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[DwarfUli]

Hello,

I am new to DF and have been using the most recent Vettlingr tile set. I really love the way it looks but somebody warned me that tile sets can cause problems and don't always display correctly?
Is this correct? I tried playing the ASCII and I actually found it quite beautiful, and somewhat mesmerizing, will it perform better than using tile sets?

Also, do dwarves tire faster going up and down stairs? I am making a fortress with 8+ layers and when I see them haul things 8 floors, I wonder if this creates negative thoughts or tires them faster?
It doesn't seem to bother them.

One last question; when I break the last block to get into a water source or lava, will the dwarf drown/get burned? Do I have to break that last tile in a certain way?

Thank you so much,
Uli

[Thisfox]

It's all a matter of opinion. I find tile sets ugly, and my imagination can fill in the blanks, so I prefer the ASCII. Others are less imaginative. I'm told that there is a slight performance advantage in the case of FPS death. I almost never have FPS death of my fortress.... I wonder if that's related?

Dwarves tire the same amount going any number of steps to the north, south, east, west, or up or down. I often have very vertical fortresses. They're little machines, these dorfs! They can even roll wheelbarrows up and down the fortress stairs. That said, make sure there is enough staircase for everyone to get past each other. A 2x2 staircase stack is needed at the very least, and larger is better.

And on fluid breaches: Depending on how you break into that last tile before the water/magma, you could loose a dwarf. Don't dig up into anything is a general good idea, and even digging sideways into anything is probably a mistake. Try to dig down from above, and in most cases your mining dwarf will survive just fine. If necessary in heavy aquifers I have had a dwarf swim to safety, but no one swims in molten rock and survives, so just make sure all your magma handling is done from above. I recommend trying forts with aquifers and just experimenting until you get a better handle on how they work, no amount of us telling you will be as effective as your own trials.

[DwarfUli]

Thank you!

[Mobbstar]

Hey-ho!  Thisfox is right on all accounts.  Let me elaborate a bit more.

1) The standard ASCII graphics are a tileset too.  To my knowledge, there are no performance concerns regarding tilesets (except maybe high-resolution?).  The only problem to remain wary of is "pigeon holes", or in other words, re-used graphics.  For example, the "arrow pointing up" ↑ is used as an arrow per se, but also as a tree icon.  If your tileset changes the arrow to look like a tree, then the parts of the game where an actual up-arrow is supposed to be, will look weird.

There are ways to mitigate this kind of problem, but ultimatively there is no perfect solution.  I recommend you simply try out a few tilesets and pick one that looks good to you.  Plenty of those available online, take a look.  Personally, I stitched several different tiles together into a custom set!

2) Your observations are correct.  Walking never exhausts dwarves, even if they're walking up stairs or ramps.  In fact, it is generally agreed upon that fortresses spanning several z-levels are more efficient due to interconnection and thereby shorter travel distance between any two rooms.

(Minor caveat: Diagonal movement takes slightly longer.)

3) When tapping into bodies of hazardous liquids, the golden rule is to place a door or hatch somewhere along the tunnel, just in case something goes wrong and a flood ushers into the fortress.  The loss of a miner is misfortunate, but the loss of an entire fortress is terrible (or Fun if you have an active sense of humour).

Mine from the target location towards the source, and finish with a channel from one z-level above the liquid. This way, the miner will be standing above the liquid and safely* watch it flow by.

Sideview:
☺
█▲▒▒█
█████

*(Except if the freshly dug channel is part of the way back home.  In that case, they will deliberately walk down into the waterway before it fills up, and then may get caught in the current.)

Water is generally more forgiving, since dwarves can survive short "drowning" and can stand in shallow water.

[DwarfUli]

o7 thank you for all that info 

[PatrikLundell]

I'm not sure Mobbstar is correct regarding the character (not ASCII, as the code page used both contains characters outside of the 7-bit ASCII set and different characters from the US-centric 8-bit character sets, such as Latin-1) "graphics". It will become a tile set with the Premium release (regardless of whether you use the Premium or Classic version). Thus, there may be a slight performance advantage currently, but if it exists it will disappear in the next release.

[Ziusudra]

Mobbstar is correct, unless DF is using PRINT_MODE:TEXT, it's all just images being displayed. That said, graphics sets can hav a lot more images to switch between and display. Graphics sets can also make use of features added by TWBT, like transparency, which can add a little overhead. I don't think most people would notice any difference though.