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[MoltenIdol]

You Should try to use as much of the screenspace as possible. See how much you can cram in there, while still retaining readability.

Such as the collapsable menus. They take up way too much space, compared to their usefullness.
They could be way out to the far left.
Players Will eventually discover what type of item an item is, when they venture into the menu for adding Stuff to your embark.
And generally compacting everything would help with faster reading.
Theres too much space between information.

Right now, i feel like my eyes are drawn towards the graphics, instead of quickly spotting the information i need.

You see more information, faster, in the ASCII menu IMO.


The graphics part of Everything could have way more texture to it, and a darker background, so the text becomes more clear next to it.
Right now, its simple up against simple.
Its "hard to focus" on the text.
I Think the "runic" textures could be implemented more, such as in the scrollbar.
Or Some other Nice texture.

But in general, darken the ui, make it pop out of the screen more, with textures, shading, lighting and Stuff. Cram it together in every way possible. Get rid of unnescessary blank space.

If you ask me <3

Always exciting to See what Youre working on.


EDIT: Maybe just make a texture for Everything Thats gold

Make the sliders feel "3D", using light and shadow, like an actual button you can touch and drag.
Maybe with little "chips" in them, like theyre old and used.

The orange could have a more flat feeling to it. Still textures with light and shadow tho, and old.

Then, the untextured grey boxes of information would Really stick out and the text would be more visible at a glance.

Like the grey boxes of text are embedded in the graphics.
Maybe make the grey waaay darker.

More earthern colours for the orange. (Maybe also a dark Silver instead of gold? Maybe not) im just feeling some diablo II UI vibes all of a sudden.

[Erendir]

Are two lists necessary at all?

What if there were a single list of items, and to get an overview of what you have selected to bring with you you would activate a checkbox.

And then, with so much horizontal space, you can do stuff like having categories on the left expanding on the right (for example).

[Oab]

@Vordak: Lol!

So based on the consensus of feedback it seems like the prominent concerns are the office software vibe and the lack of tool tips.

How about something like this? (Right side)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Remove the borders and add parchment or something like stone as a background for the different sections.

[Starver]

Thinking about "Your Items", "Available Items(/etc)", does Your<=Available ordering work better than Available=>Your?

On the one hand, LHS is what you first see and is more important for you. On the other, it's "You are getting ready to embark, these are the things we can load into your wagon to take away from here (we already packed our clients' usual base requirements, but you can shuffle some back)".

I'm trying to think of various other games, and their designs. It goes both ways (but not all those are direct Embark-equivalent, some are shop-counters, and even then they have Your/Their examples - though that might be for loot-selling psychology).

I can think of a couple that do it vertically, though that's involves a different demand on screen real-estate, and also 'single table' abounds with "Goods : #Owned : Sell At : [>] : [<] : Buy At : #Available" kind of philosophy, in one order or other.

[Cruxador]

I'm just questioning the general direction this conversation is going - that being a list with collapsable sections is not enough, we need more control.
As someone mentioned before - embark screen has probably caused least amount of anguish to people.
I have zero issues with it's UX and never needed any googling to understand how it works - which cannot be said for many other DF screens.

...that is I never needed googling about what does the screen do. I did need and still need frequent trips to the wiki about properties of items on the list. AKA are llamas shearable? This problem is not unique to embark screen - at any given time of playing in both fortress mode and adventure mode a player can encounter items that they are not familiar with. Hence my ugly mockup with informational popup. Having a set properties window would work in embark screen but in the actual game you'd still need a popup of sorts.

T O O L T I P S
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You Should try to use as much of the screenspace as possible. See how much you can cram in there, while still retaining readability.

Such as the collapsable menus. They take up way too much space, compared to their usefullness.
They could be way out to the far left.
Players Will eventually discover what type of item an item is, when they venture into the menu for adding Stuff to your embark.

The ability to collapse the sections isn't the key design purpose of that used space; it's a convenience feature. Their primary purpose is to function as subheads. There are a lot of different types of items, and a lot of variants of items which have the same functionality. Of course it's true that people can eventually find out how things work; that's true now. The point of accessibility upgrades isn't to tell people to read the wiki and figure it out as they go along, but to increase the initial clarity.

And generally compacting everything would help with faster reading.
Theres too much space between information.

This isn't correct, and it's not only a matter of opinion but in contradiction to an overwhelming body of design research. The importance of white space in graphic design is well established; a dense block of text slows reading and decreases comprehension.

Right now, i feel like my eyes are drawn towards the graphics, instead of quickly spotting the information i need.

You see more information, faster, in the ASCII menu IMO.

The graphics part of Everything could have way more texture to it, and a darker background, so the text becomes more clear next to it.
Right now, its simple up against simple.
Its "hard to focus" on the text.
I Think the "runic" textures could be implemented more, such as in the scrollbar.
Or Some other Nice texture.

But in general, darken the ui, make it pop out of the screen more, with textures, shading, lighting and Stuff. Cram it together in every way possible. Get rid of unnescessary blank space.

If you ask me <3

Always exciting to See what Youre working on.

I agree that the colors of the UI really need another pass. The bright gold headers pop too much, the grey that is barely within the range one can consider dark grey is not a suitable replacement for black, and the text, overall, is overwhelmed by its surroundings. Plain white on black was too much contrast, but they've gone too far in the other direction, and if they want to abandon that old way, it should be done properly with a color, not just making the black lighter and lighter. I'm partial to a cream (#fdf5e6) on brown taupe (#483a2c) myself, with some lighter and darker variants mixed in (#f7e7ce, #f9debb, #cf9d6b and #6b594a, #594027, #634b33) for highlighting and similar but distinct elements and a licorice (#1a1110) tone for the ultimate backgrounds. Something along those lines would create a modest and warm range of tones that I think is appropriate to DF, which would work well on a far wider range of screens than the current medium greys do. Of course, that specific case wouldn't look great with the light yellow border designs, but to be honest adjusting them to a more vibrant and saturated range of tones would look more like gold anyway.

I think it's easy to do wrong if they were to make textures for everything here, however that applies to actual textures in the art/design sense, not the broader programming sense. Making more custom versions of UI elements would help, and I agree that the scrollbar is a key choice for this. There are no doubt going to be a lot of scrollbars, settling for what's basically a Windows 95 default isn't great. Instead, whey not have Meph make something that matches his gold filigree aesthetic?

@Vordak: Lol!

So based on the consensus of feedback it seems like the prominent concerns are the office software vibe and the lack of tool tips.

How about something like this? (Right side)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Remove the borders and add parchment or something like stone as a background for the different sections.

I dig the parchment section, this is definitely an improvement over Mike/Meph's initial public draft. However although I called them out as too bright, the grey buttons and background aren't bright enough to go to a dark text color.

[FantasticDorf]

I like that the righhand list itself actually replicates a paper scroll, if they were somewhat correlated with a stone/clay tablet and the paper sheet i think that'd probably fix a lot of wierd coloration choices with words for purple that don't even cross my mind and gold ontop of the general dark colors on the lefthandmost page to the right.

Besides, taking the assumption that we see our dwarves on the lefthand side of the screen in little boxes it'd be fitting to have them set against a darker background so we can see them better conveying their beardcolors or skin tones, then we'd read their credentials (or more to say, add and modify) about their skills on the righthand scroll. Bringing the pratical illusion and setting up some staging this is probably a POV of a mountain-home book-keeper/pen-pusher.

[Oab]

@FantasticDorf:
I was thinking the book keeper and broker screens could share the parchment idea as well.

Obviously this could look much better if more effort was spent on it. Crude copy pasting edits is all the time I can spare unfortunately.

Here are some additional potential improvements:

-Intricate design along the margin similar to Mephs borders.
-Having a quill for the selection icon would be a nice touch as well.
-Curled top/bottom.
-Dwarfy Finials top/bottom
-More appropriate highlight on the selection
-More appropriate tool tip art

You bring up an interesting point about the dwarfs. I don’t think their appearance is determined by this point though?

Now you have me thinking of a dwarf randomizer function that draws from historical figures. Too bad this screen comes prior to world gen.

@Cruxador:

Yes.

100% agree, and I really don’t understand the dismissive discourse in the steam suggestion threads. Unless of course it concerns suggestions on things that are clearly out of scope at this time.

Yep, and is actually true across most fields of design.

Your color suggestions are good in theory, but a lot of the sprites share those colors so there would be issues with contrast that would have to be considered.

Thanks.

[Pillbo]

Thinking about "Your Items", "Available Items(/etc)", does Your<=Available ordering work better than Available=>Your?

This has always been confusing and felt backwards to me. Available=>Your makes more sense.

[Bumber]

I don't care which side is which, but it should probably be made consistent with the adventurer/fort trading screens.

[[HYBRID BEING]]

Unpopular opinion: icons and buttons look weird on parchment background, and it makes font choice more limited.

[voliol]

Besides, taking the assumption that we see our dwarves on the lefthand side of the screen in little boxes it'd be fitting to have them set against a darker background so we can see them better conveying their beardcolors or skin tones [...]

A dark background wouldn’t work well with dark hair colors and skin tones, a medium (neither bright nor dark) background is the best option to work with as many dwarf colors as possible.

[FantasticDorf]

You bring up an interesting point about the dwarfs. I don’t think their appearance is determined by this point though?

Now you have me thinking of a dwarf randomizer function that draws from historical figures. Too bad this screen comes prior to world gen.

Randomizer is a suggestion all in itself, at most a competent DFhack script writer could jerryrig taking the data from the adventurer screen's personality & appearance stage then copy-paste, its how i think they've managed to do similar feats, save backing out to main-menu and re-embarking all the while. Im quite sure that somehow they could use the latter half of that adventurer screen to even create new non-dwarf migrant races for embark.

Its already been sort of determined that dwarves will have graphics for themsleves that are defined seperately, its amongst some of the earliest topics when the screenshots for the steam release were announced, and this is mainly what i was referecing. In lieu with the recent screenshots of little dinky animals on the embark screen to take with you, it seemed like a natural step.

Besides, taking the assumption that we see our dwarves on the lefthand side of the screen in little boxes it'd be fitting to have them set against a darker background so we can see them better conveying their beardcolors or skin tones [...]

A dark background wouldn’t work well with dark hair colors and skin tones, a medium (neither bright nor dark) background is the best option to work with as many dwarf colors as possible.

That's fair, but backround tile color designations especially for screens in those little boxes might be relevant, default being black.

[voliol]

Any thoughts on the intro sequence? Will it remain the same, or are you making a new one/remaster it?

[evthestrike]

Unpopular opinion: icons and buttons look weird on parchment background, and it makes font choice more limited.

I am not a huge fan of the parchment either, unless the rest of the menu matches that aesthetic better. I don't think it matches with the rest of the UI very well.

Any thoughts on the intro sequence? Will it remain the same, or are you making a new one/remaster it?

It would be cool if the artists made a remastered version in pixel art. That would probably be a low priority though.

[Rekov]

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.

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.