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[Sappho]

I was playing DF earlier today, as I have been frequently for the past week or two. Before that I had taken a very long break - maybe more than a year - so he had never seen it before. My flatmate has zero interest in computer games, and normally doesn't pay much attention to what I've got on my screen.

He walked up behind me to ask me something and started to talk, then stopped mid-sentence and let out a strange sound of confusion. At first he seemed to think that my computer had gone nuts, then he realized that I was interacting with this mess of symbols and demanded to know what the hell I was doing. I told him, "it's a game." He simply stared at me slack-jawed for several seconds before insisting that there was no way this was a game. It looked like I was coding the Matrix, he said. I laughed and pointed out the dwarves, the walls and floors, the plump helmets and traps and stairs and peacocks, and he just shook his head emphatically, stepped away, and said "whatever you say, I trust you, it's a game, sure, whatever you say." He backed away shaking his head and muttering to himself.

I had forgotten what DF must look like to an outsider. I can't help but feel a bit of pride for confounding him so.

[Koji]

It's pretty easy to show something like Nethack to an outsider, but good luck explaining z-levels in ascii to someone. It's amazing how complex the game has gotten.

[Urist Imiknorris]

I think a tileset is necessary to really get someone interested in DF unless they're already a hardcore roguelike fan.

[mr. macduggan]

I'd agree. I played dungeon crawl stone soup for months after my first try of dwarf fortress before I realized how cool it was ( I came back to try out adventure mode but stayed for the fortress  )

[Untelligent]

I think a tileset is necessary to really get someone interested in DF unless they're already a hardcore roguelike fan.

Depends on the person, I guess. DF was my first ASCII game, and I've only used the default tiles.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Alternatively, DF creates hardcore roguelike fans.

[Oliolli]

I've never learned the ASCII-ones. I've meant to learn.

[Imp]

*laughs*  My roommate's response to seeing my game the other day was "What?  How many dwarves do you have now?  (118 I told him)  They look like maggots swarming across your screen!"

[Rafal99]

I think a tileset is necessary to really get someone interested in DF unless they're already a hardcore roguelike fan.

Alternatively, DF creates hardcore roguelike fans.

I disagree with both. I have never heard about a roguelike before I found DF.
But I was looking for a game with that sort of complexity for long time, and it immediately got me into DF.
Also I have played games with very simple graphics before, so the ASCII graphics didn't scare me that much.
I was hardly understanding anything at start, but I felt that there is some sort of awesomeness in DF, and didn't give up, eventually learning most of the basics after a few days.

I have played a few roguelikes since then but didn't stay long in any of them.

[Keltiknight]

I had never played a roguelike much less heard of them, before I tried dwarf fortress. (Heard about it when a youtube person I watch played some of it.) Then I played it till I figured it out. (Lots of wiki help.)

[Organum]

DF was the first ASCII game I've ever played, but I stuck with it as is and the only times I'll use a graphical tileset (square letters don't count, do they? ) is if a mod I'm playing comes with 'em. DF is also the only ASCII game I'll play. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is fun, but if it didn't come with purty pictures I probably wouldn't touch it. Same goes for Nethack. Tried it, got lost, gave it up for now.

[King DZA]

I honestly didn't have much trouble with the ASCII. I had to spend some time learning about what each unit the letters were, but most of it was pretty lucid.

At a glance it can look perplexing, but sit down and actually look at it for a few minutes, and it all begins to take shape pretty quickly.

[nenjin]

Tilesets don't make a difference in accessibility to people viewing DF over your shoulder, from what I've seen. I've had honest to god gamer friends watch me playing it with a tileset and their eyes just kinda glaze over.

I think it's just the scope of it, really. By the time you have 75 dwarves buzzing around, it's pure chaos but as a player you've learned to filter most of it. Even to an RTS gamer it's a lot of visual information to digest. And then you start flipping through z-levels...and they have to look away because they almost don't want to know how deep it goes

Once you've seen it though, you can't unsee it. It took me 4 years to come to DF after the first time I laid eyes on it.

[rosareven]

I just started DF afresh for a little over two weeks now. I started out with nothing but Lazy Newb Pack with tileset, and now I'm playing the latest Genesis Mod, forced myself to get used to the ASCII because I really want to play the latest version even though a compatible tileset is not done for that version yet. Before all that though, I did refused to play with the ASCII despite the depth of the game, and I spent a while actively looking for graphical enhancements (aka the tilesets) to get myself comfortable with the game.

So in a way, I did completely refuse to learn the ASCII, but instead of turning away from the game entirely, I look for alternative ways to play it. Now that I'm used to ASCII mode, I got to say the tilesets are actually a good mediation for outsiders like me to bridge the ASCII - what I mean is that, some graphical tilesets would still use letters / ASCII symbols for some objects, but those objects are not things that you encounter frequently and have to "k" things frequently to see what the hell it is. At least I don't have to "k" a cat all the time to know that it's a cat. But after a while, I got used to the fact that there are going to be cats running around, and so when I see a small letter "c" on ASCII mode, I just kinda knew it was a cat. Also things like barrels, shrubs and whatnot - once I see those common objects in graphical tilesets frequent enough, I would come to natural assumption in ASCII mode that those symbols are "vaguely those things that I saw in graphical tileset". "All those [barrel ASCII] in the stockpile area must have been barrels!"

[vinegarninja]

my first introduction to DF came from Three Panel Soul, and at first I couldnt make heads or tails of it, but later on I discovered the ultra newbie DF tutorial, and through that I was able to figure out the basics of DF. Now I play without a tileset, and can get forts of 100~ dwarves fairly easily. Adventure mode took a bit longer, but once I played enough with that, read up on the forums here how to survive, I have become a death dealing throwing machine. Lots of Fun to be had there.