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[Cardinal]

Did Shoku just give his own brain a bad review?

You gotta call it like you see it, man, otherwise people will question your integrity.

[Shoku]

Did Shoku just give his own brain a bad review?

You gotta call it like you see it, man, otherwise people will question your integrity.

If you follow some of the tone I'm really saying human brains in general are kind of crappy at graphics but me-specific things include some processor loop style obsession issues, (allegedly) hyper-arrogance,  emotional instability (though I've sort of constructed an override I use most of the time,) social anxiety, and general deficiency in common sense.

The positive qualities may more or less balance it out but it's clearly not the market standard.
But hey, having something different from what every else has got is useful from time to time. Well, not when it's useless garbage but as long as it can still perform the same functions to some degree.

I kind of see it as a pro that I can be critical of the essence of "me" though. Way too many people can't even handle the idea and I don't think most can make much use of it.

[Lancensis]

(though I've sort of constructed an override I use most of the time,)

Ah! It's open source

[GlyphGryph]

Nah, its actually seriously closed source, but that doesn't mean you can't shoehorn in a few good hacks to make it work better.

[Sizik]

After taking a few new drawing classes I've come to realize that my mind actually doesn't visualize in very high quality. You can also see it by directing yourself while dreaming- details like writing just aren't there for me and the textures are so blurred even things like buttons on a remote are only ok if I don't look.
As such I've had a hard time not lucid dreaming since I started noticing it.

My brain's got enough memory to hold a pretty screenshot easily enough but it's easy to make a single frame look great in photoshop but rendering something like that takes a lot more power.

But I guess if you're willing to not ever look for details that aren't the first things you notice it doesn't ever come up. Actually it's probably really hard for most people to look for things they wouldn't usually look for first in dreams and mental images.

I suppose it's like this: Say you're dreaming about Abraham Lincoln. You'd probably see him as looking somewhat like this:


Now that's a rough estimate of what you would see in you mind when you picture him. But notice the size of the picture: 50x50 pixels. Scaled up, that looks like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

which looks nothing (detail-wise) like the original:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What your brain does is remember only the major details (haircut, beard, sunken cheeks, serious expression, deep-set eyes) of the face, and fills in the rest should you decide to get up close and personal with Mr. Lincoln. This doesn't work so well with writing, which needs a certain level of detail to make sense. Your brain only remembers that there's bunches of squiggly symbols arranged in lines on a page, and when you look closer, it fills it in with nonsense.

[sproingie]

What's funny about Lincoln in particular is that he's typically portrayed with this deep solemn booming voice, when in fact the historical accounts of his speech that mention the sound of his voice typically described it as "high pitched and flutey".

[mendonca]

Concentrating on the physical appearance is one aspect of it, yes, but there is also the things that aren't purely visual. Imagining the goblins approaching the fort, in formation, the sound of there rattling armour, the smell of the flatulent beak dogs, the fear of the peasant dwarves, the Rallying of the Greened Tooth (Squad of Macedwarves), the clanking of their armor as they scuttle towards a clash of arms. Legs, Elbows, Placentae, everywhere. Floor coated with a mixture of goblin and dwarf blood, crushing blows raining down, sounds, fear, pain, victory, anguish, injuries, a saved fortress.

Done with imperfect sound, imperfectly animated 3-d models, imperfect collision detection, I think you can miss out on something, you are told half the details so you don't bother to see the rest. If you aren't told anything you need to invest a bit of thought in it to see how it all happens.

That's my take on it anyway. It's almost like a good book that you are invested in.

[James.Denholm]

And there is another side to that as well, of course. To use your example of interesting books, no two people will have the exact same mental image of a character.

To apply it to DF: I would not be surprised if your idea of a dorf was at least somewhat different to my own. Of course, there is always the "cannon" descriptions that the community decides on, but not all players follow that, or are even aware of it.

A better example - Plump Helmets. The general consensus is that they are mushrooms of some description, but what shape are they? Are they tall or short, thick or thin? Do the tops droop down over the stem, weeping willow style, or do they form hard, near-flat disks? What colour  are they, what do they taste like? And so on.

I think that's one of the strengths of DF, or rather ASCII games in general - The player isn't restricted by the developers, and their imagination is given the space to soar as high as the giant eagles would.

[Footkerchief]

Regarding the caverns and what Footkerchief quoted a page or two ago, I didn't know that they were reduced in size somewhat from that old screenshot, but heck, I'd rather have natural looking caverns than the labrynth of one tile wide tunnels we get now for caves.

No no, that quote was about the caves from the current version being smaller in the next version.  Which is a good thing, because the current caves are sprawling and boring.  The underground layers will have gigantic caverns like in the screenshots.  Here's the quote again:

So will versions of those massive caverns from a few months ago be the general replacement of our current caves or merely an addition?

The layers have forced a shrinking of caves, due to the way the features are currently set up, but there will still be caves connecting the outside to the inside.  The shrinking is probably welcome, since you can locate megabeasts more easily while still having the expansive layers to explore.  Right now, there aren't any dead-end caves that skip the top layer (unless you have no layers), but there should be.  I've made cave entrances a little better looking than the giant sinkhole things with stairs, but I'll still need actual cliffs before I can make neat entrances.  Right now I'm using fake cliff bulge things.

[Lemunde]

And there is another side to that as well, of course. To use your example of interesting books, no two people will have the exact same mental image of a character.

To apply it to DF: I would not be surprised if your idea of a dorf was at least somewhat different to my own. Of course, there is always the "cannon" descriptions that the community decides on, but not all players follow that, or are even aware of it.

A better example - Plump Helmets. The general consensus is that they are mushrooms of some description, but what shape are they? Are they tall or short, thick or thin? Do the tops droop down over the stem, weeping willow style, or do they form hard, near-flat disks? What colour  are they, what do they taste like? And so on.

I think that's one of the strengths of DF, or rather ASCII games in general - The player isn't restricted by the developers, and their imagination is given the space to soar as high as the giant eagles would.

Obviously not everyone thinks as you do, otherwise we wouldn't have graphics sets(albeit limited).  I suppose even they require a bit of imagination but I believe many would be thrilled at a full blown graphics and audio overhaul.  Of course not everyone would, otherwise I wouldn't be replying to this post.

That said, I see no reason not to treat it as the graphics sets we use now.  By default, Dwarf Fortress only comes with the minimum of what you need to run it, with support for graphical enhancements that you have to download separately.  All we really need is for the engine to support sounds for events and let people use whatever audio set they want or none at all as the case may be.

[Outcast Orange]

Yeah, at least we are guaranteed the happy lute playing stuffs.

I always like that track.

[smjjames]

Regarding the caverns and what Footkerchief quoted a page or two ago, I didn't know that they were reduced in size somewhat from that old screenshot, but heck, I'd rather have natural looking caverns than the labrynth of one tile wide tunnels we get now for caves.

No no, that quote was about the caves from the current version being smaller in the next version.  Which is a good thing, because the current caves are sprawling and boring.  The underground layers will have gigantic caverns like in the screenshots.  Here's the quote again:

So will versions of those massive caverns from a few months ago be the general replacement of our current caves or merely an addition?

The layers have forced a shrinking of caves, due to the way the features are currently set up, but there will still be caves connecting the outside to the inside.  The shrinking is probably welcome, since you can locate megabeasts more easily while still having the expansive layers to explore.  Right now, there aren't any dead-end caves that skip the top layer (unless you have no layers), but there should be.  I've made cave entrances a little better looking than the giant sinkhole things with stairs, but I'll still need actual cliffs before I can make neat entrances.  Right now I'm using fake cliff bulge things.

Oh, I misread then. They could represent small caves or maybe ancient burrows (as in animal burrows, not the concept thats in the next version). Although they would be burrows dug by something pretty big.

I imagine the new cave entrances like the classic mine entrance graphic, a small hill or a slope in the ground that has the entrance to the mine into its side. Even if its stereotypical, its certainly better than the current ones. In fact, I found the sinkhole entrance kind of odd when I saw it for the first time in fort mode.

The ramp variation could be hard to pull off without it looking too horrible given the way z-levels work.

[CobaltKobold]

- Plump Helmets. The general consensus is that they are mushrooms of some description, but what shape are they? Are they tall or short, thick or thin? Do the tops droop down over the stem, weeping willow style, or do they form hard, near-flat disks? What colour  are they, what do they taste like? And so on.

I...OK, the stems could be thick or thin with the helmet still being plump.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I dunno...I know what immediately springs to mind when someone mentioned a plump purple mushroom with a soft edible helmet.

And that is the time-honoured game of golf.

[James.Denholm]

- Plump Helmets. The general consensus is that they are mushrooms of some description, but what shape are they? Are they tall or short, thick or thin? Do the tops droop down over the stem, weeping willow style, or do they form hard, near-flat disks? What colour  are they, what do they taste like? And so on.

I...OK, the stems could be thick or thin with the helmet still being plump.

...

It's just a name, there are plenty of names that are contradictary, like... like... iPods! They aren't pods! They don't even resemble pods!

James.Denholm cancels excuse-making: Throwing tantrum.