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[nil]

It does gain wear. Depending. It just takes frikkin' forever. I'm not sure if it ever degrades to nothing, though. my fps reaches the limiting point of 19fps before I find out.

But it doesn't happen any faster outside than in.

[darkflagrance]

From what I've seen, clothing gains wear most when the enemy is wearing it. In fact, the only time I've only seen cloth gain wear when not worn was upon reclaiming.

Proof:
I modded ambushers to fly in my most recent game. As a result, the guards that lead squads are glitched and don't move from the edge of the map. The other day, I took my military around and hunted them down, and revealed invaders with all varieties of frayed and worn clothing from years ago. Some were even naked because they had been sitting at the edge of the map from when I started the fort 16 years ago.

However, the clothes left behind by my hunter who was killed by goblins in the 2nd year were still there, in the same XconditionX from what I could tell (and still listed as owned by him, annoyingly).

[nil]

Yeah, it's way faster when being worn, but everything fabric or leather, including bags or crafts, will slowly wear no matter what.  It's slow, though; would probably take 50-60+ years for it to make something disappear completely.

[Squirrelloid]

You know, I see all these complaints about the default ascii, but every time i see a graphical tileset image I scratch my head and go 'what the hell is that morass of colored blobs?'  There is too much information in this game for anything but ASCII as the default tileset.

That said, it would help if it used something closer to one of the standard rogue-like ascii-associations.  Having goblin and mountain goat being the same letter is bad design.  Specifically, designate each letter to a class of creatures which the letter represents.  So Giant Eagles could be Bs for (B)ird, and Beak Dogs should be (C) for Canine (as should dogs, wolves, werewolves, etc...).  Cougars and cats should be fs for (f)eline along with lions and tigers.  Given giant dragonflies are unlikely to make an appearance, they could even be Fs. 

There's a reason this sort of system is better with ASCII graphics - its because such a classification provides a lot more information without having to loo(k) at the creature by telling you what class of creature it is at a glance.  And since the creature is going to be represented by a symbol anyway, it might as well be a symbol which conveys as much unique information as possible.

If that became default, the game would be more marketable to people who already play rogue-likes, because they wouldn't have to relearn the wheel.

Speaking of which - in terms of getting more players, advertise specifically to those people who already play ASCII graphics games.  Since the game's player base growth is mostly by word of mouth, what you need is more mouths, so target the audience with the lowest barrier to entry.

The other key, of course, is to keep players once they've started.

(1) Unify the UI.  I'm not convinced the UI components that exist are bad.  But the fact that sometimes you do it way #1, and other times you do it way #2 is annoying.  Stop using multiple parallel systems.  Also, retain letter designations for given items across menus.  Carving floodgates with (l), building them with (x), and linking them with (f) is really confusing, as is sometimes using the arrow keys and sometimes using (+)(-) to navigate menus, or using (space) or (f9) to exit screens. 

(2) A 'help' mode for playing the game with more informative error messages.  For example, instead of just telling you 'you don't have enough mechanisms' when you try to connect a lever to something, also tell you 'you can build mechanisms at a mechanics workshop'.  This way, when a player is told he can't do something, a remedy is also suggested to get them moving in the right direction.

(3) Overhaul/Add to mechanics.  This is an important area for advanced play, and doing anything mildly interesting is currently horribly complicated, and easily confuses even advanced players. 

-Make levers/pressure plates more intuitive.  Honestly, mechanical stuff has the potential for awesome, but these should be toggles, not 'on' and 'off' position items.  Or make similar objects which act as toggles, and leave these as is.

-More ways to use power in interesting ways.  The capability to turn power into the controlled movement of objects on the map would be really awesome.  Fortresses with giant 5x5x5 tile hammer-heads constructed of stone walls that swing down at the flick of a lever and then retract at another flick, or fortresses with working 'railroad' systems, would be truly awesome, if possible.  Even just conveyor-belt style movement of objects could let players use mechanics to perform basic labor.

-Some constructible devices to simplify dwarfputer logic.  In particular, a construction which functions as a repeater signal and constructions for logical operators that take two inputs and give an output could save a lot of building time (and space!) for complex computation constructions, opening playing with such things up to a lot more players.  (Not to mention reducing the frustration of making errors in building, and having basic components fail).  A repeater construction could also have a controllable frequency in game time (current buildable designs seem to have some slop because they depend on fluid flow). 

-Possibly introducing a new workshop requiring metal parts for 'advanced mechanisms' (or enumerate a specific list of interesting parts) (a machine shop perhaps?  Requires power and a 'lathe' which is buildable as metal furniture)

(4) At the end of each Winter, advance the outside world one year as per world-gen mechanics.  This will cause the outside world to be more dynamic, and means the actions of the player have an effect on the world around it.  (Goblin deaths -> weaker goblin civ.  Player can provoke a war with the elves or humans, preferably with more robust diplomatic engine for mountainhome interactions with fortress.  Ie, mountainhome favors war and tells you to keep doing it.  Or opposes war and chastises you, eventually severing ties with fortress if you continue to aggravate the other race against the mountainhome's wishes.  Diplomatic missions between elf/human and mountainhome have an effect on diplomacy at fortress and vice-versa).

Basically, a living world is a more interesting one, but the world stops being 'living' the moment a fortress is started.

[profit]

The overall slowness of late game fortress grind me horridly... no other game would I accept running this slow.. if it wasn't DF the game would be in the trashcan.  As it is, I tolerate it because it is so different from any other game out there... but it really wears on my patience to leave a game running for days at a time on my computer.

[HAMMERMILL]

The overall slowness of late game fortress grind me horridly... no other game would I accept running this slow.. if it wasn't DF the game would be in the trashcan.  As it is, I tolerate it because it is so different from any other game out there... but it really wears on my patience to leave a game running for days at a time on my computer.

My suggestion is to set your population cap to 50 in the .int, you'll have plenty of labor available, the game runs reasonably fast and you still have a mayor, fortress guard and a dungeon master at 50 dorfs.


You really don't need more then that in any fortress considering that well-trained dwarves are worth a dozen less er dwarves.

[zwei]

You know, I see all these complaints about the default ascii, but every time i see a graphical tileset image I scratch my head and go 'what the hell is that morass of colored blobs?'  There is too much information in this game for anything but ASCII as the default tileset.

I would disagree.

Graphical tilesets always have this issue but work in stages and end up working out just fine:

1) You look at tileset screenshot, or image of some construction in that tileset. You know what is going on there because you know context and it is pretty to boot. Weee!

2) You actually try to play with it. It is terrible. You can not see a thing, it are just globs of meaningless pixels instead what you are used to! You are strangely reminded of how it was when you played DF for first time.

3) You learn it and get used to it. You can play as comfortably as before.

Tileset issue is mostly about learning curve and expectations: if you are veteran roguelike player, graphical tileset will add to learning curve and be annoying because you have different expectations, but for everyone else it will reduce it because they can see something.

---

Graphical tilesets, however, are currently NOT really good choice because game is built in way that makes graphical tilesets going to be sucky because each ascii glyph is being used in several different contexts so graphics has to take them into account. That means it is quite constrained.

Trying to make graphical piece that both represents bag, amulet and plant is near impossible.

Other examples: coal, gem, value icon and currency icon share tile. So do statues and jellyfish ...

[Neruz]

I have a question Squirrelloid, how does having Lions, Housecats, Leopards, Cougars and so forth all be f's convey more information than giving each of those creatures a unique icon for their norma living stages and any undead stages, as well as potential war and hunting stages?

[JohnLukeG]

In my mind, tilesets are inevitable in the future, because I imagine there being many more objects and creatures being created, and using letters and numbers will become far too confusing if each symbol represents dozens of different things.  I do hope that an even greater variety of wildlife is included in the future.  (Not that the current selection is narrow or anything)

If a giant four-armed monster is represented by an appropriate picture rather than a C, the player could tell right away that it's a giant monster chasing their citizens and not a cat following someone around. 

[Andir]

You know, I see all these complaints about the default ascii, but every time i see a graphical tileset image I scratch my head and go 'what the hell is that morass of colored blobs?'  There is too much information in this game for anything but ASCII as the default tileset.

I would disagree.

You didn't touch the fact that under his system, a cat and a lion would both be "f" for feline.  Talk about one confused dwarf: "Aww, look at the little kitten!  OMG!"  Also a horse and unicorn would both be "e" for Equine (Equidae)?  There's just too many types of animals and "e" would be too easily confused for elephant.

[zwei]

You know, I see all these complaints about the default ascii, but every time i see a graphical tileset image I scratch my head and go 'what the hell is that morass of colored blobs?'  There is too much information in this game for anything but ASCII as the default tileset.

I would disagree.

You didn't touch the fact that under his system, a cat and a lion would both be "f" for feline.  Talk about one confused dwarf: "Aww, look at the little kitten!  OMG!"  Also a horse and unicorn would both be "e" for Equine (Equidae)?  There's just too many types of animals and "e" would be too easily confused for elephant.

It is much bigger issue than this.

In order to get distinctive enough tiles with huge amount of creatures, you need higher resolution.

Higher resolution means that there is much less screen estate left and so you see much small map section at once, so you are sacrificing your field of vision for more detail. Not only that, text become way too huge to be readable too, which is big problem because at 16x16 simple menu takes way too much screen space already without any benefit. (And ignoring the fact that game does not used higher vertical resolution to display more vertical items in menus.)

8x8 tilesets are popular because they allow one to see huge part of map at once, but it is near impossible to make distinctive enough fully graphical set for them. In that case, 'f' or 'c' for cat is good enough.

---

First step would be to get game using two sets: text/menu set and map set, and get rid of ascii-ties in map set.

[Squirrelloid]

You know, I see all these complaints about the default ascii, but every time i see a graphical tileset image I scratch my head and go 'what the hell is that morass of colored blobs?'  There is too much information in this game for anything but ASCII as the default tileset.

I would disagree.

Graphical tilesets always have this issue but work in stages and end up working out just fine:

1) You look at tileset screenshot, or image of some construction in that tileset. You know what is going on there because you know context and it is pretty to boot. Weee!

Actually, I utterly fail here.  The problem is resolution.  At DF resolutions i can glance at a screen and see a 'g' and go 'there's the goblin'.  Its large enough and distinct enough that it can easily be spotted quickly.  I see a graphical tileset image with goblins in it somewhere and i'm left going 'wait, where's the goblin?  I just see a field of green crap.'  Generally made worse by graphical tilesets blending the squares into each other by making them more substantial than a period.  (iirc, even tilesets for angband don't tend to change the floor graphic because its *fricking annoying* and leads to *not being able to see anything*). 

2) You actually try to play with it. It is terrible. You can not see a thing, it are just globs of meaningless pixels instead what you are used to! You are strangely reminded of how it was when you played DF for first time.

Well, as a rogue-like player, I had no issue with the ASCII the first time, except that creatures are bound to symbols strangely.  Like elves not being 'h's and humans not being 'p's, etc...

3) You learn it and get used to it. You can play as comfortably as before.

Tileset issue is mostly about learning curve and expectations: if you are veteran roguelike player, graphical tileset will add to learning curve and be annoying because you have different expectations, but for everyone else it will reduce it because they can see something.

Or you could just get used to ASCII and not worry about wasting development time on a graphical tileset.  Both are going to take getting used to.  And isometric graphics are, imo, no better than ASCII.  True 3D would be awesome, but something like Visual Fortress fulfills all my need for 3D - i don't need to play in 3D, I just want to be able to look in 3D.  (And since playing in 3D has a lot of UI issues that 2D doesn't, bundling something like Visual Fortress with the final game would be the superior option).

[Neruz]

Higher resolution means that there is much less screen estate left and so you see much small map section at once, so you are sacrificing your field of vision for more detail. Not only that, text become way too huge to be readable too, which is big problem because at 16x16 simple menu takes way too much screen space already without any benefit. (And ignoring the fact that game does not used higher vertical resolution to display more vertical items in menus.)

8x8 tilesets are popular because they allow one to see huge part of map at once, but it is near impossible to make distinctive enough fully graphical set for them. In that case, 'f' or 'c' for cat is good enough.

40d16 handles this problem nicely by being able to zoom in and out.

[Squirrelloid]

I have a question Squirrelloid, how does having Lions, Housecats, Leopards, Cougars and so forth all be f's convey more information than giving each of those creatures a unique icon for their norma living stages and any undead stages, as well as potential war and hunting stages?

Ok, if we went with a rogue-like symbol-mapping, living cats would be 'f'.  This instantly tells you its a cat, as opposed to seeing a 'C' and not knowing if its a Camel, Cow, or Cougar.  Different cats would have different color 'f's, and eventually, you'd be able to distinguish them immediately based on color.  (DF even fails at this - Camels and Cows are the same color, and when those Camels are rather violent migratory animals moving on your map, that difference is a big deal!)  Basically, seeing 'f' and knowing "feline" is a lot better than seeing 'E' and not knowing if its an Elephant, a Giant Eagle, or an Elf.  There's a big difference between those three things, the difference between felines is a lot smaller.

Typically, rogue-likes make all skeletal creatures 's's, and all zombie creatures 'z's, which is one way of handling this.

Now, DF cares about different creature types overall than rogue-likes do, so we probably don't want to use the same mapping.  (There aren't going to be any giant (c)entipedes, so 'c' is actually free, as is 'd' because afaik DF doesn't discriminate between small and large Dragons).  Further, some creatures are sufficiently common that they may warrant unique letter assignations.

So, in particular, housecats could probably keep 'c', although if they were given a distinctive 'f' color it would be trivially easy to tell them apart.  Dogs could probably keep 'd', although the same applies.

Skeletal or zombie creatures could be bound to 'z' and 's', or bound to the normal group letter with a distinctive color.  Ie, define a zombie color and a skeletal color, and if you see that you know its a skeletal or zombie version of something in that group.  (This runs into problems if sentient creatures start appearing as skeletons or zombies, since professions span the color map pretty well already, but we could reserve 's' and 'z' for that).  War training could be handled similarly.  (I doubt there'll be a hunting version of anything except dogs, so that's a moot point).

A general point here is that we'll never eliminate the need to use 'k', but by ensuring similar creatures have similar letter binds we maximize the information you can get before you use 'k', and good use of color will limit the absolute need to use 'k' to distinguish skeletal, zombie, and war creature types within a group.

What other groups we want to define depends on how critical it is we can tell which specific group its a member of, and how many creatures of a given type there is.  For example, Equine is a waste of a bind, because there are a mere 2 under Andir's proposal, and the color map is much larger.  Ungulate might be too broad, and the Horse itself might be sufficiently common to warrant a unique bind (although doubtful).  That said, Mules, Donkeys, Zebra, etc... would all qualify, and could even keep H as (H)ippomorpha, or we could expand to try to identify all Perissodactyla with one symbol.  (Relevantly, this would add Rhinoceras to the same letter, and that's about it unless we also have Tapirs some day).

Probable categories: Suggested Character Bind

-Vermin-
non-aquatic Vermin: . (period)
Fish: alpha
Turtle: (keep current, whatever you call that)

-Civs-
Human: p (person)
Elf: e
Goblin: g
Kobold: k
Skeletal Civ Race: s
Zombie Civ Race: z

-Mega and Semi-Mega-
Dragon: incl. in (R)eptile?*
Giant: P (incl. Colossus, Titan, Ettin, Cyclops, possibly Ogres and Trolls)**
Hydra: incl. in (M)onster?

-Animal-
Reptile: R (also bundle amphibians here if there are any non-vermin ones)
Giant Bird: b
Aggressive Fish: F (ie, sturgeon, carp, gar, etc...)
Eel: ~
Shark: S
Marine Mammal: W (for whale, but incl. dolphins/manatees/etc... here)
Pinniped: w (mostly by analogy with W above - walrus, seal, sea lion)
Canines: c (incl. werewolf)
Bears: U (Ursidae)
Feliforma: f (ends up being Felidae, unless someone decides we really need hyenas or something).
Perissodactyla: H (Horse-like.  Rhinos will just have to live with it)
Xenartha: X (because Giant Tree Sloths are a good idea!)
Rodentia: r (generally giant versions only.  If relevant, include giant lagomorpha here)
Primate: m, A (monkey, Ape)
Pecora: B, D (Bovine, others as 'D'eer - Giraffes can live with it)***.
Pig: Q (it looks like a pig.  Also, stick Hippos here - its bad molecular taxonomy, but they look similar morphologically)
Camelid: C
Probiscidians: L (eLephants, could also use M, for 'M'ammoth)
Giant Arachnid: S**** (Spider/Scorpion)

-Other Sentient-
Humanoid: h (snailman, frogman, etc... plus gnomes, and so forth)
Demon: &
Lesser Demon: u (notably fire imp, although fire imp could be assigned to Elemental)
Elemental: E (magma man, blizzard man, fireman, etc...)

-Not (obviously) covered-
foul blendec
giant olm (O is available)
harpy
Iron Man (i suppose it could be a steel grey 'p' or treated as an elemental)
naked mole dog (ok, i don't actually know what this is... i suppose it could be a 'c')
Sasquatch: A
satyr
Sea Monster: M(onster)?
Sea Serpent: M(onster)?
Treant: existing graphic is fine

Satyr, harpy, and foul blendec should share the same letter because they are chimeras.  I'd say M, but then it can't be used for M(onster), or some other letter would need to be chosen for those.  There are lots of letters left, however, so this shouldn't be a problem to find one for one of these groups.

T is still available for Troll.  O could be available for Ogre, or it could be given G (big Goblin).  Assuming we think they'd overload P.

*There is only one type of Dragon in DF, so it hardly needs a unique letter
**Giants are P in *bands because humans are p, and giants are large humans.
***Recommend antelopes be treated as 'D'eer and not 'B'ovine despite technically being bovine.
****I realize i'm using S for GCS and Shark, but they're highly unlikely to occur on the same map.

[nil]

Somebody's done that with a mod: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=43745.0

I think graphics support should be default, not necessarily because I think graphics are better (although I do) but because it's much much easier to turn graphics off (just go in the init) than on.  The default tileset should be one that changes as much as possible without garbling menu text (like Mayday_MIN).