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[Impaler[WrG]]

If you put graphics first, you generally get a lousy game.
By that rule, by putting graphics last, toady will create the best game in the world.

That is the short sighted thinking thats apparently become dogma around here.  First off you propose that "putting graphics first" is some great evil which causes bad games.  Most people how no idea how games are developed, they correctly perceive that their is a strong pattern of one-ups-man-ship in graphics.  But that is not what ultimately makes a game bad, a game is bad because of poor design decisions and insufficient testing.   Art departments are completely separate from design, coding and testing.  Each department succeeds or fails independently and its just 'harder' to fail at graphic quality in a game when rapidly evolving graphics cards allow more pixels to be pumped out according to moores law, other departments are not able to ride moores law to any significant degree so they more often result in a games failure.

Denigrating graphics as the "cause" of bad games just is cutting off your nose to spite your face, a good game is an integral fusion of graphics, game play and interface all of which must be developed in parallel as none can stand on its own.  In real game development crude and simple versions of each will be created, simple skeletal code, crude ugly graphics, clunky limited UI.  Each must be refined continually and in light of the others.  Trying to create a game in "waterfall" fashion of doing  All the game play code first then the "presentation" only after game play is done is a flawed software development model thats been obsolete for twenty years.  DF developers have let the game play code get light years ahead of the graphics and UI, keeping the three balanced keeps the games playability at a higher level throughout development and allows each areas development to be responsive to the others.

[Mephansteras]

Except that DF is programmed by one man. That's it. He can only focus on so much. If this was a team, yeah, you could do all three at once. The game coder(s) could make changes, pass them off to the Graphics/UI people, and they could deal with the fact that the code breaks everything.

But...it's not a team. If Toady makes more work for himself by breaking the UI every time he adds in a new feature, it slows down the whole thing.

It's a flawed methodology for a game company with a team. That doesn't mean it's flawed methodology for a one-person development team. The same is probably true for any other major engineering effort. The best way to do something yourself is very different from the best way to do something with a team involved. It's just a matter of logistics. *shrug*

If you think otherwise...prove it. Show me a game where a single developer did all three simultaneously, without causing major delays in between releases due to massive changes in all three areas to support game-play changes.

[Align]

show me how the game will definitely 100% break everything that is graphics related after one update

[KaelGotDwarves]

God damn. Tile and graphic set editor volunteers have already done an excellent job with what they were given. I took a look at screenshots of the Mayday sets and am surprised it's even the same game.

Why not let Toady concentrate on the game as he has done?

If you can't live with the 16x16 tile sprites, I don't know what to say. Those of us who played DF awhile lived with a shitty viewport and WORSE UI for a longer time than this, and LESS game features.

Begging for shit RIGHT NOW and saying the game is unplayable in it's current status, especially if you're not a donor, just makes you look like a pathetic whiny asshole.

Look at how far we've come compared to larger, better funded, game making corporations who treat their fans like shit and never fix bugs.

He'll get to it when he'll get to it.

[Danaru]

God damn. Tile and graphic set editor volunteers have already done an excellent job with what they were given. I took a look at screenshots of the Mayday sets and am surprised it's even the same game.

Why not let Toady concentrate on the game as he has done?

If you can't live with the 16x16 tile sprites, I don't know what to say. Those of us who played DF awhile lived with a shitty viewport and WORSE UI for a longer time than this, and LESS game features.

Begging for shit RIGHT NOW and saying the game is unplayable in it's current status, especially if you're not a donor, just makes you look like a pathetic whiny asshole.

Look at how far we've come compared to larger, better funded, game making corporations who treat their fans like shit and never fix bugs.

He'll get to it when he'll get to it.

/thread

[Capntastic]

My stance is that Toady should get around to the presentation arc so all these threads can be done with and he can get back to actually making the game. 

[Sowelu]

I love how this argument has one side being vaguely rational and saying "Graphics now will need a rewrite later, just wait" and the other side is going "All my opponents are ASCII fetishists who never want the game to change and they are crippling the community by being selfish".

I mean obviously I think my side is the rational one, but can everyone please stop misrepresenting the other side's argument?  It's pissing me off.

Maybe there's a valid argument that bumping up the presentation arc would draw in more fans.  Did you miss the part where Toady ALREADY SAID he wanted to bump up the presentation arc...to draw in more fans?...  Jesus, just show a little faith and let him implement it when it's ready to go in.  Maybe it wouldn't even take a huge rewrite, maybe it's just a couple-three days down the drain...but "Wow, I'll have to totally revise what I'm writing in a few months" is not the most inspiring thing in the world.

Plus, why is there ALWAYS that one guy who says "I just had this great idea!  If Toady writes the code to support graphics, the COMMUNITY can make the graphics!  It won't take any time at all!"  Seriously?  I'm blown away.  Next time, read the thread.

/bad day

[Roara Wolf]

There's a lot of misplaced whining going on here. Calm down, be happy, listen to this a few thousand times: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yjnvSQuv-H4

But srsly, lern2ascii.
Graphics will get added in soon enough. That's how ToadyOne does his stuff.
Long gruelling delays followed by the most mindblowing awesomeness you've ever seen.

That's the Dwarf Fortress way!!

[RedWick]

I think Toady has mentioned that he'll really only start working on the presentation arc when donations start lagging.  Given that a good number of folks are more than willing to support DF as it currently stands (myself included), I wouldn't hold my breath about getting graphics any time soon. 

[Duke 2.0]

Am I pretty much alone in being able to play DF without any tilesets whatsoever? I think they make the game look uglier and are sometimes just as hard to interpret, but whatever.

Nope. I quite literally can't stand any of the tilesets out there. I keep my graphics pristine so that I actually have some sort of clue what is going on.

 Third'd(Or fourth'd?).

 The only modifications to the current graphics I use are changing the brightness and colors, changing the size of the tiles so I can get a good-looking screen full of DF goodness, and diagional corners.

 Also, first post in new house. Not terribly easy to do so, as the router is busted somehow and this laptop is attacked to a monitor and a nine inch cord from the modem. Except for frequent posts from me soon. Ish. Mayhaps.

[Tormy]

Begging for shit RIGHT NOW and saying the game is unplayable in it's current status, especially if you're not a donor, just makes you look like a pathetic whiny asshole.

Calm down. I don't think that anyone would like to see flaming like this on these forums. I don't see any problems with the OP's post. However he forgot to use the search function. There are lot of "similar" threads like this, but again, this is always happening with other topics also. 

Plus, why is there ALWAYS that one guy who says "I just had this great idea!  If Toady writes the code to support graphics, the COMMUNITY can make the graphics!  It won't take any time at all!"  Seriously?  I'm blown away.  Next time, read the thread.

Ouch. Next time you should read everything more carefully. Someone was comparing DF to Armok I. In Armok I. Toady himself was working on the graphics. Alone. So what are we talking about again? 

[(name here)]

Have you considered that seperating graphics and text may NOT be trivial?

Because that strikes me as quite likely.

[Impaler[WrG]]

If thats the case then it would demonstrates that the existing graphics engine is indeed a placeholder and will need to be overhauled or replaced sooner or later, and I'm in favor of sooner.  Its of such high importance that it should be the current top priority along with a better UI even if it requires a complete re-write of the graphics engine, and from what I've heard a re-write would substantially improve the FPS as the current engine is not at all optimized.

[Align]

Graphics is not the cause of our low FPS in DF though.

[Swiftfreddy]

I played DF for a few minutes before I started using a tileset (Mayday *Ty*)
But this thread is just to make the current graphics SYSTEM better by differentiating text from graphics and so on - not to make the graphics `better looking`.

I don't mind but I agree that having buckets and stuff in the text can be quite annoying.

And I purely use a tileset because trying to pick out the dwarves from other feature can hurt my eyes (as I have bad enough eyesight as it is) not to make the game look `better` in some peoples opinions (Even though Maydays graphics set is awesome xD)