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[Muz]

Add it to the Eternal Suggestion and vote

[SirPenguin]

To be fair to Zoal, this began as a single post in another topic (the Dwarf Fortress Talk #6 Feedback thread), and I think it was ThreeToe that made this a separate topic here. I agree this shouldn't have been in the Feedback thread, but it's not like Zoal made a new topic about something she already spoke about previously.

[Footkerchief]

To be fair to Zoal, this began as a single post in another topic (the Dwarf Fortress Talk #6 Feedback thread), and I think it was ThreeToe that made this a separate topic here. I agree this shouldn't have been in the Feedback thread, but it's not like Zoal made a new topic about something she already spoke about previously.

If that's true then I apologize.  Most of what I said was predicated on the belief that Zoal had posted yet another thread about DF graphics.  Not that it's much better to try to derail the feedback thread, but it's a different venue at least?

[Draco18s]

How would anything become more confusing? You'll still be using the same tile system as before, so there'll still be the same amount of activity onscreen, just more diversity.

That's actually the problem, when telling a wolf, fox, dog (tame), dog (named), puppy apart becomes a matter of 1 to 4 pixels.  If you just lump them all together under one graphic ('d' in this case) then if I care to know I can [l]ook at it.

I mean, ok, so Goats and Goblins are both 'g' and you can get confused sometimes, but for the most part goblins tend not to mill around on your map for seasons without you having heard about it.

[G-Flex]

Except those examples make more sense than most. It's somewhat okay if all dogs look the same because they're all dogs: They fit under the same category, and you can see more info if you want.

This is in stark contrast to, say, the symbol for money being used for some trees, or the same symbol being used for wells as well as bracelets, ant colonies, querns and millstones.

A lot of tiles are used for multiple things that have no connection to each other, meaning you need more information just to know anything about them. Usually this isn't the biggest deal in the world, but it's still annoying, and if the OP is any indication, some people are more sensitive to it than others.

[Draco18s]

This is in stark contrast to, say, the symbol for money being used for some trees, or the same symbol being used for wells as well as bracelets, ant colonies, querns and millstones.

That, I agree, is something of a problem.

[JohnieRWilkins]

Why not remember where everything is in the meanwhile? Label different areas with the hotkey function/label function and you'll find yourself having a completely different experience. If units are the problem, try using the (U)nit screen. It's fairly easy to just check what something is with the K/Q/T buttons.

Try using F1 for your gate. F2 for your farm. F3 for your stockpiles. F4 for your crafting workshops. F5 for your metal ops. Then remember that all of your craftsdwarf workshops are in the top right corner, mason workshops in the top left, etc...

Hopefully you'll get used to looking at the Matrix like Cypher.

[BradB]

If you spent the last complete year and 2 months in the same desperate state you now present to us, then you would be fine. I'll try to be helpful now and give you some tips to minimise confusion between workshops. It is a mess of horribly written junk, and is hardly polished, but it is good advice regardless. If you read through this post properly and take the advice onboard and yet still you are confused, only then may you make more "improve the interface" suggestion threads.

• Try having your wood stockpile up against (or even slightly surrounding) your carpenter's workshop. If it is surrounded by brown logs (or even made of logs) you will know for sure, that it is the place where wood is used.
• Have the other place that makes furniture (the mason) not to far from the carpenter's place. Maybe on the other side of the furniture stockpile.  There are only two places
• Even I will accept that forges, kilns, smelters and furnaces all look quite the same. These should be the LAST thing you should worry about though. Get the basics handled first before going into the huge supply-chain nightmare of metalworking.
• The kennel and siege workshop are the two big workshops. The siege workshop's two horizontal lines kinda remind me of something like this:
  Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  
• Build your craftsdwarf's workshops in rooms filled to the brim with toys, mugs, instruments, earrings, bangles and other crap (not in bins) and you will easily be able to tell at a glance that it is the room that crafts are made in.
  
• For some strange reason, I always have my kitchen and my still in a room directly off my dining room. This makes it very easy to find them. If you cannot tell them apart there are only two in that room to choose from, so it won't be too hard to track down the one you want.
• My mechanic's workhop is in the middle of my mechanisms stockpile. I look for a bunch of mechanisms (which I remember the symbol for, as it is not shared) and viola! there it is!
• Leatherworks/tanner have stockpiles of skins/leather lying around them
• The loom/weaver/dyer have piles of thread and cloth around it. If you are searching it is going to be one of three. (Not very hard to figure out one workshop between three, the loom even looks like a real loom for god's sake).
• The farmer's workshop is right near the farm plots.
• You made the room that contains the fishery, fish-shaped
• Butcher has an endless flow of miasma coming from it
• and so forth!

There you have it, that's a bunch of workshops to get you started, now think of other ways to be able to recognise the locations of the others (not what each single workshops symbols are made up of) at a glance. Remember- don't look at the workshop itself, look at its surroundings. if the surrounding are all the same then you are screwed. Keep them all quite distinct, rather than a single room jumbled full of every workshop known to man.

I myself cannot recall off the top of my head exactly what nearly any of the workshops look like. I still get by fine from remembering where I built them in the first place. They are all in distinct looking areas too. Once you get these locations worked out, then you are fine. If you are new and cannot find your workshop, then just look around for a bit longer. Once you have looked around for a workshop, and found it, you should remember where it is located (not what it looks like)

I was just being helpful by posting all this. Probably too helpful, as this is the largest post I have ever written. Just make a fort, don't build every single workshop at once, and instead only build them as you need them- and not cluttered up! Give them rooms/places that you can recognise at a glace (say from all the wood or bloody furniture crammed in a single space).

Overall: Stop looking at the symbols of the workshops to figure out what they are. Look at the surroundings instead.

[Silverionmox]

I look forward to the moment when we'll be able to use rooms as workshops, and the tools of the trade, the resources and the products will lie in the workshop because that's where they're used and produced.

[HatfieldCW]

My advice is to just not play DF for a couple years.  Come back in 2012 and see what's cooking then.  The interface is what it is, and it'll only improve as Toady improves it.  If it's a dealbreaker for you, then the deal's broken, but Toady himself plays in ASCII, and most players have found a display option that suits them to some degree, and so the game is operational, which is pretty good, for an alpha build of the game.  It's an ambitious project, and there's a lot to do.

My pet peeve is pathfinding and hauling jobs monopolizing dwarf-hours and CPU cycles alike.  It's so poorly run that it actually hurts the game experience, since I need 50 dwarves to do what three guys with a wheelbarrow should be able to do in less time, and meanwhile those 50 dwarves are pathing and repathing as they ferry socks and stones about the map with their -Tower Cap Chopsticks-, which causes my poor PC to cry piteously in the night.  I abandon forts, and I turn off game features, and I restrict myself to 2x2 embarks in a vain effort to allay this problem.

I'm not playing the game I want to play, the game that's hiding right behind this glaring flaw.  What I'm playing is the current build of DF, and it's pretty sweet, so I'll suck it up and learn what I can and vote on the suggestions I value and wait patiently for the dev team to complete their goals in accordance with their best judgement and inclinations.