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[Davion]

There's a lot of discussion going on about presentation and interface, here are some of my suggestions that I think would improve the look and newbie-friendliness.

"Site a Building" Menu:

1. When you are in the Site a Building menu, it'd be nice if selecting a menu item such as Floodgate, when you don't currently have a Floodgate ready for placement, would still allow you to designate where you want the future item, and bring up one of the Workshops that constructs that item. Maybe that could open up multiple designations at some point and enable the option to place your beds where you want them before you even make them.

Having multiple designations for future items might bring up it's own problems, though. Like what if someone wants to edit their placement?

2. It'd be cool if there was a visual indicator that there are more options for a selection, too. Like maybe "Workshops +" to denote that when you select it there are more options for you to choose from.

3. Maybe rename "Site a Building" to "Construction", "Build", or something similar, because when I think of the word "buildings" I don't really think of beds, chairs, tables, floodgates, etc, might just be a nitpick on my part but I'm sure it confuses some people. I know when I first tried playing Dwarf Fortress I thought, "Oh?" when I went to build something and instead of seeing various workshops I saw armor stands and beds. That brings me to organization...

General Organization: Here are some visual suggestions that I think would make the readability and organization more solid:

Page 1 of Site a Building

Page 2 of Site a Building

Page 3 of Site a Building


I think it'd be good to have the Workshops and other buildings at the top because many people coming into a game expect something like this. I also think that having an entire list on one page of the menu keeps someone from being overwhelmed with all the options, though it might not matter.

Alternate Organization: Another way to organize this would be to just have the categories listed, and then you select the category you want and the list opens up in a new menu. I opted for the above layout because it means it's one less keystroke/hotkey and people are use to it.


"Designation" Menu

General Organization: Here are some visual suggestions that I think would make the readability and organization more solid:



I think putting everything into separate categories makes things easier to visualize.


"Main" Menu

One of the big reasons I think people are turned off by the interface is because it doesn't look like anything they are used to seeing, here's a mock-up that could solve that problem, a context menu at the top instead of all the options on the side, leaving the side menu open for all the information:



Could access the menus through F1-F12, and by mouse if support was added.

Game - Could include the options from when you hit Escape, along with Movies

Info - Announcements, Jobs, Orders, Nobles, Units/Dwarves, Status, Civilizations

Build - Designations, Stockpiles, Site Building, Building Tasks, View Rooms/Buildings, View Items, Zones, Notes

Military - Military, Squads, Army Arc stuff

Help - Tutorial, Wiki, Hot Keys


Another possible way to lay it out:



Separating everything into categories again, and breaking things up with dividers, could probably tighten it up a bit in my mock-up.

[Zombie]

Effing brilliant. You are the first person I've seen that's actually put time and effort into making screenshots as to how you think things should be organized. :x You earn a medal for clear, concise arguments, reasoning... And just making things look more pretty!

I absolutely adore this suggestion. It would also make it look more "professional" when we finally can set tilesets for objects.

Honestly, I'm at a loss for words at any way this could be better. o.o

[korora]

In general, I like.  Just two nitpicks though. 

1. F1-F12 are unfriendly for mac users.  I know they'd probably be resettable, but if this is about getting new players into the game fast then you should consider this factor.

2. The standard way to indicate that further user input is required after selecting a menu option is with '...', so instead of 'Workshops +' it should be 'Workshops...'

I really like the idea of placing furniture before it's made.  It could look like furniture does currently when it's been placed but not hauled yet.  Then you could q-x to get rid of them if you decided to move them.  This would also allow for dwarves replacing their furniture when the economy kicks in.

In your building list mockup, some of the items are highlighted.  I couldn't find anywhere you mentioned what that indicated, but it would be cool if the highlighted items were items you had available to build immediately.

Of your two main-screen UIs, I much prefer the second one; I'd like to avoid the mouse as much as possible. 

One thing I'd like to see if possible is making some of the 'z' screen information visible during play.  Maybe the pane with the keyboard shortcuts (which I ignore at this point but keep visible so the viewport isn't always resizing and moving) could be toggled to a status display, where you could see food stock information, etc.

[Zombie]

I think the mouse display changes could be toggled in the init. Choose to use the mouse? Display for mouse. Choose not to? Display for no mouse.

[Symmetry]

I think Toady said he was working on breaking the 80x25 limits first before redoing all the screens.  Your layouts are nice but they're restricted to the fairly small size we have now, it might be worth thinking about bigger ones.

Your idea about placing furniture before it's made is interesting, but I think the menu would be much clearer if there simply weren't an option to place a floodgate if you haven't got one spare.  I can see that becoming confusing for people though, it makes it slightly harder to find out all the things you can build when you first start.  So perhaps a middle ground where things you don't have are a different colour?

The split of the building windows could be improved by splitting down further, for example furnaces makes more sense to me as a subsection of workshops which could itself be a section in it's own right.  I like tabs for doing this sort of thing, as they're an easy to communicate where the user is in the menu system and where they can go next, but I know some people don't like them at all and you've done well to make tiny changes to the current layout.  Adding a tab system is lots more work

[Davion]

1. F1-F12 are unfriendly for mac users.  I know they'd probably be resettable, but if this is about getting new players into the game fast then you should consider this factor.

That's true. Not sure what would be good alternative keys  to make Mac and PC users happy if something like that was implemented.

2. The standard way to indicate that further user input is required after selecting a menu option is with '...', so instead of 'Workshops +' it should be 'Workshops...'

That would be a much better way.

In your building list mockup, some of the items are highlighted.  I couldn't find anywhere you mentioned what that indicated, but it would be cool if the highlighted items were items you had available to build immediately.

That's a cool idea and would show further information at a glance without having to go through the various menus.

The real reason certain things are highlighted is that was just where the selection was when I took screenshots of the interface to edit into a mock-up.

One thing I'd like to see if possible is making some of the 'z' screen information visible during play.  Maybe the pane with the keyboard shortcuts (which I ignore at this point but keep visible so the viewport isn't always resizing and moving) could be toggled to a status display, where you could see food stock information, etc.

I agree, though it's hard to figure out places to put things when the window size is so limited right now. It'll me nice when Toady starts messing around with taking away the limitation of the display, then there could potentially be a lot more room for things to me shown without having to navigate through menus.

[Davion]

I think Toady said he was working on breaking the 80x25 limits first before redoing all the screens.  Your layouts are nice but they're restricted to the fairly small size we have now, it might be worth thinking about bigger ones.

Yeah, I know he's eventually going to mess with that, but I'd just rather take baby steps and suggest smaller things that might reel people in sooner.

I'll probably get around to making some mock-ups at 800x600/1024x768 just to mess around and see what can be done sometime.

[Virex]

1. F1-F12 are unfriendly for mac users.  I know they'd probably be resettable, but if this is about getting new players into the game fast then you should consider this factor.

That's true. Not sure what would be good alternative keys  to make Mac and PC users happy if something like that was implemented.

Number keys? I think their's a distinction between normal number keys and numpad keys. Currently, the normal number keys shouldn't be used, except for some menu's, but they have the same functionality as the numpad keys. Instead you could use them to navigate the top menu.

[Align]

Delicious.

Minor nitpick though, the Kennels should probably be under Buildings.

[Draco18s]

Number keys? I think their's a distinction between normal number keys and numpad keys. Currently, the normal number keys shouldn't be used, except for some menu's, but they have the same functionality as the numpad keys. Instead you could use them to navigate the top menu.

Only half the time though.  Find a program that uses the numpad exclusively (Elona is a good example) and try turning Numlock on and off.

(Hmm, Elona is a bad example, it turns numlock off when you run the program).

[Davion]

Unless you use the numbers in the "home row" area.

[Impaler[WrG]]

My ideal interface would be much more along the lines of sim-city 2000 and beyond, mouse driven with hot keys as options.

At the top of the screen would be be 6-12 buttons for categories of designating areas of all kinds.  Some examples, Mining, Stockpiles, Zones, Rooms, Traffic, Workshops, Traps, Siege Engines, Machines, Furniture etc etc.  Each button is a pull-down menu displaying a vertical list of Icons and names so you can get to what you want with 2 clicks max.  Hot keys are present and with larger numbers of categories the uppercase letter combinations can be eliminated (they trip me up a lot) along with all requirements to scroll as each list would be 8-10 items max.  Mousing over each selection shows a description and requirement info in the right hand panel.

[Draco18s]

Unless you use the numbers in the "home row" area.

That's exactly what I'm talking about.  Elona DOESN'T use those.

[Davion]

Unless you use the numbers in the "home row" area.

That's exactly what I'm talking about.  Elona DOESN'T use those.

Elona needs to get with the program.

[dreiche2]

Nice ideas overall.

Your idea about placing furniture before it's made is interesting, but I think the menu would be much clearer if there simply weren't an option to place a floodgate if you haven't got one spare.  I can see that becoming confusing for people though, it makes it slightly harder to find out all the things you can build when you first start.  So perhaps a middle ground where things you don't have are a different colour?

That sounds very reasonable to me, simply have unavailable furniture greyed (reddened/blued/whatevered) out.

The idea about placing furniture before it's available might be too much of an abstraction in comparison to the current system were you pick the specific item to be placed. True, often you might not actually care about which darn Gabbro floodgate is placed, but it's one of the details that makes the charm of DF I guess.