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Extended ASCII (Original)

Tilesets (Mayday DFG for instance)

Other (Custom ASCII tiles, etc.)

[zwei]

ASCII keeps things squarely in the symbolic realm, and leaves plenty of room for a clean and functional design that just plain looks good. OTOH, tilesets make an attempt to convey actual representations in tiny squares, and only get halfway there. They lose the clean, unified aesthetic for cramped squares of pixel vomit and badly spaced fonts. I think that the ASCII graphical interface is perfectly fine for anybody with enough sense to use the dwarf wiki--it's the functional interface that is the real culprit in turning people away from the game.

To be fair, this is partway problem of game engine:

1) Ascii has overlaps that Tileset has to ahdere.

Symbol for ramp, for example, doubles are symbol for loaded balista arrowhead. And dont get me started on bag/amulet/pigtail/male symbol ... And workshops, poor workshops... Or letter "O", poor O.

Making sensible graphical set is quite hard if you have to follow theese little nuances, and even then it ends up looking bad.

2) There next to no typography.

All characters layoutted to grid where each character has same width. That means that most of text is going to look awfull and be unreadable unless you use symbols made directly for curses.

Hell, whole game is in same grid, so you can not even make large-ish graphics because it would make text huge. There is no reason why it should be so, actual map display could, and should, be separated from user interface.

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Graphics sets are going to look bad by default untill there is UI revamp.

[Greiger]

I like the regular old ASCII, when you do some modding your own custom creations won't look out of place when they don't have a graphical tile because nothing does. I played with a graphics set once and all the graphical stuff did for me was break the immersion when something didn't have a graphical representation on screen.

And with those tilesets like the ones that turn a O into a well or something like that I could live with, but it sticks all these wells and pillars and crap in the normal text which I just find annoying.  If the actual text was able to use a separate set from the display I would probably use those happily, but not now.

So in short I would probably never use graphics sets, but tilesets that just make wells look like wells and stuff I would use if they only the text output messages be full of furniture when I try to read it.

[Warlord255]

Artists (maybe not architects), people that don't actively have a job in mathematics and the like tend to prefer actual pictures, because they can't easily distinguish or put the link between a 'Sī and something thatīll gnaw your head off if you let it get any closer. Maybe those people prefer the tilesets?

Slowpoking on my part, but I am an artist and I much prefer ASCII - though I do have minor graphics for sentient races.

The multiple uses of any given tile are context-sensitive, and I'd rather work with that flexibility than be annoyed repeatedly by things like grass in my text fields.

[pluckcitizen]

I vote for tilesets.

I would not be playing DF if there weren't tilesets.

[reaver456]

yep I prefer the tile sets and personally use mikemay days it is my favorite pack so far. Especially the way his pack makes the environment look love it.

[ungulateman]

I use RRGO's tileset quite often, and ASCII for mods and a vanilla file. So, I don't really have a particular bias.

[RAM]

I took one of the A.S.C.I.I. sets from the wiki, stole some bits and pieces from others, converted some of the tiles from the default set, and may even have cobbled together some stuff of my own into an 8x8 A.S.C.I.I. set I have been using ever since, I think I intended to do more work on it but never bothered.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A.S.C.I.I. is not text, text is words, A.S.C.I.I. is just a slightly more representative tile replacement than pictographic tiles. Even real life works on the same basic principals, a simple wooden stool and simple wooden table may have more in common with each other than a leather armchair, but you will still identify them as sitting places and working places. <insert rant about the price of graphics and people who should watch movies instead>.
 I think that D.F. works in a discreet representative manner and is best suited to the most representative tiles, A.S.C.I.I.. The more it looks like a real fort with real dwarves in it the harder it will be to tell where one tile ends and another begins, the harder it will be to tell the difference between a table and a chair, and, in short, the harder it will be to figure out what is going on.

There will always be a desire to have a nice fortress to look at, with your brave dwarves patrolling its passages. And there will always be a desire to see exactly what the games sees, ugly random representative letters blotched together in all their naked glory. A.S.C.I.I. and Pictures are both compromised, but to completely abandon either I feel would be a grave loss.

[MathijsBuster]

I think that D.F. works in a discreet representative manner and is best suited to the most representative tiles, A.S.C.I.I.. The more it looks like a real fort with real dwarves in it the harder it will be to tell where one tile ends and another begins, the harder it will be to tell the difference between a table and a chair, and, in short, the harder it will be to figure out what is going on.

While I'd agree that sounds completely believable in theory, I find that in practice I have it exactly in the reverse.

I'm fine with dwarf fortress the way it is though. There's the original game with no graphics for everyone who has an easier time with such, and there's always the graphic mods for people like me who enjoy (and have an easier time) seeing a table instead of something representing a table.

[Muz]

The tile graphics are only barely better than ASCII, IMHO. Not attractive at all, but it helps you visualize, without memorizing what U and k are.

Personally, I'd prefer it if Toady just stopped adding new features after the next version, and made the graphics somewhere along the same level as a SNES game or Avernum. Something attractive visually, but not that beautiful.

But I think he's mentioned before that he went graphicless from Slaves to Armok because it's too much work to add graphics for every new thing. So whatever improves the pace. But graphics would be the best feature of them all. I know some of you like ASCII, but there for every ASCII lover, there are like 10000 people who prefer it nice and graphical.

[Vester]

If you read the rest of the thread then you realize that the technical term for us is not "ASCII lovers", it's "ASCII fetishists".

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That would create problems for modders, though, if they want to add a critter with a thousand gibbering mouths, or some such thing.

[Rotten]

I've used both, and they both work, but I lean towards tilesets because that's what I started with (TinyPirate's tutorial).

[Pie]

I use ascii because it is both readable, clear and involves the imagination, but I can see that it is not the best solution. The types of tilesets we have at the moment are also not the best solution. I believe there is a third way: symbols. Essentially, each type of object has a clear symbol (these would be very simple, easy to read at current zoom-level and probably single colour representations). The tiles could be coloured depending on the material/individual object, much in the same way as they are now. In order to do this you really do need to separate interface text from graphics. The possibility to overlay one thing on top of another would also help significantly. I think symbols are the best compromise between ease of production, readability, cleanness, aesthetic quality and modability.

[Muz]

That would create problems for modders, though, if they want to add a critter with a thousand gibbering mouths, or some such thing.

Well, I'm sure Toady would come up with something to represent that in pixel art. Being told to imagine all graphics is about the same as being give a graphic of something and told to imagine something else. Or there could just be an added feature for mods where you place your own graphics.

I do admit that progress for anything goes a lot slower with graphics than without. Hence why people still write books.

[calrogman]

http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Tileset_repository#Turnip

I use this tileset.

[Jervous]

Normal ASCII...tilesets look pretty ugly IMHO.