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[Rockphed]

I constantly screw up q, v, k and sometimes the t command.  They do need to stay separate though, since otherwise it takes away from controller screw and moves it into interface screw, hehe.

Well, if you could switch between 'k' and the other three and back easily, it would make it significantly easier to run forts.  I honestly don't know how hard such would be.

[Jerg]

Alternatively, have all those on 1 key e.g. k, and just repeatedly hit k to toggle through those menus.

[Jiri Petru]

In any other game, there would be just one way of selecting units/buildings (say, by clicking the mouse). All possible actions would then be accessible from the menu that appears. Or, if things required a more complex approach, there would be a menu with the most often used actions/data (accessible by left clicking), and another one for the less frequent actions (say, a pop-up menu accessible by right clicking). In any case, DF's four modes of selection are extremely confusing.

And it's not only selection, as we all know.

[Telgin]

Mouse support for picking units and buildings would go a long way toward alleviating the problem, yes.  You could mouse over a tile and right click to perform the 'k' command, left click to perform 'v' and 'q' depending on what you clicked, and so on.

As the interface stands though, combining 'v' and 'q' might be doable.  I'm so used to them being separate it would probably be jarring at first, but since I initially expected them to be the same command I'd probably relearn fairly quickly.

[zilpin]

All I want is the ability to switch between k,v,q without escaping to main menu.
That would be easy to implement for k and v, since their interfaces have little in the way of commands, but for q it becomes problematic, since buildings can use whatever key they want for commands.  Letting k and v switch to each other would be nice enough.

[rephikul]

Not a turn off perse but this cause alot of eventual issues: DF is very hardcoded, forcing work on only only 2 developers. Do you know about this company called paradox interactive? Their games have open scripts and I can do everything. Create my own user interface, new units, new events, new unit interaction, new AI... everything. A good game is fun. A great game allow others to make good mods.

[Kogut]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=13.0

[Fiskav]

.

[MrWiggles]

I'm basically providing the same answer as about 30% of the posts on this thread, but alas, I'll share my experience.  When I first downloaded Dwarf Fortress (for Snow Leopard), I created a new world, having no knowledge of the game whatsoever.   After seeing all the (what I thought were) strange green symbols and the basic font scheme, I quit the game and deleted it.

Now, I've upgraded to Lion, and when I downloaded Dwarf Fortress again, it wouldn't open!  But I found a great thread in the Bay12 forums that gave me clear instructions on how to fix this problem.  So, once again, I created a new world.  However, this time I decided to watch a recent Dwarf Fortress LP beforehand!  Now I'm fine with playing the game.

So my only real "turn-offs" was the UI.

Ascii isn't really the UI. Its an, well, art style. Like isometric, top down, side scrolling ect.

As for the Lion thing, that was partially annoying, though understandable.  Its not like Toady got developer release of Lion, and we havent had a release since Lion.

[Durin]

Just because folks were talking about command shortcuts, I thought I would add that I am not sure there is even a mention of "u" anymore on the interface, but I find it exceedingly valuable.

[Jiri Petru]

Just because folks were talking about command shortcuts, I thought I would add that I am not sure there is even a mention of "u" anymore on the interface, but I find it exceedingly valuable.

Wait, what?
How in the world has nobody noticed this up until now?

(Because nobody uses the interface, that's why.)

[Telgin]

Not a turn off perse but this cause alot of eventual issues: DF is very hardcoded, forcing work on only only 2 developers. Do you know about this company called paradox interactive? Their games have open scripts and I can do everything. Create my own user interface, new units, new events, new unit interaction, new AI... everything. A good game is fun. A great game allow others to make good mods.

I would love to see a scripting interface for DF.  I understand why Toady hasn't done it though: maintaining an API makes his development that much slower, and it would change so much between versions it could end up being a colossal waste of time.

Here's hoping that DF 1.0 has such an interface (presumably by then most internal things would be pretty solid in structure).  Not holding my breath though.

[Ripolix]

Assigning labours for all the dwarfs in every immigrant wave but i don't know how to change this.
I also dislike many parts of the interface espacially the military one.

[htabdoolb]

Hauling is the worst thing about vanilla Dwarf Fortress. Mining creates so much stone clutter that it is virtually impossible to keep up with it. Similarly, the clean up after a siege or large ambush takes far too long, with dwarves making many multiple redundant trips back and forth, each time hauling a single article of clothing, armor, or weaponry.

In the time it takes to haul one chunk of ore to the smelters, a reasonably skilled smithydwarf can churn out half a dozen or more metal  items, each of which create their own hauling job. It seems bizarre to me that moving a stone just a few hundred feet, or even a few thousand feet, takes several times longer than smelting it down into metal and then making something from it.

Without DFHack's "autodump" and "autodump destroy" functions, the game would be much, much less appealing to me, to the point of being nearly unplayable.

[Telgin]

I do wonder when Toady will get around to the improvements to hauling to make them more realistic.  I know he has plans to allow dwarves to carry multiple things at once, although I think the plan was also to require more than one dwarf's strength for really heavy things.

A mixed blessing perhaps, but at least it should make cleaning up after sieges easier.