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[Sir Pseudonymous]

DF players ranting about bad interface and lack of tutorials?! Holly shit!

For my part after couple of tries im running a working empire and having lots of fun.

Dorf fort's interface is unintuitive and inconsistent, but it's actually quite good for all it has to do, and the wiki is excellent for learning it. Aurora's interface is a spreadsheet with a metric fuckton of buttons, and the tutorials, while admittedly fairly good, aren't complete yet. I suppose it has to be mentioned that the wiki was, as far as I know, wholly a community work, where aurora's tutorials were all written by the creator himself (and added to its wiki by someone else, possibly modified but I'm not going through both copies line by line to look for differences).

I don't see what the problem is with the interface; sure its not visually appealing, but it does a good job of displaying the loads of information that it has to. As for the buttons, they are necessary, and if you can't figure out what one does just hover over it for a description.

It's unwieldy, lacks some basic niceties (like using a mousewheel for anything at all), and REQUIRES A FUCKHUGE RESOLUTION.

And as for his attitude, I would be pretty upset as well if people were shouting swears at me because my game wasn't up to their standards. I personally wouldn't say that straight to the offending people, which seems to be the issue here more than his feelings towards it; I would however ignore the thread.

I don't believe anyone was criticizing the game, per se, but rather a) the backwards, convoluted install process, and b) the lack of a complete tutorial. The first is a serious issue which he should address; the second is one he is not expected to fill, presumably being too busy with the game itself, and would instead be filled by some experienced member(s) of the community (admittedly rather small, this thread may very well be the most attention it's ever received in one place...).

I think what people here aren't realizing is that this game is written in Visual Basic 6, which is a very old and outdated language that makes dealing with modern interfaces and issues a nightmare; so fixing these problems isn't close to as easy as people are making it out to be. To fix it he might even have to rewrite the whole program in another language. Image if you were swearing at Toady because he doesn't want to completely rewrite Dwarf Fortress.

Yes, he should do that. Both of them. That's a very good idea. Aurora in a real language, and Dorf Fort in a clean, organized, efficient manner following proper object and multithreading standards. Hell, if both open sourced their programs it would be done within the week. :3

[KaelGotDwarves]

Seriously, if I ever decide, "fuck my life~ I'm staying inside and learning advanced modern coding/programming"... first thing I'm doing is designing an indepth space sim with customizable giant robots, mech(a), spaceships, you name it on epic scale.

But I don't have the time for that so I'm happy with what I get.

Speaking of which my let's play has reached nuclear oh shit mode... now if only I can get off work and finish the writeup.

Also, no I don't think a complete DF engine rewrite would not be done in a week. This is speaking as a guy who runs linux and generally advocates OS. What would happen is a bunch of cheap DF clones and spinoffs, if the bitching on other forums has any truth to them.

[Gabeux]

4.8 wasn't released yet right?
I'm gonna get back to playing any minute now.
Ha

[a1s]

has anyone figured out what (if anything) the personality traits do? (personality traits can be found in the officer screen, to the lower left of the center)

[AussieGuy]

As far as I know its just for RP purposes

[Gabeux]

I also believe it's for RP purposes, since you can change them even without SM ON.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

4.8 wasn't released yet right?
I'm gonna get back to playing any minute now.
Ha

Yes, it's under the installation board on the forum. Which you have to register to be allowed to view for some reason.

[Gabeux]

Alright, ty. Gonna register to see it's change log.

Btw if someone get issues with window positions, go to the main screen, click miscellaneous > reset window positions.

right click/close the window in the task bar and re-open. should appear now.

--
LOL I clicked the wrong button and now have to ask my mother permission to join the forum.
Of course, if I wasn't 18....or if I was dumb.

[Ozyton]

Alright, ty. Gonna register to see it's change log.

ossum

Mind pasting the changelog in a spoiler here for those of us who can't be bothered to register because we're lazy? (If that's allowed... seems kinda harmless)

[Gabeux]

Original 4.80 post:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Important! This is a database patch so if you upgrade you will lose your saved game. Don't upgrade if you want to keep playing the same campaign.

This patch can only be applied to version 4.2 or later. To apply the patch just unzip the Aurora480.zip.exe into the installation directory, overwriting two files.

I haven't tackled all the bugs in the bugs thread yet but I am going to release this new version for a couple of reasons. Firstly I am going to be very busy with RL in the next couple of weeks so if I don't release this now, it will be a while. Secondly, a couple of key parts of the tutorial I want to tackle will be affected by this patch so I thought it would be better to release it first than have to write a tutorial section and then change it. As usual treat this as a beta patch for a couple of weeks so I can tackle any immediate problems. I'll still work through the v4.7 bugs thread and apply the fixes to .01 updates to this patch. I will start a new v4.8 bugs thread though.

There aren't too many significant changes in this update, with the most noticeable being the return of fighter and ordnance factories and the addition of Drones.

Also, 4.81 was released like 10 minutes ago.
DL and applying, I'm gonna restart my game because I lost a LOAD of time with dumb choices I've made.
I'll be crazy  and start ANOTHER conventional empire WITHOUT cheating. muahaha

[Aqizzar]

Okay, does anybody have a link for a REAL TUTORIAL, that actually explains how the game is supposed to work, AND is typed at least well enough to be legible?  Because I'm using the hideous GameFAQs abortion from the wiki page and I'm stuck on assigning a governor to Earth, because I can't figure out what button to press to actually assign him there.

What the fuck is wrong with this interface, and why isn't there a click-by-click tutorial included?  Or for that matter a real website instead of a poorly typed wikia and a forum I'm not going to navigate?

This is a game I created for myself and made it available to others to use for free, so forgive me if I don't provide extensive manuals and glossy web sites for free as well. Other people have given their free time to create the wiki. Unfortunately, this is the type of abuse I have come to expect from this thread so I'll excuse myself at this point. If anyone needs any assistance with any issues they will have to post in the Aurora forums. However, as Aurora is for adults only, any posts with the above attitude will be deleted

Because I'm sure you're still reading this, I want you to understand something.  I want to like your game.  You hear me?  It looks really cool.  I love complexity, I'm here playing Dwarf Fortress after all.  But as much flak as Dwarf Fortress gets for it's hideous presentation, I took to it fast enough that I don't remember ever being confused.  Your game, I'm absolutely baffled by from screen one.  The reason I'm mad is that it looks like it's doing something awesome, and I can't figure out how to get in there and play it.

But you think it looks great, fine.  If you think it's intuitive then you're just plain wrong.  And if you actually think that providing complete documentation along with a product is to onerous to ask without compensation, especially if you made this plie of details and release it for free, frankly you're crazy.  I joined the Dwarf Fortress forum because I like talking about Dwarf Fortress, not because I could figure out to make the game start running.  A legible guide to at least what each menu does and what activity the game expects of the player is not too much to ask.

I thank you for providing a link to the tutorial you wrote, but as a player who just stumbled across your game one day, I shouldn't have to dig through your forum to find it.  If you just included that tutorial as a document with the download that would at show you actually care what people think of your game.

[head]

If anyone needs help with getting this to run on win7 just ask.

[Djohaal]

Okay, does anybody have a link for a REAL TUTORIAL, that actually explains how the game is supposed to work, AND is typed at least well enough to be legible?  Because I'm using the hideous GameFAQs abortion from the wiki page and I'm stuck on assigning a governor to Earth, because I can't figure out what button to press to actually assign him there.

What the fuck is wrong with this interface, and why isn't there a click-by-click tutorial included?  Or for that matter a real website instead of a poorly typed wikia and a forum I'm not going to navigate?

This is a game I created for myself and made it available to others to use for free, so forgive me if I don't provide extensive manuals and glossy web sites for free as well. Other people have given their free time to create the wiki. Unfortunately, this is the type of abuse I have come to expect from this thread so I'll excuse myself at this point. If anyone needs any assistance with any issues they will have to post in the Aurora forums. However, as Aurora is for adults only, any posts with the above attitude will be deleted

Because I'm sure you're still reading this, I want you to understand something.  I want to like your game.  You hear me?  It looks really cool.  I love complexity, I'm here playing Dwarf Fortress after all.  But as much flak as Dwarf Fortress gets for it's hideous presentation, I took to it fast enough that I don't remember ever being confused.  Your game, I'm absolutely baffled by from screen one.  The reason I'm mad is that it looks like it's doing something awesome, and I can't figure out how to get in there and play it.

But you think it looks great, fine.  If you think it's intuitive then you're just plain wrong.  And if you actually think that providing complete documentation along with a product is to onerous to ask without compensation, especially if you made this plie of details and release it for free, frankly you're crazy.  I joined the Dwarf Fortress forum because I like talking about Dwarf Fortress, not because I could figure out to make the game start running.  A legible guide to at least what each menu does and what activity the game expects of the player is not too much to ask.

I thank you for providing a link to the tutorial you wrote, but as a player who just stumbled across your game one day, I shouldn't have to dig through your forum to find it.  If you just included that tutorial as a document with the download that would at show you actually care what people think of your game.

I can't put it in better terms. I also am desperately wanting to like this game, the concept behind it is awesome, the level of detail is excellent, but it really needs a rewrite of the whole interface (on the very least) to something a bit more presentable. It is too abstract on the moment, and much of the interface is clumsy (having to pick fleets on a list instead of clicking on their fleet in the map for instance). The hardest part to staple in, the gameplay, is already done, so it is a matter of adding more makeup to that spreadsheet so it becomes an easier to handle monster.

[Empty]

Meh the game isn't THAT hard to figure out. And if you really need to know something read the wiki or the forum.

Anyway tip for people. Play without planet/moon orbit motion. It speeds it up SIGNIFICANTLY.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Anyway tip for people. Play without planet/moon orbit motion. It speeds it up SIGNIFICANTLY.

A 30 day interval takes ~5 seconds on my computer, with all orbit options turned on. And I'm on a laptop. And the game doesn't even use both cores. :|

Also, the wiki is horribly incomplete, and you have to register just to be allowed to think about going to the forums.