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.
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.
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).
