Yeah, doing twice the amount of work for items that are already coming up in the near future sounds productive.
Spend months putting in placeholder code and then a year down the line gut all of that and make the "real version"...
There'd be no more gutting involved than there is for the temperature init option right now. Hell, he could have set most of this up through empty functions a while ago; and for all I know that's what he did.
You write something like this:
function calculate_weapon_damage(weapon_data, victim):
if weapon_data has super_complex_materials_data then:
// calculate it based on tensile strength and victim tissue information
else:
return dieroll(2d6+1)
end
And until you're ready to start implementing all that fun stuff you just never attach materials data to any weapon data. Once you decide to start dealing with the tensile/shear strength of someone's armor versus the weapon being used, you go and fill in the code in the comment, write up and link your material data to the weapons and armor, and go from there.
There's some functional equivalent of this code implemented already, as evidenced by the fact that you can turn off things like the economy, weather, and temperature effects; all of which are pretty pervasive.
Meanwhile, huge amounts of detail is being added to stuff that could easily be abstracted out in a way that code for it could be dropped in later, while major gameplay issues are left unaddressed for months.
I know Toady has to rely on donations, but I hope he doesn't ever end up making too many concessions in order to drum up downloads or a bigger player base.
Unless the "I love playing Dwarven-dress-up" brigade is ready to stand up and support Toady all by themselves, they should accept the fact that he might actually have to turn his attention to
immediate gameplay concerns to retain sufficient fans to support himself, rather than laying ever-more-elaborate foundations for a hugely ambitious and complex vision that may or may not ever actually be realizable.
