Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[sackhead]

from what i understand Toady doesn't realy care how successful DF is he has said before that if no one else played Df he would continue to make it. Sure the UI isn't perfect but once you get to know it it is not that bad just different to other games. I actualy prefer DF's interface to prison architects.
Out of interest Moonlighter how would you improve the UI?   

[Moonlighter]

from what i understand Toady doesn't realy care how successful DF is he has said before that if no one else played Df he would continue to make it. Sure the UI isn't perfect but once you get to know it it is not that bad just different to other games. I actualy prefer DF's interface to prison architects.
Out of interest Moonlighter how would you improve the UI?

The way you manage orders to your dwarves would be of the utmost priority. Look at how the community has rushed to save Toady from himself, with tools like Dwarf Therapist and such. Hell, there's even a Legends Viewer because the Legends are disorganized and hard to follow. But yeah, work priority and how you manage tasks would be most important for me.

[thvaz]

Stop with this bullshit of the community saving Dwarf Fortress from Toady. Not everyone use or need the tools provided by the community. They are not the sole reason new players start to play the game.

[Fen]

Moonlighter, I feel you misunderstand the purpose of Dwarf Fortress. It is not to be a cash cow best-seller title. Toady is making a game to his own specifications for what he wants. He just happens to be sharing this with everyone else who may be interested and is accepting donations from people who feel like giving. It's not here to make money. It's here to be Dwarf Fortress.

[Moonlighter]

Moonlighter, I feel you misunderstand the purpose of Dwarf Fortress. It is not to be a cash cow best-seller title. Toady is making a game to his own specifications for what he wants. He just happens to be sharing this with everyone else who may be interested and is accepting donations from people who feel like giving. It's not here to make money. It's here to be Dwarf Fortress.

How is fixing the UI going to make it a cash cow best-seller like CoD or Assassins Creed?

[Finn]

I just want dwarf fortress to be as successful as it can be...

Really?  Why?  Can you expound on this, because frankly I can't see why you are so interested in how successful or not successful this program is.

...and to do that, Toady does need to fix the UI. The reason why mod utilities have flourished isn't because the game is complex, it's because because of how impenetrable and unwieldy the current in game systems are.

Right, I'm sure everyone here agrees with you on this, including perhaps Toady.  Eventually the UI will be fixed.

There is no excuse for the shoddy UI design, no matter how fanatical this community is about the game developer.

Sure, in a finished product you'd be right.  You continue to choose to misunderstand on this.  So much so that I'm not entirely sure that you aren't just being trollish.  The "excuse" for the UI design has never been about the community being "fanatical about the game developer", it is because the project is not complete.  How hard is this to understand?   UI is on the list,  along with a lot of other things.  This has been mentioned several times by the developer. 

This is the point where the community's fanaticism becomes counter-intuitive and unproductive.

It is only unproductive in the sense that it doesn't pursue your goal and the only thing this community is "fanatical" about is leaving the developer alone to do what he wants to do.  None of us (except the few who write the sort of posts that you have) feel we have any right to dictate to Toady how he develops his project.  Why do you? 

We all enjoy Dwarf Fortress, don't get me wrong, it's just that we should realize it's faults instead of portraying it as perfect.

This is so off the mark it borders on being delusional, another trollish trait.  Are you actually reading the replies here?  Would you please quote any of the posts where people claim this game has "no faults" or is "perfect". 

Doing this will help direct Toady's attention to the UI, which needs to be done at this point. The game's been in development for years now, and the UI has barely even changed. That's not progress.

So please read this last sentence of yours again and perhaps you will see what I am trying to say.  You are trying to direct the development project along lines that you want to see it go, and you are trying to convince us to help you.  If some of us seem rude to you it's probably because we resent this.  Today doesn't work for you, me or anyone else in this community.  He doesn't owe anything to us either.  And trying to say the DF has not seen any progress is laughable to the point of being delusional again.  It's made a TON of progress, gee, sorry it's not changing what you want changed.  This is usually the point where I include this link...http://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs#d-express-windows-8...knock yourself out.

I'm not sure what you hoped to accomplish in this thread.  What do you imagine will come out of this?  Do you really think that the community will agree with you that the UI needs to be fixed right now?  That they will demand and clamor for Toady to fix it?  That Toady will actually give two shits about the clamor and work on that when he would rather be working on something else? 

As thvaz so succinctly put it a couple of posts up, please,

Stop with this bullshit of the community saving Dwarf Fortress from Toady.

Finn

[Anin]

When it comes to the UI I've never actually had any problem with it. It took a while to remember where everything was, but that's understandable where the game is in it's production at the moment.

[Kolnukbyne]

"ERMGERD THE UI IZNT AS GUD AS MINE OF WARCRAFT 6 FIXIT

Kind of the vibe I'm getting from these threads. Toady knows what's best for his game. Leave it at that. He'll do the UI when he decides the UI needs to be done.

I like that you compare Dwarf Fortress' financial success to retail games. Let me say that again: you are comparing how much money a free game funded only by willpower and donations makes compared to a game funded by people buying the game.

Can we next compare the success of youtube hobby videos to James Cameron's films?

[King Mir]

DF vs FTL

DF vs Prison Architect

Minecraft is just a beast, I think it would beat every AAA title on Google Trends.

You can't measure DF success by cash alone, as cash isn't what the developers sought, but the continuous and steady development of the game until it is finished.

That said, the UI sould be improved, but I understand the reason it is not the focus by now.

Looking at those... huh. Finland sure is interested in DF.

I wonder what that says about Finland and its people.

[ullrich]

I think some of the older posters need to chill a bit on the "DF is fine newb/are you a smurf" trend I have seen in quite a few threads lately.

Just cause someone has few posts/new account doesn't mean they made it for spamming a suggestion. There are some people like me who may follow forums for years without making an account. I would not be surprised if some of the posts are coming from the large gap in releases at this time that can cause people to reach for things to scratch that DF itch.

As for the UI thing everyone (who is sane) agrees it could use some work but as people have said Toady is making the game he likes about things he finds interesting, which means cleaning up old code (which is a very boring and laborious process [programmer here]) doesn't tend to happen till he needs to fix it to add new features. Community pressure isn't gonna help that.

Something that I recently found because I was bored that to me made the UI 100x better, I was testing Masterwork DF (because of the long release gap and wanted to spice it up a bit) the various DF Hack UI tool included are very useful, they add mouse support (mostly) and allow you to designated construction across complex shapes by box dragging not having to do 2 dozen separate sets of construction commands. I recommend trying out the DF hack Ui tools.

[Finn]

I think some of the older posters need to chill a bit on the "DF is fine newb/are you a smurf" trend I have seen in quite a few threads lately.

Just cause someone has few posts/new account doesn't mean they made it for spamming a suggestion. There are some people like me who may follow forums for years without making an account. I would not be surprised if some of the posts are coming from the large gap in releases at this time that can cause people to reach for things to scratch that DF itch.

You are right, and I am probably guiltier than most about this because this type of post really gets my gander up.  It's true that it may not be one troll with multiple accounts, or even two trolls.  It smells that way to me, because some of the phrasing and formatting is the same, but I could be wrong and there's little or no way for me to tell. 

But either way, whether it's one poster or many, I find the posts to be disingenuous and imply a staggering amount of selfish entitlement. 

It's like you're throwing a house party and some guy you don't know shows up with nothing but gets a bunch of guests together in another room and says "let's go tell Ullrich to make a beer run."

[Arbinire]

I think some of the older posters need to chill a bit on the "DF is fine newb/are you a smurf" trend I have seen in quite a few threads lately.

Just cause someone has few posts/new account doesn't mean they made it for spamming a suggestion. There are some people like me who may follow forums for years without making an account. I would not be surprised if some of the posts are coming from the large gap in releases at this time that can cause people to reach for things to scratch that DF itch.

As for the UI thing everyone (who is sane) agrees it could use some work but as people have said Toady is making the game he likes about things he finds interesting, which means cleaning up old code (which is a very boring and laborious process [programmer here]) doesn't tend to happen till he needs to fix it to add new features. Community pressure isn't gonna help that.

Something that I recently found because I was bored that to me made the UI 100x better, I was testing Masterwork DF (because of the long release gap and wanted to spice it up a bit) the various DF Hack UI tool included are very useful, they add mouse support (mostly) and allow you to designated construction across complex shapes by box dragging not having to do 2 dozen separate sets of construction commands. I recommend trying out the DF hack Ui tools.

Yes, everyone can agree that the UI is one of the walls new players come up against that usually becomes a deciding factor in whether or not they stick with the game, and making a post about it isn't in and of itself what ruffles peoples feathers.  What gets us "older posters"(I don't really consider myself an older poster yet by any means since I've mostly been a lurker) is after we say "yes we know, it's on the list of things to do, just not for awhile yet" and then the original poster gets super defensive, starts accusing people of fanaticism, being rude, and unable to accept not everyone shares their immediate view point.  I blame the microwave.

And like Finn said, the formatting, style, and just general feel to a lot of these Posts that start off with saccharin altruism and end with backhand or direct insults to Toady and the community does leave one wondering if it's the same person or couple of people making different accounts to drive up a false sense of urgency.

[nasobema]

On this occasion, I'd like to post a big thank you to Toady for all his efforts and not listening to what other people think might do better.

This is the very spirit of the game and what makes it so unique.

As for the UI: it's clumsy but manageable and that's what counts. Thanks to the great community we have many nice and helpful tools and tilesets.

And btw: looking forward to the new release!!!! even without improved UI 

[MrWiggles]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=131456.0

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=130710.0

The last two posts on this very similar issue, that once again brought forth by a new poster, delivering us a truth from nigh high to us mucky mucks stuck in the mire of murderous DF UI.