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[Nagidal]

One of the viewers of my stream asked a very interesting question:

Would df lose it's appeal if you didn't have to "master" the graphics and the user interface? If it had 10 times the user base and everyone were playing it like civilization or the total war series?

I'd like to hear your answers.

[Quarque]

What I love about the game is how it explictly models a civilization from the bottom up. I feel that it captures the essentials of a society much better than any other simulation game that I have seen.

The archaic user interface has a certain charm, but I would be very happy if it were modernized.

[Dunamisdeos]

I also would be pleased to see the UI updated.

[NJW2000]

I dunno... I wonder if the lack of graphics gives a certain freedom, in one's own imagination at least, which other games might not have. If the knowledge of certain details we edit out to improve the narrative in our heads were forced upon us through graphics, the stories might be less exciting.

If they made the bloody UI manageable I'd at least do and play a lot more though 

[PatrikLundell]

It would probably lose the appeal for some players. As mentioned, the limited graphics allows imagination to fill in the blanks, aided by rather detailed descriptive text.

However, it the only change was nicer graphics, the gain of appeal would probably far outweigh the loss of appeal (apart from those suffering from the change, of course). Tile sets make a great job of widening the appeal of the "graphics" (under the constraints of the underlying logic), and probably relieves a fair bit of pressure on Toady to update the "graphics".

An important reason for why the graphics are as simple as they are is that they do not add a huge update burden when DF mechanics are changed, and so leaves Toady to spend most of the effort on the DF mechanics, rather than spending half of it on updating graphics (and he's told the story of the precursor to DF with it's 3D graphics [attempt] as a warning example).

Likewise, the UI is crude and confusing not because it's intended to be, but because that's where it's ended up when the focus has been elsewhere. Toady isn't happy about the UI, but it's still not high on the agenda (and personally I'd rather have Myth & Magic as the arc after the upcoming one than a UI change one, but on the other hand I would be happy to eventually see a change to 16-32 bit "graphics", allowing for full tile sets, and it wouldn't hurt if the color range was expanded from 15 to 255 or RGB).

[steel jackal]

personally i like the UI the way it is.
yeah, the first time i played dwarf fortress it took me about 30 minutes to figure out how to generate a world and then embark.

and yeah, that embark ended very shortly because i couldent even figure out how to dig, chop trees, or absolutely anything at all.

and yeah, i originally thought that this game was terrible and completely unplayable and so i immediately deleted it from my computer.


but several months later i decided to give it another try, and i actually figured out how to dig. and then everybody died of starvation because i had no idea how to farm.

and then the next fort i figured out how to farm.... and everybody died of dehydration because i didnt know how to make booze....

but EVENTUALLY i figured out the UI, and here i am, enjoying a masterfully crafted plump helmet roast, sipping sunshine from my stoneware goblet as i listen to the beautiful music that is zombie goblins melting in a pit of magma.

[Dunamisdeos]

Once I was an overseer, and I let goblins in through my failed cisterns to batter my half drowned citizens.

Now I am DORF, and drop live crocodiles on my enemies from self-refilling ceiling chutes while my citizens grow fat on booze and satisfaction. The mural of the last supper is almost finished on the ceiling, and captured elves fight bears for their amusement.

[Urist McVoyager]

At best the graphics will phase more towards sprite tilesets. That's really all it needs to be. One of the other reasons not to go too graphics heavy is because of all the space high poly graphics would take up. That's not to say that efforts like Armok Vision shouldn't be kept up. An external UI that uses 3D graphics and is capable of reading controls to and from the game would certainly be a welcome add-on.

Just not something Toady should focus on.

[gchristopher]

The game would be hugely improved by a better UI. Better graphics would be nice, too.

An important reason for why the graphics are as simple as they are is that they do not add a huge update burden when DF mechanics are changed, and so leaves Toady to spend most of the effort on the DF mechanics, rather than spending half of it on updating graphics (and he's told the story of the precursor to DF with it's 3D graphics [attempt] as a warning example).

I think that might be missing the point that the graphics cannot easily be improved because of structural problems with how DF is developed. I've read that the biggest obstacle to graphical improvement is that the rendering/gui code is so intermixed with the simulation code that untangling the two would be a huge undertaking, and especially unlikely because it'd require Toady to circle back to it or stop working alone and interact with a developer who has experience structuring code so that it doesn't have that problem.

If there were an API by which rendering and UI could be decoupled from the simulation engine, Toady would be a lot better off because he could leave a simple text interface in place as the default, but the entire community would be free to attempt better display ideas without any cost to him at all. In a sense, this is what the DFHack team does by building a special version of the SDL that intercepts calls from DF, but that approach has limits and is higher cost.

A lot of the problem is an artifact of how long ago DF was started, when there weren't many examples of game engines that were built from the ground up with modding APIs in mind. (Much less building an open interface layer between a simulator and a rendering engine.) But since this is a lifetime endeavor for Toady, doing major housekeeping once every three to five years would be a worthwhile investment of time, if things like a refactor for decoupling the interface could give DF broader appeal as a game (and hopefully bring in more money) while leaving Toady free to concentrate on purely building a world simulator.

[feelotraveller]

To answer the orignal question - no.

Personally, I quite like the graphics as they are (or modulated by a tileset).  Once sprites get into the equation I generally find it less attracitve and somewhat more confusing.  E.g., oh, that's a bird... but what type of bird.. compared to 'd' is for duck.  And I prefer my smilies to rpgmaker style sprites.    I know (some) others differ on this...  On the other hand an increased colour palette would be a welcome addition.

UI improvements would only make the game more attractive and playable, particularly if it eased access to information.  A large part of this load is currently born by DFHack and/or Dwarf Therapist for many players.

Finally, having more people playing DF would only increase its appeal; shared knowledge, ideas and stories contributing to its mythos. (In my seat of the pants reckoning, mainly going from forum participation, the numbers playing DF having been slowly declining for many years now, but I think that's opening up another can of worms.  )

[Shonai_Dweller]

DF works perfectly well without graphics. I can't imagine the amount of time that would be wasted trying to procedurally generate every possible kind of forgotten beast, werecreature and pretty much the entire world at high fantasy setting, just to possibly attract some new people (who would hate on the interface, the incomplete nature of the game, the way the newbie pack crashes, etc, etc). Massive amounts of pain for very little gain.

Text based display is an established form, it's not just df that does it. Text like "It warbles horrifically", "A quadraped comprised entirely of vomit", "It's florescent antennae drips menacingly" mean something different to every person and stimulate the imagination far more than one person's attempt at recreating it.

The way the text is displayed and the limitations on tilesets and colours and of course the interface itself can all be improved upon, of course, and that would definitely help ease in new audiences, but there's no need to ever resort to graphics.

(Though support the modding community and make everything as "graphic-friendly" as possible of course).

[KittyTac]

I'd leave if Toady added better graphics without the option to switch to ASCII.

[Fleeting Frames]

Certainly not.

One of the things I was disappointed with DF, when starting, was how small the community was/is. It's relatively simple to read all the unread threads on the first page of DFDMD, face palm and what's going on in your fort exempted. It's trivial to catch up to them. In other places, with multiple threads having post each minute, it'd be not something easily manageable.

Though it's not all bad (jokes about being traumatized into loving the abusive romantic partner aside); having to wait several hours for answers to simple questions certainly sparked me to experiment and test on my own to find the solutions.

[Monomstodir]

I have to say, one of the reasons I find DF so... comfortable is the wrong word. Welcoming? Relaxing? Is that there isn't the focus on MOAR GRAPHICS that affects so much of gaming culture (and is largely what's driving spiralling costs and thus prices in AAA dev). There's absolutely space in my life for a game like DF, which challenges me to use my imagination to render that corpulent skittering worm Forgotten Beast, rather than having it rendered for me - and that's a hefty part of the appeal

 I do agree that there are UI improvements that would improve the player experience - folding in some of the DFHack/DFtherapist features, for example. When encouraging new players, I've been showing them my fort via DF Remote, as the interface interpreted for iPad seems to be more intuitive for newbies that didn't grow up with Rogue/Nethack, and that's been an effective way of hooking them in. A UI/quality of life arc would be good to have, but when should it fit into the dev plan? When it suits Toady.

[quekwoambojish]

After playing for a year or so, the UI isn't a problem...

X years later and it still hasn't lost its appeal to me, and several others.