3 ms·

I assure you, the current player base is acutely aware of how bad the UI is. It's not even that it's opaque until learned, it is sometimes just downright impos

by gchpaco 14y ago

I assure you, the current player base is acutely aware of how bad the UI is. It's not even that it's opaque until learned, it is sometimes just downright impossible in vanilla DF to answer certain elementary questions like "how many dwarves are set to mine?" Workflow automation is really primitive, leading to either the "constantly assign dye thread jobs through the manager so the fools will do it" problem or the opposite "oops I left the mason alone for five minutes and now I have a hundred masterwork statues in a single 5x5 square" problem. Not for nothing does Dwarf Therapist exist, and I flat out will not play the game without dfhack's workflow and autobutcher plugins. It's still genius. But it is definitely one of those "scribbles on the wall in crayon" type works of genius. As the innards of the program itself is better understood, I expect dfhack to supplant more and more of the original UI; it already has a dwarf therapist like mode, a much better job manager, and has started venturing into fundamentally reworking the UI. I recall a plugin not too long ago that allowed you to say things like "as soon as a bed is constructed, put it here".

gnarbarian 14y ago
Thank you! I will definitely check that out.
icepotato 14y ago
yeah, and sometimes new things get patched in like squad management so you can say "alternate patrolling with training", and of course it has a brand new interface, which is subtly different from all the other interfaces... UI critiques of Dwarf Fortress are incredibly valid. But Tarn makes a living off of DF despite that, because he's trying to procedurally generate interesting stories. That's a really big challenge, and it's something very, very few other games try and do. If you check out his devlog (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html http://bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html) and his planned feature list (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) you can see the scope is... staggering in complexity. So the vision is what draws me, personally into the game. The fact that this is all free and driven by donations (publicly tracked here http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122396.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122396.0) just makes it even more incredible. This complexity and vision comes with a price. As people noted below, UI is not really Tarn's focus and probably won't be any time soon. The code is not open and Tarn is pretty straightforward about not wanting to share it with anyone, because he doesn't want to introduce more complexity with non-canonical versions and churn as he continues to replace older subsystems with new ones (At least, this is my recollection of the topic, but I've been out of the loop for a while). So no, it's not going to get fixed any time soon. Regardless, I really love this game. But I think the wiki's quick-start guide is not sufficient to get up and running with the game. So I've been maintaining my own tutorial: http://www.hailingfromtheedge.com/p/dwarf-fortress-tutorial-toc.html http://www.hailingfromtheedge.com/p/dwarf-fortress-tutorial-... so far i'd just been beta-testing this on friends who haven't played yet. If you want to try out DF for the first time, please give my tutorial a shot and let me know how it goes!
- fennecfoxen 14y ago
  "UI critiques of Dwarf Fortress are incredibly valid." Yes, and no one has ever marketed the game as anything that's Ready For The Prime Time, possessed of a decent UI, or anything other than something that's really fun and interesting despite being an early development version of someone's cool pet project. You can come back and complain some more in earnest when you've paid money for it. :) -- Postscript: If some friend, roommate, frenemy, or random dude on the Internet has, in fact, marketed the game as something that's ready for the prime time or possessed of a decent UI, they're putting you on. :P
  - gnarbarian 14y ago
    Just because something is free by no means makes it beyond reproach.
    - amw 14y ago
      And just because it can be reproached doesn't make it any less tiresome to the people who have been hearing it for years.
      - gnarbarian 14y ago
        Maybe one of these years it'll get fixed and you won't have to hear it anymore.

by gchpaco 14y ago

gnarbarian 14y ago

Thank you! I will definitely check that out.

icepotato 14y ago

yeah, and sometimes new things get patched in like squad management so you can say "alternate patrolling with training", and of course it has a brand new interface, which is subtly different from all the other interfaces... UI critiques of Dwarf Fortress are incredibly valid. But Tarn makes a living off of DF despite that, because he's trying to procedurally generate interesting stories. That's a really big challenge, and it's something very, very few other games try and do. If you check out his devlog (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html http://bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html) and his planned feature list (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) you can see the scope is... staggering in complexity. So the vision is what draws me, personally into the game. The fact that this is all free and driven by donations (publicly tracked here http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122396.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122396.0) just makes it even more incredible. This complexity and vision comes with a price. As people noted below, UI is not really Tarn's focus and probably won't be any time soon. The code is not open and Tarn is pretty straightforward about not wanting to share it with anyone, because he doesn't want to introduce more complexity with non-canonical versions and churn as he continues to replace older subsystems with new ones (At least, this is my recollection of the topic, but I've been out of the loop for a while). So no, it's not going to get fixed any time soon. Regardless, I really love this game. But I think the wiki's quick-start guide is not sufficient to get up and running with the game. So I've been maintaining my own tutorial: http://www.hailingfromtheedge.com/p/dwarf-fortress-tutorial-toc.html http://www.hailingfromtheedge.com/p/dwarf-fortress-tutorial-... so far i'd just been beta-testing this on friends who haven't played yet. If you want to try out DF for the first time, please give my tutorial a shot and let me know how it goes!

fennecfoxen 14y ago
"UI critiques of Dwarf Fortress are incredibly valid." Yes, and no one has ever marketed the game as anything that's Ready For The Prime Time, possessed of a decent UI, or anything other than something that's really fun and interesting despite being an early development version of someone's cool pet project. You can come back and complain some more in earnest when you've paid money for it. :) -- Postscript: If some friend, roommate, frenemy, or random dude on the Internet has, in fact, marketed the game as something that's ready for the prime time or possessed of a decent UI, they're putting you on. :P
- gnarbarian 14y ago
  Just because something is free by no means makes it beyond reproach.
  - amw 14y ago
    And just because it can be reproached doesn't make it any less tiresome to the people who have been hearing it for years.
    - gnarbarian 14y ago
      Maybe one of these years it'll get fixed and you won't have to hear it anymore.