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[Mugros]

First, I'm pretty sure no matter what is added Toady still intends to keep support for the ascii set.

Actually it makes no sense to keep the ASCII support. And i hate all those people who say that ASCII is so much better than tilesets or graphics of any kind. They say that ASCII displays the information much more efficient etc. This is simply not true and just shows that these players are familiar with the text.
But without ranting some more, there is an easy solution to satisfy all the ASCII lovers: Just make a graphics set that looks like ASCII characters.
I hope this will put an end to all the hate for GFX and silence players who fear that they will lose their precious ASCII display. 

That said, the current support for graphic tiles is quite ok, but a full graphics support would open so many more possibilities, e.g. meters for stockpiles, little indicators, big dwarf graphics in the status screen with wounds, equipment, a new UI overall.

And since TTF was mentioned before, we have TTF support right now. I use it and it works fine. But the advantage is only legibility, it doesn't show more characters, even if there is more space in the line. So you still have "crocodile leather q..." etc on several screens. TTF is really the way to go, because it fits more information on the screen and makes text more readable.

PS: Since this thread is still linked to the eternal voting list, i guess, it's still ok to post here, even though the thread is quite old.

[xrogaan]

Once you're familiar with the game, you can play it even if you do not have any tileset installed. But the reverse is not true. If you play with a particuliar tileset and then change, you'll be lost. I mean, there are tileset that even change some colors.

This is why IMHO, we have to keep the basic ascii display.

And for the full graphics, well, you'll have to create those graphics and keep them up to date. Which is more job for toady or, if someone else do it, more dependencies... That said, if this game would have the dungeon keeper way to show things, it'll be fine for me.

[Draco18s]

First, I'm pretty sure no matter what is added Toady still intends to keep support for the ascii set.

Actually it makes no sense to keep the ASCII support. And i hate all those people who say that ASCII is so much better than tilesets or graphics of any kind. They say that ASCII displays the information much more efficient etc. This is simply not true and just shows that these players are familiar with the text.
But without ranting some more, there is an easy solution to satisfy all the ASCII lovers: Just make a graphics set that looks like ASCII characters.

Just FYI:

1) The game already uses graphical tilesets.
2) The game already uses a default graphical tileset of ASCII characters
3) If anything changes about the way the game displays information, it is highly unlikely that this method will no longer work

Therefor, the first half of your post was pointless.

As for TTF fonts and truncating item names after character counts, it because the game is only displaying the info using TTF, it's not trying to do less processing on that info (i.e. the game--normally--only has 20 (?) characters of space to display names, so it truncates the name to 20 characters and sends that to the renderer, the renderer then goes "TTF or not TTF?" and displays it).

And I can tell you from experience, it's a bitch and a half to figure out how wide a string of non-monospaced characters is.  It'd be even worse for Toady, because in Flash I can query how wide/tall the textbox is after I put the string into it, then do something to make it smaller (reduce the text size 1pt or truncate the string one character at a time, repeat until it fits)

[Mugros]

This is why IMHO, we have to keep the basic ascii display.

It is just a matter of being familiar with it. At the very beginning you were also lost with the basic ASCII graphics. So if you change the tileset, you have a small learning period, but if you already know the basic gameplay, this should be quite easy.
As for maintaining it: A programmer is normally a bad graphics designer, so someone has to step in. But i guess there are some good graphic designers among the players. So Toady could choose an official graphic set. But when he just puts in placeholders in case something new arises, the community will quickly update the graphic packs.
I'd say the benefit of a full graphics support outweighs the "potential" drawbacks for Toady by a lot.
And anyway, as it has been said, the ASCII graphics are already BMP graphics, very basic and done by Toady. The goal is just to extend the graphics support to more than just the main display.

Therefor, the first half of your post was pointless.

Yes, i see this now. But as you can also see from the poster before, people still think, that there is some ASCII display in the game, though it is just an ASCII-looking graphical tileset.

it's a bitch and a half to figure out how wide a string of non-monospaced characters is

I haven't done graphics programming, but since TTF text display is more common now than fixed-width bitmap fonts, i would have to say that this can't be so hard. And i do think, that SDL can help with the display by just looking at some SDL documentation how TTF text is displayed. A) render TTF text surface B) blit it to the destination surface with the clipping area set to the correct width.

[Darkmere]

I don't play with default graphics, but I can read them well enough. The thing here is options... Many people enjoy the default. Many people enjoy a graphical set. Why anger either group by neglecting support?

Options...

Besides, being able to understand default is very handy when different graphical sets don't match up, or drawing schematics on the forum here.

I don't understand the superior attitudes about using either/or... It's preference, and more options are always better.

[Draco18s]

I haven't done graphics programming, but since TTF text display is more common now than fixed-width bitmap fonts, i would have to say that this can't be so hard. And i do think, that SDL can help with the display by just looking at some SDL documentation how TTF text is displayed. A) render TTF text surface B) blit it to the destination surface with the clipping area set to the correct width.

No, I mean, how long will a string will when rendered, without rendering it?

It's remarkably difficult.  You'd have to know how wide each character is (i is 1 pixel, t is 5.3, a is 6.6 ...) and then count instances of each symbol.  And even then, it's only a guess based on each computer's clear type settings (you can change that, did you know?)

[Mugros]

Like i said, you render the whole text and then blit it to the destination. Anything that is too wide will be automatically clipped. No need to know the exact width. Google will help you.
Rendering, checking the width, rendering again etc. until it fits is just bad programming. Also knowing the width of each character in TT is just useless because of kerning.
I don't see a problem here.
(clear type shouldn't matter because the SDL TTF rendering is done without native windows routine. Or please show me a game where there is a difference with or without cleartype.)

[Draco18s]

Rendering, checking the width, rendering again etc. until it fits is just bad programming. Also knowing the width of each character in TT is just useless because of kerning.

For DF blitting will work.
But for my own projects, it won't, because I'm working in Flash (oh, and I'd rather shrink the text to fit, rather than chop it off).  Oh, and changing the size, checking the width, etc takes <1 ms.  I don't have to wait for the GUI to actually update (i.e. full render).

[Peacemaker636]

I'd just like to say that different tilesets for different zoom levels would make me incredibly happy.  It fits what DF is about so well.  On the surface things don't look too impressive, but once you look closer, you see how ridiculously intricate it is.  Just think of having super-high-res tilesets for watching glorious battles unfold!  Also, zoom levels are currently being worked on, so it can be just be a step away.

Also, it can't be too hard to superimpose different colors or symbols, right?

[Dradym]

toady knows what hes doing, hes focusing on content over presentation. once the game works as he wants it im sure hell look into making it look pretty as long as it doesnt compromise his vision. graphics can be very hard to get right, so hes laying the foundation, so he doesnt have to worry about tweaking something down the line because it doesnt work right. theres enough bugs as it is. as for letting others do the graphics work...im sure its a little more complicated than just doing it.

also, the lack of graphics, yet detailed descriptions, allow for one's imagination to fill in the blanks and can actually INSPIRE some of us to create art, let alone build more and more complicated fortresses/devices/mods that this community has done.

imo, more graphics arent necessary, and should be put aside for more and more accurate/intricate content. but i like to see people work on such things, making things prettier is good, and maybe if something gets noticed by toady, maybe he can be inspired to make some changes....when his vision has been realized.

[DrazharLn]

Mike, all your ~mayday/upload links in the first post are broken.

I support this idea, it would increase the information density of the screen while being totally unobtrusive and looking real pretty.

[King Mir]

Here's what I should be done to allow better tilesets:

1)make every tile that appears in the game configurable in the raws
2)switch to Unicode to allow more unique tiles

That's all you need for a unique graphic to be possible for everything.

[RhoOphuichi]

I love this idea. While I have no trouble playing with the basic ASCII graphics or with the various available graphic packs, I think opening up the graphics to modification would inevitably lead to some excellent community-produced graphics. And having an easy-to-understand, visually pleasing game brings in more players, more income for Toady, and hopefully more and more development of DF.

[isitanos]

Bringing this back to the foreground for the new version. As I see it, the minimum subset of features to make most people happy would be:

• Keep the ASCII mode around and ensure it works perfect with a linux remote terminal. Being able to remotely play DF on a weak netbook while your desktop does all the chugging is awesome, as is multiple people connecting to watch someone play, like you can do with Nethack servers.
• Allow defining arbitrary tiles for absolutely everything... including 9 custom-made tiles for every workshop, so they can finally look like a single building (Workshops made of multiple small symbols in ASCII work ok-ish because there's little visual clutter. Enter tilesets, where you're squinting at the tiny details of thousands of small icons: workshops are even uglier and confusing to look at.) No more missing punctuation or doors on the world map. Stuff like that makes me run back screaming to a mostly-ASCII tileset every time.
• Edit: merged two ideas that Mike Mayday made me realize were actually the same.

(I'm still looking for a symbolic tileset, btw... one where the artist doesn't try to accurately represent a dog in 16x16 pixels, but rather uses specific symbols for each creature. A 'g' with stylised horns for a goat and a 'g' with stylized fangs for a goblin, for instance.)

[vorpal+5]

Isitanos, I see you are backing up a Kickstarter project. So I was thinking something along these lines...

Toady is not interested in doing graphics, but perhaps if some people would found him (more money is always welcome!), then perhaps he could be convinced to provide at least a support for unique graphic tile for each item (I don't get how it can be difficult to do that, whereas he did that for each creature of the game, and modders could add more as they wish).

Say 250 people pledge 20$ each on kickstarter for this work, this means 5000 bucks to Toady!