I agree. I LIKE simple graphics. I’ll take gameplay over graphics anyday. I like nethack type games (I prefer Moria – the merchant sstem appeals to me more).
But my eyes hurt and I have a hard time figuring out what is going on in DF.
Brian
I think the main drawback to the graphics is that the game uses multiple symbols for the same type of “terrain” in several places. For example, there are three or four different symbols for things like grass, shrubs or cave floors. So areas that are really all the same are a somewhat confusing mass of symbols.
I also think that there is some sort of difference between the symbols such that, say, grass represented as " is different from grass represented as ’ or ` which is why the designer did it that way, but I agree that it makes the display harder to interpret than it should be.
Also a question: Is there an actual manual for the game somewhere or is the only “manual” the help screens within the game itself?
Oh, dear. There goes my weekend.
Looks cool. It seems like it’s already developing a cult following, and maybe someone can help this guy make a nicer graphical interface to give the game wider appeal. If we want to see more games (both lone programmer and game companies) going into this level of gameplay depth, developers will want to see that it can be a commercial success. I’m not a graphics snob by any means (esp. since my comp. can’t even play most games made after 2002), but I really do like it when I can tell (or at least have a good idea) what a symbol represents just by looking at it.
Yeah, I played the hell out of moria. But it took me a long time of looking at the DF screenshots before I could figure things out or tolerate them.
OK, I’ve found one thing on the graphics front.
In the data\init folder there is a setting [VARIED_GROUND_TILES:YES]. Changing the setting to NO changes all the empty ground spaces to just .s, which reduces the visual clutter quite a bit (to me anyway).
Heh, as long as I’m allowed to not know what I’m doing, and pull a Caligula every so often, I’d be happy to join in.
You can also download new tilesets to improve on the native pseudo-ASCII graphics, but I can’t find my link to them right now.
Yep, that’s it!
I think almost no one would know what they are doing. I am reading up on it now, so that if I start this we will at least have a beginning that doesn’t guarantee instant death.
I’d be fine with that… it’ll be approximately 15 days until I’ll really be able to play regularly, so that sounds as if it would work out well.
OK, I downloaded it and am fumbling my way through. My brain hasn’t yet adjusted to the control/open-apple/delete graphics scheme yet, but I’m plowing forward on faith alone. 
Let me assure you, it’s INCREDIBLE fun once you get used to the graphics. I found that loading the creature graphics linked above really helped…
A word of advice: workshops, bedrooms, and underground storage facilities are your best friends. I started by storing food outdoors, but the raccoons are stealing all of my crap… it would’ve been easier if I’d started by carving an indoors area to store food, and locked it with a door.
(speaking of which it bears mentioning that elephants, like velociraptors, can open doors.)
I think the only thing that really bugs me is the hauling: I have all of these wonderful craftsmen, masons, hunters, and doctors, but they’re all hauling stone and food from one place to another 24/7.
Whoa, holy crap! I suppose it’s kind of obvious, but did anyone else realize that you can use your mouse in lieu of the numpad?
I.
am.
so.
tired.
I played this game pretty much all day yesterday, and last night, while trying to sleep, I actually DREAMT about this dam thing.
I’ll be installing it on my laptop shortly, so I can play today while I’m waiting for something to happen here at work.
I haven’t managed to make it through a year yet. I’ve given up on 2 fortresses, one due to irreparable cave-in (before I learned about supports) and one due to starving and insane dwarves.
Good lord but I’m having a good time. This is insanely deep.
I’ve started over twice myself, but for stupid reasons; the first time my dwarves all spontaneously stopped constructing stuff, and I couldn’t get them to build again no matter what I did. The second time, I accidentally excavated too much open area around the river, making it really expensive to establish floodgates and set up a farm.
Once I learn how to play, I really wanna try a Haunted fortress.
One thing i learned after playing for a while is to turn off all stone hauling jobs, theres no need for it. If a dwarf needs the space for something else he will pick up the rock and move it aside, you dont need rock stockpiles.
Hehe I used to play this game but just couldn’t get over the arcane tileset. It is so much nicer with the specific tilesets I downloaded thanks to you.
I just played most of the night and have a decent little fortress going. In fact if people are serious about a coop game I could send this one on to someone else(who can resist running a civ known by the mighty and awe-inspiring name of “Paperpaddled”. It’s not perfect by any means cause I’m just not that good at the game. 
But other than a few minor episodes of starving to death it seems on the path to stable. It wouldn’t take me long to write up the year, even though it wouldn’t have screen shots. But the first year (actually year and a half at this point) is pretty boring anyway.
Thanks for the wiki link Miller; reading through it made things a lot clearer.
Didn’t help though; I just abandoned my second fortress.
The first failed because I didn’t realize there was a maximum safe size to a room. The roof collapsed, crushing my miners and trapping the rest in a storage area. Unfortunately they didn’t have a pick with them and so couldn’t get out.
The second was actually somewhat amusing. I’m in some kind of tundra area; no trees, only a few plants and no lakes or rivers outside. I’ve got the miners digging straight into the cliff looking for the underground river.
A snowstorm comes up and all the dwarves outside come running inside. About this point, the miners hit the river and it floods. Everyone runs outside to escape the flood, only to see the snow again and run back inside. They immediately start to drown then run back outside again, only to see the snow again and run back inside again. This repeats several times.
Three dwarves drown and one drops dead outside for some reason. The remaining three are so traumatized that they won’t do anything except carry rocks from one place to another.
Oh well, I’m sure there are another seven dwarfs around here somewhere.