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[Mr Frog]

I do agree that graphical tilesets can look a bit more lifelike, but -- as GoombaGeek so wittily pointed out -- it all goes down the toilet when I a raised drawbridge that somehow is made of trees. Or a screw pump that apparently can't decide whether it's made of two barrels or two dinner plates.

Text mode has softened it considerably -- I used to cringe whenever I saw a screenshot of an announcement log with all the periods and commas replaced by grass -- but I still won't consider using a graphical set until many more advancements on the game's display and how it can be modded have occurred. I'm so used to ASCII by this point that I don't even see it anymore, so there's not enough actual benefit to me to offset the immersion break caused by misplaced tiles.

I would use creature graphics, as they don't interfere with anything and I already have a homebrew 16x16 ASCII tileset to use them with, but I haven't yet found any that are to my taste and I'm too lazy to make my own.

[G-Flex]

Every screenshot or video I see on these forums use it. I can't stand it, the newer graphics pack is so awesome grass is green, dirt is brown you can see what things are, everything is not weird symbols.

Grass is always green. Dirt is always brown. Graphics packs are not responsible for that.

[Valtam]

I don't know, I feel the default tileset to be a language on it's own, rather than images. Sure, graphic packs are more polished and you can actually see your axemen, but I find myself more comfortable filling the gaps in my mind. Maybe that's just me, but you were asking for a "why", and there is it.

I've been playing since a few months ago, a couple of days before the release of 0.34.11, and even with that I haven't updated to the recent version. Am I hipster? I don't think so. Lazy enough to avoid using the Lazy Newb Pack? Perhaps.

[GoombaGeek]

And I play utilityless - I just learned how to get on without them when I started and never looked back.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

I use them to keep frame-rate up.  I assume that is why most people use them as well.

[G-Flex]

Why would using one tileset instead of another affect framerate?

[smirk]

Every screenshot or video I see on these forums use it.

Apart from personal preference, this specifically is for ease of communication, I'm pretty sure. Vanilla is a ground zero for the game, such that even people who don't use it are (mostly) familiar with what's going on in a screenshot. Lotta people are familiar with Ironhand and Phoebus as well, so you'll see those in screenshots too. If I'm playing with my personal tileset, I'll move the save to a vanilla install to take screens so I'm not confusing people on the boards.

[Eric Blank]

I use only ASCII, because I only ever learned to read DF in ASCII. Not graphics sets. When I try to use graphics sets I get all confused. And then there's the modding; I'm a huge modder and every game I've played for over 3 years has been modded to hell and back. I'm lazy, and I don't want to have to work even harder to synchronize my latest copies and backup copies of mods, and then have to include ASCII or graphical versions of each.

[krenshala]

GOOMBAGEEK'S SCINTILLATING GRAPHICS ADVENTURE

"Oh boy, graphics pack! Now everything will be super cool and awesome! This door looks like a door!"
"Wait, the floor is doors too except I just wanted to smooth it!"
"The intersection of two brooks is also door!"
"This fearsome goblin stronghold is actually a pink cabinet!"
"Honeycombs look like boulders! Anthills look like wells!"
"Mugs are growing in my savage biome! My volcano looks like a beartrap!!"

I never said it was perfect, I was just wondering why some people like it, that is all. It just seems like some weird early computer age simulator. ( I see the irony ) I just like the new graphics beacuse it feels more like a world, I see dwarves running around as opposed to smiling faces. Which may be more cheery when thing go south.

Too tired to read further and see if someone else replied to this part already, but you can use the default ASCII "graphics" and still have your dwarves (e.g., the nice IronHand dwarves and critters) running around the map.  I've actually done this just to see what it looked like (looked awesome, actually).

[G-Flex]

To me, text graphics are more like reading. Maybe I don't want a visual representation of what a dwarf looks like. Maybe I just want to know "here is a dwarf" and allow my imagination to picture it however I please, without any particular art or graphical style getting in the way.

[Putnam]

Art looks messy to me. It's just so... cluttered when all those colors are on screen. I like having my 16 colors, 2 colors per tile, thank you.

Plus, it's standard. Saying "why don't people use graphics for screenshots" is kind of like saying "why don't people use romance languages exclusively". There are a lot of romance languages. While an Italian and a Spaniard can try to talk and will get the gist of what the other is saying, there's still plenty of meaning lost. The same goes for graphics. There is no one graphics pack, and tilesets are messy because there are no item graphics. Creatures are the only thing that actually have graphics.

[Mr Space Cat]

For me, the ASCII is quicker and more efficient at informing me on what's going on.  I learned to play DF with Ironhand, then tried ASCII. Then I went back to Ironhand. Then I went back to ASCII again and quickly grew used to it, because I could quickly look over a paused screen to find, for example, the elf corpse that's trying to gnaw my legendary carpenter to bits out in the field of eyeballs.

Graphics should, first and foremost, provide the needed information so the player can respond to the game. I play with a more zoomed out view, and graphics sets are effectively giving me little tiles of images; they look nice on their own, but together they make a task such as finding a bunch of green goblins in a field of green grass more difficult than it should be.

currently I'm using masterworks' ASCII graphics w/ actual square tiles, rather than vanilla's rectangles as well as the fantasy text font. Looks nice and even. I'd probably never go back.

If I want a graphical experience, I'd rather imagine a sauropod stomping in the heads of a war dog, a child, and a miner in the middle of the entrance hall in a matter of seconds, rather than watch their 16x16 sprites blinking in a fustercluck of tiny images.

[MoonLightBird]

I started with ASCII. But now I use MayDay's graphic pack.

[misko27]

I use only ASCII, because I only ever learned to read DF in ASCII. Not graphics sets. When I try to use graphics sets I get all confused. And then there's the modding; I'm a huge modder and every game I've played for over 3 years has been modded to hell and back. I'm lazy, and I don't want to have to work even harder to synchronize my latest copies and backup copies of mods, and then have to include ASCII or graphical versions of each.

This. If you learned DF in ASCII, you keep it like that. If you hated it, you went graphicand never went back. Before you settle, there can be alot of movement and choosing, but after, people stick with it. I learned it ASCII, and  hvae no clue what these crazy Phoebus's are about.

Also, what Space cat said. My imagination heelps me out. I look at my siege, I don't need to know how cool graphics are, I ned to freaking know where the crossgobbos and defenses against them are. Bare needed info, DF can lead to SENSE OVERLOAD already, don't need graphics complicating it.

And, more then everything, It makes combat look neater. I find it so weird when a standing gobbo next to a axedwarf suddenly becomes corpse, where in ASCII its very clear he just one-shoted i.

[Lielac]

We-ell. I don't. I use Alloy's 12x12 from the tileset repository. On the other hand, that's basically the same extended ASCII just in square tiles...

Anyway. I play DF in ASCII because it's the default. Everyone knows the hoard of paragraph symbols next to my craftdorf shop is a shitton of mugs. Everyone knows the %s are prepared meals. ^s? Traps. ‼? Cages. Or fire, when around a ‼name‼. People know what those mean, and the wiki uses them, and anyway it makes me imagine shit more. Also it works just fine. And I like it. And it's the default and an overwhelming majority understands it.

But I use square tiles because I like square rooms to be square, thank you very much.

(I did do Phoebus for a while but 16x16 is too big for me, especially when I'm on my dinky little netbook alone instead of plugging my hugeass screen into it. 12x12 all the way!)