Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Omega2]

Well, the proccess should go like this:

1- Toady provides us with the clay.
2- We designate a farm.
3- A modder comes around and plants the projects.
4-
5- Mods!

No, wait...

[Puzzlemaker]

Well, the proccess should go like this:

1- Toady provides us with the clay.
2- We designate a farm.
3- A modder comes around and plants the projects.
4-
5- Mods!

No, wait...

Not enough Pirates, methinks...

[valcon]

Look I don't mean to be a dick but let's just look at the situation and find the answer.

It's fairly obvious: Toady needs to overhaul the user interface before someone else does or he will lose control of the project.

There.  It 'aint on us.  It's on him. 

[dreiche2]

I mean, take Bethesda and Blizzard. Bethesda caters like hell to their modders. They give them a kit to play around with, a forum and outlet to discuss it all, and why? Because they know that they laid down a fantastic gridwork, but it's the players who know what the players want, and they know that it was the modders who put the Elder Scrolls series on the map, not the developers. And who reaps in all the money, yet none of the blame when Naked Nords For Hire mod doesn't work? Bethesda. When a new patch breaks mods, no one ever looks to the developers. It's the modder's shoulders that the responsibility falls on. Rightfully so.

Now take Blizzard. Blizzard couldn't give two shits about the modding community for World of Warcraft. They offer a very limited ability with AddOns, and even the slightest patch causes every mod to either go haywire, bitch and moan that it's not updated, or downright fuck up your display...just because it feels like it.

And yet I can name 5 WoW AddOn websites off the top of my head. And I'd say over 50% of the userbase, and probably 90% of the "dedicated" userbase, swear by at least a COUPLE of AddOns, and a lot say WoW would be nigh unplayable without some.

Yeah, but again, the thing is not so much that either of these situations could work, but that Toady doesn't *like*  the working conditions of either. Not to actively work for interface modders, nor just opening the interface up and then ignoring large parts of the community while constantly feeling pressure to work with them. And I for my part can surely understand this, especially the second situation. In case of the first, I guess when Toady feels so wary of the cooperation situation, then yeah he should avoid it (as far as he can, that is), because again in case of DF I think clearly what is best for Toady is in the end best for DF.

[TheSpaceMan]

Look I don't mean to be a dick but let's just look at the situation and find the answer.

It's fairly obvious: Toady needs to overhaul the user interface before someone else does or he will lose control of the project.

There.  It 'aint on us.  It's on him. 

He wouldn't loose control eitherway. People might try to hack in ways to overhaul the UI system, it won't work as well as it will when toady finaly decides to change it, even if people do find a way, there will be all sorts of problem when toady does his update and the gui maker is in all sort of pain hooking everything up again specialy when new stuff get added. Not to talk about speed loss working in a separat window.

Nah that Toady would loose controll of the project due to the fact he won't update the gui... not likely.

Like he said, he will update the gui when he finds a good way and the time to do so.

[Andir]

He wouldn't loose control eitherway. People might try to hack in ways to overhaul the UI system, it won't work as well as it will when toady finaly decides to change it, even if people do find a way, there will be all sorts of problem when toady does his update and the gui maker is in all sort of pain hooking everything up again specialy when new stuff get added. Not to talk about speed loss working in a separat window.

Nah that Toady would loose controll of the project due to the fact he won't update the gui... not likely.

Like he said, he will update the gui when he finds a good way and the time to do so.

You could say the same thing about a third party API.  If someone were to create an alternative UI using hacks, and people started using it en masse, then when Toady throws out an update it will break the interface leading to the same problem he described above.  He'd have to wade through pages of complaints that "such and such an interface wasn't working now... how do you fix it?"

The person what created the UI would have to update the memory locations and it would be the same situation as updating a third party client to accommodate the changes in the API.

[Puzzlemaker]

I am failing to follow some of the logic here.

How does not making an interface make it so he will lose control of the project?  That sounds more like a veiled threat then anything else.

Also, I don't think that adding in third party support makes you obligated to help them.  I mean, look at all the utilities we have already.  There isn't much direct support going on.

[dreiche2]

Also, I don't think that adding in third party support makes you obligated to help them.  I mean, look at all the utilities we have already.  There isn't much direct support going on.

Well, exactly, he is not supporting this tools *at all*, so he can (so far) ignore them. But adding official third-party support code-wise would create a situation more akin to what he have now with the raws, and there is whole sub-forum associated with that type of modding after all.

[Omega2]

And people seem quite willing to do trial and error while modding DF, so there is even less need for official support: just give them the basic information and they'll figure everything else out by testing it.


By the way, can we stop with the accusations? They just throw people on the defensive and start flame wars.

[TheSpaceMan]

Yeah third party libs are bad if you want to keep controll.

Part 1: What I mean is simply stating that "not adding a gui will make him loose controll becouse some one else will do it" makes no sense if you have any programing experience. You can do hacks and plugins and bots and cheats, but adding a new gui (esentialy rewriting the game without the source) is nothing some one do becouse you "don't like the current system". Specialy not while the game is still work in progress (if it was realeased and no more updates it would be another story)

Part 2: Anyone who likes DF and have any experience with programing understands the amount of work Toady has put into this. No one with that experience who think straight would atempt to do a replacement hack on his work.

Any one with the shortsightnes to try this would lack the experience and fail missaberly while Armok eat their soul.

Thats my 5 cents atleast.

[Andir]

The difference is abstraction...

If Toady created an API/interface to the program then he himself feels he needs to document and maintain that interface.  The op specifically covered that by stating that he could create an interface that was the "basic" interface and open source it allowing it to be the documentation and wherewithal to creating other interfaces.  Those dedicated to Toady's image of the game could stay with his interface and others can go off and use the third party interfaces.  Just like the tile/graphic sets do now, they can wait for the author to update their tiles or use Toady's client.

Alternatively, without a "common" interface/API, if Toady were to change something and it affected a memory location he can plead that he never intended to have tools at all.  In which case, he should obfuscate the memory allocation (and there are several methods for doing this.)  But right now, he can plead ignorance (and no, that wasn't an attack, just an appropriate word) to the fact that he cannot be responsible or aware of any breakage to third party tools.

[Anikki]

DF is a book, not a comic strip.

[Exponent]

It seems that central to this topic is the issue of psychology:  particular features of Toady's personality dissuade him from taking certain actions that some of us (including myself) wish that he would take.  Some of us, were we in his shoes, could actually follow through on some of the suggestions in this thread while not experiencing the same psychological effects that Toady would; we are all simply different people with different personality quirks.  (However, to counter-balance this statement, so that people don't accuse me of criticizing Toady, some of these same people might not have been able to do things that Toady has done, again due to differences in personality.)

Toady has said that if he were to purposefully aid third-party interface developers, he would feel obligated to continue aiding them, even if the original intention was for the aid to be a one-time deal.  If he obeys this feeling, he has less fun working on DF.  If he ignores this feeling, he has less fun working on DF.  I can understand this perspective (whether or not I would myself experience it), and it isn't a matter of good or bad arguments or reasoning.  It's primarily emotional/psychological, and there's not much that can be done about it, unless Toady himself decided that it was a character flaw that is serious enough that he is motivated to work to overcome it.  I don't suspect he'll come to this conclusion any time soon, and I don't blame him.  I have plenty of quirks myself that inconvenience other people but that I still don't wish to "fix" (assuming it is correct to call them "broken" in the first place).

Admittedly, I really really really wish that Toady didn't have this particular psychological feature, because I'd really like to see (and perhaps work on) some third party interfaces.  But I don't always get what I wish for; that's life.  And I don't think there is really any rational grounds to justify to Toady that he should change.  So I suppose I'm willing to accept his stance and move on.

Now if anyone can come up with some clever ideas that do not require Toady to purposefully aid third-party interface developers, but that Toady is nonetheless comfortable with, then by all means, we should discuss it.  But it seems as though any ideas that require that Toady do anything at all to purposefully aid them (whether it is large or small) are (unfortunately, from my perspective) dead ends for now.  There is not much benefit to be had from discussing them.

[Jamuk]

The risk he would be taking by endorsing these people would not be a one time thing, as some people seem to think.  It would likely happen over and over again, and Toady would not be able to talk to them and explain that he wants to work alone, because people are irrational.  He has already attempted to do this once in this topic and it failed miserably because people are still trying to push their points of views around.

It isn't some psychological disorder that causes him to avoid open sourcing and aiding third party interfaces.  It is topics like this one that go on for huge lengths of time because people think that they know what is best for his game and that he doesn't.  What's to say that if he does start having community made interfaces that they won't use that against him?  People are already making threatening remarks about  how even if he doesn't allow other people to make the interface that people will just hack his code and do it on their own.  I mean this topic is the shining example as to why NOT to allow people to work on the interface.

If he did help make an API what is to say that people wouldn't use that as an argument to do it again and again?
"Well it didn't cause any problems this time, nothing could go wrong!" is one response he would likely get over and over again.

Have anyone ever thought maybe he doesn't like seeing crap topics like this demonizing him just because he would rather do his own work?

[DJ]

If we can't have an open source interface, then the next best thing is a flexible interface. So I'm hereby asking Toady to please try to make one when he has time and inspiration to work on the interface.

In particular, I'd like to see fully adjustable display size when it comes to screen dimensions in tiles. Another neat thing would be adjustable buttons, as seen in Black Isle's games such as Icewind Dale. Ideally, we'd be able to drag and drop buttons where we want them and hide them if we want to. Full mouse support is implied. Throw in support for macros and reading from external files (which can store stuff like constructions blueprints) and I'll be a happy man.

Of course, all this is a lot of work so I reckon it'd best be implemented bit by bit over a long period of time.