Print

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

[Fenrir]

I've heard (well, seen, actually) people complaining about Dwarf Fortress' user interface. Maybe my brain is wired in a bizzare manner, but I never had trouble with it. Sure, I had to get used to it, but it wasn't difficult. Does anyone else think the interface is fine the way it is? I don't mean that it couldn't be improved, however.

[LSTAR]

I was confused for about 10 minutes upon first setting eyes on the UI.
To be honest I never have any problems with it, though I believe that's probably because now I mostly use the shortcuts as opposed to scrolling through the menus.
Even with mouse support or a more ordered interface it would still be much faster pressing "b-w-m" or "b-c-w" lightning fast.
The only things I would really like to see are the ability to make larger walls  (by which I mean not putting in each wall tile individually) and the option to have the game continuing to run (or be run in steps) while some menus are used, such as the wounds menu. (Wounds, examine, unpause, pause, wounds, examine, unpause, pause, wounds, repeat... And yes! I do know that opening creature status pauses automatically!)
Basically, I'd prefer to see more new functions coming in than having older ones cleaned and made more intuitive.

[ January 05, 2008: Message edited by: LSTAR ]

[peterb]

There are a lot of aspects to user interface design where Dwarf Fortress fails.  It's still a great game.  It just fails some basic usability testing.

Dividing them into rough areas, let me discuss some of the main problems.

Note: I'm going to be brutally rough here.  Toady, please keep in mind that I love, love, love the game.  I'm only being harsh because it's true, and because you need real feedback.

(1) Discoverability.  How do new (or experienced) players find things they don't already know how to do?
(1)(a) The shortcut menu.   It's impossible to find anything in the shortcut menu unless you already know where it is or what it does.  It's possible to make the shortcut menu disappear and have no indication of how to get it back.  The shortcut menu should be ordered in terms of priority, and commands that are more important than others (eg d)esignate) should be visually distinct.
(1)(b) The "long" help should be taken out behind the shed and put to sleep.  It's useless.  But then to make up for being useless, it's hard to navigate.  Whenever I use it, I can't tell if it doesn't have the information I need, or if I just simply can't _get there_.

(2) Distinctions without differences.
(2)(a) Inspection.  To look at a tile, you hit 'k'.  To look at a dwarf, you hit 'v'.  To use a workshop, you hit 'q', but to look inside it you need to hit 't'.  I _still_ get these wrong during the game and quickly correct myself.  I understand there are arguments for why one might want shortcut keys, but what i really want, most of the time, is a simple "query" tool that _does the right thing_ and, if it does the wrong thing, lets me quickly change modes.  If this was a windowed program, this would be a great use for an inspector window that just showed everything under the cursor in one place.
(2)(b) Creating zones.  Sometimes you create zones by setting anchors (eg mining and designation), and then other times you create zones by 'stretching' them via U/K/etc.  Yuck.

(3) Specific areas of clumsiness
(3)(a) The jobs list.  It was bad before, and now that it's getting bigger, it's getting worse.  It turns out that often what I want is a trivial way to tell a dwarf "Hey, slave, if you don't have anything else to do, do the first job of any type that becomes available."  Right now, that involves hitting the arrow key and return about 50 times.  Conversely, sometimes my dwarfs will decide to not do the job they (and only they) are assigned to do, and there's no indication of _why_ they're not doing it.  Without knowing why, I can't fix it.
(3)(b) Navigating through a 3d fortress.  Building a fortress with a ton of z-levels is basically begging to be smacked in the face repeatedly.  You either end up zooming around via <and>, or trying to psychically divine shortcuts ("Let's see, Ottar is cutting trees.  He's _probably_ outside on top, then, although he might be on the way there and on some random level.  I'll jump to Ottar and see if that takes me where I wanted to go.  Oops, it didn't").  At a minimum, I'd love to have keys that meant "top z-level with digging" and "bottom z-level with digging."  If it turns out these already exist, see section (1), "Discoverability."

That's my knee jerk reaction to the question "What's wrong with the UI?"  If I come up with other things, I'll tack them on or edit this message.

[Fenrir]

quote:Originally posted by peterb:
<STRONG>
(2)(b) Creating zones.  Sometimes you create zones by setting anchors (eg mining and designation), and then other times you create zones by 'stretching' them via U/K/etc.  Yuck.</STRONG>

Since when?!

[Xgamer4]

For the record, there is a way to set hotspots, like the gate, that you can automatically zoom to. Unfortunately I've never really figured out how to set them. I just accidentally pull up the list of them and can never remember how to get back to it.

[Jifodus]

quote:Originally posted by Fenrir:
<STRONG>
Since when?!</STRONG>

Well there is the fortress location choosing screen, also for bridges and roads.

(1)(a) I can't really comment on this. I already know the shortcuts so I don't need the menu anymore.
(1)(b) The long help is useless, but such is the fault of the game being in alpha. Do you want Toady to spend more time on the help over the gameplay?

(2)(a) They are very distinct: look at the map, view a creature, check the queue of a building, check the items in a building. They provide nice convenient shortcuts. I suppose there could be a "long" way to get to the other menus (i.e. selection like for items).
(2)(b) Once again, provides convenient shortcuts. It's also a keyboard shortcut limitation. You can't very well move it around with the arrow keys and change the size with the arrow keys.

(3)(a) Yeah, a couple times I've had that problem. The game needs better documentation.
(3)(b) It's discoverability: See (h) Hotkeys

[Sergius]

quote:Originally posted by Xgamer4:
<STRONG>For the record, there is a way to set hotspots, like the gate, that you can automatically zoom to. Unfortunately I've never really figured out how to set them. I just accidentally pull up the list of them and can never remember how to get back to it.</STRONG>

Just hit <h>otspots, press the F# key you want to change, and press <z>oom here. that'll make that F# key go to the location currently on screen.

[valcon]

i failed to be able to comprehend DF for about 3 full days of non-stop staring at the UI.

then, as my first dwarf randomly decided to go fishing, i started to realize how jobs worked, and then the need for stockpiles, et cetera

i'd say the learning curve is along the lines of a curve you would find on the blade of a razor..

[Fedor]

quote:Originally posted by peterb:
<STRONG>There are a lot of aspects to user interface design where Dwarf Fortress fails.  It's still a great game.  It just fails some basic usability testing.

Dividing them into rough areas, let me discuss some of the main problems.

Note: I'm going to be brutally rough here.  Toady, please keep in mind that I love, love, love the game.  I'm only being harsh because it's true, and because you need real feedback.

</STRONG>I agree so much with this post.  It's correct, it doesn't beat around the bush, and it combines respect with honesty.  *salutes*

[peterb]

quote:(1)(b) The long help is useless, but such is the fault of the game being in alpha. Do you want Toady to spend more time on the help over the gameplay?

As an experienced software developer, I have several responses to this.

First, I want to observe that the question being discussed is "What's wrong (or right) with the DF UI."  Not "What should Toady spend all his time on?"  I, personally, am happy when users file bugs against my product.  Even if it's a bug I already know about, it's useful information when you get a bug report, because it gives you a sense of the severity and scope of the problem, and how many users it affects.  So I think "You shouldn't bring up this issue because the game is in alpha" is not helpful to anyone, least of all Tarn.

Second, software development is not a zero sum game.  You don't always start with the most severe bug and/or most demanded new feature and then march monotonically down through the queue.  Often, one of the most satisfying activities is looking for low hanging fruit, things that are easy to fix yet have a substantial impact on the product being developed. Making the help file useful seems to me to be quintessentially low-hanging fruit.  But of course, it's not my decision to make.

Lastly, one of the biggest mistakes developers -- and, for some reason, gamers -- make is to believe that "gameplay" is severable from UI.  In large part, the UI is the gameplay.  If the UI is frustrating, uninituitive, or timewasting, that translates directly into time that I could be having fun, but instead am wrestling with poor UI.  Anyone can adjust to a bad UI after using it for a few weeks.  Hostages can learn to sympathize with their captors, too.  Just because you can get used to something does not make that something good.  The DF UI is many things, but it is not good (various commenters on my web site have described it as "just slightly less painful than playing Mario Bros. with pencils gripped in your teeth" and '“punishingly bad” merely scratches the surface of the true terror.')

Tarn didn't ask for this feedback, so I don't harbor any expectation that he's going to drop everything and fix the UI instead.  But the topic came up, and I think it's important to describe the issues accurately, so that's what I'm doing.  I don't think anyone should feel bad about straightforwardly (but, hopefully, respectfully) saying what they think the problems with a given program are.  Ever.

[ January 06, 2008: Message edited by: peterb ]

[dreiche2]

Just to put that into context:

quote: Core52, INTERFACE OVERHAUL, (Future): A coherent interface, additional options and mouse support.  

I think Toady is aware of interface problems. One reason he might be reluctant to put too much work into it is that you have to change the interface often when the underlying game mechanics change, which they will for quite some time. So you can't finalize the interface now, anyway.

Doesn't mean you cannot try to convince him to change his priorities a little bit, though, if you want to.

Another problem is that you can only do so much with a keyboard based interface. And implementing mouse usage properly, which is apparently planned for the future, is probably a little bit more work.

Something that cannot hurt though would be discussing and suggesting some things how the interface could be improved...

[numerobis]

To me, the three most annoying parts of the UI that look like they'd have relatively easy fixes (the first two easier than the third, maybe?) are:

1. q/v/t/k.  When I have the cursor somewhere, I should be able to learn everything there is to know about that grid square.  There is already a reasonable mechanism for this: in 't' and 'k' mode I can +/- through everything that's there.  I keep wanting to hit 'enter' on a unit and get taken to what I'd see in 'v'; similarly, 'enter' on a building should show me the 'q' screen for that building.  And I see little reason to have both 'k' and 't' -- the items in the square should all pop up, indented or somesuch if they lie within the building.

2. m/x/vps, and however it is that you assign work dogs (I have to rediscover it every time).  Armor is set in one screen, weapon in another, dogs in yet another.  Ideally, the screen for a squad would be accessible from either 'v' or 'm' and would have all the settings -- food, water, barracks, stand down, give chase?, weapon, armor, dogs, ...  I can never remember which setting is in which screen.

3. in the 'a' screen, there should be a way to flip to the place where the event took place.  When a dwarf suddenly bleeds to death after getting torn limb from limb by a band of rabid macaques, I'd like to be able to know where that happened so I can go exact revenge and collect dinner.  When a dwarf cancels a job, I'd like to be able to select the related building / mine location and deal with it, or with the dwarf (I can flip to the dwarf via the 'u' menu, but that gets slow when you have more than 20 dwarves).

Oh, and -- less important, but 'twould be nice -- I can never remember my dwarves' names, so when one of them dies, I sometimes wonder: was that a new immigrant, or was that my High Master Weaver who liked dwarven wine and overindulges all the time?  Just so I can mourn appropriately, I'd like to be able to 'v' a dead body.

[numerobis]

By the way, the most important thing that made me stop playing earlier last year, until I tried again recently, was the stones UI (after too many "oops, I dug a little tunnel near the entrance, now no one has the stamina to carry my stone to the magma river").  It's not perfect, but even small fixes have big effect.

[Forumsdwarf]

quote:3. in the 'a' screen, there should be a way to flip to the place where the event took place.

YES!

A related pet peeve of mine is that you can't find the creature that interrupted your worker if there are a whole bunch of that type on the map.

Well, you can, but it's like having a molar extracted without painkiller.

First you hit "U" for "Units", then scroll down to the "Wild Animals" section, then find whatever species caused the interruption -- let's say a batman -- then go to the first batman and hit "c" for "zoom to Creature".

Now here's where the UI gets really masochistic: instead of letting you walk the list of batmen centering the map to each one as you go until you find one that might possibly be close enough to your people to be the culprit, YOU HAVE TO START ALL OVER AGAIN AFTER YOU SELECT ONE.

This means you have to MEMORIZE AN ENUMERATOR in order to find the right creature.  So when I repeat, FROM THE BEGINNING, the units menu and the scroll down, I have to remember "second batman", "third batman", and so on, until I scroll through all dozen and find the one that actually caused the problem.

As a final twist of the dental drill into the raw nerve ending, the more dwarves you have, the more difficult this process gets, as the number of keystrokes required to select hostile creatures increases.  Bonus points if you memorize the number of times you have to hit "PgDn" to get to the species you're attempting to find.

This awful torture ignores the one thing that could make all this pain disappear: THE COMPUTER KNOWS WHODUNNIT!  I could jump right to the part where Velma yanks the wig if the freaking computer would just TELL ME WHERE THE PROBLEM IS!  I don't mean the dwarf who got interrupted, that's not the problem.  THE CREATURE CAUSING THE PROBLEM IS THE PROBLEM!  Would it kill you to actually show it to me?  Put the cursor on it so I don't have to spot the lowercase letter "b" in unhelpful white-on-black text?

Ironically the graphics otherwise work for me, for the most part, the one exception being dangerous creatures in white-on-black text.  Really dangerous creatures are red -- okay, great, I can spot those -- but wolves and batmen, dangerous enough to interrupt work and kill your people but not dangerous enough to warrant some color on the map, are almost impossible to spot.

Next begins the exciting adventure of navigating the snarled UI again to rally the troops to go kill the thing, but that's a rant for another post.

And I second the dude who said Dwarf Fort rocks.  There's nothing else like it, and once you start playing you can't seem to put it away.

[umiman]

Hmm... it took me a few days to figure out most of the UI and perhaps a few weeks to understand anything well enough without having to refer to the wiki every 10 seconds.

I don't think this game has a learning curve though. It's more like a learning tangent + cosine slope.

But hey, I don't want it to change really. The UI works once you get the hang of it and it has a nice feeling that you get when you use it. Yes, I'd like it if I could set the size of walls and floors but hey, if we simplify things too much... I fear of what would become of the playerbase and the community.

Because really, the only reason this community is nice and good and all is because the ADHD generation can understand this game.