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[AmpsterMan]

So I have a question

A lot of people have been saying that the UI is bad but I don't think any one has stated specific issues they have with it.

Me personally, I think one of the worst things is not knowing how many dwarves you have for a certain job and setting jobs takes you to a separate screen so if you want to set up multiple jobs it takes a long time.

[Leatra]

Dwarf management is the worst part of UI for me. At least we got Therapist for that though.

Other than that, I wish we had something like Therapist to set up our military.

[AutomataKittay]

I'd like to bring 40d's military uniform designation back, but more for civilians' outfit. It's a bit annoying having to put dwarves into inactive squads to get them to dress exactly how I need/want them to. Or at least having the woodcutters, miners and hunters being able to put on inactive uniform!

Having labor screen with similar set-up as current medical screen would be cool, and could be seen as managemental feature, like profile setting of workshop and being able to queue up workshop orders. It'd be nice feature to be able to index dwarves by jobs that's enabled, too, but I tend to nickname them so it's redundant ( to me! It'd still be useful feature for labor management ).

I don't really have much useful ideas on how to improve the interface, at least not without making it more complicated and probably harder to manage for newcomers.

[Damiac]

Wow, this thread got out of hand.

My point was not that the UI should be better at this stage of the game.  My point is not that it is a bad game.  I like this game, I really like the fact that Toady is getting enjoyment out of making this game.  And hell, the UI functions, it lets you do what you want, but it could be better.

My issue is not with Toady, or DF's development.  My issue is with players shooting down helpful suggestions and constructive criticism of the UI, and the game in general.  In the suggestion forum it seems like quite a few times people's suggestions about making the game more user friendly are shot down because DF isn't supposed to be easy.  I'm just pointing out that the UI isn't the game.  DF should be challenging.  The UI, optimally, at some point in time, shouldn't be.

So when people say "it'd be nice to be able to loo(k) at things with a mouse click", there's no reason to say "Keyboards are better than mice! Play the game like I want you to!"
And of course I'm paraphrasing, and that's aimed at nobody in particular.

[Deathworks]

Hello Damiac!

It is a good thing that you gave that additional information. While I occasionally participate in discussions in the Suggestions Forum, I am not really keeping track of most of what is there, simply as these are not items I care too much about (for instance, I enjoy the original music of the game, so that thread about music you recently posted in is not something I would normally look at). I would assume that there are other people like me who do not have a perfect overview over all forums, but who participate in some forums strongly - like for instance the General Discussion Forum...

Anyhow, since I might accidentally have been part of the crowd you are worried about, please allow me to clarify something: I do like playing using the keyboard. And this is not because I want to get an extra challenge (I turn off invaders, set vampires, werebeasts, secret types to 0 in world gen, put a lot of z-levels between the surface and the caverns), but because I personally find it easiest to play the game using a keyboard. I am not very agile, and using mouse control can be very frustrating for me when I want to be very detailed in what to mark or where to click. Besides, I can't envision a feasable and easy way to structure the complex content of the game in such a way to have an easy-to-use menu/window structure that would allow the mouse to really show its potential.

For all these reasons, things like mouse support are not something that makes the game easier, but rather more difficult should they become mandatory. And that is where I speak up. I don't mind if people want to play using the mouse. I think it would be great if the game gave them the option to do so. But if in doing so, the game denies me the possibility to continue playing using the keyboard or making keyboard playing ineffective as compared to the current state of affairs, I can not agree with the proposal. Mind you, I wouldn't care if mouse support was the default (which it actually currently is, for its limited use at the moment), as long as I am able to turn the mouse off (which I currently do) and play the game in the manner which I find easiest.

Putting it simply, if you let me play the game the way I like to play, I have no problem with you playing the game the way you like it.

Yours,
Deathworks

[Damiac]

Oh, definately.  I don't know why you'd throw away a feature that's working to add another.  Mouse and keyboard work well, and do not interfere with one another.  It should be the player's option.

Keyboard control is much more efficient for some things.  But mouse control is easier for many people, and a lot more intuitive.  And like you said, it's already in the game...  It'd just so much easier for those "What the hell is that % supposed to be?" moments.  If I could just click on them, instead of "k", where the hell is my cursor, scroll to the thing, all the while the game is paused (It'd be really nice if we could have an option not to pause every time we do anything...)

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Well, the problem is actually which one lies at the core of the interface design. At the moment, the keyboard is at the core, which allows it to be highly efficient for people like me who like it. But this means that any mouse support is less than what the mouse could really do. If the game wanted to be really mouse-controlled, you would need menus and windows and other features that make use of what the mouse can do. But this may lead to a change in the core structure which could then make keyboard support inefficient. So, even if both are supported, there is a conflict of interests between them that is probably impossible to fully resolve. And that is what I am then worried about.

However, this only concerns the complete shift to mouse control. Adding right-clicking for information or some such is not inherently something that threatens the keyboard players...

Yours,
Deathworks

[Callista]

I don't see much of a problem with the UI when you take into account accessory programs like Dwarf Therapist. A menu system would probably work better than what we have now, but it really doesn't take that long to learn. I think I had the UI mostly learned within about three days of starting Dwarf Fortress. I had access to the wiki, and that helped, but still--you don't have to be a genius to figure it out. A clumsy UI is a problem, but it's not exactly the end of the world.

DF's main challenge is not the UI. The UI is a minor annoyance that you get past. The main challenge is that everything about it is extremely flexible. Possibilities explode to near-infinity soon after embark. Complaining about the UI is like complaining about the color of the plate at a fancy restaurant.

[kuki]

I don't see much of a problem with the UI when you take into account accessory programs like Dwarf Therapist. / snip / like complaning about the color of the plate at a fancy restaurant.

Dwarf Therapist takes one of the most cumbersome parts of the UI and replaces it with a different UI. You're right, once the problematic parts have been isolated and completely replaced, the UI won't be problematic anymore! Dwarf Therapist is a pretty great demo of how mouse support and optimized information displaying can take a task like, say, sorting a group of ten incoming migrants into professions by enabling and disabling labors, which takes a couple hundred keystrokes and a good bit of memory, and turn it into ten or fifteen clicks and a couple of presses of the shift key, with no use of mental effort at all.

Therapist has some bonus functions like showing you your dwarves' stats in numerical form, but I think the features that make it so popular are, by far, the fact that you can see all of your dwarves' skills and labors on one page and the fact that you can assign and unassign labors to multiple dwarves on one page. That is nothing except a rearrangement of info displays and controls which are already present in the game. And it's such a superior rearrangement, that tons of players are willing to tab out to use it, even though having to tab out to use it is a pretty problematic choice for a UI component.

I tried to ask earlier in the thread but I am unanswered. Maybe this means my questions are dumb and asinine, but I ask anyways because I am really really curious. Where does this attitude come from, that the UI is fine as it is? Why does anyone feel compelled to defend a UI that its designer refers to as 'shitty?' Can't we hope for the best, most intuitive, most awesome interface plausible, and therefore be reasonably critical towards the way the UI is now, regardless of the extent to which any of us have learned to make it work for us?

Edit to add this. My actual point is, at some point Toady will do a UI overhaul, and when that time comes it would be kind of cool if people would be brutally critical towards the UI. Maybe then we'll get a much better one. I trust Toady to develop a great game regardless of the community, he surely seems like that kind of cowboy developer, but none of his published game projects have finished, good-as-can-be UIs, so I guess DF's going to be his first? Yeah, please don't tell him "it's fine as it is" because you didn't mind spending several days to a week learning it. It would still be better if it were so intuitive you could just look at it and dive in!

[AutomataKittay]

I tried to ask earlier in the thread but I am unanswered. Maybe this means my questions are dumb and asinine, but I ask anyways because I am really really curious. Where does this attitude come from, that the UI is fine as it is? Why does anyone feel compelled to defend a UI that its designer refers to as 'shitty?' Can't we hope for the best, most intuitive, most awesome interface plausible, and therefore be reasonably critical towards the way the UI is now, regardless of the extent to which any of us have learned to make it work for us?

I don't think I've seen Toady called it 'shitty', just unpolished. It's impossible to have something truly intuitive beyond a certain level of complexity, and just DF's construction system's beyond that level already.

If you want perfectly something intuitive, then you're looking at wrong game. That means icon for each thing that's used, automated systems that don't interact with player, and so on. Closest thing I can remember that had anything like that with reasonable complexity is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globulation_2 and possibly more recent version of SimCity, but I've not played it.

I don't think current UI is PERFECTLY fine as is, just that it's not worth the effort to re-develop it unnecessarily! Having better key mapping, or more flexible system of one, could go a long way and have community work out good key layout. The issue is nobody can agree on what a good UI is, and there're logistic problem of re-learning interface once it's changed ( very noticible for change from 40d to 31.xx military system ). And Today's not finished implementing all the needed features and important points, so parts of curent UI might suddenly change or be rendered useless.

[kuki]

I don't think I've seen Toady called it 'shitty', just unpolished. It's impossible to have something truly intuitive beyond a certain level of complexity, and just DF's construction system's beyond that level already.

If you want perfectly something intuitive, then you're looking at wrong game.

Boy do I feel like a forum asshole ninja editing above you and then replying real fast, but I want to say,
Oops, I got the "shitty" quotes from this thread somewhere. Maybe they were joke quotes or paraphrases and I misunderstood, in which case my bad.

I don't want the game design to revolve around an intuitive interface! I want the interface to be *as intuitive as possible without sacrificing game design.* Take Therapist. I never had to look at a guide to figure out how to use Therapist. I sure as hell had to look at the wiki a lot of times to figure out how to assign labors in game. Trying to play DF before I knew about the wiki or Therapist, I never managed to figure out what a labor was, or what enabling one would do. If I had had Therapist in front of me, I would have instantly known what to do. No change in mechanics, no sacrifice to complexity, just better layout and better controls.

I don't think the UI should be redeveloped until Toady damn well feels like it either. It would just make me personally very happy if people would, in the meantime, distinguish between "how workable is it, for me," and "how good is it, in quantifiable terms."

Thank you for the response...

[kuki]

double post. ugh.

[AutomataKittay]

I don't think I've seen Toady called it 'shitty', just unpolished. It's impossible to have something truly intuitive beyond a certain level of complexity, and just DF's construction system's beyond that level already.

If you want perfectly something intuitive, then you're looking at wrong game.

Boy do I feel like a forum asshole ninja editing above you and then replying real fast, but I want to say,
Oops, I got the "shitty" quotes from this thread somewhere. Maybe they were joke quotes or paraphrases and I misunderstood, in which case my bad.

Yeah, it was from someone trolling around and taking a jab someone, I didn't keep track who did it, just that I know Toady didn't said it

I don't want the game design to revolve around an intuitive interface! I want the interface to be *as intuitive as possible without sacrificing game design.* Take Therapist. I never had to look at a guide to figure out how to use Therapist. I sure as hell had to look at the wiki a lot of times to figure out how to assign labors in game. Trying to play DF before I knew about the wiki or Therapist, I never managed to figure out what a labor was, or what enabling one would do. If I had had Therapist in front of me, I would have instantly known what to do. No change in mechanics, no sacrifice to complexity, just better layout and better controls.

I don't think the UI should be redeveloped until Toady damn well feels like it either. It would just make me personally very happy if people would, in the meantime, distinguish between "how workable is it, for me," and "how good is it, in quantifiable terms."

Thank you for the response...

Fair enough! I don't uses Therapist, but I can understand the desire for better interface

What I'm arguing against is that it's possible to have DF that's perfectly intuitive interface, not that something as good as possible could be developed. I'm not too confident of being able to transplant the ease of usage from Therapist into the base game with way it's designed, I does support attempts at re-designing interface to be more usable in general.

I also don't believe that the superior interface can be developed well until Toady's worked out how to transplant the UI into something like raw, because it's difficult to design it well if you're elbow deep into the code itself, or used to older UI. It would also allow community to design something more along their style for mods. I suspect it's in the eventual plan.

Please don't take this as disencouragment against helping to improve things, or suggesting ideas! I'm pessimistic because it's honestly difficult to change things once it's in there, even moreso if there're no outside reference or views

( I'm also supportive of tutorial being developed, because from what I've seen, once someone get past ASCII or find a good tileset, they're ovewhelmed by what they can do and is lost with lack of goal. It's part of UI issues to me, not knowing what can be done or is needed. )

[Callista]

Well, my major point is that the interface might suck, but that this doesn't matter nearly enough to decrease my enjoyment of the game, because the obstacle it presents is easily overcome. It's a valid complaint, but still a minor one. Maybe the restaurant IS using really ugly plates, but does it matter that much if the food they serve is delicious? (And it is. Delicious, delicious -kitten tallow biscuits-.)

[kuki]

Maybe the restaurant IS using really ugly plates, but does it matter that much if the food they serve is delicious?

It's more like the only utensils they have on offer are so complicated, the average person (do not read as "the average computer nerd" please) would not be able to figure them out without a few days of practice with the manual - and the cups are so bad that everyone leaves every few minutes to go take a drink from the soda in their car, rather than mess with ordering drinks in the restaurant, BUT THE FOOD IS STILL SO DELICIOUS THAT WE'RE ALL STILL EATING THERE ALL THE TIME.

Also, all the people I'm talking to appear to be cats. The internet is a weird place