Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Putnam]

Curses.

[Jake]

The default ASCII. I've no objection to tilesets in principle, and the only reason I didn't start using one from the beginning was because I wasn't sure how to change the settings and didn't want to risk breaking the game. I got used to it so quickly that I never bothered with anything else, and the colour-coded smiley faces are a better visual shorthand for a dwarf's profession than any tileset graphic I've ever seen.
Besides, the Flora and Fauna mod is at the top of my "how did I ever play the game without this?" list, and it hasn't got a graphical tileset and isn't likely to acquire one.

[Ottofar]

ASCII due to laziness.

[Rhazak]

Phoebus with Beefmo sprites for the dwarfs and other units.

[MagmaMcFry]

I suddenly remembered an ad for cinemas I saw once. Its general theme was like "Stop movie mistreatment" or such. So there was a reporter going to a playground, and he asked a six-year-old girl holding a smartphone how big King Kong was. The kid held two fingers to her display, then held them up and said "This big." The ad went on to make a different point, but I noticed that that's exactly the problem with graphics packs, you start thinking of goblins as of little green blobs on your display.

[forumist]

Letters and other typographical symbols were probably designed so as to be easy to read, and easy to differenciate from one another, at least in the begining. Add the colours to that, and the default character set (which is more than ascii, by the way) is more easy to read than tilesets. Well, I did not try tilesets myself, but the little I have seen in screenshots from other players does usualy not give something easy to comprehend. It's a bit "blurry" for me.

Also, I got used to text-mode play with dungeon crawl before playing Dwarf Fortress.

[jaxy15]

Default ASCII. I can't get tilesets to work, and it gives the game more of a roguelike feel.

[forumist]

I'd rather imagine a goblin than look at some tiny green blob that's supposed to be one.

Strangely, I don't even imagine a goblin. a 'g' *is* a goblin (well, sometimes it can be a groundhog or a goat (but goats are white), but usually, as with natural languages, the context helps you to understand).

[Shook]

I go with the default ASCII, primarily because i'm so used to it that i can't see what the sprites in tilesets represent. Mostly the minerals, but still.

>.>

That isn't to disrespect the spriters, because as far as i see, many of them are quite good. The main issue, as mentioned, is my visual associations. A yellow £ means gold or limonite, and i can instantly recognize it as so, but changing to a tileset would require me to go loo'k' at the tiles before being able to tell it. I could probably get used to it, but i'm nice and comfy in my theta bed and pi chair. :U

[Jacob/Lee]

I used Mike Mayday's graphics as my training wheels when I started DF, which was my portal to the amazing world of roguelikes. I started playing other roguelikes when I was still using my tileset and realized most symbols for everything are pretty universal so I just removed my tileset and went with ASCII. Never gone back since, I even turn off tilesets in roguelikes if they start with one.

[geoduck]

I use the tile set I created; I kept the basic "smiley face" idea and added details to each, instead of trying to cram the whole dwarf/goblin/whatever into a tile. For text, I took Zaratustra's 16x16 set and added a bunch of custom stuff to it.

[Rushmik]

Ironhand's, not because my imagination is deficient, but it's what I started with and it's a lot easier on my eyes than colors on a pure black background.

I can 'read' the ASCII just fine, and can honestly say that it doesn't take any more imagination to do so.

[Newbunkle]

Yeah, I get far less eye-strain using graphics. And personally I have no problem imagining the 'green blob' as a goblin. Not sure why anyone would to be honest.

[Xen0n]

Yeah, I get far less eye-strain using graphics. And personally I have no problem imagining the 'green blob' as a goblin. Not sure why anyone would to be honest.

switch.

I actually really like a lot of the graphics sets I've seen, it's just with the resolution of monitor I use, and the distance I typically play at, it's difficult to tell tiles apart.  It's much easier for the human eye/brain to distinguish between large, simple, single-colour objects than very detailed, multicoloured objects with similar outlines.  If you stand back a ways from your screen and look at a tileset you may see the 'green blob' issue that some of us get with tilesets. 

If I could find a way to play with a graphics set that didn't involve me squinting, leaning in and pausing all the time to see what's happening, I'd definitely use a graphics set.  The 80 horizontal tile limit seems to be the main obstacle to this, at least for me.

[Flying Dice]

ASCII. Mainly because I like it more, but also because g is a much clearer indicator of what something is than a tiny pixelly blob that may or may not be a living thing.