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No

59 (68.6%)

Total Members Voted: 86

[Erkki]

Personally I already spend the working day looking at a screen mostly and definitely am not going to look at even more flashing high-contrast stuff on a black background just because some purist thinks its the only way the game should be played.

You want a purist? Look at morderkaine only a few posts above you. Arguing for the absolute superiority of graphical tilesets and that the way to 'solve this' is to make a graphical tileset default.

So its turned around huh? I referred to the OP and not ASCII users in general. They can do what they want.

I dont mind ASCII, I simply prefer not to use them for reasons I stated above and if I were to prefer ASCII I'd be equally annoyed if someone wished to enforce the opposite.


However you must admit that tilesets are better advertise in most places and will probably bring more people to try out DF. Having options is rarely bad, especially for a single player game.

[Graknorke]

However you must admit that tilesets are better advertise in most places and will probably bring more people to try out DF. Having options is rarely bad, especially for a single player game.

No I don't.
I mean, I do about people having options, that's good. But as for getting people in, it's still about personal preference. And regardless of tileset an image from DF is going to be confusing to someone who's never played the game before, just like with any game, you need to know the rules behind it and have a general feel for it before anything from it has any significance.
Like if I were to show someone some sequence breaking stuff from Deus Ex then it wouldn't mean anything to them without understanding why that's unusual. In the same way, to someone who has no idea what DF is a screenshot is either going to look like a bunch of symbols and blocks of colour, or like a bunch of squashed-up pictures and blocks of colour.

[GavJ]

However you must admit that tilesets are better advertise in most places and will probably bring more people to try out DF. Having options is rarely bad, especially for a single player game.

I don't admit that, either. The kinds of people who are just starting to play DF, and who are going to stick around, are of course the same sorts of people we are. One would expect about the same proportions of them to care about the benefits of ASCII versus caring about the benefits of graphical tilesets, even as beginners, with just a sentence or two explanation of what each set of benefits are.

Showing them their options is unambiguously better for advertising. But not one or the other alone.  Just something like
"You can choose: ASCII allows greater abstraction for you to imagine more what's going on, but has a more difficult learning curve and may be harsh on the eyes. Graphical tilesets are more intuitive at a glance, and some think easier to physically look at, but constrain the possible images of what's happening to a degree. No option remotely approaches modern graphical detail in most games."
And show an example of both.

[Linkxsc]

If you have problems viewing ascii or a graphical set. Start a fort. Play it a year, so its built and you know where all your stuff is. Then switch modes. Its what I did when I went from ascii to phoebus (my main mode. 2 colorblind friends who play this)
Its what I did when I learned the matrix one. And how I learned ironhand and the masterwork one, and all the other commonly used 1s.

Should noobs be told to "only use ascii because the bittervets will like you more". No perhaps the bittervets should pull up their big boy pants and spend 20 minutes glancing though the different graphical modes so when a noob shows up and asks "y my fort flood?" you can answer.

Should the noobs stick to a graphical set forever.... if they want. But they should put the grow-up pants on and learn the other modes too some time.

Should there be a standard. No. Why should someone have to learn your way of doing it when you arent willing to learn theirs. Conversely if your willing to learn another person's way of doing something. They should at least have to courtesy of learning yours.

[GavJ]

No perhaps the bittervets should pull up their big boy pants and spend 20 minutes glancing though the different graphical modes so when a noob shows up and asks "y my fort flood?" you can answer.

Posting in the most popular tileset is not for the benefit of bittervets. It's more for the benefit of other brand new newbies looking up the same question 4 months later after the thread is over and trying to answer their similar question. Screenshots posted in the most popular tileset is the most efficient way to elad to the least confusion amongst such readers.

Bittervets can probably figure out anything from context, even if the initial screenshot is confusing.

[Linkxsc]

And what are the the most popular sets. 1 person earlier argued that based on communuty forts it had to be ascii. But I can immediately counter with the majority of noob friendly youtube videos. And also that "utterly newby guide to df"(what got me interested and lit the first thing that comes up when googling many combos of df and guide) are graphical.

So where do we draw the line. Also previously a couple. Maybe not bittervets but older players made claims of eye strain (for the whole 5 seconds theyd be looking at a forum post) and lack of understanding due to being unfamiliar with graphical sets.

[GavJ]

Exact data is unclear, because everything has a bit of a bias you could argue.

But since the community fort one, I've been sampling various other things while bored, that should have less of a bias or at least varying biases. The results are pretty much the same everywhere:
* Several other community forts. I'm not looking at any of them that specify an official tileset, obviously, since those are SUPPOSED to have a bias. Amongst those that don't specify, ones that begin with ASCII in the founder of the fort are about 80+% ASCII. Ones that begin with a graphical tileset are between about 50/50% up to about 2/3 ASCII 1/3 various graphical tilesets. Overall, these suggest a healthy tilt toward ASCII, since it tends to have a majority even when the founder of the fort is not using it and all commons ense would suggest non-ASCII for compatibility.
* The "what's going on in your fort" thread: This should have less of a bias than community threads since nobody has to have compatible saves or RAWs. About 2/3 of all screenshots use ASCII, 1/3 use graphical. The 1/3 included all graphical. The most common amongst them is more like 1/10th of people with Phoebus
* Googling dwarf fortress images. Might be biased, but I don't see a reason for any particularly obvious bias, at least. Regardless, once again, it seems to be about 2/3 ASCII, 1/3 graphical of various sorts. A higher portion of these, aroudn 1/6-1/7 overall, appear to be Phoebus.

I mean I guess you could still argue that I just randomly "happened" to choose half a dozen different data sets that all had strong, non-representative ASCII biases. But that seems extraordinarily unlikely.

If anybody cares enough and had a brilliant idea for how to actively go recruit a completely unbiased set, then I'm all ears and probably would help. But it seems pretty straightforward to me without having to do that.

[WoobMonkey]

If anybody cares enough and had a brilliant idea for how to actively go recruit a completely unbiased set, then I'm all ears and probably would help. But it seems pretty straightforward to me without having to do that.

One easily-parsed dataset is a YouTube search for 'let's play Dwarf Fortress,' sorted by page views.  It may not be an exact metric, but it seems to be what you're seeking.

[GavJ]

Uh, why would let's plays on youtube be a completely unbiased dataset? It is well enough as one measure, but by no means special sounding. Probably the equal of google images in terms of well-constructed studies (i.e. not one). Go ahead and count them up and add it to the list of lazy measures, though, if you want.

When I say " a brilliant idea for how to actively go recruit a completely unbiased set" I mean like, a way of actively recruiting a completely or almost completely random sample of DF players to poll. I cannot think of such a method. The closest practical one might be something like [unique IP addresses accessing DF wiki] versus [unique IP addresses downloading non-ASCII tilesets from DF wiki], probably about the closest you'd get without hiring Gallup to start calling random phone numbers or something...

Sadly I don't even have either of those numbers though.

[Linkxsc]

But noone downloads graphical sets from the wiki they either do it through forums or get them from lnp. But thats also "biased" cause not everyone uses lnp

[doublestrafe]

But noone downloads graphical sets from the wiki they either do it through forums or get them from lnp. But thats also "biased" cause not everyone uses lnp

When I tried using tilesets I got them from the wiki (this was well before the LNP). I can't imagine how you would even go about getting them through forums if you were a newbie, unless you're the really annoying kind of noob who goes to the forum and says "tileset link plz???" when there's a perfectly good wiki right there.

[WoobMonkey]

Uh, why would let's plays on youtube be a completely unbiased dataset? It is well enough as one measure, but by no means special sounding. Probably the equal of google images in terms of well-constructed studies (i.e. not one). Go ahead and count them up and add it to the list of lazy measures, though, if you want.

First of all, I made no claim as to the bias, or lack thereof, of such data.  So please, don't attribute such a claim to me.

Second, it's not the number of let's plays, but rather the size of the audience, that makes up the pertinent data.  It's very difficult (impossible, perhaps) to control for factors such as the skill of the 'caster, the popularity they carry over from other, unrelated videos, etc...  however, the number of DF popularizers using IronHand and Phoebus, on one of (if not THE) most popular media for introduction to games, is overwhelmingly greater than those using plain ASCII.  Considering that number of views is one of the primary reasons for uploading videos to YT in the first place, and that, even on a cursory read of the data, videos using graphics packs are orders of magnitude more successful in garnering those views, these data are relevant.

Perfect?  Of course not.  Relevant to this discussion?  Absolutely.

A look at these data is analogous to the use of Nielson ratings to determine the popularity of a television show.  It says nothing about the quality of the medium; however, it speaks volumes to the popularity of it.  In this case, graphics packs are far, far more popular than plain ASCII. 

The above is not an argument against the use of ASCII in screenshots, etc., nor an argument for the usage of tilesets.  If, however, the goal is to be as relevant as possible, to the greatest number of players and potential players as possible, this is evidence that enforcing a standard of ASCII only would be, at best, counter-productive.  At worst, insular and elitist.  Considering that DF is entirely funded through donations, I find it hard to comprehend how anyone would wish to alienate any other would-be player - especially when there are plenty of popularizers who are quite willing to spread the word that DF exists and is entirely comprehensible (despite its reputation) - simply over a desire to maintain some sort of illusory 'purity' or the like.

One place where the enforcement of a standard makes sense has nothing to do with the graphical representation of the game: the use of the DFFD for uploads of saves, mods, and the like.  But that, I suppose, is well beyond the mandate of this thread, so I'll leave it there.

[GavJ]

You're reading like... an order of magnitude too much into that data, dude.

There are a bazillion reasons why the most popular youtubers might be using graphical sets more often, amongst them:
* They review lots and lots of games and don't have time to use anything but the most convenient utility packages for any one of them.
* One random dude did it first, and other copied as many minor details as possible from him to try and also get lots of views with minimum risk.
* They have a different audience - many of them know they stream to people who often play stuff like call of duty, and thus choose the grpahics closest to mainstream at a glance, whereas the choice might be entirely different if the audience was legitimate recruitment to this game long term.
etc.
etc.

Yes, all the other data sources I listed have similar issues of their own. But that's why I just listed them and didn't make big deals out of them. I totally agree that youtube should be thrown on the pile. Along with any other lower quality/lazy data source, and the convergence of evidence from them can help combat conflicting biases. But using that method of research precludes thinking about any of it too hard.  If you wanna be that precise, then all of this is useless, and you need a true manipulated variable experiment, which we don't have.

The concept of a convergence method of data is that you handwave enough times that the hands all wave in different directions enough to cancel each other out a bit, making any remaining patterns more convincing. It's the same exact concept as random assignment in an experiment, but on a meta scale (you don't think too hard about random assignment either, you just do it, on the theory that the unknown noise cancels itself)

[WoobMonkey]

You're reading like... an order of magnitude too much into that data, dude.

<snip>

Did you miss the part where I acknowledged all of the points you make?

Now, point by point:

* They review lots and lots of games and don't have time to use anything but the most convenient utility packages for any one of them

So, you acknowledge that using a tileset is more convenient.  Very interesting point, that.  Especially considering that, when using the most popular package (LNP), one must still purposefully update the raws to use a graphics pack - the default is still ASCII, and players choose to veer from that default.

* One random dude did it first, and other copied as many minor details as possible from him to try and also get lots of views with minimum risk.

So, then, using a tileset will aid in popularity?  As in, will be more easily approachable for new players?

* They have a different audience - many of them know they stream to people who often play stuff like call of duty, and thus choose the grpahics closest to mainstream at a glance, whereas the choice might be entirely different if the audience was legitimate recruitment to this game long term

So, once again, using a graphics pack aids players coming from other games/genres in understanding and relating to DF?

You seem to be making the very points you're arguing against.

[GavJ]

So, you acknowledge that using a tileset is more convenient.

No, LNP is. Which has a whole bucketload of relevant utilities. Tilesets come along for the ride, which may be for better or worse.

High falutin' professional youtubers don't have the time or inclination  to lovingly look into and pick out every custom install option, for their unique snowflake of an experience. They just grab the package and go. The inclusion of any other tileset with LNP (including ASCII) would likely be met with an equal amount of trusting indifference.

So, then, using a tileset will aid in popularity?

No, it might DECREASE popularity by itself for all they know. They just don't want to risk experimenting to find out which things help or not. They already know that the entire constellation of choices made by the one lucky first successful podcaster worked. So if they all just copy everything lump sum, they can't go too far astray.

Think of it like a cake recipe - if you eat a tasty cake, you know that if you just follow its exact recipe, you'll get a tasty cake again.  In no way does that imply that that's the tastiest POSSIBLE cake in the universe. It's just that if you barely know what you're doing, you're more likely to ruin it by changing stuff than you are to stumble upont the few things that would improve it.

So, once again, using a graphics pack aids players coming from other games/genres in understanding and relating to DF?

yeah probably. Most of whom are not the types of players who would ever even attempt playing this game themselves, though, making what might be a good choice for a youtuber on this point not necessarily relevant at all for this thread topic.