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I was under the impression that the classic keyboard-only version was kept up to date with the Steam version? They're both on patch 53.16[1][2] which was released simultaneously on 8/5, so it doesn't look to me like keyboard-only is forgotten or left behind unless I'm missing something.

[1] https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

[2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/

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Sadly no – the current 'classic' is just the Steam game without the steam features AIUI – i.e. still the mouse-oriented UI. 0.47.05 is the last keyboard version AFAIK.
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Ah I see, I misunderstood. I just tried the latest classic version and it was all mouse. I agree then that it's disappointing as someone who has played both versions
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I have to agree. Sure, the new GUI is a some kind of accessibility improvement over the old, but is seriously underpowered for e.g. any kind of repetitive tasks (which are not atypical in DF). Most annoying is the fact that even though a fair number of keyboard shortcuts exist, a full pipeline often does not. It's barely more efficient to use the keyboard since you'll still have to switch over to the mouse every second action.

I know that the keyboard features are coming at some point, but I doubt it's a very high priority. My hopes rest on the modding improvements; once the UI becomes moddable, the old one is recreated in an instant. Until that, I'll stick to the trusty 0.47. (I have bought the "new" game to show support and thank for all the earlier work, of course.)

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They chose to have social security over a keyboard only interface for a game they continue to publish for free.
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It's sold for $30 now. The old version is free but that's not updated anymore apparently.

When he asked whether long time supporters would want to pay $30 bucks for the game I don't think that was implied? Seems fair to be annoyed.

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I understand why they did it - medical emergencies and all. Have to pay the bill somehow. But yea, 0.47.05's still my go-to. Just can't vibe with the new UI/keybinds.

Old controls were on their roadmap for a long time, but the benefit from their perspective shrinks as time goes on. I doubt we'll see it at this point.

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They also dropped the Mac version.

They complain there are few Mac players on Steam. Well, I'm not going to buy it if it doesn't run on the desktop OS [1] i use most, duh.

[1] My Linux boxes are headless. And the windows boxes I have to RDP into them. That may work for a game with a beginning and and end via Steam streaming or something, but not for a forever game you just keep around.

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While individual game developers choose whether to support macOS, the broader phenomenon of developers dropping macOS support is Apple's fault. They either have no interest in being a serious gaming platform, or else they've made catastrophic missteps in their quest to stay relevant for gamers.
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I don’t think it has anything to do with their gaming specific capabilities, just their general philosophy matches poorly with the games industry.

Apple insist on having their own apis and they don’t maintain compatibility for older software for very long, these 2 facts explain things fine on their own. Game devs don’t want a major support burden, they’re happy to patch here and there but constant dropping of apis or even architectures is a lot to handle. The bigger impact is that macOS ends up with a lot less old games that still run, if you need a critical mass of games to become a gaming platform, that constant bleed of legacy games will always slow macOS down.

As for gaming specific features, Metal is a perfectly fine api whose only real problem is that it’s different from the other platforms. Maybe not the best, but certainly not terrible. They also have a really nice capability floor, it’s practical to make a modern game work on any Mac from the last X years (maybe the neo complicates that a bit).

There’s probably a few gaming specific capabilities they could improve on, mouse input especially, but that’s never been the real issue.

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Optimization and bug hunting makes supporting multiple graphics api's a pain. I really don't understand Apple's stubborn refusal to make vulkan drivers. Between Apple and the better performance on SteamDeck, I can see PC game developers seriously considering Vulkan over directx.
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> Game devs don’t want a major support burden

What fraction of game studios still even exist 10 years after releasing a game?

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I was a quarterly(-ish) contributor for years. There was no way for me to justify buying anything when they announced dropping keyboard support, when I've spent years developing muscle-memory to their (admittedly insane) control scheme.

Also - I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that running DF through a terminal is (was...) possible if you're not using a graphical tileset (perhaps even with... ha)?

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The sad thing is that current Macs are perfect machines for DF. The recommendation was always to get as fast a single threaded machine as possible with the biggest cache. Even the least expensive Macs are monsters in those regards. The game is more multi-threaded than before but still is dominated by single threaded performance.
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You might be interested in running games from your headless boxes with this: https://github.com/hgaiser/moonshine
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I know how to stream ty :)

And I do use that option, as i said, for games that you play in finite sessions and that have a beginning and an end.

Also as I said, I don't use it for forever games (mmos or endless simulators like DF) by choice. My playing pattern for those is not finite and relatively long sessions. I fire them for a short break, do something in them, close them and move along.

If you have to turn on a separate box for that half your short break is gone with booting and shutting down. And you may lose interest before the other box is finished booting.

Same for running games under crossover. Start crossover - SLOOOW. Wait for the game to start through the layers of emulation - SLOOW. It's fine if it's a weekend and I want to play say Dishonored [1] for a few hours. It's not fine if I want to spend 20 min improving a build in Minecraft and then go do irl stuff.

[1] Dishonored is an example of the type of game I'd jump through hoops to play. I've always streamed it actually. No idea how it runs in Crossover.

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Mac gaming is a pain in the **. It's Apple's fault. It's fine they can't justify the maintenance.
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The game runs fine in Proton, including with dfhack. You can probably get it working on your Mac with a tiny bit of Crossover/Wine/GPTK tweaking.
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That's missing the point. There were official native MacOS builds and now there aren't.

Can't be too mad about it though, it was free back then too.

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What benefit does a native build have over proton? I used to care more about it on Linux, until I realized that "native build" probably means "doesn't work." I can only imagine this being much worse on a niche gaming target which there are extremely few users making (and voting for) bug reports.

Tack on having to pay Apple to play in their shitty ecosystem and it makes complete sense.

Wine/proton as a gaming ABI/runtime is perfectly fine, Microsoft used to do a lot to maintain backcompat and that spirit has clearly distilled into proton: it even runs games Windows is unable to (most recent example of mine is Black and White).

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You should try speaking to the Apple manager.
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macOS has changed a lot more than Windows or Linux did in the last decade. It's hardly Tarn's fault, here.
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macOS is also just a proper PITA through and through. I'm annoyed that I can't play it on my m4 but I also understand that supporting macOS has always been a nuisance.

If I were making games I wouldn't support it either. Apple does just about everything to not support backwards compat.

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FWIW DF and DFHack work flawlessly through Crossover on macOS on my M2 and my M5
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What you are asking for is completely unreasonable. There’s no way that one programmer can maintain two completely separate UIs. Keep in mind that they could not simply “add graphics” to the existing interface, they had to write a completely new one that was not based around fixed–size character cells.
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Wasn't the graphical interface 95% outsourced to others? And originally the graphic version was suppose to be layered on top and leave the underlying version of the game barely touched from the player's side. It was even touted as an excuse at the time to fix some of the keyboard shortcuts that were inconsistent among different submenus, and certainly not to eliminate or supersede keyboard interfaces.
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The art was outsourced to pretty much one artist. Zach and Tarn implemented it.
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Is it really that bad? I haven't played since the GUI update but was thinking about getting into it again because I still have years of muscle memory from it. But if I am forced to use the mouse im not sure I even want to bother. There is absolutely no way I could play the game at the same speed I use to if I have to resort to mouse-only features.
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It makes me sad to think about. I would love to get into the new UI, but the immersion just won't come back. My muscle memory, hands firmly on the keyboard, is too persistent, and playing with the new UI feels like stumbling around and misclicking.
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I know what you mean, but I have been playing since 2008? and the last few updates have been pretty great.
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Yeah my biggest issue has been that none of my muscle memory transfers over and it adds another hurdle to ever getting back into the game.
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You dont want to know your hours. Perhaps my greatest shame is the number of hours i have spent on factorio. I was afk for much of that (letting the factory run) but ... i would not want other people to see the number.
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The new updates got me back into dwarf fortress. I'm sure there are more players now then ever before.
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I don’t understand. I don’t know what “added the G to their UI” means.

Also sounds like they added back the keyboard support so there’s literally no issue?

> In excess of 10k, I'm sure.

Sure sounds like you got your moneys worth.

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Ui+g=gui. As in since they added graphics
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