Print

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

[funeymonkey]

I just cant seem to get the hang of the graphics, no matter what tile set i use. How long did it take you guys to overcome the learning curve and finally start to have fun?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Just give it a while. Once you start playing, you won't even see smiley faces, letters, and symbols, just "Cheesemaker, lasher-goblin, tree..." Heck, I'm so used to ASCII that graphics are tough to decipher for me!

[funeymonkey]

granted ive only heard about the game recently. im hoping after watching some tutorial videos for awhile ill be able to at least get the basics down. its a ton to comprehend though. but i cant wait until i start getting fluid with it!

[Putnam]

"v" and "k" are your favorite keys. Use them often!

[Corai]

Took me a few hours to overcome graphics. A few weeks to figure out how to actually mine.

[Wellincolin]

Give it a time. If it doesn't help, use stonesense.
Stonesense's graphics reminds me of Tactics Ogre for the SNES.

[Cruxador]

For me it was pretty instant. That said, I was using a tileset and I started with the old "first fortress" guide on the wiki. If you try to just diving into a pile of punctuation, it might take you a bit longer.

[hermes]

Yeah I would recommend starting with a graphical set too.  It makes the initial experience more accessible, though you still need v and k for looking which trains you for ASCII if you want to switch later.  I probably switched after a year of playing, can't really say why but ASCII just began to feel more natural.

[LoSboccacc]

partly depends on your previous experience.

I played a lot of rogues, so I had an easier time starting from adventure mode, to get a sense of what I was looking at, then switching to fortress mode.

I did a bit of graphical set usage, but in the end it only confuses me more than symbols, for some reason.

also, a nicer, square 16x16 font will help a long way, even without switching graphics on.

[Starver]

Put me down in the "I understand the ANSI-like better than graphical tilesets" camp.  (Not to poo-poo those who applied their considerable artistic skills towards making the replacement tilesets.  I think there's some good stuff in there, I just don't understand the many varied representations of, say, creatures as well as I do the 'character' versions.)

As mentioned, if you're not sure what you're looking for, 'v' and 'k' (and various deeper menus) give you all the information you need, and pausing   You can pause whenever you like, indeed for most management issues (except for squad control, in fact, if I have it right) most of the time you're not just watching things happen you are paused.  You can look at the entire map, investigate the thoughts of every single unit, find the location (with a good enough Manager) of every single item, assign and de-assign jobs galore, etc, etc, etc, all in a single dwarven heartbeat.

You'll get used to what you're seeing, understanding what's probably happening in the background, work out how to jump easily between points or units of interest, etc...  (Whatever graphical system you're using.)  Bear with it, and keep poking away.

And, of course, don't be afraid of 'losing' and starting over again.  "Losing is fun!", after all.  If not !!fun!!...

[thvaz]

In the old times all you needed was reading "Surviving the first winter"...

[SanDiego]

When I begun, I used [k] almost every two minutes to check some random critter roaming around, but in a week I had a solid database of ASCII critters in my brain and in two more months I had my first ASCII dream.

[Ghills]

It took me several weeks until I got the hang of it, and a few months before it was instantaneous.  Also, if the ASCII-like look doesn't work for you try switching to a tileset.  That really let me get a feel for what the game was like, which helped with interpreting the ASCII-like graphics when I ran into them.

[Loud Whispers]

I just cant seem to get the hang of the graphics, no matter what tile set i use. How long did it take you guys to overcome the learning curve and finally start to have fun?

The ASCII was the easy part. Keeping the Dwarves alive, harder. Knowing how to achieve anything, harder still.

[Scow2]

Just give it a while. Once you start playing, you won't even see smiley faces, letters, and symbols, just "Cheesemaker, lasher-goblin, tree..." Heck, I'm so used to ASCII that graphics are tough to decipher for me!

^I'm with this guy. In fact, because of this, I find it obnoxious to try to figure out what's going on in posts that DO use graphic tilesets. The only things that continue to trip me up is surface vegetation, but that's because it's a LOT of noise.