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[Bromor Neckbeard]

^Seconding THAT.  I'm still playing 40a because Mayday hasn't updated his graphics pack download in a while.

I've tried and tried and tried to get the transferring graphics task to work correctly, but I somehow screw it up every time.  So I just settle for playing whichever version of DF there's an EZ-install pack for.

[McDoomhammer]

Fortunately, there are few legendary donkeys

[ravensgrace]

The thread's anger level needs to be reduced greatly.  I will continue the current trend of breaking the tension with this funny link.

http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/

This has about half an hour of entertaining reading.

That's awesome!  Someone should make a game based on these characters. 

[Tormy]

Hi!

Just a few tidbits I want to add.

Interface: Personally, I prefer keyboard interfaces, but I can see that a well-designed mouse interface can be very good as well (I think it is meaningless to discuss badly designed mouse interfaces as no one will seriously consider them useful).

My personal stance on interfaces is that, whatever interface you do, make it one device only in each mode! Granted, if you need to enter a word or number, adding keyboard entry can be useful, but having an interface that requires you to do 70% of the handling via the mouse and 30% of the handling via some keyboard hotkeys is just an abomination in my eyes. The player has to shift between input devices and this can be rather annoying, especially if the devices mix very wildly (so that even a common action involves more than one device).

Therefore, I would personally prefer to see full mouse support as a distinct game mode/option for the game existing independant of the keyboard controls, so that both can develop their full potential.

Tiles: I have to say that I find it rather amusing that people say that there is major representation problem. "B" marking a big bear does make sense to me somehow, just as "c" marking a cat and "d" marking a dog. Of course there is some overlap (donkeys and dragons really annoys me ), but things are not really that bad as people sometimes claim. At least that is the way I see it.

As for the tilesets, I personally think that part of the problem are people providing the tilesets. Putting it bluntly: If you want people to use your tileset, provide it in a ready-to-use package the player just downloads and puts in their DF directory. This is not to say that no one does that, but I have the impression that very often, just the raw graphics are provided and people are left to their own devices to figure out how to make the game actually use the tileset. Including the proper files, like the changed init file would make things much, much easier for people.

Deathworks

Well a good mouse based "interface" can be awesome. Rushing the right mouse button could bring up the in-game menus, always related to the in-game objects. IE. for example if you right click on  a creature, than the creature menu would appear. You could do everything using that menu what you can do now, using the keyboard. Excellent and simple.
Tilesets: I dont like what we have now...at all. We need to have full tileset support, so that we will be able to change everything in the game. So I am still playing in ASCII mode for example, because mixing ASCII with creature tiles is just messed up. Tilesets will make the game much more player friendly, not to mention that same ascii symbols/letters are already being used to display various in-game objects, for example: D, g etc. Well they are in different colors, but its still annoying [especially for new players I guess]

[Exponent]

My personal stance on interfaces is that, whatever interface you do, make it one device only in each mode! Granted, if you need to enter a word or number, adding keyboard entry can be useful, but having an interface that requires you to do 70% of the handling via the mouse and 30% of the handling via some keyboard hotkeys is just an abomination in my eyes. The player has to shift between input devices and this can be rather annoying, especially if the devices mix very wildly (so that even a common action involves more than one device).

Only if you configure the keyboard controls poorly.  I have played numerous games (some of them off the top of my head, Starcraft, Diablo II, Unreal Tournament, and Civilization IV) that had a mix of keyboard hotkeys and heavy use of the mouse, and they had very nice interfaces.  Sometimes when I'm lazy I play with just the mouse, but most of the time, a good keyboard/mouse combination is awesome.

The key is to keep the hotkeys within easy reach of a single hand.  DF fails at this currently primarily because it depends so heavily on the keyboard for movement (+, -, *, /, number pad, umhk).  A mouse wheel for scrolling lists, and a better interface for moving around the map and indicating specific locations on the map would help tremendously (click and drag map movement, border of window map movement, minimap clicking, and positioning objects with the mouse directly are examples).  The second problem is the large size of certain menus.  An improved hierarchy could help fix this up.

I most certainly would love to see a good mouse interface added, but one of my criteria for it being good is that it interact and mesh well with a keyboard interface.  Alone, I would consider it to be wasted effort.

[Neonivek]

Toady is probably one of the hardest working Free developers EVER!!!

I mean... Looking at internet series... SURE they usually start off with 1 week per update... then 2... but then they end up taking months! (And most of the time they didn't ACTUALLY work on it a little bit everyday of the month)

Worst of all these internet series (Such as any Abridged series) Get angry at their fanbase for constantly asking when the game is going to be done... WHEN THEY DON'T GIVE UPDATES!!!

Toady works on the game for hours nearly EVERYDAY!!!... He updates almost EVERYDAY!!! and he genuinly listens to the community and is active in bug testing and elimination.

Frankly Toady is doing everything we could ask of him APPART from getting outside sources to help. Though no one is perfect.

[Tormy]

Toady is probably one of the hardest working Free developers EVER!!!

I mean... Looking at internet series... SURE they usually start off with 1 week per update... then 2... but then they end up taking months! (And most of the time they didn't ACTUALLY work on it a little bit everyday of the month)

Worst of all these internet series (Such as any Abridged series) Get angry at their fanbase for constantly asking when the game is going to be done... WHEN THEY DON'T GIVE UPDATES!!!

Toady works on the game for hours nearly EVERYDAY!!!... He updates almost EVERYDAY!!! and he genuinly listens to the community and is active in bug testing and elimination.

Frankly Toady is doing everything we could ask of him APPART from getting outside sources to help. Though no one is perfect.

I think that bugfixing is taking most of his time however. Its not easy to track down the countless reported bugs and fix them. Imagine if he wouldnt have to fix bugs. I think we would have v0.45 at least in that case. 

[Archaeologist]

Why is it the moment everyone says "Simplify the Interface" they seem to mean "Give Us Mice and Magically fix....stuff."? 

What about just cleaning up the main menu, and simplifying the number of steps/ menu's you have to go through, or coming up with better descriptions for tasks? 

Reduce the amount of material you have to wiki to find out how it works. 

True, in most games now days people don't even read the manual.  Which is a real shame.  Hell, I didn't even know I could scroll pages with 3-9

Also, DF is not exactly Lappy friendly.  It's designed for keyboards with a full number pad seperate.

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, although it's easy enough to change the keys to work. I use my laptop to play all the time. It's just a bit hard to get set up a first for a new player.

Maybe it should come with a laptop configured interface file as well?

[Archaeologist]

^Seconding THAT.  I'm still playing 40a because Mayday hasn't updated his graphics pack download in a while.

I've tried and tried and tried to get the transferring graphics task to work correctly, but I somehow screw it up every time.  So I just settle for playing whichever version of DF there's an EZ-install pack for.

Graphics Transfer = My Head, Exploding.

It induces too much rage.  So I don't even bother switching for a while.

[olemars]

Also, DF is not exactly Lappy friendly.  It's designed for keyboards with a full number pad seperate.

Yeah. I like keyboard-only games myself (or rather, I like games to be either only keyboard or only mouse), but playing on a laptop is a hassle with games making heavy use of the numpad. I keep planning to buy a USB numpad but I always forget about it again.

[McDoomhammer]

My lappy is the only thing I have that runs DF.  Yes, I am a masochist.

[gimlisonofgloin]

I'd like to say that I am in no way, shape, or form associated with the original poster.

[Rilder]

^Seconding THAT.  I'm still playing 40a because Mayday hasn't updated his graphics pack download in a while.

I've tried and tried and tried to get the transferring graphics task to work correctly, but I somehow screw it up every time.  So I just settle for playing whichever version of DF there's an EZ-install pack for.

Graphics Transfer = My Head, Exploding.

It induces too much rage.  So I don't even bother switching for a while.

Just use This

Works quite well and removes fair bit of the issues with switching to a new version.

[Deathworks]

Hello!

Fortunately, there are few legendary donkeys ;)

Unfortunately, I regularly have engravers who love to embrace donkeys :) :) :) :)

(The question has been asked elsewhere, but I didn't have anything new to say there, so I mention it here: 4 or more smilies are my way of emphasizing that this is light-hearted and free for laughing at. A single smily feels as if there was still room for sarcasm/irony/more critical thought)

Tormy: I think you misunderstood my intent. I did not mean to say that mouse support was automatically inferior. Actually, I wanted to stress that proper mouse support can be a very good interface for this game as well (even though personally I would still prefer using the keyboard controls). The context-menu driven approach you described would be one way of a mouse control implementation I think would be a good solution.

Exponent: I suppose our gaming styles differ there. Switching between devices is something I find rather annoying and try to avoid. But that is a personal difference, I suppose, so there is little point in the two of us arguing about this - especially since I have no interest in a mouse interface for DF.

About Laptops: If I recall correctly, the keyboard settings are in an individual file in the init directory, aren't they? If so, why not prepare a laptop friendly setting and upload that file (zipped with a full subdirectory tree "data/init/") somewhere (like the file depot) and advertise it at the DF Wiki? That would help newbies with laptops a lot, I think. I strongly advice you to put the subdirectory tree in there as well, so that a newbie just needs to unzip the download and then move the unzipped directories into the directory where they installed the game - hunting the proper subdirectory is again something that will just annoy people.

Deathworks