Hello again!
This time, we have an example of the new interface to show you. First, let's look at the old version of the embark screen:
Dwarf Fortress of course has been a text game up to this point, but even in that limited framework there are some elements lacking here! There's no indication for instance that both of these lists scroll or how to do it. The bottom options are a random jumble.
When you press the key to buy a new item, it takes you to a whole new screen:
This one does have scrolling instructions but still no indication of how many pages there are. The mouse doesn't work anywhere.
Here is where we are in the version we are working on:
This screen is mainly mouse-driven. The scrolling and purchase options are more clear, and we've cleaned up the options on the bottom as well.
You can continue to narrow your selections with a text filter as below:
The animals have been moved to a third tab:
Meph drew the border and Mike drew the buttons, bars and the rest, and also gave me various layout advice. Mike also has a widescreen monitor, which has helped correct issues there - this screen currently uses a customizable working area ~2000 pixels wide, centered, while the main screen uses the full width of the display for the more graphical play area.
This screen also sizes down fairly well, to a point. The menu widths compact and finally the border is removed (except for the tabs at the top), so the game is playable at smaller resolutions and window sizes.
We haven't yet finalized the order of the listed items (which are still somewhat random, as opposed to, say, sortable alphabetically or by point value.)
We're continuing to work on the main screen to get it up to this new standard. It'll be exciting to share that when it is ready!
- Tarn
Kitfox's Note
If you sign up for the newsletters, you'll be able to see the full size versions of the images! (And they'll be delivered to your inbox.) You can sign up here and view the web version of the newsletter here.
- Victoria