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[Haartian]

I'm sorry, but the OP is right - the new UI is unplayable.

It's not just the design of it - lack of/inconvenient/STRAIGHT UP INSANE keyboard shortcuts, forced mouse painting, clunky panels and functionalities hidden behind no-keyboard shortcut buttons - but also the feeling. It's laggy, fails to read input (both keyboard and mouse), assigns unintuitive bindings (after 10h or so I still can't figure out which way is up and down on the mouse scroll, and I strongly believe basic navigation shouldn't be a FromSoft level of challenge to the player), and the text filters/search that used to work perfectly now require the correct word order always.

Oh, and the performance is significantly worse.
I'll probably get crucified for saying this, but it's time to open-source it and let people fix things.

[eerr]

Releasing open source is not a magic fix-all, sadly.

[Tavy]

I hate joining band wagons but I've been playing DF since it became a thing on the SA forums, way back when now (probably, I can't remember version numbers from when I started).
 I bought the Steam version because take my money! Tarn earned it with a game like this. Then went back to Classic because I couldn't handle being kicked to the mouse..I played a lot on a laptop so didn't even have a real mouse, and it made it more accessible. It's a tiny game that can suck you in and kill days on end.

Now, I downloaded v50 because I missed playing and wanted to get back to the old school DF, with all the key-highlighted menus.. and you can't even USE that style menu? Unfortunately this thread has answered my question for "how do I get the old sidebar back or display the key bindings on the icons..." -- download v47 again. I really hope I'm not a minority on that, because I liked the old UI - not necessarily for speed or anything but because highlighted key bindings was what made it easy to get good.

It's not unplayable, but it definitely killed a lot of the enjoyment I had for the game for what I thought was an excellent UI for something so complicated. I'm used to text-based interfaces and felt it was a good one, especially with the key highlighting the way it was -- yeah, it takes some learning and practice, but I could also just look right and find the binding - always, and everywhere.

[pisskop]

Mouse sounds bad, but I wonder if thats not because Im used to uhjk and such.  I bet new players feel differently, I wonder how many have learned DF on the mouse but then tried numpad/uhjk

I guess it makes sense to drop old menu support somewhere, especially if the aim is accessibility.  The same reason it took so long to even consider revamping the UI, which people had been going on about for years.

[Tavy]

I feel like with some more keyboard support, the new interface can be made whole for everyone. Mouse crutches and all. Just give me some floaty bold green letters and a proper keyboard cursor and I think we'd be back in the realm.

I'll relearn the key bindings, or revamp them all if I can't hack it. Someone else will probably too, but without the key based cursor full time or access to some functions without the mouse, it's only a half measure.

It isn't totally broken or bad, it just needs to show some love for everyone is all.

[BarlowJack]

I'm still on 47.05, because my preference is so strongly keyboard-only and I don't care about graphics at all. (plus I'm subscribed to the Patreon so I feel no obligation to buy DF)
The old UI was difficult to learn because it lacked consistency and "ascii" is a hurdle for many people who were interested in DF before.
I believe the new UI is a vast improvement for the majority of people who want to play DF.
vim might be my preferred text editor but I recommend Notepad++ to friends and family.

I'm really looking forward to the simulation improvements in the game, so when a version comes out that support keyboard-only I'll upgrade.
Until then, 47.xx was good enough for years, it's still good now.

[NappyTheTired]

Well, you may not be the only one, but what is sure is that you are in (by a large margin) minority.
It's sad, though.

I have tried to adapt to it myself, but its understandable that a lot of people find it to be a hassle. Is there any way to make the "classic" version on steam revert to the actual old dwarf fortress ASCII set?

[NappyTheTired]

I'm still on 47.05, because my preference is so strongly keyboard-only and I don't care about graphics at all. (plus I'm subscribed to the Patreon so I feel no obligation to buy DF)
The old UI was difficult to learn because it lacked consistency and "ascii" is a hurdle for many people who were interested in DF before.
I believe the new UI is a vast improvement for the majority of people who want to play DF.
vim might be my preferred text editor but I recommend Notepad++ to friends and family.

I'm really looking forward to the simulation improvements in the game, so when a version comes out that support keyboard-only I'll upgrade.
Until then, 47.xx was good enough for years, it's still good now.

For the vast majority of people, yes, but for those familiar with the old version, its a bit of a pain. At least the steam version has direct workshop support, though.

[Ghills]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has issues with the new UI.  On top the wrist issues that mouse use causes, and the speed of keyboard shortcuts, the game goes randomly black for me. .50 is unplayable because it's not even consistently visible.

Between that and the lack of tilesets I'm on .47 for the foreseeable future.

[Freakazoitt]

I got used old keyboard keys so I could use muscle memory (fast). But now even in "classic" I'm stuck as if I'm seeing this game for the first time. I tried and tried to stretch the farm plot and after that I created a lot of small ones and just closed the game.

upd
Okay, old digging was terrible, like other similar things (railroad)

upd
Not sure I would avoid ban but just use Rim World similar UI

[Grand Sage]

Really happy to have found this thread.

Its not so much that the new UI is worse than the old one - It sounds like some people got used to it and can see the benefit. Its just that it feels like a big "screw you" to those of us who spend years playing and learning the old keybinds. These days, I simply dont have the time or the energy to do that all again, And I dont want to spend 2-3 times as long doing it with the mouse.

[jecowa]

Well, you may not be the only one, but what is sure is that you are in (by a large margin) minority.
It's sad, though.

I have tried to adapt to it myself, but its understandable that a lot of people find it to be a hassle. Is there any way to make the "classic" version on steam revert to the actual old dwarf fortress ASCII set?

I guess you already know about opening the settings and enabling "ASCII" mode, so you are probably wanting to switch from the Curses 8x12 to Curses 10x12 perhaps Curses 16x16.

• Open /data/init/init_default.txt in a text editor.
• Search for FONT:
• Change the all 3 FONTS: settings to your choice of either "curses_800x600.png" (aka Curses 10x12) or "curses_square_16x16.png"
• And note that changing the BASICFONT to a non-8x12 font like can cause UI problems if you turn ASCII mode back off. At worst, it can cause a crash.

The default value for all 3 FONT: settings is "curses_640x300.png" or maybe "curses_640x300.bmp" if you need to change it back.

[jecowa]

I'm sorry, but the OP is right - the new UI is unplayable.

It's not just the design of it - lack of/inconvenient/STRAIGHT UP INSANE keyboard shortcuts, forced mouse painting, clunky panels and functionalities hidden behind no-keyboard shortcut buttons - but also the feeling. It's laggy, fails to read input (both keyboard and mouse), assigns unintuitive bindings (after 10h or so I still can't figure out which way is up and down on the mouse scroll, and I strongly believe basic navigation shouldn't be a FromSoft level of challenge to the player), and the text filters/search that used to work perfectly now require the correct word order always.

Oh, and the performance is significantly worse.
I'll probably get crucified for saying this, but it's time to open-source it and let people fix things.

I had to flip the mouse scrolling z-level changing settings around because it was confusing me.

[Lord Dullard]

Well, as an "old-new" player, I wonder what I'll think of all this.

I am downloading both 47.05 and the newest version to compare.

[chaussettes]

Dont really agree for the most part. I think the new UI is better in most ways. It can still be a chore to find some things in nested menus but its no where near as bad as it used to be. If you played pre-steam you know how vital tools like dwarf therapist were to manage jobs in a sane way. A lot of this quality of life functionality is now integrated into the game and it's just flat out better.

One thing I dislike about the new UI at least is how ASCII mode is handled at the moment. The focus on mouse control for designations means it can be difficult to make precise designations when playing in ASCII mode. I've noticed a few problems with some UI screens in ASCII mode as well, like the lack of text for labor roles compared to in graphical mode, but a lot of these things are very minor and will be ironed out not too long from now I'm sure.