Hey there! I predate the Steam release; though, my time in old DF was 99% Adventure Mode -- my Steam fort is my first serious fort, ever. There are a lot of great things about the Steam version; though, like with any radical change of anything ever, I've noticed a *lot* of opportunities for improvement! I registered an account on this forum to share some ideas around that (and also to finally comment on
the Archcrystal thread, because that fort was epic). I hope you find them helpful, if nothing else! As always, thanks for making such a deep game, and sticking with it for so long. There really isn't anything *quite* like Dwarf Fortress out there -- it's very unique, and y'all should be very proud of yourselves for what you've accomplished.
Okay, with the prelude out of the way, let's get into things:
General UI improvements:- Have all forms that contain a search field have that search field pre-selected when first opened.
- All buttons (and tabs) should have a hover effect (such as a lighter background, or perhaps inverting their colors) when hovered.
- Right clicking should go back one level in each menu, instead of closing outright. Menu closing, then, should only happen when there are no more levels to go back.
- Perhaps have an option to change the fog colors? Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I liked the original black color for lower/higher terrain; and judging from the number of different mods by different people making the fog black, I am apparently not alone in this. I actually think that the current dark-grey of undiscovered areas underground is the ideal fog color -- it's the most-consistent with the rest of the game. The current cyan is just... idk, it feels a little out-of-place? It kinda works above ground, but it's definitely weird in the caverns. Black/dark-grey works everywhere.
Construction:- Add a new button so that we can dismantle buildings just like we can floors and walls.
- Allow building floors when something (like furniture, or a stockpile) is on the tile. Currently, we can already smoothe, engrave, and remove floors beneath such things; so why can't we build them, too? Right now, reflooring means taking out every single piece of furniture, which is a HUGE hassle.
- Stop pausing work because a glove is on-top of the space. As it is now, it's very hard to perform work in bedrooms and stockpiles because of this limitation.
- Have a visual indication when constructions are suspended.
Mods:- Allow activating mods *after* creating a world. The RAWs aren't a part of saves anymore, so I don't think there's any reason we can't change the mods after starting a world.
- Allow selecting a set of default mods, which will be active on any new world creation *by default*, though the user can still of course select a different set for each specific world. Currently, when generating lots of worlds in hopes of getting a specific map feature, EVERY SINGLE MOD has to be selected AND REORDERED, EVERY SINGLE TIME we generate, and this is a HUGE malus.
Justice:- It lists the witnesses with their Dwarvish forename and their English surname, but when you click to interview people, their surnames are all in Dwarvish -- making it impossible for me to figure out whom is who (other than ghosts) without a dictionary! Can you keep the names 100% consistently Dwarvish? (or Elvish, if you're playing a dirty hippie treefort)
- Can injured parties and witnesses be (respectively) listed right after the accusèd in the interview pane? And can they be marked as such? Atm, it's impossible to find them in the randomly-ordered list of dwarves.
- Have some option to autointerview dwarves who have been witnessed committing a crime.
Military:- Allow us to edit the equipment templates we've saved, like in previous versions.
- Allow us to assign ammunition to soldiers like in previous versions.
- Allow us to change the order of the squads in the squads panel.
Lore:- Allow clicking on names of things in Fortress Mode to view their descriptions, either [1] according to what the dwarves have learned about it, or (much easier to implement) [2] just show the Legends Mode page. So, let's say I see a thought that says "He feels wonder after communing with Litast Cobaltsieges.", I would LOVE to be able to click on "Litast Cobaltsieges" and learn all about that deity. Atm, it's just a random name -- but it *could* be an invitation to learn about the lore of the world; and I think that would really help to flesh things out for me. Atm, weirdly-enough, this new DF feels ¿less? alive than the old one (perhaps in part because I'm playing Fortress Mode instead of Adventure Mode), in large part because... I just don't know what things are.
- Have a list of known kinds of instruments, and let us click on each one in the list to see a description of what the instrument is. I have no idea what the Áwlist my dwarves have is, other than that it looks like a gong when placed; but I know from the old DF that there's actually a detailed description of what an Áwlist is, somewhere.
- Just make it MUCH easier to access lore in general. I want the world to feel alive, and I want to study the history of the world my dwarves live in.
Legends Mode:- Allow us to rearrange tabs
- Allow closing tabs with a middle-click, like in a web browser
- When closing the active tab, go to the most-recently-opened tab, instead of the one directly to the left of the closed tab.
- Add back/forward buttons, have links open in the same tab, and open things in a new tab by middle-clicking (like a web browser)
- Change the cursor to a hand when hovering a link
- Add a map
- When clicking on a location/region/etc, open the map and have that thing selected.
- Add portraits for as many things as possible
- Add filters to searches. So, for example: let me filter the Historical Figures so that it only shows me deities, or only shows me demons, or only shows me dwarves, etc; and let me filter Sites by species, or by type; etc.
The Log:- Make it so we can choose to show some kind of log at the bottom of the screen, so that we can watch all the things that are happening. Right now, the logs are just really scattered, and we can't play the game while reading them.
- Make it so we can unpause (or at least step through, with the period key) when viewing a log from a notification. Currently, opening one force-pauses the game.
- Have two speed options: One is a slower speed, one is a faster speed; and both are configurable in settings. This way, we can have the game run slowly when we need to issue lots of orders or really read the log; and we can have the game run really fast when we just want something built.
- Make the game pause when one of our citizens or tamed animals enters combat, so that we don't miss any of the action.
Labors:- Make the default labors editable AND deleteable.
- Make it so we can select our own icons for labors.
- Allow us to rearrange labors.
- Allow us to export/import our labors list, so we don't have to set it up again from scratch every time we start a new fortress.
- Allow us to specify a target number of people for each labor; this will automatically, every day, add the most-skilled dwarves to each labor until we hit their targets. This would, of course, require a Manager with an assigned office. So, as an example of how this would work: Let's say we have a Bowyer labor with a target of 2, and we have a Legendary Bowyer, a Talented Bowyer, a Novice Bowyer, and someone who isn't a Bowyer at all. Your Manager would appoint the Legendary Bowyer and the Talented Bowyer to the labor, and would then stop adding additional dwarves to it, since the target of 2 will have been reached.
Work Orders:- The ability to have folders in work orders. We could arrange these folders just like normal orders, and even have folders in folders. We would be able to move orders into and out of folders. We would be able to name folders.
- The ability to drag work orders around, instead of just using the arrows.
- Shift-clicking the arrows moves work orders to the top or the bottom of the current folder.
- Ctrl-clicking the arrows moves work orders to the top or bottom of the orders that are currently visible on the screen.
- Whatever order we are currently hovering over gets highlighted -- the whole line.
- Material selection also highlights the currently-hovered line.
- The currently-selected material should also be highlighted, and it should be located at the top of the list.
- There should be a confirmation shown when removing an order, so that people don't accidentally delete a really complex order.
- The ability to pause a work order.
Work Orders Buttons:- TL;DR for this section: Rearrange the work order rows to the following: activity indicator, validation indicator, space, count buttons, title/count, workshop count buttons, workshop count, long space, material button, conditions button, space, up button, down button, space, pause button, X button.
- The quantity buttons should be moved close to the quantities, instead of on the opposite end of the screen -- atm, we can't see the quantity AND the button at the same time; our eyes just don't have that wide of a focal point. The best place for the quantity buttons, is probably to the left of the work order's name/count, as that is where they will be the closest to the count itself.
- If we move the count buttons to the left of the name/count, then for consistency, the workshop count buttons should be moved to the left of the workshop count.
- The work order activation indicator and the work order validation indicator should be next to each other, as they share the same semantic domain, and are also functionally linked. I like having them at the far-left, where the former is now. If the quantity buttons are also moved to the left, there should be a small space between these indicators and those buttons, as there is now between the latter indicator and the very same buttons.
- Since we've just moved everything else around anyway, I'd like to suggest having the arrows be to the direct left of the X button, since moving/removing are mildly similar. And I'd like there to be a small space to the right, between the two movement buttons and the X button, so that accidental misclicks don't remove the order. We'd also want a small space to the left, to visually separate the arrows from the material and conditions buttons.
- If you add a pause button, you might as well add it next to the X button, since they're semantically related. Since it's a common trope to have the X button be on an edge, the pause button would then go to the left of the X button.
- Since not every order has a material button, and since the above transformations have moved the material button and the conditions button next to the long space that appears after the workshop count, the most-aesthetic arrangement would be to have the materials button lie to the left of the rules button.
Misc:- When holding Alt plus a movement key, the screen should pan a SINGLE space at a time. Currently, it's a pain getting things perfectly centered in the viewport.
- Apply a pathing bonus of -100 to any tiles with water on them, for any creatures that are not amphibioius or aquatic. At present, everyone loves jumping off of waterfalls, and guests especially like to ignore manual prioritizations. Making this -100 be part of the core pathing algorithm would help to keep everyone and everything safe from waterfalls. It wouldn't be foolproof, but by all means it should help.
- Keybinds for everything (I know this one is thankfully already in the works.)
- Don't allow dwarves to use bedrooms that are part of a tavern -- those are supposed to be for guests to rent; that's why we added them to the tavern. The current situation forces you to build a room for every dwarf (all 200) before you can start building rooms to house tavern guests.
- When requesting my engraver to engrave a slab, I have to scroll through a GARGANTUAN list of EVERY dead named creature on the map (albeit thankfully in alphabetical order), with NO indication as to whom is who. I have two requests for this: #1 is that an image be shown of each creature, to the left of their names, so that I at LEAST know who is and isn't an animal; #2, is that the creatures be ordered, such that the following are taken into account: Ghost (worth 16 points), Unengraved (worth 8 points), Unburied (worth 4 points), Unmemorialized (worth 2 points), Sentient (worth 1 point). Each deceased individual receives a score from each parameter that is true for them; and then everyone is presented in a list from most points to fewest points. So unengraved ghosts would have the max of 31 points, and show at the top; while buried animals that have already been memorialized would have the min of 0 points, and so would show at the bottom.
- PLEASE add a confirmation when deleting zones, stockpiles, and burrows. I can't count the number of times I've misclicked and deleted these, and it always REALLY stings, because some of them take a LONG time to set up!
- Allow sorting by species and by sex in the Creatures tab.
- Toppled furniture notifications should have a "GOTO" button, like other notifications. Atm, we have to guess where the event took place, and find it manually.
- Remember the toggle state of the "Keep building after placement" checkbox; it's always annoying building after loading a save and realizing that box isn't checked anymore.
- Allow us to delete guilds/taverns/etc. Right now, if you accidentally create one, it exists PERMANENTLY.
- Allow us to rename our forts
- Allow us to declare independence from our parent civilization, and create our own.
- Allow us to change the order of burrows.
- Allow installing peg legs onto dwarves that have lost their natural legs.
- Add an option to autosave every month.
Okay, phew! That was a lot. If you read this far, THANK YOU for taking the time to do so! I'll doubtless think of more things as I continue to play (133hrs in the Steam version at the original time of posting), and I'll try to edit those into this post as I do so.
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Topic: A List of Suggestions for v50+ (Read 1023 times)