ASCII or Tiles?

[Bill Peterson]

I saw some ASCII/tiles trash talk on a recent thread and it brought back fond memories of vi/EMACS.

If you chose to respond with an opinion, I'd like to know what you chose when you first started playing *band, and if you had a choice. I have a theory that we're all just creatures of habit and we prefer what we first started playing. I started with AngbandTk and have always preferred tiles. I've always suspected that the ASCII lovers spent their formative *band years playing that way and just don't want to give up their stick shift game.

[Sky]

idk i always played tiles so i just play tiles. You do get further LoS on ASCII because - insert generic Nick hate here - but it very very rarely affects the game IRL.
IMO the only *real* advantage of ASCII is that you can play at work and nobody will spot that you aren't actually working.

[Pete Mack]

I have a much easier time recognizing letters than figures, and they fit far better on a phone screen. (Thanks Cubeoideb!)

[Talharim]

I started playing when there was only ASCII mode. I keep doing so for several reasons:

• Real players play in ascii mode!
• Out of habit
• It’s harder for people to realize you’re playing
• I don’t want to lose time figuring out what each monster/object is
• I get to see more of the map

[Ed_47569]

I saw some ASCII/tiles trash talk on a recent thread and it brought back fond memories of vi/EMACS.

If you chose to respond with an opinion, I'd like to know what you chose when you first started playing *band, and if you had a choice. I have a theory that we're all just creatures of habit and we prefer what we first started playing. I started with AngbandTk and have always preferred tiles. I've always suspected that the ASCII lovers spent their formative *band years playing that way and just don't want to give up their stick shift game.

Always ASCII for me, since Moria in the 1990s.

[Pondlife]

I've always played ASCII. Started with rogue in early 1980s on a VAX running BSD Unix, then Moria on VAX/VMS. Still play nethack and angband occasionally.

[ewert]

ASCII all the way, and yea started in the 80s as well.

For me it is more about function over form, a character and a color is easier for me to process quickly, and tile size is smaller fitting more on the screen. I'd love to be able to have the whole dungeon level on my screen all at once ... need to get a bigger monitor ...

[Sky]

ok but, while i get the "out of habit" thing, can you please explain to me what you mean by "I don’t want to lose time figuring out what each monster/object is".
Like, it's a image of an enormous black dragon. Or a great wyrm covered in lightning storms. it's not exactly difficult to tell what they are.
Besides, if you've played ANY p&p RPG you probably already know the images as they are lifted out of popular 1980s illustrations. I'm having a really hard time thinking that someone can see the drawing of a lantern and think "uuh, i'm not really sure what that could be".

[Estie]

If you arent trained on ascii, getting from picture to lantern is faster. If you are, however, it is not - a yellow ~ is clearer than a many pixel image. Reading a map is easier if you have learned the ascii characters.

I am saying this as someone who has played with both tiles and ascii.

[mrfy]

I've always played ascii, with Moria and then Angband. Just used to it.

I imagine I could get used to tiles but I enjoy ascii.

I've had a few conversations on planes that start with "oh, you're a programmer?" "no, just playing a game..."

[Sky]

"a yellow ~ is clearer than a many pixel image"

- this is just not true. Yeah ok an individual ASCII symbol can be just as easily - not more, but rather JUST AS EASILY - identifiable as a tile, but then you have to assess the color. Is it red or orange or yellow or amber?

In my years upon years of playing tiles the number of times i have misjudged a tile as something else than it was is exactly zero.

[Estie]

Its not that you misjudge the tile - its that you take more time to sort the clutter. Ascii is less clutter.

[Grotug]

I started playing Angband in 2013, so I would have had the option to jump right into a Tiles game back then, but one of the things that attracted me to Angband in the first place (not sure why I didn't discover it long ago ) is it's oldschoolness (it harkens back to the 80s when many games were all in ASCII), so I started playing it in ASCII. I did try tiles to see if they were better but found that I struggled to immediately know what anything was, and was overall not impressed with the tile graphics. Tiles might be as good as ASCII if they were at an insane resolution and thus able to be made as small as ASCII graphics, but as such the economicalness of ASCII and the simplicity of its look make it far superior. That said, it is true that I occasionally mis-identify an ASCII enemy or don't notice that black 'd' is Kavlax and not a young black dragon. On the other hand, I find it difficult to watch youtube videos of Angband in Tiles and much prefer to watch (and play) in ASCII.

[Bill Peterson]

On the other hand, I find it difficult to watch youtube videos of Angband in Tiles and much prefer to watch (and play) in ASCII.

This is the first pro ASCII argument that I can appreciate. I've never seen a video with tiles, but they do lend themselves to play where the player controls the speed.

[HallucinationMushroom]

I've always played ascii for Angband. Having come from Moria it seemed natural. I never could get into tile sets for Angband once I came across them - I tried a few times because I thought it might be neat but they felt clunky after having become fluent in ascii.

However, I play tiles for Nethack. I apparently only have enough room in my noggin' for one ascii set and I found it hard to learn a different set, kept confusing the two, and found tiles much more approachable.