Huzzah! An animated Windmill that links appropriately with Mechanisms!
Yeah, its a simple 2-frame affair, and looks kinda like it jiggs back and forth until your brain is fooled by the illusion, but there you go!
Now, on to more serious business.
In my mind (Jonas might say differently), this is first and foremost a low-requirement Visualization tool; without Tarn stating that he is okay with us taking Stonesense in the direction of a GUI, I'm not going to push for it.
Through our participation in the development process of Dwarf Fortress, we all start to feel a little sense of ownership of the game... we've suggested features, tested for bugs, designed mods, spread publicity, and ultimately supported Tarn in this monumental effort. We all need to remember, however, that this is still Tarn's project, not ours, and it's an unpaid project at that. No matter how excited we all get about Dwarf Fortress, it's not at all fair to push him to do something that he doesn't want done... and he has already voiced his apprehensions about 3rd party graphical interfaces, and how that would impact the project.
Judging by how several on-line communities are viewing this project, especially the folks who say "Wow, now I might try Dwarf Fortress now!" or "I think I could finally get my friends to try this!" one can see that there is definitly a demand for a more accessable interface. Heck, I've even had friends I know in person say that this would get them into the game way more. The problem is that, if players start to rely on such a 3rd-party interface, the team designing it would have to be as dedicated as Tarn with updates and new features, or such an interface would have to be officially adopted... and collaboration is something he has also expressed great reservations about, as this is his brainchild.
But yes, in the universe where we are given the go-ahead from Tarn, interpreting mouse and key input with Stonesense, and translating it to input for DF would probably be the way to go. I'd imagine that drop-down menus for Constructions (a simple point-and-click for designating mining, sizing bridges, laying out roads and walls, etc.) would be doable, though anything beyond that depends entirely on the degree to we can interface with the program itself.
For now, though, the thing that keeps us from even being able to consider a GUI is the wealth of graphical issues that still need ironing out. We need tile rotations, fixes for some of the graphical hiccups such as the "Escher Effect", and a
-Lot- more tiles and sprites. For now, focus on that, and if we can eventually pitch a solid visual display and interface to Tarn, and prove that this is a dedicated project, maybe we'll see such a thing down the road.
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Topic: Stonesense - Old Official thread - Now locked (Read 1696469 times)