[scotty79]

Wow. I'd definitely play it with that UI.

I often wonder why games almost never have swappable (or even just scriptable) UI-s that could allow player to use shorthands through UI drudgery.

[zyxley]

> Wow. I'd definitely play it with that UI.

You may want to take a look at Gnomoria (http://gnomoria.com), which is basically "DF clone with sensible voxel graphics". For example: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/45067176442464...

It's not a scriptable interface, but it is much saner than DF's, with a limited set of consistent hotkeys/toolbars/panels.

[bduerst]

Gnomoria is to Dwarf Fortress as Nano is to Vim. It's much easier to learn to play and fun, but it's about 1/10 the magnitude.

[kbenson]

For many popular roguelike games different tilesets are common. Search for "dwarf fortress tileset".

[wagglycocks]

I'd recommend installing the Lazy Newb Pack instead. It has all the tools and tileset you need preconfigured:

http://lazynewbpack.com/

[Raphmedia]

Now that's what I needed to try this game. Last time I tried, I spent hours and hours downloading tools and never ever got to play the actual game!

[qznc]

Also read some introductions. Some tips like "no aquifer" for your first settlement really ease it.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Quickstart_gui...

[pavel_lishin]

DF badly needs that for the key combinations. They're complete nonsense, and in all the time I've spent playing, I've always needed a cheat-sheet for even the things I didn't do all that rarely.

But I'm guessing that's not trivial to implement if you haven't already started doing it that way, and for something like Dwarf Fortress, it would probably be a lot of effort for not a significant amount of result - after all, everyone's already got their cheat sheet...