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[Putnam]

This is a dumb thread. All of this is going to happen eventually. The suggestions forums is to give ideas to Toady and modders, not to whinge about how the Military screen is indecipherable and the framerate drops after a 10-year fort. It'll be fixed eventually. If Toady dropped everything to work on optimizing the game every time he released a major patch, then he'd be months behind actually creating new content.

Just play Masterworks for now; that improves the framerate a bit by removing the 'type' of objects that make up an item and other ways. Leave the suggestions forum for actual suggestions.

1. Masterwork

2. Accelerated does that too and isn't intrusive as hell

[Splint]

Accelerated is the one that gives some solid FPS increases if I'm not mistaken.

Something that would probably at least reduce strain on systems and probably not take too much effort to do is having the item contaminants from trees vanish at a reasonable speed. That seems to be where the biggest FPS issue is, and doesn't really seem like it'd take too much effort to remedy. But even then, DFHack can take care of that with the clean map item command. Makes a noticeable difference.

Some way to get rid of or recover broken ammo would also be nice, since that's an item contaminant contributing to the problem too and has been for... Ever.

Unrelated, I only ever needed the tutorial on making patrol routes. The rest of the Militart interface seemed fairly straightforward (at least the parts I use.)

[Lubricus]

I must be a moron i haven't figured out the military interface :-( but my dorf army are somehow good at killing stuff anyway.

[cata2k]

I agree on that to make DF a better game Toady should work on play-ability.
I would say that UI is more important than optimization. The game is so huge and complex so i am impressed with the speed it is running. So the said reality maybe that he has to limit it more with capping the population and the amount of contamination's to minimize the risk of the fps death to fortresses.

But in the end i am confident that Toady will continue to do what he think is fun and develop the game in a way that make it even more interesting

I have no doubt that he will work on optimization eventually, but I would like to see it sooner rather than later. Its absurd that such a simple game runs so slowly

[Putnam]

I agree on that to make DF a better game Toady should work on play-ability.
I would say that UI is more important than optimization. The game is so huge and complex so i am impressed with the speed it is running. So the said reality maybe that he has to limit it more with capping the population and the amount of contamination's to minimize the risk of the fps death to fortresses.

But in the end i am confident that Toady will continue to do what he think is fun and develop the game in a way that make it even more interesting

I have no doubt that he will work on optimization eventually, but I would like to see it sooner rather than later. Its absurd that such a simple game runs so slowly

This is one of the most complex games ever made. It is in no way, shape or form simple by any stretch of the imagination.

[StagnantSoul]

How could a game that simulates physics and geology and keeps tracks of literally thousands, almost a million in massive worlds, of people be called simple? Dwarf Fortress is one of the most complex games in the world, simple it is not.

[Evil One]

Sadly, people these days often only equate graphics with complexity instead of actual gameplay and simulation detail.

As for the OP, it'd be pointless going into full optomization now, when future features or coding additions could undo all the work.

[Shazbot]

People often confuse depth with complexity. Go is deep and simple. Chess is deep and only slightly more complicated. Checkers is somewhat shallow and simple. Dwarf Fortress has a lot of depth, sure... but players are blind to most of it without memory hacking to see eyebrow length. A large degree of the 'depth' is actually pointless complexity confusing new players and making it very difficult to grow the game's player base.

Toady needs to sit down and do a UI and optimization pass. Get things consistent in the UI, have a standard look and schema for all the menus (the 'Status' or Z-screen is an excellent touchstone) and go from there. Why are dwarves with the hammerer military profession not color-coded purple in the military screen? Dwarves who would draft into recruits could all be dark grey, those who draft into military professions their respective colors, and suddenly assigning weapons is far simpler. And link that selection menu, indeed every dwarf selection menu, to the dwarf's 'holdings and owned objects' page. In fact, why is that the root screen for v-z on a dwarf? Nearly every time I check a dwarf its for the personality page, and that could all be distilled down to the critical 'baseball stats' of age, sex, spouse, number of children, overall mood, physical and mental stats.

He can do this now or he can do this ten years from now with ten years more screens to optimize. If he does it now he has ten years more players gained thanks to an improved UI (the biggest turn-off and complaint) contributing to his Paetron account. I know what I'd pick.

[Bumber]

Why are dwarves with the hammerer military profession not color-coded purple in the military screen? Dwarves who would draft into recruits could all be dark grey, those who draft into military professions their respective colors, and suddenly assigning weapons is far simpler. And link that selection menu, indeed every dwarf selection menu, to the dwarf's 'holdings and owned objects' page.

I'm fairly certain these are low-hanging fruit for a DFhack plugin in the meantime.

[Shazbot]

That DF needs a community memory hacker to sort out its UI is the case in point.

[Deboche]

A UI overhaul would have to be done with every update. And I don't think any of DF's complexity is pointless.

[StagnantSoul]

The screens are kept separate because it would get over complicated if they were together. Do you really want to see 900 buttons and three paragraphs of words for every single dwarf, needlessly thrown together? The UI is fine, spend five minutes looking at it and it's done in the most logical format possible. He doesn't need to colour code everything fro you, that'd just be an eyesore.

[Putnam]

spend five minutes looking at it and it's done in the most logical format possible

no

by which I mean hell no

there is very little reason for it to be in alphabetical order, that's ass-backwards

you don't want to know what b does, you want to know where to find buildings

[Shazbot]

A UI overhaul would have to be done with every update. And I don't think any of DF's complexity is pointless.

No, a UI overhaul would need to be done once. A standard format for information and keystrokes would be adopted. And then as additional UI elements are added, they are made to fit that format. I'm in the industry (the industrial side of the industry to boot) and even punching boolean values into a ruggedized circuit board trying to fool it into thinking an imaginary 5000kw diesel engine is running, I have a better UI than this. When that UI begins to drift from standards, we file a report and it gets fixed. Here, there are no standards, just habitual patterns, and it creates pointless complexity. Not depth, complexity.

Pointless complexity example; WASD UHJK Left Right Up Down 8462 /*-+ all depending on the particular screen you're on. There is no unified schema to it. Why are these menus not mouse-enabled? With full mouse integration, the game's learning curve could be stripped to a half-dozen keyboard commands to bring up the menus you click on. Mousewheel Z-level changes. Multi-tile constructions designated by dragging a box. Ordering constructions by painting them with the mouse instead of building each cell individually.

There are so many ways to reduce complexity, which will allow more players to experience the game. Currently there is a whole genre of DF-knockoffs whose only merit is mouse support and integrated isometric graphics. "Towns" sold 200,000 units at $15 each. That's three million dollars for unfinished shit with a halfway decent UI. Adding another feature arc that brings 5% more of the grand vision to the current user base should come after a UI pass that grows the user base 5000%. And doing it now is plainly easier than doing it later.

Stagnant, really? Do you think I've not spent five minutes looking at the UI? And yes, I would like to see all of a dwarf's most important information condensed onto one screen from which I can navigate to detailed screens.

For example,

Avron Zeronozada
Male, 126
Married to Obakhekh Otoderozera, 2 children
Fishery Worker, Proficient Fisherdwarf
Civilian, Striker
Dreams of creating a great work of art.
Owned Objects: 10
No rooms.

"I'm doing alright".


Instantly I know he needs a job change to an art profession, should be assigned a larger bedroom because of his family size, and all of this replaces the main profile page, which presently, following 'most logical format possible', is...



Your eyes slide off this black space -every time- you are on your way to another screen in the profile. How many times have you selected a dwarf to see how many rooms he's assigned? How many times was this page just a pop-up box to be dismissed on your way to the personality profile? Which, most logically, should be shown here?

We can either all collectively lie to ourselves and pretend learning the UI is part of DF's difficulty curve, or we can realize the game's difficulty curve and the UI's difficulty curve are not the same thing. Having a hard UI does not make a hard game, it just makes for hard play.

[Bumber]

-snip-

Looks nice. I believe it might be time to raise the Total Interface Overhaul thread from its grave. (It'll be a year dead in exactly a week.)