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[Shonai_Dweller]

Funny thing is the 47.05 method of "Build a coffin, wait for it to be placed, select it, turn it to burial=yes" is basically the same amount of effort as the new "place 1x1 tomb zone, build coffin on it." Except you don't have to wait for any coffins to be built. With the added benefit of being able to build funny single room burial chambers for everyone if you really want to with the multi function.

It could be better, sure. Hopefully will be at some point. But it's closer towards a unified system that the scattered "everything works differently" system we had before.

I can record a macro to do 10 at once in 47.05, however, and then just do 100 more with 10 clicks instead of like 500 or whatever. I wouldn't say it's "basically the same."

We weren't talking about macros. When macros work properly in 50.0x you'll be able to do it there too. Obviously using a time-saving function that doesn't actually exist yet is going to be better...

[Bumber]

When macros work properly in 50.0x you'll be able to do it there too.

That's more "if" than "when". IIRC, Toady didn't design the macro feature to begin with. Stuff like the building materials list can open on the left or right side of the screen depending on where the construction is located in the game window. Scrolling lists isn't aligned to grid. Everything to do with the mouse is affected by current zoom level and UI size. Sounds like a nightmare to me.

Mice just aren't suited to repetitive tasks.

[Shonai_Dweller]

When macros work properly in 50.0x you'll be able to do it there too.

That's more "if" than "when". IIRC, Toady didn't design the macro feature to begin with. Stuff like the building materials list can open on the left or right side of the screen depending on where the construction is located in the game window. Scrolling lists isn't aligned to grid. Everything to do with the mouse is affected by current zoom level and UI size. Sounds like a nightmare to me.

Mice just aren't suited to repetitive tasks.

With two programmers the mystery of how to make a macro remains secret forever? Not very likely....

[Bumber]

With two programmers the mystery of how to make a macro remains secret forever? Not very likely....

The issue is doing it well in an environment that has dropped full keyboard support in favor of a mouse-oriented GUI.

You can create mouse macros right now using 3rd party tools. It's just garbage due to the aforementioned issues.

[Shonai_Dweller]

With two programmers the mystery of how to make a macro remains secret forever? Not very likely....

The issue is doing it well in an environment that has dropped full keyboard support in favor of a mouse-oriented GUI.

You can create mouse macros right now using 3rd party tools. It's just garbage due to the aforementioned issues.

When was keyboard support dropped? Was there an announcement?
Strange thing to decide after so many announcements and comments after release that further keyboard support was going to be coming up.

Or did you perhaps dream it?

[Achanei]

Every major release is followed by a long series of bug fixes. This isn't new.

Sort of. On Steam, it isn't common to have major bugs lasting one revolution around the sun. Which is why I thought a Steam release might be a good thing. Turns out...

Turns out, releasing on Steam didn't magically duplicate Toady into a company full of programmers dedicated to fixing bugs. Well, funny that....

I haven't played DF for a few years before the steam release, so I'm not sure if this is a contentious opinion around these forums, but I hope that for the game's future development, at some point they hire a UX guy.

I find that, akin to dwarves, developers also have skills and preferences,  and Zach and Tarn are legendary at those hyperfocused deep dives that flesh out the aforementioned "forty-eleven trees" or the masterwork of a health system that is, to me, still the best health system of any game I have ever played. This is, in my humble opinion, what makes this game great.

User Experience and Interfaces, however, are something that gets usually kinda-sorta done as an afterthough and sometimes with great focus but less experience and skill. This is, by the way, a common problem in many products coming out of the FOSS-bubble of much beolved nerds. Things with a good UI tend to come from the big, soulless capitalist monsters - because they hire people to specialize in it.

Now I for one much prefer a wacky, powerful and brilliant game to a smooth-playing smartphone microtransaction scam, and I think everyone who gets lost on these forums does, but perhaps with the cash rolling in, we might get both - it would allow Zach and Tarn to focus on the things they excel at, to provide us all with more glorious in-depth simulations of [whatever], while someone who specializes and excels in user experience could begin the task of working on actualy QoL and user experience. But what do y'all think?

[brewer bob]

Things with a good UI tend to come from the big, soulless capitalist monsters - because they hire people to specialize in it.

A "good UI" (and UX) is also very much subjective and depends on what you're used to.

For instance, since I don't have a smart phone (or ever used one), most modern interfaces which have been made with a smart phone user in mind are utterly horrendous for me. Give me a UI from decades back and I'm much more comfortable with it. That's one reason why I've never really had issues with the old DF interface (I mean, I loved even 'umkh'!) and why I am reluctant to play the Premium release (also, lack of 100% keyboard control keeps me away).

(...And no, I'm not expecting that the DF UI should be made to suit my old fashioned tastes. I know I'm pretty much in the minority and that's just what I'll have to live with.)

[Shonai_Dweller]

Yeah. It's hard to know sometimes if modern interfaces are actually better, or just that people have gotten used to things.

I felt so old when I booted up a demo of Octopath Traveller II the other day and couldn't select anything on the menu at all.
Checked Steam forums and I wasn't the only one, but the comments where all "well, duh, isn't it obvious you move the cursor with WASD!?". Um...damn...no, not at all...

[brewer bob]

I felt so old when I booted up a demo of Octopath Traveller II the other day and couldn't select anything on the menu at all.
Checked Steam forums and I wasn't the only one, but the comments where all "well, duh, isn't it obvious you move the cursor with WASD!?". Um...damn...no, not at all...

Yeah, there was a time when 'wasd' wasn't the standard and felt like a really weird/unintuitive choice to replace the arrow keys.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I felt so old when I booted up a demo of Octopath Traveller II the other day and couldn't select anything on the menu at all.
Checked Steam forums and I wasn't the only one, but the comments where all "well, duh, isn't it obvious you move the cursor with WASD!?". Um...damn...no, not at all...

Yeah, there was a time when 'wasd' wasn't the standard and felt like a really weird/unintuitive choice to replace the arrow keys.

Doesn't help that the rest of the computer world outside of games still use the arrow keys to move up and down (amongst other options, but it's never disabled by default).

[ab9rf]

Doesn't help that the rest of the computer world outside of games still use the arrow keys to move up and down (amongst other options, but it's never disabled by default).

This is solely because the arrow keys are to the right of the main keyboard area (overlaid with the numpad on PC keyboards, and in between the main keyboard and the keypad on most AT-standard keyboard layouts), which means that right-hand mousers cannot use the mouse and the arrow keys at the same time without placing their left hand on the keyboard in an odd and awkward position. A righthanded mouse user only has their left hand available for keyboard operations while they're using the mouse at the same time, which means to be non-awkward all keyboard controls that are intended to be used at the same time as the mouse have to be on the left side of the keyboard. If the arrows were to the left of the keyboard, we'd have just used them. For that matter, I suspect that if the function keys, which were to the left of the keyboard on the original PC keyboard, were still there we'd be using those instead of WASD. And yes, I've seen games from the late 1980s and early 1990s that did exactly this, although not many. A keymapping using function keys as arrow/movement keys that was viable on the PC/XT keyboard would be madly awkward on the AT keyboard, and by the mid-1990s practically everyone was on the AT layout or some variation of it. This is all basic human-computer interface engineering, which really everyone who writes UIs should be either aware of or able to figure out fairly quickly, but sadly far too many software developers haven't really put much thought into these issues.

All that said, WASD is quite a bit older than Dwarf Fortress. The first known instance of WASD keyboard controls was in the 1986 game Dark Castle, although the earliest game probably best known for being a "WASD controlled game" would be Half Life, released in 1998. However, I suspect Toady wasn't a big player of games like Half Life, and Daggerfall, which Toady has specifically mentioned as an inspiration, defaulted to using the regular arrow keys for movement. While Daggerfall has mouse support, the game (like many other games of the 1990s and even early 2000s) is entirely playable without one.

[Achanei]

Things with a good UI tend to come from the big, soulless capitalist monsters - because they hire people to specialize in it.

A "good UI" (and UX) is also very much subjective and depends on what you're used to.

Mmh, I agree that there is a level of subjectiveness to it, as interfaces are learned, but:

a) standards exist, formalized or not, and they serve us well. If most people are used to processes working a particular way, symbols have a particular meaning, we should by default conform to that unless there is a good reason not to. Otherwise, the argument is basically "preferred language is subjective, so my forum posts will be in swahili instead of english" - sure, but that would make it a pain for almost everyone else. Using english is not a perfect compromise, but it works better than all the alternatives.

b) independent of subjective design tastes, there are loads of low-hanging fruits - for example unsearchable dwarf lists when assigning tombs or military squad membership. I don't know by what measure these lists are sorted, but searching through 120+ dorfs to find the one guy I want to add to a squad is just a pain.

For instance, since I don't have a smart phone (or ever used one), most modern interfaces which have been made with a smart phone user in mind are utterly horrendous for me. Give me a UI from decades back and I'm much more comfortable with it. That's one reason why I've never really had issues with the old DF interface (I mean, I loved even 'umkh'!) and why I am reluctant to play the Premium release (also, lack of 100% keyboard control keeps me away).

(...And no, I'm not expecting that the DF UI should be made to suit my old fashioned tastes. I know I'm pretty much in the minority and that's just what I'll have to live with.)

I totally feel the smart phone UI thing! I managed to avoid one until around two and a half years ago and the swiping still vaguely annoys me. And I also agree on keyboard controls, I still occasionally hit old control combos when I want to do something in the steam version. Perhaps the soulless corporate dig was a bit misleading, the UX improvements I would like to see in DF are more along the lines of consistent filter/search/sort functions, a better labour interface - this being a prime example of a sorta half-assed improvement, before the steam version, fortress mode was (imo) unplayable without dwarf therapist for labor assignment, now there is a barebones interface for it that needs a ton of categories added manually (unless you want lots of shitty weapons while the legendary weaponsmith is picking flowers somewhere). Its an improvement, but still very annoying to add a ton of labor categories by hand every fort. And that's what I mean - making a good UI for dwarf fortress is a significant chunk of development time, increasing with every new feature and system. I don't think it is productive to have Toady spend time on it, I'd rather have fancy new things added to the game - i.e. the old "Dwarf Fortress plus a modding community that adds vital UX stuff like dwarf therapist" system. But, with the big steam bucks rolling in, and from a business (and, you know, general accessibility) perspective the sensible idea of making it easier to get into and play the game, hiring somebody who solely focuses on User Experience could be doable and would mean the best of both worlds.

[brewer bob]

Things with a good UI tend to come from the big, soulless capitalist monsters - because they hire people to specialize in it.

A "good UI" (and UX) is also very much subjective and depends on what you're used to.

Mmh, I agree that there is a level of subjectiveness to it, as interfaces are learned, but:

a) standards exist, formalized or not, and they serve us well. If most people are used to processes working a particular way, symbols have a particular meaning, we should by default conform to that unless there is a good reason not to.

Yeah, that's sort of the 'depends on what you're used to' part of my comment.

With DF's lifespan (hopefully development spanning still decades) in mind, I'd expect there being many more times when there'll be complaints about an outdated and clunky UI. Probably some ten years or so from now, what is currently seen as a "good and intuitive UI" will not be seen as one.

Perhaps the soulless corporate dig was a bit misleading, the UX improvements I would like to see in DF are more along the lines of consistent filter/search/sort functions
<snip>
But, with the big steam bucks rolling in, and from a business (and, you know, general accessibility) perspective the sensible idea of making it easier to get into and play the game, hiring somebody who solely focuses on User Experience could be doable and would mean the best of both worlds.

I guess my main point why I commented was that a professional (corporate) UI designer wouldn't necessarily be the best option for Dwarf Fortress. It'd have to be someone who is very familiar with the game and could address both the accessibility and needs of new players, but at the same time do it so that it doesn't come at the cost of "veteran" players' user experience and possibly making it less accessible for them. And, judging by comments I've read, the Steam release UI currently has been at the expense of long-time players (e.g., lack of 100% keyboard control).

But yeah, it'd be great to see Toady focus solely on content and features, and the interface part be handled by someone else. The "someone else" just should be somebody who knows DF very well, imho.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Things with a good UI tend to come from the big, soulless capitalist monsters - because they hire people to specialize in it.

A "good UI" (and UX) is also very much subjective and depends on what you're used to.

Mmh, I agree that there is a level of subjectiveness to it, as interfaces are learned, but:

a) standards exist, formalized or not, and they serve us well. If most people are used to processes working a particular way, symbols have a particular meaning, we should by default conform to that unless there is a good reason not to.

Yeah, that's sort of the 'depends on what you're used to' part of my comment.

With DF's lifespan (hopefully development spanning still decades) in mind, I'd expect there being many more times when there'll be complaints about an outdated and clunky UI. Probably some ten years or so from now, what is currently seen as a "good and intuitive UI" will not be seen as one.

Perhaps the soulless corporate dig was a bit misleading, the UX improvements I would like to see in DF are more along the lines of consistent filter/search/sort functions
<snip>
But, with the big steam bucks rolling in, and from a business (and, you know, general accessibility) perspective the sensible idea of making it easier to get into and play the game, hiring somebody who solely focuses on User Experience could be doable and would mean the best of both worlds.

I guess my main point why I commented was that a professional (corporate) UI designer wouldn't necessarily be the best option for Dwarf Fortress. It'd have to be someone who is very familiar with the game and could address both the accessibility and needs of new players, but at the same time do it so that it doesn't come at the cost of "veteran" players' user experience and possibly making it less accessible for them. And, judging by comments I've read, the Steam release UI currently has been at the expense of long-time players (e.g., lack of 100% keyboard control).

But yeah, it'd be great to see Toady focus solely on content and features, and the interface part be handled by someone else. The "someone else" just should be somebody who knows DF very well, imho.

It's been at the expense of a tiny handful of extremely vocal long-term players. Most of us who have actually been playing "long-term" are aware that Toady smashes the game out of our comfort zone with every major update. This is no different from that. Those who lack the patience to see what the UI evolves into once all the updates Toady has mentioned (including, yes, adding full keyboard controls) are most likely not even "long-term" players in a dwarf fortress development sense.

[Salsa Gal]

Also, tombs being only for one dwarf isn't all that awful? I can imagine them desiring their own private place of rest. Probably aren't fond of being buried in mass burial chamber, and thus would not prevent ghosts. Though perhaps something like family tombs would be a good idea, I wouldn't put that under QoL.

I mean is a cemetery not just a public place of rest? I don't see why they should have an issue with that really.