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[Bronzebeard]

Before everyone gets too doom and gloom about the horror of playing DF sans graphics, I should point out that DFG isn't the only tileset out there. Phoebus and Ironhand both make full graphic tilesets that are going to continue to be so for the forseeable future.

I doubt they're equivalent to DFG, because the reason DFG has to downgrade is a sheer deficit of symbols. In other words, Toady is making more things as symbol x when x already defined something corresponding to a sprite in a tileset. But since that sprite was, say, a tree, and the new item that shares it is, say, a shovel, it would quickly become redundant (or at least very messy) to transcribe the symbol to begin with ― forcing you to remove the sprite & leave it alone.
I don't know whether everything in the game already uses all 128 ASCII characters, because (if not) a tileset author could undergo the (I think) extremely difficult (if not impossible) process of redefining some of the game's characters as other characters . . . but to anyone who really knows the details, I could be way out there. Either way, I doubt any other tileset authors've done that, provided it's possible, so all tilesets as complete as DFG was should be running into the same issues. If not, they may already be like DFGs (which is the new, slimmer version that's the subject of conversation).

[Cruxador]

I didn't know people still used Mayday. I thought Phoebus and Ironhand were the big ones these days. Good to see Mayday is making something for people who just want an improved ASCII now, that's a group that hasn't had a good option for a while

[Epithemius]

The one thing I really did like about Mayday were those walls. They looked much better than the Ironhand walls and they looked so much smoother.

[Yag Alone]

I don't know whether everything in the game already uses all 128 256 ASCII characters, because (if not) a tileset author could undergo the (I think) extremely difficult (if not impossible) process of redefining some of the game's characters as other characters . . .

Phoebus redefine some of the chars in the raws in order to gain a few more tiles. This makes a phoebus game very weird in plain ASCII...

[Bronzebeard]

Phoebus redefine some of the chars in the raws in order to gain a few more tiles. This makes a phoebus game very weird in plain ASCII...

My bad. Is it that easy? I'm surprised if Mayday hadn't already been doing that, then. If not, that would explain how DFG has problems whereas Phoebus's doesn't (if it doesn't).

[Neonivek]

I didn't know people still used Mayday. I thought Phoebus and Ironhand were the big ones these days. Good to see Mayday is making something for people who just want an improved ASCII now, that's a group that hasn't had a good option for a while

People just skip over those and go straight to the source of Mayday since he has a website.

He is also the person I usually get people to download when it is their first try.

The ability to know what you are fighting immediately when seeing it is just a large boon.

[MarcAFK]

Oh my, i've been playing in ASCII lately because the mayday set i was used to had changed a bit since 40d, but i don't think i could get used to full ascii, certain things just confuse me, like open or closed lever being too similar to various other o symbols.
I was used to seeing weird anomalies like cheese in walls and such, it was fine as long as stuff wasn't changed around in each update.
Also i should add it was tiny pirate's tutorial and Mayday's glorious 40D tileset that convinced me to play

[darklord92]

it's not just the creatures tileset makers have to worry about now. the game mechanics have changed slightly. such as site maps. I can see why he made the wall changes. If he changed the tiles for the sitemaps i think it'll make it more confusing, the line down the center looks similar to a road hmmm...

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/site_travel.png

[Bronzebeard]

it's not just the creatures tileset makers have to worry about now. the game mechanics have changed slightly. such as site maps. I can see why he made the wall changes. If he changed the tiles for the sitemaps i think it'll make it more confusing, the line down the center looks similar to a road hmmm...

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/site_travel.png

That's an excellent explanation. Not sure if wall tiles were ever used for roads, though; I think he always used river-like lines for them on maps.

[Mike Mayday]

Hey guys, I've only just discovered this thread...
I can see that the response is somewhat more negative than I had expected. We'll see what the new release will allow for, but my hopes are low.

Phoebus redefine some of the chars in the raws in order to gain a few more tiles. This makes a phoebus game very weird in plain ASCII...

My bad. Is it that easy? I'm surprised if Mayday hadn't already been doing that, then. If not, that would explain how DFG has problems whereas Phoebus's doesn't (if it doesn't).

I have, in fact, been doing that as well. It's just that the game doesn't always allow you to do it (in fact, in only affects walls, vermin and plants). All the new tools, objects, healthcare equipment- they use tiles that were previously graphical representations of completely different objects- so now neither can be graphical. Add to that the upcoming woes of having to worry about the site map as well and it's just... well, too much for me.

RE: walls, in line with keeping things simple, I wanted to implement a differentiation:
-if it's graphics, it's a creature
-if it's a square, it's a wall
-if it's a symbol- it's a plant or an object.
This should also help keep the sitemap clearer- but we'll see about that.

[KillHour]

I think it's about time to start making waves about this again.  Since the release is so imminent, we should at least ask Toady to take a look at what improvements are feasible after the customary bug fix releases.

[darklord92]

So your going to be basing the new set off a "legend"? hmmm.... the issue i see that affects this msotly is the walls and floors. thats what we see commonly in DF. maybe we can see what it looks like with the walls floor and old "sparkly" ground tiles will look like before we jump to the solid line walls? aside from symbols thats what i found made DF easy. a consistent ground instead of  '.,'.',''.,.',.','.',,'.',''.,'.'," even the period mode in df int.txt was confusing. and vermin only being a larger period made it worse when tiles began to flicker.

[Bronzebeard]

Hey guys, I've only just discovered this thread...
I can see that the response is somewhat more negative than I had expected. We'll see what the new release will allow for, but my hopes are low.

Mayday, I first want to thank you for taking the time to read & respond to this thread. Secondly, I think a good measure of negativity's natural with something as dramatic as moving away from graphics. For lack of understanding in what actually goes in creating a tileset like yours, I'll imagine it's quite difficult -- particularly in keeping up with Toady's changes.

I have, in fact, been doing that as well. It's just that the game doesn't always allow you to do it (in fact, in only affects walls, vermin and plants). All the new tools, objects, healthcare equipment- they use tiles that were previously graphical representations of completely different objects- so now neither can be graphical. Add to that the upcoming woes of having to worry about the site map as well and it's just... well, too much for me.

RE: walls, in line with keeping things simple, I wanted to implement a differentiation:
-if it's graphics, it's a creature
-if it's a square, it's a wall
-if it's a symbol- it's a plant or an object.
This should also help keep the sitemap clearer- but we'll see about that.

My only point of contention with the new tileset apart from anything to do with ASCII's been the new walls. I understand your new philosophy, & while I've never had trouble discerning walls from anything else, I'll defer to your judgement in that it makes things visually simpler. However, could you perhaps put in an alternate tileset (similar to the NO-HIGHLIGHT, etc.) with the old walls back? I think that'd please a lot of people who don't like the new walls, & hate seeing them change considering all the other changes to digest.
At the least, would it be okay to manually replace the new wall sprites with the old ones from DFG? (It'd be a pain to do that with each release if there's any tileset changes, but it'd be something.)

[Socializator]

Although I am using Phoebus, let me express my pure sadness of the current state of afairs. The DF is probably internally quite mess if assigning custom and unique icons to objects is such a pain... Seems like level of abstraction is quite low...
Toady is really missing on lot of possible donors by not prioritizing presentation arc... but we can at least dream about translation support, full graphic support or even... dare I say... abstracted user interface.
I dont want to sound overly negative tho, I like new features too and we can be quite happy that this game didnt turn into abandonware. It is just to represent this nonexistent majority on this board - players who tried but fail to comprehend the look and feel of DF and thus left DF forever. We have sort of selection bias going on on this boards, where people largely prefer new features with minority(?) wishing for bugfixes.

That being said, noone can really blame any graphic developer for basically giving up...

[Bronzebeard]

we can be quite happy that this game didnt turn into abandonware.

I don't think that would happen without tilesets, anyway. Sure, the market may thin a little, but I would've played it vanilla if I had to.