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[RabblerouserGT]

What about different ASCII sets from the default?
I quite enjoy Jolly Bastion.

[Vanaheimer]

I prefer to be able to know what I'm looking at with a glance, and as such I can't stand the standard ASCII graphics. Useless symbols as far as I'm concerned.

[Tarran]

I used to use graphic packs. Then I used ASCII. Then I used Dorten's ASCII tileset.

I don't regret switching to ASCII. ASCII, to me, adds a unique flavor to the game that differentiates it from many other games. I prefer Dorten's set due to the sweet walls and square tiles.

I prefer to be able to know what I'm looking at with a glance, and as such I can't stand the standard ASCII graphics. Useless symbols as far as I'm concerned.

That statement can work both ways. Just saying.

[Malarauko]

All the information is there you're just asking for it to be easier for you to find. Once you start down that road its a slippery slope.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A slippery slope to what?  A game with a better interface?

How easy it is to find information makes a huge difference when you are playing a game.  How much do you know about any random dwarf in your fort?  Do you even see them as distinguishable at all? 

How do you know when a dwarf is injured, or when a dwarf is unhappy, but not unhappy enough to actually cause a tantrum or the down arrow indicator to pop up on the screen as, again, a visual indicator of information on the play area window? 

Unless you are religiously tracking all the detailed views of your dwarves on a game-daily basis, or are using Dwarf Therapist to give you more information more easily, then you aren't getting that information at all.  And most people just skip that part if they aren't using Dwarf Therapist.

The same goes for injuries - you basically can't tell a dwarf is injured if there isn't a mortal wound indicator or a blood trail or you are looking at their information page for some reason.  Without that reason to look, why would you ever notice that injury?  Unless there is somehow an indicator that attracts player attention to the fact that there is a problem, why would a player ever go looking for information they may need?

There were plenty of problems with a "bug" in DF where people had doctors that refused to treat patients, and nobody understood why.  The reason why was because the doctors had a personality trait that made them not want to help others, so they refused to do it, but that information was never conveyed to the players, so they never figured it out, and just figured the game must be buggy. 

Mechanics in a game are useless unless the game somehow can transmit the effect they are having in the game as information to the player.  If the interface is so convoluted that players don't even know where to look for the information on their problem, or that they don't even realize there is a problem at all because that information was never transmitted to them, then it is the failure of the game, not the player.

Its a slippery slope to change. I am of course joking. Maybe you're right about displaying the information and I know you're right about the game being confusing but it comes down to two points. Every review or mention of the game notes the graphics and the learning curve. The game is meant to have basic graphics because it is the mechanics that is complex and it is meant to be confusing and hard to play. You may want that to be different but this game either stands or falls on its toughness for me. Its the real heart that drives the game. Complexity should not be feared it should be tamed. This is is how I feel.

[NW_Kohaku]

Its a slippery slope to change. I am of course joking. Maybe you're right about displaying the information and I know you're right about the game being confusing but it comes down to two points. Every review or mention of the game notes the graphics and the learning curve. The game is meant to have basic graphics because it is the mechanics that is complex and it is meant to be confusing and hard to play. You may want that to be different but this game either stands or falls on its toughness for me. Its the real heart that drives the game. Complexity should not be feared it should be tamed. This is is how I feel.

Ah, sorry for my misunderstanding, then.

The thing about complexity is just that, again, you need to give the player an idea of what is going on.

Currently, we can only display one character at a time with a single tile.  In order to tell the player some sort of status information about a dwarf (such as "thirsty" or "sleeping") the game needs to flash between two different tiles. 

If you do something more like what Stonesense is doing, and what I've talked with Baughn about doing, using transparencies on icons to make objects not "flash" for the people with epilepsy, so that graphics can be overlayed and transition into one another by "fading" transparency in and out, you could, hypothetically, have more than one icon in a tile at the same time. 

The graphics would have to be completely rewritten for this to work, but hypothetically, you could convey more information in a single tile by doing something like those badges I was talking about earlier - cut a tile into quarters or something, and have one or two of the quarters indicate unit type, and the other two quarters convey information about the unit status.

We could have, for example, dwarves talking to one another displayed on the screen while we are just playing, and see a Sims-style speech bubble that might put a topic into the bubble, to let players have an idea what they are talking about, and let the player zoom in on the conversation if they want to overhear it. 

Alternately, combat could display more information about the status of each combatant, and what they are intending to do. 

When you give the player more of a window into what is actually going on in the game, it creates the room for the player to have a greater appreciation of that complexity, as they can actually see it in action. 

[Moonshadow101]

The "Am I the only one who..." thread format is literally the worst thing ever. Every forum has these threads, and they answer is always, invariably, inevitably, "OF COURSE NOT, IDIOT. YOU ARE NOT A UNIQUE AND SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE."

That said, tilesets for life. I could live without the stones and the trees and such, but being able to know what job my guys have at a glance is information that I couldn't stand to lose.

[Tarran]

That said, tilesets for life. I could live without the stones and the trees and such, but being able to know what job my guys have at a glance is information that I couldn't stand to lose.

Wait, what? I assume you mean Profession, right? Because tileset or ASCII, it takes the exact same amount of keystrokes to find out their job.

[Vanaheimer]

I prefer to be able to know what I'm looking at with a glance, and as such I can't stand the standard ASCII graphics. Useless symbols as far as I'm concerned.

That statement can work both ways. Just saying.

How do you tell who is a farmer and who is a miner with ASCII at a glance? Or which particular "s" creature that one is?

[cephalo]

I much prefer a modified version of the ascii. When I see a screen with the graphics sets I have no idea what I'm looking at. I also think the world map looks way better with a good square ascii tileset. I bugs me to see a volcano that looks like a weapon trap. It bugs me alot!

[Tarran]

How do you tell who is a farmer and who is a miner with ASCII at a glance? Or which particular "s" creature that one is?

That's pretty specific compared to your original statement's generalization.

Farmer: Brown smiley face. I'll admit, you can't tell the specific profession, but I feel that the general class is good enough that you can tell from their location what kind of profession they have. That's just me, though.

S: Color, capitalization or no of the s, color of the s, and the location of the s should tell you the kind of creature it is.

[NW_Kohaku]

I much prefer a modified version of the ascii. When I see a screen with the graphics sets I have no idea what I'm looking at. I also think the world map looks way better with a good square ascii tileset. I bugs me to see a volcano that looks like a weapon trap. It bugs me alot!

Some of the graphics people (I know Mike Mayday does, for certain) are lobbying for Toady to get the game to have a way of switching between separate tilesets for maps or the minimap in Fortress Mode, and the "zoomed in" view of Fortress Mode or Adventurer Mode for this very reason.

There are also some lingering problems with overlapping tiles, especially things like wooden doors being the same tile as a wall, which are, again, things that some of the graphics people are trying to lobby Toady to change.

[Vanaheimer]

That's pretty specific compared to your original statement's generalization.

Farmer: Brown smiley face. I'll admit, you can't tell the specific profession, but I feel that the general class is good enough that you can tell from their location what kind of profession they have. That's just me, though.

S: Color, capitalization or no of the s, color of the s, and the location of the s should tell you the kind of creature it is.

So instead of a quick glance telling me "Oh turds my brewer is right next to that snake man and about to die" I have to sit there and wait for all of that to click. It's a small delay, but a few seconds is life and not all dwarves are expendable.

[NW_Kohaku]

How do you tell who is a farmer and who is a miner with ASCII at a glance? Or which particular "s" creature that one is?

That's pretty specific compared to your original statement's generalization.

Farmer: Brown smiley face. I'll admit, you can't tell the specific profession, but I feel that the general class is good enough that you can tell from their location what kind of profession they have. That's just me, though.

S: Color, capitalization or no of the s, color of the s, and the location of the s should tell you the kind of creature it is.

The problem is there are a lot of different kinds of farmers.  Your haulers might be soapmakers from migration that are brown for lack of another color, your cooks and your brewers will look just like them.  Your threshers and will be going to the same food stockpiles as your growers, your brewers, and your cooks, as well. 

As for the "s", here's a list of all the creatures that have a lower-case "s" on them:

Rattlesnake, rattlesnake man, copperhead snake, copperhead snake man, slug man, snail man, sparrow man, skunk, skunk man, satyr, siamang, strangler, helmet snake, giant sponge, sponge man, frill shark, squid man, spiny dogfish, and maybe some other things I didn't get in a quick browsing.  (And yes, there are color variations, but most of those are either gray or brown, anyway.)


With all that said, however, the largest argument for ASCII, that it is what you are used to, goes both ways.  You're used to the thing you've used.  You can have any arbitrary system that you create yourself, and get used to it, so being used to something is not an argument for anything except that you just don't want to learn a new system.  That, again, does go both ways to anyone who doesn't want to switch what they're used to.

The arguments about overlapping tiles (as cephalo mentioned with the volcano looking like a trap) or the arguments about how much data a single tile can display at least have merits that go beyond what you, personally, are settled upon in terms of being a way to actually convince other people. 

If you are arguing for your particular system just because it's what you're used to, then you are effectively just affirming the choice of the people who are already used to a different system to not even bother considering your system's merits.

[Tarran]

So instead of a quick glance telling me "Oh turds my brewer is right next to that snake man and about to die" I have to sit there and wait for all of that to click. It's a small delay, but a few seconds is life and not all dwarves are expendable.

That's your problem with not being able to deal with ASCII/not knowing ASCII then, not a general problem with ASCII.

The problem is there are a lot of different kinds of farmers.  Your haulers might be soapmakers from migration that are brown for lack of another color,

Wouldn't graphic packs have the same problem with soapmaker-tile haulers? I'm not sure because the last time I used tilesets was 40d, but I'm pretty sure that problem carried on to graphic packs back then.

your cooks and your brewers will look just like them.  Your threshers and will be going to the same food stockpiles as your growers, your brewers, and your cooks, as well.

True, true. Though they would be carrying different things when using the piles and taking different paths, right?

Rattlesnake, rattlesnake man, copperhead snake, copperhead snake man, slug man, snail man, sparrow man, skunk, skunk man, satyr, siamang, strangler, helmet snake, giant sponge, sponge man, frill shark, squid man, spiny dogfish, and maybe some other things I didn't get in a quick browsing.  (And yes, there are color variations, but most of those are either gray or brown, anyway.)

Wouldn't the location they're at also factor in? Regardless, point taken.

[NW_Kohaku]

Wouldn't graphic packs have the same problem with soapmaker-tile haulers? I'm not sure because the last time I used tilesets was 40d, but I'm pretty sure that problem carried on to graphic packs back then.

Yes, they would still appear to be soapmakers, but if you know that you have no assigned soapmakers, then seeing a soapmaker would let you know that it's a hauler.  I guess that was too unclear a thing to try to make a point of it, though, since it would also take some understanding of context.

Wouldn't the location they're at also factor in? Regardless, point taken.

Well, you could certainly tell a "s" in the caverns would probably not be a rattlesnake man, and is more likely a helmet snake, however, a rattlesnake man, a rattlesnake, and a slugman, snailman, or satyr might all be within the same types of places.  A squishy slugman is a much lower threat than a venomous rattlesnake man, which is larger and more threatening than a plain rattlesnake.