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[dray]

It sounds to me as though the one major contention, the one thing that could use a change, is to have the ability to narrow down huge fields by typing letters in. This is demonstrated to be particularly handy in the manager window when queuing up new jobs, as well as in Dwarf Therapist when searching for a particular dwarf from amongst a huge fort.

I think that if just this one change was made, a great deal of frustration would be alleviated even with all of the other things that people find tricky.

[tyrannus007]

In the Eternal Suggestion List, there's a suggestion to externalize the interface so it can be modded. That seems like the way to go.

[Elvang]

There are some great suggestions and mockups on how to improve the UI here (the original post isn't quite up to date on the links) . A couple of the earlier ideas/mockups no longer apply due to content updates, like the early military screen mockups.

I also would like more screens dealing with potentially large lists/categories of items to be searchable. Selecting goods to move to the depot is fairly easy, that same system would work great for the stocks menu.

[Kinasin]

IMO an interface overhaul would lesser the learning curve which would attract more players which is always a good thing so making that first would pay off in the long run although i agree with the assessment that for any future additions Toady would have to think of the interface for those too. For right now however i would like full screen option on all screens (we got full screen world generation recently i think?) and the ability to use mouse scroll on stocks/military/etc screens because before full screen a single page up/down would jump like 10 lines now it jumps the whole screen so i need to use arrows for scrolling all the way to the middle, at least let us use the mouse to select individual things.

It would be so much easier if a interface like the one used in gnomoria was implemented.

This. Gnomoria interface is fantastic you can build anything with a right mouse click, i hope Toady isn't above copying from a game that copies DF.

My thoughts exactly. 

[Babylon]

I think that being able to zoom to a spot on the region map by clicking there would help with navigation.

[toomanysecrets]

OP: You have to try to consider the fact that this game is made by pretty much just two people. Also, the current version is .34.xx.  This means 34 planned game features have been impletemented out of roughly 100.  Since the game is not even close, by a long shot, to even beta, why would there be any final finishing touches on the interface? It's complicated because the game is complicated.

Second, isn't a little premature to knock the UI when you admit you don't even know it yet?  Try the quickstart on the wiki instead of youtube videos. That is a much better way of learning all the basic keystrokes.

Third, I think once you learn the controls, you start to realize it's way faster than using a mouse to pick stuff out of a menu.

Just jump in with both feet.  Use the crap out of the wiki.

[Tres]

The only major flaw (to me) are items that have different short-cuts depending on the menu you got to them from, designating an up / down stairway vs constructing one (d-i vs b-C-x) for example.

[zwei]

I think its awesome that this game has so much complexity, but I'd really like to see sorted menus and searches. When you're adding a new job you can just type in what you want and the game sifts through everything until you get a match. Its fast and efficient. With the huge size of most of the menus a lot of time is spent searching for what you want just because everything is unsorted.

This. The controls make sense to me. D for designate, b for build. Its easy, but the worst part is looking for individual stuffs. I hate having to scroll through pages upon pages of crap. The bring stuff to the depot page has a search, and the manager new job page, as well as the embarking page. I just want to be able to search my stock page, the names on my military positions page, and the units page.

Yes, ability to search for both commands and items would go long way in making game more pleasant to play.

But it only helps players who are familiar with game already. It does little for newbies because they do not know what to look for.

I train animals in i-area (formely in b-building) and place then in i-area. however, caged animals are put in p-stockpile, some animal handling is also done in b-buildings.

I b-build bed and make dormitory from it, but i i-zone hospital.

I designate individual trees to cut down and herbs to pick, but hunting and fishing automatically picks targets and commences action, collecting webs is triggered by workshop job and picks target on its own and sand/clay is triggered by workshop job but requires i-zone.

There is unified vision about what features are being added, but no unified vision how they are to be accessed by player.

---

Besides this, UI is missing rather simple quality of life things: I would, for example, expect that holding right mouse button and dragging mouse would move map and that mouse wheel would change z-levels (and scroll full-screen lists).

[Starver]

Well, usually on overhead views, and especially in such as Google Earth/Maps, the scroll-wheel changes zoom-level.  And (I think, given I don't use it much) this is what it does with the game.

Of course, for DF (unlike a lot of games, where more detailed or high-breadth of view of a map is perhaps hugely more important, it being essentially a scalable vector graphic), the very fact that the zoom-function is not so much used (by me, leastwise) means that it could be farmed off to some other control process, because what a user really wants at his/her hands is the ability to change Z-levels...  But it might well be a lot more non-intuitive.  Equivalent to the number of times I've gone back to the DFMA map viewer and mixed up the level-change and zoom controls on that interface, for a few moments.

But then I'm a keyboard person.  And I have the Z-changing buttons easily at hand, as with every other control, and I personally find control via keyboard (scrolling around, and slicing up and down) is far more accurate than using a mouse.  Ok, so there's no quick-scroll and slow-scroll ability (save for shift-cursor to move ten at a time, which is in turn also good for accuracy), compared to moving the mouse a lot/a bit, or (even with usual the 'ridge-resistance' on the scrolling wheel, while not middle button/buttin_3 ) more quickly or more slowly moving the wheel back and forth, depending on how quickly you want to ascend/descend.

DF's environment isn't a continuum, but is split into discrete blocks in all directions.  As such a multi-tap is logically aligned to the same number of multi-moves in the given direction or Z-shift.  I think there could be better ways to implement some things through extended mouse use, but I find it hard to be convinced that it would be a worthwhile improvement for all players (not just newbies), and that the problem with newbies-being-stuck couldn't be solved just with something more explicit (or a 'learning mode'/guided example level), once the game has settled down enough to allow it to not be a developer-diversion that has to be diverted into again and again when some later (possibly massive) UI overhauls happen anyway...


So, not sure where I went with all that.  I can see where you're going, all the while with me being a stick-in-the-mud keyboard user.  I think the community really has to take the lead with more (and perhaps more refined) hints and tips being available from the usual resources, and reacting quickly to all those changes Toady will bring about.  This solves the "I don't know how to do this" situations, leaving us the interface complaints of "there is no way to (simply) do this" kind, within which the "sort lists" sort of suggestions lie.  (But beware the latter being solved in ways that further confuse the people who are still suffering from the prior complaint.  Needs to be consistent.)


((Should I summarise that summary?  Naw, I'm sure it's Ok...  Apolos if still TL;DR;ish, though.))

[falconne]

Apologies for bringing back an old thread, but I noticed that several people have mentioned that being able to search/filter some of the long lists, similar to the manager and "bring to depot" screens would alleviate some of the issues with the UI.

You might be interested in a plugin I wrote recently for DFHack that enables "find as you type" searching in a few other screens: Units, Animals, Stocks and Trade. I wrote about it here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=118001.0

[GreatWyrmGold]

In this subforum, we prefer that you necro over clogging up the subforum with more topics.
Searching screens would be very useful.