Yes, it nice to start with a good looking approach.
Assuming the path is from [appearance}--->[function], then other than what is done first, it makes
little difference IF one is successful.
While it is possible to go from an aesthetically pleasing design to a finished product, frequently is
is more practical to put a "skin" (or GUI, if you wish) on an backbone that is more or less functional and
functioning.
Car companies certainly do design sleek looking bodies and then turn them into "concept cars", so it can be
done. But that is a tricky and complicated process, that is changed even more if there is going to be a
production car that resembles the concept car.
Now I know that software is not exactly equivalent to a piece of hardware or a car. I suppose that IF one was very fluent with writing software, especially modular and/or object oriented, or whatever they're doing
these days, code one might be able to come up with a flexible enough method by starting with some sort of slick look. Fine, IF that gets done.
What is being said, elsewhere not here, and privately, is that the concern is that what is going to happen, or what is wanted by whomever does the wanting is a "small sand box" where the user gets to "take it or leave it". Period.
A disaster in the main.
Sort of a "dumbing down".
Which would be ironic for a client for a game that takes so much intellectual brain power to play, and more effort to study and learn.
Somehow, if developers don't see functionality as one of the primary goal and requirement, I doubt that functionality will ever be present except as a skeletal subset.
Finally, for most pieces of software it is hard to add on, unless the framework is set up initially and designed with the explicit intent to do just that.
Well, I think that's enough on this subject for the present.
Nothing I say seems likely to have any impact or impression, so this is an exercise in frustration for me.
A productive discussion would be nice, but that seems nearly impossible in this forum.
Parochial and prior viewpoints seem chiseled in stone.
Shame it is.
-- Ed )