Print

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

[Armok]

ASCII is BEAUTIFUL!
This game will ALWAYS remain precious ASCII, ALWAYS!
Die sinful eyecandy, behold the superiority of ASCII!!

And there is NOTHING wrong whit the UI, it is loads better than most graphical games I have seen.

The only ting this game has ever done wrong, and ever will do wrong, is insulting kobolds.

WHAT?!? YOU DON'T AGREE???
I'll never understand humans...  :roll:
[/STEREOTYPE]

[Bryan Baywood]

quote:Originally posted by herrbdog:
<STRONG>

...only if it menaces with spikes of something...</STRONG>

Menaces with spikes of cotton?

[ March 15, 2008: Message edited by: Bryan Baywood ]

[gimli]

quote:Originally posted by Armok:
<STRONG>ASCII is BEAUTIFUL!
This game will ALWAYS remain precious ASCII, ALWAYS!
Die sinful eyecandy, behold the superiority of ASCII!!

And there is NOTHING wrong whit the UI, it is loads better than most graphical games I have seen.

The only ting this game has ever done wrong, and ever will do wrong, is insulting kobolds.

WHAT?!? YOU DON'T AGREE???
I'll never understand humans...    
ASCII is ok for a roguelike, but that is all. However I prefer graphical roguelikes and RPG games, Eschalon is a very fine new RPG game btw. Old school with nice and simple graphics.

[ March 16, 2008: Message edited by: gimli ]

[dreiche2]

quote:Originally posted by gimli:
<STRONG>
The truth is that -as most of the reviews stated- the potential is big in this game even if its alpha, but its almost unplayable.
</STRONG>

That's simply not true. Most reviews I've read might say the ASCII is a hurdle you have to take in the beginning, but when you're used to it, it's no problem any more. You could argue whether that's a bad thing (and we had that discussion many times already, I think yourself started a pretty big one some time ago), but saying the game is unplayable because of that is just not true, either.

quote:Originally posted by gimli:
<STRONG>
PS. I find "people like you" sentences very offensive. This is what making this board very annoying for lot of people. </STRONG>

I have no idea what you're talking about. This must be the single most mature and polite board on the internet. And to be honest, I find you're post somewhat offensive itself, and I'm not even an ASCII fanatic (like many other people here aren't either - including Toady). You're wording isn't exactly diplomatic, and you basically call people here fanboys (if in a quote) before someone even has replied to your post. Well, if you get angry replies then, that's what I call self-fulfilling prophecy.

Finally, on the point, I wonder if at this stage of development it is actually only beneficial to have as many players as possible. Like I said, personally I don't need ASCII (though it has advantages and disadvantages much like reading a book versus watching a film). Also, I'm not talking about elitism here, in the sense that only "smart" people should play DF. However, there is one advantage to the crude interface and "difficult" graphics: People playing this game are willing to put some effort into it - and that might be the right mindset for a game that's in alpha, changes every other week, naturally has a lot of bugs, etc.

Just another point to consider, maybe not a big one, though.

[Dae]

AFAIK, DF already has a decent UI for an ASCII game. It's easily understandable once you get the trick.
UI isn't the first priority now, Toady said, I totally agree with him. The only ones who would mind are casual gamers (although I wouldn't describe myself as hardcore gamer).
Nowadays, the tendancy is to please those casual gamers, which leads to HUGE differences in quality : just have a look at Morrowind and then vanilla Oblivion (although Shivering Isles is pretty cool actually^^).
Now, DF is the very deepest game I've ever heard of, and you have to commit yourself into playing it. You have to spend time learning how to trade, how to handle moods, how to farm and so on. Learning to see through ASCII is but a tiny part of the process.
If you can't do it, you can't play DF.

More, graphics are on the list, but I think they will be the last thing in. First cause otherwise changing something in the game would mean changing the UI,  second because for a programmer, more for ONE programmer alone, graphics are a pain the... well, wherever, it's painful.
ASCII is quite handy cause it isn't that abstract, you can easily play with it, and it's easy to make changes on it compared to a 3D UI.

Finally, I don't think money is Toady's goal.

[numerobis]

quote:Originally posted by Dae:
<STRONG>ASCII is quite handy cause it isn't that abstract, you can easily play with it, and it's easy to make changes on it compared to a 3D UI.</STRONG>

I don't much care about the beauty of the graphics -- that's just eye candy.  I care about the UI, which currently is not very good: it's hard to discover new things, and similar tasks are often done using orthogonal methods.  It obviously doesn't stop me from playing it, but it does stop a lot of other people I know.  Basically, I want to play Dwarf Fortress.  I don't want to play "should I use the arrow keys or the +- keys here?"

[YolkFolk]

Customers "donate" money in return for a product they would like to have.
Supporters donate money to help make a product they would like to have.

If you don't want to give money because you feel you get are not getting enough right now, then thats fine, but many of those who are donating now are doing so because they see the potential that DF has, and realize that donating to Toady is more like investing than shopping.

[Fishersalwaysdie]

ASCII fanatics a minority?
Not fanboys?

It seems I am at the wrong forum...

[Dae]

Anyway, I remember someone said Presentation Arc was following Army Arc, so there might be a few changes about the UI.

True that if we could build floors by selecting the area via the mouse, it would be easier  

...

Is it me, or is this topic going anyhere?

[Torak]

Never understood the "UI is bad" testament. I mean, it says what you can do on any page, the buttons the scroll are always the same two combinations, and it's not even hard to understand since if you can read, you can play the game.

The argument that a "pretty" interface would be easier to understand doesn't make sense to me as well, there's still going to be a million things to do on any given page, and making the letters cursive, or making the background colorful with a border wont change that. I just don't see how that is supposed to detract from the game in any way.

[Davion]

quote:Originally posted by Torak:
<STRONG>Never understood the "UI is bad" testament. I mean, it says what you can do on any page, the buttons the scroll are always the same two combinations, and it's not even hard to understand since if you can read, you can play the game.

The argument that a "pretty" interface would be easier to understand doesn't make sense to me as well, there's still going to be a million things to do on any given page, and making the letters cursive, or making the background colorful with a border wont change that. I just don't see how that is supposed to detract from the game in any way.</STRONG>

There's more to UI design than making everything look pretty. It has a lot to do with flow, how each element of the interface links together, how much time it takes for a user to access something, move the mouse, get to a menu, etc. Ergonomics comes into play quite a bit, and on a primitive level, aesthetics.

While I don't have any problems navigating the interface, it is cumbersome at times, and I can understand some peoples frustration in dealing with it.

[DJ]

Here's an example of a bad thing in DF interface: you have to open the view screen for every individual item you want to dump, which gets pretty cumbersome when you're dumping rock. There's a million of such little things in DF, and an overhaul of interface would make the playing experience much more enjoyable.

However, as new features get added, they don't mesh well with this new interface and you're back to square one. Therefore, a complete overhaul of the interface is a waste of effort. But this doesn't mean that ignoring the current interface problems and just piling up new problems on top of them will work out fine. At some point the interface might become so frustrating as to make playing the game a chore.

The way I see it, this is very similar to bugs. There needs to be a balance between improving the interface and adding features. Obviously, majority of effort should go towards new features, but enough effort should be dedicated to interface to stop it from getting worse, or just a bit more to slowly improve it.

[Skooma]

quote:Originally posted by Slappy Moose:
<STRONG>I think the increase is from natural internet sharing, mostly. I learned about DF on the Facepunch Studio's forum, and I decided to try it out after hearing about it for years.</STRONG>

You too?

I hope they include tantrum cascades and carps into The Sims 3.  

[TheSpaceMan]

I think many gameprogrammers play DF. I am one of them. Doesn't mean that they'll copy anything from the game, they might but the context will probably be completly diffrent. I bet you can't even build a house over 3 floors in sims 3.

[Mr.Person]

quote:Originally posted by TheSpaceMan:
<STRONG>I think many gameprogrammers play DF. I am one of them. Doesn't mean that they'll copy anything from the game, they might but the context will probably be completly diffrent. I bet you can't even build a house over 3 floors in sims 3. </STRONG>

There was a thread earlier about how the Warhammer40k Online devs played DF, I think.

Where did the Presentation Arc after Army Arc rumor come from? IRC? I haven't seen anything on the forums or website about plans after the Army Arc.

Graphics, the easy way. Allow the font tileset to be larger than 16x16. Bam, anything in the raws can have it's own image. Considering the graphic tilesets already do this, it would mostly be syncing back up to older code. I'm gonna estimate that would take a month... (Note, this could take upwards a year depending on Toady's code.)