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[FantasticDorf]

I'm lost. What do you guys mean by parchment, exactly? Because that's what a modern game would have done, and I'm glad that DF didn't go that route.

If you did want the menus to have an "in universe" look to them, I would have gone with carved stone, with little gems for the buttons.

Video game history lesson time. People have been trying to imitate ye-olde paper documentation for game-menus since forever but its very subjective, since dwarves have a paper and book industry and don't actually write important things down on stone tablets.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That is unless sometime between now and the near future toady adds stone tablet `sheets` to vanilla.

[Starver]

"On the wall of the mountainhome depot is a carving of seven dwarves, two animals and a wagon groaning under a heavy load of many items. They are all leaving."

(There's a lot of different textural visualisations we could use. Many are tropes possibly to the level of cliché. If I could think of one that was suitably genre-correct, attractivel distinctive and utterly novel then I'd be wasted just blurting it out here. That I'm not doing so is entirely due to the lack, though.  That choice is well beyond my paygrade, though. I'llnprobably be best saying which ones I like, if they pop up...)

[Cruxador]

I'm lost. What do you guys mean by parchment, exactly? Because that's what a modern game would have done, and I'm glad that DF didn't go that route.

If you mean modern in the historical sense, maybe. It's been out of the trend for design for the better part of a decade even at the most generous. It was in decline even longer ago than that. But Dwarf Fortress is not a game made for only one year, it doesn't need to be mired in a single decade's popular style and should consider design more broadly.

The DF menu looks like a menu in a computer game, not parchment, and I'm fine, and indeed happy about that.

If you did want the menus to have an "in universe" look to them, I would have gone with carved stone, with little gems for the buttons.

It looks like a menu in a computer program, but not game, from the 90s. Setting that aside, forgoing "immersion" type aspects is only better if it's because those aspects are inadequate and a more abstract aesthetic allows you to do something that would otherwise not make sense. However, even if we only look at color choices, that parchment look is an improvement, and the added value of the additional aesthetic detail ought not to be disregarded either.

[MoltenIdol]

Parchment look is so Much Better.
Its closer to actually making me want to play when looking at it.
Its looking more like a game, with at least a slightly immersive menu to get you into the vibe.

Just give us Some serious 80-90 fantasy vibes and Everything will be good.

[Meph]

I'm personally more a stone/metal texture fan. Fits the theme of Dwarves better. Sepia parchment also restricts the color palette quite a bit.

[Starver]

Yes. It's not anywhere ready for public review (may never be) but I had been fiddling with a bit of a Cast Iron texture, before realising only I might actually recognise it as such, and put it aside in favour of another pet project...

[Cruxador]

I'm personally more a stone/metal texture fan. Fits the theme of Dwarves better. Sepia parchment also restricts the color palette quite a bit.

What's "restricts"? No matter what you pick, you need a color scheme for the UI where the components work well together. No matter what you pick, every color added narrows the range of what other colors can be used and look good. If you can make a stone/metal that looks good, by all means do so, but so far the color choices aren't nearly as versatile in terms of the range of screens that they look good on as it would be to stick with tried and true options. You haven't even really got control over whether the elements will be predominantly warm or cool tones.

[Meph]

Ah, Cruxador. Now I remember why I stopped posting here.

[sanchezman]

One thing about the "Your items" view that is not clear to me is the point system.
Take the seeds.  I see:

5 plump helmet spawn.      1pts + -

From a visual perspective, it's not clear if it costs 1pt per spawn, or 1pt for all 5 spawn.  I can only tell by actually clicking + or -.  Also, it would be nice if the number could be typed instead of only incremented/decremented.

A clearer way to present the information might be something like this:

Plump helmet spawn.   1pts x [5]  + -   5pts

The square braces are to indicate an editable box.

[Uthimienure]

If the keys used to increment/decrement repeat then changing the quantity will be very fast, no need to type it in.

[Starver]

'Undocumented' shift-click to ±10s (as per shift-cursor jumping in map-selection/painting/cursoring-in-general) could be implemented. But, given the usual number of points one has to play with, I doubt that would be often needed. And almost never would ±100s be considered any use.

But if we're having 'freetext' (restricted to digits) typing in those boxes, at least make focus a thing where tab/shift-tab moves it around logically across the active subwidgets.

[Cruxador]

Ah, Cruxador. Now I remember why I stopped posting here.

What, because I addressed the subject of the thread? Responded to a post you made? If you can't hear any disagreement or that not every choice you've made is perfect without dissolving into a pile of salt, how are you gonna do anything iterative ever?

Do you want congratulations first? Look, it's an improvement over just a list. You (and Mike and Toady, and I assume also ThreeToe) brought the UI from 80s to 90s, which is a substantial improvement. It's good! But that doesn't mean there's no further room for improvement, and color scheme in particular is an area where the current offering could be improved a lot. It's not even a high-effort thing to implement in particular, compared to the amount of benefit attainable. I get that none of you guys are primarily graphic designers and as far as I'm aware don't have a graphic design background, and everybody has only a limited array of screens to work with. I reckon just about everyone gets that. Who said they expected your first public draft to be perfect? But UI is pretty important and absolutely deserves at least the time and care that went into ramps after initial feedback, and color scheme in particular is part of that.

And yet when someone simply says that a more conventional choice would be valid and avoid some pitfalls, that is so direly offensive to you that you "threaten" to leave, invalidating the purpose of the thread and undermining the project by eschewing community feedback?

[Cruxador]

In case it was unclear, I'll more explicitly elaborate that

-the colours are not quite right (or they're "mad ugly" as one commenter put it).

In my view is because the colors are not sufficiently suitable to all screens. I can adjust things such that they look pretty good, actually, but the portion of the population for whom this is the default setup won't be high enough. Maybe Meph's screen falls into this area, I don't know. But that's why a color scheme with a more robust appearance on a variety of screens is the thing to angle for.

[Oab]

Keep in mind my parchment suggestion is extremely crude. The color palette and design are not even at a rough draft standard.

That parchment could easily be dwarven toilet paper. Don’t get caught up on the parchment idea itself, but instead focus on the visual clarity potential something like this could offer.

At the end of the day the background just needs more visual interest and should help create a cleaner overall visual.
 
Concerning the color not working or the icons clashing, that’s a moot point obviously that would have to be addressed with anything official. Correcting those issues is absolutely not difficult to accomplish, and I suspect Mike already has palettes that would work to accomplish this. For example the icons could just use a gray tone or some other appropriate color filter. This would probably even help to enhance the parchment theme.

Adding themes for immersion adds value as long as it’s relative and complimentary to the tile set art. The only concern is what do you do with all the other screens?

It’s great that many of you find the boxes of text good enough, but that is a minority thought and defeats the purpose of this venture. I would be happy with it as is to. This UI work more than anything is arguably the most crucial to get right. To appease the expectations of the majority of players on steam this needs and deserves unbiased feedback.Toady’s opinion doesn’t even matter much against the weight of the majority opinion on this. This is one of the costs of using steam as a platform unfortunately.

@Meph:

I suggest the parchment mostly because the art style you guys are using reminds me of older games that utilized parchment themes. It seemed easily adoptable, sensible, and complimentary even to the art style.

Stone/metal would absolutely work as a background and by default be usable for all screens to boot.

[ror6ax]

Ah, Cruxador. Now I remember why I stopped posting here.

As a relative newcomer to DF and this forum this is not something nice to see.
There's a ton of goodwill and support for the UI work and many people essentially volunteering as a collective UX hivemind.
Supposedly unfriendly comments by one person are hardly a reason to kill this, obviously very popular thread.

The "help save the noobs" thread has a lot of love put into it as well and not a single acknowledgement that it's being read by anyone. I thought it is precisely the job Kitfox was supposed to be doing. With Thursday releases becoming smaller each week, I feel uneasy about the future of UX endeavour.

I've asked for a screenshot of an active mid-size fortress in several places and got to answer. It would take you guys 15 seconds to make a few and give us a bit more than 100x100px crop to appreciate and maybe give feedback about. Win-win.