Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Finn on December 17, 2013, 02:26:51 am

You might have more than one problem, but the first is that you have to understand that archery practice is something they (may) decide to do on their own when they are idle.  It is not something they do because you gave them an order to "train".  Making them train (or do anything else) will interfere with archery practice.

This is not the case. Marksdwarfs _will_ schedule archery training as part of their active training regimen if they have both an active barracks and an archery range.

Both entrances lead to a single path, which I've secured well with troops snacks.

wait, wait. I think I realized the hitch. He's asking for rough and cut gems; he only has rough because I traded away my cut gems to the last caravan. He hasn't claimed the blocks because the cut gems come before them in the process. Strange that he's asking for both kinds, though, seeing as he'll cut the rough ones anyway.

Quote from: Oort on December 04, 2013, 03:02:34 pm

That being said, I'm not sure I think that graphical development should be a priority. I'd much rather have more of Toady's time devoted to developing gameplay features, because to me the visuals are only relevant as far as they are functional.

I'm afraid I have to disagree there.  While I realize there are a number of players who prefer ASCII art, I for one do not.  I also find trying to figure out which workshop is which is more a case of me knowing where I put what than being able to recognize what it is on screen.  Weird's recommendation, which I personally hope he'll organize into a formal suggestion and put it on the suggestion forum for Toady to consider eventually, is one I would find highly helpful.

Q: Have you ever considered making the UI external to the game, so that somebody else could take care of it while you'd be able to fully concentrate on the simulation aspect itself? By external I mean - export appropriate API to control the game, and import a few symbols from the UI SO/DLL so that the game would be able to interact with it. Considering the fact that the game already reacts to the user input (hence you have those entry points that need to be exported already well defined) creating such interface should be only a matter of finding the time to do it.

The community has already proven that they have the ability to deliver superior UI (Stonesense, Dwarf Therapist, numerous tilesets, etc.), so why won't you leave it to them? There are limits to what one can do with memory hacking; a real API would make it possible to make something like Stonesense, but fully interactive. Wouldn't that be awesome?

A: I've thought about it. It seems like it would take a lot of work to maintain...There are lots and lots and lots of data structures, and the API would not be a simple thing, and it wouldn't be something I could just do once and then forget about.