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[Erax]

Hi everybody!

I just started DF. Once again. I stumbled over it the first time in the beginning of 2008, IIRC. Back then I created a world, started the game, didn't know what to do in the first screens and went straight to the game or maybe I started directly without further preparations, I'm not sure.
Then I saw that mess of ASCII on my screen and tried to find out what it is that I see. Blue is for water, green is for trees and grass, grey should be rocks - no problem so far. But where are my dwarfs? There are symbols hovering around the centre of the screen and when I give orders in that menu they move, so that should be them. Still I can't tell what they are doing.
And what should I do first? Let's start digging - the area changes slightly, looks like I did something which had an effect.
I gave up eventually because in all that ASCII-symbols I just couldn't figure out, what was going on and the menus are somewhat of an enigma.

Yesterday I suddenly was reminded of DF by another Fantasy RPG and thought, I could give it another try. After I found the tutorials in the Wiki, I think I get the hang of it - slowly though.
My first problem again was the interpretation of the symbols. I installed one of those tilesets and all of a sudden I can see what is going on in my world. I think this is the biggest obstacle for most users today.

The second important problem is definitely the menus. Their layout should be slighty rearranged to give a better oversight. And I think controlling the game completely by mousepointer would be necessary, if you want to reach a larger number of people.

I can't say anything about adventure-mode, I have only built my first outpost - thrice until now. Yeah I know - losing is fun. Oh yeah: perhaps many people who play games on the screen today wouldn't agree to that. So, maybe it would be a good idea to offer a mode, where beginners can reduce the complexity, or where they get more hints in the beginning as to how to feed their dwarfs properly and suchlike. In other words: a decent tutorial mode would help a lot. (I think that was already mentioned somewhere... Oh well...)

Sorry, if I only repeated stuff others already wrote.

[zwei]

Guess this all adds up to theese:

* Graphical tileset in default package which is default. That is very easy to do

* Tutorial. That is harder to do, but certainly doable. I would imagine that game could dispense usefull information when certain events happen in way not unlike tutorial (i.e., when your dwarf first falls asleep, game would tip you off to build bed. When your food items rots, game would tip you off to make food stockpile, When your food stockpile fills, game would tip you off to make barrels, when your non-food stockpile fills, game would tip you off to make bins.). This would take some moderate work, but it not that hard.

* 'Arcade' mode with heavily simplified game mechanics. Very hard, basically rewrite of game.

[131]

To be honest the only thing that really annoys me about DF is having to sort through all your dwarves when you get a ton of migrants. I never know what job to assign them.

[Rozenbuddy]

Have you started an army yet?

[Lord Dakoth]

Have you started an army yet?

Not the best idea, unless you want to deal with the Department of Dwarven Veterans' Affairs.

I suggest a laboratory instead of an army.

[zwei]

To be honest the only thing that really annoys me about DF is having to sort through all your dwarves when you get a ton of migrants. I never know what job to assign them.

It is fairly easy for me -

Migrant peasant gets drafted to army immediately and become career military.

Skilled migrants get enabled moodable skills (Carpentry, Masonry mostly, I like artifact furniture ) to get some training, Pumping to boost stats and whatever else is needed - like hunting or woodcutting to make backup army.

I have several workshops profiled that only dabbling dwarves can use then and set to produce goods that are not really that much affected by skill level on repeat (bins, blocks ...).

That way, migrant is generally useful (high stats, can help with constructions), guaranteed to give me interesting artifact from mood and is always available when specialist is needed.

[PermanentInk]

i got stuck at the embark screen because being on a laptop if hav different +/- keys than a PC keyboard.

Oh god, don't get me started on this.  I briefly put up with hitting the little function key combo to go in and out of num pad mode before it drove me crazy and I just bought a USB numpad.  And now I'm concerned because my numpad doesn't work quite right in 40d16!  Hopefully that gets resolved before Toady integrates that branch into the mainline.  At the meetup he sounded like he was in favor of doing the next release without the 40d16 stuff first to make sure it worked for everyone before messing around with it.

[eerr]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

i got stuck at the embark screen because being on a laptop if hav different +/- keys than a PC keyboard.

Oh god, don't get me started on this.  I briefly put up with hitting the little function key combo to go in and out of num pad mode before it drove me crazy and I just bought a USB numpad.  And now I'm concerned because my numpad doesn't work quite right in 40d16!  Hopefully that gets resolved before Toady integrates that branch into the mainline.  At the meetup he sounded like he was in favor of doing the next release without the 40d16 stuff first to make sure it worked for everyone before messing around with it.

Ohmy god yes, DF is completely impossible on a laptop!
You just don't have enough keys, or the patience to rebind all the keys you lost!

[Footkerchief]

I used the laptop binds from the wiki and that worked but yeah, it was a huge source of initial confusion for me.

[Quatch]

Oh yeah, I remember getting stuck on that whole laptop keyboard bit too.  Is that something that was changed in the mayday repack?

[Nexii Malthus]

The biggest hurdle at first was understanding what was going on. The wiki solved all my problems, how does the industry work for example? Easy. Nicely organized and digestible chunks in the wiki, for any subject, from offense, defense, industry, to taking care of your dwarves. Not to mention the couple of tutorials for those that need an additional helping hand.

I think the game should first and foremost point to the DF wiki. It is an invaluable reference and documentation resource for new and old players. I really couldn't live without it for months when I began my affair with DF.

Just can't stress the importance of the wiki enough here.

[Rozenbuddy]

I think adventure mode is bland... it has nothing too it. It's basically, Make a dude, Run around killing wolves, get a quest, kill the dude, get money, explore boring empty towns and past forts, yea... I just don't find it fun.

[Urist McDepravity]

I think adventure mode is bland... it has nothing too it. It's basically, Make a dude, Run around killing wolves, get a quest, kill the dude, get money, explore boring empty towns and past forts, yea... I just don't find it fun.

It's expected for alpha version, isn't it?
Once you get full set of skills and abilities there, it should be far more fun.

[Grimic]

Aside from the game being beyond difficult to understand by itself, my main issue with DF from the first time I played and to this day is the miserable, miserable hauling system. Dwarves will haul heavy objects filled with other heavy objects no problem, but when it comes to the smaller stuff like bags, crafts, coins, etc., they have to pick them up one-by-one and go back and forth just to move them all from point A to point B. The time dwarves spend just hauling things where they need to be takes a massive toll on everything else the game has to offer, often leading me to abandon and lose interest in the game entirely.

Personally, I think hauling should be a skill that works as a sort of threshold for dwarves to carry bigger, heavier, and multiple objects (depending on size/weight and possibly a grip factor of each one, with a single object of any size/weight being the minimum). Of course, in order to determine when to haul more than one item at once, the pathfinding would need to be updated for sure. Optimally, one dwarf would be able to get the most items they can to their respective delivery points within the least amount of time possible.

[LesBrisant]

I've played DF before I got into it properlyesque like now. The first time I saw it I had no idea what was happening, my FPS setting meant that Rheseus Macques were teleporting like little crazy arsehats and stealing my stuff 5 times a second and I had no idea what the ASCII graphics did.

After starting with the CAUNT tutorial and using the textures DF become more enjoyable, particularly now I start reading the epic lulziness of some of other peoples adventures and achievements. Haven't had the effort to get back into it in a while because a lot of things were frustrating me but otherwise it's pr good.