I haven't played the Steam version, but it's my understanding the menus aren't keyboard-based anymore. That alone is a massive undertaking, Dwarf Fortress has an insane number of submenus for them to figure out good GUI places for them all.
Everything used to just be in a central massive "press a single letter for this specific submenu" sub-screen on the right third of the screen, with multiple submenus to navigate to what you're trying to do.
Yes, they also implemented a tutorial, which I think is new, and reordered and reorganised the menus iirc. (This is from memory so I could of course be wrong).
This isn't true, as far as I know. Some menus are, but hotkeys have been changed quite a bit. Quite a few menus seem mouse only.
I can't ABABABABABAB to add a bunch of beds to a carpenter anymore, DD doesn't mine.
The hotkey path for placing doors in the steam version is bananas. Still a great game! Hoping there's a mod or a patch that lets me use the classic keys with the new interface eventually though.
Yes, there are some definite losses in the move to a mouse based interface. I'm glad I had enough of a break from my last ASCII DF play, so my muscle memory isn't driving me insane. Some of the hotkeys are a little rough (requiring a big stretch across the keyboard or two hands on the kb but I'm using a mouse now..) and I hope they get another pass.
Agree there's definitely some quirks with building and making things not via work orders. Even for queuing up a couple of copper greaves at a metalworker's shop (because my king is obsessed with demanding their creation and banning their export), I opt for work orders rather than going through and selecting armor -> copper -> greaves twice.
Are you certain? I've played the classic version for ten years and the Steam release has completely different hotkeys, and is missing keyboard control for some tasks entirely.
