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[Railick Stonemane]

I've been looking through the tile sets and the graphic sets on the wiki after finding an interesting link in someones profile. I was wondering if anyone used both to make the game look a bit more interesting. I would like to add a graphic set and a tile set to make the game look more like a game and less like the Matrix however I have a few questions.

1) For those of you that have tried graphics sets do you find that it adds to the game or does it take away? The way I've viewed Dwarf Fortress and most Rogue like games or Muds is that they are like books. In other words Dwarf Fortress is to Diablo 2 as a book is to a movie. A book gives you the ability to imagine the situation in your mind while a movie forces you to watch another persons imagination turned into reality. Dwarf Fortress then allows you to imagine your dwarf slamming his axe into a goblin's spine instead of being forced to watch some animation that is the same each time. SO , does adding a graphic pack to the game take away from this experience for anyone?

2) Does adding a tile set, graphic pack to the game that was not included caused increased lag or is it pretty much the same as it was before?

3)Those of you who have had a lot of experience with these sorts of things, can you recomend any sets that work well together? I believe once I get access to the internet again at home I'm going to use the GuyBrush 16x16 character set along with all of Sphr's graphic sets becuase IMHO they are ALL awsome O.o Still I would like to hear other users opinions to see what goes best with DF in their opinion.

4)Does adding these graphics packs ect cause any instability in the game? Are they still compatable with the newer versions of dwarf fortress and if I do use them should I continue to check for updates? How likely is it that Toady will change the usage of a character from a door to a dog? Hence how likely will it be that I see a door running around attackin people if I don't pay attention to version changes?

All of these questions are just information gathering, I know ultimately the choice is mine to make and it is based on personal taste. Still, I would like to know what others have experienced in these fields and see what I can expect if I try one.

[DR]

Howdy!

1. A lot of people find they take away from the experience, usually for the reasons you mention. Sometimes because they have horrible eyesight/tiny monitors.

2. There's no extra lag at all.

3. Guybrush's goes well with pretty much everything. For Graphics, yeah, Sphr's sprites are very professional and look quite nice. I prefer Mike Mayday's overall though, because they sprites are that much clearer.

I also quite like mine (¬_¬) and generally use it for development purposes, but I don't think I'm qualified to comment on its quality.

4. Nah, there won't be any instability. As for compatability: bit mixed I suppose. Sometimes new versions add more options for graphics, you'll want to update then.

[Eagle of Fire]

1) I agree with you completely. I tryied several kind of graphic mods and I always ended up going back to the original. I made a custom curse version that I use, but that's it and the changes are very minor.

2) Yes, there is some lag but it's very minor. It will take away some FPS if your computer is already straining under the task, but even then it should be up to 3-4 max. People usually don't notice the difference.

3)N/A

4) Graphics mods change nothing to the game. The only difference is the image sent to the screen on a given imput... Which mean there can't be instability and such.

[Railick Stonemane]

DR I do like your list, your graphics remind me a lot of FF 1 or so while Sphrs remind me more of Dragon Warrior 4 or something, SNES level graphics  Do you know where I can see the other graphic pack you mentioned I didn't see that listed on the wiki with the other graphic packs.

I think that is why Dwarf Fortress wouldn't work so well if it did go full 3d with a big company. Making it fully realized would take away from the imagination involved.

With that in mind, it'd be freaking awsome to make  a dwarf fort Mud, and I think I might actually look into doing that now that I've had the idea. Of course I'd need Toady's permission ect but it would be a good way for all of us to come together! Sorry, just a random thought there.

[sphr]

lol.. I din even know I had a "style".  frankly speaking, my tiles started off in a most unplanned manner.  I have been using the mixed version of DR and Deep Qantas for a long time. But as I train up military, I find that the DQ military tiles, although they must have been very nice at 32x32, lost quite a lot of detail at 16x16.  My original aim was functional rather than artistic: make them look more distinct and at the same time more intuitive to recognize.

imo, I really think that the primary goal of gfx set tiles, rather than just to make the game look nice, is to be able to tell the "D" of donkey apart from the "D" of a dragon, without being forced to remember all the color coding.  In that respect, I really think that DR should be the one to start with, as it is the most complete set.  You get gfx for all creatures with just one set.

After you get used to it and get to know how to customize gfx tiles more, or wish to try out other sets (which are almost certainly not as complete), you can try to customize your gfx data by combining new tile setswith the DR set, so that you get to see some new tiles without having to see E's and S's and forgetting the horrors that they represent.

Edit: FYI-btw, One of Veryinky's sets is actually DR but split up by race/biomes.  I'm not 100% sure but I think the images there may not be as updated as the one DR maintains himself.

[ January 05, 2008: Message edited by: sphr ]