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[Greiger]

There are a few people working on 3rd-party external UI programs.

Also, I was promised calculus.  There's no math in this thread!

Spoiler: Off topic, here is your math (click to show/hide)

Just some math that impressed me recently.  Taken from the Cc2iscool forums for TF2, though the poster says it wasn't him.

Back on topic, I too like the current interface, but I wouldn't be opposed to a redo once Toady gets around to it.  Like others said it is a bit wonky in places.

[Kdansky]

After lurking for a long while, I came to the conclusion that Toady belongs to that rare species which will never ever give in to writing a UI. Just like the linux geeks who think that entering twenty lines of commands is a user-friendly approach to using software. Luckily, they are the minority. If dwarf fortress had a decent interface, I'm sure it would be ten times as popular, just look at how popular rogue-likes are, and their UI is not great either. But it's a lot better.

Is the current mess workable? Yes. Any interface is workable. Technically, you could play a game by entering mathematical chat commands. Would it be less fun? Certainly.

And the problem is not the current UI's inexistance, it's its inconsistency.
- Four buttons to look at stuff, none showing all information.
- Different buttons for the same thing (leaving menus, area designation)
- Multiple buttons and menus to assign military options.
- Incredibly complex "look at dwarf" menu with Wounds, Pref, General, History, Labor, and you can only access some places through some means, and not from anywhere.
- The game is virtually unplayable without Dwarf Manager, after you get past 7 dwarves. That alone should ring a bell.
- Menu entries in random order. It would take all of ten minutes to rearrange the menu entries in alphabetical order, and would reduce the time spent searching for rarely used things such as (b) "siege" greatly. This is my major gripe. I can see why reworking the UI is a lengthy, tedious task, but this would simplify things greatly without a lot of programming.
- Messages don't tell you where stuff happened. Starcraft did this right: If you get a "Base under attack" you may press (Space) and your view will center on that hotspot.

Pretty sad actually to have such a great game with the most horrible interface ever written. If this was open source, I'd commit a tweaked UI this week. It makes me stop playing after a couple hours, because I just can't stand it. I hope someone else writes a similar game to DF, with UI included. Then everyone will just stop playing DF in favour of that other game, leaving Toady no choice but to improve this mess.

[Raging Mouse]

- The game is virtually unplayable without Dwarf Manager, after you get past 7 dwarves. That alone should ring a bell.

Speak for yourself only there, my good man/woman/thing.

The reason DF is good just _might_ have something to do with all that programming being spent on in-game features rather than polishing the front end. In my reasoning, learning the UI was by far compensated by being able to play the game, and future versions (including the up-and-coming one, definitely) are bound to just increase that payoff. In other words, as long as Toady keeps adding to the awesome I couldn't care less about the interface.

[Derakon]

Raging Mouse: you're looking at a tradeoff between Toady working on game features and Toady working on interface. There's only one programmer, his time is limited. I believe, from KDansky's comments, that he's looking at more of an open-source model, where you have more than one programmer and not all of them work on the same things. In that situation having someone to work on the UI makes more sense (since you can't really have more than one person at a time working on features that involve ripping out the guts of the program anyway).

Of course, we've had the open-source discussion over and over again.

[Leafsnail]

- Four buttons to look at stuff, none showing all information.

I presume you're referring to k (items) v (units) q (building commands) and t (building items).  K then selecting a unit would be fine, replacing v, and I'm sure q and t could be merged without many real problems.  Combining all four may not work too well, however.

- Different buttons for the same thing (leaving menus, area designation)

F9 vs spacebar, yeah.  Also note the +/- vs pg up/ pg down.

- Multiple buttons and menus to assign military options.

The m screen works fine for me.

- Incredibly complex "look at dwarf" menu with Wounds, Pref, General, History, Labor, and you can only access some places through some means, and not from anywhere.

Yes, the units menu should let you see their wounds.

- The game is virtually unplayable without Dwarf Manager, after you get past 7 dwarves. That alone should ring a bell.

I have 122 dwarves, and I'm playing perfectly well without Dwarf Manager.

- Menu entries in random order. It would take all of ten minutes to rearrange the menu entries in alphabetical order, and would reduce the time spent searching for rarely used things such as (b) "siege" greatly. This is my major gripe. I can see why reworking the UI is a lengthy, tedious task, but this would simplify things greatly without a lot of programming.

Yep, this would be nice.  Possibly in order of buttons and objects (option to choose?).

- Messages don't tell you where s ???tuff happened. Starcraft did this right: If you get a "Base under attack" you may press (Space) and your view will center on that hotspot.

And equally, unnecessary calling to places.  I don't care too much if my legendary miner has hit bauxite (again) or if "A human caravan has arrived" in the bottom left or bottom right.  The starcraft solution could work well - maybe the first attack on a dwarf from an enemy (but not every attack, of course) could trigger this.

Pretty sad actually to have such a great game with the most horrible interface ever written. If this was open source, I'd commit a tweaked UI this week. It makes me stop playing after a couple hours, because I just can't stand it. I hope someone else writes a similar game to DF, with UI included. Then everyone will just stop playing DF in favour of that other game, leaving Toady no choice but to improve this mess.

Um, you aware of the amount of money that it costs to play this game, or the amount of advertising revenue gained?

Besides, Eve has a worse interface.  And the rewards for learning this slightly messy interface are great.

Open source would probably compromise the quality.

[Kdansky]

It's not unexpected that people agree on the UI being clunky

Military:
What I meant: You go with (m) screen for assignments, that's fine. You have to change their name/profession with v and station them with x. That's three menus to get one thing done.

"I can play it fine"
I know of people who don't use a debugger when they write code. It's doable, but it's 10 times more tedious and leads to subpar results. One of the main reasons WoW is so successful is the UI. It's extremly simple, easy to learn and very powerful, even before addons.

Open-Source
If Toady does not want to opensource his stuff, that is fine, I can understand that. But spending hundreds of hours on wound mechanics which a vast majority of people will likely completely ignore (either the dwarf works or he stays in bed, but I cannot make a meaningful choice depending on what wound he has) and neglecting even the simplest UI concerns is a bad investment of time, even for a single person. Effort should be made where the least time spent results in the biggest improvement, economically speaking. Spending 10 minutes to make the menus in alphabetical order, or having ESC/F9/Space behave the same everywhere would be such a thing. Producing pretty buttons for everything on the other hand takes a long time and is not much better than plain text.

That is what I meant.

And the rewards for learning this slightly messy interface are great.

Yes, that is why I even bother. If DF wasn't as awesome as it is, I would never look twice. Still, there is so much space to improve the UI, one doesn't know where to begin.

[zchris13]

The announcements zooming is coming.

[Leafsnail]

Military:
What I meant: You go with (m) screen for assignments, that's fine. You have to change their name/profession with v and station them with x. That's three menus to get one thing done.

Well, you can use w to change their profession (indeed, this is the only way with elites/ champions) and v, z from the m screen to station.  It's still a bit annoying though.

"I can play it fine"
I know of people who don't use a debugger when they write code. It's doable, but it's 10 times more tedious and leads to subpar results. One of the main reasons WoW is so successful is the UI. It's extremly simple, easy to learn and very powerful, even before addons.

Indeed.  I'd actually like more input from the mouse in DF - I mean, it's used on a couple of menus.

Open-Source
If Toady does not want to opensource his stuff, that is fine, I can understand that. But spending hundreds of hours on wound mechanics which a vast majority of people will likely completely ignore (either the dwarf works or he stays in bed, but I cannot make a meaningful choice depending on what wound he has) and neglecting even the simplest UI concerns is a bad investment of time, even for a single person. Effort should be made where the least time spent results in the biggest improvement, economically speaking. Spending 10 minutes to make the menus in alphabetical order, or having ESC/F9/Space behave the same everywhere would be such a thing. Producing pretty buttons for everything on the other hand takes a long time and is not much better than plain text.

True.  Although some wounds are different; I do care if a dwarf is down with a broken leg (he'll be fine in a couple of months) or a broken spine (permanent invalid).  I personally think that a nervous wound should make the dwarf flash with a blue cross, or something.  I also care whether a dwarf has received a brown leg wound (he'll walk it off) or a brown brain wound (needs to be realocated weapons).  Same goes for eyes and stuff.  Something about the wound system gives dwarf fortress a very detailed feel.

[ProfessorA]

There are a few people working on 3rd-party external UI programs.

Also, I was promised calculus.  There's no math in this thread!

I was disappointed too.
At any rate, if y'all don't mind me going off on a tangent...
The current interface does successfully reduce the amount of user time needed to implement changes in the game world to bare essentials - I usually leave the game running while I read/cook/surf the web, only "playing" in the conventional sense for a couple minutes periodically over the course of a typical day.  If simple pathing errors and perhaps some way of prioritizing designations/buildings could be implemented (as is the case with jobs atm) then micromanagement could be further reduced.  Perhaps even a designation queue (so that engravers will immediately set to work detailing and engraving a room as it is carved out) would help immensely - and how much time have you spent spelling out for dwarves in a detailed, banal fashion how to carve out simple but large structures?  Then again, for some that's where all the fun is...
As it is the interface is pretty freakin awesome in that I don't have to constantly interface with it.

[Volfram]

I hope someone else writes a similar game to DF, with UI included. Then everyone will just stop playing DF in favour of that other game, leaving Toady no choice but to improve this mess.

Not bloody likely.  There's no market for it.  The only people who actually would make a DF clone of any reasonable quality are already playing the real deal.  Games currently on the market make it pretty clear that developers are working 90% towards a pretty game, the remaining effort being divided about evenly between bug-free performance and actual gameplay quality.

How else do you explain the fact that half of the big-name games currently on store shelves have bugs that make them unplayable(all Sonic games post Adventure 2, most open world or sandbox games) or fall far short of their promised gameplay value(anything by Will Wright, most open-world games)?

[Muz]

The game is unfinished, guys. You guys should be happy that Toady is letting you play the pre-alpha version of his game in the first place.

Yes, it could be fixed, but there are so many higher priorities, especially since it's already playable.

Here's an idea: How about you guys design a better UI for DF and put it in the suggestions forum. Chances are, if it's better in every form, Toady would certainly use it.

[Smew]

Thank you Muz, it seems everybody and their mother forgets how this game is still in it's alpha, despite already feeling so complete.

If I can spend over 80 hours playing an ALPHA of a game, and still not be bored, I know it's bound to be good in the future.

[LrZeph]

Designing an interface is difficult. Pretty much no matter which way you go, you will scare someone off. Be it from being too complex, too simple, too clunky, etc. When building a UI, there is something a lot of people forget, Not everyone is you. Besides, a lot of people have gotten used to this UI, and for now the easiest choice is to fill out the game before putting it in a fancy dress.
(.... am i mixing Analogies here?)
Besides, it is only the alpha of a game, it's like demanding art to be finished after the first day of working on it.

[G-Flex]

Yes.

One problem is that, without knowing what exact features the game's going to have in the future (or knowing but not having those features yet), it can be hard to design a proper UI that'll work for the rest of the game's development.

[Martin]

The only interface element I trip over are the different keys for the same item in different contexts. Building a floodgate at a mason workshop is 'l', constructing it is 'x', linking to it from a lever is 'f'. Building leather bags is 'n', plant bags is 'b'.

Unifying that would be easy to do in code, but would be greeted with howls of protest from anyone playing for more than a version.

That said, the interface is very servicable for the game. It's responsive, scriptable, and works well in the interface limitations that the game framework demands. You could do a LOT worse, and almost any 'improved' interface would be mouse driven and for most of us considerably slower to use.