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Dwarf Fortress => DF General Discussion => Topic started by: Rubtazar on January 02, 2011, 08:12:07 am

Title: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Rubtazar on January 02, 2011, 08:12:07 am: Soup, up until now I've been playing with a tile set. Some strange mood got me to try ye' olde vanilla graphics, and oh boy is it awesome. I don't know why i didn't do this ages ago.. looking at the screen and everything just seems like it belongs to it's place (except occasional elf not in my refuse stockpile)

Just wanting to know how many people still play with tileset?

And not to make this post completely useless, how do i make my babies age faster?
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: btbtbtbt on January 02, 2011, 08:42:34 am: The ASCII graphics are nice and clean, aren't they? I've personally never strayed from them since I started playing in 2D.

You can change the rate at which your dwarven children age by playing with the raw files in the data folder, although I haven't done much of that since version 40d, and even then not much modding really. I think you need to go into the file "creature_standard.txt" in the raws under both the data folder and your save folder and change the numbers under the tags [BABY:1] and [CHILD:12] under [CREATURE:DWARF] to something smaller, the numbers represent years until your dwarf changes from being a baby to a child, then from being a child to an adult from memory.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: juanito89 on January 02, 2011, 03:16:00 pm: I use the Phoebus tileset, and have never tried playing the game in ASCII. I've seen videos of it, though, and in my opinion the tilesets make the better look better.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Cruxador on January 02, 2011, 03:33:58 pm: Some tilesets share this cleanliness of form, including Phoebus and the "HD ASCII" tileset.
More graphically oriented ones such as Mayday or Ironhand, while they have their own charms, are indeed lacking in this.

But it's not really inherent to ASCII so much as a design thing.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: iceball3 on January 02, 2011, 03:35:45 pm: Damn there are too many topics exactly like this. It is ridiculous.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Duelmaster409 on January 02, 2011, 03:48:43 pm: Quote from: iceball3 on January 02, 2011, 03:35:45 pm
Damn there are too many topics exactly like this. It is ridiculous.

I'd like to believe it's okay to start threads expressing your opinion on ASCII vs. Graphics as long as they don't explode into flame wars. That usually doesn't happen however.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: BaLLz on January 02, 2011, 03:52:57 pm: Quote from: Cruxador on January 02, 2011, 03:33:58 pm
Some tilesets share this cleanliness of form, including Phoebus and the "HD ASCII" tileset.
More graphically oriented ones such as Mayday or Ironhand, while they have their own charms, are indeed lacking in this.

But it's not really inherent to ASCII so much as a design thing.

HD ASCII? Can you link? Been looking everywhere for it!
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Maklak on January 02, 2011, 04:03:08 pm: I use Phobeus from Lazy Newb Pack, and it mostly works for me. The only confusing thing is humans, elves, goblins and dwarfs look too alike. I haven't playes ASCII so far, byt I'll probably try it at some point.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Rex_Nex on January 02, 2011, 04:12:35 pm: I change between Pheobus and Ironhand for my graphic sets. To be honest, most of the work I do on my fortress is done through text screens (Such as c, v, labor screen, stockpiles screen, etc) instead of through the main interface. I only use that for seeing what my fortress looks like and construction, as well as to get the gist of whats going on.

So I could probably go ASCII without too much of a problem, I just cant stand the lack of anti-alias in the default graphic sets. The aforementioned HD ASCII sounds amazing for me.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Cruxador on January 02, 2011, 08:18:23 pm: Quote from: BaLLz on January 02, 2011, 03:52:57 pm
Quote from: Cruxador on January 02, 2011, 03:33:58 pm
Some tilesets share this cleanliness of form, including Phoebus and the "HD ASCII" tileset.
More graphically oriented ones such as Mayday or Ironhand, while they have their own charms, are indeed lacking in this.

But it's not really inherent to ASCII so much as a design thing.

HD ASCII? Can you link? Been looking everywhere for it!
Nope. I have no idea where you could find a download of it.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Flying Carcass on January 02, 2011, 08:23:41 pm: Aside from the dwarves and elves I use the mayday graphics and tileset. For the dwarves and elves (and soon humans) I use a graphics set I made for myself.

Dwarves
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v650/Flying_Carcass/FCDWARF.png)

Elves
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v650/Flying_Carcass/fcelf.png)
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: iceball3 on January 03, 2011, 09:06:13 am: Quote from: Duelmaster409 on January 02, 2011, 03:48:43 pm
Quote from: iceball3 on January 02, 2011, 03:35:45 pm
Damn there are too many topics exactly like this. It is ridiculous.

I'd like to believe it's okay to start threads expressing your opinion on ASCII vs. Graphics as long as they don't explode into flame wars. That usually doesn't happen however.
It's not that much okay if there are other threads about the exact same thing.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Samohan25 on January 03, 2011, 10:55:43 am: I personaly play using Phoebus and occasionaly Ironhand but I can understand ASCII fine as it is usialy used in succesion games, I just seem to prefer graphics, although one of the things I love about Phoebus is that the rock tiles show their uses, like plaster, flux. I may decide to try ASCII one day though.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Kav on January 03, 2011, 11:03:32 am: I love the original ASCII but I wanted just a little bit more. I needed higher definition square tiles that remained true to the original flavor. I find that this 16x16 tileset meets all of my needs and looks fantastic. I find it to be very clean and true to the original while providing me with the improvements I wanted.

(http://img.ie/29c93.png)

It is my modification of the "Marble Dice" tileset in the repository - http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Tileset_repository#Marble_Dice (http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Tileset_repository#Marble_Dice)
I blacked out the walls and floor tiles so that they don't "glow" when they have inscriptions with the special inscription graphics toggled off. I also made the gems look more like the original and fixed one of the river tiles not matching up exactly.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Vertigon on January 03, 2011, 01:18:31 pm: That is beautiful, thank you so much :D
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Bergelmir on January 03, 2011, 02:12:25 pm: I always use http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Tileset_repository#Tyrving (http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Tileset_repository#Tyrving). I do not like the default as it is not square. And graphics are not as clear for me as ASCII.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: NSQuote on January 03, 2011, 02:53:10 pm: Yeah, I've always loved classic ASCII graphics. Sure, the rectanglular tiles can be a bit weird when designing things, but I still love the cleanliness and the beautiful simplicity of the ascii graphics. The graphics honestly seem more complicated than the vanilla ascii set.

If I ever do use a tileset, it'd be the old Anikki set with vertical (V ^) ramps. It looks like the standard set, but with sligtly different SQUARE tiles. The text is also really nice, too.

(http://df.magmawiki.com/images/5/51/Df_anikki_2.png)
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: de5me7 on January 03, 2011, 03:50:55 pm: tried maydays once for abit but mostly used vanilla ascii, after reading this thread and going to the tile et repo...

im amazed at how many custom ascii sets people have done, tempted to try the bt micro one

df goes... more retro
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Cruxador on January 04, 2011, 12:17:05 am: Oh, I found the HD ASCII set, apparently.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=47236.0
It's not exactly the one I was thinking of, but so it goes. Maybe I'll never find the one I'm thinking of.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: nbonaparte on January 04, 2011, 06:19:15 pm: I recently remembered this one. The captnduck tutorials had it, and I redownloaded it. It's nice.
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Tileset_repository#Guybrush
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Tarran on January 04, 2011, 06:26:25 pm: To OP: Sounds like me. Started on tilesets, tried ASCII and never went back. 'Course, I do use a custom ASCII tileset(Dorten's), but it's basically ASCII.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: de5me7 on January 04, 2011, 06:57:27 pm: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60176.msg1355922#msg1355922 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60176.msg1355922#msg1355922)

new id seen this, the matix tile set, more confusing than ascii, i might give it a run
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Gatleos on January 04, 2011, 07:57:28 pm: Quote from: de5me7 on January 04, 2011, 06:57:27 pm
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60176.msg1355922#msg1355922 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60176.msg1355922#msg1355922)

new id seen this, the matix tile set, more confusing than ascii, i might give it a run
Trust me, it will break you. It's still awesome, though.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Alastar on January 05, 2011, 10:08:54 am: I prefer ASCII myself. Clean, readable and used quite cleverly in places.

That Matrix tileset is interesting... but having everything in shades of green is about as far as I'm willing to go there.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Kolbur on January 05, 2011, 11:42:43 am: I honestly wonder why many people here say that the ASCII mode is clean. ???
It's the noisiness of ASCII (like the . and , everywhere) that makes it unusable for me. Non-squareness and general unprettiness doesn't help either, but each to their own. I'm happy with the Mayday graphics.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: caknuck on January 05, 2011, 12:43:28 pm: I have never had the desire to try tilesets (although the concept of ASCII tilesets is... intriguing).

Then again, one of my first PC gaming experiences was playing Rogue off a 5 1/4" floppy 20 years ago.

Wow. I feel very old now.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Man of Paper on January 05, 2011, 01:01:33 pm: I play using whatever tileset comes with Genesis when I'm alone. When there's someone around, though, I revert to ASCII purely for the "wtfs".
I might start using the Matrix tileset for that reason now though.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: nbonaparte on January 05, 2011, 06:42:42 pm: Quote from: Kolbur on January 05, 2011, 11:42:43 am
I honestly wonder why many people here say that the ASCII mode is clean. ???
It's the noisiness of ASCII (like the . and , everywhere) that makes it unusable for me. Non-squareness and general unprettiness doesn't help either, but each to their own. I'm happy with the Mayday graphics.
There's an init option to change the ground to all periods. And there's a square version of the default bundled with DF, just switch over.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: onodera on January 06, 2011, 04:42:30 pm: I've always played with a tileset (first with a custom one, now using Phoebus'), but found out that in adventure mode ASCII works better. Camps and other features are more noticeable and I can tell apart my swordsman sidekick and a bandit swordsman. I then tried paying dwarf mode in ASCII, and turns out it's perfectly playable. The only thing I miss is streamlined gem/ore designations.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Wirevix on January 06, 2011, 05:04:08 pm: I enjoy playing with ASCII. Never actually tried a tileset, so I can't say if I'd enjoy it as well. I like that ASCII makes my creature-modding efforts easier; just have to assign it a symbol and I'm done, instead of worrying about drawing an image...

I've considered tilesets just for the fun of it, but every time I look at a screenshot of someone with one, inevitably they do something I don't like. Like making the ohm (vanilla statue) symbol into an actual statue. I use the ohm symbol for some modded creatures because its shape to me evokes cape-like wings folded over a figure (thus I use it, for example, for a humanoid dragon species.) I don't want it being replaced by statues. Hard-setting my ohms into statues removes that bit of creativity from my tile-assigning. I mean, I could just draw them their own creature tile, but that's just a random example.

Plus I've seen places where parts of the actual text get changed into symbols too. Like a [ getting turned into a shirt, so you have random little shirts scattered amongst the text. Someone claimed to me that doesn't happen anymore, but I keep seeing things like that pop up in screenshots, so it can't be all that fixed.

Once full graphics support is in so I don't have text getting confuse'd with descriptive tiles and all that, I'll worry about tilesets more.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: SurfinShroom on January 07, 2011, 05:03:31 am: Quote from: Wirevix on January 06, 2011, 05:04:08 pm
Plus I've seen places where parts of the actual text get changed into symbols too. Like a [ getting turned into a shirt, so you have random little shirts scattered amongst the text. Someone claimed to me that doesn't happen anymore, but I keep seeing things like that pop up in screenshots, so it can't be all that fixed.

Once full graphics support is in so I don't have text getting confuse'd with descriptive tiles and all that, I'll worry about tilesets more.
It used to do that for me :) I might try ascii eventually but i'm sticking to the most recent mayday tileset for now :D
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Max White on January 07, 2011, 05:10:54 am: These days I proudly use the matric tile set, and hoping that the lower case letters get a make over to make them less readable.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Thief^ on January 07, 2011, 09:32:10 am: Quote from: nbonaparte on January 04, 2011, 06:19:15 pm
I recently remembered this one. The captnduck tutorials had it, and I redownloaded it. It's nice.
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Tileset_repository#Guybrush
I use that one, plus the Dystopian_Rhetoric (http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/40d:Graphics_set_repository#Dystopian_Rhetoric) creature graphics plus a few of my own sprites (mule/donkey?, goat and doctor dwarf)
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: SolarShado on January 07, 2011, 10:49:45 am: I've always used ASCII, although i have switched to a 12x12 set from the wiki.

It's what I'm used to, Graphics sets mess with me (imo, 16x16 is way to small for a unambiguous, meaningful icon, especially when there's dozens on screen at once). Even the more "graphical" plain sets mess with me... because it's not what i'm used to...

Might try the matrix tileset sometime though... :D
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Urist McDepravity on January 07, 2011, 09:14:18 pm: I've been ASCII-only long before I even discovered DF. Rogue, Nethack, ADOM, and even several my own attempts at making rogue-likes made me perfectly tolerant to simple UIs.
Never tried tilesets myself, but screenshots of them annoy me. They give a very cheap look to DF.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Sysice on January 08, 2011, 06:24:54 am: It's weird. DF is one of the two things I can stand ASCII in (the other is Stone Soup), and I don't like it elsewhere. However, ASCII in DF looks so much better than any tilesets. I think it might be the varied ground tiles and its tendency to not just put boring black space everywhere. It makes it look more natural and clean.
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: Qinetix on January 08, 2011, 09:22:11 am: I played with ASCII before , but it iritated my eyes and I couldn't advance to make a fortress and learn wath to do
Right now I am playing with the phoebus tilepack
Title: Re: Oh, the heavenly ASCII
Post by: RantingRodent on January 08, 2011, 10:42:57 am: I started with ASCII to make sure I understood the game in its raw form before I started building my tileset. ASCII simply provides too little information for my taste. If Toady adds much more to the game he's going to start running into serious character reuse problems.