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Author Topic: What turns you off about DF?  (Read 314540 times)

Halykan

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1380 on: April 19, 2010, 03:53:26 pm »

Undoubtedly this gets talked about relatively often, but it's my biggest hang-up in DF, so:

I really have trouble visualizing Z-levels. I enjoy making complex, interesting fortresses with a lot of architecture to them, but this is the big stumbling block. Pulling off something like Moria isn't overly hard, but trying to make domes, or multi-Z-level sculptures of Armok (complete with adamantine fangs and magma pouring from the mouth) are considerably more challenging and a lot less satisfying simply because it's impossible to actually see them.

I know there's some efforts to add like an isometric view or whatever, but I do think that something like that would greatly enhance the long-term playability of the game. After all, I think this is one of the major reasons a lot of players aren't interested in megaprojects, which seem to me to be one of the handful of things to do once you've gotten good enough to make survival relatively trivial.
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Footkerchief

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1381 on: April 19, 2010, 03:55:51 pm »

^^^ It's a huge turnoff for me when I'm just trying to follow my dwarves through caverns or hilly aboveground terrain.  I'm not the first to mention it, I know, but god what a hassle.
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Quantum Toast

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1382 on: April 19, 2010, 05:45:55 pm »

Hmm... anything I can do about it?

It's true that once I open the bridge that's blocking them, the FPS shoots back up.

That's because they're no longer pathfind-spamming.  They found a path and are following it.  Set a guy to pull that lever on repeat.  Eventually it'll smash some demons.
Aren't they immune to atomsmashing anymore?
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Andir

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1383 on: April 19, 2010, 06:19:12 pm »

Hmm... anything I can do about it?

It's true that once I open the bridge that's blocking them, the FPS shoots back up.

That's because they're no longer pathfind-spamming.  They found a path and are following it.  Set a guy to pull that lever on repeat.  Eventually it'll smash some demons.
Aren't they immune to atomsmashing anymore?
Only one way to find out!
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Jiri Petru

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1384 on: April 19, 2010, 07:29:54 pm »

They are. Found it the bad way... my bridge broke when I tried to hit one.
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SirHoneyBadger

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1385 on: April 21, 2010, 08:39:28 am »

Ambiguously bearded dwarf strippers.
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keratacon

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1386 on: April 21, 2010, 04:19:46 pm »

The game needs a mouse-based interface that's more unified and not seemingly cobbled together.

The game needs an in-program way of loading a graphical tileset.

A pregen starting area so that people could write more reliable tutorials would be nice, but that's not necessary.

But I can tell you what I *don't* think the game needs: an isometric point of view.  It would be a nice modification, but as much as people want it, I don't think it would actually get used that much.  There are isometric mods for other roguelikes and they don't really get used, and Dwarf Fortress is a lot more complicated than most roguelikes.

It would work well for being outdoors, certainly, but for indoor and underground areas, you'd still have the problem of pressing < and > to strip off top layers until you can see the floor you're looking at, and even then that doesn't help with seeing past cave walls and closed doors and so on.  Other games with a 3d perspective and a lot of visual obstacles solve this by looking through the objects in front of the main character, but in Dwarf Fortress there is no main character, you'd need to use a cursor of some sort to tell the game where you're looking in order for it to reveal space behind walls.  I'm sure there's a way of doing it, but I don't think you'd gain any simplicity.  It would be nice to be able to pause the game and look around a nice 3d view composed of good isometric tiles.  I just don't think it would be very convenient to play with.  Dwarf Fortress requires that you have access to a large amount of information in a small window, and anything that obscures areas that should be visible isn't going to add to game playability.
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Footkerchief

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1387 on: April 21, 2010, 04:28:55 pm »

It would work well for being outdoors, certainly, but for indoor and underground areas, you'd still have the problem of pressing < and > to strip off top layers until you can see the floor you're looking at, and even then that doesn't help with seeing past cave walls and closed doors and so on.  Other games with a 3d perspective and a lot of visual obstacles solve this by looking through the objects in front of the main character, but in Dwarf Fortress there is no main character, you'd need to use a cursor of some sort to tell the game where you're looking in order for it to reveal space behind walls.  I'm sure there's a way of doing it, but I don't think you'd gain any simplicity.  It would be nice to be able to pause the game and look around a nice 3d view composed of good isometric tiles.  I just don't think it would be very convenient to play with.  Dwarf Fortress requires that you have access to a large amount of information in a small window, and anything that obscures areas that should be visible isn't going to add to game playability.

Irregular ceilings are very hard to handle in isometric, yeah.  They also present major obstacles to multi-z-level top-down viewing, but it's not quite as complicated.
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Orkel

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1388 on: April 21, 2010, 04:30:18 pm »

@Thread title

Currently, military and healthcare bugs. Can't and won't play until they are fixed (healthcare is for .04, I can only hope that military gets in .05)
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zwei

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1389 on: April 22, 2010, 01:40:39 am »

A pregen starting area so that people could write more reliable tutorials would be nice, but that's not necessary.

If you are making tutorial, you can simply pregen world, embark to some location suitable and zip game.

You want to do that for tutorial anyway because it allows you to put in tileset and fiddle with init (i.e. remove annoying fullscreen y/n dialog, turn on water level display, turn on autosaves, etc ...)

What tutorials desperatelly needs are mission "objectives" and "triggers". For example "tutorial noble" that would demand construction of carpenters workshop and 7 beds at begining, once he is satisfied he would mandate construction of tables and chairs... etc etc ...

Fetus4188

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1390 on: April 22, 2010, 02:15:54 am »

Some thought need to be given to better interface, or providing meaningful defaults that allow you eg. to set up a military or production with two clicks.

Very much so on the meaningful defaults bit.  I like all the added complexity and I know that some of the problems with the military are a result of bugginess.  But I shouldn't be required to go in and fiddle with a bunch of stuff just to activate somebody to throttle a kobold (not that I see kobolds anymore--poor guys are as rare as chupacabres, these days.  I think all the titans and dragons and such think they taste like candy.).  Same with plump helmets and booze defaulted to being cookable and other newbie-friendly defaults. 

I wanted to write a proper suggestion with mock-up interface pictures, but god knows when I get to it, so I'll just spam it here before I forget.

A meaningful default for military would be:
- Reverse the way recruitment works in the military screen. Instead of clicking on a position first, then choosing a dwarf, you would click on the dwarf first and put him in the squad second. Also, there's no reason why the player should be forced to choose the dwarf's number in the squad - just assign it automatically, please. Basically, bring back the old system for recruiting dwarves and arranging them to squads, it was better! (I know the new system of positions has advantages, and internally it would still work the new way. But that things work in some way internally doesn't mean they have to work the same way in the interface)
- You only have to click on dwarves you want to recruit, the squads get created automatically. Once a squad has 10 soldiers, another one gets created and the first soldier you click on becomes its leader. No extra effort needed.
- Along the same lines, the first dwarf you ever recruit becomes the militia commander. No extra screen or separate system needed (but allowed).
- Meaningful default: have two squads by default. Each odd dwarf goes to the first one, each even to the second one. Result: chaotic clicking on 10 dwarves would create two squads of 5 instead of one squad of 10. Because...
- Have the default squads alternate training and free time in a chessboard pattern. Each month, one squad trains and one has time off
- Which means the default schedule should be some "ideal mix" of training and free time, not only training. Also, default requirements should be... i don't know... 5 dwarves, not 10. (Better yet, have this value in percents, and by default set it to 50 %)
- Have some kind of default, automatic ammo assignment... the old system was good: "use wood/bone for training, metal for combat". Also, automatically assign ammo for hunters. The player should only see ammunition menu when he wants to change thing, it should be entirely possible not to ever use it, like in the old version.

(All of this is the default behaviour that happens when you click as little as possible. I don't want to take any functions away. Spending some more clicks would of course enable you to have one squad of 10 instead of two of 5, etc.)

AND

- Have all barracks by default allow everything (training, sleeping, equipment storage) for all squads! Player should only intervene when he want to turn things off, not on!

Result: you have a functional military, and the only thing you had to do was clicking ENTER on dwarves you wanted to recruit. Like in the old, good days.


------

Also a random suggestion: have all rooms, like dining rooms, barracks, zoos, statue gardens or even bedrooms work the same way as hospitals. Interface streamlining. Please, pretty please!


Quoted for great justice.

It seems like many of the default behaviors in DF translate to "don't do anything," which is annoying.  If I've taking the trouble to draft a dwarf it's because I want them to do something.
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The Architect

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1391 on: April 22, 2010, 02:34:14 am »

(reference to post about visualizing z-levels) It's a huge turnoff for me when I'm just trying to follow my dwarves through caverns or hilly aboveground terrain.  I'm not the first to mention it, I know, but god what a hassle.

The whole military deal needs to be less scrolling through menus and more clicking. I'm sure it has been brought up before, but just allowing more mouse interaction would make the current interface MUCH less painful. Just clicking on jobs and items in menus rather than cumbersomely scrolling down to them repeatedly would be golden. This is the problem that Dwarf Therapist fixes for labor.

We the players/testers need a (perhaps Dwarf Therapist style) interface (easily distinguishable sections, subsections, items, and buttons) with mouse interactivity for menus from embark to military. For me it's not that I can't understand the military system, but that it's so cumbersome and wonky to fool with that I would rather turn off invasions and avoid (spoilers) to avoid messing with a fort's military until I absolutely must. Thus, I miss half of the game.

I'd willingly submit to current z-level viewing for the next 5 years if it means a more workable interface (allowing Toady to add all of his features without making the game entirely unplayable). Because this is how I see it: As things become more complex, everything will tend to go the way of the military system. By which I mean it will become absolutely impenetrable to newbies, and nearly unworkable even for experienced players.
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Tormodino

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1392 on: April 22, 2010, 10:02:36 am »

I agree with The Architect.

I think there is a clear and present danger of bloat here.
That is really my only fear where DF is concerned.

More can sometimes be less.

 
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Deathworks

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1393 on: April 22, 2010, 10:16:23 am »

Hi!

As far as I remember, ANSII would be the default graphics as they are actually a modified ASCII set/go beyond ASCII.

Personally, I think that the lack of in-game documentation as well as a really easy default scheme for setting things up is what stops people early on.

The User Interface is okay as it is in my eyes, as you default with an overview over the necessary keys.

The graphics also work very well, especially when people see them in the light of the background of the new homepage.

However, figuring out what you ought to do is a real pain, and having no real "official" (as in coming with the game) documentation that tells you just how things work is really confusing.

In addition, during the 3D versions, I have had the impression that the default settings really do not make very easy worlds which should be what players are introduced to.

Finally, while the bigger worlds are of course more interesting, using small worlds/smaller worlds as the default may also be something to consider to speed up things and not have people frustrated about the speed of the game. The nify features of the bigger worlds can be uncovered later, I think, when the player has grown used to the game and will design their worlds anyway.

Deathworks
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silantrath

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1394 on: April 22, 2010, 10:49:53 am »

I gotta say, I was in the same boat as Amitabho a few years ago. I hated Halo, just because it was such a fad. EVERYBODY loved it, so I just decided I hated it. These days, I can play it, and even have fun, but I don't drool over it like so many people do. If somebody says, "lets play Halo!" I'm much more likely to say "sure," "okay," or "naw," than "yeah!" or "dood, I was just thinking of plastering your brainz with a sniperz rifel!"...

What I'm trying to say is, I think a lot of things are over-rated. More than the general public realizes. It's our job as individuals and responsible play-testers to sift through threads like this, determine what the general public is begging for, reason why or why not those features would be good, and come up with some kind of logical argument in favor for or against these features, or even for some other thing that would solve the problem in a creative way that sets this game apart from all the others.

SO... I'm not gonna sift through +98 pages of repeated posts here, just cuz that would be unnecessary and I've seen the trends of complaints already. I'll just give you my little bit on what small bit I've seen and let someone else handle the rest.

I'll start with Amitabho's post, as it caught my interest. First off, while technically ANSII is correct, most people will just say ASCII. if you say ANSII, you sound like an elitist turd who thinks he knows everything. So remember; it's ASCII, not ANSII in your PANTSI. Second, you're thirteen. You need to realize the world doesn't revolve around your opinion, and if someone finds it more enjoyable to look at a 6x6 pixel comical representation of a dorf than a simple colored smiley, then that's their choice, freedom, and right, and it in no way makes them more shallow than you, in and of itself. Their motives for doing so MIGHT, but you can't read their minds so don't judge them on that preference alone.

I'm 19. I like the mayday tileset. I also like to play stock nethack, without any graphical additives. Knowing those things alone, would you say I'm a shallow, Halo fanboy, who only cares about graphics? Would you still say that, if I told you I was about to join the Air Force, go Special Forces, and never even see a computer game for up to nine months at a time?

I think I've made my point.

Now, my opinion is that it should be *much* easier to configure df, from editing the init.txt, to adding graphics packs, to even upgrading to a newer version. I don't much care for having to splice a new version into an already configured older version, realize I accidentally overwrote my init.txt, forgot to replace the raws folder in my save folder, and after I fix those, low and behold my plump helmets look like trees! (still don't understand that one.)

As far as interface goes, I'd like to see consolidation of options like the [k], [t], [v], and [q] menus. I had trouble starting out when I'd loo[k] at a workshop and not be able to see what my moody dorf already had.

For tutorials, I think an easy fix would be to choose a safe biome, embark, spend a year or two digging out and setting things up for a basic fortress(maybe turn off migrants), load the place up with notes("this is your sleeping quarters, make sure you have enough rooms for all your dwarfs! use [q] to set up bedrooms like these!" or "see how I channeled out this reservoir for my well?" or "make sure you embark with this stuff. Its called 'lignite,' and you use it at your foundry to make coal, so you can make metal stuff"). then save it, and bundle it with the game. Add some stuff in the help files pointing to it, and presto, you've got a tutorial. Also, the help files should be reorganized. I think windows help might even be better than that thing right now, and that's saying something.
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