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Author Topic: Am I the only one who likes the user interface  (Read 27886 times)

sethwick

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Re: Am I the only one who likes the user interface
« Reply #45 on: May 10, 2010, 03:09:30 pm »

I'm an elitist. I like the interface, I like the controls, and I like the ASCII. Any changes to any of those for the sake of "ease of use" would hurt the game IMO. I LIKE it having a learning curve, and I'm afraid any change for ease of use would detract from the complexity of the game, which is what makes it worthwhile to play in the first place. I HATE modern video games, I hate all the concessions made to people who suck at games or aren't willing to die their first X times playing. I hate recharging health, context sensitive buttons, walkthroughs built into the game. . . I despise it. I liked video games where half the game was figuring out what the hell you were supposed to do, because there was no tutorial and the manual was badly translated drivel. I love dying a minute into the first fight over and over again (I died like 5+ times in the first fight in STALKER before I killed someone, and I think I died another 5+ times before I managed to complete the first gunfight, loved that game to death).

I think that there is no way to simplify the DF UI without simplifying the game itself, and that would be the most severe of blasphemies.
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DFPongo

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Re: Am I the only one who likes the user interface
« Reply #46 on: May 10, 2010, 03:15:18 pm »

I do not like the user interface.
It is passive aggressive to an all time historical high.(although it tries some times to give hints)
That combined with the complexity and interactions of the various craft, harvest, build, personnel, custodial, military and diplomatic systems make the game way harder to learn then it should be. And way harder to remember what you learned before.
Now, I realize that dwarves are probably intended to be a little passive aggressive, but the system doesn't have to be.

Edit,
I am speaking here strictly of the menu system and the feed back it gives you, not the graphics, the mouse the sound or any other component of the "UI"
« Last Edit: May 10, 2010, 03:17:52 pm by DFPongo »
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Footkerchief

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Re: Am I the only one who likes the user interface
« Reply #47 on: May 10, 2010, 03:28:46 pm »

The interface sucks beyond belief, even disregarding the military screen.  For the past couple weeks, I've been at a point where my desire to play the game is outweighed by my reluctance to put up with that tedious bullshit. 

The criticisms by Jiri Petru and Kilo24 are spot on.
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Soadreqm

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Re: Am I the only one who likes the user interface
« Reply #48 on: May 10, 2010, 03:41:10 pm »

Sethwick: I'm just going to go ahead and assume you're completely sincere. If this is not so, I apologise. It's hard to tell on the internet, sometimes.

A "learning curve" is when a game starts easy and become progressively harder. DF doesn't really do that. There is the period of "What the hell am I looking at" as you stare in disbelief at the strange maelstrom of colors that is your embark site, then a period of struggling with the controls, trying to get the dwarves to do things, getting to terms with the third dimension and trying to keep your dwarves from starving to death. Then everything becomes trivial. Set up safe perimeter, set up farm, set up various craft industries. The learning curve is shaped like a mesa. Scale it once, and you're home free.

Also, the "dumbing down" of video games isn't exactly MODERN. I haven't studied game history that much, but I'm sure Monkey Island was doing it. Instead of dying every six steps, you could just try everything, dick around as much as you please, and generally not be terrified of screwing up all the time. You could lose Zork in, what, four moves? I've never played it and I don't want to. Gateway was reasonably forgiving most of the time, but still pulled more than enough dick moves to alienate me. Want to survive this encounter? Yeah, you need a gun. How do you get a gun? Why, you use that tool you swiped to mess with this air duct thingy here. You didn't figure to drop the tool in the planter tray to avoid being asked for it back? Haha, yeah, you have to start over. Clever, huh? Fuck you, Gateway. Fuck you.
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Oglokoog

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Re: Am I the only one who likes the user interface
« Reply #49 on: May 10, 2010, 03:49:08 pm »

I am sort of a new player but I never really had any trouble getting used to the interface. Even the three four ways to view stuff (q, v, k and t) seem pretty logical to me. From Jiri Petru's post, the only thing I can fully agree with is the bit about bedrooms and barracks - the way bedrooms are done now forces you to put the bed in the middle of the room, which doesn't seem very esthetical at all.
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So we got monsters above, monsters below, dwarves in the middle and a party in the dining hall. Sounds good to me.
If all else fails, remember one thing:  kittens are delicious, nutritious little goblin-baiters, cavern explorers, and ambush-finders.

Exponent

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Re: Am I the only one who likes the user interface
« Reply #50 on: May 10, 2010, 03:57:10 pm »

I'm an elitist. I like the interface, I like the controls, and I like the ASCII. Any changes to any of those for the sake of "ease of use" would hurt the game IMO. I LIKE it having a learning curve, and I'm afraid any change for ease of use would detract from the complexity of the game, which is what makes it worthwhile to play in the first place. I HATE modern video games, I hate all the concessions made to people who suck at games or aren't willing to die their first X times playing. I hate recharging health, context sensitive buttons, walkthroughs built into the game. . . I despise it. I liked video games where half the game was figuring out what the hell you were supposed to do, because there was no tutorial and the manual was badly translated drivel. I love dying a minute into the first fight over and over again (I died like 5+ times in the first fight in STALKER before I killed someone, and I think I died another 5+ times before I managed to complete the first gunfight, loved that game to death).

I think that there is no way to simplify the DF UI without simplifying the game itself, and that would be the most severe of blasphemies.

I like to conceptually separate the interface from the game rules themselves.  In my mind, the design of these two components should be largely kept separate.  They both provide challenges to the user, but these challenges are not of the same sort with the interface and the game rules.  The interface is merely a necessary evil, a means to an end.  It lets the user interact with the game rules.  An ideal interface should therefore be 100% transparent; the user shouldn't even realize it is there.  In this ideal state, the interface has reduced its challenges to zero.  Game rules on the other hand are designed to provide challenges.  Challenges are the whole reason why game rules even exist.  And a good set of game rules is designed to provide interesting challenges; not just any ol' challenge will do.  (I could ask you to merely select every third item in a list as quickly as possible without selecting any incorrect items, but that's hardly entertaining.)

Note then that a user overcomes the challenges of the interface in order to do something, while the user overcomes the challenges of the game rules because those are the challenges that the user finds interesting for their own sake.

Now of course this last statement clearly presents a significantly subjective element.  Different people will find different challenges to be compelling.  Nonetheless, if a person wants a game that is challenging in such and such ways, then that person should seek out a game whose rules provide this challenge.  Smuggling these challenges into the interface complicates what the game is actually attempting to be.  It might look like it provides one set of challenges, but it actually provides a larger set of challenges, some of which are significantly different from what is advertised.

I can respect your interest in taking a complicated and poorly understood object, and poking and prodding it until you tease out the nuances of what it is and how it works.  Sometimes I enjoy doing that myself.  (And other times I do it because I need to in order to do some further goal; in these cases, I tend to get frustrated while doing it, but still have a pleasant sense of accomplishment once I have succeeded.)  But I would suggest that you look for a game that has this concept built into the rules themselves.  Maybe some games out there exist like that.  If not, maybe there's a niche market that is in desperate need of being filled.  (Entrepreneurs, take note!)  Either way, this doesn't seem to be the sort of game that DF aspires to be, most notably because such mechanics aren't built into the game itself, nor do Tarn's goals seem to indicate that they will eventually be added.  And given that I am very drawn to the type of game that I personally feel that DF tries to be, I am very concerned about people calling for DF to be more complicated and opaque simply for the sake of providing this sort of challenge.

On the other hand, if an increase in difficultly fits with the overall theme of the game rules, I do not oppose it.  (For example, making farming more difficult in a way that properly meshes well with a fortress simulation.)

In short, I would suggest that if you're looking for a game that is difficult just for the sake of being difficult, then DF is not for you.  If you're looking for a game that is difficult for the same reasons that building and managing a fortress full of dwarves would be a difficult challenge, then DF very likely is for you.  And if this notion does fit with Tarn's vision of DF, then changes/additions to DF should always keep this target audience in mind, and not stray too far from it.
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Greep

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Re: Am I the only one who likes the user interface
« Reply #51 on: May 10, 2010, 04:47:56 pm »

The interface is bad mainly because it's newbie-unfriendly.  If you play DF a lot like me, then you get used to it and like it.  But for like 20 hours you're gonna be smashing your keyboard.  Most people aren't going to play dwarf fortress if they have to put up with that.
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Kilo24

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Re: Am I the only one who likes the user interface
« Reply #52 on: May 10, 2010, 04:57:48 pm »

Being able to designate burrows in unmined rock would help.

This needs to be stressed more... you CAN designate burrows in unmined rock. For me, it's basically one of the two reasons for using them at all (the other being the occasional "stay here and don't go where the goblins are" order).
How so?  I believe you, it's just that I couldn't figure it out myself.  Was that added after v.31.01?

The interface sucks beyond belief, even disregarding the military screen.  For the past couple weeks, I've been at a point where my desire to play the game is outweighed by my reluctance to put up with that tedious bullshit. 

The criticisms by Jiri Petru and Kilo24 are spot on.
Eh, the interface isn't that bad - it beats console-based interfaces in terms of keeping commands self-evident and is quicker to use than them, at least. 
I'm in something of a similar state for the past few weeks myself, though it's also the repeated crash on a fort I've got as well as having work to do on coding a game too.  If setting up a new fort was easier to do, I would have done that earlier.

I'm an elitist. I like the interface, I like the controls, and I like the ASCII. Any changes to any of those for the sake of "ease of use" would hurt the game IMO...
I think that there is no way to simplify the DF UI without simplifying the game itself, and that would be the most severe of blasphemies.
...I disagree wholeheartedly with this last statement.  Playing games with designations to force dwarves to simply do what you want them to do (building walls, for one example) is a horrific mess that does not benefit anything but a gamer's masochism.  And there's quite a lot of other stuff in DF like that.

Let me add that I love difficult games, too.  Demon's Souls, Devil May Cry 3, and DoomRL come to mind - and none of those rely on a crappy user interface to provide "challenge."  Good, hard games with poor interfaces/controls like Nethack and La Mulana would greatly benefit from a better interface.  There are games which I could have enjoyed but for crappy interface as well - Trilby: The Art of Theft is one, and Dwarf Fortress was almost one when I started playing a few years back. 
Poor interfaces help keep the new players out - but that's a *bad* thing for a game, and can strangle the playerbase quite effectively.

The interface is bad mainly because it's newbie-unfriendly.  If you play DF a lot like me, then you get used to it and like it.  But for like 20 hours you're gonna be smashing your keyboard.  Most people aren't going to play dwarf fortress if they have to put up with that.
I'd agree that it's bad mainly because it's newbie-unfriendly, but that's pretty much the defining factor of a bad interface.  Getting used to a bad interface is quite possible, and is in fact the only way you can deal with one. 
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Footkerchief

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Re: Am I the only one who likes the user interface
« Reply #53 on: May 10, 2010, 05:03:34 pm »

Being able to designate burrows in unmined rock would help.

This needs to be stressed more... you CAN designate burrows in unmined rock. For me, it's basically one of the two reasons for using them at all (the other being the occasional "stay here and don't go where the goblins are" order).
How so?  I believe you, it's just that I couldn't figure it out myself.  Was that added after v.31.01?

Haha, you just designate them like normal.  The catch is that they don't show up until you mine it out.  That's what I've heard, anyway.
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Aklyon

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Re: Am I the only one who likes the user interface
« Reply #54 on: May 10, 2010, 05:13:56 pm »

there's clearly something wrong with Dwarf Fortress that makes it impossible for some people to play (and I don't think it's graphics).
All the "popular" games (ex. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) have superultramega realistic graphics, so most people expect them in games. the slightly less popular but still well known games (ex. Super Mario Galaxy) have cartoonish but still 3D graphics.

Then, theres DF and it's ASCII.
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Kilo24

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Re: Am I the only one who likes the user interface
« Reply #55 on: May 10, 2010, 05:15:21 pm »

Being able to designate burrows in unmined rock would help.

This needs to be stressed more... you CAN designate burrows in unmined rock. For me, it's basically one of the two reasons for using them at all (the other being the occasional "stay here and don't go where the goblins are" order).
How so?  I believe you, it's just that I couldn't figure it out myself.  Was that added after v.31.01?

Haha, you just designate them like normal.  The catch is that they don't show up until you mine it out.  That's what I've heard, anyway.
...thanks. 
I'd wipe the egg off my face, but I think I'd rather fry it with righteous indignation.
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Jiri Petru

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Re: Am I the only one who likes the user interface
« Reply #56 on: May 10, 2010, 05:43:17 pm »

Since there seems to be quite a few people interested in the interface, let me use this post to invite you to a topic I created months ago in the suggestion forum: Total Interface Overhaul. It was meant as a repository of constructive ideas and graphical proposals for Toady to choose from. It's been going quite slowly (and I myself am mostly ignoring it), but there have fortunately been contributors who kept it alive (most notably Zwei). So if you're interested in interface and like to come up with solutions, we could use you  ;)

NOTE: That topic should if possible remain practical, so let's keep all arguing here. That being said...

---------------------------

It's hard for me to believe someone could actually like the current interface. A part of me want to say you'd have to either (a) not understand what an interface is, or (b) never have seen a good interface. No insult meant, It's just hard for me to grasp.

A good example is the main menu:


It's basically just a mess, a confusing wall-of-text. A good interface would in the least visually differentiate between the most important (often used) features and the minor ones. There's nothing like it in DF. No visual distinction, not even any semblance of order. The features are listed alphabetically by the keyboard shortcut, for Christ's sake! I can hardly imagine anything more useless. The menu is unusable - you have to memorise it and then hide it, you can't orientate yourself by it.

A functional DF main menu would at least:
- Group features according to frequency of use and function. Eg: (1) Buildings, Designations, Stockpiles, Zones; (2) View unit, View items in building, Use buildings, (3) Military, Squads, Routes, Burrows, etc.
- Break the wall of text! Differentiate between the functional groups using font size, colour, blank spaces. Distribute them along the whole screen. Anything...
- Reduce the visual clutter! Hide the more obscure functions in submenus. Artifacts and civilisations could go into Stocks menu. (why are they here in the first place, when things like animals or kitchen - which you use more often - are hidden?) Nobles could hide under units, or whatever. Depot acces should be accesible wrom the depot building screen, no need to have it here. Options could easily fit into the (Esc) menu, like in every other game.
- etc. etc.

There are just examples I made up while writing this post! The current interface is completely illogical, there seems to be next to no thought put into its ergonomy or whatever. I really, really can't believe you like it more than for example my half-assed proposal here.

(Also, please note the lack of any mouse support or graphics stuff in this post.)

---

ALSO, before a misunderstanding, because I expect reactions along these lines: you can hide a Tooltip in a submenu and still have a shortcut for it. You can hide the text "(l) artifacts" in the stocks menu and still have the shortcut (l) functional in the main game. Most software works like this, just look for example at your browser. Is there a visual clutter? No. Is there a visual distinction of more and less important controls? Yes.
« Last Edit: May 10, 2010, 05:50:46 pm by Jiri Petru »
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Krumbs

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Re: Am I the only one who likes the user interface
« Reply #57 on: May 10, 2010, 05:48:47 pm »

It's really hard to learn, but once your used to it, it's very efficient and easy to use.
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Goron

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Re: Am I the only one who likes the user interface
« Reply #58 on: May 10, 2010, 06:09:20 pm »

I'm an elitist. I like the interface, I like the controls, and I like the ASCII. Any changes to any of those for the sake of "ease of use" would hurt the game IMO.
Do you use Therapist? Did you rebind any keys or set any macros? If you have done any of those, then you are proving yourself wrong.
I LIKE it having a learning curve, and I'm afraid any change for ease of use would detract from the complexity of the game, which is what makes it worthwhile to play in the first place.
depth is not the same as complexity. Suppose that in order to designate a mining area you had to press "d" fifteen times. That would add to complexity and detract from ease of use. Does that make the game 'better'? You seem to have ease of use mistaken with 'shallow gameplay'. You can have both ease of use AND depth.
I HATE modern video games, I hate all the concessions made to people who suck at games or aren't willing to die their first X times playing.
WHat do those have to do with usability?
I hate recharging health, context sensitive buttons, walkthroughs built into the game. . . I despise it.
what do any of those have to do with ease of use, usability, clean, well presented interfaces?
I love dying a minute into the first fight over and over again (I died like 5+ times in the first fight in STALKER before I killed someone, and I think I died another 5+ times before I managed to complete the first gunfight, loved that game to death).
still not sure what any of this has to do with being user friendly. Gameplay difficulty is not the same as interaction difficulty. Does using a mouse in your elft hand make using the computer more fun (I assume you are right handed)? It makes everything less easy to do, therefore it must be more fun, right?
I think that there is no way to simplify the DF UI without simplifying the game itself, and that would be the most severe of blasphemies.
I think you are wrong. I'll supply one very simple interface change that would vastly improve DF's UI and have not one single impact on the game play:
Display the minimap underneath the actions menu.
Explain how that ruins the game?

Exponent

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Re: Am I the only one who likes the user interface
« Reply #59 on: May 10, 2010, 07:21:40 pm »

It's really hard to learn, but once your used to it, it's very efficient and easy to use.

Define "efficient".  I don't know how many times I've found myself repeatedly pressing keys over and over and over just to perform some task that would have taken 10 seconds at most with a well designed interface.  That to me is the exact opposite of efficient.

The difficulty sometimes is actually first catching yourself doing this tedious exercise, and second realizing that may exist alternative designs that would make the task far easier.  It's just as Goron mentioned earlier; without training or experience, it isn't always obvious to a standard user, or even an expert user, that an interface is poor.  Give users a significantly improved interface, though, and many will eventually wonder how they ever accomplished anything (or in this case, experienced more fun than frustration) when using the old interface.
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