Posting this is probably useless, but I might as well post an alternate take of my previous skitching about UI:
Imagine you move into a new skyscraper with in-built tavern in bottom floor.
After walking in through the doors with images of antelopes, you're greeted by an interesting dwarf:
Wearing hemp sandals, worn blue pig tail socks, cow leather loincloth, flax tunic and blue pig tail cloak, this middle-aged bronze-skin has deigned to walk around with a mustache and minimal beard.
"Hello, new neighbour. May I show you around?" asks she.
"Indeed - please tell me about the spirit, families and cliques in the fortress. Any grudges I should look out for?" you reply.
"Well, going from your left, you see the founders along with some third wave people and a dancing ecru resident. The third wave ones are the ivory-skinned folk; all cousins to some degree."
You look, and see an ecletic and scarred group of bronze-skins wearing similar mismatch of fashion - the entertainer is even completely naked, but not minding any. Others have bare chest, or some parts covered by armour. Three of the founders wear their beard in four braids, and three of them are well-muscled, but one goes without mustache while another boasts pale head. The ivory-skinned dwarves have similar facial appearance, all have red hair and ochre eyes and they appear to be between ages 20 and 40. Many of them seem weathered by the sun.
Glancing further around you, you see that the mismatch continues - most boast a blue cloak to wear, and the most popular footwear choice seems to be sandals of various materials, mostly hemp, though shoes also make an appearance. Some go around in socks or even barefoot.
It seems the third wave cousins were unusual - two thirds of fortress has bronze skin, and third favors four-braided beards, though about tenth are completely bald - among them also an elderly pregnant lady clad in mailshirt. There are four further pregnant women - no, the last is rather a girl - in the fortress, three of them sporting a black mustache and dancing in a larger circle. The one with combed hair is giving youngest stink-eye.
As you complete turning your head to the right, you see two brown-haired dwarves with copper and bronze skin arguing in the library, and some even shouting angrily - and they all seem barely clothed, while the humans around them boast both clothes and tomes.
"Huh," you say, "I'm here for only ten seconds and I can already spy three grudges, including one between relatives."
"Indeed," your grudge agrees and points at one of the pregnant ladies in particular, "though there are more. Kivish there, for example, has grudges with three other working dwarves, and also the manager's pet cat. However, most people aren't here and thus don't meet each other." explains the guide.
"Who do meet together? The ones who arrived at same time?" you question.
"Only for the founders - others seem to know better the people they share their gods with, if they're not warriors or miners," your guide shares.
"Hm. So you get travellers often. Who is the most travelled person here, anyway?" you question.
"Depending on how you count, it's either Lolor there" - she points at a blind and bald dwarf with a blue jade mug in hand - " or old smith Dodók currently hundred flights down. Lolor joined the fort after touring dozen hillocks, six retreats and score goblin pits after the fort was founded. But the heavily-scarred Dodók was kidnapped as child twice, and then taken prisoner once he turned twelve. He moved from job to job in site to site, moving up from slave to informant to apprentice, before finally being reunited with his parents back in 73." your guide - who you now realize you don't know the name of - answers.
"Huh, is that unusual?"
"Dodók, yes. Lolor is followed by fourteen others boasting more than two dozens visits, but other dwarves have scarcely any."
"I now realize I don't recall your name, my guide. You've been telling me this about people for how long now?"
"Hello. As you can 'v'iew and 'z'ee, I am Rakust Tiristrakul, proficient bookbinder and dabbling architect with a gapped smile," she flashes her half-empty mouth, "and I've been talking with you for only a minute. Though you did spend fifteen seconds on looking around you." tells you Rakust, a blue smiley face.
"Strange. It feels like I've been noting down the clothing, appearance, personality, age, scars, relationships, clothing colour, previous history and visited sites and when they last met with their spouse for all my free time for four days now, and vast majority of dwarves aren't even in tavern," you wonder, "I couldn't possibly put faces and demeanor to names before next month comes."
"Nonsense - you wouldn't spend that long doing data entry and brute-force memorization. You'd just look 'does this smiley face does what I want'. "
"Yeah, I suppose so."
When everyone is a smiley face and you can more easily dig a moat than imagine someone's face, the fantasy the fantasy world simulator generates is usually going to be about architecture and maybe few caricatures noted for their profession, stress and maybe demands. Stories of fashion, separated families, simmering internal race war, inheritance drama or how on average new room compares to the mountainhome's are what we'd grasp in person in moments, but in-game have barriers barely shy of conquering hell.
Bilbo and Frodo could walk into our fort, carrying a different ring of power on each finger and boasting with tales of Shelob and their masters Gandalf and Sauron and tell tales of world's impending end, and we might only notice their woodcrafting and herbalism skills, then assign them to mining.
also streamlining constructions and buildings into ONE build menu, allowing to mass-deconstruct furniture and workshops the same way you have to use to deconstruct built walls and floors.
This would, alongside engraving constructed walls and floors, would mechanically go very well alongside my in-progress priority script (that also handles do_now for non-workshop jobs).
But I am halted by the fact that then I don't know what to call it (and that I still have more of other priority-related stuff to implement)
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Topic: What turns you off about DF? (Read 313052 times)