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[forsaken1111]

Everyone has their own preferred method. No one method is better or worse than the others.

I think mouse-enabled constructions would greatly speed up the process of laying down walls etc.

[MaDeR Levap]

Why, oh God Armok Me, why everyone think that keyboard and mouse is exclusive? -.- I personally would use both, if mouse would be viable in DF (as is now, it is not viable in any way).

And by the way... I somehow overlook his post.

Rectangles? k and u. Long walls? u.

You, of couse, "forgot" about positioning it on screen. Multiple arrow keystrokes. Better to use mouse - mouse is created to pointing at things, like beginning and end of wall. Of course, that I think mouse is better is not demand to remove possibility to do it with keyboard.

Everyone has their own preferred method. No one method is better or worse than the others.

Seems like surprisingly large group of people would deny mouse completely and forbid use of this poor rodent by someone else.

[ein]

You can use the mouse for designations in DF.
Not sure about constructions though.

[forsaken1111]

You can use the mouse for designations in DF.

Yes, but it is incredibly unintuitive and clunky.

Doesn't really matter though, Toady will do what he will do.

[Jiri Petru]

By the way, the goblin camp guy has twitter.

[Athmos]

Well, be it mouse or keyboard, building walls a block at a time does definitely suck.

However the community may feel, the interface is what is keeping many players from even trying the game. I quite agree with the opinion that postponing the interface overall any longer (i mean, this game is 4 year old already) is, for toady, shooting himself in the foot.
I do code websites for a living, and anyone who have worked on the frontend of any application should know that not only coding an interface that doesn't need an overall each time you add a feature is doable, it's actually the only reasonable way to do it.
Exposing the command layer or not is another discussion entirely, and toady doesn't want to do it; but still, giving his game a framework for interface and focusing on usability for a bit would turn out to be a huge benefit for him as much as the community i think.

I definitely think the interface overall should be the next priority of Toady after the bug hassle settle down a bit.

The simple fact that there are so much hot debates about DF clones or bragging about such possible things, and so much discussions about the interface should only underline the urgency of it. There are many great ideas in the interface overall thread.

[Rotten]

You can use the mouse for designations in DF.

Yes, but it is incredibly unintuitive and clunky.

Doesn't really matter though, Toady will do what he will do.

Beginning of designation:Rightclick-> enter
End/corner of designation: Rightclick->enter

How is that unintuitive? Toady just needs to let us do that will constructed walls.

[forsaken1111]

You can use the mouse for designations in DF.

Yes, but it is incredibly unintuitive and clunky.

Doesn't really matter though, Toady will do what he will do.

Beginning of designation:Rightclick-> enter
End/corner of designation: Rightclick->enter

How is that unintuitive? Toady just needs to let us do that will constructed walls.

How is rightclick->enter intuitive?

There is no feedback, no way to judge distance or precision (especially in unexplored underground tiles where there is often no visual grid for reference), and it requires shuffling of your hands because everything else is keyboard-centric. You have to first hit d, use the keyboard to find the correct spot with numpad/arrows + (>)(<) keys, then move your right hand over to the mouse, then right click, then either move your hand back to the keyboard to hit enter or use your left hand to hit enter. Then repeat, right click again, enter again.

On top of this, the feature is entirely undocumented and only discoverable by trial and error or accident because no other menu uses that system of control.

Really... you think this is intuitive? Why can't I just leftclick and drag to define a square? or leftclick->drag to draw and rightclick->drag for a square. That would be about 1000 times more intuitive than rightclick->enter.

[nil]

As side note, Toady make his life harder by making UI initimately connected to inner working of DF engine. Good grief.

I think the interface-hate is mostly overwrought, and a lot of the alternative suggestions I hear are pretty disappointing (I read five pages of the SA thread where most were agreeing that what DF really needs is to be isometric).  That said, the above quote is dead on.  What I'd really like to see is an interface controlled as much as possible by a raw or init file, allowing the fanbase to create skins/UI-mods.  That way Toady wouldn't have to worry so much about wasting his time on an interface that might be made obsolete in the future, and we'd all get sweet interfaces catering to our personal tastes.

[Naero]

It's a nice UI. Tell me when there's a game to go along with it.

The game is the important part, and I wouldn't be showing a game off if all I'd done was the UI. Not least of all because that UI would take about a day to implement, especially if you were using some GUI library.

[Kazang]

You can use the mouse for designations in DF.

Yes, but it is incredibly unintuitive and clunky.

Doesn't really matter though, Toady will do what he will do.

Beginning of designation:Rightclick-> enter
End/corner of designation: Rightclick->enter

How is that unintuitive? Toady just needs to let us do that will constructed walls.

How is rightclick->enter intuitive?

There is no feedback, no way to judge distance or precision (especially in unexplored underground tiles where there is often no visual grid for reference), and it requires shuffling of your hands because everything else is keyboard-centric. You have to first hit d, use the keyboard to find the correct spot with numpad/arrows + (>)(<) keys, then move your right hand over to the mouse, then right click, then either move your hand back to the keyboard to hit enter or use your left hand to hit enter. Then repeat, right click again, enter again.

On top of this, the feature is entirely undocumented and only discoverable by trial and error or accident because no other menu uses that system of control.

Really... you think this is intuitive? Why can't I just leftclick and drag to define a square? or leftclick->drag to draw and rightclick->drag for a square. That would be about 1000 times more intuitive than rightclick->enter.

No that is not intuitive, that is the point.
Drag and select interface would a god send.  Burrows right now are a monumental pain the ass to build and maintain.  3D Drag select would make this a breeze.
The fact that this feature (right click to move the cursor) is undocumented is another failure, all the UI quirks are hidden, which compounds the already sheer rise of the learning curve.

Now do not take that to mean I don't like hotkeys or don't use them.  I actually really like the very intuitive hotkeys that DF uses, for this the keyboard is better.  But for things like placing buildings, doing designations, selecting dwarfs, targets, etc the mouse is the perfect tool for the job.
A well designed UI makes the best of tools and options it has available.  Mouse wheel scrolling in menus for example, this would make the many sub menus exponentially quicker to use. 

Context sensitive tool tips: Why do I have to press k and then move the cursor over to object to look at it?  Why not use a tooltip natively on mouse over or click from the main menu.  The K sub menu serves no purpose and should be the default mode, with other menus accessible through that.

The DF ui is broken in small but crucial ways.  UI design and ergonomics is an art that unfortunately toady does not seem to possess, he makes up for that being a genius in other areas but this limitation has to realized.  The UI design and/or code needs to be opened up to someone else with more inclination to fix it.  I'm not trying to put down DF but it really has no way to progress without a complete UI overhaul, the complexity and beauty of the game is hidden by the impenetrable (for most people) wall of bad UI design and graphics.
Working on making the core game more complex is pointless if players have no way to use it.  It actually makes me sad to see such genius wasted in such a way.

[Desdichado]

I don't get the zealotry surrounding DF sometimes. Lol. Why can no one ever make a game even influenced by DF? Do you only play RTS games made by Blizzard, because the rest "stole" the idea from Warcraft: Orcs and Humans? Do you only play FPS games by iD software because they created Wolfenstein 3D?

Hell, by the standard being advanced here, Toady stole the god-game intricacy and simulation ideas from Will Wright and Peter Molyneaux, heh.

Anyway, Toady is not going down this avenue of streamlining and making it more game-y rather than simulation-y, at least in the forseeable future. It's a legit angle for someone else to pursue. Good for this guy.

[forsaken1111]

I don't get the zealotry surrounding DF sometimes. Lol. Why can no one ever make a game even influenced by DF? Do you only play RTS games made by Blizzard, because the rest "stole" the idea from Warcraft: Orcs and Humans? Do you only play FPS games by iD software because they created Wolfenstein 3D?

Hell, by the standard being advanced here, Toady stole the god-game intricacy and simulation ideas from Will Wright and Peter Molyneaux, heh.

Anyway, Toady is not going down this avenue of streamlining and making it more game-y rather than simulation-y, at least in the forseeable future. It's a legit angle for someone else to pursue. Good for this guy.

Who said the guy couldn't make his game? I hope he does so, and I hope it's a good one. I will play them both.

[Mfbrew]

Goblin camp just looks like a settlers clone in ASCII with a name parodying DF.  Way to be lame and 10 years behind the times.

[Desdichado]

Who said the guy couldn't make his game? I hope he does so, and I hope it's a good one. I will play them both.

The general impression left by comments like those by Mfbrew below is that many DF-zealots have an antipathy to anyone being influenced by DF. Even calling it a clone is a touch disparaging, since it's clear that it's more like a development fork than a straight clone.

Goblin camp just looks like a settlers clone in ASCII with a name parodying DF.  Way to be lame and 10 years behind the times.