5 ms·

At least many of these "insane random combinations of controls" follow a pretty OK mnemonic naming convention. b>c to build a chair b>d to build a door b>w>l

At least many of these "insane random combinations of controls" follow a pretty OK mnemonic naming convention. b>c to build a chair b>d to build a door b>w>l to build a still (type of workshop, many other things under b>w)

coolp_jim 12y ago
Exactly. Which is exactly like games like Starcraft or Warcraft, where there are any number of things you can "do" as a player. No one complained about those games' UI. DF has this and more. Therefore, the UI becomes more involved. I think what this really boils down to is "I haven't played the game and everyone says it's really hard, so I guess I won't try. Instead I'll go online and complain about the UI I've never used."
- seanflyon 12y ago
  This is the first time I have heard someone suggest that DF has UI design of comparable quality to Starcraft or Warcraft (or any other major game for that matter).
philsnow 12y ago
This is the kind of stuff that always trips me up: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/40d:Controls#Building_Placement http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/40d:Controls#Building... Several different sets of keys to use depending on what you're manipulating, even though they all have to do with direction. I can never remember and always have to use the in-game help. Whereas, when I play nethack or DCSS or brogue, 99% of the things my fingers do, they do without needing to consult their external memory (my brain). The interface is so simple (okay, nethack's is not, but I started playing it at an early age, so it's baked in to my fingers now) that it's a joy to operate the game. Once your brain doesn't have to drive your fingers, the interface becomes an extension of you and you achieve a kind of flow where you're interacting with the (game) world without thinking about it. Anybody who has learned to drive stick shift (especially if you already knew how to drive an automatic) knows this feeling.
- bhickey 12y ago
  We place a strong emphasis on usability and interface in crawl. For example, we actively avoid putting items in the inventory slot corresponding to using them: potions shouldn't land on 'q', food on 'e', etc. Another advantage is that we're dealing with a simpler game. Brogue takes this one step further and I think does a fabulous job. For example, there are no inventory stacks on the floor. Either there's an item or there isn't. Adding stacks would impose a complexity cost without improving gameplay. Back in 2009-2010 on DCSS we were very fortunate to have one of our developers organized a usability study. The usability study ran over several months and produced a ton of feedback. Since the core team is around 30, we actually had the throughput to act on these recommendations.
  - grimgrin 12y ago
    DCSS is absolutely fantastic. I wrote an IRC bot last year for myself and a small community on IRC (5 of us at the time), that specifically monitored only us by paying attention to lines said in ##crawl. It also passed along commands to the appropriate bots (Henzell, Gretell, etc), and responded with their responses. The bot was pretty crappy through, as it was just an irssi script with a buncha hacked perl. https://github.com/shmup/OCTOTROG/blob/master/crawl.pl https://github.com/shmup/OCTOTROG/blob/master/crawl.pl A friend in the community rewrote it as a proper bot, and has extended it much more. This little community of ours (now up to 20 or so people) has had a ton of fun thanks to this, because we get the usefulness of ##crawl without the spam. http://octotrog.neckro.com http://octotrog.neckro.com https://github.com/neckro/OCTOTROG.JS https://github.com/neckro/OCTOTROG.JS
  - philsnow 12y ago
    Brogue just blows my mind with how simple it is. The magic system is reified as items. You really only have one stat (strength) IIRC. The food clock is both dead accurate and merciless [0]. I haven't played DCSS in a few years, but when I did, it was literally feast or famine: I would either be walking around with dozens of rations or else dying of hunger all the time. Herbivorous races like Spriggans didn't have very high food consumption but also didn't have many options in case they didn't find vegetarian food. I read the summary page for the usability study, it seemed to give tons of (in particular) very _actionable_ feedback. [0] Nethack, as much as I love it, causes brain damage in the same way that BASIC does: it shapes the way your brain works in a disadvantageous way. Consider that all of the nethack variants _add_ features (and are unabashed about it, SLASH stands for Super Lots of Added Stuff Hack).

coolp_jim 12y ago

Exactly. Which is exactly like games like Starcraft or Warcraft, where there are any number of things you can "do" as a player. No one complained about those games' UI. DF has this and more. Therefore, the UI becomes more involved. I think what this really boils down to is "I haven't played the game and everyone says it's really hard, so I guess I won't try. Instead I'll go online and complain about the UI I've never used."

seanflyon 12y ago
This is the first time I have heard someone suggest that DF has UI design of comparable quality to Starcraft or Warcraft (or any other major game for that matter).

philsnow 12y ago

This is the kind of stuff that always trips me up: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/40d:Controls#Building_Placement http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/40d:Controls#Building... Several different sets of keys to use depending on what you're manipulating, even though they all have to do with direction. I can never remember and always have to use the in-game help. Whereas, when I play nethack or DCSS or brogue, 99% of the things my fingers do, they do without needing to consult their external memory (my brain). The interface is so simple (okay, nethack's is not, but I started playing it at an early age, so it's baked in to my fingers now) that it's a joy to operate the game. Once your brain doesn't have to drive your fingers, the interface becomes an extension of you and you achieve a kind of flow where you're interacting with the (game) world without thinking about it. Anybody who has learned to drive stick shift (especially if you already knew how to drive an automatic) knows this feeling.

bhickey 12y ago
We place a strong emphasis on usability and interface in crawl. For example, we actively avoid putting items in the inventory slot corresponding to using them: potions shouldn't land on 'q', food on 'e', etc. Another advantage is that we're dealing with a simpler game. Brogue takes this one step further and I think does a fabulous job. For example, there are no inventory stacks on the floor. Either there's an item or there isn't. Adding stacks would impose a complexity cost without improving gameplay. Back in 2009-2010 on DCSS we were very fortunate to have one of our developers organized a usability study. The usability study ran over several months and produced a ton of feedback. Since the core team is around 30, we actually had the throughput to act on these recommendations.
- grimgrin 12y ago
  DCSS is absolutely fantastic. I wrote an IRC bot last year for myself and a small community on IRC (5 of us at the time), that specifically monitored only us by paying attention to lines said in ##crawl. It also passed along commands to the appropriate bots (Henzell, Gretell, etc), and responded with their responses. The bot was pretty crappy through, as it was just an irssi script with a buncha hacked perl. https://github.com/shmup/OCTOTROG/blob/master/crawl.pl https://github.com/shmup/OCTOTROG/blob/master/crawl.pl A friend in the community rewrote it as a proper bot, and has extended it much more. This little community of ours (now up to 20 or so people) has had a ton of fun thanks to this, because we get the usefulness of ##crawl without the spam. http://octotrog.neckro.com http://octotrog.neckro.com https://github.com/neckro/OCTOTROG.JS https://github.com/neckro/OCTOTROG.JS
- philsnow 12y ago
  Brogue just blows my mind with how simple it is. The magic system is reified as items. You really only have one stat (strength) IIRC. The food clock is both dead accurate and merciless [0]. I haven't played DCSS in a few years, but when I did, it was literally feast or famine: I would either be walking around with dozens of rations or else dying of hunger all the time. Herbivorous races like Spriggans didn't have very high food consumption but also didn't have many options in case they didn't find vegetarian food. I read the summary page for the usability study, it seemed to give tons of (in particular) very _actionable_ feedback. [0] Nethack, as much as I love it, causes brain damage in the same way that BASIC does: it shapes the way your brain works in a disadvantageous way. Consider that all of the nethack variants _add_ features (and are unabashed about it, SLASH stands for Super Lots of Added Stuff Hack).