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[Jiri Petru]

Well... I still believe there's something like an objective quality. Sure, quality is very subjective, but that doesn't stop people/critics from acting like there are some objective measures of films, books or computer games. Interfaces are the same and I do think they can be objectively good/bad.

This was just a philosophical detour without any point.

[Footkerchief]

But Toady does seem to make modifications to the interface from time to time.  Remember how in 40d it was a toss up weather escape, space or F9 would leave a menu?  And now it's mostly just escape or F9?  What was the first thing people did when that change was made at the request of a large portion of the community?  Complain.  Sure I suppose an improvement to the interface could be in order, and I could get behind it.  But a complete 5 star rewrite putting the interface on par with most commercial products would be a waste of time at this point, and unfortunately unless a interface like that is made people will always complain about it.

Summary: Unless Toady makes a top quality interface people will always complain about it.  And a top quality interface isn't worth it at this point when it's just going to be taken apart and have to be modified with every new feature.  A small interface improvement could be nice, but it won't stop complaining, and at any rate it's Toady's decision.

You could apply this argument to gameplay, too.  People complain about gameplay all the time.  Does that mean it shouldn't be improved?  Of course not.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Jiri Petru: Adding my own philosophical view, I believe that the only objective qualities of an interface are a) bugs (the interface not working as intended by the designer) and b) impossibilities (this usually shows up with interfaces that give you a choice between two input method - one method may actually lack capabilities and thus not be fully functional without the other).

Beyond that, in my opinion, it is really subjective, as no matter what criterion (like speed, visual layout, obviousness) you mention, there will be people who say that is not important for them or who may actually like the current state (especially with things like visual layout - beauty lies in the eye of the beholder).

Footkerchief: But Greiger does aptly show that improving the interface has not really stopped the whining, thus making it questionable whether Toady One is really to gain something about listening to the loud discussions.

Mind you, I am not against improvements per se. But I am not convinced about their absolute necessity right now.

Deathworks

[Footkerchief]

Footkerchief: But Greiger does aptly show that improving the interface has not really stopped the whining, thus making it questionable whether Toady One is really to gain something about listening to the loud discussions.

Greiger brought up exactly one example: "Remember how in 40d it was a toss up weather escape, space or F9 would leave a menu?  And now it's mostly just escape or F9?  What was the first thing people did when that change was made at the request of a large portion of the community?  Complain."

This completely ignores the specifics of that situation -- in particular, the fact that the "improvement" a) was one that many people never wanted and b) outright broke a number of crucial features, such as remapping keys and exiting the Embark menu.  Calling it an "improvement" at all is highly questionable.

Contrast this to real improvements that pretty much everyone wants, such as making the military/unit screens utilize the available vertical space.  Oh, but I guess I'm just "whining" now, thanks for reminding me!

[Jiri Petru]

Jiri Petru: Adding my own philosophical view, I believe that the only objective qualities of an interface are a) bugs (the interface not working as intended by the designer) and b) impossibilities (this usually shows up with interfaces that give you a choice between two input method - one method may actually lack capabilities and thus not be fully functional without the other).

Continung the philosophical debate I would add c) simplicity and ease of use, which I believe is an important measure of quality. And what's important it's almost the direct opposite of adding more stuff to overcome "b) impossibilities". Striking a good balance between these two is the goal of any interface designer. But I could never agree with the notion that "more features/options are always good". See the new military screen which added many new features/options but is believed by many to be actually worse than the previous military screen.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

This completely ignores the specifics of that situation -- in particular, the fact that the "improvement" a) was one that many people never wanted and b) outright broke a number of crucial features, such as remapping keys and exiting the Embark menu.  Calling it an "improvement" at all is highly questionable.

Ahem. Most of the interface suggestions people are making have also a lot of opponents. And talking about number of opponents and supporters is kind of tricky as you only get small fragments of the whole base to comment on each occasion, even if they are interested.

And as far as I know, the broken remapping and the embark menu are considered bugs. So, if any improvement had bugs in its first implementation, we can't call it an improvement?

And I also want to point out that Greiger's example is very good, because many people have complained about the interface being inconsistent. And clearly, having one exit key is more consistent than having three different ones. It is also easier to learn for newbies, another argument brought forth by the people who want interface improvements so that we get more players.

Contrast this to real improvements that pretty much everyone wants, such as making the military/unit screens utilize the available vertical space.  Oh, but I guess I'm just "whining" now, thanks for reminding me!

Interesting how we got threads full of partly heated debate about improvements everyone wants. After all, we are talking about interface improvements people here on the board are suggesting and often strongly defend. I find it rather interesting how contested things that pretty much everyone wants are actually on the forums.

Jiri Petru: The problem is that ease of use is a highly subjective measurement. Just look at the quarrels between the mouse and keyboard people in the thread I started. What is easy to use for you may not be easy to use for me. But you are right that simply adding to the interface does not necessarily make it better. However, any real interface should be able to access all features the game has, otherwise it is insufficient for its job - namely allowing the player to interact with the entirety of the game.

Deathworks

[Sabin Stargem]

I think using GUI, mouse, and keyboard effectively is important to make a game fun.  While it is true that Roguelikes typically rely solely on the keyboard to be interfaced with, I do not believe that using a GUI or mouse to be mutually exclusive.  For example, the mouse would be good for looking at objects on the screen and for tool-tips, while a keyboard is good for accessing many screens quickly, but the GUI is very useful for stuff you want people to easily pay attention to, which is very useful for new players and keeping the player informed.

As a gamer, I feel that having Roguelikes to only use the keyboard and ASCII is anachronistic.  One of my favorite roguelikes, Castle of the Winds employed graphics, and had a GUI that was very accessible.  For example, there was a quickbar for spellcasting, a paperdoll inventory which made it easier to manage items, wand belts, backpacks, and the ability to quickly examine items by mousing over them and right-clicking for details.  In short, by making it easier for the player to understand and interact with the game, the player had more options in how to play the game.

Contrast this with the new military menus for Dwarf Fortress:  Most people don't understand them, so they don't use them.  This is bad, because the military is an important feature, but since people don't like messing with that menu, it by default becomes a liability and chore.  As such, I feel that sticking to tradition for Roguelike interface principals is a bad idea.  I think most people play roguelikes for the gameplay, not the ASCII and keyboard aspects.  So it shouldn't hurt to rework how the player interacts with the game, if the goal is make the game easier to play with.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Well, I think that is where personal preferences simply collide.

In my gaming experience, all hybrid interfaces I have encountered were tedious at best and horrid at their worst. Thus, I either want to use only the mouse, or only the keyboard, or only the gamepad (with the exceptional intrusion of the keyboard for entering text where required).

Please allow me to point out again, that I mentioned the rogue-like roots of Dwarf Fortress to underline that the current interface has command keys and an overview and not a menu and shortcut keys. I did not mean to say that the rogue-like origins are an argument for Dwarf Fortress to keep the interface.

However, returning to the keyboard vs. mouse question, in my personal opinion, the case is very clear: Dwarf Fortress is tile based, on rectangle tiles to boost. This means for me that mouse is nearly the worst option (only barely ahead of Joystick, I suppose, and paddles) and keyboard or gamepad being the best choice. The mouse is good for games with lots of tables and charts and things where you want to interact on a pixel-level, but it has in my experience the problem of being imprecise. Keyboard and gamepad allow easy precise selection, but they are not so well-adapted for pixel-level. But for tile-based, they are basically unbeatable in my eyes.

And given the broad functionality of the game, the gamepad falls out of favor for me as it would require a restructuring into submenus in order to fit all functions onto the limited number of keys.

But these are just my feelings about that.

Deathworks

[Fedor]

One problem with third-party user interfaces is that damn near everyone would wind up using them. Even if a decent API is used, things would break between versions, leading to (sometimes large) gaps in time between a new version of DF being released and the third-party UIs catching up.

This is very annoying for the community, at least.

Consider the current situation with tilesets, Dwarf Therapist, Reveal, and so on. For a surprisingly long time after the release of 0.31.01, people were flooding the IRC channel fairly regularly with questions about whether or not this-or-that tileset still worked, if there was a Mayday pack out yet, if Dwarf Therapist worked for it yet, and claiming that they wouldn't even play the game until there was.

Count me as one of those people.  I haven't played DF past d40 yet because I don't just want a job manager and a decent tileset, I require them both in order for the game to be fun for me to play.  Because both of these things are now available, I just downloaded DF v31.06, discovered that the SDL version flashes enough on my screen that I didn't want to deal with it, which means extra work to find a tileset that works on the legacy version (which does appear to cooperate with my machine).

Call me lazy, but I want a game that looks half-way decent without too much installation effort, where I can do cool things without too much micro, and in which bugs don't trip up too much of the entertainment.  I look forward to lots and lots of DF fun in future, and to making another well-deserved donation to the Source of All Good Things Dwarven, but I may have to wait some more to get started.

[G-Flex]

My main point isn't that people complaining about utility updates are bad, more that the situation itself is bad. An officially-maintained API would help, but I think the proper solution is for the game itself to have first-party systems that people generally don't feel frustrated with.

[Fedor]

In my gaming experience, all hybrid interfaces I have encountered were tedious at best and horrid at their worst. Thus, I either want to use only the mouse, or only the keyboard, or only the gamepad (with the exceptional intrusion of the keyboard for entering text where required).

I use the keyboard almost exclusively with DF.  But there are cases where the mouse is simply superior.  Try mapping out complex designations with the keyboard, then try painting them with the mouse.  Even though I designate with the keyboard most of the time, when I want the mouse, I really want it. 

It takes a mental shift to switch between input systems, and then to practice with both ways enough to appreciate them, but being flexible about this sort of thing can clue one in to an easier way to do a particular thing.

[Footkerchief]

My main point isn't that people complaining about utility updates are bad, more that the situation itself is bad. An officially-maintained API would help, but I think the proper solution is for the game itself to have first-party systems that people generally don't feel frustrated with.

I've said it before, but a private API would itself help a lot.  As far as I can tell, he writes every single interface basically from scratch right now, resulting in each menu having its own bizarre and sometimes crashtastic (farms in 40d#, military menu in 31.01) quirks.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

My main point isn't that people complaining about utility updates are bad, more that the situation itself is bad. An officially-maintained API would help, but I think the proper solution is for the game itself to have first-party systems that people generally don't feel frustrated with.

But isn't actually the current situation the best way of managing the resources? The time of Toady One is limited, and as the followers of the third-party tools show, the third-party tools do work for them without frustration and make the experience for them enjoyable.

So, if third-party tools are a viable option for people to get rid of interface frustration, why should Toady One spend time to reach exactly the same thing instead of removing the bug frustrations which no third-party tool can heal?

Why should Toady One re-invent the wheel while he has other things to keep him occupied?

Deathworks

EDIT: Fedor: And that is where I am lazy :) :) I am not really good at fine movements, so training for perfect mouse control would be a lot of effort. On the other hand, I am perfectly fine with slowly designating and designing things in a game. I don't need to rush things, so if I want some extravagant shape designated, I take the time to do it tile by tile if necessary and maybe even experiment with the designation a bit, to see if one more tile here or one tile less there could actually improve the visuals.

But as I pointed out, these are aspects of personal difference.

[Jiri Petru]

But isn't actually the current situation the best way of managing the resources? The time of Toady One is limited, and as the followers of the third-party tools show, the third-party tools do work for them without frustration and make the experience for them enjoyable.

No it isn't. Toady himself doesn't want to do a proper interface, while at the same time he doesn't want to allow other people do it. Dead end. Dwarf Therapist is great but it's just a minor part of the game controls.

I'm not one who would cry for Toady to open his code and work with other people, that's why I wrote he needs to do proper interface as soon a possible.

[Jiri Petru]

Doublepost. Oops.