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[Seth]

Why would a green square or circle be better than a D?  At least the D gives some hint as to what it means--honestly I don't know why you would pick on the alphabet representation in ASCII roguelikes of all things.  It's pretty straightforward.  And a big square might work when the only big baddie is the dragon, but if you once you have more monster types simple shapes won't cut it.

[tametick]

Why would a green square or circle be better than a D?  At least the D gives some hint as to what it means--honestly I don't know why you would pick on the alphabet representation in ASCII roguelikes of all things.  It's pretty straightforward.  And a big square might work when the only big baddie is the dragon, but if you once you have more monster types simple shapes won't cut it.

I'm gonna go outright and say it - I like ASCII aesthetically.

I think it's pretty.

Cardinal Quest started out as an ASCII game until I got a message on irc from Lobotomist about a week or so into development, asking if he can make graphics for one of my games.

If he wouldn't have offered it when he did it might have still been ASCII today.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Okay, there we go then. Sorry to waste your time.

[tametick]

Okay, there we go then. Sorry to waste your time.

I don't think it was a waste of time at all, different people have different opinions and there is nothing wrong with it as long as everyone's having a polite conversation.

BTW I still think RL interfaces are more commonly atrocious than passable, I just don't think ASCII is the main culprit. 

[s0]

I agree that dragons et al are difficult to represent, but even a large ominous green circle or square might be better than the letter D. It's also important to pay attention to the grid for movement, and to other necessary data, but I don't think ASCII does any of these better.

Obviously graphical tilesets aren't the solution, especially when they're offered as an option. It's almost always a sloppy layer to the interface rather than an integral part of the game design.

First, you ask for a more iconographic representation of data, then you brush aside tilesets which are just that because they're not an "integral part of the game design". What?

As for contextual usage, I expect some RL games do this, but they could offer a list of interactions and put the common ones at the top, with the facility to scroll to the more peculiar behaviours

But isn't that just what Stone Soup does? The iPhone port of Nethack does it as well.

[tametick]

First, you ask for a more iconographic representation of data, then you brush aside tilesets which are just that because they're not an "integral part of the game design". What?

I think what Dock meant was that he opposes to tacking on tiles on an ascii game as an afterthought (which is what you get with many of the classic roguelikes like angband, nethack & crawl).

[rszrama]

Okay, there we go then. Sorry to waste your time.

Not a waste of time - I'm intrigued by your map idea, and the university map actually helps me envision it better. It sounds a bit like what ToME 4 did, with its mix of ASCII / flat graphical representation. It's not a direct comparison, but you might be interested in the screenies here:

http://te4.org/tome/screenshots

[Waltorious]

Okay, there we go then. Sorry to waste your time.

Not a waste of time at all!  I think it's a very good discussion to have, especially about the interface.  Regarding graphics, I still think that using ASCII is an aesthetic choice and can also save time when the developer simply doesn't want to do art.  The developer can focus all his/her time on gameplay, and the game will appeal to those who care about gameplay above all else.

There are many roguelikes that are graphical, by the way, including IVAN, LambdaRogue, Elona, POWDER, and others.

Sometimes, graphics DO affect the interface, like in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup where you can not only see your enemies, but can see what weapons they are holding.  This information is still available in the ASCII game, but you have to actively look at the enemies to find out what they have equipped, whereas you can get a sense just at first glance when using the tiles.

I find it interesting that you found Dungeon Crawl's interface to still be poor.  I think it's one of the most accessible interfaces for a "hardcore" roguelike to be found anywhere.  The thing is, it's still a very complex game, and that requires complex input.  The reasons you need to use shift- and control-clicks so often is that it's not usually clear what a click actually denotes.  Let's say you click on a potion.  Do you want to drink it?  Drop it?  Throw it?  Equip it in your hand as a weapon?  All of those things are possible, so you can't just CLICK on it, you need to provide extra information.  A click will drink it, a shift-click will drop it, etc.

I feel that a lot of the time, the huge number of keyboard commands actually make things easier, because you have a separate input for each action you might want to take in the game.  They can be frustrating to learn, but once you do they're much faster than going through lots of mouse clicks.  I like the fact that Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup lets you use both keyboard commands OR the mouse.  I personally find that movement is faster using the keyboard and the fast-travel commands, but those who prefer the mouse can use that.

The only effective alternate control scheme I can think of would involve menus.  Lots of menus, where you can select actions to take.  I.e., click on that potion, get a menu with choices for drop, drink, throw, etc.  This would certainly be easier to learn, but I think it could get cumbersome having to slog through these menus every time you want to do something.  Perhaps a menu-based system combined with keyboard commands could be good?  Adding menus for the mouse control might make mouse control easier, and then keyboard controls could be used if the player finds that menus take too long.

I should stress again that Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is not a good game for those trying out Roguelikes for the first time.  It's very complex, very, very hard, and can be a lot of work to learn.  But I would say that it's a good introduction to "hardcore" roguelikes, for those who have tried some simpler ones and want something deeper, because I think it does a pretty good job of simplifying all the complex input it requires.

[Seth]

Hayden, I don't think you were wasting time, I just honestly don't think the convention of making a goblin a 'g' is that confusing.

BTW I still think RL interfaces are more commonly atrocious than passable, I just don't think ASCII is the main culprit. 

I agree with this.  Although it's true that people aren't used to looking at ### for walls and . . . for floors, it's not like it's a huge jump in imagination.

I also think ASCII is aesthetically pleasing, in a garish kinda way.  Nothing else really captures that feeling of loneliness (yet).  Although I think the DCSS graphics are kind of bland.

[mirosurabu]

Looking at ASCII art (I'm limiting myself to roguelike ASCII) is like trying to understand someone else's messy or unconventional code. I'm pretty sure you can love it once you get used to it but that doesn't make it less geeky.

I tried Brogue as suggested and while I think it's more accessible than other ASCII roguelikes, it's still a little bit unpleasant. I hate that I have to play hidden object game with @ whenever I go into new depths and I don't like having to stop and look at the left whenever I face a new enemy. At first, I was confused as to where my representation of HP was and died several times due to that. Diving into new depths was confusing too, partially because I had no idea what that means and partially because it stole my keyboard input unexpectedly.

Using (or more precisely applying) items seemed pretty straightforward though, but quite often I had no idea what some of the items are so ended up not using them at all.

All in all, I can make some progress and I can understand some of the rules, but I found it too monotone to keep playing. I can understand the concept of procedural variation, emergent situations, trial-and-error learning and discovery, but it doesn't look it was done in a good way.

[Seth]

I honestly don't know how you would come to the conclusion that an ASCII roguelike was geeky unless you already had some idea of what it was, or it was shown to you by a stereotypical geek.

edit: maybe I do, a little bit, but honestly I would be less embarrassed to show someone an ASCII roguelike than one with little pictures of dwarves and goblins running around

[mirosurabu]

The look of it is geeky, which is not necessarily a bad thing, just, well, it's geeky. It's a sort of interface that programmers can easily understand but the one everyone else has trouble with.

Now, to balance my posts a bit, low-res pixel art is geeky too albeit easier to grasp than ASCII symbols.

[tametick]

Looking at ASCII art (I'm limiting myself to roguelike ASCII) is like trying to understand someone else's messy or unconventional code. I'm pretty sure you can love it once you get used to it but that doesn't make it less geeky.

Not really, there are plenty of roguelike presentation conventions (@ is the protagonist, a-Z are monsters, punctuation mark are ground tiles, most other non-alphanumeric symbols are objects, etc.) that do not differ much from game to game.

Once you really understand one roguelike it is fairly easy to get into many others.

[Mipe]

Don't be dissin' ASCII, bro.



Once upon a time, I worked on a roguelike.

[tametick]

Looks a lot like one of my old 7DRLs, fruit of the forest.

[s0]

It's been said before, but if you have a problem with ASCII, most notable roguelikes support tilesets that make things much more conventionally readable.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

C.A.Sinclair, whenever you use quotation marks it reads as sarcastic, or as though you intend the term as an insult. I appreciate that you're trying to state that it isn't more readable for seasoned ASCII users (and I agree), but regrettably it reads as "readable (for dickheads)".

Repeating myself, it usually seems as though graphical tilesets are seldom the intended treatment for the game, and are poorly done.  Like all of these things, there are exceptions. Please don't assume I'm ignorant to this.

I do agree that ASCII presentation is less childish than most graphical treatments, which was part of what I was trying to discuss earlier with alternative abstract treatments of map data. Mipe's screenshot is a better example than average, but would be even more effective to use genuine tree, water and grass symbols rather than awkward ascii approximations.  The mountains are better than the rest of it (IMO, of course), as plain triangles are just that, not a re-purposing of an otherwise intended letter/character, and they have correct grid alignment unlike the commas or tildes.

The consistent rules do make a lot of sense in a usability sense, in a similar way to shortcut keys being common across different pieces of software.  However, it forgives sloppiness in terms of interface otherwise. For example, in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup I recall having to exit the inventory screen in order to check my health, when you'd certainly want to see your health when choosing healing items to consume. Nothing to do with context, just common sense to see current status when applying status related items.

[s0]

Removed the quotation marks.

Repeating myself, it usually seems as though graphical tilesets are seldom the intended treatment for the game, and are poorly done.  Like all of these things, there are exceptions. Please don't assume I'm ignorant to this.

All the classic hardcore RLs like Nethack, Angband, ADOM, etc. are more than 15 years old and often have direct precursors dating back even further. Even the "newest" one, Linley's Dungeon Crawl, was started in 1995. So of course tilesets are later tacked onto these games. That doesn't mean they don't still fulfill their purpose, i.e. making the game more readable for people not used to ASCII, though. I dunno, I actually think tilesets are a pretty good solution to the problem of better abstract/inconographic representation you talked about earlier because the tiles are pretty much icons anyway, or least that's how I look at them.

Also, it's not like there haven't been attempts to overhaul the interfaces of old roguelikes either. The already discussed Stone Soup, based on Linley's Dungeon Crawl, is probably the best-known and most successful example. There's also Vulture's Eye for Nethack which gives the game an isometric perspective and an interface somewhat akin to games like Baldur's Gate. However, with a game with that kind of complexity (and age) you can only go so far. No amount of clever interface design is ever going to turn Nethack into Peggle.

in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup I recall having to exit the inventory screen in order to check my health,

In Stone Soup, you hardly ever need to bring up the inventory screen in the first place because the inventory on the lower right corner of the screen is interactive. It's context senstitive too, with the most common action mapped to the left mouse button. I.e. left clicking on a scroll will read it, left clicking on a potion will drink it etc.

[PaleFox]

This is true, Dungeon Crawl with tiles I think has basically the best interface of any roguelike I have ever played; unlike nethack which just replaces the ascii it actually adds features and a gui to the game. Very helpful.

But then, for example, some roguelikes don't have very good tiles because the person making them is bad at art; that's a fair thing, right? One of my favorite roguelikes, prospector, has tiles, but they are hilariously ugly because the creator has no art ability. Maybe someone will draw some actually good ones sometime.

[baconman]

There is a simple, tile-based remake called "TileRogue," too. It also has a mostly-immediate HUD, too. That's what I'm seeing this discussion heading towards, anyways.

Perhaps a simpler notion would be to display your inventory on a strip to the side, and invert the system. So instead of memory-stroking "(q)uaff (f. Red Potion)," you would press (f) to use your displayed Red Potion, and then the inventory would be replaced for a moment with the hotkey command list; of which (q)uaff/drink would be obviously displayed.

Also, if it's a matter of being so screen-cluttery, you could simply insert a forced space between characters in play, so the corner of a room would look more like...

Code:

# # # # # # #
# . . . . . . 
# . . . @ . . 
# / . . . . .
# . . . . . .

...instead of...

Code:

#######
#......
#...@..
#/.....
#......

I think that's the kind of design scheming in question here.

  (Isn't ### a hallway and not a wall, anyways?)