Tiles?

[jadedsamurai]

Is Thomas Biskup still 100% against tiles?

Really wanted to remake ADoM entirely with 100% accuracy, just to add tile support... But I doubt I'd be able to do it justice due to lack of ability to get to the late game and whatnot

I can understand playing with ASCII symbols being preferred by some people... but I also know that a lot of people straight up prefer tiles. It's easier to instantly identify monsters/items/etc faster, and don't really take away from the ability to imagine the world in your head. Whatever the case, I'm sure if support was added in JADE for tiles, even with no tiles, fans would make pretty tilesets fast enough.

[nathrakh]

>It's easier to instantly identify monsters/items/etc faster
No.

Tiles are garbage.

[gut]

The conventional wizdom is that bad tiles are worse than no tiles,
and good ones are difficult to make and incorperate. They must be
of at least a certain size to be useful. Adom (and I think jade)
displays 80x25 tiles on screen at all times. The tiles would just be
too small.

I once thought of producing images that could be pulled up along
with monster memory command along with monster info, but
ultimately gave up on that idea. In order to include hundreds of
images large enough to be interesting (maybe 400 x 300), the
image package would be so large I doubt anyone would bother.
Besides, display them via terminal would probably be a pain, if
not theme breaking for the game.

If one wants images in jade or adom, just start a fan art project
and look at them on your local PC.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I personally prefer ASCII to tiles, as it is always much clearer. But it's undeniable that tiles are a good means to hook non-geek people into the game. Games like DCSS have both options, I always play them in ASCII but some people use tiles, no one loses anything. So I am all for at least the option for people to load tilesets into JADE (even if a default tileset is not included).

By the way, JADE has a zoom function, it can present characters in various sizes.

[Aielyn]

Just a thought, but what if Jade provided the ability to put the mouse cursor over any particular character, and see what it is - kind of like the "Look" command, but more visual?

Then, the community could work on creating/finding suitable pictures for each type of being. It would be the best of both worlds - still the relatively easy to use ascii visuals, but will the ability for users to obtain visual help in understanding what they're looking at.

Actually, perhaps the Look command could be replaced by this mouse-based system, anyway. It would be quicker, and could display more information than would be visible in the message bar.

[nathrakh]

Mouse-based look seems nice but a whole replace? No way, I want to hold my hands on the keyboard while playing text games.

[Laukku]

TB has said in the past that any kind of interface is possible; the ASCII one is just the default coded by Biskup himself. So user-made UIs with tiles are perfectly possible.

See http://www.adom.de/jade/javadoc-jade...Interface.html and http://www.adom.de/jade/javadoc-jade...ceFactory.html

[Silfir]

nathrakh is definitely correct; the default control scheme doesn't do anything with the mouse at all. I'm pretty sure I'd be way faster with the good old "l"ook command than with the mouse.

[Aielyn]

Mouse-based look seems nice but a whole replace? No way, I want to hold my hands on the keyboard while playing text games.

Sorry, I should have emphasised that I meant it as a replacement option, not as just replacing it entirely. I was talking about a GUI option where you could choose which one you prefer, and one would replace the other depending on your choice.

I did refer to the "hover" information idea - perhaps the text-based Look command could optionally also produce a hover, rather than using the message bar. It would just hover elsewhere, rather than where the mouse is.

[jadedsamurai]

Huh that "look" idea sounds really sweet. In fact, if/when I make a roguelike I'm going to put that in. Was always a fan of getting extra tidbits about monsters and stuff. I like the little quotes in NetHack which you can see.

@Laukku
Sweet. Guess I'll do that when JADE's further along, if it's not already done by then.

@nathrakh
Your signature is quite unsightly. Anyhow, I'd gladly sacrifice viewing area (even if the game was designed for larger) to get some tiles. I've played a lot of Nethack in ASCII (and even ascended once) and I never really got used to it. Might just be a difference in how our brains work.