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[Getix Kain]

The most important part of this project would be making a saner alternative to the menus and settings panels in DF.

Mouse control isn't obviously better for DF. Or it at least doesn't address a pressing UI concern since no one really has trouble moving the cursor around.

What will improve the game a lot for everyone is cleaner, better-organized menus.

PTW.

[Rumrusher]

Question how does this work with Dfhack Adventure mode plugins?

[Treefingers]

Rebuttal

Yeah, sorry. For some reason I thought you're idea was to make bedrooms more like a dig designation or something. I was imagining a standard one-size-only thing that you placed in a not-yet-dug area. If you're just reversing the bed-placement/room-define actions, then I have no complaint.

I'd even go one step further, actually. Just define the room and be done with it; no bed required. Sure the dwarf will be ticked at having to sleep on the ground, but they'll at least have their own room to do it in. So even more play options, and the interface is simplified, to boot. Not sure how possible this is with just a plugin, though.

[isitanos]

Some good ideas in there, and it's also a good list of what's wrong with the DF UI, which Toady could refer to in case he wants to finally "unsuckify" his interface.

I completely disagree with the people arguing that df's room creation amounts to interesting gameplay btw. Maybe it's fun making little rooms for your first seven dwarves, but when you have 200+, making rooms for all them turns into a dumb, boring, mindless chore... and you're gonna follow a template anyways.

The best way to help out new players (or experienced players getting bored with making tons of generic rooms) would be to let you place a bedroom(/office/etc) by simply drawing the rectangle, and depending on the size it would auto-fill it with furniture thanks to DFHack's planning mode. Bonus points if you can designate this on solid rock and the mod automatically digs it out and places a door, maybe even smoothes out and engraves. So, the classic 1x2 peon room would just get a bed and perhaps a chest; as it starts getting larger you get more furniture such as cabinets, armor stands and weapon racks.

As you draw the room you need a visual preview of the furniture that's gonna be placed, and a textual indication of which kind of person that's appropriate for. So you can instantly know if you're placing a room that's gonna make a peasant, manager, expedition leader or noble happy.

I you want extra icing on the cake, holding shift or somesuch modifier should allow you to place a group of rooms. You need a lot of keys to control room size and spacing as well as the placing area, but this kind of functionality is needed if placing 50 rooms is to be bearable without using a pre-planning tool.

And to those screaming "oh noes it gonna dumbs down", just remember you don't have to use it, and the full customization will still be available, mmkay? But there can always be the option to place an empty room, so you get the best of both worlds. Better yet, let the player add his own templates to the aforementioned auto-placement, and flick between them with the mouse wheel or some key.

[kr0pper]

Interesting idea, and I made another example of this

It's very complex, and in very early development, there is a lot of crutches.
Because I'm a newb in DF hacking and every new line of code opens new undeground caverns in my knowledge.


All actions binded on middle mouse click with autohotkey script. Or you can use any other way - AHK just send "Ctrl-Alt-Shift-F9" to DF window.


Middle click in sidebar:
- in main menu - any command, eg "z: Status" or "B: building" (pause/resume works too)
- on empty space - return to previous
- at "designations" - selects an desgn command
- at "building" - select building or construstions or machine components, also you can middle click on "+-*/" below to move cursor/page
- middle click in any other screen except dwarfmode just send ESC


Middle click on map shows context menu, where you can use left click to select an action.
Right/middle click or ESC hides menu
Here I click on map, then click first line "Designate dig"




How to install:

1. Append a line to your dfhack.init or just execute from console

Code: [Select]

keybinding add Ctrl-Alt-Shift-F9 mouse_concept
2. Download script and put it in {DF}\hack\scripts\
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hkwt0ybxbg5zz74/mouse_concept.lua

3. AutoHotkey script, just download and execute
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yegcabqdy9aaocd/mouse_concept.ahk (81byte)
OR
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tk9kqj3opm06ic5/mouse_concept.exe (1 174 528 bytes)



Limitations:
DF 34.11 and DFHack 0.34.11-r5 (all from PeridexisErrant LNP r64)
And TWBT interprets viewscreen of context menu as text.


It's all made for proof of concept and fun, because hacking the DF is fun

PS: Thanks to all community for sources in, out and around DFHack - it's gave me a lot of ideas and inspiration.

[fricy]

Limitations:
And TWBT interprets viewscreen of context menu as text.

It'll be worse with twbt nextgen, as it will blank the screen with dfhack commands to avoid the text artifacts...
And please consider using IronAHK, because Autohotkey is windows only.

[kr0pper]

It'll be worse with twbt nextgen, as it will blank the screen with dfhack commands to avoid the text artifacts...

I try to build twbt by myself for tests.

And please consider using IronAHK, because Autohotkey is windows only.

I don't have any GUI machines except Windows, and can't test.

You can just press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-F9 when mouse cursor in desired location, sorry.

[slay_mithos]

I would advise anyone with multiple keyboard languages/mapping against using any Alt+Shift key binding, as it switches between keyboard languages/mapping.
Might sound a bit stupid, but some games out there don't support key rebinding and use an english keyboard layout, so any other layout is forced to switch at least for those. Once you got hit by that 2-3 times, you end up remembering about alt+shift too (because when you hit A and it prints Q, it's not really helpfull).

Apart from that, it looks promising, so I'll continue to watch.