4 ms·
Feelings rant: I've played DF since just before the massive z-level update (2008?) - I was living in a girl's college dorm with my girlfriend and her roommate'
by royaltjames 4y ago
Feelings rant:
I've played DF since just before the massive z-level update (2008?) - I was living in a girl's college dorm with my girlfriend and her roommate's boyfriend that was living there turned me onto DF and Fallout, etc.
DF has been the one thing I have turned to over the years as a therapeutic device when I'm in deep depression and meds/therapy doesn't feel like it's doing it: the function of procgen obscurity, guided freedom of choice, and even the simple repetitive mundane nature of it that doesn't feel like it (even the looped guitar track) helps me really get through some dark days.
I'm worried seeing the steam updates like Tarn is begrudgingly making UX/UI changes for "the people in our community that can't handle ASCII" when he is obviously NOT a UX/UI guy (evidenced by the product of DF itself). The textbox styling look like he's just adding bland graphics as #goodenough.
If they patreon'd a $100/month tier where I could support a team to help translate his brilliant spaghetti into clean, streamlined frictive processes (militia workflow having broken defaults, navigation, etc), and maybe even some devs to optimize his legacy code so embark can handle larger complex sites and maybe CO-OP (come on I can dream). So much of the flow has always felt like I have to do this because this is how it is done in DF.
tldr: I am worried Tarn is not a UX guy, begrudgingly building UX for DF, when he (and WE) are missing out on a massive opportunity to build something with less friction and more [FUN].
- OkayPhysicist 4y agoI was under the impression that Tarn's getting outside help for the Steam Version's UI.
- kibwen 4y agoTarn is outsourcing the UI and art. I think the art looks fantastic, better than any DF tileset I've seen.
- drakythe 4y agoTarn is not doing the UX outside of any back end coding changes needed. Kitfox games is doing the UX, which is why this blog post isn't on Tarn's site. As I read the blogs I believe he is giving input and making code changes to support information retrieval, but he isn't the one actually doing the UI and Graphics.
- royaltjames 4y agoOh thank the gods
- muzani 4y agoI've played DF since back when it was Slaves to Armok. I don't think Tarn/Zach are that bad at UI/UX. It's just they headed down this path as the low friction route, planning to come out of it later.