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[YashaAstora]

I haven't played DF in like six years.

One of the reasons I liked DF was because it ran fine on even terrible laptops thanks to being pseudo-turnbased (I was never good enough to reach FPS death anyway) and the entirely keyboard-based interface obviated the inherent limitations of touchpads compared to mice. DF was a game I could play in bed, in between classes, wherever.

Well, finally the legendary Steam release dropped. No ASCII so I waited for Classic. And now I'm here, with a new laptop that absolutely blows the old one out of the water aaaaaaaaaannd the interface is now almost exclusively done with the mouse. Oof. I don't know what to think. Yes, the old UI was bizarre as hell, but this new one seems to replace "slightly arcane until you know it" into "agonizingly elaborated and finicky mouse-clicking" which honestly, I'm not sure is much better. Not getting into the weird omissions. I'm asking: do any of you play on a laptop without a mouse? How are you liking the interface?

[Bihlbo]

I play on PC with a mouse that I'd prefer to avoid using for DF. Most of the new changes are very good, but some of them are... not to my liking. It feels like two steps forward, one step back. Thankfully, v0.47 isn't going anywhere, and with its superior interface, I find myself wanting to go back to it. I'm basically white-knuckling v50 instead of diving in with gusto.

[Bumber]

I use a laptop with a mouse and dislike it. Maybe I should try the trackpad, instead. At least I could keep both hands near the keyboard.

[EmperorCoolidge]

Definitely need to be able to navigate better with keyboard, but for *most* tasks, I find the new system much better. I played classic again the other day and building things and mining are so painful.

[anewaname]

Yeah I miss the complete keyboard control, but there are excellent new features and the keyboard controls are likely to mostly return. About one out of three time I need to mine, I still hit the 'd' key.

[YashaAstora]

I decided that it was far more worth it to just to play .47. I'm about 2 years into my fort and honestly surprised at how easily I settled in once I got used to the slight weirdness of the controls. My more pressing issues are stockpile nonsense like nobody picking up the ore I've mined or why these gabbro rocks still haven't been moved to the stockpile. I DO definitely wish that all these damn kids could do chores like in .50 and maybe the new labor system is better than me tediously enabling and disabling labors but until this game is entirely keyboard-usable like before I can't move onto the new version. Hell, I probably wouldn't even like the adjusted keybinds they'd use since they seem to be really hellbent on WASD instead of the arrow keys for...some reason.

[Carefulrogue]

I play with full mouse and keyboard and prefer the old schema of arcane control interface that makes you feel like you're hacking into a linux machine to the dumb as rocks setup the Steam (or perhaps classic in general) interface gives us.  Was it annoying in places?  Sure.  But it was FAST.  For example, trying to setup work orders in 0.50.x (steam) ... requires an annoying level of cursor navigation.  Before beds were "J M N 'bed' ENTER '50' ENTER" or something similar.  Now it feels like it takes twice as long because of cursoring, and then I have to edit the order details, etc... 

Right now?  I'm considering refunding in protest because it just doesn't feel playable as before.  Perhaps the barrier to entry is lower at last, but this is not the sort of picture I got when I noticed there was native mouse support coming, and a steam release with a non-subjective date.  I want the keybindings and interfaces of old to what we have now, what few improvements (like seeing foodstuffs and other details lining the top) there are.

[Salmeuk]

I play with full mouse and keyboard and prefer the old schema of arcane control interface that makes you feel like you're hacking into a linux machine to the dumb as rocks setup the Steam (or perhaps classic in general) interface gives us.  Was it annoying in places?  Sure.  But it was FAST.  For example, trying to setup work orders in 0.50.x (steam) ... requires an annoying level of cursor navigation.  Before beds were "J M N 'bed' ENTER '50' ENTER" or something similar.  Now it feels like it takes twice as long because of cursoring, and then I have to edit the order details, etc... 

Right now?  I'm considering refunding in protest because it just doesn't feel playable as before.  Perhaps the barrier to entry is lower at last, but this is not the sort of picture I got when I noticed there was native mouse support coming, and a steam release with a non-subjective date.  I want the keybindings and interfaces of old to what we have now, what few improvements (like seeing foodstuffs and other details lining the top) there are.

 even if you have these issues (which I and many others do) and feel somewhat disappointed by this sudden shift towards painful mouse control, just continue to voice your opinion on these forums and elsewhere. I cannot really say whether refunding the game is the right decision.

in my (humble) opinion, the devs deserve this kind of financial recognition regardless, and have in the past (notice my careful wording so I am not accused of lying!) appeared to promise recognition of this keyboard-only control schema or the recreation of an equivalent. so if we wait, wait and wait some more, features and changes will occur in the positive sense. all DF releases are slow burn, beta tests if you will, and this shift to premium is no different.

and, yeah, cannot agree enough - the main issue for me as well is SPEED, or LACK THEREOF. mouse clicking is such an inefficient method, but easy to learn and introduce new players to. so the decision was made thinking it would make everyone happy but this has not been the case. what's funny to me is how even new players identify these issues with speed of interaction / tedium of selection. for example, have you tried cancelling multiple constructions? the first time I mistakenly designated 100+ walls for construction and realized I was forced to manually click each cancel button, I almost quit the game in frustration lol.

[Carefulrogue]

-snip-
 even if you have these issues (which I and many others do) and feel somewhat disappointed by this sudden shift towards painful mouse control, just continue to voice your opinion on these forums and elsewhere. I cannot really say whether refunding the game is the right decision.

in my (humble) opinion, the devs deserve this kind of financial recognition regardless, and have in the past (notice my careful wording so I am not accused of lying!) appeared to promise recognition of this keyboard-only control schema or the recreation of an equivalent. so if we wait, wait and wait some more, features and changes will occur in the positive sense. all DF releases are slow burn, beta tests if you will, and this shift to premium is no different.

and, yeah, cannot agree enough - the main issue for me as well is SPEED, or LACK THEREOF. mouse clicking is such an inefficient method, but easy to learn and introduce new players to. so the decision was made thinking it would make everyone happy but this has not been the case. what's funny to me is how even new players identify these issues with speed of interaction / tedium of selection. for example, have you tried cancelling multiple constructions? the first time I mistakenly designated 100+ walls for construction and realized I was forced to manually click each cancel button, I almost quit the game in frustration lol.

Perhaps a bit of an empty threat on my part.  I didn't realize when I hit purchase that my old friend had changed a fair bit between .47 and .50.

Definitely though, big mistake.  While there are somethings that I think the changes will help a great deal with, like noble selection and military designations, and those weird mining or constructions you came up with to 'save space' ... but if I wanted to play a mouse primary game I would boot up Rimworld instead.

[Saiko Kila]

for example, have you tried cancelling multiple constructions? the first time I mistakenly designated 100+ walls for construction and realized I was forced to manually click each cancel button, I almost quit the game in frustration lol.

Designing a multi-levelled burrow is another example of change which introduces more mouseclicks... In classic you just mark one point at one level, and another point on another level, and create a cuboid between them. In Steam version you have to create a two-dimensional burrow at every level separately.

[YashaAstora]

Ultimately my problem is that the interface of .47 and before had issues, but they decided to "fix" those issues but just making you click stuff, not actually fixing the issues. My problem with the trading interface of .47 is not that I had to use the keyboard, it's that I couldn't search for the one thing I wanted to trade! Does the new UI fix the fact the military screen doesn't organize your dwarves by their combat skills and just throws you a giant-ass list where you check each dwarf and it tells you one random combat skill they have if they have any? No.

Real talk: if 0.50's UI update had been literally only adding a screen where you could easily search who has what labors enabled and enable and disable labors from it that would have already been a massive QoL update worthy of 30 bucks.

EDIT: Okay it turns out dfhack just literally has the above as a feature lmao wow how did I survive without this

[Carefulrogue]

DF hack has that feature?  I just always used Dwarf Therapist for that functionality.  And to assign new migrant waves to the farming peasantry.

[YashaAstora]

It does! Accessible from the units screen with l is Manipulator, which is basically a stripped down therapist. I personally don't like therapist that much, tabbing between DF and it is a pain and it's honestly WAY more complicated and micromanage-y than I need. i just want a simple spreadsheet in-game where I can check labors more efficiently than obsessively checking every one of these 70 boozehounds.

[Saiko Kila]

I use both Therapist and the Manipulator from DFHack. They complement each other in my play very well. DT is mostly for heavier tasks, grouping dorfs by waves and assigning, manipulator is for happiness checks and sorting by skill levels. I hope the Steam version will eventually get both of them.

[YashaAstora]

I have been playing more 0.47 and I am fully keyboard-pilled now. My position on DF's old keyboard-driven UI has been "yeah it's annoying but you get used to it" to my current position of "the old UI was actually always good and people were just lazy". With DFHack this thing blows 0.50 out of the water unless you are just actually allergic to using the keyboard and break out in hives if you have to hit more than 2 hotkeys.

If this is what DF will be now...I will buy the Steam version eventually to support Toady but I am just gonna play 0.47 till the day I die or until someone makes a mod that completely rips out this insufferable new UI and puts the old back in.