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[Haven]

Oh man, the Katakana Goblin archers are rushing downscreen to wreak havoc on my... My... Ooo, Matrix... OH ARMOK ARROWY DEATH!

I was under the impression part of it was that it meant the Dev wouldn't need to stop and do art for every new thing he wanted to introduce.

[PTTG??]

1: This has already been suggested.
2: It has always been on the to-do list.
3: DF does not use ASCII font. It uses a tileset that is a copy of it; this tileset can be changed easily.

I agree that we should use a "real" color system. I'd say why bother with thousands when you can just use a millions of colors system. If Toady One's going to replace all the color code, why not do it right the first time?

[G-Flex]

Using a more arbitrary-count tileset, separating the tileset and game text font, and using 24/32-bit color aren't "hard things" from an objective standpoint of designing a game. It's just that in this case, it would take a lot of development time from other things.

So no, there's really no PARTICULAR reason for it except for historical reasons (the game has roots in roguelikes and curses graphics). It's just that changing it is one of the lower-priority things compared to making more game content.

[Random832]

A lot of Kanji would be a bitch to pixelate properly.

There are already standard 16x16 fonts that include lots of kanji, you know.

[PTTG??]

Using a more arbitrary-count tileset, separating the tileset and game text font, and using 24/32-bit color aren't "hard things" from an objective standpoint of designing a game. It's just that in this case, it would take a lot of development time from other things...

It might not even take that long. I agree with you, personally, but nobody is going to change Toady One's mind on this. He has stated that interface improvements will come before magic, though, so celebrate that.

DF will not reach 1.0 without better graphics.

[Calessa Lynn Orphiel]

A lot of Kanji would be a bitch to pixelate properly.

There are already standard 16x16 fonts that include lots of kanji, you know.

The problem is that (aside from Kanji being freaking confusing) anything you implement has to be scaleable.  Just because some people are using 16x16 tilesets doesn't mean kanji will be legible on a 9x9 tileset.

[PTTG??]

Another reason not to use Kanji:

THE MOST SIGNIFICANT SET OF USERS AND OF THIS PARTICULAR SOFTWARE INCLUDES NEITHER THE JAPANESE NOR THOSE THAT SHARE YOUR UNIQUE INTERESTS AND EXTENSIVE STUDY IN THAT PARTICULAR CULTURE.

Luckily, you can already make a mod that will do this for creatures, please look it up on the wiki under graphics sets.

[MrWiggles]

Another reason not to use Kanji:

THE MOST SIGNIFICANT SET OF USERS AND OF THIS PARTICULAR SOFTWARE INCLUDES NEITHER THE JAPANESE NOR THOSE THAT SHARE YOUR UNIQUE INTERESTS AND EXTENSIVE STUDY IN THAT PARTICULAR CULTURE.

Luckily, you can already make a mod that will do this for creatures, please look it up on the wiki under graphics sets.

o.0
0.o
Such a strong reaction. I don't know Japanese to the next guy. And by using different language character set wouldn't force anyone to learn anything. What would happen, they would simply remember which symbol stood for what, much how we remember that the omega symbol, stands for moutianhomes on the map legend, and statues in game play mode.

In fact I suggested japanese character set as its more prevalent in american culture. It has a presence, and wouldn't look alien. But any different language character set would accomplish the same task.

I was just curious, I wasn't aware of it being place holder, but an artistic choice. Which is why I tried to suggest thing which would stay in theme Rogue like games.

[Keiseth]

Kanji might be hard to represent in a small tileset. But I'm all for the color upgrade, definitely.

[PTTG??]

...Such a strong reaction. I don't know Japanese to the next guy. And by using different language character set wouldn't force anyone to learn anything. What would happen, they would simply remember which symbol stood for what, much how we remember that the omega symbol, stands for moutianhomes on the map legend, and statues in game play mode.

In fact I suggested Japanese character set as its more prevalent in american culture. It has a presence, and wouldn't look alien. But any different language character set would accomplish the same task.

I was just curious, I wasn't aware of it being place holder, but an artistic choice. Which is why I tried to suggest thing which would stay in theme Rogue like games.

I had hoped that my post would have come across better; I just meant to be ironic, as most of the time bold, all-caps lettering is rarely spelled correctly, let alone not directly offensive.

Anyway, you must realize that presentation- including more support for tilesets- is planned for DF. It is currently rogue-like only because it's what Toady One has built. There is support for creature tile-sets, and in fact, you can already make a Kanji-based graphics set for all creatures. I think such a project would be an exellent idea; perhaps even a good way to learn the language.

In fact I suggested japanese character set as its more prevalent in american culture. It has a presence, and wouldn't look alien.

I take it you have not visited America. Look, I live here, and we are probably the most insular culture of the western world, possibly including Turkey. A significant portion of americans violently rebeled agains the metric system. The national language of our neighbor, Mexico, is widely reviled by about half of the country, and many people here feel that foregn language support is a waste of money and that immirgrants "should learn the language."

Though I dispise these people, and without any relevance to this idea or Dwarf Fortress, I say this to disabuse you of any notions that the United Sates has any acceptance of Kanji outside of some small immirgrant and internet communities. Now, back on topic:

Let me stress three things:
-I agree with the heart of the OP.
-A Kanji DF tile/graphic set would be a fantastic idea.
-I do not hold any malice to MrWiggles, to any other user, to most of the Japanese people, or to any form of Japanese writen language. I do hold quite a bit of maliace to the roughly 20% of Americans that give us such a bad name, but that's getting better now.

[Duke 2.0]

 Americans: Americas greatest enemy.

[Theoclymenus]

If my brief forays into coding are to be trusted, the colour limitations are probably to do with the libraries Toady uses. A lot of the old bay12 games used Curses and that had the same colour limitation.

I could be horribly wrong though.

[Mel_Vixen]

Its not like that these functions can be substituted. 256 Coulours should be fairly easy. I think by the way taht more colors could sometimes more confusing.

Kanji would be interresting thought it could drive the japanese players away if suddenly something insulting is written on the screen.

[Akroma]

I may point out that Kanji is not installed by default in some occasions

on my sadly way too old computer, all kanji on shows up as a rectangle

I tried to install it on my PC, but since my version of windows XP, like all non free-ware programms on this PC, is a pirated copy, I have no such thing as a "installation CD" which seems to be required


I doubt that anything but unicode is a proper option

[Grath]

Allow me to say my matters on this in the appropriate format:
漢字はとてもむずかしいしあくだしよくないです。
(Kanji are very hard, evil, and bad.)