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[Seth]

This isn't supposed to sound condescending, but ASCII is the niche, not graphical representations.

ASCII is a Graphical Representation, though.

Hm, I would say ASCII is more like a mix of abstract/iconic/textual representations.  "S" is no way graphically representative of a giant cave spider.

[Red Jackard]

...and it seems like every time a graphical tileset comes out, people have to bring up the same old tired debate between the two styles. How about we save it for once? Let people develop and play their preference without telling them why you think the other one is superior.

[Boomer]

...and it seems like every time a graphical tileset comes out, people have to bring up the same old tired debate between the two styles. How about we save it for once? Let people develop and play their preference without telling them why you think the other one is superior.

...but then it would not be a discussion. Which would defeat the whole purpose of having a forum.

No real argument going on here, just a lot of people voicing opinions about what interface graphic they like best.

Red Jackard, your tileset was my favorite right up until this one. I am surprised that someone was thinking exactly what I was thinking, made the minor changes I wanted, and posted it where I could get it. But this has made me very happy and I thank you for your part in the process. You helped make things beautiful.

[Red Jackard]

Thanks.

No real argument going on here, just a lot of people voicing opinions about what interface graphic they like best.

These same opinions get brought up in every one of these threads, and they are pretty irrelevant to the topic itself. (Which is talking about the tileset, not beating the ascii vs. graphics dead horse.)

[Jude]

I just use the EZPack on the wiki because I couldn't be bothered to figure out how to work any other one....and now I'm used to how that ones looks and I won't change.

Oddly enough, I'm a longtime Angband player but DF in its ASCII form was just too much for me...I said hell no. But when I play Angband I always use ASCII graphics and the tilesets just kill me. Idk why this is.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Maybe the two use different symbols to represent the same things? I know one ascii roguelike used forward slashes to represent doors.

[Cthulhu]

Oddly enough, I'm a longtime Angband player but DF in its ASCII form was just too much for me...I said hell no. But when I play Angband I always use ASCII graphics and the tilesets just kill me. Idk why this is.

Because Angband's tileset is hideous.

[Boomer]

Dangit... cannot tell the difference between stone and ground with Ian's tileset.

...going to see if i can take an image of stone I like from one tileset and stick it into Ian's after that it should be perfect.

[bigmcstrongmuscle]

Both Angband and Nethack are way easier to play ASCII. It's practically impossible to differentiate such small and unreadable tiles, and its much easier to scan over the letter of their category. DF works better with tiles, but only if you drastically embiggen the interface and use the larger sets. But frankly, I still can't tell most creature tiles from Saturday.

[Boomer]

Ah ha, fixed it. Now it works perfectly... I say while quietly changing other tiles i don't care for...

[Zurack]

Oh well, when (IF) the scenario tileset gets separated from the text tileset, I'm going to make a tileset similar to TibiaME graphics.

Images:
http://www.tibiame.com/screenshots/?language=en

I don't care about graphics, and I don't like to change DF defaults, I like the "pure" game , but I love to MAKE stuff!

[Doppel]

I downloaded the Mike Mayday set and simply redrew whatever i wanted to look different. I don't really understand the logic behind people that swear by the ASCII way and feel thats the only way to play the game. They seem to not understand that nomatter howmuch you argue about what you like or not like, a Goblin isn't supposed to look like a g, ever. The only logic i can find behind wanting ASCII is simply because you are used to it, thats it, there is no "artistical" value behind one or another abstract symbol portraying whatever, that g could've just aswell been a ^ or a O or a I or a U or a m, there's no difference apart from a Goblin making slighly more sense being portrayed via that first letter. Mind you, wanting a certain "understandable" tileset is pretty much for the exact same reason why people want ASCII, except that there's an actual artistical graphical parameter involved where it is void in the symbolical ASCII.
People tend to like or dislike certain tilesets not just based on how familiar they are with whatever is portrayed, but because they actually prefer one graphical style above another. Anyways, there isn't much freedom creating graphical tilesets now anyways, so most of that is irrelevant.

[Boomer]

Meh, use what you like. That is the great thing about how modular this game is.

What I'd really like to do is give every single game object its own unique tile. But I don't know where in each game thingies data the tag is that references it to the right tile.

Truly, that is what the graphics people want.

Also, because the game is viewed top down, top down graphics like Red Jackard's NES dwarves and Ian of 3 Panel Soul's walls are what we need. The horizontal stuff is just odd. Is everyone laying down or flying or what? Top down view is what we have an a graphics set should represent this, or we really are better off with ASCII.

[bigmcstrongmuscle]

A quick reply to Doppel: It isn't only familiarity. One very good reason for using ASCII is image contrast and ease of reading. Each individual letter has only two colors (foreground and background), is nice and thick, and in most cases is easy to distinguishable from other letters, especially when you start color-coding them.

Graphical tiles, while they provide more familiar icons, have to cram many more distinguishing characteristics into their space, and the resulting cramping strains the eyes to look at. It might be easy to confuse, say, a goblin with a halfling - similar size and shape, after all - and if you start trying to differentiate graphics between goblins, goblin archers, elite goblin hammerlords, and fire-breathing mutant death goblins, you might have a serious problem. Better graphics and bigger spaces for them ameliorate this problem a lot, but those require better artists and better interface code. Which costs money and even more importantly, time. In low-resource niches like Dwarf Fortress and most roguelikes, ASCII tiles are often a better design choice.

Graphics have a lot to recommend them - they are easier for the brain to translate, and the good ones do look a lot nicer - but "familiarity" is not the only reason to eschew them.

[Doppel]

A quick reply to Doppel: It isn't only familiarity. One very good reason for using ASCII is image contrast and ease of reading. Each individual letter has only two colors (foreground and background), is nice and thick, and in most cases is easy to distinguishable from other letters, especially when you start color-coding them.

Graphical tiles, while they provide more familiar icons, have to cram many more distinguishing characteristics into their space, and the resulting cramping strains the eyes to look at. It might be easy to confuse, say, a goblin with a halfling - similar size and shape, after all - and if you start trying to differentiate graphics between goblins, goblin archers, elite goblin hammerlords, and fire-breathing mutant death goblins, you might have a serious problem. Better graphics and bigger spaces for them ameliorate this problem a lot, but those require better artists and better interface code. Which costs money and even more importantly, time. In low-resource niches like Dwarf Fortress and most roguelikes, ASCII tiles are often a better design choice.

Graphics have a lot to recommend them - they are easier for the brain to translate, and the good ones do look a lot nicer - but "familiarity" is not the only reason to eschew them.

I agree to some extend that the more graphical representations you need to more space you need. But its simply easyer for a average human being to recognise one drawing of say a happy face between a hundred drawings of a bird then it is to recognise a g between a hundred k's, this simply is a fact. I'm not saying ASCII isn't a better design choice for DF because DF is low recource (or atleast, high recource apart from what is less important to gameplay, although a graphic and sound can contribute to gameplay just aswell), but you have to weight that to how easy it is to spot something. For anyone who isn't "familiar" with ASCII the whole DF screen is nothing but a blur of unrecognisable symbols wich are very hard to distinguise from eachother while with "a graphical representation" none has to be specifically familiar with it because its cooked into our brains over tens of thousend of years of evolution. You don't learn to read graphical representations, you have to learn how to read ASCII.
That being said, i do sometimes crisscross using my graphical tileset with ASCII, just because i do like to learn it (and it is more fun to know wth is going on when looking at a vid or fortress of someone else), but when i first was confronted with ASCII i couldn't spot that ambush from kobolds for atleast a minute even if my life depended upon it. (i like learning how to read Matrix too btw, lol)

Also, you would be surprised how much graphics you can squeeze out of a 16x16 pixel tile, the only problem is that DF uses a number of same symbols to portray different things, wich makes it harder to create graphics for the game. (i don't believe its at all that time or resource consuming to seperate most of them)