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[SpartanSnip3r]

Whenever my housemate wants to see what's going on in my DF game, she really has issues reading the ASCII. She likes the Phoebus graphic set, but I usually play in just ASCII.

I was wondering, is there a way that I can simply "flip" from ASCII to Graphics or vice versa with a push of a key or something equally simple/quick? I (and in particular, my partner) would love this capability...

Thanks for any help!

[Bronzebeard]

Hrm. Sadly, I don't think so. To do so would require hard-coding that can switch the tilesets in real time, which is only something Toady could do.

What could be done, however, would be very painstaking work on a tileset that oscillates between ASCII and graphics constantly, much like, say, a ramp tile with something on it (as extremely disorienting and/or annoying as that would be).

[Creamcorn]

Alternatively, just keep two separate files of the games, one good ol'e ASCII, the other plain, boring, dull, mundane ect tilesets.

[Quadricwan]

Alternatively, just keep two separate files of the games...

This.

The game itself isn't very big. Phoebus' pre-prepared version is only 8.5ish megs. 

[G-Flex]

Why would you need to keep two completely separate copies of the game just to switch creature graphics and font files? All that takes is a change to the init file.

[Joishi]

Why would you need to keep two completely separate copies of the game just to switch creature graphics and font files? All that takes is a change to the init file.

Apparently you didn't read the OP..

Because two different people want to play on the same machine (apparently), one with vanilla, and one with graphics..

[Quadricwan]

You could change the ini every time, sure, but I figure it's probably easier just to have two copies, rather than change it regularly.  At such an insignificant file size, why not?

[Emily]

Why would you need to keep two completely separate copies of the game just to switch creature graphics and font files? All that takes is a change to the init file.

Apparently you didn't read the OP..

Because two different people want to play on the same machine (apparently), one with vanilla, and one with graphics..

Er, yes, and they were saying that switching between graphics and not graphics takes changing one line in the init file.  So having two whole copies of the game would be massively redundant.  (And if that's too hard for you, you could probably write a program, or get someone to do it for you, that would toggle the [GRAPHICS:NO]/[GRAPHICS:YES] line in the init file.

You can set up the game two use two different font files; one when windowed and one when full screen.  This still doesn't change graphics modes, though, so creatures either must be letters or sprites, not both.  (At least not the way I'm doing it.)

You could change the ini every time, sure, but I figure it's probably easier just to have two copies, rather than change it regularly.  At such an insignificant file size, why not?

People use the same save files?

If they don't, then yeah, there really isn't a huge reason not to, if you find that easiest.

[Joishi]

Er, yes, and they were saying that switching between graphics and not graphics takes changing one line in the init file.  So having two whole copies of the game would be massively redundant.  (And if that's too hard for you, you could probably write a program, or get someone to do it for you, that would toggle the [GRAPHICS:NO]/[GRAPHICS:YES] line in the init file.

You can set up the game two use two different font files; one when windowed and one when full screen.  This still doesn't change graphics modes, though, so creatures either must be letters or sprites, not both.  (At least not the way I'm doing it.)

*shrug*  DF is 83 megs on disc.  If someone is asking this question, they're PROBABLY not comfortable changing (or checking) the ini file EVERY TIME.  It's the most simple solution to their problem.

[Passive Fist]

You could make two init files, and launch the game with a .bat that lets you choose which one to use. 

[SpartanSnip3r]

You could make two init files, and launch the game with a .bat that lets you choose which one to use. 

Whoa, okay, I really like this one, but I've no experience with batch files. Would this be relatively simple to make?



Meanwhile:

Alternatively, just keep two separate files of the games, one good ol'e ASCII, the other plain, boring, dull, mundane ect tilesets.

Yeah, this is essentially the set up I have now: I have two copies of the game (ASCII and Phoebus) and when my housemate wants to watch for awhile, I move over the entire save from the ASCII to Phoebus. However, since I use uncompressed saves, this gets a tad unwieldy...

BUT:

You could change the ini every time, sure, but I figure it's probably easier just to have two copies, rather than change it regularly.  At such an insignificant file size, why not?

This is something I'd not actually thought of... and it's a much better option for myself, as all it takes is to copy over the Phoebus art and .ini, and only make one .ini readable at a time.

[gtmattz]

Something to keep in mind, and I am not sure if phoebus does this but I know most other graphics packs do, is that the raw files are often changed to use different tiles for certain things, so simply switching graphics mode off and on will work, but one of the 'modes' will have incorrect tiles for some things.

[Phoebus]

My tileset alone changes 24 of the RAW files. Those are required for the tileset to display things correctly.
Graphic tileset are very limited if they don't change the RAWs (I could write a long rant about that.) There's quite a few of those available that are about as good as they can possibly get.

Switching from a clean tileset to a tileset with RAW changes is going to be painful.
If you still want to try that, I suggest keeping two different copies of DF, one with RAW changes and one without.
Everytime you want to switch display style, you'll have to save the game, copy the game to the other version of DF, then run the savegame updater to change the savegame's RAW to the version of DF you've moved it to.

[SpartanSnip3r]

My tileset alone changes 24 of the RAW files. Those are required for the tileset to display things correctly.
Graphic tileset are very limited if they don't change the RAWs (I could write a long rant about that.) There's quite a few of those available that are about as good as they can possibly get.

Switching from a clean tileset to a tileset with RAW changes is going to be painful.
If you still want to try that, I suggest keeping two different copies of DF, one with RAW changes and one without.
Everytime you want to switch display style, you'll have to save the game, copy the game to the other version of DF, then run the savegame updater to change the savegame's RAW to the version of DF you've moved it to.

Well, there's that...