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[Loud Whispers]

But hang on, tilesets hurt my eyes and make me feel like I'm watching a spastic flash game. Meanwhile I'm struggling to decipher what the sprites all mean when the grey text of doom show up. Catapults are easy to find in ASCII!

So a 16x16 PNG tile doesn't look like a turkey... so what? Neither does a fucking "t".

"k" tool

It's a turkey.

ASCII.

[GoombaGeek]

Progress is cool. Try it. If you're honestly going to argue that codepage 437 is better, then you must be replying to this thread from a BBS program and running MS-DOS 5.0, because 6.1 is "just too newbish".

Armok I was a full 3-D game. Its development was ceased because working out the graphics for each level of detail young Toady wanted was too much work.

Toady is a developer, not an artist. He has no obligation to make his game any easier to use. Any graphics he make will dissatisfy a lot of people, especially after spending 8 years building up an identity as an incredibly in-depth modern ASCII game. Using a fixed tileset has a lot of advantages in development speed: you never need to draw a single tile again after making the set, third-party tilesets don't need to update if they use the same standard, and if it's abstract enough you can get away with anything. Toady got away with using the alphabet from a public-domain character set for over 200 creatures. Graphics pack makers have to draw every last one of them. Toady wins.

Here are all of the tiles that are completely unused in the latest version:
◙ ↕ ∟ ↔ ₧ ª ¬ ½ ¼ ╢ ╟ ⌡
In the next version, the ¼ glyph will be used as tree foliage, shrinking the list to 11 characters, plus the blank FF tile. 244/256 is actually a pretty good fraction of used tiles...

And locating anything is a moot point when tilesets can only include one interpretation of what a tile is used for.

"And in the meantime 94 goblins just popped by to say hello and you can't find their home fortress on the world map because it's a little pink cabinet and it's in TILESETS, GODDAMN TILESETS."
"And in the meantime 94 goblins just popped by to say hello and you can't find your fortifications because they're normal wall intersections and it's in TILESETS, GODDAMN TILESETS."
"And in the meantime 94 goblins just popped by to say hello and you can't find your gear assemblies because they turn from suns into ore-bearing rocks and it's in TILESETS, GODDAMN TILESETS."
"And in the meantime 94 goblins just popped by to say hello and you can't find the clouds because they're little pieces of dried leather and it's in TILESETS, GODDAMN TILESETS."
"And in the meantime 94 goblins just popped by to say hello and you can't find your highwood plantation because they are all green mugs and it's in TILESETS, GODDAMN TILESETS."

Here's an ASCII set to really piss off graphics users. Spread the word!

[Leatra]

Nobody wants Toady to remake the graphics of DF. Do you think that's what tileset supporters are asking for?

[CharlesMcFist]

I mainly just use Ironhand. I really like the ASCII, however. I'll constantly switch between the two, mostly for the sake of IronHand being square, and ASCII...not.

[MasterShizzle]

And locating anything is a moot point when tilesets can only include one interpretation of what a tile is used for.

See... that's a GOOD thing. The fewer things a tile can represent, the less ambiguity you find when trying to locate something. If a tile represents nine different things, then you need to determine WHICH of those nine things you're actually seeing, which isn't always obvious in context.

"k" tool

It's a turkey.

ASCII.

Case in point. Graphics sets represent turkeys with ONE graphic, and ONE graphic only, and that picture used for turkeys isn't used for ANYTHING else. See the graphic, it represents a turkey, and it's ALWAYS a turkey, and there's no other possible option for it to be anything but a goddamn turkey. No "k" tool necessary.

Toady is a developer, not an artist. He has no obligation to make his game any easier to use. Any graphics he make will dissatisfy a lot of people, especially after spending 8 years building up an identity as an incredibly in-depth modern ASCII game. Using a fixed tileset has a lot of advantages in development speed: you never need to draw a single tile again after making the set, third-party tilesets don't need to update if they use the same standard, and if it's abstract enough you can get away with anything. Toady got away with using the alphabet from a public-domain character set for over 200 creatures. Graphics pack makers have to draw every last one of them. Toady wins.

How is this winning? He's using ASCII out of necessity, and not necessarily a stylistic choice. I have no doubt that if Toady COULD devote his superhuman genius to making graphical tiles for each and every entity in Dwarf Fortress, then he WOULD, but he's busy making the game awesome in other ways. He used ASCII because it was convenient to do so, NOT because it's better than graphical tiles. If users make tilesets that are easier for me to process than the raw ASCII graphics, then I fail to see how that's a bad thing. I don't EXPECT Toady to make graphical sets for his amazing game, I'm just saying that the graphic sets make it easier to understand and convey information more efficiently than ASCII. Let Toady do what he does best, and have some other devoted person make the graphics.

There are developers/artists out there, even independent ones, that have very happily created 200+ individual tiles for things. Just look at Adam Bolt's tiles or David Gervais' tiles for Angband. They didn't make the games themselves, but they spent a great deal of time making wonderful tilesets that made those games easier and more accessible. Tilesets make the games easier to understand, thus drawing in more players, which (again) I fail to see as a bad thing.

[Loud Whispers]

No "k" tool necessary.

I have forsaken HD for the k tool, and you try to give me promises of its destruction?

Truth be told the only time I've ever had to use the k tool to identify a tile was to identify a mineral or when someone installed a graphics pack in a succession fort.

ASCII.

[Leatra]

IMHO, ASCII goes well only for good ol' simple dungeon-crawling roguelikes and DF is not a simple roguelike. There is simply too much info on the screen.

[GoombaGeek]

This thread is going all according to keikaku.

keikaku means plan

[kragnoth]

I honestly at one point thought it would be easy enough to allow tileset users to more accurately portray the graphics if toady simply increased the number of available tiles, and duplicated ascii representations over several tiles.   So you could have % represent all of those things, but a tileset would be able to have a graphic for each.

However, no matter how eloquently he did this, it would end up taking up loads more memory in the representation of the map.  Going to 16bit representation would more than double the number of available tiles, however unfortunately it would double the storage and memory requirements for a lot of things.

I'm actually wondering though, how much would it increase load times and memory usage if Toady did increase the number of available characters.

[Taffer]

I feel so conflicted! I'm presuming by "tilesets", people are referring to graphic sets? There's a whole section of tilesets on the wiki, and just about all of them seem to fall into the "ASCII" "camp".

Also, lots of unnecessary rage in here. (On both sides.) I may not be a lover of DOS and my computers may be modern, but I tend to run BSD on them and fart about on the command line. Does that provide satisfactory ammunition for the "ASCII lovers are progress fearing luddites" people? Flame away.

[Leatra]

Also, lots of unnecessary rage in here. I may not be a lover of DOS and my computers may be modern, but I tend to run BSD on them and fart about on the command line. Does that provide satisfactory ammunition for the "ASCII lovers are progress fearing luddites" people? Flame away.

I guess you missed the first pages where peo-ASCII people argued with nobody but themselves while noone defends the tilesets side. I'm not saying they provoked anything but, still.

Hey, it sounded a lot like a civil war or something when I used the words "side" and "pro"

[GoombaGeek]

Also, lots of unnecessary rage in here. I may not be a lover of DOS and my computers may be modern, but I tend to run BSD on them and fart about on the command line. Does that provide satisfactory ammunition for the "ASCII lovers are progress fearing luddites" people? Flame away.

I guess you missed the first pages where peo-ASCII people argued with nobody but themselves while noone defends the tilesets side. I'm not saying they provoked anything but, still.

Hey, it sounded a lot like a civil war or something when I used the words "side" and "pro"

Yes, arguments with nobody tend to happen when nobody shows up to argue.

Or are you saying that pro-tileset people are CREATURES OF SHADOW who ONLY MANIFEST when TILESETS MUST BE DEFENDED?! I think that's what you're saying! I think you think tileset users are subhuman!!

Also, Noone

[Taffer]

I guess you missed the first pages where peo-ASCII people argued with nobody but themselves while noone defends the tilesets side. I'm not saying they provoked anything but, still.

Edited my post for clarity.

Can't we all just pass a pipe around, blow smoke rings Tolkien-style and be friends?

[Leatra]

Also, lots of unnecessary rage in here. I may not be a lover of DOS and my computers may be modern, but I tend to run BSD on them and fart about on the command line. Does that provide satisfactory ammunition for the "ASCII lovers are progress fearing luddites" people? Flame away.

I guess you missed the first pages where peo-ASCII people argued with nobody but themselves while noone defends the tilesets side. I'm not saying they provoked anything but, still.

Hey, it sounded a lot like a civil war or something when I used the words "side" and "pro"

Yes, arguments with nobody tend to happen when nobody shows up to argue.

Or are you saying that pro-tileset people are CREATURES OF SHADOW who ONLY MANIFEST when TILESETS MUST BE DEFENDED?! I think that's what you're saying! I think you think tileset users are subhuman!!

Also, Noone

What I'm saying is, even when there is nobody to argue against some people are arguing for the sake of arguing and showing off their snobby elitist way of thinking. Even one of your guys agreed with me.

"Pro-ASCII people are a buncha high-minded hooligans out to change our way of life".

Okay, I may have changed it a little bit.

And, it's common knowledge that Peter Noone is an avid supporter of tilesets. WE DESERVE RESPECT.

BTW, "Hell yeah!" for blowing smoke rings Tolkien-style.

[Taffer]

And, it's common knowledge that Peter Noone is an avid supporter of tilesets. WE DESERVE RESPECT.

Is he? I hope he likes mine. v_v

Also, GoombaGeek is an excellent troll. You heard it here first.