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[Pie]

Right, well obviously this is not an immediate goal, but I am sure that there will be a time when it is, and having discussed it beforehand I think would help significantly. So I've tried to come up with an initial plan for how this could work. Bear in mind that I have assumed that we'll have mouse support and that all features such as 'k' to view a unit are replaced with 'mouse over' to view a pop-up box with info about what you are mousing over. So, without further ado, here is my idea:

Structure:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• Pause (Space)
• Resources/Population
• Announcements
  
  • Combat Reports
    
    • Military
    • Hunting
    • Misc
  • Detailed Stock List
  • Detailed Population Information
  • Justice
  • Kitchen Settings
  • Civilisations
  • View items
  • View rooms
  • Nobles
  • Artifacts
• Orders
  
  • Standing orders
  • Squad control
  • Jobs
• Planning/Construction
  
  • Planning
    
    • Designation (one time)
      
      • Area to be mined
      • Vein to be mined
      • Channel to be dug
      • Detail stone (if rough, smooth. If smooth, engrave)
      • Carve Fortifications
    • Designation (continuous)
      
      • Trees to be cut
      • Plants to be gathered
      • Zones
    • Burrow Control
    • Remove designation
    • Remove building/building plan
  • Construction
    
    • Food
      
      • Butcher’s shop
      • Kitchen
      • Fishery
      • Still
      • Farm plot
      • Kitchen Settings
    • Glass
      
      • Glass furnace
        
        • Standard
        • Magma
      • Kiln
      • Jeweller’s workshop
    • Gem
      
      • Jeweller’s workshop
    • Metal
      
      • Smelter
        
        • Standard
        • Magma
      • Forge
        
        • Standard
        • Magma
      • Wood furnace
      • Craftsdwarf’s workshop
    • Textile
      
      • Plant
        
        • Farm plot
        • Farmer’s workshop
        • Thresher
        • Clothier’s shop
      • Silk
        
        • Loom
        • Clothier’s shop
      • Dye
        
        • Millstone
        • Quern
        • Dyer’s shop
    • Wood
      
      • Bowyer’s workshop
      • Carpenter’s workshop
      • Craftsdwarf’s workshop
      • Siege workshop
      • Wood furnace
    • Soap
      
      • Butcher’s shop
      • Kitchen
      • Wood furnace
      • Alchemist’s laboratory
      • Ashery
    • Fuel
      
      • Wood furnace
      • Smelter
    • Furniture
      
      • Armour stand
      • Bed
      • Seat
      • Table
      • Coffin
      • Chest
      • Statue
      • Window (choose material later)
      • Cage
    • Mechanisms/Stoneworking
      
      • Mechanic's workshop
      • Mason's workshop
      • Craftsdwarf's workshop
• Help
  
  • Step-by-step tutorial
  • Materials info
  • Industry info

(God damn that was a bitch to compile from word.)

Mock up to show the idea of consistent tabs (they would each have different stuff underneath them):
Here
I will add more stuff to this later, but I think it conveys at least some of the idea.

I am going to do a full mock-up in flash, but I wanted to check if I'd missed any key functionality before I did/if there are any major changes. Also note that the major titles (Pause, Resource/Population, Announcements and Planning/Construction) are always on screen, as tabs that you can immediately switch to. Therefore the largest number of clicks to get something done is (by my calculation) 5 (to get to a magma glass smelter from, say, the announcements tab). Some elements appear multiple times, because they are related to multiple things. I designed this to try to reduce the need for reference to the wiki or tutorials.

Give me some constructive criticism please, along with your ideas.

[sproingie]

I'm no fan of a mouse-centric interface, and I don't think a pop-up has any specific benefit over a dedicated information area.  I'm not old-fashioned, I enjoy plenty of other games with the mouse as the only selection interface, and I wouldn't mind expanded mouse input in DF.  But the command interface in DF is complex, and not always needlessly so, and I wouldn't be keen on mouse replacing a keyboard interface for selection.

Now in the area of mouse enhancement, I wouldn't mind being able to toggle informational tooltips and/or icons for unit types, names, workshop status, etc, possibly with them expanding to greater detail when clicked.

[Pie]

I'm no fan of a mouse-centric interface, and I don't think a pop-up has any specific benefit over a dedicated information area.  I'm not old-fashioned, I enjoy plenty of other games with the mouse as the only selection interface, and I wouldn't mind expanded mouse input in DF.  But the command interface in DF is complex, and not always needlessly so, and I wouldn't be keen on mouse replacing a keyboard interface for selection.

Now in the area of mouse enhancement, I wouldn't mind being able to toggle informational tooltips and/or icons for unit types, names, workshop status, etc, possibly with them expanding to greater detail when clicked.

Well that is fair enough, but I don't really see any benefit of the 'k' method over mousing over things to gain information. Regardless, you could just add an extra menu item for viewing things (oh, and the pop-up idea is separate: you could just have info appear in the sidebar when you mouse).

But yeah, the main purpose of this thread is the actual structure that I've designed. What do you think of that?

[Impaler[WrG]]

I don't see anything covering construction (walls, bridges, wells).   Also I see no need to do bury workshops under so many categories, just having them all under 'workshops' would be fine.  DF already goes too far in separating furnace from workshops which I see your removing which is good but don't go an replace it for yet more layers.

[Pilsu]

A mouse interface doesn't mean there won't be hotkeys

That thing seems really overloaded with needless submenus. You can sort the workshops by purpose (so farm plot is in the same section of the list) but there's no reason to add separate menus for food related workshops for instance

[Pie]

I don't see anything covering construction (walls, bridges, wells) nor furniture (doors, cabinets Tables).   Also I see no need to do bury workshops under so many categories, just having them all under 'workshops' would be fine.  DF already goes too far in separating furnace from workshops which I see your removing which is good but don't go an replace it for yet more layers.

You are right about the walls bridges etc (I forgot about them), but furniture is there. Good point about reducing the layers (though I think that maybe we could get the best of both worlds if there was an additional option to see buildings filtered by industry - so if you decide "hey, I'm going to set up a glass industry" you can just check that and then it will only show buildings associated with that. Or maybe it could just be a few little icons next to the building to tell you what is associated with what.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Yes, sorry I messed the furniture then immediately noticed it and edited the post, you must have been very quick to have seen it.

I've always felt the current workshop system should be replaced with a work-room system as described in Eternal Suggestion #27 as of this post, this could go so far as to essentially merge the room, stockpile and workshop and possibly zones concepts into one entity which would have a great deal of flexibility.  When the players selects and places such a thing their really just selecting a data template to apply to the new entity, which means its no big deal to allow custom templates to be added to their selection list as well.

[Pie]

Yes, sorry I messed the furniture then immediately noticed it and edited the post, you must have been very quick to have seen it.

I've always felt the current workshop system should be replaced with a work-room system as described in Eternal Suggestion #27 as of this post, this could go so far as to essentially merge the room, stockpile and workshop and possibly zones concepts into one entity which would have a great deal of flexibility.  When the players selects and places such a thing their really just selecting a data template to apply to the new entity, which means its no big deal to allow custom templates to be added to their selection list as well.

I am a ninja post spotter

Under my latest idea (which you can see partially I think in the mock-up), the notion of zones is actually the extrapolated out to mean any area where a continuous function occurs. So I would put stockpiles, current zones, tree cutting designation and plant gathering there (and possibly even burrows).

It is actually fairly difficult to break away from traditional thinking about the DF interface because it is hardcoded into my brain. I'm trying to work it so that someone could almost intuitively 'get' it. So if they want to build something they go to the build menu. Furniture should not be 'built' in my view (hence 'placed' in the mockup). Also, though I never mentionned this, I think it is fairly obvious that we should have consistent controls throughout (so the same buttons for scrolling etc). I think it might be better to have 4 tabs at the top, and separate designations and zones from general building construction. What do you guys think?

[Impaler[WrG]]

I agree that furniture because its placed has too be a separate concept.  The biggest challenge to your interface redesign is that DF has too many concepts to mentally juggle, zones, rooms, stockpiles, workshops, constructions, furniture and that's without dealing with ANY actual dwarfs yet.  Its going to be very hard to fit all that into a simple interface until these concepts get paired-down and merged to the maximum extent possible.