I never thought the ASCII graphics were a big problem in Dwarf Fortress; once you get used to it using a bunch of symbols as decoration, almost all the weird stuff ends up being things you placed yourself. On the other hand, the complete lack of UX consistency - whether a given submenu will use primary/secondary cursor keys, nested menus, or a pile of hotkeys - is a lot harder to deal with.
I like how the ascii graphics look better but the fact that they are not square drives me crazy. I used tilesets when I was learning the game which I would recommend since it can be a lot to take in all at once.
Dwarf Fortress: An actual look at graphical improvements
91–100 of 142 posts
Re: Dwarf Fortress: An actual look at graphical improvements
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally agree. A lot of those disagreeing with you find the ASCII graphics to be a barrier to initial entry, which is true, but it is a barrier that you can overcome quickly and feel quite comfortable with. On the other hand, having spent many hours with the game, the UX issues you mention are what block me from building fluid muscle memory and being able to really get into the game.
Graphics is not the main issue here. There are other issues that are much more important. Like the jobs interface. I don't want to have to run Dwarf Therapist alongside it, when games like Rimworld and ONI manage just fine.
I've been playing for some time using dfhack's "autolabor" feature, and it streamlines things immensely.
Granted, it ends up essentially just turning on every profession for every dwarf, but it's still possible to restrict workshops to certain dwarves. For example, you might have a carpentry workshop set to produce endless amounts of wooden shields, but only allow skilled carpenters access to it.
Re: Dwarf Fortress: An actual look at graphical improvements
#93There is already a pretty excellent 3D isometric front end for Dwarf Fortress. The name eludes me but it's well known within the community. However - I found that many parts of Dwarf Fortress disappointed me (and I was hyped as heck to play it - given that I'm a fan of Nethack, DCSS, Cataclysm, and basically any rougelike or rougelite). The game just feels extremely unfinished. Adventure mode is a total joke. Perform…
> ...3D isometric front end for Dwarf Fortress
There is more than one mod in this category, but you may be thinking of Stonesense: https://dfhack.readthedocs.io/en/stable/plugins/stonesense/d...
DF is a bit rough as a casual gamer (me), but don’t many game designers consider it the greatest game ever made? The complexity of the underlying system of simulation is mind-boggling, especially for a two-person project.
Re: Dwarf Fortress: An actual look at graphical improvements
#94Dwarf Fortress strikes me as a game that would benefit from a strong engine / UI split, with an API for querying the world state. That said, DFHack is probably sufficient for this purpose. https://docs.dfhack.org/en/stable/
I haven't used it, but Dwarf Fortress Remote for iOS seems to accomplish this somehow; the whole UI is iOS native.
Obviously there's no official API, but the developer has somehow managed to achieve something similar.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dwarf-fortress-remote/id100366...
Re: Dwarf Fortress: An actual look at graphical improvements
#95I never thought the ASCII graphics were a big problem in Dwarf Fortress; once you get used to it using a bunch of symbols as decoration, almost all the weird stuff ends up being things you placed yourself. On the other hand, the complete lack of UX consistency - whether a given submenu will use primary/secondary cursor keys, nested menus, or a pile of hotkeys - is a lot harder to deal with.
In addition to DF I also play Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, a venerable (and actively developed!) roguelike with the classic ASCII look, and I'd like to present a counterpoint: once it became possible to play DCSS online using the graphical tiles interface rather than the ASCII look, new players overwhelmingly prefer the graphical. Stats that I have seen indicate >95% choose the graphical tiles. I myself still play both…
I play DCSS in tiles mode and DF in ASCII mode. It's not that I think graphics are a bad usability feature, I just think they're over-emphasized because they're the first thing people see.
Adding graphics to DF means more new players give it a try, but most of them are going to bounce off of the wildly inconsistent menus. It's an acquisition funnel thing; the total players will be incoming players times the percent that are okay with the graphics times the percent that are okay with the menus. My assertion is just that in DF's case the menus have room for a bigger lift, because they're really that bad.
Re: Dwarf Fortress: An actual look at graphical improvements
#96The biggest single thing DF can do after graphical improvements is fixing the performance, perhaps make it not single threaded. I've been able to get past the graphics, and work through using the keyboard menus, but having the fortress come to a screeching crawl when there's a ton of things going on is when I stopped playing.
I picked up dwarf fortress 7-8 years ago when I was in eighth grade, and have been playing it on and off since. Performance is always what kills the game for me. The game is supposed to be hard, but if you at all know what you're doing it's very easy to keep your fort well, and the only real risk of losing your fort is from you intentionally doing stuff that puts your fort at risk. You literally can defeat entire ene…
Concerning it being a simulator first and a game second, that's definitely true, but it makes me wonder if the very old 2D versions (before there was a Z-axis or fancy worldgen) was more enjoyable as a game. I didn't start playing until after those versions, but I get the impression there was a lot more consistent narrative as to what you discover while tunneling into the mountain, as opposed to so much depending on the worldgen.
Re: Dwarf Fortress: An actual look at graphical improvements
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely disagree. The ASCII "graphics" (if you can really call them that) are a huge reason why I've never even considered playing it. I've read all about the mechanics, and they're interesting. I just don't understand why anyone would spend so much time developing so many intricate features when the presentation is so poor.
The thing is, it's really not. Granted, I always used the Lazy Newbie Pack which gave you basic tiles, but once you get used to ASCII, things tend to be a lot easier. Also, this is a detailed simulation, so things move a lot faster if you're not spending CPU on graphics. Remember, each creature has a bunch of parts with individual health, each tile can get stained by various materials (that can spread disease) and ev…
> Also, this is a detailed simulation, so things move a lot faster if you're not spending CPU on graphics.
Pretty amusingly, DF used to spend most of its CPU on graphics. There was a graphics rewrite at some point that fixed it.
Re: Dwarf Fortress: An actual look at graphical improvements
#98Seems like simply upgrading some of the characters to equivalent emoji would have been a big improvement. I know many people don't like emoji, but for the most part they are pretty universal and easy to understand.
This is not really needed. The game doesn't actually use ascii output, it renders the text (windows terminals would probably be too slow), and it supports graphic packs than can show the dwarves as actual pictures of dwarves. The biggest problem is when a glyph is reused for multiple things, as in that case the graphic has to pick one of them or stay generic.
> The biggest problem is when a glyph is reused for multiple things, as in that case the graphic has to pick one of them or stay generic.
Solution: https://github.com/mifki/df-twbt
This is included in various content packs, so setting this up manually is optional.
> The game doesn't actually use ascii output, it renders the text (windows terminals would probably be too slow)
Linux and OS X terminals are fast enough. The init.txt setting [PRINT_MODE:TEXT] switches the renderer to ncurses.
Re: Dwarf Fortress: An actual look at graphical improvements
#99There is already a pretty excellent 3D isometric front end for Dwarf Fortress. The name eludes me but it's well known within the community. However - I found that many parts of Dwarf Fortress disappointed me (and I was hyped as heck to play it - given that I'm a fan of Nethack, DCSS, Cataclysm, and basically any rougelike or rougelite). The game just feels extremely unfinished. Adventure mode is a total joke. Perform…
> pretty excellent 3D isometric front end for Dwarf Fortress. The name eludes me
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Utility:Stonesense
It's not a complete front end. It cannot control the game, just provide a visualisation of the world.
Re: Dwarf Fortress: An actual look at graphical improvements
#100Next step: going 3d http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=167533.0 A raytraced DF front end would be breathtaking.
Get someone to write a DF to Minecraft map converter and then use Mineways to export to Blender? (Admittedly, this won't be a real-time affair...)
only works on old versions