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[kitfoxgames]

Steam Community Update 8 June 2022: Tutorials and Tooltips

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/975370/view/3349003120350094609

Full text:

Hello there!

When you're starting out in Dwarf Fortress, there's a lot to learn, and we're working now on various forms of tutorialization and instruction to help out new players.

First off, when you are placing your fort, you'll have an option to have the game pick a spot in the world you've made where it can do a more traditional tutorial:



This is the camera controls tutorial.  It's important to lead with this since the elevation slices can be a little confusing if you haven't played a game with them before.  Once you can operate the camera, we expand out into mining, woodcutting, stockpiles, and workshops.



Another way we can teach people is to have popups on any menu that might be confusing.  These are all works in progress, but in the image above you can see the general idea.



Finally, tooltips, tooltips everywhere.  We have 350 so far, and we'll keep on adding them until everything makes sense!

This isn't all we have planned.  You may have noticed the help button at the top of the screen.  Here we'll have more information, and we're thinking about ways to guide players toward goals and things they might have missed in a more interactive fashion as well.

- Tarn

[DrudeFiegler]

Very nice work with the tutorial! I'll try it in my first game... even if I don't think I'll need it.

Question though: will there be a way to rebind the keys ? Because wasd has no sense outside the qwerty keyboard, and i'm not using one ^^

[Giant Dwarf]

I am a bit concerned by the lack of highlighted letters for shortcuts.
Really hope we don't have to use the mouse for everything in the end as it would be super cumbersome.
(To me DF plays a lot more fluid than Rim World for example.)

And even if there are shortcuts for everything it will be hard to get into (or even coming back after a longer break) without being able to see them immediatly.
So please add those back. 🙏

[PatrikLundell]

It would have been ideal to retain key binding indications, but the mouse only UI work that only recently was reversed has likely caused too much damage to make that possible throughout. Many icons don't have any text (all over the main screen, for instance), so the best thing that can be done in those cases is probably to have a toggle and a temporary key (such as ALT alone) to show the key binding instead of the icon. This has been discussed in the FotF thread (temporary indication by Toady, toggle by me).
For the cases where there is text, it ought to be possible to reintroduce key binding indications (like the zone selection and stockpile settings, but not the stockpile icons on the right).

Hm, looking at the displayed tool tip for the stockpile settings, it ought to say what the current value is as well, not just say that you can toggle between two values: I can't guess which value the icon is supposed to indicate...

[kitfoxgames]

Steam Community Update 22 June 2022: Places and Zones:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/975370/view/3343374889353944956

Full text:


Hello!

We've been continuing along with our usability work.  That isn't just tutorials, but a few final menus to give some helpful overviews and otherwise provide information.  Let's take a look at the new Places tab for an example.



Here's an ordered list of the zones.  The most important part is the recenter button - it's easy to lose your garbage dump or dungeon, placed somewhere on the hundred elevation levels and then forgotten until you need it again.  The meeting areas all display the tavern/library/temple/etc. they are associated with, and barracks show their squad.



The larger locations, which can be made of several zones placed over multiple elevations if you like, also get their own list.  Hospitals display the number of patients if you have any.



Here's the stockpile list.  It places stockpiles with custom names at the top of their category (Zach named a few of them here.)  Determining how full a stockpile is can be complicated by containers like bins and barrels, but the occupancy number here gives some idea of how close each stockpile is to needing expansion.



Like certain zones, workshops can be easy to misplace, and this alphabetical list lets you pop over to a given workshop without trouble.  The assigned master of the workshop is shown below the name, and the list also shows the current task.  It prints "+ X tasks" if there are additional tasks set for the shop.



Farm plots aren't as easy to misplace, since there are usually only a few layers where they can logically be set down, but it's nice to have an overview of what's currently growing and ready to harvest.

These are all still subject to change - they're a bit sparse and there's always more information we could display - but things are continuing to come together.

- Tarn

[Strangething]

That places screen is going to be so useful. 

[[HYBRID BEING]]

Spoiler: Popup (click to show/hide)

Another way we can teach people is to have popups on any menu that might be confusing.  These are all works in progress, but in the image above you can see the general idea.

Rather than "Don't show again" checkbox on popups, maybe a "?" button on menus themselves (to bring up a popup) would be better? Would be less obtrusive and helpful if one would need a refresher on smth.

[clinodev]

https://twitter.com/KitfoxGames/status/1544674516667961347

Full text:

Hey Urists! For various reasons, the Dwarf Fortress news will be delayed a week, from tomorrow til next Wednesday the 13th.

In exchange for your patience, here's a dog, who may or may not be the heir to your fort, after the clown got possessed by the devil.

There's a picture of a Premium tileset dog as well, which I'd post here but I'm on my phone.

[clinodev]

Sooooo, I had to have it explained to me, but apparently the devil clown dog king thing is from a recent viral tweet:

https://twitter.com/lumnmch/status/1543687491819130884?s=19

People who play dwarf fortress are like “Yeah sorry my clown just got possessed by the devil and killed the king who named his dog as heir so now the king is a dog and he’s making everyone dig for bones until they die of dehydration” then you look at the game and it’s like @ ^ $

Neat that DF is getting viral tweets, I guess?

[voliol]

Sooooo, I had to have it explained to me, but apparently the devil clown dog king thing is from a recent viral tweet:

https://twitter.com/lumnmch/status/1543687491819130884?s=19

People who play dwarf fortress are like “Yeah sorry my clown just got possessed by the devil and killed the king who named his dog as heir so now the king is a dog and he’s making everyone dig for bones until they die of dehydration” then you look at the game and it’s like @ ^ $

Neat that DF is getting viral tweets, I guess?

Oh that explains it, I was wondering how

Spoiler: DF Spoilers (click to show/hide)

a clown could be possessed by a devil, when they are the same thing. With "who may or may not be the heir to your fort", I kind of expected some kind of demon dog, as those may indeed inherit your fort, in the way that the Balrog inherited Moria.

It is regrettable that we do not have demonic possessions yet, but it going viral is cool either way!

[Starver]

...and here was I wondering if my adventurer would have to brave that trap to pick up the coins.

/checks INI to see if that matters

[kitfoxgames]

Steam Community Update 13 July 2022: Plants and Fruit

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/975370/view/3365894791522358421

Full text:

Hello!

Carolyn has completed the update of the interface art and icons and has moved on to the next set of updates: vegetation!  Here is where we are at so far with aboveground trees:



Flowers!  These are apple, peach, and sand pear trees.



And their fruit!  Along with some smaller bayberry clusters over on the right that didn't have visible flowers.



In autumn, the leaves begin to turn...



Achieving a rich autumnal glow...



And then ready to fall!  We have yet to do the falling leaves animation (it has a very crappy placeholder drawn by me right now ha ha), but we'll be there soon.  If you look closely, you'll see a few leaves pointing the wrong way, or branches connecting to nothing - those were my fault and we're fixing them up!  Some of it also comes from limitations of the system.  But for a tile-based system, where the exact tiles matter (dwarves can only scurry up into the thicker branches when treed by wild beasts), I think this looks great!

Of course, your dwarves don't have to embark in the temperate zone with the four seasons (despite the text at the top!):



In this screenshot alone, we have round limes, guavas, coffee berries, carambolas, kapok fruit, avocados, bitter oranges, cashew apples, pomegranates, papayas, citrons, rambutans, lychees, custard-apples, and durians.  There are three images for fruit right now, based on size and recolored.  This is a candidate for improvement of course.



And here they are in flower.

-Tarn

[Bob69Joe]

Does this mean it is early access? Hand it off to Sseth Tzeentach! XD

[PatrikLundell]

No. It means that progress towards release is being done. No release date has been announced yet. DF is a project in continuous progress, and thus it would have been suitable to be described as in perpetual Early Access. However, the decision was to label it as a Release. Once released, it's possible experimental branches may be tried when introducing new features, but that can't happen until there is anything to branch out from. Still, the "Release" may still have significant feature missing, as there have been discussions to push the release and catch up with these features post release. However, that probably won't be cause for it to be called Early Access, even though that would be the more honest approach (there's a lot of stuff out there that has had their "Release" version missing more than half the content, so there's bad precedence).

[Su]

something about these images - i don't see a mouse cursor. where are the "avocado tree twigs, avocado leaves, avocado flowers" ect tooltips coming from?