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[Cespinarve]

Man, I have not logged in hear for a hot minute...

I am a long time Dwarf Fortress player who hasn't picked up the game is some years, partially because I am eagerly waiting for the Steam release (and hoping it gets a Mac release relatively quickly), but also because my eyes have been damaged in the last few years and I don't see enarly as well as I used to. I remember in the past being able to change the type of text DF used, but not necessarily it's size. My questions are:

1) If you can adjust text size, how does the current game adjust to an increased text size.

2) Will the new Steam release have a more variable text size, because watching the demo stream the text is punishingly small.

[Ziusudra]

1) In the current vanilla game you choose a single tileset that is used to draw every thing, by default. The wiki has a repository of tilesets, though a few are not listed there. So, you can use a tileset set that has larger tiles which will make every thing larger, but the game will not display fewer than 80 columns and if you try to use too large of a tileset, the game will hav to scale it down. The ideal tile size is the max window size divided by 80, so for a 2560x1080 display that would be a tileset with 32 pixel wide tiles.

Now, you can tell the game to draw text using the bundled TrueTypeFont, either with an init file setting or by pressing F12. However the size at which that text is rendered is determined by the tileset and zoom level, so is usually less readable. Also, some screens do not display as the TTF, like the thoughts screen in fort mode.

The game can zoom the display, using the mouse wheel by default, which will scale the tileset tiles. Of course, scaling can cause the displayed tiles to look blurry, pixelated, or distorted, and is also limited to no fewer than 80 columns.

For non-vanilla there is the DFHack plugin TWBT (Text Will Be Text) which allows you to set different tilesets for text and non-text. However, I don't know what sort of limits there are on that and if you can set the text tileset to be larger than the non-text one. The easiest way to get TWBT is by using one of the packs such as PE's.

2) We don't know a lot about how the premium version works, but looking at the screenshots, it is using 32x32 graphics tiles and for text is using the 8x12 tileset that the current game defaults to. So, I would guess that there will be an option to use a larger text tileset, though there might a limit to how large of one can be used, maybe being limited to 32 pixels. It is also unknown whether the TTF functionality will remain, and last we heard the zoom functionality would not remain.

[Salmeuk]

agree with Ziusudra on all points.

I am the same re: eyesight, and I use a larger tileset and make sure to zoom all the way in with my mouse wheel. this helps immensely. I also recommend trying a number of tilesets to find the most legible style.

[Cespinarve]

agree with Ziusudra on all points.

I am the same re: eyesight, and I use a larger tileset and make sure to zoom all the way in with my mouse wheel. this helps immensely. I also recommend trying a number of tilesets to find the most legible style.

Mayday was what I used back in the day, but really haven't plaid since the eye damage happened so I can't recall what it was like in comparison.

[NTJedi]

I'm only 49 years old and reading the text in dwarf fortress is painful...  I'm sure it's the grey font against the black background being the problem. 
Wish there was an easy fix

[Salsa Gal]

I had a similar issue because my screen has higher pixel density, so I just did this:

1. duplicated the image with the font
2. scaled it up in GIMP
3. named the file to curses_1280x600.png (or whatever resolution you made yours instead)
4. set my init.txt to use that file with [FULLFONT:curses_1280x600.png], you can use [FULL:curses_1280x600.png] to make it not fullscreen (again replace the name with whatever different resolution you used if you didn't just make it twice as big)

Hopefully this works for you too, there's probably a better or cleaner way to pull this off but idk how

Here's my image, just slap it into data/art in your dwarf fortress folder https://ufile.io/e3ye2swp

[Ziusudra]

and last we heard the zoom functionality would not remain.

And now it's back in:

I might have also mentioned at some point that mouse wheel zooming was out, but now it's back, using ctrl+mouse wheel or the brackets or two buttons near the minimap.

[Thisfox]

(and hoping it gets a Mac release relatively quickly),

Oh so very much yes! This game runs so well on Mac, and so clunkily on Windows!

I'm less enthusiastic about the Steam release because it seems to be art-tile heavy (I really want to keep using the ASCII-like method, as it's better for my eyes) but if it means that more users lead to more mac users then I'm all for it. The M-range chips seem to have locked me out of playing on my mac for now, until I can get an M-free computer again.

Friend of mine hooked his machine up to a huge smart-TV and had this Starcraft in surround-vision thing going on, where each (usually centimetre-high) sprite was the size of my hand or larger. Perhaps a supermegasize TV screen might help you a little in making DF larger? Or is that not going to work?

[Salsa Gal]

(I really want to keep using the ASCII-like method, as it's better for my eyes)

You seen the screenshot of the ASCII mode coming in the premium version? It looks really cool with the ASCII style but still also the new UI system