- Designating digging/plant gathering/tree chopping, painting burrows, painting zones, designating buildings/constructions use the same graphical icons but each play by different rules. Erasing dig/plant/tree orders requires you to go back and use a seperate "erase" tool, while burrow/zone/stockpile erasing is done in the same painting interface, and removing building/construction orders requires clicking each one and cancelling or cancelling the corresponding task in the tasks screen. All of these should just use the zone/burrow/stockpile painting system. I imagine there could even be one "paint" tool where the player selects their desired "paint" from a "palette" of mining, plant gathering, tree chopping, stockpile, zone, burrow, construction, building--and then selects from a "sub-palette" the priority, automine, construction/furniture type and desired material filters (instead of selecting pre-existing items--just like the df hack feature) and then uses the familiar click-paint and box tools.
- You should just click the unit's icon (the little picture showing their clothes, weapons, etc.) in whatever list to see their sheet instead of having a separate "magnifying glass" button. Everywhere where unit icons are useful, so is the ability to see the unit's sheet, so it should just be implemented that way to make UI design easier and more usable.
- All animal lists are impossible to sort in any coherent way currently. Sort by "profession" doesn't work correctly (whatever counts as a profession for animals anyways) nor does "name" or "domestication". And for cages, they're sorted in order of appearance, which is probbably simpler technically but again makes things difficult for players.
- The justice menu needs to be searchable/filterable.
- All surnames should be in english or native languages everywhere, not a mix of both.
- Pressing "esc" or right-clicking needs to always do the same thing--go back one "interface layer". Currently, pressing esc while defining adjectives for a work order condition--the only way to leave that menu--goes back TWO layers, to the work orders list. Pressing esc with just the squad menu open should close the squad menu, then another press opens the game preferences. Currently it does both in one press, because the squad menu opens AND closes with 'Q' instead, clearly so players can refer to it while in other interfaces--but the only time they have the opportunity to do that is when selecting new squad members, as all other interfaces from the panel either don't require info from other panels that can be open (giving orders) or themselves open another panel (equipping, scheduling, etc.). You wouldn't need the weird exceptional 'Q' behavior if the interface "stacked" like it used to, anyways--that means opening a character sheet from say, the equip interface and closing it leads you back to the equip interface.
- Let us define bolts for marksdwarves to use!
- The trade good selection interfaces' items list makes no sense--there is no need to make seperate sub-categories for each different material pants, etc. when there is a string search already for when players want to isolate certain details. Add a "select all matches" functionality like the stockpile filter screen.
- All lists should smooth-scroll instead of snap-scroll, the snapping makes quickly browsing to find a specific unit name/item (which happens way too often) more difficult. For some reason, only a few lists smooth-scroll.
- Really, all the item-list/filter interfaces (trade goods, stocks, stockpiles, work order conditions, etc.) should work the same way, as should all the unit-list interfaces. It's more usable and from a layman's perspective, technically simpler.
I think the every-function-has-different-interface-rules is the real thing that makes the UI clunky and is an artifact of the way the game was developed. Adding graphics and mouse support only helps usability so much.
Author
Topic: [Steam] Most requested list of quality of life changes this game needs as of now (Read 5406 times)