Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Yes

27 (31.4%)

No

59 (68.6%)

Total Members Voted: 86

[WoobMonkey]

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

Once again, it takes a conscious effort, even with the LNP, to update the raws to use a tileset.  Players and 'casters are purposefully choosing to use them.  Therefore:

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.

Is either ignorant of how the LNP works, or disingenuous.

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.

Except that this is simply untrue.  There were streamers before there were tilesets.  They were (by view count) relatively unpopular.  There are still streamers who use the base ASCII.  They are (by view count) relatively unpopular.  It doesn't take a genius to see this as evidence of a causal relationship between graphics packs and popularity.

Poor baking analogy snipped

Your choice of analogy argues against your point.  Baking is applied chemistry; altering the ingredients is far, far more likely to make an inferior product.

We're not talking about the cake in this thread, anyway - we're discussing the frosting.  There are many types of frosting that can be placed atop a cupcake; any bakeshop will confirm that sugary, colourful frosted treats out-sell broccoli-flavoured ones.  Changing the cake recipe is modding; popular examples being Meph's Masterwork mod, or Deon's Genesis mod.  That discussion is beyond the scope of this thread.

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.

For some reason, I'm getting the feeling that even you don't take your argument seriously.  How could you possibly know what the motivations of the general public are?  Especially since, by choosing to watch a DF video, there's already a significant level of selection for exactly the 'types of players' who are interested in DF?

What makes a good choice for a popularizer is what makes a good choice for popularity.  Even if it rubs the elite, dare I say hipster, crowd the wrong way.

Setting a standard that alienates new players, limits choice, and actively discourages creative artists, is an indefensible position.  There's nothing wrong with posting screenshots in ASCII; there is also nothing wrong with posting in a different tileset.  The converging evidence, from all sources thus far presented, is that tilesets are the more newb-friendly path, whereas ASCII is preferred by many veteran players.  Neither is superior to the other - to pretend otherwise speaks more of the biases of the observer than it does to any merit of a particular graphical representation.

[wierd]

.... Uhm, I think you guys are treating this too seriously.

People will play how they will play. Toady will code how toady will code. Nothing any of us can do about either of those. Might as well argue about angels on heads of pins.

That's the issue I have with threads like this one; many people eager to tell other people about the one-true-UI, and none can agree. News at 11.

both sides need to just get over themselves; the other side will never budge. Stretched and tortured arguments about statistics from youtube and community succession games are just that-- stretched and tortured arguments, beat and hammered to fit a pre-existing bias for a position. Cherry picking never works.

I just want the invisible framework to place a better, more complete tileset on. I dont need, nor want for toady to change to full on graphics mode, or for him to pick a tileset to settle the community angst brewing under the surface.  He should not ever be placed in that predicament, and many of you should probably apologize for trying to put him there. Really.

I use tileset graphics, because I find them more intuitive and easier on the eyes than ascii mode.  That's a personal preference, and any arbitrary DF player may experience that in exactly the other direction. That's fine.  I have learned to half-assed read ascii mode screenshots; ascii mode players can learn to do the same with graphics packs. I can read pretty much any graphics tileset without issue (it may make me want to gouge out my eyes, but I can figure out what is going on, usually), so "There are so many! It's not consistent! whaa!" is not a valid excuse. There are tons of fonts one can use in ascii mode too. The exact same argument can be made the other way.

If your arguments in this thread hinge on retaining either arbitrary position as being "right", you are not seeing the light of reality, and are only arguing against a wall. No matter how intricate your words, it will never fall over.

People will play and post how people will play and post, and nothing, NOTHING, you say or do will make people change their mind. At the most, you will only make people consider you to be a jerk. I don't think that is an accomplishment any here want to achieve.

Compromise is the circumstance where all affected parties walk away dissatisfied. Free choice is the compromise. 100% satisfaction is not, and has never been guaranteed.  No-one has the right or authority to demand any screenshots in any particular flavor. Everyone has the right and authority to post screenshots in the flavors of their choice.

That is the reality. If you dont like that reality, tough. Better chances of getting the sky to stop being blue.

[GavJ]

People will play and post how people will play and post, and nothing, NOTHING, you say or do will make people change their mind. At the most, you will only make people consider you to be a jerk. I don't think that is an accomplishment any here want to achieve.

You realize that your post right here is itself an attempt to persuade other people to change their minds about what they post, yes? I for one am not trying to argue anything is better to play with. Only, like you, what might be better to post. Not that I'm going to actually complain at anybody for posting in anything. Just as a productive suggestion to newbies using the forums (as per the OP of this thread). Providing compatibility of information for the majority of one's audience is not very controversial advice. Who the majority actually is is apparently slightly more controversial, I guess...

@Woobmonkey, I did not know you had to manually change anything for the LNP. (Why do people say there's a "default tileset" for it, then?)
Anyway, that was one of three alternative explanations I came up with in 5 seconds out of hundreds of potential others.
Bickering over their specifics is pointless, because I could come up with a dozen more afterward. None of it will  ever be much more productive than my initial dogpile of random data.

Which is why nature of scientific inquiry demands that if you want DEFINITIVE answers about causality, you need to run a controlled, proper experiment with random assignment and isolated, manipulated variables.  Period.




The gut feeling type of data is already out on the table, and everyone will interpret it how they will, or not. If you want to go beyond that, then start thinking of how to run an experiment. Otherwise, I don't see much point in proceeding further.

[Melting Sky]

People will play and post how people will play and post, and nothing, NOTHING, you say or do will make people change their mind. At the most, you will only make people consider you to be a jerk. I don't think that is an accomplishment any here want to achieve.

You realize that your post right here is itself an attempt to persuade other people to change their minds about what they post, yes? I for one am not trying to argue anything is better to play with. Only, like you, what might be better to post. Not that I'm going to actually complain at anybody for posting in anything. Just as a productive suggestion to newbies using the forums (as per the OP of this thread). Providing compatibility of information for the majority of one's audience is not very controversial advice. Who the majority actually is is apparently slightly more controversial, I guess...

@Woobmonkey, I did not know you had to manually change anything for the LNP. (Why do people say there's a "default tileset" for it, then?)
Anyway, that was one of three alternative explanations I came up with in 5 seconds out of hundreds of potential others.
Bickering over their specifics is pointless, because I could come up with a dozen more afterward. None of it will  ever be much more productive than my initial dogpile of random data.

Which is why nature of scientific inquiry demands that if you want DEFINITIVE answers about causality, you need to run a controlled, proper experiment with random assignment and isolated, manipulated variables.  Period.




The gut feeling type of data is already out on the table, and everyone will interpret it how they will, or not. If you want to go beyond that, then start thinking of how to run an experiment. Otherwise, I don't see much point in proceeding further.

As I said earlier its rather silly to even debate over which graphic set is most popular. Regardless of which one it turns out to be I am sure it will still account for a minority of players overall. My guess is that the most popular option will likely come in around 1/4 or maybe 1/3 of players, so what would be the point in suggesting that people post in that version when it is still alienating the majority of the viewers?

This entire debate is essentially moot. We can't even come to a consensus on which option is the most widely used let alone get any hard numbers on it. I guess perhaps the one useful bit of advice one could offer to people about what graphics they should post screen shots in is to avoid using a crazy tile set whose entire intent is to purposely obfuscate the game such as that matrix tile set somebody linked to earlier. (Although, it would actually be pretty damn funny to post something as confusing and complex as a dwarven computer in the matrix tile set just for laughs.)

Aside for intentionally hard to read tile sets, everything else is on relatively equal ground. Most players can intuit what things are by looking either at the little pictures or from context alone. Even somebody who has played with nothing other than one of the more graphical options can usually figure out what it going on in a vanilla screen shot and vice versa.

[MinethatCrackers]

I love the idea of using the default ASCII, but there is one problem. THE TILES ARE NOT PERFECTLY SQUARE. This makes my judgement of distances and room size to be off, and vertical distances seem longer than equivalent horizontal distances.

TL;DR: I don't use the default because I want perfectly square tiles

[wierd]

There's a square version of the ncurses font by default in the art folder. Just an FYI.

[GavJ]

Regardless of which one it turns out to be I am sure it will still account for a minority of players overall.

Why would you be "sure" of that? Your guess is no more founded in data than are any claims of which one is most popular.

I love the idea of using the default ASCII, but there is one problem. THE TILES ARE NOT PERFECTLY SQUARE. This makes my judgement of distances and room size to be off, and vertical distances seem longer than equivalent horizontal distances.

There are like 10 different tilesets that are square default ASCII, you know... including, as mentioned, the default square one, but also multiple other exact copies except for resolution and "making it look less squished" etc. by the community.

[miauw62]

If you want to discourage people from playing DF because they're not "hardcore" enough, then go ahead and write it.

I can play DF in ASCII mode, but it's an aquired taste.

[Ramaraunt]

It's a videogame. I don't think it matters tbh.

[FrankMcFuzz]

I'm all for writing a paper to make people WANT to play Dwarf Fortress though.

[Icecoon]

When I started playing DF I played only with graphics packs, because the ascii mode was too daunting to understand.
Now when I'm an old and experienced Urist, I play only with ascii. I'm using taffers ascii tileset though.
I guess graphics packs are important because they can draw new, inexperienced players to the game. They can shift to the ascii mode
later, because the game was meant to be played in ascii and it has a totally different atmosphere.

[Skuggen]

When I started playing DF I played only with graphics packs. Now that I'm a somewhat experienced player, I play only with graphics packs.

The way the game is meant to be played is decided by whoever plays it. The ability to change and add to games to make it suit your own preferences is the main reason I prefer PC gaming over console gaming (though I do both).