23 ms·

I tried to play this game, and I think that the interface is a complete bottleneck. Once you have more than 12 dwarves, which you are completely intended to do,

I tried to play this game, and I think that the interface is a complete bottleneck. Once you have more than 12 dwarves, which you are completely intended to do, it's tedious and difficult to access them, organize them, and generally, the interface to the simulator you have is like drinking through a straw. I think the fun would be massively improved with making it easier to interact with the simulator.

sageabilly 11y ago
Check out Dwarf Therapist. It is what makes the game accessible IMHO.
- dccoolgai 11y ago
  Yeah, I know a lot of people that use DFHack too, but that always seemed a little "cheat"-y to me. Therapist makes managing the labors of the dwarves (the most intensive thing in the game, really) a lot easier. I use Therapist with the regular ASCII tileset and I love it.
- AndyKelley 11y ago
  I've heard this suggestion before, and I may have even attempted to install it at one point, but this is exactly my point. To really have a good gameplay experience one must turn to community-made tools. But the game is not open source, and really, it's kind of a fundamental user experience problem with the game. Seems like it might be worth putting into the actual game. I'm hoping that in 10-20 years, the devs have a change of heart about the importance of the user interface, or they open source the code so the community can really step in, and then I'll give it another shot :-)
  - intended 11y ago
    If you are on HN, it's quite likely you will find the issues trivial to overcome. The support tools really are ridiculously good now, and you'll find that the cost of running them is ideological, while the pay off is magical, if not inspirational. Minecraft came after notch got irritated with DF. The entire dwarf-lite genre is inspired from wanting to do DF better. Now DF has been improving it's adventure more gaming, something which had been vestigial for 90% of the dwarf fortress Dev cycle. Take a look at the kisat dur thread (Dwarven martial arts) on the bay12games forum. Go for it, you can always put it down and come back later.

sageabilly 11y ago

Check out Dwarf Therapist. It is what makes the game accessible IMHO.

dccoolgai 11y ago
Yeah, I know a lot of people that use DFHack too, but that always seemed a little "cheat"-y to me. Therapist makes managing the labors of the dwarves (the most intensive thing in the game, really) a lot easier. I use Therapist with the regular ASCII tileset and I love it.
AndyKelley 11y ago
I've heard this suggestion before, and I may have even attempted to install it at one point, but this is exactly my point. To really have a good gameplay experience one must turn to community-made tools. But the game is not open source, and really, it's kind of a fundamental user experience problem with the game. Seems like it might be worth putting into the actual game. I'm hoping that in 10-20 years, the devs have a change of heart about the importance of the user interface, or they open source the code so the community can really step in, and then I'll give it another shot :-)
- intended 11y ago
  If you are on HN, it's quite likely you will find the issues trivial to overcome. The support tools really are ridiculously good now, and you'll find that the cost of running them is ideological, while the pay off is magical, if not inspirational. Minecraft came after notch got irritated with DF. The entire dwarf-lite genre is inspired from wanting to do DF better. Now DF has been improving it's adventure more gaming, something which had been vestigial for 90% of the dwarf fortress Dev cycle. Take a look at the kisat dur thread (Dwarven martial arts) on the bay12games forum. Go for it, you can always put it down and come back later.