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[Alatun]

I looked into the development pages and did not find anything related to UI/usability. I only found a 4 year old thread regarding usability issues, but these seem to partially fixed already.  This may be low priority, but some things are quite annoying (at least for me :-) ) and could probably be fixed quite easily.

- cursor management: leave the cursor where it was. Currently it seems when you press ESC to get back to the top level menu to trigger a new action, the cursor gets reset to the center of the screen. Lets say I want to create a stockpile(p). I move the cursor to a certain position and define the stockpile. In many cases you want to refine the settings of the stockpile. So you must go back to main menu and issue "q" to refine the settings. Now the cursor is back in the middle of the screen and you need to move to the spot, where you just created the stockpile. If the cursor would stay where it was, this would make life a lot easier. I could note a couple of actions, where the current behavior is annoying. To prevent confusion: when you scroll the screen and the last cursor position would get moved off screen THEN you could reset the cursor the middle of the current screen. IMHO this could make playing much smoother.

- leave map without saving: another small thing. Currently you need to kill the process. All 3rd party tools lose their connection and must reconnect.

- handling of linked items: stockpile & workplaces, triggers & actuator. Currently a stockpile can display which workplace it will give items. It would be nice, if the workplace could also show which stockpiles it takes items from. Because this can be list, it be difficult to display this in the workplace menu, but maybe in the workplace profile page in a new tab "linked stockpiles". A similar technique could be used to display the linkage between any triggers and their actuators.

Thanks for reading. Any comments appreciated.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Hi. It's not listed in Dev notes yet, but right now Toady is at the beginning of a massive overhaul of the UI in order to release the game on Steam and Itch.io later this year (start of 2021?).
So good time for suggestions (although bear in mind he's already had over a decade's worth of feedback on the UI so far, so basics he probably already knows about).

I think "save & quit" is a philosophical issue rather than right out UI problem. Many Roguelikes still only offer "save & quit" (others allow "quit without save" too so there are arguments for both).

A few comments from Tarn on UI and other stuff:
https://www.pcgamer.com/tutorials-and-mouse-support-could-make-dwarf-fortress-on-steam-vastly-easier-to-play/

[Pancakes]

Personally, one minor change that I would LOVE would be if the date was displayed in-game, similar to the FPS counter or idle dwarf counter.

Another thing would be being able to swap through certain displays in-game in the same manner as pressing TAB currently. The fact that TAB only swaps the visibility of the minimap and the main command menu is a bit of a missed opportunity. I'd like to be able to swap between displaying, say food levels, with the number of creatures on the map, right where the minimap currently is. Honestly, having to pause the game and view a seperate screen entirely just to view the amount of food or view the date is a real hassle, and small bumps in the UI like that are what have made Dwarf Fortress have the infamous reputation that it does.

[Alatun]

I think "save & quit" is a philosophical issue rather than right out UI problem. Many Roguelikes still only offer "save & quit" (others allow "quit without save" too so there are arguments for both).

Yes it's a philosophical issue, but I'd like to see players having the option to choose.

With the current philosophy of the game: open for 3rd party tools, open for modding aso. what does a "force to save and quit" achieve?
When using tools like DF-Hack I can teleport dwarfs, monsters, uncover the map, fix moods and do dozens of other things not doable inside core game. And there is a risk, that I corrupt my world. The game itself is not free of bugs too. I can always kill the process, but this causes some inconveniences (aka usability).

An option to "force save and quit" should be considered, if you have an incentive to play a "hard mode"/"iron man mode" or how it is called by other games. Then you should also think about "how do you prevent cheating?". This is a completely different game philosophy than the current game.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I think "save & quit" is a philosophical issue rather than right out UI problem. Many Roguelikes still only offer "save & quit" (others allow "quit without save" too so there are arguments for both).

Yes it's a philosophical issue, but I'd like to see players having the option to choose.

With the current philosophy of the game: open for 3rd party tools, open for modding aso. what does a "force to save and quit" achieve?
When using tools like DF-Hack I can teleport dwarfs, monsters, uncover the map, fix moods and do dozens of other things not doable inside core game. And there is a risk, that I corrupt my world. The game itself is not free of bugs too. I can always kill the process, but this causes some inconveniences (aka usability).

An option to "force save and quit" should be considered, if you have an incentive to play a "hard mode"/"iron man mode" or how it is called by other games. Then you should also think about "how do you prevent cheating?". This is a completely different game philosophy than the current game.

Third party utils give you a save without quit option so what's the problem?

Toady wants to make a game in a certain way. A game he wants to play. He doesn't use 3rd party utils. That's the privilege of dedicating most of your life to making a game by yourself. You disagree. He disagrees with you. Until he feels like changing his mind one day.

[Putnam]

Third party utils give you a save without quit option so what's the problem?

There's a thread open right now in general discussion asking how to make the game more accessible to noobs, so this isn't particularly a good point? Especially when I can use third party utils to do pretty much anything I desire. Why develop at all?

You disagree. He disagrees with you.

I'm not actually sure that's the case?

Personally I think save-without-quitting and quit-without-saving are both reasonable for fortress mode, perhaps as a start-game option. Mount and Blade does this, actually, and it's perfectly fine.

[therahedwig]

I agree that quit-without-save or save-without-quit is not going to be the end of the world, hell I bet even full duplicate saves and loads like any modern style rpg is not really going to change df (though, maybe not the best idea given how heavy DF saves are...).

quit-without-save can already be achieved by force closing df, and through that people have already been save scumming. Like, the monster island thread was 99% save scumming, but the story being told was no less epic. Similarly, the stuff you can achieve by modding is far far more cheating than save scumming could ever be.

[Putnam]

The game already has duplicate saves and loads with the AUTOBACKUP and AUTOSAVE init settings, mind

[Alatun]

Another list of usability issues and some improvement suggestions:

* stockpiles:
- a way to extend existing stockpiles (maybe like defining burrows works)
- a way to copy settings of one stockpile to another (DFHack lets you save and store settings, but even that is cumbersome) - military schedule already has C&P
- items lists in stockpile settings should be sorted (maybe hierarchical lists or other filters could help: e.g. defining a stockpile that should contain all types of fat)
  Maybe a smart filter can only offer the items available in the current map (or that have been detected so far). Maybe some better ordering of types would make life a lot easier (e.g. put the mostly used seed type to the top of the list).

*build menu:
- the items in the build menu are neither sorted alphabetically nor logical. I would prefer a logical grouping:
  #furniture like items (beds, tables, seats, cabinet, container, weapon rack, instruments....)
  #constructions (walls, floors, .. but also doors, floodgate, hatches, windows, traps,...)
  #workshops & furnaces - this should include farm plots 
  #machines & siege engines
  #roads & bridges - maybe add the trade depot here

To avoid the need to open a group each time, the game could remember the last group that was accessed and automatically open this group. E.g. if you need to build many doors this could reduce the number of required key presses.

*unit list:
- an option to sort the list according to dwarf name would be nice. Sometimes you need to find a specific dwarf and with the current list it's also cumbersome. (incremental search would be cool: like the filter when choosing material for job)
- a 3rd column would be nice showing the information that you see when press "z" (goto unit). This would make it a lot easier to check dwarfs equipment aso.

*work order list:
- editing the amount of items for a work order would be nice. You can edit numbers for conditions, but not the number of the work order itself.
- after creating a work order it's put at the end of the list, but the first item of the list is being selected. Please select the order just created.
- putting an order into suspend state - sometimes a reagent is out of stock and the work order cannot continue and you get announcements for that. So either you ignore the announcements and remove the order (and need to recreate it later). Simply putting an order into suspend, could be a solution.

[darkhog]

This DF-like game shows a great deal of ideas how it could be improved (and no, it's not RimWorld): https://store.steampowered.com/app/688060/Odd_Realm/