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[Aramco]

Yeah, I don't think so. I like DF UI the way it is. If Goblin Camp's UI is put in, I will stop playing DF.

[Z1000000m]

I agree that once you learn all the hotkeys, building placement isn't so hard in DF.
But I have to admit that the way how goblin camp handles wall placement is vastly superior to df's 10x10 max + place it with wsad/num's. Designing a megaproject thats not based on a square takes ridiculous amounts of time, and fixing a simple flaw also takes way too long. (imo)
Also, I can see how using the mouse scroll can speed up material selection by a large amount.

[Footkerchief]

Yeah, I don't think so. I like DF UI the way it is. If Goblin Camp's UI is put in, I will stop playing DF.

Pretty sure you're outweighed by the thousands of people who already stopped playing DF because of the existing UI.

[Aramco]

Yeah, well, I'll make thousands of clones of myself to outweigh those people.

[Deimos56]

I would think that a hybrid keyboard/mouse interface would be optimal. Let people decide which one they want to use.

That said, Kohaku makes some rather nice suggestions. As usual.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

I don't really care about the UI but you can butcher an animal without entering the animal page. There's a slaughter (y/n) option specifically for that.

[GTM]

For the love of god, please maintain full keyboard support if the mouse is eventually added.

I will still never forgive Microsoft from taking the arrow keys out of MSpaint after windows 3.1.  I know this sounds like a parody, but I'm being 100% serious here.  The mouse is for geriatrics.  One of the traits of the best PC gamers is using hotkeys effectively.

[Aramco]

For the love of god, please maintain full keyboard support if the mouse is eventually added.

I will still never forgive Microsoft from taking the arrow keys out of MSpaint after windows 3.1.  I know this sounds like a parody, but I'm being 100% serious here.  The mouse is for geriatrics.  One of the traits of the best PC gamers is using hotkeys effectively.

This would be acceptable-- add goblin camps UI, but leave the old UI there, in case you want to use it. I just want to continue using the UI as it is now.

[NW_Kohaku]

I agree that once you learn all the hotkeys, building placement isn't so hard in DF.
But I have to admit that the way how goblin camp handles wall placement is vastly superior to df's 10x10 max + place it with wsad/num's. Designing a megaproject thats not based on a square takes ridiculous amounts of time, and fixing a simple flaw also takes way too long. (imo)
Also, I can see how using the mouse scroll can speed up material selection by a large amount.

Oh god, not "wasd".  I already have to re-bind all my keys for every first person game ever because of "wasd".  Not that the "uhlm" DF sometimes uses isn't worse, though...

I don't really care about the UI but you can butcher an animal without entering the animal page. There's a slaughter (y/n) option specifically for that.

Perhaps, but that requires finding every animal manually to toggle their butchering, as opposed to using a list of animals so you can see exactly how many are in your fortress, and how many you are slating to be butchered on one screen, consolidating all the information you need to make an informed decision onto one or two screens (provided you could look at a detailed view of a cow from the animals page so that if you were looking for particular traits, you could zoom to that page).  If you're going through every cow in your fort by hand, you might have to go to the units list, scroll through every cow in the units list, find their location, and then mark the ones you want to kill or keep in the "v" look menu when you cursor over them.  That's a large amount of paperwork that could be streamlined by giving players access to the information they need to make their decisions just one keypress away by making a shortcut from the animals page to the detailed view page.

[Capntastic]

The key thing to keep in mind is that the GC UI is great for designating a lot of stuff; a simple click or two and you're designating wall arrangements and stockpiles.   There are aspects of it that are quite virtuous, and the ones most beneficial could be implemented for the aspects of DF most receptive to such things.   Being able to do most sorts of designations, like tree cutting, digging, walls, roads, stockpiles, etc, from one basic menu would do much to boost new players into making things.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, I guess I could see a mouse replacing the designation of bridges or the like since "uhmk" as a means of making bridges larger leaves much to be desired.  Of course, even then, I suspect "wasdx" would still be there as a means of determining the direction of bridge retraction - having multiple layers of clicks in menus gets tedious.

The thing about a mouse is that you have to spend time aiming it, while hotkeys are much faster.  Then there's the problem that there's such a godawful amount of hotkeys that you're not going to see them all localized within the distance your left hand can hit them all while its on the homekeys, which means you're going to have to flit between mouse control and keyboard control with your right hand frequently... and it already has to flit between numpad and homekey control, at that.

Basically, it means that we'd need four hands to play DF without constantly repositioning our hand after ever input.

[Stratah]

Well.  I wouldn't like DF's UI to be replaced, just because I think any person who likes DF, spent enough hours playing to memorize pretty much everything on the keyboard.

I would like, however, to make the mouse more useful for certain things.  For example, designing zones and walls, as GC suggests and be able to navigate on the map with the mousewheel to raise-lower view level and click&drag to move around.  And squad management with mouse would be much easier (and more rts-like) than using the lists.

The menues as an option wouldn't be as bad...  Nowadays it's extremely messy to play DF eating pizza.

[therahedwig]

TBH, I would love better mouse support(especcially of the 'select retangle kind' for designating instead of the one-square at a time) because I love playing games with my tablet.(Perhaps a little selfish there). For me, it would already be better if we'd be able to click the hot-key explaination as a sort of buttons.

I think though that to be able to effectively redo the DF UI, the game should be rewritten in some parts. Instead of having workshops and rooms from furniture, these would work better if they were similar to the burrows/zones. This is mostly because I really like the idea behind hospitals, even if they're not quite working like they should. Next to that it allows for better workflow when planning things out.

But I think we could also take the things that require 'think hard about it once, and then don't bother with it for a long time' such as nobles and the 'information' screens to the status screen. This way you wouldn't have that kind of clutter on the front-screen, making things easier for newbies to discern.

On the other hand, things like the manager and the military should be readily availeble because these concern mass-orders of some or other.
So combining those two ideas you would get a sort of subdeviding like this: http://img.ie/bc043.png
At most, the player would have to tick two keys to get to their needed option, and at the same time the screen is uncluttered.
By placing the 'look' on top, newbies would be most inclined to choose that option, resulting in them being able to figure out what all these symbols mean.(I just realised I forgot to add a few things, like announcements. which should be on the frontscreen but more near hotkeys/status).

And general key-consistency, that would be nice.

[NW_Kohaku]

On the other hand, things like the manager and the military should be readily availeble because these concern mass-orders of some or other.
So combining those two ideas you would get a sort of subdeviding like this: http://img.ie/bc043.png
At most, the player would have to tick two keys to get to their needed option, and at the same time the screen is uncluttered.

I'm sorry, what are those dashed/dotted borders and color coding supposed to signify, exactly?

[therahedwig]

Nothing besides visual grouping.

It was to stop people from getting lost in a field of lines.