Hello Urists! Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Duit! Happy Saint Paddy’s Day!Long-time lurker, first-time poster here. I limited myself to two topics, and for the sake of readability, I’ve broken them up into sections.
EDIT: I, a dunce, fell victim to one of the classic blunders - assuming a feature of DFHack was a feature of base game! Having to use GeForce prevents DFHack and the ui scaling behavior in 50+ is crazy.
A) ASCII Mode and emergent storytelling in v50+This may just be a me issue, I play v50+ on GeForce NOW as I just have MacOS (https://dwarffortressbugtracker.com/view.php?id=13124). While I do play v50 with sprites (after the hotkey additions), I boot my old v47 install whenever I want to play ASCII. The scaling of the UI in ASCII when zooming (scroll/[/]) is even more difficult now with how the UI is arranged and now partly graphical with icons. Many of the elements seem to scale over one another or off the screen entirely.
Any chance ASCII can now have non-scaling UI when zooming, at least as an option?A couple of other things also stand out:
- The mix of faux-ASCII borders on menu tabs and essentially sprite icons for some UI elements feel overly busy/distracting and introduce an aesthetic that wasn’t present in v47. Any chance that these UI elements might be given another pass for readability and aesthetic consistency? I loved the prior clean simplicity.
- The presentation of dwarf personality, thoughts, and descriptions has changed significantly in a way that really dampens the emergent story experience of dwarf fortress for me. Instead of being immersive full-screen windows that command your attention to a dwarf’s personality, description, and story, this information is fragmented across small panels that require slow manual tabbing and feel sidelined by the UI. This has really changed the emergent storytelling experience for me. (As well as giving animals odd panels/descriptions.) I understand that the smaller insert has its place, but would it be possible to get another menu, a larger UI element that presents this information in a way that better supports narrative immersion—perhaps something navigable through all residents via keystrokes?
B) Diplomacy & Fortress Integration with the WorldWith Adventure Mode released, would you consider adding smaller diplomatic features that would help integrate a fortress into its civilization and world?
For example, a few simple messenger actions could add a lot of depth:
- Requesting Road Construction: Ask an economically linked site or your mountainhome to build a road to your fortress, appearing as road floor tiles at the edge of the embark map and as a new road on the world map after a set construction time.
- Invite Neighbors for Cultural Exchange: Your messenger could be sent to bring a food item or gift to nearby neutral town or a neutral animal-person troupe present on your fortress map. Depending on their preferences and item value, this might lead to them becoming hostile or deciding to visit as long-term residents for the purpose of ‘learning about their neighbors’ or ‘cultural exchange’. This would also add a simple way for animal people to become fortress residents and populations—something Urists have dreamed of for ages!
Thanks for reading such a longer post! I was hesitant to remove anything else. And thanks to Toady One for continuing to engage this forum, I’ve always liked the community involvement here.