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[widden]

Guys, as you probably all know the learning curve of this game is ...well, it's not even steep, it's a bloody rock-climbing exercise.  When a basic tutorial is a 2.5Hr video, it's a good indicator that there's space for improvement

There are a number of reasons IMHO.

1) character graphics (yes I've now found gfx packs) - I'm sorry but it's the technology of 30 years ago (I certainly haven't played anything using it for about 30yrs), and for good reason; you can't recognise anything at all, simply by looking at a character.  Does it represent a tree or a monkey, maybe a pile of rocks?  No idea.

2) 2D overhead view - even this makes things fairly hard, there's a good reason we've 3D for a long while now. (especially painful on a hillside)

3) control - we have the rodent for ages now, everybody has it, why not use it?  It'd help enormously in navigating around and selecting objects, etc.

4) Consistency
There's a lack of consistency in a few areas.  Look at controls, or marking down stuff. 
Sometimes you use the cursor keys to navigate around the map or in the menus, sometimes you have to use other keys. 
OR when you mark stockpiles vs "building" - from the user's standpoint it's pretty much the same operation, you mark an area for something...yet they're utterly different to set up.
Or that the program uses different names for the same thing, but won't understand me if I do the same.  This one-way variation is rather annoying.
Use the same name, anything else is just creating confusion.
The game is complicated enough without these extra twists.

5) in-game help and clear labelling.  Go to an inventory, and you have the option something like "enter - change status" ...well, isn't that nice?  But what the heck is the difference between status one and two is anybody's guess.  There are a lot of areas with similar problems, where little or no information is available on the operation at hand, or why it would not work, etc.


I'm not against this game at all, don't get me wrong.  But getting into it is something like a week or two of hard work, it seems.  And it's not fun - you have to read and listen to long lessons and try to remember it all, practice, read/listen again...  I don't know where it begins to become fun.  I'm pretty sure I'll never get there as I already feel exhausted after two few-hour sessions.  It's just work.

The idea is great, the freedom is great, it's the execution and accessibility which needs work.  It's overly and unreasonably convoluted, and the aforementioned things are all artificial barriers making access even harder.

And I'm pretty sure most difficulties could be alleviated a LOT by little things, simply using today's tech available. (mouse, 3D, maybe context sensitive menus...) plus the consistency.


These are of course just my opinions, I'm sure a lot of you seasoned players won't agree with me - but if you guys want to appeal to a broader audience, I think you'll have to look into these areas sooner than later. 

Best regards, and good luck!

[G-Flex]

1) character graphics (yes I've now found gfx packs) - I'm sorry but it's the technology of 30 years ago (I certainly haven't played anything using it for about 30yrs), and for good reason; you can't recognise anything at all, simply by looking at a character.  Does it represent a tree or a monkey, maybe a pile of rocks?  No idea.

I don't think the characters for trees or rocks are used for anything else, or certainly not much at all. At any rate, it's a valid complaint, but could also be solved by using more characters. I want unicode DF, god dammit!

2) 2D overhead view - even this makes things fairly hard, there's a good reason we've 3D for a long while now. (especially painful on a hillside)

DF reasonably 3D-rendering everything in the game is orders of magnitude less feasible than having distinct 2D tiles for everything. I doubt it's going to happen, really. There are suggestions for displaying multiple z-levels by dimming lower ones, and things like that, which... helps, I guess.

Some people have suggested overhead isometric (or similar) displays, which would also help, but those have potential problems of their own.

3) control - we have the rodent for ages now, everybody has it, why not use it?  It'd help enormously in navigating around and selecting objects, etc.

More mouse control is a popular suggestion, although I think the keyboard will always be important due to the plethora of things you can do.

4) Consistency
There's a lack of consistency in a few areas.  Look at controls, or marking down stuff. 
Sometimes you use the cursor keys to navigate around the map or in the menus, sometimes you have to use other keys. 
OR when you mark stockpiles vs "building" - from the user's standpoint it's pretty much the same operation, you mark an area for something...yet they're utterly different to set up.
Or that the program uses different names for the same thing, but won't understand me if I do the same.  This one-way variation is rather annoying.
Use the same name, anything else is just creating confusion.
The game is complicated enough without these extra twists.

Yeah, this problem is pretty well-known. Seems like Toady wants to experiment more with interface options before standardizing much.

5) in-game help and clear labelling.  Go to an inventory, and you have the option something like "enter - change status" ...well, isn't that nice?  But what the heck is the difference between status one and two is anybody's guess.  There are a lot of areas with similar problems, where little or no information is available on the operation at hand, or why it would not work, etc.

Yeah, the game needs to be more self-documenting. Much of the information in the wiki should be possible in-game. I want to be able to tell the industrial uses of things, and how big one of those weird cave creatures is, in-game.

And I'm pretty sure most difficulties could be alleviated a LOT by little things, simply using today's tech available. (mouse, 3D, maybe context sensitive menus...) plus the consistency.

To reiterate, even simple 3D graphics are nowhere near a "simple" thing to implement.

[Bdthemag]

See the problem with graphics is, DF does alot of generating. People who have huge forts usually get around 10 FPS. Think what it would be like with 3D rendering.

[612DwarfAvenue]

Yeah, if DF was in 3D, you'd need the NASA Supercomputer to play it.

1) character graphics (yes I've now found gfx packs) - I'm sorry but it's the technology of 30 years ago (I certainly haven't played anything using it for about 30yrs), and for good reason; you can't recognise anything at all, simply by looking at a character.  Does it represent a tree or a monkey, maybe a pile of rocks?  No idea.

You haven't played DF much, have you? As you play, you learn to recognize what each symbol represents.

And so what if it's 30 years old? The Telephone was invented in 1876, and it's still used.

[nogoodnames]

Speaking as someone who's been playing DF for a few months I can tell you that the ACSII graphics grow on you. I prefer them by far to any of the graphics packs, and making DF use 3D graphics would just not work for a multitude of reasons.

[AutomataKittay]

1) character graphics (yes I've now found gfx packs) - I'm sorry but it's the technology of 30 years ago (I certainly haven't played anything using it for about 30yrs), and for good reason; you can't recognise anything at all, simply by looking at a character.  Does it represent a tree or a monkey, maybe a pile of rocks?  No idea.

Even old graphics works perfectly well. And it's tileset-based, so it's certainly nothing like thing that old! And you haven't been playing long enough if you don't recognize things, or probable range of things. As you've said, you've found better graphic set!

2) 2D overhead view - even this makes things fairly hard, there's a good reason we've 3D for a long while now. (especially painful on a hillside)

Personally thinks that 2D's the best way of viewing things considering the nature of fortress mode, you do have to deal with a LOT of things in each plane in a busy one. I don't plays adventure mode enough to say if 3D would be helpful.

3) control - we have the rodent for ages now, everybody has it, why not use it?  It'd help enormously in navigating around and selecting objects, etc.

Not understanding what you mean here? It's keyboard control, and very detailed control at that. Press tab until you can see the control list, in fortress mode. It's a lot faster than mouse control IMO. Dwarven stupidity on other hand you just have to work around...

4) Consistency
There's a lack of consistency in a few areas.  Look at controls, or marking down stuff. 
Sometimes you use the cursor keys to navigate around the map or in the menus, sometimes you have to use other keys. 
OR when you mark stockpiles vs "building" - from the user's standpoint it's pretty much the same operation, you mark an area for something...yet they're utterly different to set up.
Or that the program uses different names for the same thing, but won't understand me if I do the same.  This one-way variation is rather annoying.
Use the same name, anything else is just creating confusion.
The game is complicated enough without these extra twists.

Been suggested/requested often, interface improvement's somewhere down the road. It takes practice, or you can remap your keys for some areas. This isn't a simple game, much less completed!

5) in-game help and clear labelling.  Go to an inventory, and you have the option something like "enter - change status" ...well, isn't that nice?  But what the heck is the difference between status one and two is anybody's guess.  There are a lot of areas with similar problems, where little or no information is available on the operation at hand, or why it would not work, etc.

Sounds like adventure mode thing to me, which I don't know anything about. In fortress mode, there're plenty of error messages, assuming you have a workshop set up, or something happens. There're too many things that could possibly go wrong to really have a clear and helpful documents, outside of linking to a wiki.

I'm not against this game at all, don't get me wrong.  But getting into it is something like a week or two of hard work, it seems.  And it's not fun - you have to read and listen to long lessons and try to remember it all, practice, read/listen again...  I don't know where it begins to become fun.  I'm pretty sure I'll never get there as I already feel exhausted after two few-hour sessions.  It's just work.

The idea is great, the freedom is great, it's the execution and accessibility which needs work.  It's overly and unreasonably convoluted, and the aforementioned things are all artificial barriers making access even harder.

And I'm pretty sure most difficulties could be alleviated a LOT by little things, simply using today's tech available. (mouse, 3D, maybe context sensitive menus...) plus the consistency.

These are of course just my opinions, I'm sure a lot of you seasoned players won't agree with me - but if you guys want to appeal to a broader audience, I think you'll have to look into these areas sooner than later. 

Best regards, and good luck!

3D would require a lot more processing power, and wouldn't help at all in fortress mode. There're already multiple graphic packs for that. It -might- be helpful in adventure mode, but I'll leave that point for someone that's got experience there. I don't believe we're looking for 'broad audience', we're looking for people that'll enjoy the open world and multiple probabilites that DF offers, which a lot of people don't like or find boring 

Even if you calls such things 'simple', it's very complicated under the hood, and would need a lot of tweaks and adjustments, that'd take away from the core feature improvement and polishing.

Have you tried http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Main_Page for references and just being generally questioning on the forum, or even search?

As for 'today technology', please, you're still using push button, aren't you? That thing is so old. And telephone, what about that? Radio too. What matters more is proper application of possible technology as well as consideration of their capacities. And for DF, you need a LOT of processing just to run a fortress, not too much overhead for the prettiness, much less 3D! I'll admit that interface could be improved, but really only in standardizing the keypresses and allowing some processes to be controlled more precisely. I personally find that some practice after turning invaders off in init_d and lowering the population cap to 50 helps a lot, as well as a few practice runs using keyboard commands and checking out the DFwiki as well as skimming the forum.

[G-Flex]

Sounds like adventure mode thing to me, which I don't know anything about. In fortress mode, there're plenty of error messages, assuming you have a workshop set up, or something happens. There're too many things that could possibly go wrong to really have a clear and helpful documents, outside of linking to a wiki.

I disagree. It doesn't take much for the game to say, for instance, the possible reactions a reagent is involved in when you view the item. It already does it for ores, so why not things like potash? And why not say approximately how large a given type of creature is, or what products you might get from slaughtering it?

[Neonivek]

Some of the reasons why some of the suggestions have not been finished is because of the nature of Dwarf Fortress itself in that it is early in development (Alpha).

Even the Wiki has felt the blow when entire sections have to be redone when a new change is made.

It would be tough to keep up with the interface and help sections at this time appart from controls.

I'd expect this to come together much more smoothly a bit further down the line when large new additions won't be very common.

The next three big arcs: Carrivan, Army, and adventurer and some minor like the Combat Arc will ALONE almost entirely transform Dwarf Fortress (afterall the Army Arc requires Toady to actually get around to finishing what tribes, cities, fortress, and retreats really are). So for now I guess the Wiki will be required reading...

It isn't a great excuse but it is the reason why these things have not been kept up to date.

[EmperorJon]

Also a note on the whole 'It takes weeks to learn and it's not fun and the basic tutorial is a 2.5hr video and and...' I downloaded it. I opened it up. I read the instructions. I read the wiki when I encountered a problem. My first fort didn't die of starvation. Or goblin attack. Or flooding. Or mad dwarves. It died an FPS death. It's not hard.

[Montague]

Ehh... The graphics are what they are. A good, well designed tile set would help here or better graphical support, but its a ASCII game, it just is. Also, the game is played with it zoomed out so much a nice detailed art work representing a pile of rocks or a monkey would look crappy anyways.

The UI with using keys is fine and it works fast once you've gotten a hang of it. It turns into intuition, like typing, which is basically what it is, if you can spell short imaginary words, you can get whatever you need in DF and this is much better then navigating through menus or whatever the alternative might be.

It really could use more functions with the mouse. Edge scrolling and click/drag and using it to place things, click on dwarves to see their status, ect, ect. There is tons of things here that could be improved on.

Consistency, eh, maybe.