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[elilla]

No, a ton of people complained about the old UI, so he made a new one, and now people that some how managed to adapt to the old UI, but can't adapt to the new one, complain about it.

I'm an old player.  The old UI was kinda terrible, in terms of design (e.g. inconsistency among different menus).  But every operation was possible with the keyboard, which has two major advantages; one, it's better for accessibility and preventing injury; two, it's macro-able.

The new UI is, to me, indisputably a step forward in terms of intuitiveness and consistency.  Overall I like the new UI better than the old one.  However, they made two design decisions that I dislike; one is that some operations are mouse-exclusive, and the second is that old keybindings have changed.  In large part it seems that the latter choice is to accomodate WASD arrow movement, which sounds like little benefit to me—it's not like this is an FPS, the arrow keys would be fine, the number of new players who would be both interested in DF and insistent on WASD feels to me to be vanishingly small.  I wish this was customisable, with an option for the old-style keybindings.

Full keyboard support for the new UI is in the roadmap, but you know how it is with DF; there's always so much to do and so few developers (even though the new version has double the number of developers).  The most recent release has fixed a number of longstanding grave bugs and even more longstanding performance issues.  I do believe at some point we'll have fully mouseless interaction back in the menu(s).  I don't think the old keybindings are coming back, but dfhack has a command to overlay on-screen hints for the new keybindings; I hope that this makes into the new UI in vanilla, too.

[Salmeuk]

As an older player who liked the old keybindings, I will say that the new keybindings are subjectively worse IMHO.  The general playability is better, though. 

Again, as an older player, I think the current version is a massive upgrade overall, but there are definite pain points.  I feel sympathy for those who find the new UX unplayable, but it is definitely a very minority opinion.

yeah, very well stated. though I think that, if one were to poll exclusively 'old' or ascii version players, the minority opinion thing might not hold true. .  there is this weird thing with the DF playerbase where people will check out for years but still consider themselves fans or players of the game. as more of these people come back to find the game changed I expect these sorts of threads will continue to appear. expressing confusion or discontent..

i also think that the keybinds are so poorly chosen that yourself and many others feel the need to entirely rebind is not a great thing. . . like, why can't workshop hotkeys correspond to their first or second character of the title?

agree with Brewer that the 47.05 version is about as playable as any version of DF ever was, and represents a fairly majestic final stopping point before the premium conversion... so at any rate, the old ways are merely a download away.

[Eric Blank]

Fixing the keyboard bindings to make them both present again and this time more consistent is a priority for Toady, it will probably happen after the adventure mode release they're working on right now which will need keyboard bindings of its own too. adventure mode was pushed back because they felt it would take take too long to release anything if they waited, and hey, turns out it has taken almost an extra year so far, which is a long time to wait when you desperately need to see a doctor on a regular basis, understandably.

I've actually been enjoying the new version, it didn't take too long to adapt to it, or back to doing everything on the keyboard again going back to the old version. Biggest problem I have is I absolutely hate drawing sprites and suck at it, and don't know how everyone else seems to be pushing out complete layered sprite sheets for new races. Like what program are they even using to let them manage all that?? It's a mystery. Only a few hundred more sprites to go...

[Ziusudra]

However, they made two design decisions that I dislike; one is that some operations are mouse-exclusive

I think this was less a design decision and more of a "just get some thing releasable" decision.

and the second is that old keybindings have changed.

The old keybinds were a major part of the old UI problem; different parts of the UI used different keys to do the same thing and the whole thing all but required the keypad on a full keyboard which many don't hav any more.

Frankly, at this point I'd be surprised if fort mode ever gets truly full keyboard support again; it'll get some more but there's a lot missing and cases where the old problem still exists of situations where the key it would make sense to use is already in use for some thing else.

[mikekchar]

i also think that the keybinds are so poorly chosen that yourself and many others feel the need to entirely rebind is not a great thing. . . 

I'm one of those weirdos that feels that if it isn't using HJKL (Rogue/vi keys), it's broken    To be completely fair, I mostly remapped the keys in the old version too...  It's just that this version needs it more because the movement keys are *always* active (something that I think is probably a UX mistake).  The original modal operation of the game was definitely better UX (he says as a vi user... hmmm...)  It's really that modal operation that I would like to see return.  I suspect that will be more supported eventually.

Just to be clear, by "modal operation" I mean something like "(d)esignate" to get to the designate menu, "(d)ig" to get to the dig menu, "(s)tairs" to select digging stairs.  That way you can overload keys to do different things in different contexts instead of having to have 200 different key bindings with weird semantics -- for example "(t) dig stairs" because (s) is already used for motion ("s" for "down").

To be fair, it's not as bad as I'm suggesting here and you can get about 80 percent the way towards a modal keybinding if you spend an hour or so thinking about it.  If I ever get a combination that I'm really happy with, I may release them.  My main problem is that HJKL is actually suboptimal for right handed players because you really *have* to use the mouse, so I'm probably going to shift that to the left hand at some point (which is, I suppose, why WASD was chosen).

agree with Brewer that the 47.05 version is about as playable as any version of DF ever was, and represents a fairly majestic final stopping point before the premium conversion... so at any rate, the old ways are merely a download away.

I also agree with that.  I'd be using it right now if I didn't like the new labor system so damn much.  I'm a total vanilla player (apart from keymaps :-) ) so I don't like using DT.  The new labor system is actually almost ideal for me.

[Wilfred of Ivanhoe]

agree with Brewer that the 47.05 version is about as playable as any version of DF ever was, and represents a fairly majestic final stopping point before the premium conversion... so at any rate, the old ways are merely a download away.

I agree with this sentiment, and was hoping to wait out buying the graphics until they had patched in the old control scheme. Since that won't happen, confirmed by what mikekchar posted here, my relationship with the new version is now just to enjoy 47.05 until the magic release, maybe, to learn the new macros.

[Maloy]

my favorite forts are all on .47 and I often find myself wanting to go back, but also all the tech support the latest version gets is pretty rad.

I usually lose my forts to glitches and so the knowledge that stuff is being actively patched without having to start new saves is pretty enticing.

I'm excited for the game's future. The steam community for DF is so very different from the bay12 one though I don't mesh with it.

[Splint]

As far as the UI stuff, everything I've  personally found wrong with it are all individually small problems that only when taken as a whole become a single large, clunky problem that makes it more of a side-grade rather than a universal good or bad.

Stuff like mining designations feel much easier and faster to do with the mouse, but we can't control how we build/dig stairs anymore. Mass creation of rooms is a cool feature and can be super helpful, but now you have to have the rooms "ready" before you can place them that way (as in closed up with doors) and can't have their designations touch or they merge into single room designations. The Work Detail system was a neat idea to try and alleviate the 'dwarves not doing stuff themselves' but I personally find it as a clunkier version of the old system through manually flipping stuff on and off. Now we can check for people who'd be good fits for more dangerous jobs at a glance, but there's a ton of stuff buried in the new menus instead of a single button press (to get a basic visual description you need to go to health instead of it being part of their overview for instance despite there being plenty of space to include it at the bottom.)

Basically it feels like there was a lot that is a genuinely good concept but at worst just wasn't well executed (in my opinion anyway) and probably could have been play-tested better maybe with a mix of complete novices and old hands (there wouldn't have been a shortage of volunteers) to figure out what would work best for both camps and hopefully yield a better product that didn't change the game's perceived identity too severely. I also feel there was a misinterpretation of people wanting mouse support (since there's some stuff the mouse is absolutely better for) as wanting mouse only with limited to no keyboard support.

Also I believe Linux support just dropped with v50.10, so there's that if that's of interest to you, and there's been a slow track of either making adjustments, reimplementing things, or even adding new stuff, so there's that.

Personally I'm hoping a fix for gloves made by custom reaction finally happens, even if I'm not holding my breath on it.

[Blue_Dwarf]

but there's a ton of stuff buried in the new menus instead of a single button press (to get a basic visual description you need to go to health instead of it being part of their overview for instance despite there being plenty of space to include it at the bottom.)

Does that space exist in all resolutions?

[Splint]

but there's a ton of stuff buried in the new menus instead of a single button press (to get a basic visual description you need to go to health instead of it being part of their overview for instance despite there being plenty of space to include it at the bottom.)

Does that space exist in all resolutions?

Considering most people probably aren't running on super small resolutions, chances are it'll fit. Very few people likely use a machine one or more decades old to play Dwarf Fortress.



This is an example hacked together in paint.

I can understand the logic of putting the description under health, since injuries will appear in their description, but it's one of those things that seems oddly placed in practice (tested with a smaller screen, it might be tighter overall but there's still that same huge swathe of empty, unused space under the unit's little quip.)

After checking, it's used to display recent thoughts at least, but we have a whole tab that shows both recent thoughts and memories making that kind of superfluous since it provides the same info. One or two lines at a glance for the absolute most recent thoughts I could understand, but not the laundry list we get that would be better served with the unit description itself.

[Salmeuk]

i also think that the keybinds are so poorly chosen that yourself and many others feel the need to entirely rebind is not a great thing. . . 

The original modal operation of the game was definitely better UX (he says as a vi user... hmmm...)  It's really that modal operation that I would like to see return.  I suspect that will be more supported eventually.

Just to be clear, by "modal operation" I mean something like "(d)esignate" to get to the designate menu, "(d)ig" to get to the dig menu, "(s)tairs" to select digging stairs.  That way you can overload keys to do different things in different contexts instead of having to have 200 different key bindings with weird semantics -- for example "(t) dig stairs" because (s) is already used for motion ("s" for "down").
To be fair, it's not as bad as I'm suggesting here and you can get about 80 percent the way towards a modal keybinding if you spend an hour or so thinking about it.  If I ever get a combination that I'm really happy with, I may release them.

 this is great analysis of the new UI, and sort of sums up a general discontent I was feeling with it. please release that keybinding setup if you ever do complete it.

I rebound dig to 'e' and this has sped up my gameplay considerably. As well, rebinding the zoom to '1' and '3' allows for better control over the display space. which is important because one of the major timelosses in the new UI is moving the mouse from individual pieces of furniture to the item's description menu, and this can be shortened by going to full zoom.... because the UI displays the buttons that much closer to the item....

DF hasn't really changed. there is still a metagame to the UI, little tricks that will save you hours, and that aspect will probably always be there, and form part of the much feared, mostly mythical difficulty curve of this game.

its that moment when you realize just how tedious it will be to designate / construct / remodel your next project, and you weigh that work against the pleasure of seeing the completed project, and realize that maybe you don't care enough to properly form this pyramid or tower or hellpit or coliseum or whatever. knowing certain UI workarounds or speed tricks can sustain your desire for fantastical constructions. this is kinda weird if you think about it - are we playing a game at that point, or playing the UI? where can you draw the boundaries between gameplay and interface shenanigans?

essentially, the game should cater more to the megaproject players because I selfishly want to see more and more amazing builds

I'm excited for the game's future. The steam community for DF is so very different from the bay12 one though I don't mesh with it.

yeah agree with this. very much amazing spritework and modding energy going on in the workshop. but a lot of it reminds me of Rimworld's modding community... for better or for worse.

time will tell how many people maintain these larger mods, and what mods are seen as 'necessary' by the community.

[mikekchar]

I literally realised just a couple of days ago that I want zoom keys for exactly that.  It's even worse in text mode (especially on the community version where you have no choice).  I have poor vision and I just can't see the map unless it's zoomed all the way in.  But then super wide menus don't fit on the screen any more.  So I'm finding that I'm constantly zooming in and out.  I suppose I need one of those 48 inch screens so I can see everything at the same time :-)

[Blue_Dwarf]

This is an example hacked together in paint.

I can understand the logic of putting the description under health, since injuries will appear in their description, but it's one of those things that seems oddly placed in practice (tested with a smaller screen, it might be tighter overall but there's still that same huge swathe of empty, unused space under the unit's little quip.)

After checking, it's used to display recent thoughts at least, but we have a whole tab that shows both recent thoughts and memories making that kind of superfluous since it provides the same info. One or two lines at a glance for the absolute most recent thoughts I could understand, but not the laundry list we get that would be better served with the unit description itself.

I think that having thoughts listed in that space is far more useful than the dwarf's description. It's easier to keep track of his stress levels that way.

[Splint]

I think that having thoughts listed in that space is far more useful than the dwarf's description. It's easier to keep track of his stress levels that way.

Gonna have to chalk it up to differences of opinion in that case.

[Urist Mchateselves]

At the end of the day I don’t think Toady will ever be able to please everyone. Don’t change the UI, newcomers complain. Change the UI, veterans complain.