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[starscream]

ascii graphics are like an explosion in an alphabet soup factory.  it does't need imagination and it requires the brain to readjust to read the screens.
however, if you're playing a game like df, you're not playing it for the graphics but for what it provides.  not having a good basic graphics set hurts the game in the long run, but there are tile sets that alleviate much of the problem.

[RAM]

I wish that there was a steampunk mecha game where you could design your own mecha at the scale of boilers and pipes and valves and chambers... You could use big boilers for more efficiency and higher maximum pressures, or lots of little ones for more redundancy and articulation. You could vent steam as a weapon, or pump it into expanding chambers to make claws swing around, or use it to charge a generator to zap things... Build your own limbs using expanding chambers or tendons or by pumping steam across wheels... This is a thing that I want.

Spoiler: off-topic (click to show/hide)

I really don't see even the remotest harm to D.F. from its graphics(Well, from a purist perspective. Obviously people will have biases and preferences that will affect distribution. A.S.C.I.I. will probably never be 'cool'...) because it is just so very excellent at visually representing things. It is easy to discern the going-ons with an 8x8 A.S.C.I.I. display and be able to grok a whole fortress layer at once. How many tile-sets are actually helpful at 8 pixels by eight pixels? A.S.C.I.I. combines directly graphical representations of many, mostly background, elements that give you a quick understanding of the layout of the environment and combines that with coded information concerning more complex entities. Given that it is coded in common text, it is not exactly difficult to translate for anyone who is capable of reading. Even people who cannot read will have an easier time discerning the difference between letters than they will an assortment of low-resolution figures that all have five protrusions from a central mass... If you actually added multiple colour support, well, it would inhibit the ability to recognise a little, a g which is green on its top half and white on its bottom half would create a bit of a 'broken' effect in its form, but I doubt that it would be a critical inhibition...

Graphics are not inherently superior. Games are interactive, the main goal is not to make something pretty, the main goal is to communicate. A pleasant aesthetic is nice, but if it fails to communicate then the experience will be frustrating and therefore detrimental. Graphics communicate quickly, that is a good thing, but it is not everything...

[Sergarr]

ASCII is a 3D-world-outline of the hidden world-of-the-book lying underneath the cover of the alphabet-soup.

[Graknorke]

I wish that there was a steampunk mecha game where you could design your own mecha at the scale of boilers and pipes and valves and chambers... You could use big boilers for more efficiency and higher maximum pressures, or lots of little ones for more redundancy and articulation. You could vent steam as a weapon, or pump it into expanding chambers to make claws swing around, or use it to charge a generator to zap things... Build your own limbs using expanding chambers or tendons or by pumping steam across wheels... This is a thing that I want.

A bit like From the Depths but with giant humanoid fuck-shit-up bots?

[Sirus]

I wish that there was a steampunk mecha game where you could design your own mecha at the scale of boilers and pipes and valves and chambers... You could use big boilers for more efficiency and higher maximum pressures, or lots of little ones for more redundancy and articulation. You could vent steam as a weapon, or pump it into expanding chambers to make claws swing around, or use it to charge a generator to zap things... Build your own limbs using expanding chambers or tendons or by pumping steam across wheels... This is a thing that I want.

A bit like From the Depths but with giant humanoid fuck-shit-up bots?

That would be awesome.

[MDFification]

Toady's Law: Any thread in which the word "graphics" is used will inevitably devolve into pro/anti ascii comments.

[TheDarkStar]

Toady's Law: Any thread in which the word "graphics" is used will inevitably devolve into pro/anti ascii comments.

Pff, ASCII will win. 

On-topic: I wish that there was an RTS game where rather than building things out of abstract crystals or metal, you actually tear apart the ground and use it to build (with various factories/processing steps along the way). Kind of like a combination of Minecraft, Factorio, and the RTS genre.

[King Kravoka]

Toady's Law: Any thread in which the word "graphics" is used will inevitably devolve into pro/anti ascii comments.

Pff, ASCII will win. 

He's got it right, graphical packs tend to make everything look ugly and deform the RAW files into accentless abominations.

[blazing glory]

Toady's Law: Any thread in which the word "graphics" is used will inevitably devolve into pro/anti ascii comments.

Pff, ASCII will win. 

He's got it right, graphical packs tend to make everything look ugly and deform the RAW files into accentless abominations.

True, Tilesets are ugly.

[Rez]

On-topic: I wish that there was an RTS game where rather than building things out of abstract crystals or metal, you actually tear apart the ground and use it to build (with various factories/processing steps along the way). Kind of like a combination of Minecraft, Factorio, and the RTS genre.

I'm just imagining a player having to micromanage hundreds of earthmovers, refineries, mills, and factories.  It seems like your best bet would be to put the player in charge of prospecting, constructing infrastructure, and deciding what military resources need to be built.  Automate everything below that level and I think the player would still have an enormous amount to do.

When you say tear apart the earth, were you thinking about terrain deformation?  I instantly thought about the player having to clear overburden, designate where to dig shafts or build ramps, and that sort of thing.  Basically, Gold Mining Simulator (TM Discovery Channel), but with dozens of mine types and ores.

Has there ever been an RTS that actually had terrain deformation WRT fortifications, tunnels, walls, etc.?  It seems like a fairly obvious way to go, given how important terrain and fortifications are in tactics.  Wait, aren't there going to be invaders who can dig in DF?

[RAM]

I wish that there was a steampunk mecha game where you could design your own mecha at the scale of boilers and pipes and valves and chambers... You could use big boilers for more efficiency and higher maximum pressures, or lots of little ones for more redundancy and articulation. You could vent steam as a weapon, or pump it into expanding chambers to make claws swing around, or use it to charge a generator to zap things... Build your own limbs using expanding chambers or tendons or by pumping steam across wheels... This is a thing that I want.

A bit like From the Depths but with giant humanoid fuck-shit-up bots?

I would hope for less like Minecraft and more like The Incredible Machine, or maybe Factorio now that someone mentioned it. From the Depths seems a bit too hierarchial for my tastes. It seems as though you have one bit that actually does things and a whole lots of other bits that tweak how the primary ones works. I would like something where every bit is just doing its own thing and the interactions are about a bit being-done-to by other bits and then doing to others in turn. Don't get me wrong, From The Depths looks like loads of fun, but it seems as though a gun is always a gun, a spike is always a spike, and an engine is always an engine. You are never going to put a gun in your leg to kick faster, or put a spike facing into your fist to make a pressurised tank explode when it hits something, or put an engine in your arm because it, and the armour you were putting around it anyway, were heavy enough to cause some serious damage if you just swing it at something...

[flabort]

You notice that there's no really new platformers out there?
Reason I don't count new sonic games: Unleased was the last sonic platformer. I could MAYBE count colors, but there's all this auto targeting stuff and the new games basically have no instant death infinite pits, or if they do, they're impossible to see because they blend into the rest of the stage. I think the Adventure games handled being a platformer really well, even if the camera controls were sketchy.
Mario games... I can't count it as new if I already beat it, and as well, there is no variety any more. Maybe there's the 3D party one, but as I said I already beat it.
Any other recent platformer I garuntee you is an indie title, which is synonymous with retro, which means 'made to be old', which means that it was never new in the first place. Seriously, in the past two years, name one indie platformer that is not made of big pixels or tron lines. If you're restricting yourself to that art style, you're restricting yourself to the same old physics and ideas, too.

I want to see a decent 3D platformer, where the camera is never fixed perspective, where defeating enemies is the same as using them for platforms, but without putting you on very obvious rails. Probably with interesting puzzles, involving jumping onto the right switches. But there has to be a near-constant sense of if-you-screw-up-this-jump-you're-dead, and fealing like you're getting somewhere even when you're exploring in the completly wrong direction.

Like, if you had an open world game, but it was Sonic-Adventure style, with straightforward objectives that you could aproach in several dozen ways, but it's entirely possible to die no matter which you choose if you can't master the controls, and then if you want you can roam billions of miles away from the start, facing all sorts of challenges, and then take a quicker but just as hard way back, just to get an optional upgrade, or maybe to experience the seemingly infinite world. Hmm... actually, with on the fly generation, the world could actually be made infinite.

Bah. Basically, I just miss real tough 3D platforming, and modern games don't cut it because devs don't like plat3Ds anymore.

[Rez]

I was going to suggest that there are lots of pretentious indie platformers, but you got it in before me.

[Graknorke]

-snipt-

Mirror's Edge 2, coming some time in the indeterminate future.

[KingofstarrySkies]

-snoop dog-

Portal games are fairly modern.

Mirrors Edge, aye. Assassin's Creed I've always felt was a platformer-murdersim mash up.