surely there must be some way to approximate it rather than simulating it to such a high degree, which would get about the same result, but would use up only a fraction of the system resources.

I think this principle could be applied to things such as temperature in game, or other worldgen factors. It would not be a pure simulation then, but it would allow him to get a lot more done rather than focusing with laser like precision on things that might not make much impact at all. For example, trade in worldgen. While it sure does look pretty when you export maps in legends mode, I really have not noticed any impact in gameplay.

Also I freely admit I really don't like adventure mode that much. Its a roguelike, but with roguelikes there are a great number of options. Diablo clones are just Rogue with a pretty UI wrapped around it. Torchlight 2 is coming out in a few weeks for anyone who wants a roguelike.

Adventure mode is not what makes DF unique, nor does it seem to be the major draw. Its fortress mode, as implied by the very name of the game itself. Fortress mode is an absolute jewel. Its brilliant and unique, and so it should be cherished, treasured, and lavished with all of the focus to make it even more awesome than it already is.


TLDR;
In short, I think Tarn should focus more on "player facing" things in the game. These are things the player interacts with and actually notices. While the background stuff does make worldgen very rich, for the most part the player will never interact with this, so all of that time and effort spent is on things players may not even be aware of.

[Hyndis]

Also a request;

If you have a problem with a post use the report button. That is what the report button is for. It alerts the moderators. Spamming a thread with demands that it be closed when the discussion is calm is only derailing things.


I am curious as to what people want DF to be, when its done. I doubt DF will ever actually be finished. I think it will be a continual work in progress forever, but what the game may look like years down the road is something that very much interests me.

Design is always an interesting topic, including the future of the fortress.

Of course this thread is entirely irrelevant to what Toady actually does. Toady can do anything he wants, but the peanut gallery is fun sometimes.

[Hyndis]

Honestly, all I want is for Toady to divorce all objects from the ascii tileset in the same way that dwarves, animals etc. are handled. I know that's more work that I make it sound, and I know that it will likely have some effect on performance but I think it would be more than worth it. It would go a long way to making graphics sets feel more complete and less like a half finished work around.

It's not fancy graphics that I want, just better readability. Graphics sets are great as is, but that's not to say that they couldn't be a hundred times better if their creators were given the tools.

This is actually a good point. One of the limitations with a graphics set is that because the game uses ASCII, a graphic set can cause weird things to happen and make it hard to read text.

I'd absolutely love it if everything was put into raws, including things like carpenter workshops, beds, barrels, and reactions to be put into raws. Some things are in the raws, other things are not in the raws.

Its already in the game, its just in the exe not in the raws, but if its moved to the raws and there's an option to give any object its own symbol or tileset option, that would be amazingly useful for making graphics sets, as well as hugely expand modding options.

I think this was one of Toady's goals. Eventually he wanted to put everything (all workshops, furniture, reactions) in the raws so its more accessible for tinkering, IIRC.

[misko27]

If you have a problem with a post use the report button. That is what the report button is for. It alerts the moderators. Spamming a thread with demands that it be closed when the discussion is calm is only derailing things.

Derails are one of the great joys of life. For instance, I nearly derailed this thread into talking about whether or not people are asking to close the thread. Right now, I've only managed to derail it to the importance of dwarfmode versus the other modes and features. I hope to get it to the gold standard of derailing, the weaponization station.

[Phibes]

I would be more than satisfied if the limitations on tilesets were removed at some point. Graphics are important to me, in that I find the default game to be a headache-inducing mess of random characters. Something in the vein of Stonesense or Gnomoria would be nice, but tilesets are good enough for me.

[tootboot]

You cannot speak for Toady (actual opinion) and I can't as well.

He's been consistent in saying he doesn't want to change the way he works, and that graphics/UI aren't a big priority.

[Trif]

I don't see anything hostile going on this thread. Its just a discussion about the merits of focused development vs more unfocused development.

I'm a big fan of focusing on the practical, and I freely admit that. I also subscribe to the 80/20 rule. Getting it 80% done takes only 20% of the work. The remaining 20% takes an additional 80% of the work.

In other words, this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle#In_software

That also works out for simulating things. "Close enough" may be better than 100% accurate. A "close enough" system makes a lot of abstractions behind the scenes, but the results are about 80% accurate for only around 20% of the work.

While the math probably doesn't quite work out this way, you could get 1 thing done 100% accurately. Or, using the same amount of time and effort, you could get 5 things done 80% accurately. If you're building a simulation to land a rover on another planet, you had better be sure everything is 100%. But this is a game. Games always make allowances for gameplay as well as system resources. A game does not need to be 100% accurate with all things at all times.

Yeah, I can agree with that.

Fully accurate weather and temperature, as well as pathing are massive resource hogs. I do not claim to know how DF does these, nor do I have a proposed fix for it, but surely there must be some way to approximate it rather than simulating it to such a high degree, which would get about the same result, but would use up only a fraction of the system resources.

I think this principle could be applied to things such as temperature in game, or other worldgen factors. It would not be a pure simulation then, but it would allow him to get a lot more done rather than focusing with laser like precision on things that might not make much impact at all. For example, trade in worldgen. While it sure does look pretty when you export maps in legends mode, I really have not noticed any impact in gameplay.

The weather is maybe the biggest waste, even Toady admitted that, but at least you can turn it off.
Temperature could be simplified, but it also could be more complicated. For example, constructed pillars of ice in a magma-filled room won't melt. That's the problem with the Pareto principle here: it's difficult to define what exactly 100% means if you don't know the possibilities.

I think Toady did a fairly good job so far. After all, we all love Dwarf Fortress because it is complex and not overly simplified like most games out there.

And about trade: right now, it doesn't have a big impact because all trading stops when worldgen ends. It'll be more interesting once the world is properly activated.

Also I freely admit I really don't like adventure mode that much. Its a roguelike, but with roguelikes there are a great number of options. Diablo clones are just Rogue with a pretty UI wrapped around it. Torchlight 2 is coming out in a few weeks for anyone who wants a roguelike.

Oh boy, Rogue and Diablo are extremely different. One is turn-based, the other uses real-time, for example. Or take the random level generation: it barely matters in Diablo because there is no perma-death, but in Rogue, it's basically the whole point. Diablo was inspired by Rogue, but it's not a roguelike, and neither is Torchlight.

Adventure mode is not what makes DF unique, nor does it seem to be the major draw. Its fortress mode, as implied by the very name of the game itself. Fortress mode is an absolute jewel. Its brilliant and unique, and so it should be cherished, treasured, and lavished with all of the focus to make it even more awesome than it already is.

Well, in the genre of roguelikes, adventurer mode is pretty unique - maybe just like fortress mode is as an RTS. And, yes, fortress mode is the main draw, because it's much more fleshed out than the other modes. But keep in mind: DF doesn't aspire to be a building / civilization management simulator. When Toady talks about Dwarf Fortress, he always introduces it as a fantasy world simulator. The main goal is to be able to influence and shape the world - and that is why the current developments are so exciting.

PS: Toady said that he likes playing adventurer mode more than fortress mode. Threetoe prefers fortress mode.