Programmers and artists at Kitfox helped, but no, 95% of the work on the UI was not outsourced. Perhaps if you add in all of the countless time spent drawing sprites for all of the creatures in the game.
And your understanding of “layering” is simply wrong. The _game_ is the same underneath the UI, aside from the new features that have been added and the bugs that have been fixed, but the UI was ripped out and rewritten. It could not be any other way. You are correct that the goal was not to eliminate keyboard–driven interfaces, but the rewrite did completely replace the entire UI with something new. And that new UI does not have the same structure as the old UI.
For example, in the old UI you used to have to first enter the “designations” menu and then choose “dig”. So digging had the keyboard shortcut ‘d d’. To place buildings you typed ‘d b’ to “designate buildings”, and to “designate stockpiles” was ‘d p’.
But now these three things are all at the top level of the menu, so simply typing ‘m’ for digging, ‘b’ for buildings, or ‘p’ for stockpiles is all you need to do. (Digging cannot be on ‘d’ because the view is now moved using the WASD keys.) There is no designate menu any more. The old keyboard shortcuts are simply meaningless.
If you prefer different keyboard shortcuts then you can customize them. One of the features of the rewritten UI is that there is also a new UI for customizing the key bindings.
And your understanding of “layering” is simply wrong. The _game_ is the same underneath the UI, aside from the new features that have been added and the bugs that have been fixed, but the UI was ripped out and rewritten. It could not be any other way. You are correct that the goal was not to eliminate keyboard–driven interfaces, but the rewrite did completely replace the entire UI with something new. And that new UI does not have the same structure as the old UI.
For example, in the old UI you used to have to first enter the “designations” menu and then choose “dig”. So digging had the keyboard shortcut ‘d d’. To place buildings you typed ‘d b’ to “designate buildings”, and to “designate stockpiles” was ‘d p’.
But now these three things are all at the top level of the menu, so simply typing ‘m’ for digging, ‘b’ for buildings, or ‘p’ for stockpiles is all you need to do. (Digging cannot be on ‘d’ because the view is now moved using the WASD keys.) There is no designate menu any more. The old keyboard shortcuts are simply meaningless.
If you prefer different keyboard shortcuts then you can customize them. One of the features of the rewritten UI is that there is also a new UI for customizing the key bindings.