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[LucasUP]

I haven't played much StarCraft, but I think its a great example of Mouse/Keyboard use. The really good players always go for the keyboard shortcuts because they ARE faster. The mouse is still used for certain specific things, like moving units to a precise location extremely quickly, or going to an exact location on the map.

[SlowDog]

Not sure is this fits with what the OP is after, but:

Would it be possible, rather than there to be a total interface overhaul as such,  for Toady to expose/create interfaces for others to hook in to?

The obvious current example would be Dwarf Therapist, which (AIUI) pokes into memory structures that it's got to find on each release. If there were an exposed interface which was "set Dwarf Id (x) with labour Mining", and "read Dwarf(x) status", etc, there could be competing manager programs which then wouldn't be broken  with each release. Toady would obviously have to do work to create the interface and get the internal menu system using it himself, but if he did, it would be known to be complete and sufficient.

You could do some things by just allowing the existing menu structure to be driven by an external program; (init)->bpuukk<right><down> builds a 3x3 farm down from the current cursor position, for example. There'd need to be program feedback for workshops and the like, though.

[MaDeR Levap]

My 2 eurocents...

While I was happy with existence of CORE 51 (so Toady maybe will decide to decouple game world and interface), I don't think it will be implemented any time soon. At least we have resizable window now. There are still problems with it (many screens does not resize) and it needs fixed.

And about completely new interfaces, I think we should make these assumptions:

• Both mouse and keyboard should be supported. Ideally, one could play using only mouse, another only keyboard, and most will probably use both on various occassions and when more convienent.
• Project for minimum supported size (80x25), of course extendable for higher resolutions.
• Project with tile letters. We like challenges, aren't we?

In light of this, robolee'es interface is interesting.

In other UI-related news, I fully support getting rid of designating rooms from objects. I would like zones all the way. Hospital zone (already exists, will be mentioned here and there for comparison), bedroom zone, stockpile zone, workshop zone, etc... Place in bedroom zone cabinet and it will used to contain 50 xKitten socksx personally owned by dorf assigned to this zone. Place it in hospital zone and will be full of medical supplies. Place statue and it will do nothing except usual things (same as placed outside of any zone).

Downsides:

• Some relearning time needed from old gamers that are so used to current way that would have problem with this concept now, like Deathworks.

Upsides (some of them was mentioned earlier by other people):

• Easier to comprehend for new gamers in comparison to current system of zillion (okay, four) ways to do same thing.
• Allows to have important options in menu tree (not completely detached and hidden like now), like command "designate zone"->list of zone groups-> list of zones.
• Very elastic workshops (afaik possible now only with hospital): any size (declutter, anyone? in fact, clutter could be actually visible on map), incompleted with reduced functionality, requiring custom furniture (some of them could function as impassable tiles known from old workshops) etc.
• Modders heaven.

[Jiri Petru]

• Project for minimum supported size (80x25), of course extendable for higher resolutions.

Is there any reason for this besides Curses nostalgia? 80x25 using the default tileset is ridiculously small. And above that, why would you even measure the game screen in squares? The logical way seems to be to allow the user to set up a resolution and then fill the resolution with squares, not the other way around.

All: What do you think a sensible minimum resolution is? I went for 1024x768, allowing 800x600 might be nice but I don't think anyone actually uses it any more and the added screen space really makes a difference when designing interface.

EDIT:

Would it be possible, rather than there to be a total interface overhaul as such,  for Toady to expose/create interfaces for others to hook in to?

Is has been discussed, yes. The current situation seems to be that Toady has no intention to open any part of the code, probably not even make an API for others, and I'm not going to challenge it... not in this thread because it's potentially a very flamable issue. But feel free to open a new thread. 

[Footkerchief]

But feel free to open a new thread. 

Or not.  Read these quotes from Toady first, at a minimum:

Anyway, yes, this has been suggested before and Toady has made a couple direct responses.  Any supporters of the idea should definitely read these:

Spoiler: response (click to show/hide)

Somebody reported a post in this thread...  it didn't really matter which one.  A bit of chilling would be good.  There are a few people that have failed to chill.  There are quite a few statements here I'd respond to in person myself, and some very sharply, but internet discussions are more fragile and more prone to derailment.  So I'll try to stick to what seems to be the core of the matter.

Which for me (and granted, I'm picking a recent post -- I've read the thread, but don't remember when this came up first in this thread) is along the lines of what Jamuk said.  I'm being asked to assume risk.  I don't accept assessments of the risk as extraordinarily slight -- I've seen no sound basis for those assessments here.  I also don't think the currently proposed licensing/obfuscation method of putting the cat back into the bag would work -- with a principal downside being that it requires me to turn into an asshole who, after initially sanctioning the process, breaks everything that people have been working on.  Publishing an API and then trying to reel it back in just seems completely unworkable and irresponsible to me.  So the point is to assess risk upfront and then make a decision I can live with.

And right now, I have no idea what would happen.  This isn't the same as leaving my math job or adding the Z coordinate.  The first was a decision I had to make personally for my quality of life, and the second was a calculated risk which I didn't really have strong misgivings about (though some people are still pro-2D version, I think I can get most of them what they want over time in terms of gameplay difficulty, etc., though it'll never feel like it's quite on that rail again most likely).  Do I accept that third parties could improve the interface?  Of course.  Do I think I could do better than a third party myself, even over time?  No, not at all, though I can certainly improve on what I've got now to a large degree even without external input (which I, of course, love to receive).  So, initially, there's some attraction to the third party interface idea.

However, reflecting on the position I'd be in, there are things not to like about it.  How many threads were there about broken utilities when this version came out?  If more than half the player base comes in off a third party interface (and given how much the current interface sucks, and how much it is a source of first time downloaders dropping the game, this is not only imaginable, it is very, very likely), how would it be if it broke at each release?  There's no way to mitigate that without my direct involvement -- imagine a release down the line where you can suddenly move dwarven armies around on the world map, with a tactical view and various options.  That interface can't write itself, and it wouldn't be a quick patch, though certainly dedicated people, assuming that about whoever is maintaining the front-end at that time, can pull things together rapidly.  The pressure on me to work directly with them to get the interface out at the same time as the game itself would likely be immense and disruptive, given what little evidence we have from broken utilities.  That's not to say that I often get requests to work with utility writers (other than from the writers themselves, who I generally accommodate), but this would be at a different order of magnitude.

So what's the exact risk there then?  First, I don't want to work with other people.  So, assuming I don't do that, there's now a constant amount of pressure on me and a general disruption in the forums.  The latter could be mitigated with some announcements/guidelines, etc., but the pressure wouldn't go away.  Monetarily, it's impossible to say what on earth would happen, but if I supported the third party interface directly pre-release, I'd likely make more money, but I'd be unhappy.  If I didn't support it directly, but it was there, I'd still likely make more money, but I'd be unhappy.  That's not to say that I don't want to grow the audience and allow more people play the game, but I want to do it in a way with which I feel satisfied, even if that ends up being slower or just plain worse than a hypothetical third party alternative.  If someone, as a potential donor, thinks that's unreasonably selfish, that person shouldn't send me any more money than he or she thinks I've deserved for his or her enjoyment, just like everybody else.  Despite my dedication to this project, I'm unwilling to sacrifice my enjoyment of working on it for anything, including its quality or even its future release if it comes down to that.  That should be plainly obvious.  I'm not a slave.  Of course I do some things I don't like working on, with the interface and more.  I fulfill requests for features I'm not going to use myself.  However, again, the current proposal is of a different order of magnitude, with the potential of ruining it for me, and the end result is completely uncertain.

Given what I've seen here and there, it seems like a full third party interface might develop even without my involvement (rather than the various utilities we have now), but in that case, despite the same issues that might come up, at least it won't be a situation of my own creation that I feel a strong obligation to deal with, although the pressure would still be there.

Incidentally, in the proposed model, I still don't think I'd be able to bring code back in to the core project -- the first Kobold Quest port attempt showed that people bringing in code don't necessarily check or care about the licenses of the code they are swiping, and I can't assume that responsibility for them (it has stuff from Wine which shouldn't have been there).  Problems come up here with tilesets and so on too -- I know there've been a few cases where a contributor used somebody else's art and then it was put in a game, causing some legal trouble, though I don't have them at my immediate disposal.

I may have missed a lot, both problems I'm not thinking of and ways to handle them, since this gets complicated and is, due to lack of information, somewhat unspecified, but that's what I've got right now.

Spoiler: followup (click to show/hide)

I tried hard to put myself in your shoes and see things from your point of view, but apparently I failed to understand one thing (correct me if I'm wrong): the general atmosphere of the forums and feedback you receive from players is an integral part of your happiness. I was imagining that you could just let the mess settle down by itself after every release, but since I am not this forum's moderator, I can't really tell how it feels to have a big mess of threads about stuff not working.

It generally sucks to have a bunch of people complaining that things don't work, especially when there's something I can do about, that is, work with the interface modders more closely, having in this scenario sanctioned third party interfaces and released a public API.  It's the pressure that would make me unhappy.  It's good when the forum people are happy, but that wasn't what I was getting at so much.

When you speak of pressure, are you picturing direct pressure? I have a hard time imagining people screaming at you on the forums, except maybe for the occasional moron that can be ignored. Wouldn't people rather be putting pressure on the third-party developers to update their interface ASAP? But maybe you'd feel pressure nevertheless because you dislike seeing that people cannot play the game.

There would be direct pressure on me to work with third party developers -- this isn't about screaming.  This thread itself is direct pressure to work with third party developers (or at least get the ball rolling).  That isn't to say I disagree about you posting it.  I'm simply stating what it is, and I think that yes, there'd be a lot more of this, a lot more I'd have to reply to, and a lot of...  pressure.  Additionally, I'm not just talking about external pressure, in fact, principally not -- having created the situation, I would feel some obligation to make it run as smoothly as possible, and I would rapidly become irritated by this, because it's some of my least favorite kinds of work.

One thing I'd like to point out, though, is that you seem to think that a single interface, "The front-end", would come out of third-party development. Even though that's possible, open-source usually seems to bring diversity (look at the number of linux distros), especially in a single-player game where people don't have to use compatible clients, so they can play together. So I think we'd likely see an improved ascii client, a 2d tiles client, an isometric client, a 3d client, and maybe several of each one. In my view it would distribute the uproar, so that at least not everybody would be complaining about the same thing  . But I don't know if you see that as a relief.
[emphasis added]

He he, of course not.  It's worse actually -- more parties to work with.

Lastly, I may have a good way of mitigating the breakage of third-party clients at every release, without requiring your direct involvement. Assuming that you develop your own open-source interface at the same time as your closed-source server, you would likely publish your interface changes to a public SVN server. You would probably do it incrementally, at the rate of one or several commits a day - akin to backing up your work whenever you've made a step. In that case, you can bet that enthusiastic developers will watch those changes keenly, to see what's going on with the interface. This means that third-party client makers will already know that moving "dwarven armies around on the world map, with a tactical view and various options" is coming for the next version (from your very detailed dev notes), so they'll have time to plan which kind of interface they want to provide for that. And since they'll see the necessary code changes evolve gradually, because you'll always need an up-to-date interface for bugfixing, they'll be able to follow closely your development. They might have to adapt to your last minute changes, but otherwise I believe that the days of bugfixing prior to release could be enough for some of them to finalize their clients on time.
Now of course, you have to feel comfortable with that way of working.

Yeah, this somewhat mitigates breakage with those third parties that are active and approaching the situation with some dedication, but the trade-off of working with my day-to-day changes under that sort of scrutiny is definitely a minus for me, and I don't think it could really happen in a vacuum without questions about changes and so on, or without me feeling like I have to provide some sort of documentation as I add things.  I don't know if that sounds like quibbling, but I can't easily overstate how much I hate managing code or collaborating on code or anything along those lines.

Additionally, I think breakages would still happen, especially when staff leave projects hanging (work obligations, got tired of it, vacations, etc.), and it wouldn't change the fundamental situation I'm imagining, although in the case of project abandonment or delays with staffing, where there isn't pressure to work with the (missing) people in question, it's more the pressure to incorporate changes back into the base API, which as I stated in my previous long post, I wouldn't be able to do without potential legal problems.


I don't mean to write as if I'm sure about any of this, but once I drop this bomb in my project, I can see every day becoming "oh man, what a goddamn hassle" instead of what I've got now, which has less of that.  Again, I think the OP is justified in starting this thread, so I'm not raising that as an issue, but I've also spent some hours in here, reading posts and composing these replies.  That stuff just starts to magnify, and I'll either end up ignoring people I don't feel like I should be ignoring, or not ignoring people to the detriment of the core game itself and my own well-being.

What I would like to hear from Toady is what kind of graphics he has in mind for when he gets to the interface overhaul. That way we could at least prepare some sprites ahead of time and have nearly complete graphics sets as soon as the version with the new interface comes out. I personally waste a lot of my free time doodling in GIMP, so I might as well do something useful.

Depending on the stage of the interface overhaul, ultimately I'm going to be support 2D tilesets (probably in dimensions of multiples of 4 because I'm lazy with image file headers).  So if you want to draw up some 32x32s or something, you won't be wasting your time, I think.  It should be fairly straightforward to support single z-slice isometric stuff as well, once I get that going, since I'd just have to change the print locations and print order, though transparency decisions are probably annoying, and it's slightly more annoying to get multilayer isometric stuff going, since people are going to want various options about display there, so I don't really have a clear opinion on the future of isometric.  The support for a resizeable viewport/window is definite, but nothing has been decided on layering there (for instance, critters walking over grass tiles, that kind of thing -- people will want more and more out of this system, such as inventory and wound displays, and I'm not sure where lines will be drawn, or where it will bog down, anyway).

Also some earlier stuff:

Spoiler: part 1 (click to show/hide)

This has come up before, but I don't remember if I've actually entered into a discussion on it.  As it stands, without knowing much about it, my issues are as follows:

It seems like I'd have to publish all my class definitions to make this practical.  I don't anything about reverse engineering, but it doesn't seem far from opening up the source at that point.

The class definitions would also not document and otherwise support themselves, and there would be pressure on me to do so, which is not a one-time cost.

In fact, if a third party front-end becomes popular, I think I'd be forced into relationship or even a state of dependence on the third party that I'm not comfortable with.  And I don't think we can just gloss over version compatibility.  Ignoring it or handling it before releases -- either approach has ramifications for me.

Certainly players would benefit from having third party front-ends.  They'd benefit from open source and third party back-ends too.  If it means cutting myself out of my own game, I'm not going to support it.

I also don't know anything about scripting, and it's tough for me to say whether time spent learning a scripting language, implementing scripts and supporting third party front-ends is better spent adding modestly to the interface myself.

Spoiler: part 2 (click to show/hide)

"You break everything, we fix it, it's all good."

I don't think it's that simple.  Even the utilities that people use cause some grief when they are broken -- it would be far worse for a popular front-end.  If the majority of the player base has to wait after each release for third party fixes to a broken front-end that may or may not even happen, it puts a lot of pressure on me to resolve the issue by working more closely with the third party, a completely unknown entity that happens to maintain the front-end most people use.  It would be difficult for me to retain my independence once in that position.

I think somebody mentioned in an email discussion I had that in that case I should just incorporate some of the more popular aspects of third party interfaces back into the main release in order to avoid forming that kind of tie and to avoid serious bumps in playability for front-end users after each release, but I don't know the legal ramifications of that, and my first impression is that I'd be setting myself up for trouble, though some major publishers seem to do this without issue from what little I know about it.

I can vaguely see how something could be set up to automatically prepare a lot of this now, but it still seems like the functions etc. that are created would need to be documented to be useful, especially if the front-end needs to be patched quickly.  If variables are removed or changed around, it seems like the incompatibility for front-ends relying on a previous version of the automatically generated system could be pretty severe.

Made it this far?  Here are previous threads we've had (and I probably missed some):

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30070.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=4753.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=28068.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=21806.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=46189.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=32054.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=34132.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=56066.0

[RAM]

I haven't played much StarCraft, but I think its a great example of Mouse/Keyboard use. The really good players always go for the keyboard shortcuts because they ARE faster. The mouse is still used for certain specific things, like moving units to a precise location extremely quickly, or going to an exact location on the map.

Starcraft is %100 mouse-controlled, with some keyboard alternatives to some buttons if you want them. Starcraft uses larger individual grid-points than DF, so mouse control is more precise than it would be in DF, and keyboard selection would be faster than in DF. But Starcraft is a continuous session, the mouse is faster for imprecise selection and speed is everything in Starcraft. I am happy with the way that DF pauses when I am doing something, and I don't want a mouse jerk to mess up my zone selection, I fully support a combination of control schemes, but I do not want to be forced to use a mouse. Not that my opinion matters much in the grand scheme of things...

[zwei]

I haven't played much StarCraft, but I think its a great example of Mouse/Keyboard use. The really good players always go for the keyboard shortcuts because they ARE faster. The mouse is still used for certain specific things, like moving units to a precise location extremely quickly, or going to an exact location on the map.

Basically, mouse is superior for inputing positional data, keyboard for commands.

One of bad things about DF interface is that keyboard is used for navigating in game map and placing stuff, even with shift-arrows, it is just slow and inefficient.

I agree that the game would need a variable width fonts but it would have to be like in the above video (... in the link), not a true type font, sorry if anyone finds this insulting but the fonts in all the other mock-ups are horrible, any game font should either be custom made or follow the aesthetics of the game, just using something like arial in a game drastically reduces the quality IMO.

While Arial usage is dreadfull, but there is nothig wrong with using TT fonts in general. Custom made bitmap fonts are usually even more ugly (see pretty much any random tileset). Hell, you really want some features like kerning and already figured out letter spacing (which is terrible in most custom made fonts). There is no point in throwing away features ...
 
As far as aesthetics goes, game does not have any. I would be fond of, for example, 19th century adventure book style. This one is also free to download and personal and commercial use btw.

[sadis]

This is kind of what I wanted with the mouse support in my mock-up, I was thinking about using the mouse to be able to designate anything like walls and so forth (though I think instead of the walls being L shaped it should be rectangular).

Why not make it so that you can select the amount of sides (or angles) with a number key.

You start drawing a wall and it does only straight line until you press 2 (for two sides), and now you're drawing L-shape. By pressing 4 you can draw rectangle. 3 would be somewhat harder. It should draw C-shape but I'm not sure how it should select which side is left open. Maybe the side next to start point that is in clockwise direction from cursor, like this:

Code: [Select]

C = cursor, S = startpoint

Cxxxxxxxxx     |     x        S     |     Sxxxxxxxxx     |     xxxxxxxxxC
x              |     x        x     |              x     |     x        x
x              |     x        x     |              x     |     x        x
x              |     x        x     |              x     |     x        x
xxxxxxxxxS     |     Cxxxxxxxxx     |     xxxxxxxxxC     |     S        x
So that you would always have the open side next to where you started and would just draw depth and width from there. But this is somewhat off-topic.

[Jiri Petru]

Wouldn't it be easier to simply draw an L first and then a line?

[robolee]

The point is that if its a box perimeter then you can just remove what you don't need, that's gotta be easier than predicting or designating which way the L/U will face. (and the fact that I can't remember one instance of me making an L or U shaped wall  (the only use would be if you were building onto a mountain face).

[Jiri Petru]

For inspiration: the creator of Goblin Camp posted a demonstration of simple, yet effective take on standing production orders.

[sweitx]

The point is that if its a box perimeter then you can just remove what you don't need, that's gotta be easier than predicting or designating which way the L/U will face. (and the fact that I can't remember one instance of me making an L or U shaped wall  (the only use would be if you were building onto a mountain face).

I think that's a good idea, a U-shaped box just need two draws, a box with a line removal.  L-shaped box is just 2-lines, etc.
One can even envision a way to handle other shapes, such as circle, ellipses, etc.

Another interesting thought!  A view in different dimension!  Say the ability to see/designate build in your fortress from the side.
Going to make this into a separate suggestion.

[Draco18s]

One can even envision a way to handle other shapes, such as circle, ellipses, etc.

If I recall correctly from CAD software there are something like five different ways to designate a circle.

Tangent-Tangent-Tangent
Tangent-Tangent-Radius
Center-Radius
Three points
Two-point diameter

[Jiri Petru]

How to handle Material Selection
Now the Workshop Material Selection topped the eternal voting and was implemented to the upcoming features list, I started thinking about how to handle it in terms of interface. I wanted to draw a mockup, but the solution is so simple it doesn't even need one.

Use the uniform system for workshop items!
You could call them "recipes" instead of uniforms or whatever.

Each workshop now comes with a list of "recipes" that can be made there. But you could expand the list by defining your own recipes. You would then name them and they would appear in the menu. It's the same thing as with uniforms, except you wouldn't be able to delete the defaults.

Let's take craftsdwarves workshops, for example. The default list would look something like this (from the top of my head)
- cloth crafts
- decorate with bone
- decorate with horn/ivory
- decorate with pearl
- decorate with shell
- horn/ivory crafts
- leather crafts
- pearl crafts
- rock crafts
- rock mugs
- rock short sword
- shell leggings
- shell gauntlets
- totem

Now if I wanted to create something very specific, I would click "Add a new recipe". Which would bring up a new screen, something like the uniform definition screen. This screen would probably be very complicated, but in the end, I'd define something like "Carp bone helm" + "studded with cow horns" + "encrusted with red sapphires" + "bands of rose gold"... name my creation "horned helmet" and save.

The order list would then look:
- cloth crafts
- decorate with bone
- decorate with horn/ivory
- decorate with pearl
- decorate with shell
- horned helmet
- horn/ivory crafts
- leather crafts
- pearl crafts
- rock crafts
- rock mugs
- rock short sword
- shell leggings
- shell gauntlets
- totem

Easy peasy!

The uniform system has no cons, only pros! It remembers all your recipes (and if you don't want them remembered, simply delete them). And most important of all, it makes material selection completely optional. We definitely don't want to force the player to choose a material every time he orders something. The material selection screen should be something a player could go 100 % without, they could play the whole game without opening it once.

The uniforms/recipes could also be exportable and transferrable between games!

[zwei]

...

While we are at it, i would also like ability to "clone item" - say, i have this golden breastplate with image of lion in rubies in it and decide i want several, so i let my dwarves examine it and create recipe for it.

Also, recipe should be able to create several items: For example, "full clothing" recipe with contains leather boots, socks, trousers, etc..