Bay 12 Games Forum

Then some programmer constantly asks you to release the actual game source.

I don't remember anyone asking to open the whole program... JUST the interface.

What's wrong with the interface? Perhaps I don't understand because I only play adventurer?

Viewing more than one Z Level
Lack of clear, defined standard keys and interface metrics.
You could have more than 21 tiles tall by whatever wide allowing you to see more of the map.
View the game in Isometric, 3D, first person, or flat 2D tiles depending on what you prefer
Ability to add more variation in tiles

These are from the fortress mode:
UP/Down in some screens vs. +/- in others
Designate blocks to dig by setting a start and end point vs hitting HKMU to resize construction areas
Usable, sortable, and filterable lists for selecting items, people or resources
Easily definable standard build material
Templated building without the need of a keyboard macro program
Quick and easy access and modify all dwarves professions, current task (kind of falls in my list option...)

I haven't played adventure all that much, but when I did play, I died of thirst trying to run to the quest that was WSW or something.. no clue that there was a quick travel:
Better compass display
Better map
More intuitive signifier that you can fast travel
Better quest/goal interface.  Never really knew what the hell I was doing.
Quickly and easily equip or remove items, eat food, drink, etc
Visually see in an interface item how your health, body parts, etc are doing without having to spelunker into the vast number of keys to figure out which is which

I could go on, but those are the major complaints I have...

Quote from: Tormy on July 27, 2008, 11:06:27 am

Hate? If that was directed to me than nah, its not hate at all, I just find his so called "reviews" quite retarded. Thats all.
I mean seriously what the heck is this crap for example?
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/138-Age-of-Conan
Its totally retarded even tho he tries to be funny I guess.

What precisely was it you disliked? It was amusing enough to me. I think perhaps you're mistaking "retarded" for "not amusing to me, specifically"

I thought his review was pretty spot on.  AOC is just another grind me up MMO with 10,000 substandard quests to make you feel like you're doing something.

P.S. Nevermind about sending me a link to it, I found it, when I actually got around to checking http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/List_of_user_graphics_sets , but Mike Mayday's website's download link for it says "Get the latest version HERE! (v9, updated 26 VII 2008)" and the file it links to doesn't actually exist. (The v8 file still exists though. It looks like it should still work if you do what I said and do what that other thread says. I'm a bit surprised he would have gone and changed the interface keys, though.)

IMHO, using Shift + ./, is a horrible way to change Z-Levels :p  I change levels so much it's not funny.  Having a singular key to do it is awesome.  To be fair though I remapped my G15 and G18 keys to the / and * so they were on the left of my keyboard, but whatever.

Are you having trouble getting version f to work?
http://code.google.com/p/dwarvis/downloads/detail?name=3dwarf_04f.rar

It automatically retrieves the config off the internet. And the configuration it retrieves is correct.

I have 4f and I don't see anywhere where it checks for updated configs.  Is this done in the extract process or in 3Dwarf?  (I haven't looked through the code, so I'm assuming 3Dwarf does it?)

Drop the U,H,K,M entirely and go for just the style used in the designate menu. Much larger areas, much faster, fewer keystrokes, could be done with the mouse, auto-ignores obstacles, etc.

Agree.

You would have to ensure that the arrow keys always scroll and Enter always selects, and that Space always goes back.

ESC should always go back.  Space is kind of an accepted "activate" or "action" button in every other game.

Menu's should only appear when an action is being done.  Clicking the mouse or hitting the space bar on a tile should open menu options for that tile.  (channel, down stair, designate begin, etc.)

Arrow keys should be context dependent.  When you're in a menu, arrows should navigate that menu (instead of +/-), not change the map location.  PgUp/PgDn should be context as well.  If you're in a menu they should page the menu.  If you are in a screen with complex submenus (like the custom stockpiles) the options should activate with the space/Enter and navigate using the arrows (like they do now) instead of having different keys for enabling or disabling items.  (Enter, A, B, E, D, F, P)

That's all I can think of right now.  Haven't been interested in playing recently mainly because of the interface to be honest.

And really there's some increase in the aggression on the forums. Is it a solar eclipse or some alien covert actions?

I'd like to think that it's an influx of new people who may not be used to "roguelike" games.  Let's face it.  ASCII gaming is something reserved for the geek/nerd/computer literate folks who are willing to look past ASCII graphics and at the content itself.  DF has attracted people who don't normally play roguelike games and have no interest in "getting past" the interface usually.  They are likely attracted by people who post of forums and game sites who say, "The interface is hard to learn, but when you learn it, you'll be happy." or something like this.  So these people that tend to skip by low graphics (non-intuitive usually) games will start playing.  (I say non-intuitive because clearly it's not intuitive for a mouser to play a keyboard centric game)

At least that's my take on the whole issue.  You have to understand that their are people playing now that are already frustrated by the interface (because they are not used to heavily keyboard based games) and anything they can do to alleviate this frustration (graphics sets) helps them get past the learning curve of the game and into playing.  If anything, it should take about a day's worth of code for Toady to add a menu option for changing tilesets without having to edit files.  It would do wonders to help those already frustrated.  (Choose Tileset, Select file named "MikeMayday's Tiles" or whoever, and start playing.)

Quote from: Andir

No having to worry about Vista overhead, 32-bit XP limits, or any of that fun stuff.

Spending time pointing out that Windows XP comes in 64-bit edition because they don't keep their knowledge up-to-date - not that is priceless.

I knew about 64-bit XP, but last I heard it was still very much unstable and unsupported by tons of hardware/software, and all that.  Excluded it because I frankly don't know a single person that runs it.

And I told you it would be fun... mention Linux, the world ends.

Yes, I know... blah blah multiplayer/interface blah...  ignore my post if you just want to mouth off on how you hate multiplayer and or interface upgrades.  I'm not responding to flames.

But honestly, If Toady split the interface from the engine and the interface queried the engine (over TCP/UDP, whatever) for a small section of the world you could easily build multiple fortresses and just pan around the world like you'd do in adventure mode.  Of course, it would require some water optimizations (only calculate water as one tile instead of 7/7 water when it's offscreen) as well as dwarf pathing (have the client path, send it to the server for verification?), but those are needed anyway.  Besides, at that point you could have a main DF server running in another room while you connected to the server with your laptop from the couch. :p