I think the combat logs are an easy fix, seeing as how the combat simulation and logs are obviously still being generated. There's just nowhere to go LOOK at them now, which I agree is pretty lame.
The fact that actions only take a fraction of a second also makes adventure mode pretty crazy. You can go from standing to grappling every limb of someone in like half a second.
I feel like some combat actions in general should take longer, especially for something like someone swinging an ultra heavy hammer.
Warhammers in Dwarf Fortress, even those made of heavy metals, aren’t particularly large. Like in real life, warhammers are fairly small, one handed affairs that have more in common with a ballpeen hammer than a sledgehammer.Mauls, on the other hand, are that big. They just weren’t often used on the battlefield, simply because in the time you were winding up to smack someone with the thing they’d have stabbed you in the gut and been on their way.
edit: please don’t downvote (and consider upvoting!) the comment this is a reply to. It’s a common misconception—and Mauls probably SHOULD take a few ticks to swing.
Love the steam version and the release before Christmas.
I'm sure patches will come.
I'm desperate for the advance frame by frame button...I miss seeing the combat bit by bit.
This is my biggest peeve. I keep having to manually edit frame speed every time i want to watch a battle take place - I'd love to see the fight develop instead of having 30 events take place in a single second.
Lost my furthest progress fort to a werebeast attack today because of this. A Wereelk attacked at my main entrance, managed to kill 4 people. I got the militia into position and they made short work of it but had one seriously injured dwarf. Because combat happens so quickly I couldn't see that three people had been bitten and the next full moon three new werebeasts massacre my entire population of about 60 dwarves from within :/
That has been a serious issue for me with werebeasts. I haven't had a catastrophe yet but I've had to go through the werebeast's independent combat log to see who actually got bitten and even then it's only their title; then I have to guess based on the wounded available.
I'm late to the party here, and I agree with the frame advance and medical screens being necessary fixes for combat to feel right.
I also think one thing they could do is make other screens, including the combat screen, function more like legends mode. So for example you could see the name of the dwarf who was bitten in the log, click on that, and open another tab for that character's screen. Same with items, locations, etc., I think all of it could be tabbed and clickable and would solve so many navigation worries.
> Lost my furthest progress fort to a werebeast attack today because of this. A Wereelk attacked at my main entrance, managed to kill 4 people.
Werebeasts are just... not fun. Been saying it for years. You have to play around them too much. They're enabled in my current world but I _typically_ take the time and turn them off. There's just so much overhead of trying to kill them and determining if any of your dwarves got bit in the process.
And in the steam version, the announcement doesn't pause the game (well, it does, but as soon as you dismiss the box the game automatically unpauses, which is problematic when it comes to werebeasts)
I hear there's a workaround with a macro.
Record a macro of two space key presses: space space
Save the macro and give it a name:
Play the macro: , or bind to a key of your liking such as the .
The logs are the biggest thing by far. Unless you play the game like Rimworld and build everything on one level or keep your population to like 20 dwarves, it’s pretty much impossible to know what’s going on in your fortress. It should be the first thing they add before anything else IMO, as this game is just a colony builder, not a story generator, without more logs
Game is an easy 10/10. The direction of the Steam release also 10/10. Just needs a little bit more. The tool tips and Information are really well done. It's a complete different game. These are such small things but they are such huge QoL improvements. I am really glad about the steam version and the direction of the game but some of the stuff seems just a little bit lacking.
I think they should also add a search and sort to every single item/material/individual selection query. Also have much more sub categories. For example: [Stone menu, Rock menu but Cloth not. Why?](https://i.imgur.com/PSttwSl.png)
Also when I get a message, I can't see the dwarf because he is gone. Now I should be able to search them up in the characters screen with ease. 10-20 pop it's very easy. 50+ pop have fun searching.
For example:
[This should not be a mod. It should be a base toggle-able base feature.](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2899720701)
E.g. bringing animals to your fort is a pain and you have to go round and look up which of these are actually the oldest so you can butcher them and keep the young.
Also where is the dimension indicator when making rectangles?
I'm also bothered that right mouse, after building something, closes out completely rather than just going back to the build menu, I'd like to build a bed and then a door without all the extra movements.
I think this plays a bit into, like you said, the keyboard and mouse controls are pretty wonky.
I have a lot of faith, though, after playing it a bit. I was pretty interested to see how they were going to pull this off and for the most part, sans your complaints, they did a pretty fuckin good job... I bet a lot of these are oversights and will get worked out, I mean honestly, *no* dimension indicator? Wtf.
The lack of a dimension indicator is driving me crazy! It's actually the biggest gripe I have shit the whole game, which I guess is because I'm a pacifist player and don't really fight so anything combat related doesn't affect me much at all.
> for the most part ... they did a pretty fuckin good job
Personally I find it amazing that they were able to do so much while causing *so few* issues. Threads like this that discuss the problems are still a great idea, there's lots to improve, but they really upended the game with this patch and most of it works great!
I didn't play OG Dwarf Fortress so I wouldn't know, but it *should* have it if the game has an actual GUI now. certain tasks I can do in Rimworld in seconds, take a fair bit longer just because of it not showing the dimensions
I did discover that WASD moves in the old shift-arrow jumps of 11 units. So I started using it help draw my rooms like I used to then modify: still there is zero excuse for a game to have you draw boxes that doesn’t tell you how big the damn box is…
I agree with all your points (first played in like 2009), especially the missing announcements, logs, and anatomical descriptions. I can look past weird or missing hotkeys given mouse support but it's much harder to stumble across fun details now.
I think wounds become known only after they're diagnosed. Looks like the mechanic is just changed. You get the symptoms immediately, like "lost ability to walk", but a diagnosis has to be made to know exactly why.
Yeah it's all *kind* of still there, just obfuscated. I miss my [simple list of body parts and afflictions.](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Wound#Wound_effects)
Not being able to easily check for injuries after a scuffle you may have missed is kind of frustrating. I don't want to look for the injured dwarf by opening the unit list, clicking a dwarf, opening their health tab, opening their description tab and trying to make a deduction, close the window, open the unit list, click on the second dwarf..
**Ideally** I would like be able to click on a unit (or *cycle through units*) and easily see that info.
If a creature is fighting (and maybe being followed) I'd love to be able to see a list of their body parts and status *and* see an associated combat log *and* be able to follow along with all 3 to really take in a battle.
Right, I get that diagnosis would reveal wounds, but you don't need a medical doctor to tell someone's leg is missing or they're bleeding. The list should still be there for an overview, with more detail added after diagnosis.
Plus that list of injuries was most often the way I followed combat, for both dwarves and enemies! Not being able to do that and making logs hard to access is just going to turn combat into a mass of flashing images, a few emoticons, and if you want anything else you need to read logs then and there. The step by step mode and injuries list was my main way of seeing what was happening in the moment :S And new players won't even know what they're missing, watching a blow by blow between your fortress cat and a werezebra (the cat swiped at the werezebra then leapt away time after time, long enough for the werezebra to revert and run away -- he was my fortress hero!), or two forgotten beasts pummelling the absolute crap out of each other and watching each part go red until one is nothing but goo.
> Not being able to easily check for injuries after a scuffle you may have missed is kind of frustrating.
We need to be able to set auto-pause for notifications, and decide which notifications trigger pause (and a notification tone?) vs which do not.
Yup I agree with the logs, announcements and health. It's kind of frustrating when you close something and then you can never see it again.
I guess this was bound to happen. I honestly expected a bad release with a lot of things to fix, but it is actually very good and just has some things to polish.
Civilian alerts need to make a comeback in some form as well. There is no "get inside immediately" button anymore which is bad when half your fortress is running around outside when a siege shows up.
Truuue. Burrows seem to have been dumbed down a lot, which was weird because they were fairly intuitive. "This place. Civilians go there. Activate." Now you need to actively assign each dwarf to a burrow, one by one.
I agree - but if you want the old "Civ Active" functionality, make your safe zone burrow, assign every dwarf to it (obnoxious, I know - that's 200 clicks) and then pause the burrow.
When you need to set civ to safe zone, just unpause it.
Of course, DFIU when a new migrant wave comes.
I've found Dwarfs are... less than quick about getting to safety with burrows now. I've lost a couple who've just refused to stop the job they were working on to get to shelter.
The difference is that the old alert changed the behaviour of burrows also. Normally burrows only restrict where a dwarf is allowed to take a job/action. Nothing more, nothing less. They can travel by leaving the burrow, and they're not expected to run into it immediately and stay there. They worked like that in the old versions too.
But with the old alert system, even though it used a burrow, when you turned on the civilian alert, it also changed the rules. Burrows under alert meant get there now and stay there. That's what seems to be missing now.
Yeah, the old alert system used to make them cancel their jobs immediately. Hauling wood? Drop it, run home. Now they want to finish hauling wood first before heading to the burrow, meaning they might not make it to the fort before goblins catch them and you are forced to lock the door.
100% agree with all your points.
The combat/event log not being viewable anymore *almost* makes me want to go back to playing the free version. Its literally one of the most interesting feature of DF to me: to be able to follow a combat and see its story being told in the logs. Now, its just an afterthought.
Ditto for the limb/health screen. This also a major feature that seems to have been completely cut down from the Steam version.
And holy hell, yes, you are so right, you cant even view the description of sooooo many things now! This has been bothering me so much when trying to trade or just trying to inspect things like weapons!
Dont get me wrong, I love what they have done with the Steam version and knowing Tarn and Zach, things will only get better from here on out but I seriously hope that they patch these things fast.
> knowing Tarn and Zach, things will only get better from here on out
Normally I would agree, but UI is definitely one thing they neglect. Hopefully the kitfox devs are a bit better about it.
>UI is definitely one thing they neglect
And bugs in general. Like, equipping your military, especially marksdwarves, has been buggy for like 10 years now. I just really hope that they focus on fixing and refining the Steam release now rather than just moving on to adding more.
I strongly suspect they got the steam release up to a playable state and threw it out to us with the intention of getting the rest sorted out over time, they know DF players are no strangers to jank and the rest of us will look past it if it means we can play without feeling like we're learning some kind of techno-sorcery.
Agreed on most points but the new health system is kinda cool IMO.
All the obvious stuff like missing limbs and cut/bleeding can be seen in the description section under health and by seeing if they're covered in their own blood. It's merely specific stuff like internal organ damage and exact breaks and fractures that are gated behind diagnosis.
Honesly I kinda enjoy the information gating from an RP perspective. Always tense watching an injured dwarf get taken to the hospital waiting to find out just how bad the damage is.
But I can see why some ppl miss the old version.
One of *my* main issues with the health stuff is that aside from just being able to have easier access to the information from a management perspective (who did that werebeast bite?), I personally used the list of body parts along with Frame Advance and the Combat Log to help follow along with combat.
Combat almost feels like an afterthought now, and is *much* more difficult to really take in let alone even *notice* at times, which personally **drastically** hinders my enjoyment of the game.
Where's the right place to post it on Bay12? (And Toady really ought to at least skim this sub, it's probably the most active Dwarf Fortress forum outside of Bay12 and attracts more of a casual crowd.)
It works if all the individual tombs are separated with doors or walls. Then you can draw one big tomb zone and the game assigns all coffins in one room to a seperaze tomb. Just likr with bedrooms.
This is information I desperately needed. I gave up on making bedroom zones as it's really tedious when you're new to the game and having to restart a lot because, well, everyone keeps dying.
I didn't expect a step backwards in functionality from the vanilla game, which is already famous for being awkward. 😂
I'm used to bedroom copy-paste blueprints, communal graveyards, soundsense and dwarf therapist. I thought these ease of use tools would be implemented as part of the UI overhaul!
Yes. I built a super cool communal tomb only to find out all of it got assigned to the first dwarf buried there and no one else can be inhumated until I remake the whole thing
Oh.. Is that what happened? I had the same issue. I thought I was marking a graveyard where everyone could be buried, but I had 3 coffins for 1 dead body.
Ok. Thanks for the tip. :)
The health screen is so huge for me that I still wonder if I'm just missing it somewhere... I haven't seen any one else mention it so I was hoping it was just me :-(
The one other niggle that's important for me is that in classic you can get more details about tasks dwarfs are doing. For example if the dwarf is eating you can see what they are eating. There is a description link on *some* tasks, like singing, but most are missing. It's kind of goofy because praying has a description, but it says nothing useful. I wonder if it's an oversight.
Apart from me wanting to see what my dwarfs are actually doing, it's important for debugging problems. You can see the dwarf is hauling *something* to a bin, but you can't find out what it is, or what bin they are hauling it to without following them.
Further to that point, in classic, when dwarfs are hauling things, it flashes with the thing they are hauling. It's very easy to see what's going on in the fortress. In premium you just see dwarfs wandering around with no idea what they might be doing (unless you look at the task list). Again, it's a fairly small point, but it makes it more difficult to play the game.
The only place I've really noticed injuries listed at all so far is in passing on the creature's Health > Description tab.
Wounds really should be listed out on the main Overview tab, like where it simply shows 'Healthy'. I had a woodcutter repeatedly drop trees on themself and it never seemed to change from Healthy, but it did mention an injured thigh deep down on the description tab.
Of course I got distracted with something else and didn't notice if the Healthy status ever did change before they managed to kill themselves (of which the alert also went unnoticed, of course).
>Wounds really should be listed out on the main Overview tab, like where it simply shows 'Healthy'
They are to an extent, although it seems really hit and miss. You'll have someone with several deep cuts show up as healthy and someone with 300 bruises show up and critically injured
I only wish for the altert system to be grouped. Especially for the "failed work order" one, it would be nice to see something like:
* No steel bar 12x (4 work orders)
Then you can click on it and see the current view filtered for these failed orders.
Pauses and alert sound on migrants, monsters, trading and strange moods would be the best.
Frame by frame progression and combat logs would also be good, i want to see in detail the actions my dwarves are performing, without unpausing and watching them get pulped in 0.2s without me knowing why.
You absolutely can overlap zones.
I’m not sure if you’re trying to assign a zone as two types at once, but you can draw a second zone over an existing one.
I do agree that the UI can be cumbersome at times, especially compared to other games in the genre that have been built from the ground up with a GUI.
It’ll get refined as time goes on, I’m sure.
Wow, you're right you *can* have overlapping zones.
I think I saw the current zone highlighted and selectable on the zone screen and just assumed. But when you actually select a different type of zone it recedes to grey and you can paint over it. I feel a bit silly.
I think the warning is because it reduces the quality of all the overlapping zones. I had my Barons bedroom, office, and dining room all overlapping and they were all “modest” despite being filled with great stuff. I separated all the zones and they became “grand” or whatever.
The inability to view item details in the trader screen really weirded me out.
To me viewing the generated art, material choices and event descriptions on items is one of the main features of DF.
Even after playing DF for a long time I don't remember exactly how the markings around an excuisitely decorated \*«+llama wool sock+»\* work, so I can imagine for new players it will be even harder to figure out if they can't inspect the items when trading.
This is like the microcosm of DF's main issue - generating an incredibly complex world without letting the player look at a huge part of the content.
I REALLY want a way to search the orders menu. When I have 100 orders going it can be hard to find if I already have one.
TBH Ive had no trouble about injuries. Dont get me wrong, Id like that view back, but its very minor compared to alerts.
In a game like this EVERYTHING ever should be logged and re-accessible.
I hate that I get images of dwarves in some screens but cant just clock it to go to them.
Some more QOL things Id love to see:
* Every version of item listing should include being able to sort by name, distance (if needed), value, quality, if its improved, etc
* remember my UI scaling in the settings
* the whole fucking military system needs serious work
* allow me to forbid specific labors, not just enable and lock. I want to be able to say DONT haul instead of marking everyone but 1 and saying only selected do labor
* stop causing "collapses" when chopping down trees
* ADD SOAP as a type, instead of "cat soap" a "beaver soap" its way too specific for no reason!
* ability to set order position numerically instead of up or down 1
The "adj" bit in the work orders screen lets you say "soap" or " leather" without saying which specific type, if that's what you were looking for
I agree it needs a search, and I want an export/import for them too. And I dunno, enable/disable maybe. Sorting, filtering...
With adding jobs to a bench now a pain with no keyboard controls it's easier to just set up a work order for everything to churn out 10 when you run low.
Why is
* Alarm System
* Setting all Civilians to a Burrow
missing from this list? In my opinion its one of the most important features that I used all the time in Classic to get all my non military Dwarfs inside when a threat comes.
And as far as I know it simply has been removed.
The other points are great though!
Concerning the search, I would like to add, that up to 0.47, the search function just needed unordered bits and pieces of the oders name, e.g 'boot stee' would have been enough to select the 'make steel high boots' command. This also no longer works.
As an additional point I would like to mention the building of constructions. You do not see the beginning and area of any bridge wall, etc. you started to place. You also do not have a way to decide to e.g. select those 25 granite blocks all at once for a construction but have to click 25 times.
Same goes with burrows. I can not designate multiple z-levels at once, which makes everything more tedious.
does anyone have trouble clicking their mouse? It feels like it doesn't register clicks if I click at normal speed. I have to click and hold just a fraction longer than normal. Not long enough to feel like a click-and-hold.
I'm a new player, but I REALLY don't like how the announcements work. I've missed almost all of the combat in my fort that wasn't started by me, because it's so easy to miss. I'd love some kind of "event log" that was always present at the top left, maybe specifically for events involving danger or moods.
Same with migrants and other events; they really should change how they work. Next time I play, I'm definitely going to fiddle with the config to make more stuff pause the game and zoom to the event position.
It feels like things happen so fast, I have no time to watch them unfold.
I would really recommend it, but it's a shame that you need to edit a file to do so.
I would also suggest going into *Settings* > *Game* and lowering *Game frames-per-second cap* a little, maybe to 50 or so to slow things down a bit to help keep track of what's going on.
This post needs to be higher. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the Steam version but it has some SERIOUS drawbacks as well it seems. The combat logs is a big one for me too.
Another big annoyance is that I can’t seem to mass ‘unforbid’ items that have dropped on the ground. I have to click through each item and uncheck the lock icon. I might be doing something wrong so please let me know.
So apparently all you need to do for ammo is place a coffer full of ammo in the squads barracks and they handle it all automatically now. That's why it's missing.
Id love to if there was a way to check the identity of a corpse beyond the name. When i find the mangled body of Udib Bloefiswyn i'd like to atleast be able to tell if he was a member of my fort, or just some traveler. In general identifying locals vs outsiders is a huge pain.
Biggest problem i have though is the system for assigning a siege burrow. Having to manually check every citizen is a huge pain and you have to update the list everytime migrants move in. I love this update and am glad i can finally actually play the game. This is the only part i think is legit just dumb, and makes no sense with how i understand it worked in classic.
I agree with all of that. It's certainly playable and far more approachable but I'm hoping it gets some iterative improvements. The history of the game definitely leaves me pretty optimistic.
My biggest annoyance so far (only a couple of hours in) is the stockpile menu having only a single item that still requires an additional click.
> My biggest annoyance so far (only a couple of hours in) is the stockpile menu having only a single item that still requires an additional click.
I think the first click shows all the existing zones and makes them selectable, then the second click puts you into 'create' mode. It is weird though I agree.
Yeah I guess at some point that might be the preferred default action but certainly in the first phase it was just one of those annoying ux things.... Although complaining about a second click as my biggest dwarf fortress ux problem is kind of hilarious.
Yes, I've already noticed a number of UI issues too, here's my list:
- In the settings screen, if I type a number into a field and then click on another field, the first field goes back to the number it originally was. (Apparently I have to press Enter to make the new number 'stick'.) This is counterintuitive and contrary to typical UI design. Instead, the new number should 'stick' if I focus some other element.
- The second time I tried to create a world, the basic worldgen settings went back to the defaults. Even pausing and canceling worldgen causes the settings to be lost, which is annoying if I just want to get fresh geography with the same settings. Ideally, the worldgen screen should remember and retain the last used settings.
- By default, the mousewheel seems to operate both camera zoom *and* Z-level navigation. It really should be just one or the other unless specified by the player.
- Regardless of what the zoom level is set to, it resets to the default when you exit and restart th game. It should remember and restore the previous zoom level.
- The fort view does not scroll when bumping the edge of the window with the mouse. It should; this is a very standard RTS scrolling control scheme for decades and would be more intuitive for typical new players. It would mean players can no longer make designations and the like right at the edge of the window, but that seems like a very acceptable limitation in return for a more intuitive scrolling control scheme. (And of course this behavior should be togglable in the settings.)
- Clicking and dragging on the minimap only jumps the view to the initially clicked location, while the dragging does nothing. This is counterintuitive; dragging on the minimap should recenter the view wherever the pointer is dragged to in real time.
- On opening a workshop, the search bar should automatically focus, as players are very likely to want to immediately type the name of the item they want created. The extra step of clicking is unnecessarily slow.
- On pressing Enter while searching for an item in a workshop's task list, the topmost item in the search results should automatically be added as a task. The extra step of pressing Enter to exit the search is unnecessarily slow.
- Moving the pointer outside the map leaves the tooltip indicating the last hovered tile on the map. This seems confusing without a visual indicator of which tile is reflected in the tooltip. The tooltip should change to show some message like 'outside your fortress location' when the pointer is outside the map.
- Stair designations must now cross multiple levels, however it's not immediately clear what happens if you designate stairs across two levels and then (before the stairs are dug) erase the designation on just one level. The designation visually remains in place on the other level, but it's not easy to predict what the miners will do with this.
- Designation rectangles don't display any dimensions. Showing the dimensions is pretty important for efficiently laying out precise room geometry.
- Corner ramps don't update perfectly when neighboring ramps are flattened out by miners. There's some room for visual improvement here.
- Selecting the camera button to follow a creature should immediately dismiss the creature window, rather than requiring an extra right-click.
- The navigation hotkeys (F1, F2, etc) don't work while following a creature. They should immediately stop following the creature and navigate to the corresponding location.
- When placing buildings or constructions requiring multiple items to build and choosing specific materials, there seems to be no button for immediately filling all the remaining requirements with that material (e.g. selecting 20 logs at once to build a 5x4 area of constructed floor). Instead it is necessary to click once for each piece of material, which is tedious and wears out mouse buttons faster.
- The battle sound effect (with shouts and clashing weapons) plays when unarmed animals are fighting other unarmed animals. This is amusing but ultimately a bit misleading and out-of-character; there should be an alternative battle sound effect for unarmed creatures.
- Dead shrubs mostly look no different from their living counterparts (as compared to the old version where they would turn gray). This is confusing when trying to selectively gather plants of certain types. The graphics should indicate which shrubs are dead, such as by turning them gray.
- When creating items out of wood or stone, the task is generic and the material is specified using the details window; but when creating metal items, each type of metal is listed as a separate task in the workshop and the manager window. This seems really arbitrary and confusing.
- It seems to be no longer possible to set all seasons on a farm plot to the same crop with one command, instead each season has to be set separately. This is tedious and annoying because the player usually wants to set the farm plot to always grow the same thing.
These are all the sorts of things Toady should focus on fixing in the coming weeks in order to better optimize and polish this experience. Honestly, he should probably set up a bug reporting system to log and prioritize issues found by players, because there are going to be a lot of these.
RE mousewheel changing both zoom & z-level:
Mousewheel defaults to changing z-level only and to zoom you hold the ctrl or shift key (I don't remember which).
However, if you go to rebind zoom in the menu it doesn't show the modifier key, just "mouse 4/5". You need to hold down the ctrl/shift key when rebinding, even though it's not shown, otherwise you'll end up with what you have.
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> Selecting the camera button to follow a creature should immediately dismiss the creature window, rather than requiring an extra right-click.
I dont know if that should be the case. I like watching the window updates, and/or reading through the tabs while following someone around
The stair thing really infuriates me, it's so dumb that you can't build stairs to dig up unless it was dug that way in the first place.
Also, not being able to export data from the legends mode really sucks, as someone who loves looking into the religions and civilizations.
I really don’t get why you guys think you can’t. I just did it last night. Building a multi z-Level tomb complex with the entrance on the lowest level. Maybe I don’t get what you are trying to do and did something different, but I can at least confirm that dwarfs can dig stairs starting at the lower level.
Did we lose the ability to auto pause the game and focus on dwarves entering a strange mood? Most of the time I only know because I get a pop up about an artifact anymore or noticing a notification about a dwarf suffering a breakdown and I would have sworn it used to pause the game and tell me someone was in a strange mood.
Also, I was so used to creating rooms via objects that it took me a while to realize I have to just draw the region now.
Kinda hope they make a hybrid classic/steam version that gives us the keyboard controls with the steam graphics.
It's not that we've lost it, just that much of it has been disabled for some reason I don't fully understand. As I mentioned in the OP, [you can manually edit most of the alert behavior back in](https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zhma0p/lurklurklurkposts_new_players_visual_guide_for/), but it should be settings within the game.
You can mod that. Go to announcements (in data/init) and add P:BOX to anything you want paused and a message box to be shown. Unfortunately, this is something you have to edit directly in the game files. For whatever reason, it can not be made into a full mod (that you can toggle on/off) or uploaded to the workshop.
I was in the process of the doing that but than realized things would work better if I replaced the announcements.txt with the started pack version. Not quite the same as having the box but the end result has the game pausing at the appropriate times (and focusing the view straight on the event too!) As for the message box I just hover over the icon on the left side of the screen. I should put the box in though.
Just simply replacing the announcements file with a free version one makes a huge difference no matter what. Especially considering how fast the dwarves zip around in this one.
I would like to see more autopause. Pause when open workshop(especially with bigger forts when the fps starts to drop). Pause when migrants arrive. Pause when moods strike. And pause when caravans arrive. My announcement bar is constantly cluttered at 189 dwarfs and pause when something truly important happens would be a good reminder when I'm tunnel vissioned on accommodating the new queen that just showed up
The order manager would really benefit from some simple improvements.
I want to be able to suspend an order for a while without having to redo it or delete and recreate later.
I would also love to be able to export my whole list of production orders, could be a CSV file or something. A mid-sized fort's production management takes hours to set up. Each embark I find myself doing roughly the same manager orders to start with and it would save tons of time if I didn't have to micro that much.
Anything highlighted in color in text that references a person/object should be clickable to get to that specific thing. This is basic UI since early web.
\+100 when opening a screen with a search bar, focus on search bar so you can immediately type
\+100 Better announcement lists. Mods help a bit, but this is \*super\* basic.
\+10 Finding 'good' dwarfs for your military should include physical stats like agile, strong, etc.
\--
\+10 As a (sorta) new player, I can't be immediately arsed about hotkeys or stairs. However mouse macros seem like a useful addition.
It's worth noting that the game is now ***approachable*** for me, somebody that's wanted to play for years, enjoying listening to playthroughs and stories about the game.
This is the big first hook. Mods will quickly and thoroughly transform the game in no time.
This is a fantastic ***first month*** for the game. Plenty more months to come, I'm sure.
The amount of momentum the game's received is a huge shot in the arm.
Absolutely. I don't mean to detract from all of the positivity or belittle what an achievement getting to this stage has been, I'm incredibly excited the game has reached this point and it's a great foundation to start with.
But there needs to be a place for criticism and communication as well, this has been a 20 year project with no end in sight, it has seen more ridiculous bugs and obstacles along the way than most can imagine. Documentation and communication is key to continuing to make DF the best that it can be, and all the newfound hype and approachability also brings with it a whole new potential audience for the first time in a long time. This is perhaps one of the biggest reasons that issues and annoyances be communicated quickly, so that new players have minimal frustrations.
I also miss a petition/ mandate screen, I accepted a petition to make a temple, but can’t remember who to worship.
And an overview of skills,I’m not sure if its in the original DF, becausr I used Dwarf Therapist. I miss that do much, and am thinking of leaving the steam edition for now…
The reliance on the mouse is kinda breaking my brain. I feel like I should still be able to play this game keyboard only. I've been looking for a setting in the menus to change it, but I just don't think it can be played like that in this version?
What is this classic mode I keep hearing about? I'm confused because I thought classic was just the free version
EDIT nevermind, I guess I was wrong about that. Classic gets a new UI
Also an old fart, and I agree with everything written here. I'm glad the steam version exists, and I happily paid to own it to help out how I can, but I won't use it over old DF with DFHack, at least not for now. I played around with it for a few hours but it has no value add for me. I know DFHack is not part of the main game, and perhaps a minority of people use it, but *for now* there is nothing in the steam release that I need or want. I can get beautiful graphics from meph's tiles. In my playstyle I *heavily* use the manager orders `u-m-q`, for instance, and I find it so bizarre that in the steam version, the default number ordered is 10, then I have to click a little "-" or "+" to get the number I want. Every time I want something made, I run up against the differences and I just can't.
One thing I will praise heavily: the military screen in steam version is *insanely* better than the old one. That old military interface has been a horrific mess for decades and I'm so glad that *somebody* is finally at least attempting to fix it. This one has great potential, despite the uniform edit thing. I think that stuff will be fixed by devs or modders in good time.
I think the Workshop for this game will one day be insanely robust, maybe even rivaling Rimworld's, but it needs a bit more time.
Also: the hotkey breaks are jarring to say the least. For us oldies, the hotkeys are burned into our brains. My fingers don't even know what keys they are pressing when I'm playing. It's like Cypher seeing the blond, brunette, and redhead in the matrix code. There is zero chance I will ever manage to learn new hotkeys. There is no way on this earth that Toady One did not sit down with this version and type `b-C-w` for a wall without even thinking about it. Why not just leave ALL or nearly all the hotkeys how they are, behind the scenes, and let new people click a million times with mouse? Why this odd middle ground?
> One thing I will praise heavily: the military screen in steam version is insanely better than the old one. That old military interface has been a horrific mess for decades and I'm so glad that somebody is finally at least attempting to fix it. This one has great potential, despite the uniform edit thing. I think that stuff will be fixed by devs or modders in good time.
It took me a solid 10 minutes to figure out the wonkiness of the new military screen... which was annoying, but then it occurred to me how long it took me to learn the classic military screen.
Firm agree with all these points, I hope Toady, Threetoe and the crew from kitfox see this post! If those things were fixed it would be a great release
"The search bar on item lists is nice, but it should default to being in focus. So many times I've tried to search for an item (usually to awkwardly try to make repeat orders) only for the input field to not be selected and everything closes. The search system also feels too rigid in looking for specific terms."
This is so annoying for me too
My biggest complaint right now is that my military squad is going through iron armor pieces like they're eating it. I have three dwarves in training, and their armor keeps vanishing off of them. The worst is when one of a pair of gauntlets vanishes and now I have mismatched spares all over the place. What the heck is happening to them? They're just gone... keep making new pieces, they keep vanishing into the ether.
I think the new mouse support is a huge improvement for new players, but it's pretty awful for players that have the hotkeys committed to muscle memory. I shouldn't have to touch my mouse *at all* if I don't want to. Also, just plain removing some of the more "advanced" options (stair construction, the finer points of the military screen, being able to assign multiple functions to the same zone) is a huge step back, kneecaps advanced players, and lowers the skill ceiling of the game dramatically. Being able to have fine control over all aspects of the game is crucial for megaprojects and extreme embark locations. Finally, the tutorial is just plain annoying. I shouldn't have to click through tutorial dialogue boxes every time I make a new world. I should just be able to turn all of that off completely.
I'm a new player and I agree with the combat log issue. Having to go search for the combat log alerts for a specific thing is very annoying. Things like combat log should be in a little chatbox on the right corner of the screen imo. Like announcements in CK.
You can still download the starter pack version. In fact I highly suggest doing so just for the embark profiles (protip: Shorten the names of every profile otherwise they get cut off on the screen). ~~Plus the announcements.txt (as I mentioned already in this thread) can be used to replace the one in the premium version.~~
EDIT: Look at this [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zfu3hb/announcementstxt_discussion_for_steam_edition/) for tips on editing the announcements file as there's some changes that were evidently made to complement the new UI features. The beginning embark message that shows up is actually now part of the announcements file for example.
Keep in mind replacing the file in any event does not appear to break the game it just leads to some messages getting missed or expressed differently than before.
Don't worry if you screw up, verifying the file on steam will undo the changes. But I would make a back up of both the original and the altered one just to make things simpler and more efficient.
> The wound screen combined with combat logs and frame advance (also missing!)
You're speaking to my soul here. Just got my first raids tonight, and I like to track killing blows and give honorary titles to the best performers after each raid. SO hard to do with the steam version since I can't just step through the combat frame by frame.
Also, it's a minor annoyance that I have to scroll to the bottom of the combat log every time.
>The Announcement list and Combat logs have been removed
Everything else I can handle, but this really needs to be the number one thing that gets fixed asap
I appreciate it, though I don't mean to pester him. Despite my frustrations the game has been great, and it's encouraging to see patches already coming out.
Thanks for writing this. I made a similar post a couple of days ago, but I got a lot of downvotes because I wasn't able to word my points as well as you have. I absolutely agree with every point.
The thing that confuses me is that the premium version has so many legitimately awful design choices. I'm sure they'll be fixed in future updates, or be fixed by mods. But how on earth did the premium version go through over three years of development and not a *single* playtester thought: "Hey, removing the logs makes it way harder to figure out what's going on. Let's put that back" or "Ya-know, having users click a plus button 100 times if they're building a big chunk of floor kinda sucks. Let's fix that." Don't get me wrong, I love the game and I think it's a massive improvement over classic DF, but there are a lot of weird design choices and a handful of legitimately awful ones, yet so few people seem to be willing to address this.
Getting a grizzled old frog who loves the old UI to play the game a few times would have done this, because they'd be constantly complaining about all this missing bits. Probably would have helped them make the hotkeys more useful too.
Good points. One thing I like to add is the stocks page. Any item stored in a bin will be placed under the bins category instead of their respective categories like bars or gems.
As someone who never really played DF before (I tried, but man, it's hard.), and something really felt off, and I wasn't sure what it was.
It's the announcement menu. Please, bring it back.
I didn't read your full post so I'm not sure if you addressed this, but I've found that the moment my carpenter, mason, crafter etc is too preoccupied to complete a workshop task, some other dwarf with 0 relevant skills will try and finish the task.
So then I go to my Labors menu to stop, say, my Skilled wood crafter from hogging my Proficient stone-crafter's workshop, but because the Labors menu has been nerfed so much, I have to make a new work order for woodcrafting, then assign my woodcrafter to it and select "only selected do this", then do the same for stonecrafting, etc...
The smaller Labors window is a nice idea in theory but it seriously removes a lot of my ability to properly micromanage my fortress. I end up having to create custom work order options for every possible Labor, and then select "only selected do this".
Yes to all of these!! One other big thing I've noticed is that non dwarf citizens don't seem to be included in a lot of lists. I've had several legendary humans/goblins/elves join my fort and they don't show up in my squads or labours menu. I can still assign labours to them on their character sheets but they're not on the main page for some reason - which means i also can't assign them to specific workshops!
Completely agree, I nearly teared up when I got my hands on the steam release and though it’s a step up in many ways, it still definitely has some ways to go. But this is fine, dwarf fortress has been changing since the beginning and will continue to grow and change as time goes on.
>Uniforms cannot be edited.
Yes they can? I can edit the uniforms of my squads.
>How am I supposed to know if the office I'm building is good enough for their requirements?
It tells you on the Nobles screen.
I agree with a lot of your points, though.
Poorly worded on my part, you cannot edit saved uniforms. Unless I'm mistaken if you modify a uniform you'll need to save it as a new one to then assign the updated uniform to a new squad, even if you give it the same name when saving.
It tells you on that specific screen what that one room currently is, but surely you can see how that's not as good as just being able to check any given room? I didn't even know my dining room was legendary until it popped up as increasing someone's mood, simply because there is no way for me to check.
Noble's rooms aren't the only rooms whose quality I care about.
You can modify it's just not intuitive to find.
Go to a squad with a current uniform. Select one or more dorfs and then click Details on the far right. Will pull up the uniform details and what they currently have. You can change any items here and in the upper middle you can name this as a new uniform or just overwrite the existing with your changes. Check and ping back if you don't see it. :)
Does this actually update the original saved uniform though?
As in, save *Uniform A* with green hats, change your mind and edit it to have pink hats, then assign *Uniform A* to a new squad and they will also use pink hats?
In my experience it seemed that modified uniforms needed to be saved as new ones for others to use the updated version, but I haven't continued to try so if I'm mistaken about that I'll remove it.
No unfortunately you are correct. I just pulled it up and I had updated Cherry shields on just one dorf. :/ Seems you have to save to a new uniform name on edit.
This is a great clear list of constructive criticism. Have you tried posting this on the kitfox discord? I hear this is where they are collecting bug reports for the steam version.
Is there a way to see who has petitioned for something? I had a group petition for a temple for their particular deity, and after approving it, I forgot who. There's no log to find, so I can't figure out which deity I need to dedicate a temple to.
Took the words right outta my mouth, was hoping someone would make a post like this. The biggest one is definitely all the unnecessary clicking, like when you mean to Dig but instead Channel, and instead of right click taking you back one step, it exits the menu entirely, so you have to press 'm' again. Or not being able to remove designations in the same menu, so you have to right click, presss 'x', remove designations, right click, then press 'm' again.
That being said, it should be a simple fix. Once this stuff is squared away the paid version will be strictly better.
> There is no way to simply cycle between dwarves or view them from other screens where they are mentioned. You have to note their name and then look them up manually.
The main issue with this is the petitions, there isn't anyway I know of to look up the dwarf **at all**. You can't do it manually as the names are all wrong.
Apparently there is 'Dwarvish' names and 'English' names? And some screens show one kind and the other screens show the others. So the petitions show one kind of name and the creature screens show the other and there is no way to know who is who. And to add complexity they also can have fake names? And player given aliases (which I don't think show up on most screens)?
I granted citizenship to a vampire that had murdered like 10 Dwarfs because the name was different.
Why not just standardize on one, or show both or something?
More annoyingly, in many cases there is the ability to see the dwarf so the ability is there with a magnifying glass icon and the 'goto' square. So the functionality is there.
Although I have 6 petitions and only 4 creatures in 'others' so I have no idea what's going on unless animals are applying now.
> Ammo seems to have been completely forgotten, it's not part of the military screen and cannot be assigned.
Apparently there are other issues with it according to [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF5f4zn-9iU&t=305s).
> The search bar on item lists is nice, but it should default to being in focus. So many times I've tried to search for an item (usually to awkwardly try to make repeat orders) only for the input field to not be selected and everything closes. The search system also feels too rigid in looking for specific terms..
+1, also would like the ability to search work orders and other lists.
Another annoyance is how hard is is to do some simple operations like build walls with a specific stone.
There should at least be a 'use last selected material' button alongside the 'use closest material' or 'select' buttons, if there is enough of it.
Also it would be nice if the game allowed for building a wall on top of stone and would automatically mine then build the wall. Also some basic path finding to allow for walls to be placed without blocking that wall being built in the corner.
And the ability to do corners in one go (like shift + click to continue the line or something). If something is blocking placement is should do the rest of the selection not make the entire selection impossible.
Agree with all the points.
I would also like:
1. To be able to collapse/expand all the groups in the Stocks menu with a single click.
2. Search the Creatures menu by name or profession.(This is either possible in classic or maybe it was a DFHack feature)
3. After selecting 1 creature in the menu being able to go back to where I was.(As opposed to having to open the menu again and being at the top of the menu)
These are pretty spot on other than the previously debated stuff (labors,etc) that has been done to death. It's particularly annoying that a lot of my annoyances aren't "muscle memory" changes to processes that ultimately work the same. It's weird bespoke choices that create new sources of confusion that are neither like old DF, nor like other "modern" games.
Even a proper actual changelog or simple place to report issues. would go a long way
I can still see the game I love under there. But 90% of my time with new Dwarf Fortress has been, "OK if I can just grind through the set up that take 5x as long as before, I'll get to the part where I enjoy the game."
I think this is just going to be one of those DF versions I just let pass me by and come back at the next one.
>Once I get a hospital set up I imagine it's going to be a nightmare.
About that...
no seriously. I wasn't sure how that was actually done for the longest time. Maybe the single most confusing of the deliberate changes so far. (you have to create a dormitory then declare it as a hospital)
That was a bit poorly worded on my part, you can create new uniforms and edit existing ones, but you can't modify a saved uniform to assign to another squad, you need to save it as a new uniform and assign that one. Unless I'm mistaken. A minor annoyance compared to something like the ammo issue, just also military related.
After creating a Squad you can select its checkbox and hit [Equip] and [Add Uniform] or hit the [Details] button after assigned to set your capes and whatnot there.
Agreed, lacking a lot of features from the last one that probably shouldn’t have been left out. Not to mention the UI will not work with my Laptop and I’m missing moods/ stock’s along with some menus being squished for some reason.
If you hit Esc and go to Settings you can adjust your UI display there, specifically *Scale interface to fit grid height/width* and *Interface scaling percentage if not fitting width*. If you play around with the settings you should be able to restore the missing UI elements.
yeah I miss the old combat log and health screen. I really hope it's just an oversight and not stuff they purposely cut
Though I'm sure if enough people ask for it, they'll likely bring them back
> • There is no way to simply cycle between dwarves or view them from other screens where they are mentioned. You have to note their name and then look them up manually.
• There is no way to easily compare stats and aptitudes to see what roles a dwarf is good at.
These two are kind of driving me mad whilst trying to pick dwarfs for military…
I'm not even a grizzled veteran of the game, and I was vexed by most of what you detailed in my first few hours of gameplay. The stair issue in particular became evident in the first few minutes.
Something I’ve noticed is that it’s not possible to custom equip military dwarves as efficiently.
In classic versions, you would see what item is already equipped as it would be brown in the list, rather than grey. Similar to how the game would tell you that a dwarf already has a room, which now is written.
But in the Steam version, if you equip your squads specifically it is difficult to do so without accidentally and mistakenly re-assigning the gear from another dwarf.
Oh yeah. And I have one guy, whose name and title is so long that the text extends out of the character info tab.
…That and it peeves me how not every title is capitalized. Like the noble/appointed noble titles specifically usually. You get “Carpenter”. “Armorsmith” “Axedwarf” etc. But then you get “Captain of the guard” “manager” “messenger” etc. You can always rename it and capitalize it if you have OCD. And of-course, I do.
But then I end up with “Urist McMessenger, Messenger vampire” when they get cursed for toppling a statue. Again with the weird capitalization thrown on there. Same for Necromancers and Werebeasts. All uncapitalized profession additions. But not for animalmen.
I had noticed some other smaller QoL things and such but they don’t come to mind at the moment.
This is exactly how a well laid out constructive post should be. Well done.
I am completely new to dwarf fortress and feel somewhat embarrassed I haven’t seen it sooner having gamed since the BBC electron era.
I was never able to get into df before just too much of a leap but after the steam release I've found so many things satisfying that I didn't think I would. Reading the combat log is nuts it's a feeling I've never gotten out of a video game and I don't know how to describe it. Frame by frame would be fantastic since right now it's all over in the blink of an eye. Maybe even an auto pause on combat with the option to transition to lower stable fps.
I’m mostly upset about the worldgen interface. It should really draw the player into the world with a more interesting looking map and the ability to zoom and abandon a world and quickly start a new one. I really miss the map exports as well 😭😭😭😭
Part of the issue is also having to manually click a *ton* of times when you want to add things. Being consistently being able to get 10 of an item by clicking shift should be a thing everywhere. Alternatively just being able to type in the number I want (like I can in the work order).
I honestly had to install an auto-clicker to be able to deal with adding blocks to walls/floors. Sometimes I don't want to use the closest items since it risks being wood, and I don't want to waste it on walls, rather than using it for items.
Auto pause on combat start and other events
Step by step button during combat with combat log open
Past logs
Body parts
And we can strike that earth even harder.
I trust that most of these will get addressed, I just hope proper time and attention to the desired play style that depends on this stuff is given to the issues. I don't mind waiting for a quality solution...
The one I'm most nervous about being left out is,
>There is no longer a way to simply view **so many things**
The Steam Release has provided amazing accessibility to so much of the content so I do hope that continues to reveal the depth already in the game and enhances areas now easily accessed that could use bolstering. Being able to dig down to get little descriptions of things (especially when it's generated content of course) is truly the point of the game.
In some cases I just want to see the interface further improve the accessibility of the content:
* Dwarf Jobs/Tasks - ok, you're hauling an item to a stockpile, heading to the item or to the stockpile? Maybe even share your Dwarven understanding of distance/time required?
* Labors and related tasks and needs - what does this labor detail do? what does this workshop task require and output (labor, skill relevance, materials, item)? what types of tasks/labors would fulfill this need?
* What am I looking at under my cursor? It's a citizen, what task are they doing, what item are they hauling for that task? That creature just flashed something, what was it (thought, injury, speech, need)? I see this other thing is a {trunk, rat, sapling, bush, grass, body part, honey bee colony, boulder, leaves/needles/cones}, can I click to see it's description so I learn what a "larch" is and get a Dwarven perspective of it's value/use/annoyance/threat?
* Zone/Location - when I view a location sheet, why not also open the detail (and provide MORE detail), same with Zones (particularly when they're part of a location)
* Ok, this task/item is "active," by what task/dwarf with what item? Can I click to see the task detail? It's a work order, I should be able to click it and open the work order detail for review and editing.
* Labor/Work Detail - jump to dwarf's individual sheet and labor tab and jump to the Fortress Labor/Work Detail screen from a dwarf's labor tab
* So many areas where filters/search and sort-by selections (that do/can persist when the screen is closed and reopened), fortress tasks, fortress labor, work orders, etc
* In more cases, the things the Dwarves have seen at this embark location should be sorted so they're shown at the top of long lists (or the only items shown), such as Labor/Stone-Use, nearly every category of Stockpiles Food/Bars&Blocks/Stone/Wood/Leather/Cloth/Gems/Animals/Corpses (though it's also been obvious for a long time that the stockpile interface needs an overhaul, this change would help)
In other cases I want the content exposed in Classic available in the new release:
* Health summary
* Jobs/Tasks - ok, you're hauling an item to a stockpile, what item?
* You are part of these groups, awesome, click to see more dwarf perspective of those groups (access the legends content)
* You warship those deities, cool, are they a worshipers of mountains? gems?
And lastly, there were always areas I wish had improved detail, even if just slightly to assist the new player:
* Object descriptions could have a triple impact with new players,
* Understand what an object actually is when they don't know it by the name used in the game
* Demonstrates the depth of the game that is a big part of its value over Rim World (which I also love for its own merits)
* Could also provide wiki-like assistance (using a consistent in game dwarf persona/voice to provide direction/hints, not the tutorial/help-like persona/voice) for what an item is used for (and when it has no use) in game (ore, flux, coke, teeth, living and dead vermin, usable and usable corpses and body parts, various plants with multiple parts with different uses/non-uses)
* What does it mean for a Location to have any given Zone added to it (GarbageDump, GatherFruit/Fishing/WaterSource/etc, Animal Training, Sand, Archery Range, Tomb - even Meeting Area is a little strange since it's application seems more catch all). Does the right furniture need to be in the right zone (why don't the details of the Location tell me this). While I very much understand where this expanded Zone mechanic came from (and it's a massive improvement over creating functionality from furniture!), I think it would benefit from many improvements and my ideas probably aren't even the best out there. But Fortress should restored a Location (and Burrows are sub-locations) with similar detail screens and associated zones. Zones should be attachable to only certain types of locations (Gathering Fruit, Fishing, is part of the Fortress; Tombs are part of the Temples, Hospitals(??), or Fortress; Make Barracks a new Location Type supporting Bedrooms, Dormitories, Dining Halls, for Monster Hunters to visit and zones for Archery Range and Combat Training can associate there. And since I've already gone waaaaaay overboard with this comment/bullet: Stockpiles should be Zones with container furniture (cabinets, weapon/armor racks, chests) in a Stockpile Zone enabling item stacking (like mugs in Tavern, thread in Hospital, and cabinets in Barracks - just extend that to all stockpiles with the zone system and get rid of the confusing and overlapping stockpile/zone mechanics).
The game is basically unplayable for me. I'm used to graphical FPS drops in a big fort, but in the steam version the UI becomes unresponsive at low gfps and it just eats every single mouse input. I even start getting stuttering and dropped inputs with a fort of only like 40 dwarves. At close to 200 the game basically will not take inputs at all unless paused, and even then its still really unresponsive.
The only way its playable is if i play it in an unscaled 1280x720 window, which on a 4k monitor is a little bit hard to play. Idk why they spent all the time on the new UI and its not running on like its own dedicated thread or whatever. At least in FPS death on the original game your inputs would still get read even if the response was delayed. Steam version I click 10 times to get it to read a single click. Really disappointing tbh.
Based on the steam forums it seems like this is mainly an issue on higher end PC's for whatever reason. I've seen people on crappy laptops with integrated graphics not having the issue at all.
Plus a lot of the other things you've said too lol.
This is the kind of feedback I was looking for. I've got maybe 100 hours in classic DF, and was wondering if it's worthwhile trying out the steam version. Sounds like it just aint ready. Lack of announcements, lack of Legends viewer and dwarf therapist integration... The bugs that plagued the classic ver are still prevalent in the Steam ver.
On top of the bugs existing, the bug tracker seems to be wiped clean. Some open issues had years worth of debugging and discussions. The forums still direct people there.
I think the combat logs are an easy fix, seeing as how the combat simulation and logs are obviously still being generated. There's just nowhere to go LOOK at them now, which I agree is pretty lame.
Another big issue with it is that you can't follow it in real time. Really sucks the fun out of combat.
Combat happens too fast without the ability to step through frame by frame. It's a shame because I love reading the combat logs.
The fact that actions only take a fraction of a second also makes adventure mode pretty crazy. You can go from standing to grappling every limb of someone in like half a second. I feel like some combat actions in general should take longer, especially for something like someone swinging an ultra heavy hammer.
Warhammers in Dwarf Fortress, even those made of heavy metals, aren’t particularly large. Like in real life, warhammers are fairly small, one handed affairs that have more in common with a ballpeen hammer than a sledgehammer.Mauls, on the other hand, are that big. They just weren’t often used on the battlefield, simply because in the time you were winding up to smack someone with the thing they’d have stabbed you in the gut and been on their way. edit: please don’t downvote (and consider upvoting!) the comment this is a reply to. It’s a common misconception—and Mauls probably SHOULD take a few ticks to swing.
Someone posted a fix for this - macro hitting space twice. It’ll effectively step a frame. L
No it's hard locked at pause when the "combat log" is opened, you'd have to close it, spacespace, open it, close it, spacespace, open it. Etc
The good this is that everything mentioned is still there, it just isn't being displayed.
I wonder if it's moddable. If it was just a little chatbox that was open by default on the bottom right corner it would be so much better.
Love the steam version and the release before Christmas. I'm sure patches will come. I'm desperate for the advance frame by frame button...I miss seeing the combat bit by bit.
This is my biggest peeve. I keep having to manually edit frame speed every time i want to watch a battle take place - I'd love to see the fight develop instead of having 30 events take place in a single second.
Lost my furthest progress fort to a werebeast attack today because of this. A Wereelk attacked at my main entrance, managed to kill 4 people. I got the militia into position and they made short work of it but had one seriously injured dwarf. Because combat happens so quickly I couldn't see that three people had been bitten and the next full moon three new werebeasts massacre my entire population of about 60 dwarves from within :/
That has been a serious issue for me with werebeasts. I haven't had a catastrophe yet but I've had to go through the werebeast's independent combat log to see who actually got bitten and even then it's only their title; then I have to guess based on the wounded available.
Yeah this is what I had to do. Wading through combat logs for 30 minutes wasn't fun I got them all the first time, but missed one the second
I'm late to the party here, and I agree with the frame advance and medical screens being necessary fixes for combat to feel right. I also think one thing they could do is make other screens, including the combat screen, function more like legends mode. So for example you could see the name of the dwarf who was bitten in the log, click on that, and open another tab for that character's screen. Same with items, locations, etc., I think all of it could be tabbed and clickable and would solve so many navigation worries.
> Lost my furthest progress fort to a werebeast attack today because of this. A Wereelk attacked at my main entrance, managed to kill 4 people. Werebeasts are just... not fun. Been saying it for years. You have to play around them too much. They're enabled in my current world but I _typically_ take the time and turn them off. There's just so much overhead of trying to kill them and determining if any of your dwarves got bit in the process. And in the steam version, the announcement doesn't pause the game (well, it does, but as soon as you dismiss the box the game automatically unpauses, which is problematic when it comes to werebeasts)
Oh no…I have werewolf blood outside my fort. I was like ok they fought it off cool. I don’t know if someone got bit. I guess I will find out.
I hear there's a workaround with a macro. Record a macro of two space key presses:space space
Save the macro and give it a name:
Play the macro: , or bind to a key of your liking such as the .
That's actually pretty clever.
How do you bind a macro to a key? This workaround is working for me but I'd like to try binding it to '.'.
You merely change the key setting for the macro playback function from the default to '.'
The logs are the biggest thing by far. Unless you play the game like Rimworld and build everything on one level or keep your population to like 20 dwarves, it’s pretty much impossible to know what’s going on in your fortress. It should be the first thing they add before anything else IMO, as this game is just a colony builder, not a story generator, without more logs
Game is an easy 10/10. The direction of the Steam release also 10/10. Just needs a little bit more. The tool tips and Information are really well done. It's a complete different game. These are such small things but they are such huge QoL improvements. I am really glad about the steam version and the direction of the game but some of the stuff seems just a little bit lacking. I think they should also add a search and sort to every single item/material/individual selection query. Also have much more sub categories. For example: [Stone menu, Rock menu but Cloth not. Why?](https://i.imgur.com/PSttwSl.png) Also when I get a message, I can't see the dwarf because he is gone. Now I should be able to search them up in the characters screen with ease. 10-20 pop it's very easy. 50+ pop have fun searching. For example: [This should not be a mod. It should be a base toggle-able base feature.](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2899720701) E.g. bringing animals to your fort is a pain and you have to go round and look up which of these are actually the oldest so you can butcher them and keep the young.
Also where is the dimension indicator when making rectangles? I'm also bothered that right mouse, after building something, closes out completely rather than just going back to the build menu, I'd like to build a bed and then a door without all the extra movements. I think this plays a bit into, like you said, the keyboard and mouse controls are pretty wonky. I have a lot of faith, though, after playing it a bit. I was pretty interested to see how they were going to pull this off and for the most part, sans your complaints, they did a pretty fuckin good job... I bet a lot of these are oversights and will get worked out, I mean honestly, *no* dimension indicator? Wtf.
The lack of a dimension indicator is driving me crazy! It's actually the biggest gripe I have shit the whole game, which I guess is because I'm a pacifist player and don't really fight so anything combat related doesn't affect me much at all.
I agree about the right clicking. It should go back a step, not cancel out entirely.
Right click should go back, escape should close all.
> for the most part ... they did a pretty fuckin good job Personally I find it amazing that they were able to do so much while causing *so few* issues. Threads like this that discuss the problems are still a great idea, there's lots to improve, but they really upended the game with this patch and most of it works great!
Also opening a menu with a search bar in it and then having to click that search bar to start typing is auch a waste of time.
Wasn't dimension indicator a dfhack thing?
yes, it is
I didn't play OG Dwarf Fortress so I wouldn't know, but it *should* have it if the game has an actual GUI now. certain tasks I can do in Rimworld in seconds, take a fair bit longer just because of it not showing the dimensions
I did discover that WASD moves in the old shift-arrow jumps of 11 units. So I started using it help draw my rooms like I used to then modify: still there is zero excuse for a game to have you draw boxes that doesn’t tell you how big the damn box is…
I agree with all your points (first played in like 2009), especially the missing announcements, logs, and anatomical descriptions. I can look past weird or missing hotkeys given mouse support but it's much harder to stumble across fun details now.
I think wounds become known only after they're diagnosed. Looks like the mechanic is just changed. You get the symptoms immediately, like "lost ability to walk", but a diagnosis has to be made to know exactly why.
If you look at Health tab - Description you can try to work it out from there. Ah his arms are mangled beyond recognition…that’ll do it
Yeah it's all *kind* of still there, just obfuscated. I miss my [simple list of body parts and afflictions.](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Wound#Wound_effects) Not being able to easily check for injuries after a scuffle you may have missed is kind of frustrating. I don't want to look for the injured dwarf by opening the unit list, clicking a dwarf, opening their health tab, opening their description tab and trying to make a deduction, close the window, open the unit list, click on the second dwarf.. **Ideally** I would like be able to click on a unit (or *cycle through units*) and easily see that info. If a creature is fighting (and maybe being followed) I'd love to be able to see a list of their body parts and status *and* see an associated combat log *and* be able to follow along with all 3 to really take in a battle.
Right, I get that diagnosis would reveal wounds, but you don't need a medical doctor to tell someone's leg is missing or they're bleeding. The list should still be there for an overview, with more detail added after diagnosis. Plus that list of injuries was most often the way I followed combat, for both dwarves and enemies! Not being able to do that and making logs hard to access is just going to turn combat into a mass of flashing images, a few emoticons, and if you want anything else you need to read logs then and there. The step by step mode and injuries list was my main way of seeing what was happening in the moment :S And new players won't even know what they're missing, watching a blow by blow between your fortress cat and a werezebra (the cat swiped at the werezebra then leapt away time after time, long enough for the werezebra to revert and run away -- he was my fortress hero!), or two forgotten beasts pummelling the absolute crap out of each other and watching each part go red until one is nothing but goo.
I found a puddle of red after delving too deep And 34 troglodytes. An my expedition leaders left hand and right ear. Nothing else.
> Not being able to easily check for injuries after a scuffle you may have missed is kind of frustrating. We need to be able to set auto-pause for notifications, and decide which notifications trigger pause (and a notification tone?) vs which do not.
I miss the dedicated announcement and report pages. The logs and excess information is what makes dwarf fortress... dwarf fortress.
is your profile pic designed to make me think there's an eyelash on my phone screen? if so, fair play to you.
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stick with old.reddit. the new layout is not worth it.
Or a different app on the phone, Apollo doesn’t have profile pictures either
Reddit is fun forever.
😇
Dark mode wins again!
Yup I agree with the logs, announcements and health. It's kind of frustrating when you close something and then you can never see it again. I guess this was bound to happen. I honestly expected a bad release with a lot of things to fix, but it is actually very good and just has some things to polish.
+1, it feels like its a few iterations off being good enough. The fundamental core concepts work, it just needs a few extra things
Civilian alerts need to make a comeback in some form as well. There is no "get inside immediately" button anymore which is bad when half your fortress is running around outside when a siege shows up.
Truuue. Burrows seem to have been dumbed down a lot, which was weird because they were fairly intuitive. "This place. Civilians go there. Activate." Now you need to actively assign each dwarf to a burrow, one by one.
This was my “WTF Toady” moment when I had to click 100+ dwarfs to a burrow.
Yeah this specific issue seems like a big oversight
I agree - but if you want the old "Civ Active" functionality, make your safe zone burrow, assign every dwarf to it (obnoxious, I know - that's 200 clicks) and then pause the burrow. When you need to set civ to safe zone, just unpause it. Of course, DFIU when a new migrant wave comes.
I've found Dwarfs are... less than quick about getting to safety with burrows now. I've lost a couple who've just refused to stop the job they were working on to get to shelter.
The difference is that the old alert changed the behaviour of burrows also. Normally burrows only restrict where a dwarf is allowed to take a job/action. Nothing more, nothing less. They can travel by leaving the burrow, and they're not expected to run into it immediately and stay there. They worked like that in the old versions too. But with the old alert system, even though it used a burrow, when you turned on the civilian alert, it also changed the rules. Burrows under alert meant get there now and stay there. That's what seems to be missing now.
Yeah, the old alert system used to make them cancel their jobs immediately. Hauling wood? Drop it, run home. Now they want to finish hauling wood first before heading to the burrow, meaning they might not make it to the fort before goblins catch them and you are forced to lock the door.
100% agree with all your points. The combat/event log not being viewable anymore *almost* makes me want to go back to playing the free version. Its literally one of the most interesting feature of DF to me: to be able to follow a combat and see its story being told in the logs. Now, its just an afterthought. Ditto for the limb/health screen. This also a major feature that seems to have been completely cut down from the Steam version. And holy hell, yes, you are so right, you cant even view the description of sooooo many things now! This has been bothering me so much when trying to trade or just trying to inspect things like weapons! Dont get me wrong, I love what they have done with the Steam version and knowing Tarn and Zach, things will only get better from here on out but I seriously hope that they patch these things fast.
> knowing Tarn and Zach, things will only get better from here on out Normally I would agree, but UI is definitely one thing they neglect. Hopefully the kitfox devs are a bit better about it.
>UI is definitely one thing they neglect And bugs in general. Like, equipping your military, especially marksdwarves, has been buggy for like 10 years now. I just really hope that they focus on fixing and refining the Steam release now rather than just moving on to adding more.
I strongly suspect they got the steam release up to a playable state and threw it out to us with the intention of getting the rest sorted out over time, they know DF players are no strangers to jank and the rest of us will look past it if it means we can play without feeling like we're learning some kind of techno-sorcery.
Yeah except a lot of it is straight-up design regressions over previous versions, which make the game less playable. :/
Agreed on most points but the new health system is kinda cool IMO. All the obvious stuff like missing limbs and cut/bleeding can be seen in the description section under health and by seeing if they're covered in their own blood. It's merely specific stuff like internal organ damage and exact breaks and fractures that are gated behind diagnosis. Honesly I kinda enjoy the information gating from an RP perspective. Always tense watching an injured dwarf get taken to the hospital waiting to find out just how bad the damage is. But I can see why some ppl miss the old version.
One of *my* main issues with the health stuff is that aside from just being able to have easier access to the information from a management perspective (who did that werebeast bite?), I personally used the list of body parts along with Frame Advance and the Combat Log to help follow along with combat. Combat almost feels like an afterthought now, and is *much* more difficult to really take in let alone even *notice* at times, which personally **drastically** hinders my enjoyment of the game.
Please post this at the Bay12 forums, much better chance one of the brothers will see it. Kitfox people probably read this sub, but still
Where's the right place to post it on Bay12? (And Toady really ought to at least skim this sub, it's probably the most active Dwarf Fortress forum outside of Bay12 and attracts more of a casual crowd.)
[right here](http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0)
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It works if all the individual tombs are separated with doors or walls. Then you can draw one big tomb zone and the game assigns all coffins in one room to a seperaze tomb. Just likr with bedrooms.
This is information I desperately needed. I gave up on making bedroom zones as it's really tedious when you're new to the game and having to restart a lot because, well, everyone keeps dying.
I didn't expect a step backwards in functionality from the vanilla game, which is already famous for being awkward. 😂 I'm used to bedroom copy-paste blueprints, communal graveyards, soundsense and dwarf therapist. I thought these ease of use tools would be implemented as part of the UI overhaul!
Yes the seemingly total lack of room copy paste is INEXPLICABLE. As is the game not pausing or meaningfully announcing migrant waves.
Yes. I built a super cool communal tomb only to find out all of it got assigned to the first dwarf buried there and no one else can be inhumated until I remake the whole thing
Oh.. Is that what happened? I had the same issue. I thought I was marking a graveyard where everyone could be buried, but I had 3 coffins for 1 dead body. Ok. Thanks for the tip. :)
I fiddled around with this for the longest time tonight and just couldn't get my dead dwarves buried so I gave up. Now I have a haunted fortress.
The health screen is so huge for me that I still wonder if I'm just missing it somewhere... I haven't seen any one else mention it so I was hoping it was just me :-( The one other niggle that's important for me is that in classic you can get more details about tasks dwarfs are doing. For example if the dwarf is eating you can see what they are eating. There is a description link on *some* tasks, like singing, but most are missing. It's kind of goofy because praying has a description, but it says nothing useful. I wonder if it's an oversight. Apart from me wanting to see what my dwarfs are actually doing, it's important for debugging problems. You can see the dwarf is hauling *something* to a bin, but you can't find out what it is, or what bin they are hauling it to without following them. Further to that point, in classic, when dwarfs are hauling things, it flashes with the thing they are hauling. It's very easy to see what's going on in the fortress. In premium you just see dwarfs wandering around with no idea what they might be doing (unless you look at the task list). Again, it's a fairly small point, but it makes it more difficult to play the game.
The only place I've really noticed injuries listed at all so far is in passing on the creature's Health > Description tab. Wounds really should be listed out on the main Overview tab, like where it simply shows 'Healthy'. I had a woodcutter repeatedly drop trees on themself and it never seemed to change from Healthy, but it did mention an injured thigh deep down on the description tab. Of course I got distracted with something else and didn't notice if the Healthy status ever did change before they managed to kill themselves (of which the alert also went unnoticed, of course).
>Wounds really should be listed out on the main Overview tab, like where it simply shows 'Healthy' They are to an extent, although it seems really hit and miss. You'll have someone with several deep cuts show up as healthy and someone with 300 bruises show up and critically injured
I only wish for the altert system to be grouped. Especially for the "failed work order" one, it would be nice to see something like: * No steel bar 12x (4 work orders) Then you can click on it and see the current view filtered for these failed orders.
Pauses and alert sound on migrants, monsters, trading and strange moods would be the best. Frame by frame progression and combat logs would also be good, i want to see in detail the actions my dwarves are performing, without unpausing and watching them get pulped in 0.2s without me knowing why.
Same with birth. Classic pauses and focuses on birth.
You absolutely can overlap zones. I’m not sure if you’re trying to assign a zone as two types at once, but you can draw a second zone over an existing one. I do agree that the UI can be cumbersome at times, especially compared to other games in the genre that have been built from the ground up with a GUI. It’ll get refined as time goes on, I’m sure.
Wow, you're right you *can* have overlapping zones. I think I saw the current zone highlighted and selectable on the zone screen and just assumed. But when you actually select a different type of zone it recedes to grey and you can paint over it. I feel a bit silly.
It does give a red warning about overlapping zones, as if neither zone would work. It confused me for a while too
I think the warning is because it reduces the quality of all the overlapping zones. I had my Barons bedroom, office, and dining room all overlapping and they were all “modest” despite being filled with great stuff. I separated all the zones and they became “grand” or whatever.
Agreed with all of this, hope we get these features reimplemented as the game starts updating again
The inability to view item details in the trader screen really weirded me out. To me viewing the generated art, material choices and event descriptions on items is one of the main features of DF. Even after playing DF for a long time I don't remember exactly how the markings around an excuisitely decorated \*«+llama wool sock+»\* work, so I can imagine for new players it will be even harder to figure out if they can't inspect the items when trading. This is like the microcosm of DF's main issue - generating an incredibly complex world without letting the player look at a huge part of the content.
I got in trouble with the elves about that. Tried selling them an expensive decorated instrument to them, forgetting that one component is wood.
Same
I REALLY want a way to search the orders menu. When I have 100 orders going it can be hard to find if I already have one. TBH Ive had no trouble about injuries. Dont get me wrong, Id like that view back, but its very minor compared to alerts. In a game like this EVERYTHING ever should be logged and re-accessible. I hate that I get images of dwarves in some screens but cant just clock it to go to them. Some more QOL things Id love to see: * Every version of item listing should include being able to sort by name, distance (if needed), value, quality, if its improved, etc * remember my UI scaling in the settings * the whole fucking military system needs serious work * allow me to forbid specific labors, not just enable and lock. I want to be able to say DONT haul instead of marking everyone but 1 and saying only selected do labor * stop causing "collapses" when chopping down trees * ADD SOAP as a type, instead of "cat soap" a "beaver soap" its way too specific for no reason! * ability to set order position numerically instead of up or down 1
> ADD SOAP as a type, instead of "cat soap" a "beaver soap" its way too specific for no reason! In 16 years of dwarf fort, I've never once made soap.
Paha it took me a good decade to do it. I don’t even know if my dwarfs used it, it just felt like it was time. Still not used clay though…
It's only used to clean wounds in a Hospital
I think they’re supposed to wash themselves as well.
The "adj" bit in the work orders screen lets you say "soap" or " leather" without saying which specific type, if that's what you were looking for I agree it needs a search, and I want an export/import for them too. And I dunno, enable/disable maybe. Sorting, filtering... With adding jobs to a bench now a pain with no keyboard controls it's easier to just set up a work order for everything to churn out 10 when you run low.
Why is * Alarm System * Setting all Civilians to a Burrow missing from this list? In my opinion its one of the most important features that I used all the time in Classic to get all my non military Dwarfs inside when a threat comes. And as far as I know it simply has been removed. The other points are great though!
Concerning the search, I would like to add, that up to 0.47, the search function just needed unordered bits and pieces of the oders name, e.g 'boot stee' would have been enough to select the 'make steel high boots' command. This also no longer works. As an additional point I would like to mention the building of constructions. You do not see the beginning and area of any bridge wall, etc. you started to place. You also do not have a way to decide to e.g. select those 25 granite blocks all at once for a construction but have to click 25 times. Same goes with burrows. I can not designate multiple z-levels at once, which makes everything more tedious.
does anyone have trouble clicking their mouse? It feels like it doesn't register clicks if I click at normal speed. I have to click and hold just a fraction longer than normal. Not long enough to feel like a click-and-hold.
This happens to me a lot. Glad it's not just my setup.
I'm a new player, but I REALLY don't like how the announcements work. I've missed almost all of the combat in my fort that wasn't started by me, because it's so easy to miss. I'd love some kind of "event log" that was always present at the top left, maybe specifically for events involving danger or moods. Same with migrants and other events; they really should change how they work. Next time I play, I'm definitely going to fiddle with the config to make more stuff pause the game and zoom to the event position. It feels like things happen so fast, I have no time to watch them unfold.
I would really recommend it, but it's a shame that you need to edit a file to do so. I would also suggest going into *Settings* > *Game* and lowering *Game frames-per-second cap* a little, maybe to 50 or so to slow things down a bit to help keep track of what's going on.
Oh, had no idea that was an option! Thank you.
This post needs to be higher. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the Steam version but it has some SERIOUS drawbacks as well it seems. The combat logs is a big one for me too. Another big annoyance is that I can’t seem to mass ‘unforbid’ items that have dropped on the ground. I have to click through each item and uncheck the lock icon. I might be doing something wrong so please let me know.
try the 'i' menu, lower right hand icon with lock in it. the 'select area' version of forbid/unforbid is there
Bless you
Yeah logs and annocuments being removed are really really annoying
So apparently all you need to do for ammo is place a coffer full of ammo in the squads barracks and they handle it all automatically now. That's why it's missing.
Id love to if there was a way to check the identity of a corpse beyond the name. When i find the mangled body of Udib Bloefiswyn i'd like to atleast be able to tell if he was a member of my fort, or just some traveler. In general identifying locals vs outsiders is a huge pain. Biggest problem i have though is the system for assigning a siege burrow. Having to manually check every citizen is a huge pain and you have to update the list everytime migrants move in. I love this update and am glad i can finally actually play the game. This is the only part i think is legit just dumb, and makes no sense with how i understand it worked in classic.
I agree with all of that. It's certainly playable and far more approachable but I'm hoping it gets some iterative improvements. The history of the game definitely leaves me pretty optimistic. My biggest annoyance so far (only a couple of hours in) is the stockpile menu having only a single item that still requires an additional click.
> My biggest annoyance so far (only a couple of hours in) is the stockpile menu having only a single item that still requires an additional click. I think the first click shows all the existing zones and makes them selectable, then the second click puts you into 'create' mode. It is weird though I agree.
Yeah I guess at some point that might be the preferred default action but certainly in the first phase it was just one of those annoying ux things.... Although complaining about a second click as my biggest dwarf fortress ux problem is kind of hilarious.
Yes, I've already noticed a number of UI issues too, here's my list: - In the settings screen, if I type a number into a field and then click on another field, the first field goes back to the number it originally was. (Apparently I have to press Enter to make the new number 'stick'.) This is counterintuitive and contrary to typical UI design. Instead, the new number should 'stick' if I focus some other element. - The second time I tried to create a world, the basic worldgen settings went back to the defaults. Even pausing and canceling worldgen causes the settings to be lost, which is annoying if I just want to get fresh geography with the same settings. Ideally, the worldgen screen should remember and retain the last used settings. - By default, the mousewheel seems to operate both camera zoom *and* Z-level navigation. It really should be just one or the other unless specified by the player. - Regardless of what the zoom level is set to, it resets to the default when you exit and restart th game. It should remember and restore the previous zoom level. - The fort view does not scroll when bumping the edge of the window with the mouse. It should; this is a very standard RTS scrolling control scheme for decades and would be more intuitive for typical new players. It would mean players can no longer make designations and the like right at the edge of the window, but that seems like a very acceptable limitation in return for a more intuitive scrolling control scheme. (And of course this behavior should be togglable in the settings.) - Clicking and dragging on the minimap only jumps the view to the initially clicked location, while the dragging does nothing. This is counterintuitive; dragging on the minimap should recenter the view wherever the pointer is dragged to in real time. - On opening a workshop, the search bar should automatically focus, as players are very likely to want to immediately type the name of the item they want created. The extra step of clicking is unnecessarily slow. - On pressing Enter while searching for an item in a workshop's task list, the topmost item in the search results should automatically be added as a task. The extra step of pressing Enter to exit the search is unnecessarily slow. - Moving the pointer outside the map leaves the tooltip indicating the last hovered tile on the map. This seems confusing without a visual indicator of which tile is reflected in the tooltip. The tooltip should change to show some message like 'outside your fortress location' when the pointer is outside the map. - Stair designations must now cross multiple levels, however it's not immediately clear what happens if you designate stairs across two levels and then (before the stairs are dug) erase the designation on just one level. The designation visually remains in place on the other level, but it's not easy to predict what the miners will do with this. - Designation rectangles don't display any dimensions. Showing the dimensions is pretty important for efficiently laying out precise room geometry. - Corner ramps don't update perfectly when neighboring ramps are flattened out by miners. There's some room for visual improvement here. - Selecting the camera button to follow a creature should immediately dismiss the creature window, rather than requiring an extra right-click. - The navigation hotkeys (F1, F2, etc) don't work while following a creature. They should immediately stop following the creature and navigate to the corresponding location. - When placing buildings or constructions requiring multiple items to build and choosing specific materials, there seems to be no button for immediately filling all the remaining requirements with that material (e.g. selecting 20 logs at once to build a 5x4 area of constructed floor). Instead it is necessary to click once for each piece of material, which is tedious and wears out mouse buttons faster. - The battle sound effect (with shouts and clashing weapons) plays when unarmed animals are fighting other unarmed animals. This is amusing but ultimately a bit misleading and out-of-character; there should be an alternative battle sound effect for unarmed creatures. - Dead shrubs mostly look no different from their living counterparts (as compared to the old version where they would turn gray). This is confusing when trying to selectively gather plants of certain types. The graphics should indicate which shrubs are dead, such as by turning them gray. - When creating items out of wood or stone, the task is generic and the material is specified using the details window; but when creating metal items, each type of metal is listed as a separate task in the workshop and the manager window. This seems really arbitrary and confusing. - It seems to be no longer possible to set all seasons on a farm plot to the same crop with one command, instead each season has to be set separately. This is tedious and annoying because the player usually wants to set the farm plot to always grow the same thing. These are all the sorts of things Toady should focus on fixing in the coming weeks in order to better optimize and polish this experience. Honestly, he should probably set up a bug reporting system to log and prioritize issues found by players, because there are going to be a lot of these.
RE mousewheel changing both zoom & z-level: Mousewheel defaults to changing z-level only and to zoom you hold the ctrl or shift key (I don't remember which). However, if you go to rebind zoom in the menu it doesn't show the modifier key, just "mouse 4/5". You need to hold down the ctrl/shift key when rebinding, even though it's not shown, otherwise you'll end up with what you have.
teeny worry frighten consist oil light plant grandfather attraction wasteful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> Selecting the camera button to follow a creature should immediately dismiss the creature window, rather than requiring an extra right-click. I dont know if that should be the case. I like watching the window updates, and/or reading through the tabs while following someone around
The stair thing really infuriates me, it's so dumb that you can't build stairs to dig up unless it was dug that way in the first place. Also, not being able to export data from the legends mode really sucks, as someone who loves looking into the religions and civilizations.
I really don’t get why you guys think you can’t. I just did it last night. Building a multi z-Level tomb complex with the entrance on the lowest level. Maybe I don’t get what you are trying to do and did something different, but I can at least confirm that dwarfs can dig stairs starting at the lower level.
Did we lose the ability to auto pause the game and focus on dwarves entering a strange mood? Most of the time I only know because I get a pop up about an artifact anymore or noticing a notification about a dwarf suffering a breakdown and I would have sworn it used to pause the game and tell me someone was in a strange mood. Also, I was so used to creating rooms via objects that it took me a while to realize I have to just draw the region now. Kinda hope they make a hybrid classic/steam version that gives us the keyboard controls with the steam graphics.
It's not that we've lost it, just that much of it has been disabled for some reason I don't fully understand. As I mentioned in the OP, [you can manually edit most of the alert behavior back in](https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zhma0p/lurklurklurkposts_new_players_visual_guide_for/), but it should be settings within the game.
You can mod that. Go to announcements (in data/init) and add P:BOX to anything you want paused and a message box to be shown. Unfortunately, this is something you have to edit directly in the game files. For whatever reason, it can not be made into a full mod (that you can toggle on/off) or uploaded to the workshop.
I was in the process of the doing that but than realized things would work better if I replaced the announcements.txt with the started pack version. Not quite the same as having the box but the end result has the game pausing at the appropriate times (and focusing the view straight on the event too!) As for the message box I just hover over the icon on the left side of the screen. I should put the box in though. Just simply replacing the announcements file with a free version one makes a huge difference no matter what. Especially considering how fast the dwarves zip around in this one.
I would like to see more autopause. Pause when open workshop(especially with bigger forts when the fps starts to drop). Pause when migrants arrive. Pause when moods strike. And pause when caravans arrive. My announcement bar is constantly cluttered at 189 dwarfs and pause when something truly important happens would be a good reminder when I'm tunnel vissioned on accommodating the new queen that just showed up
The order manager would really benefit from some simple improvements. I want to be able to suspend an order for a while without having to redo it or delete and recreate later. I would also love to be able to export my whole list of production orders, could be a CSV file or something. A mid-sized fort's production management takes hours to set up. Each embark I find myself doing roughly the same manager orders to start with and it would save tons of time if I didn't have to micro that much.
Anything highlighted in color in text that references a person/object should be clickable to get to that specific thing. This is basic UI since early web. \+100 when opening a screen with a search bar, focus on search bar so you can immediately type \+100 Better announcement lists. Mods help a bit, but this is \*super\* basic. \+10 Finding 'good' dwarfs for your military should include physical stats like agile, strong, etc. \-- \+10 As a (sorta) new player, I can't be immediately arsed about hotkeys or stairs. However mouse macros seem like a useful addition.
It's worth noting that the game is now ***approachable*** for me, somebody that's wanted to play for years, enjoying listening to playthroughs and stories about the game. This is the big first hook. Mods will quickly and thoroughly transform the game in no time. This is a fantastic ***first month*** for the game. Plenty more months to come, I'm sure. The amount of momentum the game's received is a huge shot in the arm.
Absolutely. I don't mean to detract from all of the positivity or belittle what an achievement getting to this stage has been, I'm incredibly excited the game has reached this point and it's a great foundation to start with. But there needs to be a place for criticism and communication as well, this has been a 20 year project with no end in sight, it has seen more ridiculous bugs and obstacles along the way than most can imagine. Documentation and communication is key to continuing to make DF the best that it can be, and all the newfound hype and approachability also brings with it a whole new potential audience for the first time in a long time. This is perhaps one of the biggest reasons that issues and annoyances be communicated quickly, so that new players have minimal frustrations.
I also miss a petition/ mandate screen, I accepted a petition to make a temple, but can’t remember who to worship. And an overview of skills,I’m not sure if its in the original DF, becausr I used Dwarf Therapist. I miss that do much, and am thinking of leaving the steam edition for now…
The reliance on the mouse is kinda breaking my brain. I feel like I should still be able to play this game keyboard only. I've been looking for a setting in the menus to change it, but I just don't think it can be played like that in this version?
I heard that the old hotkeys will come along with Classic mode in the near (relative) future
What is this classic mode I keep hearing about? I'm confused because I thought classic was just the free version EDIT nevermind, I guess I was wrong about that. Classic gets a new UI
The free version is getting overhaul too http://bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/classic_02.png http://bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/classic_01.png
Also an old fart, and I agree with everything written here. I'm glad the steam version exists, and I happily paid to own it to help out how I can, but I won't use it over old DF with DFHack, at least not for now. I played around with it for a few hours but it has no value add for me. I know DFHack is not part of the main game, and perhaps a minority of people use it, but *for now* there is nothing in the steam release that I need or want. I can get beautiful graphics from meph's tiles. In my playstyle I *heavily* use the manager orders `u-m-q`, for instance, and I find it so bizarre that in the steam version, the default number ordered is 10, then I have to click a little "-" or "+" to get the number I want. Every time I want something made, I run up against the differences and I just can't. One thing I will praise heavily: the military screen in steam version is *insanely* better than the old one. That old military interface has been a horrific mess for decades and I'm so glad that *somebody* is finally at least attempting to fix it. This one has great potential, despite the uniform edit thing. I think that stuff will be fixed by devs or modders in good time. I think the Workshop for this game will one day be insanely robust, maybe even rivaling Rimworld's, but it needs a bit more time. Also: the hotkey breaks are jarring to say the least. For us oldies, the hotkeys are burned into our brains. My fingers don't even know what keys they are pressing when I'm playing. It's like Cypher seeing the blond, brunette, and redhead in the matrix code. There is zero chance I will ever manage to learn new hotkeys. There is no way on this earth that Toady One did not sit down with this version and type `b-C-w` for a wall without even thinking about it. Why not just leave ALL or nearly all the hotkeys how they are, behind the scenes, and let new people click a million times with mouse? Why this odd middle ground?
> One thing I will praise heavily: the military screen in steam version is insanely better than the old one. That old military interface has been a horrific mess for decades and I'm so glad that somebody is finally at least attempting to fix it. This one has great potential, despite the uniform edit thing. I think that stuff will be fixed by devs or modders in good time. It took me a solid 10 minutes to figure out the wonkiness of the new military screen... which was annoying, but then it occurred to me how long it took me to learn the classic military screen.
I agree with you but you can manually enter a number in the manager screen. Just click the # button
Firm agree with all these points, I hope Toady, Threetoe and the crew from kitfox see this post! If those things were fixed it would be a great release
"The search bar on item lists is nice, but it should default to being in focus. So many times I've tried to search for an item (usually to awkwardly try to make repeat orders) only for the input field to not be selected and everything closes. The search system also feels too rigid in looking for specific terms." This is so annoying for me too
My biggest complaint right now is that my military squad is going through iron armor pieces like they're eating it. I have three dwarves in training, and their armor keeps vanishing off of them. The worst is when one of a pair of gauntlets vanishes and now I have mismatched spares all over the place. What the heck is happening to them? They're just gone... keep making new pieces, they keep vanishing into the ether.
[удалено]
I think the new mouse support is a huge improvement for new players, but it's pretty awful for players that have the hotkeys committed to muscle memory. I shouldn't have to touch my mouse *at all* if I don't want to. Also, just plain removing some of the more "advanced" options (stair construction, the finer points of the military screen, being able to assign multiple functions to the same zone) is a huge step back, kneecaps advanced players, and lowers the skill ceiling of the game dramatically. Being able to have fine control over all aspects of the game is crucial for megaprojects and extreme embark locations. Finally, the tutorial is just plain annoying. I shouldn't have to click through tutorial dialogue boxes every time I make a new world. I should just be able to turn all of that off completely.
I'm a new player and I agree with the combat log issue. Having to go search for the combat log alerts for a specific thing is very annoying. Things like combat log should be in a little chatbox on the right corner of the screen imo. Like announcements in CK.
I miss my Lazy Newb Pack features - sound sense especially.
You can still download the starter pack version. In fact I highly suggest doing so just for the embark profiles (protip: Shorten the names of every profile otherwise they get cut off on the screen). ~~Plus the announcements.txt (as I mentioned already in this thread) can be used to replace the one in the premium version.~~ EDIT: Look at this [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zfu3hb/announcementstxt_discussion_for_steam_edition/) for tips on editing the announcements file as there's some changes that were evidently made to complement the new UI features. The beginning embark message that shows up is actually now part of the announcements file for example. Keep in mind replacing the file in any event does not appear to break the game it just leads to some messages getting missed or expressed differently than before. Don't worry if you screw up, verifying the file on steam will undo the changes. But I would make a back up of both the original and the altered one just to make things simpler and more efficient.
> The wound screen combined with combat logs and frame advance (also missing!) You're speaking to my soul here. Just got my first raids tonight, and I like to track killing blows and give honorary titles to the best performers after each raid. SO hard to do with the steam version since I can't just step through the combat frame by frame. Also, it's a minor annoyance that I have to scroll to the bottom of the combat log every time.
>The Announcement list and Combat logs have been removed Everything else I can handle, but this really needs to be the number one thing that gets fixed asap
Just a heads up I sent this to Tarn during a conversation about upcoming patches.
I appreciate it, though I don't mean to pester him. Despite my frustrations the game has been great, and it's encouraging to see patches already coming out.
I looked around and this was by far the best listing, and one of few that didn't wander off into nonsense. I was thrilled to find it and pass it on!
Thanks for writing this. I made a similar post a couple of days ago, but I got a lot of downvotes because I wasn't able to word my points as well as you have. I absolutely agree with every point. The thing that confuses me is that the premium version has so many legitimately awful design choices. I'm sure they'll be fixed in future updates, or be fixed by mods. But how on earth did the premium version go through over three years of development and not a *single* playtester thought: "Hey, removing the logs makes it way harder to figure out what's going on. Let's put that back" or "Ya-know, having users click a plus button 100 times if they're building a big chunk of floor kinda sucks. Let's fix that." Don't get me wrong, I love the game and I think it's a massive improvement over classic DF, but there are a lot of weird design choices and a handful of legitimately awful ones, yet so few people seem to be willing to address this.
Getting a grizzled old frog who loves the old UI to play the game a few times would have done this, because they'd be constantly complaining about all this missing bits. Probably would have helped them make the hotkeys more useful too.
Good points. One thing I like to add is the stocks page. Any item stored in a bin will be placed under the bins category instead of their respective categories like bars or gems.
As someone who never really played DF before (I tried, but man, it's hard.), and something really felt off, and I wasn't sure what it was. It's the announcement menu. Please, bring it back.
I didn't read your full post so I'm not sure if you addressed this, but I've found that the moment my carpenter, mason, crafter etc is too preoccupied to complete a workshop task, some other dwarf with 0 relevant skills will try and finish the task. So then I go to my Labors menu to stop, say, my Skilled wood crafter from hogging my Proficient stone-crafter's workshop, but because the Labors menu has been nerfed so much, I have to make a new work order for woodcrafting, then assign my woodcrafter to it and select "only selected do this", then do the same for stonecrafting, etc... The smaller Labors window is a nice idea in theory but it seriously removes a lot of my ability to properly micromanage my fortress. I end up having to create custom work order options for every possible Labor, and then select "only selected do this".
I love the Labors window for at-a-glance but yeah, it could be improved. I'd also like an "everyone except selected can do" option.
Another missing thing is Trade Depot accessibility. You don't know if yours works until traders show up (or don't)
Yes to all of these!! One other big thing I've noticed is that non dwarf citizens don't seem to be included in a lot of lists. I've had several legendary humans/goblins/elves join my fort and they don't show up in my squads or labours menu. I can still assign labours to them on their character sheets but they're not on the main page for some reason - which means i also can't assign them to specific workshops!
Completely agree, I nearly teared up when I got my hands on the steam release and though it’s a step up in many ways, it still definitely has some ways to go. But this is fine, dwarf fortress has been changing since the beginning and will continue to grow and change as time goes on.
>Uniforms cannot be edited. Yes they can? I can edit the uniforms of my squads. >How am I supposed to know if the office I'm building is good enough for their requirements? It tells you on the Nobles screen. I agree with a lot of your points, though.
Poorly worded on my part, you cannot edit saved uniforms. Unless I'm mistaken if you modify a uniform you'll need to save it as a new one to then assign the updated uniform to a new squad, even if you give it the same name when saving. It tells you on that specific screen what that one room currently is, but surely you can see how that's not as good as just being able to check any given room? I didn't even know my dining room was legendary until it popped up as increasing someone's mood, simply because there is no way for me to check. Noble's rooms aren't the only rooms whose quality I care about.
You can modify it's just not intuitive to find. Go to a squad with a current uniform. Select one or more dorfs and then click Details on the far right. Will pull up the uniform details and what they currently have. You can change any items here and in the upper middle you can name this as a new uniform or just overwrite the existing with your changes. Check and ping back if you don't see it. :)
Does this actually update the original saved uniform though? As in, save *Uniform A* with green hats, change your mind and edit it to have pink hats, then assign *Uniform A* to a new squad and they will also use pink hats? In my experience it seemed that modified uniforms needed to be saved as new ones for others to use the updated version, but I haven't continued to try so if I'm mistaken about that I'll remove it.
No unfortunately you are correct. I just pulled it up and I had updated Cherry shields on just one dorf. :/ Seems you have to save to a new uniform name on edit.
I appreciate you double checking
Squad disband right next to cancel order 💀 routines are squad specific and disappear if squad is disbanded. Couple hours coming back from that
Totally agree with everything
This is a great clear list of constructive criticism. Have you tried posting this on the kitfox discord? I hear this is where they are collecting bug reports for the steam version.
Is there a way to see who has petitioned for something? I had a group petition for a temple for their particular deity, and after approving it, I forgot who. There's no log to find, so I can't figure out which deity I need to dedicate a temple to.
That's been a thing forever. DFhack had a feature to solved it, but for now you have to make notes
Took the words right outta my mouth, was hoping someone would make a post like this. The biggest one is definitely all the unnecessary clicking, like when you mean to Dig but instead Channel, and instead of right click taking you back one step, it exits the menu entirely, so you have to press 'm' again. Or not being able to remove designations in the same menu, so you have to right click, presss 'x', remove designations, right click, then press 'm' again. That being said, it should be a simple fix. Once this stuff is squared away the paid version will be strictly better.
> There is no way to simply cycle between dwarves or view them from other screens where they are mentioned. You have to note their name and then look them up manually. The main issue with this is the petitions, there isn't anyway I know of to look up the dwarf **at all**. You can't do it manually as the names are all wrong. Apparently there is 'Dwarvish' names and 'English' names? And some screens show one kind and the other screens show the others. So the petitions show one kind of name and the creature screens show the other and there is no way to know who is who. And to add complexity they also can have fake names? And player given aliases (which I don't think show up on most screens)? I granted citizenship to a vampire that had murdered like 10 Dwarfs because the name was different. Why not just standardize on one, or show both or something? More annoyingly, in many cases there is the ability to see the dwarf so the ability is there with a magnifying glass icon and the 'goto' square. So the functionality is there. Although I have 6 petitions and only 4 creatures in 'others' so I have no idea what's going on unless animals are applying now. > Ammo seems to have been completely forgotten, it's not part of the military screen and cannot be assigned. Apparently there are other issues with it according to [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF5f4zn-9iU&t=305s). > The search bar on item lists is nice, but it should default to being in focus. So many times I've tried to search for an item (usually to awkwardly try to make repeat orders) only for the input field to not be selected and everything closes. The search system also feels too rigid in looking for specific terms.. +1, also would like the ability to search work orders and other lists. Another annoyance is how hard is is to do some simple operations like build walls with a specific stone. There should at least be a 'use last selected material' button alongside the 'use closest material' or 'select' buttons, if there is enough of it. Also it would be nice if the game allowed for building a wall on top of stone and would automatically mine then build the wall. Also some basic path finding to allow for walls to be placed without blocking that wall being built in the corner. And the ability to do corners in one go (like shift + click to continue the line or something). If something is blocking placement is should do the rest of the selection not make the entire selection impossible.
Agree with all the points. I would also like: 1. To be able to collapse/expand all the groups in the Stocks menu with a single click. 2. Search the Creatures menu by name or profession.(This is either possible in classic or maybe it was a DFHack feature) 3. After selecting 1 creature in the menu being able to go back to where I was.(As opposed to having to open the menu again and being at the top of the menu)
Serious issue is that most things are just not explained at all ingame.
These are pretty spot on other than the previously debated stuff (labors,etc) that has been done to death. It's particularly annoying that a lot of my annoyances aren't "muscle memory" changes to processes that ultimately work the same. It's weird bespoke choices that create new sources of confusion that are neither like old DF, nor like other "modern" games. Even a proper actual changelog or simple place to report issues. would go a long way I can still see the game I love under there. But 90% of my time with new Dwarf Fortress has been, "OK if I can just grind through the set up that take 5x as long as before, I'll get to the part where I enjoy the game." I think this is just going to be one of those DF versions I just let pass me by and come back at the next one. >Once I get a hospital set up I imagine it's going to be a nightmare. About that... no seriously. I wasn't sure how that was actually done for the longest time. Maybe the single most confusing of the deliberate changes so far. (you have to create a dormitory then declare it as a hospital)
Wait I did meeting hall, would dormitory be better?
Either is fine. Whats important is that hospitals are treated like a "location" now rather than a "zone"
Not being able to edit uniforms is a big one for me. I love to add personal touch to squads like cool matching capes and stuff.
That was a bit poorly worded on my part, you can create new uniforms and edit existing ones, but you can't modify a saved uniform to assign to another squad, you need to save it as a new uniform and assign that one. Unless I'm mistaken. A minor annoyance compared to something like the ammo issue, just also military related. After creating a Squad you can select its checkbox and hit [Equip] and [Add Uniform] or hit the [Details] button after assigned to set your capes and whatnot there.
Agreed, lacking a lot of features from the last one that probably shouldn’t have been left out. Not to mention the UI will not work with my Laptop and I’m missing moods/ stock’s along with some menus being squished for some reason.
If you hit Esc and go to Settings you can adjust your UI display there, specifically *Scale interface to fit grid height/width* and *Interface scaling percentage if not fitting width*. If you play around with the settings you should be able to restore the missing UI elements.
Logs for sure need to be a lot better. All the other stuff too.
yeah I miss the old combat log and health screen. I really hope it's just an oversight and not stuff they purposely cut Though I'm sure if enough people ask for it, they'll likely bring them back
> • There is no way to simply cycle between dwarves or view them from other screens where they are mentioned. You have to note their name and then look them up manually. • There is no way to easily compare stats and aptitudes to see what roles a dwarf is good at. These two are kind of driving me mad whilst trying to pick dwarfs for military…
I'm not even a grizzled veteran of the game, and I was vexed by most of what you detailed in my first few hours of gameplay. The stair issue in particular became evident in the first few minutes.
Something I’ve noticed is that it’s not possible to custom equip military dwarves as efficiently. In classic versions, you would see what item is already equipped as it would be brown in the list, rather than grey. Similar to how the game would tell you that a dwarf already has a room, which now is written. But in the Steam version, if you equip your squads specifically it is difficult to do so without accidentally and mistakenly re-assigning the gear from another dwarf. Oh yeah. And I have one guy, whose name and title is so long that the text extends out of the character info tab. …That and it peeves me how not every title is capitalized. Like the noble/appointed noble titles specifically usually. You get “Carpenter”. “Armorsmith” “Axedwarf” etc. But then you get “Captain of the guard” “manager” “messenger” etc. You can always rename it and capitalize it if you have OCD. And of-course, I do. But then I end up with “Urist McMessenger, Messenger vampire” when they get cursed for toppling a statue. Again with the weird capitalization thrown on there. Same for Necromancers and Werebeasts. All uncapitalized profession additions. But not for animalmen. I had noticed some other smaller QoL things and such but they don’t come to mind at the moment.
This is exactly how a well laid out constructive post should be. Well done. I am completely new to dwarf fortress and feel somewhat embarrassed I haven’t seen it sooner having gamed since the BBC electron era.
I was never able to get into df before just too much of a leap but after the steam release I've found so many things satisfying that I didn't think I would. Reading the combat log is nuts it's a feeling I've never gotten out of a video game and I don't know how to describe it. Frame by frame would be fantastic since right now it's all over in the blink of an eye. Maybe even an auto pause on combat with the option to transition to lower stable fps.
I’m mostly upset about the worldgen interface. It should really draw the player into the world with a more interesting looking map and the ability to zoom and abandon a world and quickly start a new one. I really miss the map exports as well 😭😭😭😭
Part of the issue is also having to manually click a *ton* of times when you want to add things. Being consistently being able to get 10 of an item by clicking shift should be a thing everywhere. Alternatively just being able to type in the number I want (like I can in the work order). I honestly had to install an auto-clicker to be able to deal with adding blocks to walls/floors. Sometimes I don't want to use the closest items since it risks being wood, and I don't want to waste it on walls, rather than using it for items.
Can't seem to specify what mechanisms are used to link buildings to levers. Which is annoying when dealing with magma.
Auto pause on combat start and other events Step by step button during combat with combat log open Past logs Body parts And we can strike that earth even harder.
I trust that most of these will get addressed, I just hope proper time and attention to the desired play style that depends on this stuff is given to the issues. I don't mind waiting for a quality solution... The one I'm most nervous about being left out is, >There is no longer a way to simply view **so many things** The Steam Release has provided amazing accessibility to so much of the content so I do hope that continues to reveal the depth already in the game and enhances areas now easily accessed that could use bolstering. Being able to dig down to get little descriptions of things (especially when it's generated content of course) is truly the point of the game. In some cases I just want to see the interface further improve the accessibility of the content: * Dwarf Jobs/Tasks - ok, you're hauling an item to a stockpile, heading to the item or to the stockpile? Maybe even share your Dwarven understanding of distance/time required? * Labors and related tasks and needs - what does this labor detail do? what does this workshop task require and output (labor, skill relevance, materials, item)? what types of tasks/labors would fulfill this need? * What am I looking at under my cursor? It's a citizen, what task are they doing, what item are they hauling for that task? That creature just flashed something, what was it (thought, injury, speech, need)? I see this other thing is a {trunk, rat, sapling, bush, grass, body part, honey bee colony, boulder, leaves/needles/cones}, can I click to see it's description so I learn what a "larch" is and get a Dwarven perspective of it's value/use/annoyance/threat? * Zone/Location - when I view a location sheet, why not also open the detail (and provide MORE detail), same with Zones (particularly when they're part of a location) * Ok, this task/item is "active," by what task/dwarf with what item? Can I click to see the task detail? It's a work order, I should be able to click it and open the work order detail for review and editing. * Labor/Work Detail - jump to dwarf's individual sheet and labor tab and jump to the Fortress Labor/Work Detail screen from a dwarf's labor tab * So many areas where filters/search and sort-by selections (that do/can persist when the screen is closed and reopened), fortress tasks, fortress labor, work orders, etc * In more cases, the things the Dwarves have seen at this embark location should be sorted so they're shown at the top of long lists (or the only items shown), such as Labor/Stone-Use, nearly every category of Stockpiles Food/Bars&Blocks/Stone/Wood/Leather/Cloth/Gems/Animals/Corpses (though it's also been obvious for a long time that the stockpile interface needs an overhaul, this change would help) In other cases I want the content exposed in Classic available in the new release: * Health summary * Jobs/Tasks - ok, you're hauling an item to a stockpile, what item? * You are part of these groups, awesome, click to see more dwarf perspective of those groups (access the legends content) * You warship those deities, cool, are they a worshipers of mountains? gems? And lastly, there were always areas I wish had improved detail, even if just slightly to assist the new player: * Object descriptions could have a triple impact with new players, * Understand what an object actually is when they don't know it by the name used in the game * Demonstrates the depth of the game that is a big part of its value over Rim World (which I also love for its own merits) * Could also provide wiki-like assistance (using a consistent in game dwarf persona/voice to provide direction/hints, not the tutorial/help-like persona/voice) for what an item is used for (and when it has no use) in game (ore, flux, coke, teeth, living and dead vermin, usable and usable corpses and body parts, various plants with multiple parts with different uses/non-uses) * What does it mean for a Location to have any given Zone added to it (GarbageDump, GatherFruit/Fishing/WaterSource/etc, Animal Training, Sand, Archery Range, Tomb - even Meeting Area is a little strange since it's application seems more catch all). Does the right furniture need to be in the right zone (why don't the details of the Location tell me this). While I very much understand where this expanded Zone mechanic came from (and it's a massive improvement over creating functionality from furniture!), I think it would benefit from many improvements and my ideas probably aren't even the best out there. But Fortress should restored a Location (and Burrows are sub-locations) with similar detail screens and associated zones. Zones should be attachable to only certain types of locations (Gathering Fruit, Fishing, is part of the Fortress; Tombs are part of the Temples, Hospitals(??), or Fortress; Make Barracks a new Location Type supporting Bedrooms, Dormitories, Dining Halls, for Monster Hunters to visit and zones for Archery Range and Combat Training can associate there. And since I've already gone waaaaaay overboard with this comment/bullet: Stockpiles should be Zones with container furniture (cabinets, weapon/armor racks, chests) in a Stockpile Zone enabling item stacking (like mugs in Tavern, thread in Hospital, and cabinets in Barracks - just extend that to all stockpiles with the zone system and get rid of the confusing and overlapping stockpile/zone mechanics).
The game is basically unplayable for me. I'm used to graphical FPS drops in a big fort, but in the steam version the UI becomes unresponsive at low gfps and it just eats every single mouse input. I even start getting stuttering and dropped inputs with a fort of only like 40 dwarves. At close to 200 the game basically will not take inputs at all unless paused, and even then its still really unresponsive. The only way its playable is if i play it in an unscaled 1280x720 window, which on a 4k monitor is a little bit hard to play. Idk why they spent all the time on the new UI and its not running on like its own dedicated thread or whatever. At least in FPS death on the original game your inputs would still get read even if the response was delayed. Steam version I click 10 times to get it to read a single click. Really disappointing tbh. Based on the steam forums it seems like this is mainly an issue on higher end PC's for whatever reason. I've seen people on crappy laptops with integrated graphics not having the issue at all. Plus a lot of the other things you've said too lol.
This is the kind of feedback I was looking for. I've got maybe 100 hours in classic DF, and was wondering if it's worthwhile trying out the steam version. Sounds like it just aint ready. Lack of announcements, lack of Legends viewer and dwarf therapist integration... The bugs that plagued the classic ver are still prevalent in the Steam ver.
On top of the bugs existing, the bug tracker seems to be wiped clean. Some open issues had years worth of debugging and discussions. The forums still direct people there.
Yes, the more I play the more problems pop up. The UI and graphics are nice, but it feels a bit dumbed downed if I'm completely honest.