How to see whom I am at war with???

[Peter Ebbesen]

Arryn said:
Assume all you want. *I* enjoy writing UI code, and have done so since the late 80s. What's more, the part of writing UI code I most enjoy is precisely that which you claim the fewest enjoy: that of tweaking existing code. Moreover, I particularly enjoy rewriting other people's (bad) UI code.

Knew that that would get a rise out of you.

Your (false) assertions are refuted.

And impressively fast too. Well, it is my own fault for not specifically limiting the class of programmers to games programmers.

Joking apart, it is my experience with games programmers that many tend to think of time writing and tweaking the UI as a necessary evil, when what they REALLY want to spend time on is having the Orc kill the Elf in a sensible fashion rather than having it running into walls, dying of starvation, or causing fatal crashes when you least expect it. Everybody acknowledges that good UI is important, but as good UI (as opposed to "sufficiently good to work") is one of the hardest things to do right (assuming you have a decent spread of target audience for the game) and a time-consuming one as well, it is common to prefer spending time on tweaking game-engine code to see immediate results than on interface enhancements that may also require designer input and new graphics and often present minimal immediate benefit to the programmer. (In sufficiently small game companies the graphics designer might also be the programmer. In that case expect peculiarities)

Which is why sufficiently large games companies hire the dedicated souls who like to do it and hand responsibility over to people who are actually good at it, dedicating their time to interface issues rather than time sharing it with game-engine or component construction, while smaller companies have to make do with local talent - and quite often suffer from it.

Dominions 2 is a good case in point. Its graphics interface, severe micromanagement tedium in the mid-to-late-game, and in many ways unresponsive interface practically screams "written by programmers for programmers (and geeks)". As such, it is to be expected that the programmers of Dominions 2 prefer to do as little UI tweaking (which can take a lot of time for little tangible benefit to their own enjoyment) while instead tweaking spells, units, items, and killing off occasional bugs.