Do people prefer # or solid walls in Angband?

[Big Al]

Do people prefer # or solid walls in Angband? Just cause I'm curious. If most people vote for # then maybe we don't need to worry about the vista problems.

[Malak Darkhunter]

To be more specific, I like the extended fonts that Sangband uses, with the blend of solid walls, ascii, and graphics.

[Seany C]

### for me please.

[camlost]

To be more specific, I like the extended fonts that Sangband uses, with the blend of solid walls, ascii, and graphics.

+1. Sangband's "graphics" are quite nice IMO.

[Donald Jonker]

Mangojuice provided a nice compromise in Z+ that might work for vanilla's vista users - an option that lets you use 'old tiles', but has graphics only for walls, and ascii for everything else.

Maybe this would be a nice hack if folks are stumped for other solutions.

[Narvius]

Solid in V, everything else hashes.

[Edit]
Uhm, O also solid. Because it's so V-esque.

[Daniel Fishman]

I definitely prefer solid walls, and for every variant for which the solid walls don't appear, I copy one of the NPP fonts (8x12x.fon) and then change font-win.prf. I suspect, though, that I wouldn't go to the trouble of changing font-win.prf if #es were showing up; but if I have to change it at all, I'll change it to solid walls.

V3.0.9b works fine without doing all of that, though, (and this is on Vista), as do Un and FA. (And NPP 0.4 and Quick, unsurprisingly)
Z, Z+, ToME 2.3.5, Steam, Ey do not.

[Atarlost]

Solid walls definately. The game is easier to parse visually if terrain is different in appearance from monsters and items. Hashes are designed to fit in with text and the wall graphics are designed to not be confused with text*. In Angband text can kill you so it's vital that there be no difficulty differentiating text from background.

* go look at ms dos's wysiwyg text editor. The interface uses the same charachter Angband uses for walls for things like the scrollbars. I think the wall charachter originated as a ms terminal font charachter for making interfaces pretty enough to not have windows users run in terror.

[HallucinationMushroom]

I play with both about equally, so I guess I don't care. When I get sick of one I go to the other.

[Daniel Fishman]

I suspect, though, that I wouldn't go to the trouble of changing font-win.prf if #es were showing up; but if I have to change it at all, I'll change it to solid walls.

Having just tried 3.1.0beta, I'm not convinced I would keep them. Though I suspect my wanting to change has more to do with smaller floor . s (the NPP fonts have a very small . which I use for floor) and generally slightly smaller font (I'm used to 8x12 rather than 8x13) than the walls themselves.

Also, cancel this, I was misremembering:

V3.0.9b works fine without doing all of that, though, (and this is on Vista),

[Big Al]

Well blocks are winning, as expected. I imagine that most people prefer which ever version they first played with (or got used to playing with). Since Windows is obviously going to be the dominant platform, most people are going to choose blocks. I should have added a "I play with graphics" choice perhaps.

[d_m]

I mostly play on Linux and never with graphics. The only time I prefer # over solid blocks is when there is some sort of display issue (either a really slow terminal driver or weird termcap issue); my Linux machine at work has a weird issue with it's graphics using the X driver.

Incidentally, has the GCU driver ever used solid blocks? I know curses supports it.

[Nick]

I mostly play on Linux and never with graphics. The only time I prefer # over solid blocks is when there is some sort of display issue (either a really slow terminal driver or weird termcap issue); my Linux machine at work has a weird issue with it's graphics using the X driver.

Have you tried the SDL font end? This is the ideal way to play, IMO; it combines the best features of GCU and X11. Also IMO, getting this working in Windows (I'm not sure of the state of that...) would be the best solution all round for font issues, GPL, etc.

[d_m]

Have you tried the SDL font end? This is the ideal way to play, IMO; it combines the best features of GCU and X11. Also IMO, getting this working in Windows (I'm not sure of the state of that...) would be the best solution all round for font issues, GPL, etc.

SDL seems nice in some ways, but I wish I could get it to "save" my screen layout. I like to play with messages, monster-list and item-list in subwindows, and everytime I fire it up I have to create the 3 subwindows and place/size them. I didn't see any commandline options... am I missing something?

[Zikke]

I used to play with the # symbols but when I saw the newer versions with the solid walls I fell in love.


With walls.