Bay 12 Games Forum

Hey, i havent played DF for many years, but was quite into modding it back in the day, tho a lot has been forgotten, such as what precise formats should be used!

I'm recently playing again with the Vettlingr 32x32 tileset, and the ShizzleClean_text font.
Though im finding the font to be a bit too large (but i love how readable the letters are).

I tried rescaling it in photoshop to the same exact pixel size as the vanilla curses800x600 file, but no matter what i try (either constraining the ratio, or not) i keep getting tiny slivers of the letters at the top and bottom, as if the tiles arent aligned, even though the only thing i've done is scale it down.

Any help getting the ShizzleClean font to the same size as curses800x600? And/or to a 16x16 size? Thanks!

Edit: okay so, i guess ShizzleClean_text is a 16x20 size, im trying to get it down a few notches, to like a 12x16 or something.
What really confuses me about this whole thing is that, i'm comparing to other fonts like Nagidal24x24shadeBeards which is a 24x24 font, and it looks SMALLER ingame than the 16x20 font..

I'm a big fan of this artifact, considering how early the fort is.
Sadly it isnt vomit-proof.





I mean, how does this even happen? The fort has been swimming in hundreds of booze and cherry wine, a fresh river runs right outside our gate, ten fishermen are happily catching so many fish that they are rotting by the dozens on the riverbanks.
Yet my Mayor, in his splendid apartment with an artifact door worth 98000, is somehow forced to drink vomit? 
The comedy in this game, by its sheer random nature, still amuses me. 

Well, I think the biggest reason right now that it is so mind-bending headache-inducing to read long lines of text in DF is because the names make no sense what so ever.
For instance, read the following 2 examples, the first in true DF style and the second in a normal human being non-psychopath style.

"Hello, I am Ast Urighzur from The Mountainhomes of The Valley behind Artbananas Yellowfire. I bring word from my king, the leader of Urbanunderwear The Portal of Underwear."

"Hello, I am Ast Urighzur from The Banana Mountainhomes. I bring word from my king, the leader of The Coven of Underwear."

Which is easier to read? The randomization in DF, while providing interesting results, is some of the worst i've ever seen in a game. The problem is that it interferes with gameplay and usability. It is VERY hard to remember any names of any places, dwarves or civilizations because of how illogical their names are. I am so tired of never remembering my own fort name or what religion most of my dwarves follow.
There is so much interesting depth and information in DF, like the religion/cult the dwarves follow, the history of said cults and events, and the places themselves.
This is why I can't play Adventure mode, no matter how badly i want to. I can't remember any names of any quest, enemies, places, events or stories.
It's a real shame, that something so small can have such a massive negative effect on usability.

I feel like all of that amazing depth is lost, utterly scrambled and ruined, because of how awful the randomly generated names are. It is very hard for you to actually read and remember these things. It would be awesome to be able to do that, to remember the names and events, rather than just seeing a jumbled mess of words you will forget in 5 minutes again.
All that history that is generated is wasted due to this.

This also ties in with how dwarven names are sometimes translated to english, with no explanation of why or when that is. This also impacts usability a great deal.
If i look at a dwarf called Urist Burznikuk, then i want to find him in another screen, it turns out his surname is now translated to english!
How am i supposed to find that dwarf now, without a google-dwarf-translate window up at all times?
It makes no sense to seperate it like this ingame, keep it consistent instead for usability. Either have it always be dwarven names, or always english. Have a .ini setting for the player to choose wich he prefers.
Anything is better than a random illogical mix.
And I'm studying both Mandarin and Hangul at the moment, so it's not like i've got a usual problem with reading or comprehending strange words or syllables.
It's more a matter of logic, if it is illogical our brains have great difficulty reading it.

Thoughts?
Finally I must ask if there is a mod out there that improves the random name generation, thanks.