Print

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

[Marcus Aseth]

You hate ascii that much?

Well, let's put it this way: if I'm going to spend time and effort to build something, I want the final resoult to look astounding and not like a bunch of garbage data from a corrupted file :\

That's what you use stonesense for, but I love Ascii and personally can't stand graphics.

Interesting. I can't stand the look of the tilesets: It looks like my kid brother got into my phone and typed every single multicoloured smiley he could until he used up all my credit. The Ascii is clean and easy to interpret, much easier anyhow than the animated mobile phone art, which makes absolutely too much clutter. It takes all sorts

Ok, you leave me no choice but to ask: What where you playing during the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive era?! o_O

[Thisfox]

You hate ascii that much?

Well, let's put it this way: if I'm going to spend time and effort to build something, I want the final resoult to look astounding and not like a bunch of garbage data from a corrupted file :\

That's what you use stonesense for, but I love Ascii and personally can't stand graphics.

Interesting. I can't stand the look of the tilesets: It looks like my kid brother got into my phone and typed every single multicoloured smiley he could until he used up all my credit. The Ascii is clean and easy to interpret, much easier anyhow than the animated mobile phone art, which makes absolutely too much clutter. It takes all sorts

Ok, you leave me no choice but to ask: What where you playing during the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive era?! o_O

...I went and looked them up. If they were released at the same time in Australia as they were in the U.S., then either a very small child, or the proud teenage owner of a Macintosh computer. I typed a lot. I still have that machine, incidentally, not that I use the old greenscreen all that much these days. Now I'm using a Macbook Pro. I have a whole string of computers between the greenscreen and my beloved irreplaceable Pro. My brothers had a playstation when I was in highschool, but it was the sort with discs, not cartridges, and their racing games were booooooring. I was happier typing, sailing and reading books. We got an internet connection in the late 90s, and I learned html at some point, probably after I started studying Bio in Uni.

Probably why I'm a single lass in her mid thirties now, playing Dwarf Fortress and going camping in the Outback. No interest in "Sega" or "Nintendo" made me the wrong sort of geek, and thus undateable or something.

[Marcus Aseth]

...I went and looked them up. If they were released at the same time in Australia as they were in the U.S., then either a very small child, or the proud teenage owner of a Macintosh computer. I typed a lot. I still have that machine, incidentally, not that I use the old greenscreen all that much these days. Now I'm using a Macbook Pro. I have a whole string of computers between the greenscreen and my beloved irreplaceable Pro. My brothers had a playstation when I was in highschool, but it was the sort with discs, not cartridges, and their racing games were booooooring. I was happier typing, sailing and reading books. We got an internet connection in the late 90s, and I learned html at some point, probably after I started studying Bio in Uni.

Probably why I'm a single lass in her mid thirties now, playing Dwarf Fortress and going camping in the Outback. No interest in "Sega" or "Nintendo" made me the wrong sort of geek, and thus undateable or something.

well you lost a huge chunk of game history and tons of gems, and that kind of explain why you keep tilesets in such low regard xD
Never too late for some retro-gaming though
Also dispite personal preferences and art tastes, a tileset can have every human on earth understand what something is at a glance (a sword look like a sword, stairs looks like stairs and so on), while an Ascii symbol simply can't, so you should at least give him that to tilesets, the ability to convey much more informations about something.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Every human on earth can see what a tileset creator thinks something is supposed to look like with a tileset.

Fine for those who don't like to use imagination in games, I guess. Perhaps it's a result of the nintendo/sega generation having missed out on a huge chunk of gaming history...

[Thorfinn]

Every human on earth can see what a tileset creator thinks something is supposed to look like with a tileset.

Fine for those who don't like to use imagination in games, I guess. Perhaps it's a result of the nintendo/sega generation having missed out on a huge chunk of gaming history...

By the same logic, only the weak-minded use ASCII. Those with any talent at all read the binary. 

[EDIT]
What's with this? I know I used two colons and a close parenthesis. Some lamer replaced my text with a graphic!
[/EDIT]

[Shonai_Dweller]

Every human on earth can see what a tileset creator thinks something is supposed to look like with a tileset.

Fine for those who don't like to use imagination in games, I guess. Perhaps it's a result of the nintendo/sega generation having missed out on a huge chunk of gaming history...

By the same logic, only the weak-minded use ASCII. Those with any talent at all read the binary. 

Which particular history of gaming featured games you could only see in binary? Must have missed that one.

[Marcus Aseth]

Every human on earth can see what a tileset creator thinks something is supposed to look like with a tileset.

Fine for those who don't like to use imagination in games, I guess.

No is not about imagination, is that if X is supposed to rappresent a stair, you cannot know unless you are told or you read about it somewhere and then do the association, after that step you can use immagination as much as you want, but is that first step I'm talking about. What I'm saying is that tilesets completely bypass that first step, it graphically convey the purpose of something because everyone comes to the game with a luggage of knowledge built from real life, and that already includes what a stair does in the real world, so you pretty much need not for additional documentation because a tileset is leveraging people common knowledge, you can already guess a picture of a stairs allows you to move between floors, while you cannot do the same assumption about a X, you need to be told that a X allows you to move between floors.

[Marcus Aseth]

Also by your same logic, is perfectly fine if I create a game where "a pear" rappresent a real world stair, "a smoking pipe" rappresent a real world pear, and "a stone" rappresent water.
Of course I can do so and everyone will get it after I tell them, the thing is it's plain dumb for me to do so, no need to reinvent the wheel for every single game that get released, it would be madness, let's just agree upon already established common knowledge we all share, let a pear be a pear

[Shonai_Dweller]

And are your pears round or "pear shaped"?
Around here they're round. Thus leading me to consider "that pear shaped object is actually what I would consider to be a juicy round pear (and a somewhat different color than it is here)". As opposed to the word "pear" which instantly lets me imagine any kind of pear I like regardless of the tileset maker's (who is not the game's creator) cultural luggage.

I only have to check out the object once to know it's a "pear". As opposed to being bombarded with weird shaped "pears" every time they crop up.

[Marcus Aseth]

And are your pears round or "pear shaped"?

And how that matters in the context of a game? We are already agreeing in the fact we are talking about a fruit, so 90% of the info we could need for playing purpose is already there, so that further prove my point.

[mifki]

No is not about imagination, is that if X is supposed to rappresent a stair, you cannot know unless you are told or you read about it somewhere

Also by your same logic, is perfectly fine if I create a game where "a pear" rappresent a real world stair, "a smoking pipe" rappresent a real world pear, and "a stone" rappresent water.

You see, your logic is broken - in one case you're talking about introducing a new symbol for a real-life object, which is completely normal, it happens everywhere in life and science; while in the second case you're talking about using one real life object to represent another one, which is of course confusing.

[Marcus Aseth]

No is not about imagination, is that if X is supposed to rappresent a stair, you cannot know unless you are told or you read about it somewhere

Also by your same logic, is perfectly fine if I create a game where "a pear" rappresent a real world stair, "a smoking pipe" rappresent a real world pear, and "a stone" rappresent water.

You see, your logic is broken - in one case you're talking about introducing a new symbol for a real-life object, which is completely normal, it happens everywhere in life and science; while in the second case you're talking about using one real life object to represent another one, which is of course confusing.

not really, as you have a drawing of a pear associated to a real life pear, I have a symbol, let's say a X associated with a treasure mark on a map or a moltiplication symbol in math, a @ would be an email address, a point would be moltiplication or end of sentence and so on,so is the same thing, you're taking something that carry certain meanings behind it from real world usage and you're assigning a new one to it, as opposed as using it as it is and as we all know it works already.

Symbols and drawings of objects are the same thing, just shapes that carry meaning (a drawing of a pear is the same thing as a drawing of a X, is just a shape with meaning). Problem is if every game go and randomly assign new meaning to shapes.

[mifki]

No is not about imagination, is that if X is supposed to rappresent a stair, you cannot know unless you are told or you read about it somewhere

Also by your same logic, is perfectly fine if I create a game where "a pear" rappresent a real world stair, "a smoking pipe" rappresent a real world pear, and "a stone" rappresent water.

You see, your logic is broken - in one case you're talking about introducing a new symbol for a real-life object, which is completely normal, it happens everywhere in life and science; while in the second case you're talking about using one real life object to represent another one, which is of course confusing.

not really, as you have a drawing of a pear associated to a real life pear, I have a symbol, let's say a X associated with a treasure mark on a map or a moltiplication symbol in math, a @ would be an email address, a point would be moltiplication or end of sentence and so on,so is the same thing, you're taking something that carry certain meanings behind it from real world usage and you're assigning a new one to it, as opposed as using it as it is and as we all know it works already.

Symbols and drawings of objects are the same thing, just shapes that carry meaning (a drawing of a pear is the same thing as a drawing of a X, is just a shape with meaning). Problem is if every game go and randomly assign new meaning to shapes.

A drawing of a pear can't be the same thing as a drawing of an X because X is not a real-world object.

Symbols can have different meaning, as you pointed out yourself - X for treasure mark, multiplication, "no" (as opposer to O for yes) and I believe other stuff, including the letter X itself. So why can't it have one more meaning in DF?

[Marcus Aseth]

A drawing of a pear can't be the same thing as a drawing of an X because X is not a real-world object.

Just cause we created it or because is less tangible than a pear makes it not real? What about feelings, for example? Or, by the same logic, words are not real. Thing is, they are, cause we associate meaning to those sounds, and all this things are what makes society work (words can impact feelings, feelings can impact action, action can shape the world), so if for you "not tangible = not real" then I can't help but question your sense of reality.

So why can't it have one more meaning in DF?

It can, I'm just saying is less immediate compared to a visual rapresentation of the corresponding thing we already know from everyday use and if everyone where to take on such a practice it would be madness, you would need a manual of symbols for every single game. Wouldn't be a smart system overall imo... :\

[Starver]

Which particular history of gaming featured games you could only see in binary? Must have missed that one.

Spoiler: The first iteration of Pong was very user unfriendly (click to show/hide)