Dwarf Fortress Tileset

Growing up with DOS and Roguelikes, I still don’t get why people cry about the ASCII.

I’m sure everyone will reply with their reasons and all, but I still struggle to wrap my head around it and empathize. Taste is like that I guess.

tried but it runs slower than Half-Life 2 even in ascii on my laptop. I know it’s pretty intense cpu-side but… meh

Man, the top screenshot reminds me so much of Dragon Warrior. This rules. I’ll have to try this.

why i like the ascii graphics has nothing to do with the imagination bit everyone keeps going at when this topic arise, but to me the ascii graphics just have this sort of dark and dreary mood to them that fits the game (and music). I have no desire to direct a bunch of cute dwarves in a pretty world…

Yes. interface is a much bigger problem. I like ASCII graphics, I’ve been playing ADOM, Xenocide, Dungeon Crawl and DoomRL for ages. But I just can’t collect enough intelligence points to understand DF interface. I sure understand that DF is much more complicated, than, say, ADOM, but some interface friendliness would be nice.

yeah, the ascii is hardly the thing turning people away..

So which is the bigger problem, the ASCII or the interface? D:

I don’t understand all the hatred toward the interface. Yes, you pretty much HAVE to let the Wiki hold your hand the first few days to see how the interface works, but it really isn’t too bad. There are still things that don’t make a ton of sense, but again it only takes a few days to get used to.

For those who can’t play because of the interface, I wonder how long they really tried to learn it, and if they bothered with the wiki.

LOL I love Dorf fans, you can say what you don’t like about the game and they’ll just say something relative to- “You didn’t try hard enough to play it right” or “didn’t read the wiki” All of which is usually true but that doesn’t mean people didn’t have problems. I mean I love the game to death but it doesn’t always cooperate with me. I had two farmer/herbalists go an entire season without planting the seeds I picked. Why?… I dunno, maybe I didn’t read the wiki LOL.

I’m definitely getting better though except I can never put together my own game. I try downloading graphics and fonts and setting them up and changing the config and I always- ALWAYS get a black screen with no game.

The game could definitely use a Dwarfepedia alphabetical in game manual that describes and defines everything. Alt Tab to the dwarf wiki works but an in game would just be friendlier.

If you’re not alt tabbing between your game and the wiki for a week then you’re not having fun!

Also, sucks to be you casual-gamer guy. Make a notebook, take the starter course.

DF is to be earned, not given.

If you look at other very complex and powerful programs (such as Maya), they spent a great deal of time developing ways to provide the full power to users WITHOUT crippling them with an overly complex interface.

Obviously learning Maya isn’t _easy_, but the difficulty is more the inherent complexity of the tasks and NOT the interface.

Just basic mouse support would be a good start, and more complex mouse-based stuff like pie menus would probably make a huge difference.

Plus, why are the screen dimensions locked? Having all three different views up makes the “map”/world view uselessly thin — lots of people have widescreens these days!

I love the idea of both DF and LCS, but playing them is too much work to be fun.

I love Dwarf Fortress, but the interface is crap. Before you scream out “READ THE WIKI!!” Let me just tell you I have read the Wiki thoroughly, and I do understand the gameplay mechanics. It’s just that the interface has driven so many people away it’s not even funny. Toady, if you’re reading this, please just listen to me; WORK ON THE INTERFACE. Just do it. Thats the main problem with the game, thats why so many people have trouble playing this, fix it. Please.

At poster #23:
What exactly is so “crap” about the interface? I think I’m not really getting that. I see the interface as being too cluttered, badly structured, too hard to use, etc., but I don’t see how it really drives somebody away from Dwarf Fortress more than other aspects of the game, like the general wealth of options. I don’t see how the interface could “solve” this.
But anyway, I’m not arguing, I simply want to know what makes it that bad.

Awesome! I installed the new version and started a mountain fortress in an area where the trees skirt the edges, with a brook running through.

When the dry season brought dwarven traders, the promise of things to steal brought a pack of *dark gnomes*. Luckily the caravan guards were well equipped to deal with them, and the gnomes cheesed it. They were eventually all hammered and shot to pieces!

The interface might scare people away when they get the game, but ASCII scares them away before they even download it. Of course most of the people who wouldn’t even try a ASCII game probably wouldn’t try it with graphics like these either.

The interface has some nasty shortcomings, but none of them are quite as bad as watching the more rabid DF fans rub it up and down their bodies like a bar of Dial soap, moaning about how the only possible reasons anyone could well and truly dislike the interface must stem from gross intellectual weakness and a most noteworthy shallowness of character.

@Prio: Agreed. The interface is bad, but the apologists who defend the interface are worse. DF is an amazing game, don’t get me wrong, but jeez…

i want to play DF but still i don’t get it about the interface, im played ascii since Infocom so i don’t think that its a ascii trouble but the interface + amount of task that you can do can be overwhelming even for a experienced gamer.

I hope I don’t get along as that evil fanboy here. I haven’t even remotely spent enough time with DF call myself that.

Anyway, I still don’t see the big trouble with the interface. Like I said before I don’t think that the interface alone really is a reason not to play Dwarf Fortress, and it surely doesn’t take a week to get into it when guided by a Wiki.
You just also got to realize one thing: There is a totally overwhelming wealth of things to do – but you merely need to understand very few of those for the start.

I think I haven’t even seriously built more than 3 fortresses, none of which were all that advanced. I suppose I haven’t seen half of what DF has to offer, yet I’m loving it nonetheless.
For my first fortress I totally followed the Wiki instructions and played a while. This taught me many of the basics, so I could expand a lot on this with my second fortress. Quick reminder: That still has been good fun.
And from then on I already understood most of the essentials, so that I could freely go about the fortress-building and only whenever I found something I didn’t understand it could easily be looked up in the Wiki.

I understand that people can be put off by the game easily, but just do it again, do it the way it is explained, and I guarantee you will have fun, if you are at least a bit into the general concept. You should just try not to be so overwhelmed.
I was quite struck when I found out how Dwarf Fortress really isn’t all that complex, but that it’s *just* incredibly extensive.

> Keys do different things on different pages (use PgUp/Dn here, but Up/Down Arrows here for similar functions, stuff like that).

This is really the major sort of thing that discouraged me about DF, personally. A weird interface? That’s okay, I can learn that. An inconsistent interface that keeps jerking the rug around in a way that’s very difficult for humans to keep track of? Now we have a problem. That makes mastery of the interface comparable to learning a new language with all kinds of bumps and oddities and inexplicable peculiarities. And languages are hell to learn if you haven’t literally grown up with them. (I have similar problems with some of my LG phone’s interfaces. Still have to stop and think about nearly everything I’m doing, and it’s been a couple years now.)

I mean. I’ve played it. I’ve had fun. I’ve managed to build thriving farms and dug as deep as the chasm. But the interface frustration factor kinda impedes the fun, and the enthusiasm… faded. A frustrating interface and control scheme really, really can make people turn away from a game. I mean, it’s the friggin’ interface; as far as the game goes, it’s your hands, feet, mouth, and then some! If the interface sucks, you’re turned into an epileptic cripple, and unless the point of the game is to be an epileptic cripple, it truly hurts the game.

Howzabout a tutorial? The only thing that turned me off from the game is the shear amount of incredible crap there was to keep track of and do…

Seriously, stop griping about the ASCII graphics (which are quite cool) and the interface. I admit the interface is hard to use (it took me awhile to figure out how even to get the dwarves to do anything but sit around the wagon) but it’s a tough game.

My recommendation is one of these graphics guys puts his effort into making a front end that will solve all these problems. Drop-down menus or buttons. That will get rid of “interface issues.” Then everyone can enjoy losing! :)

I heard something a while ago about some “mods” for the game that would turn it into a mini-dwarffortress which would resemble some kind of tutorial like thing.