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[Rorax]

weither the interface remains keyboard orientated or changes to mouse dominated, I'm not fussed I can jockey both.
What I will say is that, it should be viable with both play styles, yes its faster with the keyboard ( in most cases), there is no reason to deny users the intuitive option of mouse use. Mouse use is visually dominated, I see a menu, so I click the menu to interact. it's the same with every action across the board; point , click, point, click, it's natural.
While the keyboard is incredibly fast for some things, it's not natural enough, you cannot say that when you first started dwarf fortress, that it didn't take your first fort forever to get /anything/ done, as you learned to navigate.

However However.

My main main main point is that /whatever/ happens to the Dwarf fortress UI, there are some things that need to be ruthlessly streamlined. While I cannot give examples of my own for streamlining right now. I can give an example of something which is probably going to give me RSI or carpal tunnel.

I am a huge fan of constructing buildings, but!
Such clunky short cuts as follows will be the death of me.

(left hand)
(b)uild>SHIFT-(c)onstructs>(w)all

(Right hand)
arrow keys to move it vaugly into position.
umkh to resize the wall to what you need
enter to designate.

And this needs to be done OVER and OVER for complex structures as you are incapable of "drawing" complex structures, only lines and squares.

A mouse would greatly improve this entire interaction.
and also b>shift-c>w is horrible as it is.


This is a single example of one of the many things that need to be streamlined, and hopefully my next post in here (which is hopefuly not being made at 1:30am) will include some streamlining I think will benefit several of the taxing interactions.

[RAM]

I think most of that is restructuring the menus and giving the player a few universal shortcuts for the more common stuff. A toggle mode would fix the keypress spam for multiple z-levels and complex shapes, especially with a fill in a room function. A few cycle through <Entity> options(as has been suggested by others) are pretty much required(I feel that zones are more of a pain in succession forts than levers...) and on a multi-level fortress cycling through all the mason's workshops is probably faster and more useful than mouse-clicks anyway.

Of course, mouse commands are probably more familiar to <Unmentionable> users and might make it easier for new players, though they would miss out on the pure awesomeness that keyboards will always provide...

[BigFatDwarf]

Still ... Rorax made a great idea, even if unintentional.

Ability to draw resizable structures (walls, floor etc.)

Maybe it could be done so:

You select walls, and in a similar way to the designations menu, you'd paint where you want walls.
Then you press Accept and it would get you to the material list as usual.

Still, that would probably require much work from Toady. Or not, since the main part is already in (the designation menu)

[Nadaka]

not as useful but you could also enable drawing of crazy things like workshops as well. For mega constructions I often find myself plopping down a dozen mason or glass workshops in a row.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Couple quick things that might just be things I'm missing (I hadn't been able to play DF for over a year, and I didn't feel like spending a huge amount of time relearning everything, so I didn't reread all the technical stuff I read when I first started DFing):

Currently, Full Screen Mood doesn't work well at all with my monitor. I'm using a 16:9 27 inch HP, and all I get when I Full Screen it is a (gigantic) corner of the game. This may simply be my ignorance of a solution that already exists, but it seems like some kind of an interface problem, especially since resizing DF is rather strange, in it's current state.

And, is there any way to cause the game to automatically follow around a specific dwarf(etc)? That seems like it would be enormously helpful, in combination with Z-levels. Also, having the ability to quickly "jump ahead" to that dwarf's destination would be great (particularly when I'm waiting for a miner to mine out visible gems, so that I can give orders to mine any invisible ones behind those, without doing any unnecessary mining). Again, might just be something I'm missing.

For that matter (although I'm pretty sure it's come up before), it would be great to be able to give a dwarf orders to only mine out a particular pocket of gems/ores/whatever, either by specific type ("only mine the regular rubies in this gem pocket. If you find any star rubies, or any other types of gems, stop and let me know"), or mine out whatever's present, other than stone ("mine all the gems you find touching this gem I've clicked on, whatever their type, but don't bother mining the surrounding marble."). Ordering miners to follow veins of ore or coal would also be great. Again, I'm pretty sure this is (atleast similar to) a common request.


Possibly more On Topic: I'd love to have the ability to easily resize (via mouse) each window in the game. That would be incredibly helpful.

The "Strange Moods" find-an-item game we have now is Fun, but it would be nice if it could have it's own screen, with an easily accessible list of the items and workshop that have already been claimed, along with the hints.

I'd also love to have the ability to click on sets of dwarfs, based on their broad skills, for job lists. In other words, to be able to click on Peasants, and bring up a list of all peasants, and then give just those peasants their work orders. Scrolling through 200 dwarfs just so that I can give turn on Fishing for my 197th, 198th, and 199th migrant peasant isn't so much Fun as it is Giant Unnecessary Hassle.

Being able to *just* access all the Antmen, or all the Horses, or all the Giant Cave Swallows, to find out where a specific one is/if one of my dwarfs has wounded it (or killed it), is even more of a hassle.

This could perhaps be fixed by adding additional screens for each division, as is currently done for the nicely laid out Military screen?

Along with this, I'd really like to be able to see which beings (atleast which dwarfs) have wounds, or which are insane, but not yet insane enough to drop them from the roster, or which are holding Artifacts, instead of having to guess.

[Lord Shonus]

If you're using 40d16, just maximise the game window.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I'm using whatever the latest version is (downloaded +/- 5 days ago), and it's not working. The Maximize button is present, but it only functions to bring the screen up, not to resize it to Fullscreen.

[CobaltKobold]

These, not that

[SirHoneyBadger]

Hmmm...ya don't say?

well thanks!

Ok, so (ignoramous that I am) how do I employ this product and or service?

Particularly since I am using Windows, not Linux.

In other words, having downloaded DF itself, is this a complete version of DF, or do I stick it in a folder or something?


Yes, I know I should be making soap somewhere.

[CobaltKobold]

*takes it to PMs*

[SirHoneyBadger]

Thank you, kind kobold.

You deserve the presence of some kind of clicky thing of which I might then click on to give you some form of "very helpful forumer" medal.

[CobaltKobold]

"Karma record" or "whitespot/blackspot"

[SirHoneyBadger]

"Karma record" or "whitespot/blackspot"

Something like that, only no "blackspots". I don't like the idea of negative reinforcement, and it's particularly useless when it comes to forums.

If you do something good, you should be rewarded, but the worst thing you can do to a forumer is to ignore them.

[zwei]

I am

And, is there any way to cause the game to automatically follow around a specific dwarf(etc)? That seems like it would be enormously helpful, in combination with Z-levels. Also, having the ability to quickly "jump ahead"

Settlers 2 allowed to open new window which focused on selected unit. It was not particulary helpfull, but quite cool.

Anyhow, next part of my ideas:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here is basic building menu.

First idea is to consolidate all "create" modes to single: designate construction, seccond is to front-load settings to allow uninterrupted construction designation and third is to add "drawing tools"

Typically, player does not really care about what is exactly used for construction. One of most annoying features is need to select one specific log or to hunt for stone of certain type in huge list again and again and again. Anyone who constructed building from specific stone in mature fortress where you have dug throught several layers and propably have various types of blocks and whatnot polluting list can testify that is can be very annoying.

So, each new construction will be "abstract", player will be able to set material mode to "any wood" or "any red stone". No specific item will be tasked, instead material according to given template will be picked at time of construction by worker), similary, quality can be set for certain buildings.

This is going to be also important when designating "action areas":

If player designates treecutting area, he can designate "oak wood" as its material - dwarves will only cut oak. Similary, player would be able to designate mining area as "any ore" and dwarves would leave other types of minerals alone.

As you can see, shape of construction will be also different: instead of using uhjk to resize construction, player will have several "drawing tools" avaiable - basic line, rectangle and oval. With both mouse and keyboard control. Oval tool would allow more exotic "circle farm plots" and generally easier time drawing interesting constructions.

[RAM]

I generally like your latest ideas, though I still have some ideas about the picture.

I often find myself wanting to limit available materials based on their value and/or quality. Having the option to open a selection window to set multiple limitations would be nice and being able to save a few sets of limitation criteria would be handy. Maybe you could have a list of, say, 5 criteria sets, say,

1. low quality
 {total value less than base value of exceptional quality base item}
2. high quality
 {low quality < total value < 1000 AND not an artifact AND less than 2 masterwork decorations}
3. unique
 {total value >= 1000 AND/OR multiple masterwork decorations AND/OR an artifact}
4. Megaproject level 1
 {(red AND stone) OR ((teal OR lime green) AND masterwork quality)}
5. Megaproject level 2
 {white AND stone}

6. Load from file
7. Replace above category from file
8. Save above category to file
9. Edit above category

The rules would probably not be displayed here, and would not need to be that complicated, and even if those were possible you would probably want a simplified version for when people didn't want to bother with that level of complexity. This would allow people to have a great list of different preferences that they can swap in as the work on different aspects of their fortress. You would want to display the name of the selection criteria as you are designating to check if you pressed the wrong button...

I still find the transparency of the menus kind of pointless, It just doesn't seem to be practical to look at the background. Could you try upping the transparency, I don't know, 20%? and changing the text to sme brazenly obvious colour, Bright Green would work, and making it somewhat transparent also/ Or giving up on the transparency and having undiluted text.
 I do prefer the light wedge to the dark wedge, but would it be possible to have a wedge that fades to completely transparent at the point it reaches its target. I figure that this would grant great visibility around the target while still giving a strong impression of what is selected, but I can't be sure unless I see it in action, and I don't really have any graphical programs that do that sort of thing. Even if it works it may be more complexity than you want in the display, it would certainly be much more number crunching then dwarf, miner = tile 018...

It occurs to me that there could be a whole siege 7 tiles away from your beds there and the minimap would stop you from seeing it. Maybe reserve some sort of warning graphic for the minimap to tell you about things that want to kill dwarves...