7 ms·

Dwarf Fortress is an example of how a great idea can be held back by a horrible user experience. The UI is a nightmare, and the performance worsens as the game

Dwarf Fortress is an example of how a great idea can be held back by a horrible user experience. The UI is a nightmare, and the performance worsens as the game gets bigger. I've recently started playing Rim World, which is essentially a Dwarf Fortress light. I'm enjoying it way more than I enjoyed Dwarf Fortress despite being a less complex (relatively speaking) game because it offers a FAR superior interface and presents it's mechanics in a friendlier way.

jmcdiesel 10y ago
Perspective? I find the DF UI, while minimal, to be great. Everything can be done on keyboard shortcuts... its more challenging initially, really easy as soon as it clicks... then the idea of doing it all with a mouse seems crazy
- JaumeGreen 10y ago
  The problem is not keyboard vs mouse. IIRC (foggy memory, several years since I last played) there are several ways to move through lists, depending on which list you are. Military was a chaos. People recommend an external application for better review of your dwarves, as the main interface is clunky. It's a great game, but the UI could be much better.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - imdsm 10y ago
    Utilities is part of the game ecosystem though. Dwarf Therapist is great, but after 30 dwarfs it becomes better to enable autolabor. To be fair, I'd like to see RimWorld* manage 200+ pawns. * Not to say I dislike RimWorld, in fact it is my favour dwarflike.
  - vacri 10y ago
    Oh, the agony of the military system. It has a learning curve all of its own. RimWorld is great, but it just feels so much more sparse than DF - you only have a handful of folks. Graphics are nice (and the Prison Architect style is nice as well) and the way to assign orders is much needed (identical to a DF community add-on), but when it comes to Building Your Thang, it's just not a bustling community working against the odds. It's interesting that so many things are based off what DF lacks (basic graphics, ui-friendliness) but don't implement the heart of DF (complexity), which is admittedly hard and was built up in DF over the course of years.
- zeveb 10y ago
  It's not either the traditional DF UI or a mouse-driven interface: other alternatives would be an improved keyboard-driven interface or an interface which uses both the keyboard and the mouse well (yes, I'm aware that technically DF does have some mouse interacton: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Mouse_control http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Mouse_control). Dwarf Fortress is an amazing game with an incredible engine, but its UI is notoriously terrible, and IMHO deservedly so. But then, I've never managed to last very long, so perhaps there's something wrong with me.
  - GrantSolar 10y ago
    The UX is a hurdle. There are inconsistencies and the last time I played, third-party utilities were pretty much mandatory in order to manage your dwarves effectively. That said, the great thing about the UI is that once you've learned it you can discard it. If you know the commands you need, you can hide the 'commands' area to give you more information on the current gamestate. FWIW, DF is absolutely fantastic at doing what it's designed to do. It's primarily a story generator not a game, which is partly why interactivity is almost an afterthought
- chongli 10y ago
  I find the DF UI, while minimal, to be great. Do you use Dwarf Therapist?
  - imdsm 10y ago
    I think I need one.
- zo1 10y ago
  It's not even the UI, or the graphics. It's the fact that the game exists in some sort of "hobby" or forum limbo. That is why it's not more popular, and simply exists in a perpetual status of some sort of "geeky" reverence. You search for it, and the main page for Dwarf Fortress is on a "bay12games" domain rather than its own. No one knows "Bay12Games", and it's been 10+ years since Dwarf Fortress was first released. The guy running this should get over it, and admit that the only reason he's got some sort of fame is because of a single game. He should focus on that, not "Bay 12 Games". That company doesn't even have its own Wiki page. Then the page itself. Looks like it's made in the early 2000's and hasn't been updated since. I just, I don't even know where to start with this one. Then the actual download for the game: "df_43_05_win.zip". No installer, no MSI, nothing. I opened it just now, and couldn't find any sort of "Instructions" file or manual, either. Not to mention that all the "nicely packaged" versions of Dwarf Fortress exist in random forum threads.
  - stagbeetle 10y ago
    > The guy running this should get over it, and admit that the only reason he's got some sort of fame is because of a single game. He should focus on that, not "Bay 12 Games". AFAIK, that's all he's doing right now. Also, Liberal Crime Squad is entertaining too and I know there's a few communities around it.
  - imdsm 10y ago
    > No one knows "Bay12Games" Really? You can find some of us here. Length > 0. http://www.bay12games.com/champions.html http://www.bay12games.com/champions.html > The guy running this should get over it, and admit that the only reason he's got some sort of fame is because of a single game. And if you don't mind me being so blunt, what is your reason? I don't know of zo1. > Then the page itself. Looks like it's made in the early 2000's and hasn't been updated since. I just, I don't even know where to start with this one. Some of us remember the internet back when it looked like this. Some of us miss the internet when it looked like this. For this reason, many of us like the website to look _just like this_. > Then the actual download for the game: "df_43_05_win.zip". No installer, no MSI, nothing. I opened it just now, and couldn't find any sort of "Instructions" file or manual, either. Not to mention that all the "nicely packaged" versions of Dwarf Fortress exist in random forum threads. Now, I'm going to do something rare and separate from the usual jovial friendliness associated with the community to give make a very stark statement: if you can't figure out how to run the game, you probably shouldn't play it. Now, returning to a more friendly disposition, I think you need to chill out a bit, stop picking everything apart so much, and start enjoying things for what they are.
- LoSboccacc 10y ago
  Gonna call this for the elitist bullshit it is. I play, know the bindings etc, but the UI has enormous problems with consistency. The older interface like the jewlery encrusting and labor assignent work in a completely different way than the less old interfaces like military management and hospitals, which are yet again inconsistem with the latest interfaces like libraries and taverns Some room get built on the room menu, oter in the zone menu, both can have either modern or old menus to manage assignment and roles and while the whole thing is workable is far from being great, good, easy or even likeable.
eduren 10y ago
I agree in a lot of cases. It's actually really interesting to watch development because you can see him incorporate less obtuse patterns in the new interfaces as the game has progressed. Some of the most headache inducing parts are the oldest and (from how he's described it) more brittle. I frankly don't blame the guy for wanting to keep it closed source.
Sevrene 10y ago
Honestly I feel the opposite. I agree Dwarf Fortress is quite hard to learn and the UI plays a large part of that as it's completely keyboard based and requires a lot of upfront effort to learn, but once you do you become much faster than you would otherwise (much like text editors). People often complain about Dwarf Fortress's graphics in the same vain and breath as the UI, but I think these are parts of the charm and instead of being weaknesses they are leveraged as strengths. For instance, the lack of fidelity of the game allows any new character to be added in 2 seconds, yet Rimworld needs a considerable amount of time and effort developing each texture. To an extent I think the 'horrible' user experience cannot be divorced from Dwarf Fortress. Losing is fun, after all. I think what you consider a 'horrible' user experience cannot be divorced from what we know as Dwarf Fortress today. Losing is fun after all. I love Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress, but they occupy different spaces within a similar genre in my mind.
- Sacho 10y ago
  I agree about the UI, but the performance degradation is still a significant issue.
  - imdsm 10y ago
    Kill cats before they adopt a dwarf. Clean up old clothes with dfhack, and stop making dams!
    - patmcguire 10y ago
      The other big one is making sure dwarves don't path to complicated places, or animals don't path at all. Needing to know about how the game is written to make it useable is not great, though.
      - imdsm 10y ago
        I think it's part of the package. Name me anything that is perfect without flaws and still useful? Water is great to drink yet it gets you wet and drowns you if you breath it. Fire is lovely and warm and cooks our food but burns and melts our flesh if we play in it. Lids keep felt tip pens wet, and choke our children. Fish are pretty and taste nice but occasionally swallow fisherdwarves. The internet is great and connects us but causes divide by mixing people who were better separated. Light is fantastic, but I can't sleep if I can see any. Tea is just perfect, but it mAkEs Me ShaKe toO mUcH aNd ThaT caN be a ProbleM.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
intended 10y ago
Dwarf fortress is a great idea made possible by the winnowing effect of its UI. I've found that this particular game has found its niche because of what it is. The point of the creator is this: the game isnt even past pre-alpha. Lots of things will change, which a UI will only bog down. So for example rimworld is still currently 2d. (will possibly change), but that a big change DF plans to change the full world gen and design in the next arc - its a reasonable view.
- andrewclunn 10y ago
  This. The UI is the final step. Right now it's about experimentation and determining the ideal game mechanics. The obtuseness means that the most obsessive and hard core are your play testers. This is a bad UI as part of good game design for what the current goals for dwarf fortress are.
  - civilian 10y ago
    As far as I understood, the UI is there to stay. The creator wrote his own game engine that is optimized for printing ascii to a screen-- it's not architected in a way that can plug-and-play with a different renderer.
    - pck 10y ago
      Cogmind is an interesting example of pure ASCII holding itself to a very high UI standard. Here is a quick animated gif with a few examples of interactions: http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/gsg-content/uploads/2014/11/cogmind_ui_animation_compilation.gif http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/gsg-content/uploads/2014/1...
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - anchpop 10y ago
        I would absolutely love if DF looked that good at some point! You're definitely right that just because it's ASCII doesn't mean it can't be visually appealing
singularity2001 10y ago
it took an hour here just to get a half-ways readable font. after a while the game was completely destroyed by constant notifications. so I couldn't agree more with the horrible user experience.
pault 10y ago
I have played both, and while I got bored of RW as soon as I got to the siege stage, I had to force myself to stop playing DF even though I still had about a dozen ideas for lava traps. YMMV. Edit: I still have to stop myself from re-downloading dwarf fortress about once per week because there is so much left to explore. I just barely scratched the surface of power stations and automated rail systems. You could spend thousands of hours just designing traps to kill goblins. The fun is in the complexity. Perhaps you just did not get deep enough into the game. Now I have to talk myself out of downloading DF again. The sheer maniacal glee of knocking a dozen goblins off a narrow path (use a rail car attached to a pressure plate) into a pit and filling it with lava after spending hours setting it up just can't be described.
- gagege 10y ago
  To be fair, RimWorld is a much newer game than DF. It hasn't had nearly as much time to add features.
dri_ft 10y ago
I think I agree. I'm up for complex keyboard interfaces and simple, ASCII-ish graphics - I play a lot of roguelikes - but something about Dwarf Fortress's interface still rubs me the wrong way. I do want graphics to be pretty, even if they're simple, and I do want controls to be elegant, even if they're keyboard-based. The default tiles are ugly - unnecessarily ugly - and the keyboard controls don't seem great. (Like a sibling to this comment says, consistency has a lot to do with it, and not having to move your hands far around the keyboard is nice.) Then again, I admit I haven't spent that much time with it. So I do find the interface offputting, but it's not because I want a flashy, dumbed-down one. And it's a bit frustrating whenever I see criticism of the Dwarf Fortress interface dismissed in those terms.
KirinDave 10y ago
I don't want to disparage Rimworld, it's great. But the game pales in comparison to the beauty and replayability of Dwarf Fortress. I've been playing DF for 5 years and I still feel like a novice. Toss in modding and the game goes even further. I understand your point of view, but I'm sad that amazing and well-designed games like Nethack and Dwarf Fortress don't get a fair shake because they're fixed width tile games. DF is a simulation game of stunning proportions.
erikb 10y ago
Agreed. And at its current development I wouldn't be surprised if Rim World would reach just as much complexity as DF, of course always lacking a few years behind (more than a decade to begin with). But as you said, due to a better interface it's probably in the leading position.

jmcdiesel 10y ago

Perspective? I find the DF UI, while minimal, to be great. Everything can be done on keyboard shortcuts... its more challenging initially, really easy as soon as it clicks... then the idea of doing it all with a mouse seems crazy

JaumeGreen 10y ago
The problem is not keyboard vs mouse. IIRC (foggy memory, several years since I last played) there are several ways to move through lists, depending on which list you are. Military was a chaos. People recommend an external application for better review of your dwarves, as the main interface is clunky. It's a great game, but the UI could be much better.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- imdsm 10y ago
  Utilities is part of the game ecosystem though. Dwarf Therapist is great, but after 30 dwarfs it becomes better to enable autolabor. To be fair, I'd like to see RimWorld* manage 200+ pawns. * Not to say I dislike RimWorld, in fact it is my favour dwarflike.
- vacri 10y ago
  Oh, the agony of the military system. It has a learning curve all of its own. RimWorld is great, but it just feels so much more sparse than DF - you only have a handful of folks. Graphics are nice (and the Prison Architect style is nice as well) and the way to assign orders is much needed (identical to a DF community add-on), but when it comes to Building Your Thang, it's just not a bustling community working against the odds. It's interesting that so many things are based off what DF lacks (basic graphics, ui-friendliness) but don't implement the heart of DF (complexity), which is admittedly hard and was built up in DF over the course of years.
zeveb 10y ago
It's not either the traditional DF UI or a mouse-driven interface: other alternatives would be an improved keyboard-driven interface or an interface which uses both the keyboard and the mouse well (yes, I'm aware that technically DF does have some mouse interacton: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Mouse_control http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Mouse_control). Dwarf Fortress is an amazing game with an incredible engine, but its UI is notoriously terrible, and IMHO deservedly so. But then, I've never managed to last very long, so perhaps there's something wrong with me.
- GrantSolar 10y ago
  The UX is a hurdle. There are inconsistencies and the last time I played, third-party utilities were pretty much mandatory in order to manage your dwarves effectively. That said, the great thing about the UI is that once you've learned it you can discard it. If you know the commands you need, you can hide the 'commands' area to give you more information on the current gamestate. FWIW, DF is absolutely fantastic at doing what it's designed to do. It's primarily a story generator not a game, which is partly why interactivity is almost an afterthought
chongli 10y ago
I find the DF UI, while minimal, to be great. Do you use Dwarf Therapist?
- imdsm 10y ago
  I think I need one.
zo1 10y ago
It's not even the UI, or the graphics. It's the fact that the game exists in some sort of "hobby" or forum limbo. That is why it's not more popular, and simply exists in a perpetual status of some sort of "geeky" reverence. You search for it, and the main page for Dwarf Fortress is on a "bay12games" domain rather than its own. No one knows "Bay12Games", and it's been 10+ years since Dwarf Fortress was first released. The guy running this should get over it, and admit that the only reason he's got some sort of fame is because of a single game. He should focus on that, not "Bay 12 Games". That company doesn't even have its own Wiki page. Then the page itself. Looks like it's made in the early 2000's and hasn't been updated since. I just, I don't even know where to start with this one. Then the actual download for the game: "df_43_05_win.zip". No installer, no MSI, nothing. I opened it just now, and couldn't find any sort of "Instructions" file or manual, either. Not to mention that all the "nicely packaged" versions of Dwarf Fortress exist in random forum threads.
- stagbeetle 10y ago
  > The guy running this should get over it, and admit that the only reason he's got some sort of fame is because of a single game. He should focus on that, not "Bay 12 Games". AFAIK, that's all he's doing right now. Also, Liberal Crime Squad is entertaining too and I know there's a few communities around it.
- imdsm 10y ago
  > No one knows "Bay12Games" Really? You can find some of us here. Length > 0. http://www.bay12games.com/champions.html http://www.bay12games.com/champions.html > The guy running this should get over it, and admit that the only reason he's got some sort of fame is because of a single game. And if you don't mind me being so blunt, what is your reason? I don't know of zo1. > Then the page itself. Looks like it's made in the early 2000's and hasn't been updated since. I just, I don't even know where to start with this one. Some of us remember the internet back when it looked like this. Some of us miss the internet when it looked like this. For this reason, many of us like the website to look _just like this_. > Then the actual download for the game: "df_43_05_win.zip". No installer, no MSI, nothing. I opened it just now, and couldn't find any sort of "Instructions" file or manual, either. Not to mention that all the "nicely packaged" versions of Dwarf Fortress exist in random forum threads. Now, I'm going to do something rare and separate from the usual jovial friendliness associated with the community to give make a very stark statement: if you can't figure out how to run the game, you probably shouldn't play it. Now, returning to a more friendly disposition, I think you need to chill out a bit, stop picking everything apart so much, and start enjoying things for what they are.
LoSboccacc 10y ago
Gonna call this for the elitist bullshit it is. I play, know the bindings etc, but the UI has enormous problems with consistency. The older interface like the jewlery encrusting and labor assignent work in a completely different way than the less old interfaces like military management and hospitals, which are yet again inconsistem with the latest interfaces like libraries and taverns Some room get built on the room menu, oter in the zone menu, both can have either modern or old menus to manage assignment and roles and while the whole thing is workable is far from being great, good, easy or even likeable.

eduren 10y ago

I agree in a lot of cases. It's actually really interesting to watch development because you can see him incorporate less obtuse patterns in the new interfaces as the game has progressed. Some of the most headache inducing parts are the oldest and (from how he's described it) more brittle. I frankly don't blame the guy for wanting to keep it closed source.

Sevrene 10y ago

Honestly I feel the opposite. I agree Dwarf Fortress is quite hard to learn and the UI plays a large part of that as it's completely keyboard based and requires a lot of upfront effort to learn, but once you do you become much faster than you would otherwise (much like text editors). People often complain about Dwarf Fortress's graphics in the same vain and breath as the UI, but I think these are parts of the charm and instead of being weaknesses they are leveraged as strengths. For instance, the lack of fidelity of the game allows any new character to be added in 2 seconds, yet Rimworld needs a considerable amount of time and effort developing each texture. To an extent I think the 'horrible' user experience cannot be divorced from Dwarf Fortress. Losing is fun, after all. I think what you consider a 'horrible' user experience cannot be divorced from what we know as Dwarf Fortress today. Losing is fun after all. I love Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress, but they occupy different spaces within a similar genre in my mind.

Sacho 10y ago
I agree about the UI, but the performance degradation is still a significant issue.
- imdsm 10y ago
  Kill cats before they adopt a dwarf. Clean up old clothes with dfhack, and stop making dams!
  - patmcguire 10y ago
    The other big one is making sure dwarves don't path to complicated places, or animals don't path at all. Needing to know about how the game is written to make it useable is not great, though.
    - imdsm 10y ago
      I think it's part of the package. Name me anything that is perfect without flaws and still useful? Water is great to drink yet it gets you wet and drowns you if you breath it. Fire is lovely and warm and cooks our food but burns and melts our flesh if we play in it. Lids keep felt tip pens wet, and choke our children. Fish are pretty and taste nice but occasionally swallow fisherdwarves. The internet is great and connects us but causes divide by mixing people who were better separated. Light is fantastic, but I can't sleep if I can see any. Tea is just perfect, but it mAkEs Me ShaKe toO mUcH aNd ThaT caN be a ProbleM.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

intended 10y ago

Dwarf fortress is a great idea made possible by the winnowing effect of its UI. I've found that this particular game has found its niche because of what it is. The point of the creator is this: the game isnt even past pre-alpha. Lots of things will change, which a UI will only bog down. So for example rimworld is still currently 2d. (will possibly change), but that a big change DF plans to change the full world gen and design in the next arc - its a reasonable view.

andrewclunn 10y ago
This. The UI is the final step. Right now it's about experimentation and determining the ideal game mechanics. The obtuseness means that the most obsessive and hard core are your play testers. This is a bad UI as part of good game design for what the current goals for dwarf fortress are.
- civilian 10y ago
  As far as I understood, the UI is there to stay. The creator wrote his own game engine that is optimized for printing ascii to a screen-- it's not architected in a way that can plug-and-play with a different renderer.
  - pck 10y ago
    Cogmind is an interesting example of pure ASCII holding itself to a very high UI standard. Here is a quick animated gif with a few examples of interactions: http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/gsg-content/uploads/2014/11/cogmind_ui_animation_compilation.gif http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/gsg-content/uploads/2014/1...
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - anchpop 10y ago
      I would absolutely love if DF looked that good at some point! You're definitely right that just because it's ASCII doesn't mean it can't be visually appealing

singularity2001 10y ago

it took an hour here just to get a half-ways readable font. after a while the game was completely destroyed by constant notifications. so I couldn't agree more with the horrible user experience.

pault 10y ago

I have played both, and while I got bored of RW as soon as I got to the siege stage, I had to force myself to stop playing DF even though I still had about a dozen ideas for lava traps. YMMV. Edit: I still have to stop myself from re-downloading dwarf fortress about once per week because there is so much left to explore. I just barely scratched the surface of power stations and automated rail systems. You could spend thousands of hours just designing traps to kill goblins. The fun is in the complexity. Perhaps you just did not get deep enough into the game. Now I have to talk myself out of downloading DF again. The sheer maniacal glee of knocking a dozen goblins off a narrow path (use a rail car attached to a pressure plate) into a pit and filling it with lava after spending hours setting it up just can't be described.

gagege 10y ago
To be fair, RimWorld is a much newer game than DF. It hasn't had nearly as much time to add features.

dri_ft 10y ago

I think I agree. I'm up for complex keyboard interfaces and simple, ASCII-ish graphics - I play a lot of roguelikes - but something about Dwarf Fortress's interface still rubs me the wrong way. I do want graphics to be pretty, even if they're simple, and I do want controls to be elegant, even if they're keyboard-based. The default tiles are ugly - unnecessarily ugly - and the keyboard controls don't seem great. (Like a sibling to this comment says, consistency has a lot to do with it, and not having to move your hands far around the keyboard is nice.) Then again, I admit I haven't spent that much time with it. So I do find the interface offputting, but it's not because I want a flashy, dumbed-down one. And it's a bit frustrating whenever I see criticism of the Dwarf Fortress interface dismissed in those terms.

KirinDave 10y ago

I don't want to disparage Rimworld, it's great. But the game pales in comparison to the beauty and replayability of Dwarf Fortress. I've been playing DF for 5 years and I still feel like a novice. Toss in modding and the game goes even further. I understand your point of view, but I'm sad that amazing and well-designed games like Nethack and Dwarf Fortress don't get a fair shake because they're fixed width tile games. DF is a simulation game of stunning proportions.

erikb 10y ago

Agreed. And at its current development I wouldn't be surprised if Rim World would reach just as much complexity as DF, of course always lacking a few years behind (more than a decade to begin with). But as you said, due to a better interface it's probably in the leading position.