If you have not yet played Dwarf Fortress, the astonishingly detailed fantasy world simulator, you may not understand what a nightmare it is to play. It’s not the ASCII gaps that make your bamboo, it’s the menus that hide information and general actions about fourteen different enormous menus, each of which has to be pressed at a different button.
Then take a look at the screenshot above. You might think it looks like the UI of a Paradox game from the early 2000s that did not yet have an art pass. But to me it looks like heaven.
This is a running version of the menus from Kitfox’s upcoming Steam reissue of Dwarf Fortress, which aims to make the game accessible with a good tile set and a set of menu enhancements. What you see above, according to the Steam blog post, has not yet had an art pass, but it is an attempt to gather important information and actions in one place when the player inspects a specific tile and the creatures. on it.
“The tabs and review boxes are still in motion, but the screenshot here is where we’re been in the game so far,” the report said. “Between physical characteristics, mental characteristics, personality facets and beliefs, the game chooses the strongest or most unique six and displays it in the overview. You can still get the complete set of data inside the tabs; the purpose of these boxes is to answer simple questions and provide the best flavor and context. The same goes for items, skills, positions and the rest. The full data and options can be found in tab pages, with a brief summary at the highest level. ”
If there is more than one dwarf or creature on the tile you are inspecting, you can cycle through it by means of ‘small tabs on the right’. This would make it easier to cycle through the birds in Nate’s bird hole, for example.
There is no proposed release date for the Steam version of Dwarf Fortress yet, but there are several development updates every month for anyone who wants to follow. This is the game I’m most looking forward to in the world.