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[Shonai_Dweller]

I don't think this game is losing popularity. Do you OP?

I have never said so, I just think that it could have been more popular if it had better graphics and was presented differently, in a way that would be more convincing for potential players.

As to URR, I just meant that from the marketing point of view it is good to have a world that seems realistic, and if what we can see on URR blog is indeed true, it stands a good chance of being more attractive as a roguelike than DF's adventure mode in the future, provided that they would deliver promised world's depth and lore as they present them - better communication, laws, different political systems and their influences, languages and dialects, trade routes and some other things.

In the far future there's going to be a lot of kids who try URR and scream 'boring!' and go back to breaking limbs in DF. Both worlds have sufficiently different goals to ever be able to say one has surpassed the other (and it would be sad if the next 10 years didn't see games surpassing one another).

DF also promises all sorts of things and is up front about pointing out that what's available right now is nowhere near anything close to a finished version. Especially adventurer. 10 years from now, who knows where either game will be? Both have potential, both require some patience to see if they ever deliver and both (if URRs blog is anything to go by) have yet to find a neat solution for managing conversations due to the vast amounts of information a character could possibly talk about.

On 'official tilesets', I'm not sure if I'm unusual or if it's an age thing, but I can't play Cataclysm DDA or Nethack with any of the 'offically available' graphical tilesets, they just look too cheap to me. Would switch to some kind of ascii set for Unreal World too, but don't spend as much time with that (and the photos are kind of funny). DF unofficially has a nice range of simple graphics and tilesets to choose from to tweak just the way I like (Taffer with graphics for main races (not always Taffer's) generally).

Either way 'more graphics support' is in both in the development notes and near the top of the eternal suggestions board.

[Chase]

I don't think this game is losing popularity. Do you OP?

I have never said so, I just think that it could have been more popular if it had better graphics and was presented differently, in a way that would be more convincing for potential players.

As to URR, I just meant that from the marketing point of view it is good to have a world that seems realistic, and if what we can see on URR blog is indeed true, it stands a good chance of being more attractive as a roguelike than DF's adventure mode in the future, provided that they would deliver promised world's depth and lore as they present them - better communication, laws, different political systems and their influences, languages and dialects, trade routes and some other things.

In the far future there's going to be a lot of kids who try URR and scream 'boring!' and go back to breaking limbs in DF. Both worlds have sufficiently different goals to ever be able to say one has surpassed the other (and it would be sad if the next 10 years didn't see games surpassing one another).

DF also promises all sorts of things and is up front about pointing out that what's available right now is nowhere near anything close to a finished version. Especially adventurer. 10 years from now, who knows where either game will be? Both have potential, both require some patience to see if they ever deliver and both (if URRs blog is anything to go by) have yet to find a neat solution for managing conversations due to the vast amounts of information a character could possibly talk about.

On 'official tilesets', I'm not sure if I'm unusual or if it's an age thing, but I can't play Cataclysm DDA or Nethack with any of the 'offically available' graphical tilesets, they just look too cheap to me. Would switch to some kind of ascii set for Unreal World too, but don't spend as much time with that (and the photos are kind of funny). DF unofficially has a nice range of simple graphics and tilesets to choose from to tweak just the way I like (Taffer with graphics for main races (not always Taffer's) generally).

Either way 'more graphics support' is in both in the development notes and near the top of the eternal suggestions board.

I really dont think URR will have anything close to dwarf fortress, except a better UI.

[Salmeuk]

I prefer ASCII graphics with a custom, square tileset. There is no question that ASCII is a turn off to a lot of newcomers. I also think the base game would benefit from having a native graphics option.

However, I will never change from ASCII - it provokes the imagination and is easier to parse at speed. I also think that if people spent a few days adjusting to it, they would agree. Most people lack the patience and for some reason refuse to believe just how awesome it is to play with ASCII. I'm not lying when I say that I, too, thought ASCII was unbearable. Back when I started there weren't many alternatives, so I shouldered through learning this weird freeware that was supposedly the deepest fantasy simulation. Then I learned to appreciate ASCII for what it wasn't, and now I can actually describe things as beautiful - the flowering of fruit trees in the spring, the flow of blood down a stream, the assortment of minerals and ores that thread through a cavern.

One downside to graphics is that every pack is different, and so when a person shares a screenshot from one it isn't very obvious what's going on to someone unfamiliar with that pack. With ASCII, ever person reasonably familiar with reading letters has a chance to put together what they are seeing, despite different tilesets or whatnot. Obviously, a "vanilla" graphics pack would be recognizable to all should it become available.

[Chase]

I prefer ASCII graphics with a custom, square tileset. There is no question that ASCII is a turn off to a lot of newcomers. I also think the base game would benefit from having a native graphics option.

However, I will never change from ASCII - it provokes the imagination and is easier to parse at speed. I also think that if people spent a few days adjusting to it, they would agree. Most people lack the patience and for some reason refuse to believe just how awesome it is to play with ASCII. I'm not lying when I say that I, too, thought ASCII was unbearable. Back when I started there weren't many alternatives, so I shouldered through learning this weird freeware that was supposedly the deepest fantasy simulation. Then I learned to appreciate ASCII for what it wasn't, and now I can actually describe things as beautiful - the flowering of fruit trees in the spring, the flow of blood down a stream, the assortment of minerals and ores that thread through a cavern.

One downside to graphics is that every pack is different, and so when a person shares a screenshot from one it isn't very obvious what's going on to someone unfamiliar with that pack. With ASCII, ever person reasonably familiar with reading letters has a chance to put together what they are seeing, despite different tilesets or whatnot. Obviously, a "vanilla" graphics pack would be recognizable to all should it become available.

ASCII ALL THE WAY 

[Ekaton]

URR is offering something very different from DF from what I gather. It's going to be a story driven mystery game with a time limit. I don't even think combat is much of a focus.

In DF you don't have to fight either, do you? You can just be a scholar and spend the whole game reading and writing. It's about how the world looks and how it feels real or not. I just said that with better sites, more building types, better daily routines of NPCs and a richer lore - like those different political systems, languages and so on, their world might seem more convincing, and that is one of the most important things for adv mode - for the world to seem real.

I am not saying that some aspects of the game like fighting will necessarily be better than in DF - the overall immersion might be different. Of course, as always, YMMV.


EDIT: But that's really OT. URR has the same ASCII graphics so it isn't relevant.

[Max™]

Death to curses! Long live Curses+1!

As for URR, I know very little about it, it looks kinda like a weird adventure mode setup to me, because I've gotten used to the df setup as my default, but I gotta echo the sentiment about it being great if someone wants to make a game that covers even a portion of what DF does better than DF. How is that a bad thing?

Dwarf Fortress is not a roguelike, or a city builder, it is a story generator.

Yes, it has roguelike elements and builder elements because those let players take part in making their own stories, and producing interesting outcomes from doing it is close to a goal... though the game is intimidating to many because there is no hard and fast "you need to accomplish this", there is no win condition, or anything of the sort besides failure.

A sandbox is only fun when you play in it, playing with the sand as "just sand" isn't going to go very far, arguing over the merits of one type of sand vs another is pretty silly when you step back and look at it.

Little kids have their box of sand (and a surprising amount of vomit) and a lot of imagination to make it wonderful.

Right here in my computer I've got a whole world full of sand (and an unsurprising amount of vomit) and I enjoy letting my imagination roam in the hopes of finding something wonderful or building something wonderful or even destroying something wonderful, but ultimately with the same goal: so I can cover it in vomit.

[Dirst]

EDIT: But that's really OT. URR has the same ASCII graphics so it isn't relevant.

Well, if ASCII-ish graphics aren't a liability for URR, stands to reason they probably aren't a liability to DF.

As for the original suggestion, the ultimate solution is probably an "asset store" model like you see in some other moddable games (even if everything is free).

A more immediate suggestion would be to link to a small handful of Starter Packs on the Bay12 download page.  Bay12 does host the DFFD, so there's no issue of stolen bandwidth ("hotlinking").  The real issue is making it abundantly clear which version of DF you are downloading.

[Shonai_Dweller]

EDIT: But that's really OT. URR has the same ASCII graphics so it isn't relevant.

Well, if ASCII-ish graphics aren't a liability for URR, stands to reason they probably aren't a liability to DF.

As for the original suggestion, the ultimate solution is probably an "asset store" model like you see in some other moddable games (even if everything is free).

A more immediate suggestion would be to link to a small handful of Starter Packs on the Bay12 download page.  Bay12 does host the DFFD, so there's no issue of stolen bandwidth ("hotlinking").  The real issue is making it abundantly clear which version of DF you are downloading.

Please, please don't do this. There's a huge number of complaints of DF crashing in this and reddit's forum and only a tiny percentage are anything to do with the official release which tends to be either in a relatively stable state or not and just a week or so away from a hotpatch.

The starter pack has done much more for DF's "crashy game - avoid" reputation than Toady's managed to pull off so far.

(Meaning, the stuff in the pack, not the pack itself which seems reasonably stable most of the time).

[Ekaton]

EDIT: But that's really OT. URR has the same ASCII graphics so it isn't relevant.

Well, if ASCII-ish graphics aren't a liability for URR, stands to reason they probably aren't a liability to DF.

As for the original suggestion, the ultimate solution is probably an "asset store" model like you see in some other moddable games (even if everything is free).

A more immediate suggestion would be to link to a small handful of Starter Packs on the Bay12 download page.  Bay12 does host the DFFD, so there's no issue of stolen bandwidth ("hotlinking").  The real issue is making it abundantly clear which version of DF you are downloading.

I've never said that it is not a liability for URR, I think it is, for the same reasons, but that's not really the point.

I think that there could be two versions of the game ready to download - with ASCII graphics and with tilesets which can contain for example ten tilesets chosen by the players in a poll.

[Max™]

^That's actually one of the best parts of playing adventurer mode, you don't miss dfhack or any of the other tools when you dive right into a minutes old version update. Being able to edit tiles or launch people around or set gauntlet handedness is nice if it's there, I forget how nice it is being able to teleport around the world-map via my gm-editor tweaks, but overall? Just easier to adapt to not having world-breaking toys than it is going back to v-p-l from manipulator (I fully admit I don't like to play fort mode anymore without it) or whatever other tools you use.

Heck, even now I've just converted from exploring on foot, chatting with people locally, planning treks and such, to trying to determine parts of the volcano generation system by teleporting around and visiting tons in rapid succession to see what features vary and how they do, and building stuff when I find ones that stand out as particularly interesting and well-sited.

[Dirst]

I wasn't clear... I certainly don't mean the bleeding-edge packs or even the packs in general use, but rather a "slow ring" distribution with anything crashy disabled by default.  That means, among other things, no TWBT.

[Pseudopuppet]

I never even bothered to play the original game. Come on, how can anyone play it? I guess that there might be some nostalgia there with those graphics but if you have a choice - why don't you play with tilesets? They are much better.

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out if this post is sarcasm or not. Assumptive as fuck. To me, graphics sets always looked way too cluttered and out-of-place compared to ASCII, which looks neat and clean.

I myself don't use DFHack, Therapist, Starter Pack, etc. but I find the fact that so many people are reliant on them (even to the degree of not knowing how to play without them) to be worrying.

[Ekaton]

I never even bothered to play the original game. Come on, how can anyone play it? I guess that there might be some nostalgia there with those graphics but if you have a choice - why don't you play with tilesets? They are much better.

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out if this post is sarcasm or not. Assumptive as fuck. To me, graphics sets always looked way too cluttered and out-of-place compared to ASCII, which looks neat and clean.

I myself don't use DFHack, Therapist, Starter Pack, etc. but I find the fact that so many people are reliant on them (even to the degree of not knowing how to play without them) to be worrying.

I don't think that this was meant to be sarcastic. Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if there are quite many people who would agree with that, that is the whole point of this thread.

[Alastar]

ASCII characters are dense, umambiguous and scaleable.
Also, with a good character and colour set, prettier. A lot of attention to detail has gone into cute details, and things like rain and wave action still make me smile. IMO, no tileset manages to be as cute in addition to the practical drawbacks.

Different graphics approaches play to their strengths in different environments:
ASCII - lots of information on the screen, any resolution. Applies more to DF than traditional Roguelikes.
Tiles - less information density, but resolution is a constraint. There's a reason they often resemble 8/16 bit aesthetics.
Fully rendered - even less information density, high resolution available,  "natural" rather than "formal" ruleset and mode of interaction.

[Max™]

*froths at the mouth*

I don't know what other games do, or why it is so common for this to happen, but literally everyone who plays df without using ncurses mode in a terminal window is using a tileset.

df/data/art has tilesets, they are specified in the font/fullfont/graphics font/graphics fullfont lines in df/data/init/init.txt.

df/raw/graphics has graphics sets, and they get bundled into saves generated with them, they get activated with the graphics: yes/no line in df/data/init/init.txt.



The vanilla curses_640x300.png, curses_800x600, and curses_square16x16 are all tilesets based on CP 437, or "extended" ASCII, as is my upscaled/cleaned up +1 version of curses_640x300.

[RANT:END]