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[MMMM Tasty Rocks]

Hello yes
I've JUST started playing this wonderful game a few days ago.
I've already had lots of "fun"
I've also began understanding how the ASCII actually makes little pictures (aka I have been cursed with knowledge)
And, just today, a fort was going pretty well.
And then a wave of like 15 migrants came in. "Fun!"
This game is beautiful and equally painful, I've no intent to quit.

Off to go eat some granite now

[madpathmoth]

Welcome!  Might I suggest something?  If you haven't already, you should find and open your "init.txt" file and see what adjustments you might want to make to have a better experience.  If you haven't tried changing the tileset yet, you totally should.  Dwarf Fortress offers a staggering amount of customization when it comes to the visuals, as minimal as they are.  The DF Wiki has a Tileset Repository but, if you look on the the Tilesets and Graphics board on this forum, you can find a lot of user-made tilesets, and people have done really impressive and creative things with tilesets.  A good tileset and color scheme combination can really have a major effect on the experience, especially if you're playing with a specific goal in mind or want to establish a certain "mood" while playing, to really get into the dwarven mindset.  Altering the game's font can also have the benefit of making the walls of text you're expected to read easier (or harder, depending) to look at, which I personally find pretty important.  There's been at least a couple tilesets made with text clarity in mind, too, of course.

[MMMM Tasty Rocks]

Welcome!  Might I suggest something?  If you haven't already, you should find and open your "init.txt" file and see what adjustments you might want to make to have a better experience.  If you haven't tried changing the tileset yet, you totally should.  Dwarf Fortress offers a staggering amount of customization when it comes to the visuals, as minimal as they are.  The DF Wiki has a Tileset Repository but, if you look on the the Tilesets and Graphics board on this forum, you can find a lot of user-made tilesets, and people have done really impressive and creative things with tilesets.  A good tileset and color scheme combination can really have a major effect on the experience, especially if you're playing with a specific goal in mind or want to establish a certain "mood" while playing, to really get into the dwarven mindset.  Altering the game's font can also have the benefit of making the walls of text you're expected to read easier (or harder, depending) to look at, which I personally find pretty important.  There's been at least a couple tilesets made with text clarity in mind, too, of course.

Thank you! I'll make sure to look into it.
As a side note, I saw some tilesets were in fact actual little drawings and not ascii. As much as I love it, are those compatible? I thought that was steam-release only!

[A_Curious_Cat]

Welcome!  Might I suggest something?  If you haven't already, you should find and open your "init.txt" file and see what adjustments you might want to make to have a better experience.  If you haven't tried changing the tileset yet, you totally should.  Dwarf Fortress offers a staggering amount of customization when it comes to the visuals, as minimal as they are.  The DF Wiki has a Tileset Repository but, if you look on the the Tilesets and Graphics board on this forum, you can find a lot of user-made tilesets, and people have done really impressive and creative things with tilesets.  A good tileset and color scheme combination can really have a major effect on the experience, especially if you're playing with a specific goal in mind or want to establish a certain "mood" while playing, to really get into the dwarven mindset.  Altering the game's font can also have the benefit of making the walls of text you're expected to read easier (or harder, depending) to look at, which I personally find pretty important.  There's been at least a couple tilesets made with text clarity in mind, too, of course.

Telling them to use a graphical tileset instead of the Ascii Tileset handed down by Armok?  Blasphemy!



(Note:  I use the default ascii because 1) it’s what the wiki uses, and 2) it’s what I’m used to…)

[RLS0812]

After 12+ years, I've found the 'Text Will Be Text' mod [*1] with the 'Phoebus x16' tileset work very well for me.
 I can actually tell what is going on in my forts at a glance, without having to pause and interpret the visual mess that can sometimes present itself. 

*1 - Note: there is a bug with this mod that can cause the game to hard crash when doing new embarks ... switching to standard text to embark, and back to 'TWBT' fixes the issues.

[madpathmoth]

As a side note, I saw some tilesets were in fact actual little drawings and not ascii. As much as I love it, are those compatible? I thought that was steam-release only!

Telling them to use a graphical tileset instead of the Ascii Tileset handed down by Armok?  Blasphemy!

Technically they're all little drawings, but there's "character sets" ("character" being used in the sense of "a character of text") that conform to the game's default ASCII appeal while still being free to customize how dwarves, walls, and objects look to some extent; then there's "graphics sets", which are more complex and are kind of the half-step between ASCII and more common videogame pixel art.  Graphics sets are primarily to give creatures their own icons (dwarves are normally little faces, but everything else is a letter) and are slightly more complicated to set up, but not significantly.

I prefer to just use character sets; graphic sets do not affect the entire game (for instance, they don't change the actual text font in the game) so they need to be combined with character sets for the best experience.  Personally I just like the more simplistic visuals that are easier to keep visually cohesive.

Right now I'm using this Crayon Tileset made by agm some years ago because it's a great combination of visual clarity with an appealing aesthetic, that doesn't look too far from the default (making it easier to look at other people's games, or images from the Wiki, to learn how to play better).

[MMMM Tasty Rocks]

As a side note, I saw some tilesets were in fact actual little drawings and not ascii. As much as I love it, are those compatible? I thought that was steam-release only!

Telling them to use a graphical tileset instead of the Ascii Tileset handed down by Armok?  Blasphemy!

Technically they're all little drawings, but there's "character sets" ("character" being used in the sense of "a character of text") that conform to the game's default ASCII appeal while still being free to customize how dwarves, walls, and objects look to some extent; then there's "graphics sets", which are more complex and are kind of the half-step between ASCII and more common videogame pixel art.  Graphics sets are primarily to give creatures their own icons (dwarves are normally little faces, but everything else is a letter) and are slightly more complicated to set up, but not significantly.

I prefer to just use character sets; graphic sets do not affect the entire game (for instance, they don't change the actual text font in the game) so they need to be combined with character sets for the best experience.  Personally I just like the more simplistic visuals that are easier to keep visually cohesive.

Right now I'm using this Crayon Tileset made by agm some years ago because it's a great combination of visual clarity with an appealing aesthetic, that doesn't look too far from the default (making it easier to look at other people's games, or images from the Wiki, to learn how to play better).

Very much noted! Any other suggestions? Variety is the spice of life, after all!

[muldrake]

Thank you! I'll make sure to look into it.
As a side note, I saw some tilesets were in fact actual little drawings and not ascii. As much as I love it, are those compatible? I thought that was steam-release only!

The Lazy Newb Pack makes it really easy to change and swap these out.  Also it isn't incredibly difficult to mess around with init.txt but LNP also handles a lot of the changes you'd want to make without having to figure anything out.

[Urist McShire]

I have been using the Phoebus set within the Lazy Newb Pack for years, ever since v0.34 or earlier, I think.

Some advice that I give is "don't be afraid to experiment and make mistakes, but give yourself the opportunity to save scum if you're not happy with the result". Normally the game won't let you leave without saving, but ending the task via Task Manager will force exit the game without saving.

Now, some people will call that blasphemy, but I say that there is a difference between accepting things that just happen vs attempting something you know is probably dumb but wanting to see how it works out for you anyway.

Case in point, earlier today in one of my forts I was besieged by the undead. Over a hundred of them milling about. Decided "aw, what the heck, let's test my military against them" while I had 30 dwarves. 9 axedwarves, 1 swordsdwarf, 10 speardwarves, and 10 marksdwarves. Opened the bridges while my military waited in the hall with some trained war moose (which I had modded to be trainable in war and available upon embark). One human hammerman risen hunter comes through the gates before I close them again so that I don't get mobbed all at once. Handling them jn smaller numbers is smart.

Because I was running this on my little laptop, running the simulations of combat takes much more juice than what the poor thing likes to give DF, so my frame rate drops down to about 4 fps as the fighting starts. A half hour later, a civilian miner finally kills this undead hammerman with his pick while 25/30 of my military and all the moose lie dead in the street thanks to this guy's copper warhammer and shield, which I suppose, apparently he was a legendary shield user considering he blocked almost everything my dwarves threw at him and none of their attacks, no matter how much they stabbed and slashed this guy, could bring him down.

So went, "well, that didn't go according to plan!" End tasked with Task Manager, went back in time a couple of in-game weeks, and promptly decided NOT to do that again.

[MMMM Tasty Rocks]

Good to know. I hate to sound like a bother though, but where can I find this Pack?

[Urist McShire]

Good to know. I hate to sound like a bother though, but where can I find this Pack?

That's not a bother at all. Here's a link to the Utilities page on the wiki. The first link under Lazy Newb Pack is the one that I have been using for a while now. It's packed with tilesets, optional utilities like Dwarf Therapist, and DFHack, as well as providing a nice convenient way to alter the d_init file to alter some common functions of the game, such as the total number of dwarves possible in your fortress, and the number you would like immigration to cease at, whether invader sieges and other hostile creatures arrive (not wildlife, however), if aquifers are present in the world, and other stuff.

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Utilities