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[Tall Smiles]

Greetings, everyone!

I was planning on getting into this game for quite some time now. The only obstacle I encountered having installed everything and working through the beginner guides on wiki is that the tiles are too small for me (I am using Ironhand pack but would be ok with ascii if it would solve the problem). The monitor I'm using is a 4:3 17-inch one (1280x1024); I also have pretty bad eyesight and (deliberately) not using glasses when using pc, so small tiles is close to a dealbreaker for me.

From similar old threads I got several things
- number of horizontal tiles displayed is fixed - at least 80
- because of that, problem can't be fixed with mere lowering of the resolution of the pc or scaling up the tiles
- you can, as it seems, try to stretch the DF window more than your common resolution (enabling second monitor, even if you don't have it) and then move the window to the right so that tiles would become bigger; downside is you won't see minimap\commands\whatever is on the right.

I haven't tried the last advice since I'm new to the game and would prefer everything stay on screen, especially key bindings\commands. Thus the question: any workaround for this problem? Maybe there are mods that would rearrange the UI more vertically and free some horizontal space for me to rescale the tiles?

side question: is there any texture pack-specific map legends to help me recognize the tiles? (I've seen ascii map legend on the wiki but don't know if it's applicable to a graphics pack, I'm not far into the game as I've mentioned before).

Thanks in advance!

[chevil]

You can change tilesize using the mouse wheel.

[Victor6]

You can change tilesize using the mouse wheel.

I doubt this will help. The maximum zoom level is the standard display size.

[Bumber]

You might be able to get some use out of All Programs -> Accessories -> Ease of Access -> Magnifier. You should be able to disable the mouse following feature if you play DF with mouse.

[Sutremaine]

I'd recommend giving the ASCII a go. Depending on your exact vision problems the 'symbols on black' look may not work out (though there are colour schemes that aim to tone down the default strong colours), but the symbolic representions need far fewer pixels to do their thing than the graphical representations do and can be just plain big at 16x16.

There's a tileset repository here, and I quite like the look of Tyrving's. Simply swapping the Ironhand character set for an ASCII one will likely result in some strange-looking things and lots of accented characters making up rough stone walls, but the outdoors and the smoothed walls should look normal.

Or you could get a new DF download and use the new ASCII tileset with that, as the game raws start out set up for ASCII.

You'll still have to work on your tile recognition, but at least the tiles themselves might be easier to see.

[slothen]

You're playing a game with tiny little abstract symbols on a small monitor with bad eyesight and no glasses, you're probably going to have trouble no matter what you try.  I have atrocious uncorrected vision as well; I've never even considered playing without contacts.  However, I don't mean to criticize.  You may find some answers in this thread here http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=125463.0  Best of luck.

[Tall Smiles]

Had to fall back on the

- you can, as it seems, try to stretch the DF window more than your common resolution (enabling second monitor, even if you don't have it) and then move the window to the right so that tiles would become bigger; downside is you won't see minimap\commands\whatever is on the right.

plan.

As a relevant question - I've seen quite some hacks or utilities modded in for DF. But no gui layout mod? Moving that commands\tooltip subscreen just below the map would solve all my problems. Is it a daunting task, modding-wise, or is it because noone needs it?

[chevil]

I think UI is hard coded.

[Sutremaine]

DFHack does mess around with a lot of things that can't be reached via the raws. You could ask in the DFHack thread whether or not it'd be possible.