Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF Dwarf Mode Discussion => Topic started by: wad67 on September 17, 2023, 07:46:20 am
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Hello, I have not played the game for some years. I saw it on steam ! Which reminded me that it exists.
I tried the steam version but did not really like it and refunded it as all the keys are different and a lot of the menus are different. It tends to run slow too.
The last playable version appears to be 47.05, there does not appear to be any linux binaries for the new 50.x version .
If I remember it right, the last version I was playing is 40.0x so I guess there is still 7 versions of new stuff to checkout before the game is unavailable from the enforced control change and lack of binary? It can be played in the proton I think.
What compelled this series of events? I have not kept up to date for 10 years. Is the magic arc done yet?
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KitFox happened. That's all i'll say, lest i invoke their wrath.
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KitFox happened. That's all i'll say, lest i invoke their wrath.
This is going to be interesting rabbit hole I think, so this publisher is evil?
I look them up on google, they make 4 games that look like the mobile phone games on facebook or whatever social media it is now.
I am guessing they have lots of money or some good reason for Bay 12 to sign on with them?
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For one, ignore the idiot. Whatever "wrath" they're suggesting, here of all places, is asinine because the moderator structure of this forum has not changed in any way.
Two, they're a publisher that Toady personally knew that he decided to work with when he realized that the donation model, while able to keep him and Tarn going for a bit, wouldn't really be able to cover large medical expenses such as a cancer scare that Tarn had at one point.
Three, game's still free. Can download it in the same place as always. Linux version isn't out right now because it's still being worked on, but is currently in a beta branch on the Steam version. Once it's fully done it'll be out both there and the usual place, for free, as always.
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For one, ignore the idiot. Whatever "wrath" they're suggesting, here of all places, is asinine because the moderator structure of this forum has not changed in any way.
Two, they're a publisher that Toady personally knew that he decided to work with when he realized that the donation model, while able to keep him and Tarn going for a bit, wouldn't really be able to cover large medical expenses such as a cancer scare that Tarn had at one point.
Three, game's still free. Can download it in the same place as always. Linux version isn't out right now because it's still being worked on, but is currently in a beta branch on the Steam version. Once it's fully done it'll be out both there and the usual place, for free, as always.
Ah well that doesn't seem so bad then, I thought it was some kind of hostile publisher takeover
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Toady One now has enough money that he'll never have to worry about money ever again. A considerable portion of it is going to charity.
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Will there be a version of the game available with the normal old school keybindings? I haven't tried 50x yet, unless that's the same as the steam version
You can remap some keys in the steam version but it is not the same at all
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Efforts are being made to add more keyboard support.
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Two, they're a publisher that Toady personally knew that he decided to work with when he realized that the donation model, while able to keep him and Tarn Zach going for a bit, wouldn't really be able to cover large medical expenses such as a cancer scare that Tarn Zach had at one point.
Fixed, ToadyOne is Tarn, ThreeToe is Zach.
Toady One now has enough money that he'll never have to worry about money ever again.
That's over-stating it (especially given the rampant corporate greed being called inflation), they just get to worry a good deal less.
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Efforts are being made to add more keyboard support.
I am a bit confused about this? We have / had keyboard support, then it got thrown out? Then adding it back again?
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No, a ton of people complained about the old UI, so he made a new one, and now people that some how managed to adapt to the old UI, but can't adapt to the new one, complain about it.
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Regarding keyboard: The idea of the Premium (aka Steam) version of DF, was to make it more inclusive for new players. There have been requests for a "mouse only" UX. Toady and Three Toe jumped to the conclusion that the original keyboard bindings were too complicated and undesirable. So Toady redesigned the way the UX worked and replaced all of the keybindings to work well with the mouse (chief amongst it is to have left hand centric movement keybindings with ASDF and to use the mouse for basically everything else). At the same time he removed all the old keybindings and made it so basically they don't make sense any more (because the menu breakdown and ordering is different).
When it released, quite a few older players were disappointed that the old keybindings didn't work. Particularly bad is that you can no longer play without a mouse. Apparently this was an unexpected complaint. Some older players basically said that they couldn't play the new version at all.
Tarn has said that he will slowly add the ability to play the game keyboard only. However, the old keybindings will forever be impossible because the UX has changed so drastically. He's not open to adding a special UX for older players (which I think is completely reasonable). It's been a bit of an unfortunate thing. As an older player who liked the old keybindings, I will say that the new keybindings are subjectively worse IMHO. The general playability is better, though. I've completely rebound the keys for myself and I no longer even remember what the default keybindings are. I think once full keyboard ability returns, it will be just as good, but it will take time (and I'm still pretty negative about the current defaults, but it's very easy to change).
In terms of Linux support, the latest beta version on Steam has native Linux support and it works beautifully. It should ship very, very soon. My only complaint is that text mode (i.e. in a terminal) is not currently possible and probably won't come back for a very long time (if ever -- Putnam mentioned that they thought it might be quite difficult).
Again, as an older player, I think the current version is a massive upgrade overall, but there are definite pain points. I feel sympathy for those who find the new UX unplayable, but it is definitely a very minority opinion.
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Regarding keyboard: The idea of the Premium (aka Steam) version of DF, was to make it more inclusive for new players. There have been requests for a "mouse only" UX. Toady and Three Toe jumped to the conclusion that the original keyboard bindings were too complicated and undesirable. So Toady redesigned the way the UX worked and replaced all of the keybindings to work well with the mouse (chief amongst it is to have left hand centric movement keybindings with ASDF and to use the mouse for basically everything else). At the same time he removed all the old keybindings and made it so basically they don't make sense any more (because the menu breakdown and ordering is different).
When it released, quite a few older players were disappointed that the old keybindings didn't work. Particularly bad is that you can no longer play without a mouse. Apparently this was an unexpected complaint. Some older players basically said that they couldn't play the new version at all.
Tarn has said that he will slowly add the ability to play the game keyboard only. However, the old keybindings will forever be impossible because the UX has changed so drastically. He's not open to adding a special UX for older players (which I think is completely reasonable). It's been a bit of an unfortunate thing. As an older player who liked the old keybindings, I will say that the new keybindings are subjectively worse IMHO. The general playability is better, though. I've completely rebound the keys for myself and I no longer even remember what the default keybindings are. I think once full keyboard ability returns, it will be just as good, but it will take time (and I'm still pretty negative about the current defaults, but it's very easy to change).
In terms of Linux support, the latest beta version on Steam has native Linux support and it works beautifully. It should ship very, very soon. My only complaint is that text mode (i.e. in a terminal) is not currently possible and probably won't come back for a very long time (if ever -- Putnam mentioned that they thought it might be quite difficult).
Again, as an older player, I think the current version is a massive upgrade overall, but there are definite pain points. I feel sympathy for those who find the new UX unplayable, but it is definitely a very minority opinion.
Thank you kindly for explaining what happened, I don't use a mouse to play so that kinda sucks. I guess I will stick with the older versions of the game. I will wait for full keyboard support and then the inevitable patch / hack to return the control scheme to normal. I have not been following along with development, if that isn't obvious. But the steam version looks graphically impressive. I would have preferred to have seen the game more fleshed out instead of more accessible but that is not my decision to make.
It seems like the old roadmaps have gone out the window? I remember there being a page that showed what was coming next but I can't find it any more.
On a semi related note, what happened to the chapter 1 3d prototype game? I can no longer find the page for that either. I would very much like to wander around and kick bushes and teleport body-parts again.
EDIT: Found it ! http://www.bay12games.com/armok/download.html
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I've been playing DF2014 for a long time and my muscle memory with the UI is good enough to play without the reminders on the right for a majority of options. The lack of precision I get doing designations with a mouse and the changes to the labor system is pretty frustrating. I'll make the jump eventually, because the map rewrite is really appealing to me. AFAIK Toady was talking about watching sieges happen, which would be great because the way siege combat is calculated weighing size so heavily has gotten several iron-clad axelords killed by elephants/trolls, while I'm confident they'd kill them easily if we were getting attacked. Right now the amount of additional features doesn't dissuade my perception of additional cruft added by the mouse centric UI, but keyboard-only support will likely make it feel somewhat better.
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I guess I will stick with the older versions of the game. I will wait for full keyboard support and then the inevitable patch / hack to return the control scheme to normal.
The latest pre-Steam version, 0.47.05, is still a very enjoyable DF experience and the most "complete" one, imo (since Steam is still missing Adventure mode). There's other players sticking with it for now while waiting for full keyboard support and other things to make it into 0.50, so you won't be the only one.
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No, a ton of people complained about the old UI, so he made a new one, and now people that some how managed to adapt to the old UI, but can't adapt to the new one, complain about it.
I'm an old player. The old UI was kinda terrible, in terms of design (e.g. inconsistency among different menus). But every operation was possible with the keyboard, which has two major advantages; one, it's better for accessibility and preventing injury; two, it's macro-able.
The new UI is, to me, indisputably a step forward in terms of intuitiveness and consistency. Overall I like the new UI better than the old one. However, they made two design decisions that I dislike; one is that some operations are mouse-exclusive, and the second is that old keybindings have changed. In large part it seems that the latter choice is to accomodate WASD arrow movement, which sounds like little benefit to me—it's not like this is an FPS, the arrow keys would be fine, the number of new players who would be both interested in DF and insistent on WASD feels to me to be vanishingly small. I wish this was customisable, with an option for the old-style keybindings.
Full keyboard support for the new UI is in the roadmap, but you know how it is with DF; there's always so much to do and so few developers (even though the new version has double the number of developers). The most recent release has fixed a number of longstanding grave bugs and even more longstanding performance issues. I do believe at some point we'll have fully mouseless interaction back in the menu(s). I don't think the old keybindings are coming back, but dfhack has a command to overlay on-screen hints for the new keybindings; I hope that this makes into the new UI in vanilla, too.
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As an older player who liked the old keybindings, I will say that the new keybindings are subjectively worse IMHO. The general playability is better, though.
Again, as an older player, I think the current version is a massive upgrade overall, but there are definite pain points. I feel sympathy for those who find the new UX unplayable, but it is definitely a very minority opinion.
yeah, very well stated. though I think that, if one were to poll exclusively 'old' or ascii version players, the minority opinion thing might not hold true. . there is this weird thing with the DF playerbase where people will check out for years but still consider themselves fans or players of the game. as more of these people come back to find the game changed I expect these sorts of threads will continue to appear. expressing confusion or discontent..
i also think that the keybinds are so poorly chosen that yourself and many others feel the need to entirely rebind is not a great thing. . . like, why can't workshop hotkeys correspond to their first or second character of the title?
agree with Brewer that the 47.05 version is about as playable as any version of DF ever was, and represents a fairly majestic final stopping point before the premium conversion... so at any rate, the old ways are merely a download away.
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Fixing the keyboard bindings to make them both present again and this time more consistent is a priority for Toady, it will probably happen after the adventure mode release they're working on right now which will need keyboard bindings of its own too. adventure mode was pushed back because they felt it would take take too long to release anything if they waited, and hey, turns out it has taken almost an extra year so far, which is a long time to wait when you desperately need to see a doctor on a regular basis, understandably.
I've actually been enjoying the new version, it didn't take too long to adapt to it, or back to doing everything on the keyboard again going back to the old version. Biggest problem I have is I absolutely hate drawing sprites and suck at it, and don't know how everyone else seems to be pushing out complete layered sprite sheets for new races. Like what program are they even using to let them manage all that?? It's a mystery. Only a few hundred more sprites to go...
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However, they made two design decisions that I dislike; one is that some operations are mouse-exclusive
I think this was less a design decision and more of a "just get some thing releasable" decision.
and the second is that old keybindings have changed.
The old keybinds were a major part of the old UI problem; different parts of the UI used different keys to do the same thing and the whole thing all but required the keypad on a full keyboard which many don't hav any more.
Frankly, at this point I'd be surprised if fort mode ever gets truly full keyboard support again; it'll get some more but there's a lot missing and cases where the old problem still exists of situations where the key it would make sense to use is already in use for some thing else.
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i also think that the keybinds are so poorly chosen that yourself and many others feel the need to entirely rebind is not a great thing. . .
I'm one of those weirdos that feels that if it isn't using HJKL (Rogue/vi keys), it's broken ;D To be completely fair, I mostly remapped the keys in the old version too... It's just that this version needs it more because the movement keys are *always* active (something that I think is probably a UX mistake). The original modal operation of the game was definitely better UX (he says as a vi user... hmmm...) It's really that modal operation that I would like to see return. I suspect that will be more supported eventually.
Just to be clear, by "modal operation" I mean something like "(d)esignate" to get to the designate menu, "(d)ig" to get to the dig menu, "(s)tairs" to select digging stairs. That way you can overload keys to do different things in different contexts instead of having to have 200 different key bindings with weird semantics -- for example "(t) dig stairs" because (s) is already used for motion ("s" for "down").
To be fair, it's not as bad as I'm suggesting here and you can get about 80 percent the way towards a modal keybinding if you spend an hour or so thinking about it. If I ever get a combination that I'm really happy with, I may release them. My main problem is that HJKL is actually suboptimal for right handed players because you really *have* to use the mouse, so I'm probably going to shift that to the left hand at some point (which is, I suppose, why WASD was chosen).
agree with Brewer that the 47.05 version is about as playable as any version of DF ever was, and represents a fairly majestic final stopping point before the premium conversion... so at any rate, the old ways are merely a download away.
I also agree with that. I'd be using it right now if I didn't like the new labor system so damn much. I'm a total vanilla player (apart from keymaps :-) ) so I don't like using DT. The new labor system is actually almost ideal for me.
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agree with Brewer that the 47.05 version is about as playable as any version of DF ever was, and represents a fairly majestic final stopping point before the premium conversion... so at any rate, the old ways are merely a download away.
I agree with this sentiment, and was hoping to wait out buying the graphics until they had patched in the old control scheme. Since that won't happen, confirmed by what mikekchar posted here, my relationship with the new version is now just to enjoy 47.05 until the magic release, maybe, to learn the new macros.
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my favorite forts are all on .47 and I often find myself wanting to go back, but also all the tech support the latest version gets is pretty rad.
I usually lose my forts to glitches and so the knowledge that stuff is being actively patched without having to start new saves is pretty enticing.
I'm excited for the game's future. The steam community for DF is so very different from the bay12 one though I don't mesh with it.
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As far as the UI stuff, everything I've personally found wrong with it are all individually small problems that only when taken as a whole become a single large, clunky problem that makes it more of a side-grade rather than a universal good or bad.
Stuff like mining designations feel much easier and faster to do with the mouse, but we can't control how we build/dig stairs anymore. Mass creation of rooms is a cool feature and can be super helpful, but now you have to have the rooms "ready" before you can place them that way (as in closed up with doors) and can't have their designations touch or they merge into single room designations. The Work Detail system was a neat idea to try and alleviate the 'dwarves not doing stuff themselves' but I personally find it as a clunkier version of the old system through manually flipping stuff on and off. Now we can check for people who'd be good fits for more dangerous jobs at a glance, but there's a ton of stuff buried in the new menus instead of a single button press (to get a basic visual description you need to go to health instead of it being part of their overview for instance despite there being plenty of space to include it at the bottom.)
Basically it feels like there was a lot that is a genuinely good concept but at worst just wasn't well executed (in my opinion anyway) and probably could have been play-tested better maybe with a mix of complete novices and old hands (there wouldn't have been a shortage of volunteers) to figure out what would work best for both camps and hopefully yield a better product that didn't change the game's perceived identity too severely. I also feel there was a misinterpretation of people wanting mouse support (since there's some stuff the mouse is absolutely better for) as wanting mouse only with limited to no keyboard support.
Also I believe Linux support just dropped with v50.10, so there's that if that's of interest to you, and there's been a slow track of either making adjustments, reimplementing things, or even adding new stuff, so there's that.
Personally I'm hoping a fix for gloves made by custom reaction finally happens, even if I'm not holding my breath on it.
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but there's a ton of stuff buried in the new menus instead of a single button press (to get a basic visual description you need to go to health instead of it being part of their overview for instance despite there being plenty of space to include it at the bottom.)
Does that space exist in all resolutions?
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but there's a ton of stuff buried in the new menus instead of a single button press (to get a basic visual description you need to go to health instead of it being part of their overview for instance despite there being plenty of space to include it at the bottom.)
Does that space exist in all resolutions?
Considering most people probably aren't running on super small resolutions, chances are it'll fit. Very few people likely use a machine one or more decades old to play Dwarf Fortress.
(https://i.imgur.com/2FpxBBH.png)
This is an example hacked together in paint.
I can understand the logic of putting the description under health, since injuries will appear in their description, but it's one of those things that seems oddly placed in practice (tested with a smaller screen, it might be tighter overall but there's still that same huge swathe of empty, unused space under the unit's little quip.)
After checking, it's used to display recent thoughts at least, but we have a whole tab that shows both recent thoughts and memories making that kind of superfluous since it provides the same info. One or two lines at a glance for the absolute most recent thoughts I could understand, but not the laundry list we get that would be better served with the unit description itself.
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i also think that the keybinds are so poorly chosen that yourself and many others feel the need to entirely rebind is not a great thing. . .
The original modal operation of the game was definitely better UX (he says as a vi user... hmmm...) It's really that modal operation that I would like to see return. I suspect that will be more supported eventually.
Just to be clear, by "modal operation" I mean something like "(d)esignate" to get to the designate menu, "(d)ig" to get to the dig menu, "(s)tairs" to select digging stairs. That way you can overload keys to do different things in different contexts instead of having to have 200 different key bindings with weird semantics -- for example "(t) dig stairs" because (s) is already used for motion ("s" for "down").
To be fair, it's not as bad as I'm suggesting here and you can get about 80 percent the way towards a modal keybinding if you spend an hour or so thinking about it. If I ever get a combination that I'm really happy with, I may release them.
this is great analysis of the new UI, and sort of sums up a general discontent I was feeling with it. please release that keybinding setup if you ever do complete it.
I rebound dig to 'e' and this has sped up my gameplay considerably. As well, rebinding the zoom to '1' and '3' allows for better control over the display space. which is important because one of the major timelosses in the new UI is moving the mouse from individual pieces of furniture to the item's description menu, and this can be shortened by going to full zoom.... because the UI displays the buttons that much closer to the item....
DF hasn't really changed. there is still a metagame to the UI, little tricks that will save you hours, and that aspect will probably always be there, and form part of the much feared, mostly mythical difficulty curve of this game.
its that moment when you realize just how tedious it will be to designate / construct / remodel your next project, and you weigh that work against the pleasure of seeing the completed project, and realize that maybe you don't care enough to properly form this pyramid or tower or hellpit or coliseum or whatever. knowing certain UI workarounds or speed tricks can sustain your desire for fantastical constructions. this is kinda weird if you think about it - are we playing a game at that point, or playing the UI? where can you draw the boundaries between gameplay and interface shenanigans?
essentially, the game should cater more to the megaproject players because I selfishly want to see more and more amazing builds
I'm excited for the game's future. The steam community for DF is so very different from the bay12 one though I don't mesh with it.
yeah agree with this. very much amazing spritework and modding energy going on in the workshop. but a lot of it reminds me of Rimworld's modding community... for better or for worse.
time will tell how many people maintain these larger mods, and what mods are seen as 'necessary' by the community.
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I literally realised just a couple of days ago that I want zoom keys for exactly that. It's even worse in text mode (especially on the community version where you have no choice). I have poor vision and I just can't see the map unless it's zoomed all the way in. But then super wide menus don't fit on the screen any more. So I'm finding that I'm constantly zooming in and out. I suppose I need one of those 48 inch screens so I can see everything at the same time :-)
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This is an example hacked together in paint.
I can understand the logic of putting the description under health, since injuries will appear in their description, but it's one of those things that seems oddly placed in practice (tested with a smaller screen, it might be tighter overall but there's still that same huge swathe of empty, unused space under the unit's little quip.)
After checking, it's used to display recent thoughts at least, but we have a whole tab that shows both recent thoughts and memories making that kind of superfluous since it provides the same info. One or two lines at a glance for the absolute most recent thoughts I could understand, but not the laundry list we get that would be better served with the unit description itself.
I think that having thoughts listed in that space is far more useful than the dwarf's description. It's easier to keep track of his stress levels that way.
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I think that having thoughts listed in that space is far more useful than the dwarf's description. It's easier to keep track of his stress levels that way.
Gonna have to chalk it up to differences of opinion in that case.
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At the end of the day I don’t think Toady will ever be able to please everyone. Don’t change the UI, newcomers complain. Change the UI, veterans complain.
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Well, Dwarf fortress continues to evolve on several important areas, one of those are multi core use thanks to more developers helping out (unless it has changed), and things are changing on the Gui that makes it easier to handle even for my kids who has never been able to play the old DF variants even though I used simplified GUIS made by the community. The complexity and richness of the game is now so huge that it's definitely enjoyable just to open it to read about whats happening in your world that you generated a while ago.
And yes I bought it at Steam at full price and I say it's worth every NOK I spent.
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It's hard to go back to 47.x between Putnam's extremely noticeable optimizations to the game and the change to how mods work (no more messing around with merging files every patch anymore). At the same time, I find myself losing interest more easily now that my big projects and even workshop orders take so much longer to actually set up - I don't think any operation that requires a mouse will ever be as fast as kay-mash sequences burned into muscle memory.
I wasn't thrilled to have to learn the new UI/keymap but I figured them out sooner or later - it's really that slowness that's been bothering me.
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Been playing on and off for almost 15 years now. I'd say almost everything is an improvement in the Steam release. Obviously there are new bugs and needed feature migration, but it's a lot easier to navigate and actually play now.
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That sums up my feelings too. I get that people were used to the old UI and controls, but I think this is a much better direction for the game's UI. It's much more consistent compared to different commands using different keys to change stockpile / zone / designation dimensions, and being able to just click on things instead of having to use different key commands to enter look vs. unit mode is much better to me. I can understand people who want to be able to play with just a keyboard and I support efforts to restore that ability to the game, but I really like being able to play with a mouse.
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We had mouse controls before v50 (expanded with DFHack.) Didn't need to give up keyboard for it.
It can't be overstated that DF's macro system simply doesn't function with a mouse. It would have been a good idea to release with a keyboard cursor for menus at the minimum. Like at least tab through options like every other windowing system does.
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I guess since I've never used macros I didn't even notice that aspect. And wow, if DF had mouse support before now it must have been longer since I last played than I realized. Maybe that's why the break in hotkeys didn't bother me.
Oh well, at least the devs have stated they want to restore the ability to play with something like the old controls again. Guess it may take a while though.
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As much as I like the Steam version for bringing graphics, there are some gameplay changes that I'm really not fond of.
For instance, the stairs. There is no way to build or alter stairs on a single elevation anymore, it must now span at minimum 2 floors. This means you can't construct an Up stairs on a carved Up/Down stairs to block entry anymore with ease. If you need to change the stone type of a hallway that includes stairs, then either the above or downstairs will have to be affected too. It's really limiting.
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As much as I like the Steam version for bringing graphics, there are some gameplay changes that I'm really not fond of.
For instance, the stairs. There is no way to build stairs on a single elevation anymore, it must now span at minimum 2 floors. This means you can't construct and Up stairs on a carved Up/Down stairs to block entry anymore with ease. If you need to change the stone type of a hallway that includes stairs, then either the above or downstairs will have to be affected too. It's really limiting.
That's one of the things I've really hated. It's especially weird since individual stair sections could have been placed under advanced options alongside priorities and blueprint mode and wouldn't have taken up much space and done the job perfectly. The basic designations are fine if you don't need/plan to do much more than a few designations, but for more complicated things or expansions, it can be very irritating.
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And wow, if DF had mouse support before now it must have been longer since I last played than I realized.
You could paint designations and burrows for as long as I've been playing (since late 2012.) Options were free painting or clicking two corners.
DFHack mousequery has existed since 2013 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=125618.0), with the ability to edge scroll and click on units and buildings.
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And wow, if DF had mouse support before now it must have been longer since I last played than I realized.
You could paint designations and burrows for as long as I've been playing (since late 2012.) Options were free painting or clicking two corners.
Designations could only be free-painted with the mouse, could not pick two corners with the mouse.
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Many have said it but I much prefer the feeling of being able to just using a keyboard. Mouses feel imprecise in comparison.
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I think we all hope for full keyboard support indeed.
Also once it is out we will still be able to redesign key bindings (however some things are strange in the premium too, I can't make "<" work for going down 1 z level, it sometimes, but not always, it sends me to the lowest level instead, with nothing else configured to it)
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I've had some weird behavior with the Steam version since the SDL upgrade with inputs too, but the main one I've had is that trying to use my touchpad's two-finger scroll feature doesn't work for scrolling or going up or down z-levels anymore. It used to work fine, but since the upgrade both directions end up causing it to go up, even if I bind them explicitly to scroll up or down based on the direction. I'm pretty sure it's jank with my touchpad since it'll stutter trying to go down before zipping back up, but it used to work so it feels like something software related is at least partially responsible.
Anyway, I was thankfully able to bind < and > to go up and down z-levels without issue. I haven't found a way to make scrolling work well without attaching an external mouse to my laptop though.
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Yeah. It's because on some devices the scroll wheel and the second mouse button drag are hard to distinguish in the current version of SDL. I actually wish that you could rebind the map scroll to something like shift-click-drag, but you can't rebind it at all. Like you, I just unbound the scroll wheel entirely.
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That sums up my feelings too. I get that people were used to the old UI and controls, but I think this is a much better direction for the game's UI. It's much more consistent compared to different commands using different keys to change stockpile / zone / designation dimensions, and being able to just click on things instead of having to use different key commands to enter look vs. unit mode is much better to me. I can understand people who want to be able to play with just a keyboard and I support efforts to restore that ability to the game, but I really like being able to play with a mouse.
This is a really bad take. Keyboard shortcuts were vastly superior for many use-cases (especially menu navigation) compared to mouse control. Note, also, that pre-Steam we had both the normal UI and mouse control for the content where it was most relevant (moving the cursor around when viewing/selecting/designating) for years. There's absolutely no reason to not have both, and in the grand scheme of things the control lost by getting rid of hotkeys vastly outweighs the control gained from clickable UI buttons. The only thing the latter are better for is a smoother new player experience (which is important too, don't get me wrong).
Being able to hammer out a three or four-layer menu selection in a second or two is just plain faster than clicking through buttons and popup windows to do the same thing, and that adds up over the course of thousands of actions.
This is going to be even more evident when adventure mode hits Steam and you have to manually click through every... single... attack target. Though I expect most people who don't like hotkeys aren't going to be using advanced attack anyways, just walking into enemies and letting the game pick attacks.
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Hello, I have not played the game for some years. I saw it on steam ! Which reminded me that it exists.
I tried the steam version but did not really like it and refunded it as all the keys are different and a lot of the menus are different. It tends to run slow too.
The last playable version appears to be 47.05, there does not appear to be any linux binaries for the new 50.x version .
If I remember it right, the last version I was playing is 40.0x so I guess there is still 7 versions of new stuff to checkout before the game is unavailable from the enforced control change and lack of binary? It can be played in the proton I think.
What compelled this series of events? I have not kept up to date for 10 years. Is the magic arc done yet?
I don't understand what you're asking. What series of events?
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I don't understand what you're asking. What series of events?
It's the series of events starting with ThreeToe getting cancer.
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This is going to be even more evident when adventure mode hits Steam and you have to manually click through every... single... attack target. Though I expect most people who don't like hotkeys aren't going to be using advanced attack anyways, just walking into enemies and letting the game pick attacks.
Well, the good news here is that Toady said that there would be full keyboard support for the adventure mode menus from day one so that won't be a problem at least.
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I think the new hybrid UI for adventure mode will probably gradually be implemented into fort mode as well as it becomes more and more clear that it's in high demand (in fact I believe Toady has hinted at this in the past, correct me if I'm wrong).
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I believe so. I can't remember when and where it was said, but I'm pretty sure it was in one of the recent interviews that he confirmed that they planned to make fort mode totally playable with just a keyboard again.
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Yes, he said that, but he also said he was going to do it a little bit at a time and that it would take a long time to complete (I am imagining years, here). So please don't get too impatient :-)