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[Cowboy Colt]

I want to be HAL 9000 or SHODAN, killing humans with "malfunctioning" equipment and secretly building an army of cyborg minions to storm the bridge and take control of the ship.

Someone is making that!

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=141612.0

You get to play as a sentient AI and assume control of droids to explore the station. Apparently you can spike the food and all sorts.

...Huh. Well I'm satisfied now I guess.

It could be everything we've ever dreamed of...

Doesn't sound too much different from Dwarf Fortress actually.

...but in SPAAAAAAAAACE!

[blazing glory]

Doesn't sound too much different from Dwarf Fortress actually.

...but in SPAAAAAAAAACE!

...With GRAPHICKS!

[Cowboy Colt]

Doesn't sound too much different from Dwarf Fortress actually.

...but in SPAAAAAAAAACE!

...With GRAPHICKS!

Aww, stop being mean to DF

[RAM]

The space thing is just a matter of implementing gravity. Once that is in then building beyond the atmosphere will just be a logistical matter...

As for graphics, D.F. already has visual representations of in-game objects. g=goblin is an abbreviation, so you could argue that there is no graphics for the goblin itself, but there is definitely a visual representation of its location. And really, any game that feels the need to contain any non-redundant text is, to some extent, absent of potential graphics. To get a game that really doesn't have graphics you need to go to something like the original Zork...

[blazing glory]

Doesn't sound too much different from Dwarf Fortress actually.

...but in SPAAAAAAAAACE!

...With GRAPHICKS!

Aww, stop being mean to DF

I'm not, ASCII is a perfectly alright type of graphics.

I've seen plenty of graphics that I would happily substitute with ASCII if I could.

[Aseaheru]

Besides, if you think ASCII always looks bad, go take a look at things like X@COM and Cogmind.

[Cowboy Colt]

Doesn't sound too much different from Dwarf Fortress actually.

...but in SPAAAAAAAAACE!

...With GRAPHICKS!

Aww, stop being mean to DF

I'm not, ASCII is a perfectly alright type of graphics.

I've seen plenty of graphics that I would happily substitute with ASCII if I could.

ASCII is a whole different type of art. Such clever re-appropriation.

[blazing glory]

*Karate chop because scissors is for wimps.*

ASCII is a whole different type of art. Such clever re-appropriation.

Suppose so, it relies more on the user's imagination to create a image rather than make a image itself.

[Graknorke]

ASCII is a whole different type of art. Such clever re-appropriation.

Suppose so, it relies more on the user's imagination to create a image rather than make a image itself.

I think that argument is bullshit. It doesn't rely on anything. It gives you information and you can process it as you wish. The same as any other rendering of anything. Just because it gives you more abstracted information doesn't mean it's doing anything fundamentally different though.

[Jopax]

I think it is. It's the difference between having an illustrated book and one without any illustrations. One is giving you only descriptions and leaving it up to you to make them real in your head while the other gives you clearly defined images that you recall every time you read something that's referencing the illustrated thing.

[Sergius]

Nobody needs to draw a picture of a goblin in their mind every time someone says "there are two goblins in front of you." That's not how brains work.

If you stop and start thinking "I wonder how a goblin looks like" or go to the long description to know if he likes cows and lapis lazuli and walks on the beach, sure. But just hearing/reading something getting named doesn't immediately evoke mental 3D mesh images and colors and animation and sounds.

If I say "pull up a chair" you don't need to use your imagination to figure out if it's a colonial mahogany chair or a plush victorian chair. The concept of "chair" is known to you and you can probably pull the closest one, possibly without even looking at it.

That "g" on the screen is a goblin. I don't care what he looks like. I know roughly what goblins are, I know they're dangerous to my "@"s, and I just want to know where is it and whether I want it dead (of course I do).

[Graknorke]

I think it is. It's the difference between having an illustrated book and one without any illustrations. One is giving you only descriptions and leaving it up to you to make them real in your head while the other gives you clearly defined images that you recall every time you read something that's referencing the illustrated thing.

No, it's more like the difference between a book that describes everything to you in detail, and a book that gives hardly any but has a huge encyclopaedia in the back full of hugely detailed descriptions of everything mentioned if you want to take a look at it. But most of the time you don't have to because really who cares about which gems are encrusted on the booze pot?

Also the stuff Sergius said.

[blazing glory]

ASCII is a whole different type of art. Such clever re-appropriation.

Suppose so, it relies more on the user's imagination to create a image rather than make a image itself.

I think that argument is bullshit. It doesn't rely on anything. It gives you information and you can process it as you wish. The same as any other rendering of anything. Just because it gives you more abstracted information doesn't mean it's doing anything fundamentally different though.

Sorry, it was poorly worded.

I also hadn't realized this had descended into a argument.

[RAM]

I would regard it more as the difference between and illustrated novel and a comic book. The vast majority of games have extensive text supporting their graphics and visa-versa. Some games have no text at all. A.S.C.I.I. games have some legitimate graphical elements, but the visual elements will be greatly enhanced by the ability to read, you could learn that the things that look like "g" are goblins, but knowing that goblin starts with g is very helpful, but A.S.C.I.I. graphics have been using solid lines for walls for as long as anyone cares to recall and you can tell that a given entity is nearer one wall than another based purely upon graphical cues. While a full-blown descriptive novel is like a text adventure, the closes thing to graphics is prompts and formatting, if you are lucky you might get a fancy font for the villain's speech...

I believe that for a while Erfworld was rapidly flicking between illustrated novel mode and traditional comic mode, which seems like a pretty good comparison...

[dorf]

Time to get this thread back on the rail!

I wish there was a HTML5/web game similar to Starport:GE or Star Control 2. It would probably need to be simplified somewhat, but I'd play it!