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[Neruz]

(1) Resolution.  Sprites in the game are small.  They are going to remain small.  This limits the amount of detail on any possible graphics

Not an issue; with the zoom functionality that was added recently sprites can be as large as you like. I'm currently running a modded Mayday tileset with 128x128 tiles, most are just scaled up 16x16 tiles, but i'm slowly replacing them with higher detail ones.

(2) Differentiability.  Can you tell the difference between a Leopard and a Jaguar at ~10 pixels length?  20 different species of monkey? An elf and a human?

You can if the sprite is designed well, but see above point as to why this is moot.

(3) Comparative differentiability.  An elf and a human swordsman probably look remarkably similar graphically at DF resolutions.  A p and an e are instantly differentiable (as are the current U and E).  Solid colors are easier to see than an image with multiple colors on it, so your axedwarves and macedwarves having different color shields isn't nearly as obviously different as the whole sprite being a different color.  Colored symbols are vastly easier to graphically discriminate between at a glance.

Even with 16x16 pixels, elves and humans look markedly different; especially if you design the set so that this is the case. The Beefmo set for example has individual roles very easy to discern, in fact i don't think i've used k to find out what a creature was ever since i started using Beefmo's set, i've only ever used v to check inventory and wounds.

(4) Communicability
Colored letters can be uniquely described in text.  "That teal G is a Giant" conveys everything you need to know.  Images require screenshots.  Given any manual ever made for DF is going to probably be pure text, this is a major advantage for people learning the game from a manual.

People read manuals now?

Anyway; DF already has a 'manual', it's called the Wiki, and it has pictures of the ascii graphics already.

(5) New Content
Toady One does not make graphics.  He will add new content.  He will want to implement said content immediately.  He should not be held hostage to a graphic designer.

This is the reason why a graphical tileset will never be 'default', but Toady has made several comments about adding improved tileset support and some way to select tilesets, so i wouldn't be surprised to find that a graphical set or two might be bundled into the download or at least linked on the site in the not too distant future.

Roguelikes are one of the few games who (1) desire to maximize information content, (2) desire ease of modification of content (most rogue-like developers also do not do graphics), and (3) maximize viewable area and thus minimize tile display size.

If you absolutely want to maximise information content, you do 3D graphics, end of discussion.

Going to a graphics engine cause similar games to reduce the viewable area (eg, Diablo), and often to sacrifice realistic coloring in favor of color-coded monsters (eg, Diablo).  Basically, your symbols are now graphical instead of ASCII, but they're still colored symbols.  And you sacrificed viewable area to achieve that so you had enough resolution to see anything with those graphics.

Viewable area is even more important in DF than it is in a rogue-like.  As such, the need to keep tile size small is very large, and the resolution demands of going to a graphics standard cannot be met.

See; Zoom.

Casual gamers require a high toy value.  They do not buy games like Gettysburg, and they would not buy DF.  DF, like Gettysburg, has a high level of strategic play, and has already closed itself to the market that is sold by toy value.  (Compare to FPS games where the 'toy' value is very high but the strategic depth is very small).  Perfunctory graphics are perfectly acceptable in the specific market DF is targetting by making that choice to be a highly strategic game.

While i doubt you'd ever get DF into the casual market, adding easily accessible graphics would definitively increase DF's fanbase; i only started playing DF when i discovered the MayDay pack where it was all set up, i've since upgraded to modding, but i would not be playing this game if i had not found a version of DF that came with a graphics pack already installed.

[Squirrelloid]

If you absolutely want to maximise information content, you do 3D graphics, end of discussion.

Absolutely not true, because 3D graphics limits the maximum amount of information your processor can handle per time, since the graphic rendering is a major processor drain.

One of the points of minimalist graphics is freeing up processor power for other more important tasks.  DF is the only game I can think of right now where this is an issue, but its a major issue.  Going to 3D graphics would make 20FPS look good.

[Neruz]

If you absolutely want to maximise information content, you do 3D graphics, end of discussion.

Absolutely not true, because 3D graphics limits the maximum amount of information your processor can handle per time, since the graphic rendering is a major processor drain.

You may want to reread that sentance.

[Squirrelloid]

If you absolutely want to maximise information content, you do 3D graphics, end of discussion.

Absolutely not true, because 3D graphics limits the maximum amount of information your processor can handle per time, since the graphic rendering is a major processor drain.

You may want to reread that sentance.

... that is in fact how you spell processor.

But don't take my word for it, trust wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processor
Or Intel, who makes the things: http://www.intel.com/products/processor/index.htm

[Neruz]

If you absolutely want to maximise information content, you do 3D graphics, end of discussion.

Absolutely not true, because 3D graphics limits the maximum amount of information your processor can handle per time, since the graphic rendering is a major processor drain.

You may want to reread that sentance.

... that is in fact how you spell processor.

But don't take my word for it, trust wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processor
Or Intel, who makes the things: http://www.intel.com/products/processor/index.htm

That's not what i meant.


I assume by processor you mean CPU, to which i have to ask what the CPU is doing getting involved in 3D graphics?

Additionally, you seem to be vastly overestimating how much GPU power is required to do basic 3D graphics.

[Andir]

There's a reason why they say a picture is worth a thousand words.  Hold on to your ASCII representations of the world all you like, it will never change the fact that an image will hold infinitely more information than you can ever get with a single character representation of said object.

Personally, I'd love to see DF go tile default, ASCII mod-able.  Ideally, as I've posted before, DF would be coded in a client/server fashion with the interface as a client process so you COULD have isometric, 3D, and PURE ASCII interface opportunities available.  Of course, Toady wouldn't be able to maintain them all, but he could maintain the "interface" code and update third parties on what changes were made and let the interface designers update their clients.  Minimally, he can maintain a vanilla ASCII interface as a stand in until the third party clients are updated.  I don't see it happening because he thinks that somehow he will lose control of the project, but IMHO it will leave him time to do what he does best: the server engine.

I'm not arguing about this again though, so this is my last post here on that subject.  Needless to say, ASCII is most definitely not the best way to do it... no matter how retro you want to feel.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Also, damn, 32x32 pixels are enough for me.

Hell, I don't need to differentiate between lions and tigers (use k for that).

However, I do need to differentiate between goblins and mountain goats.

So...

[Jimmy]

One of the biggest turnoffs for one of my friends to play is that he's colourblind, and the ascii graphics mean he can't tell the difference between the dwarves. Detailed graphics for him would be a major drawcard. As for me, I've been playing roguelikes for years, so I have no problem with ascii. It's a personal choice.

[Puck]

Colourblindness is in fact a good thing to bring up. The thing where you set the use of economic stone, for instance, that's only red/green, and afaik red/green blindness is the most common.

I'm not colourblind (I THINK ) and I wouldnt know if those certain shades are in fact discernable for folks who are, but it's definetly worth considering the whole thing. The first game I noticed that discussion was Eve Online, and I think WoW followed. Before that, it never even occured to me. I wouldnt be surprised there are a lot of publishers and developers who still havent informed themselves about the different kinds of colourblindness, if it's just to be able to consider what can be easy to implement in certain design choices.

In Eve, somebody posted his problem on the forums, and shortly thereafter 1 little green square has become a green checkmark and 1 litte red square became an x.

[zwei]

...  Ideally, as I've posted before, DF would be coded in a client/server fashion with the interface as a client process so you COULD have isometric, 3D, and PURE ASCII interface opportunities available.  Of course, Toady wouldn't be able to maintain them all, but he could maintain the "interface" code and update third parties on what changes were made and let the interface designers update their clients.  Minimally, he can maintain a vanilla ASCII interface as a stand in until the third party clients are updated.  I don't see it happening because he thinks that somehow he will lose control of the project, but IMHO it will leave him time to do what he does best: the server engine....

My DF-resilient friend saw this: http://tigsource.com/articles/2009/11/03/stonesense-dwarf-fortress-visualizer and immediately warmed up to idea of playing DF.

So, you have a point in there.

[Petra]

I'vve been playing roguelikes for some years now. DF didn't turn me off at first sight -- rather I saw it and went : OMFG I've got to try it.

Interface with military units needs to be updated, definitely. Worlds could be prettier with interface graphics update.

Also, need moar buildings. Like temples. Altars. Sacrificial pits. designatable arena areas, so champions can fight to the death.

[PermanentInk]

Reluctant as I am to get caught up in the religious debate, here's my take on the ASCII-vs.-graphics issue.

I strongly agree with the fact that was (finally) pointed out, that character glyphs have had many centuries to evolve, and a strong force in that evolution has been easy distinguishability.  In comparison to a graphical tileset, particularly a naively implemented one, this is a strong advantage.

What's a naively implemented graphical tileset?  I'd say it's one that's too strongly representational, rather than being designed in a more schematic/iconic manner.  There's a whole continuum of possibility between monochrome line art (characters) and an every-pixel-is-different polychromatic blur.  One terrible way to design a graphical tileset, for instance, would be to take photos of everything (pretending for the moment that you have dwarfs and gibbons and tentacle demons available to photograph) and scale all those photos down to 16x16 or whatever.  Obviously, the result would be an unintelligible smear.

But it would be unfair to criticize all graphical tilesets as if they were this bad.  If you start (conceptually) from character glyphs and move gradually and conservatively toward the other end of the continuum, there are very many reasonable comprimises along the way that would achieve both distinguishability and representationality.

With ASCII, it's easy to know what you're looking at ("that's a light gray lower-case 'g'"), but you can get caught up in disambiguation ("is that a goblin?  a gibbon?  a goose?").  Graphical tiles address this by introducing more differentiation, but can easily go wrong by including way more differentiation than you need.  This results in an overall massive increase in visual noise, a detriment that for some outweighs the benefit of additional differentiation.

Personally, I'll continue to use ASCII because I'm accustomed to it from long roguelike experience.  However, I believe there's an opportunity to serve a large in-between population that's not crazy about ASCII but gets lost in the noise of overly-representational tilesets.  More simplified, iconic tilesets would be a boon for these folks.  Iconic tilesets should have icons that are different from each other in obvious ways, and have an obvious enough representational connection that if it's not immediately obvious what an icon is, once you learn it it's easy to remember.

P.S. None of this should be considered an indictment of any particular graphical tilesets that are out there now; I haven't tried them, so my exposure is just from screenshots and stuff.

[nil]

There's definitely a community of people who are accustomed to ASCII from other roughlikes, and I think sometimes they underestimate just how accustomed they are. 

PermanentInk is on the right track generally in that a balance between being able to tell what you are looking at vs. what that means, but in my opinion Dwarf Fortress is already way, way on the fringes of that spectrum.  Even with a good graphics set, a person not familiar with DF has absolutely no idea what's going on in a screenshot--despite being able to recognize a number of shapes and symbols.  If the question is "how to not turn off players," then the answer is move closer to the mainstream in this respect, which means more and better graphics.

Fortunately, the best solution from all perspectives would be a loader.  Bundle the 1-3 most popular graphics sets, then have the loader allow the user to simply and easily choose between them, standard ASCII, square ASCII, and anything else they've chosen to download on their own.  I'm no programmer, but seems to me this would require nothing more than writing the existing text file and launching df.exe... which should be easy, right?  Hell, Toady wouldn't even have to necessarily write it.

[Neonivek]

I need to add

Filtering through pointless information in Legends mode

I wish there was a better format for Legends mode especially for sites, locations, heros, and civilisations.

[Sysice]

I don't mind the graphics, they actually make the outside look like a landscape, and ASCII really isn't that bad of an art form. I've actually never played another ASCII game, and, for example, I can't stand Nethack, which I play, in ASCII form. DF really has a great implementation for it.
Probably the only thing that could be improved is that that the game has so much, but most of it cannot be modded. I love the background music, and the sandbox feeling is amazing, but that kind of ends when you go into the raws. I can't make sniper rifles that are extremely accurate, I can't make a creature have no attacks (Pushing is still and attack, people), and even though I know it's changing in the next release, I can't make custom workshops, I can only add in new reactions in the smelter, and the tags have no explanation, so for some of the features it's like not even knowing. Even the wiki doesn't have them all. It's actually a really small gripe which shouldn't be a big priority, but it's still something.
Love the game, Toady! Keep it up!

EDIT: Oh yeah, and the arrow keys being tied to number keys really messed me up. I had right and secondary down be the same key for weeks, which was horrible. I didn't even know I could change it to + for the longest time, because I thought "Oh, it's already assigned to +, and it still doesn't work. Darn, looks like it'll have to stay."