Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Smew]

The less DF has to do with Japan the better.

random and irrelevant cultural prejudice at its finest

I like how it's considered prejudice to want a game to stay true to its roots.

[G-Flex]

Oh. Well if that's the case, fine, but I took it as anti-Japan sentiment, this being the Internet at all. I can understand not wanting weird out-of-left-field cultural influences in there, yeah. Sorry if I misread you.

[Smew]

Really, why japanese characters? why not greek? Egyptian? there's plenty of other languages that would be better suited.
Although in the long run, there's no reason to change from what we have now, except expanding the possibility of extra graphics.

But yes, it is partly prejudice, but also partly questioning of methods.

[Capntastic]

Having japanese or greek or whatever characters would be totally incomprehensible.   Having to memorize the difference between a yellow c and a grey c is hard enough for some people, but when you start throwing in letters from a language the average player won't even know, it becomes absurd.

[Eagleon]

羊 looks more like an ant or a spider to me.
は looks like a guy with a spear :3
し could be used for eels o.o
。 for coconuts or bulbs/other large seeds
も for a lizard or a giant scorpion or something

Of course, there are other languages you can do the same thing with, and while you're at this you may as well make tiles, but yeah. I don't think it would be terrible as long as you used the symbols in a graphical way, instead of just having '羊' for goat even though it looks nothing like one.

[G-Flex]

There's no reason to use characters from any language except the one the game is written in to begin with.

Seriously, why start using random foreign-language characters to represent things when we could just use arbitrary graphics instead?

[Capntastic]

羊 looks more like an ant or a spider to me.
は looks like a guy with a spear :3
し could be used for eels o.o
。 for coconuts or bulbs/other large seeds
も for a lizard or a giant scorpion or something

That doesn't mean they would look like that to someone else.   

Bear in mind that what the letter looks like means little; T doesn't look like a troll, but is simply the first letter of it.   U doesn't look like a human.

[MrWiggles]

There's no reason to use characters from any language except the one the game is written in to begin with.

Seriously, why start using random foreign-language characters to represent things when we could just use arbitrary graphics instead?

Because Arbitrary Graphics would be removed from ASCII Stylization.

And the major unstated premises here, is that all the other graphics are masterfully chosen. Please.

[MrWiggles]

羊 looks more like an ant or a spider to me.
は looks like a guy with a spear :3
し could be used for eels o.o
。 for coconuts or bulbs/other large seeds
も for a lizard or a giant scorpion or something

That doesn't mean they would look like that to someone else.   

Bear in mind that what the letter looks like means little; T doesn't look like a troll, but is simply the first letter of it.   U doesn't look like a human.

No, U doesn't. Neither does G for Goat, and the difference between the different npc are fairly subtle, lower case or a different color. 

And the fact, that its subjective, is erroneous at best. This artistic style requires to sorta go with it, or see into it. Does the square root sign ever strike someone as 'Yea, that a weapon rack.

Or black double tilda means sand possibly but shades of blue means water. Gotta go with it. I was showing my mom, she was utterly lost until I told her what it represented, then she went with it, and saw into it.

Edit: Unless used to ASCII, no matter what the characters used it woudl still be as alien as first, until you grow used to it.

I hope no one is thinking that the suggest was to replace English, mathematical symbols, and the odd greek letter with another language character set. Just an addition to, to help broaden its pallet of whats there.

[G-Flex]

There's no point in maintaining the text-graphic feel of a game when you do it by cherry-picking a bunch of stuff from whatever other language you want. At that point, you might as well just make simple graphics. Otherwise, all you're doing is trying to FIND simple graphics in random character sets. There's no benefit to it.

[Neruz]

Why not just use, oh i don't know, one of the dozens of tilesets already available?

[Sean Mirrsen]

He wants to have different symbols for different things, not same symbols with different colors. I agree, graphics sets are the way to go here. This will only be feasible when we have full graphics support, but for now it is already possible to have all creatures be represented by different graphics.

[Neruz]

Mayday has mostly different symbols for things, with the exception of stuff like Rock which kind of deserves to have the same symbol as other kinds of Rock, just with different colors. Although different kinds of Rock do often get different symbols too.

[Random832]

And '羊' is a more clear symbol for goat... How?

Because it's not also the symbol for goblin.

[MrWiggles]

There's no point in maintaining the text-graphic feel of a game when you do it by cherry-picking a bunch of stuff from whatever other language you want. At that point, you might as well just make simple graphics. Otherwise, all you're doing is trying to FIND simple graphics in random character sets. There's no benefit to it.

Again trying to state the character use and color is some grand master scheme. Its completely arbitrary for Gremlins, to be a Capitol G and that light Green. Its all cherried pick.

The core to the ASCII 'graphics' is that it doesn't use pictures, because when first used it couldn't. By still using character sets, you're still paying homage to it. You're still using playing with the same rules. Everything has to be represented by characters.

The benefit is that you don't have 8 things represented by B or 18 things represented by G. It makes the game more readily playable, but not having to pause the game and look at the creature.

And no, at this point you shouldn't make simple graphics. As soon as you do that, its no longer ASCII and the I like the ascii.