The version numbering scheme for DF is based on a percentage of desired features that have been implemented. The most recently-released version of DF is 0.43.04. It's not even half-way done!
So, guys create a ton of work for themselves and post up a public tracker. They scope the game to be WAAAY larger than what it could reasonably be, but this scoping allows its creators to put up this multi-generational progress bar that slowly-but-surely inches to completion, and in the process eke out a meager living. The elation, when that progress bar does move, is borderline orgasmic.
I call BS
Not everyone is out for a big score, and not all plans are short term.
They've already been working on it for a dozen years, so what's another dozen?
Anyway, back to the UI: they can rethink or polish it in the run-up to 1.0; no need to spend too much time on before then.
> The game is over a dozen years old and from what I have experienced seems relatively complete.
The original link for this thread is basically a huge list of the things that are not yet implemented.
Complete for a game, that is. All the pieces are there, the interactive feedback loop is in place, and one can currently get lost in it for hundreds of hours, should they so choose. That is a complete game to me.
The rest of that list? Stretch goals. Or the entire vision. What, you think I've never seen that list? It's a big list, and it's stupid because it is so impossibly long. The entire vision is never 1.0...
But, as you say, it's their project. They can do with it what they want. I can sit here and critique and wish it were better, and you can defend it, and together we change nothing. I just really want to play a game as inspired as this in a way that doesn't require the kind of devotion and study this game does, because its a friggin videogame and I need to devote my studyin' time to shit that actually matters (to me, touche).
(And besides, I think we human beings have a fetish for complexity that we really could do without)