I posted a message about a game project I was going to make a while ago on the gamedev.net forum. There was a map prototype download with an ASCII map... Daniel asked me why I was doing it in ASCII. I tried to explain as good as I could...But he still thinks I should use a "graphic" tile set so the map looks a little nicer...I still think that even making a plain green tile would be to much, forcing the player to accept the green tile as grass. The ASCII character's are meant to be an abstraction from the real world. I have put together a little essay defending why I would use ASCII graphics for this game... In cas you haven't taken a look at the prototype yet, you can get it here.

WHY on earth do you use ASCII ?

This is the question I get asked the most and in various ways, reaching from plain "ASCII???" to "You wanna use ASCII ? Are you just nostalgic or crazy ?" There are actually several reasons for doing it the ASCII way. So bear with me. I. Sufficiency The first reason I want to point out is that the map that use the ASCII graphics is just a small portion of the game, and should take up a quarter of the screen at the most.The purpose of the map is to give the player an overview of his sourroundings (unlike in Diablo for example). It should only take up a quarter of the screen at the most. The REAL action goes up in the message window. Here you see what's going. The game is actually more like a singeplayer MUD (in the message window) with a roguestyle overview map. When you see a 'w' (representing grass), you're not suppose to imagine anything more than grass when seeing it. You should imagine more when you read something like this in the message window: "It is early morning. You stand upon a grassy field. From the distance you can hear some birds tchirping and singing. A fresh, but pleasently warm wind is blowing softly across the field, bending the grass leafs and pulling gently at your hair. Some hums bees are already going about their business, flying from flower to flower in the search of fresh nectar.You suddenly notice that you are thirsty" THAT's were the map comes into play. (No need to look at it before). You can take a quick glance a your surroundings - hey wait there's some water over there. The you walk over there - and get another description: "You are next to a small stream. You can hear the sound of gurgling water running over stones. As you watch the water for a while you can see silver spots sparklingjust beneath the surface. You assume that these must be fishes. The sun rises above the horizon and you can see it's golden light reflected by the water." Again, no need to look at the map. After drinking, you might be hungry for anice breakfast and decide to catch some fish. You look for a nearby tree, go there, and carve yourself a fishing pole , wander back to the stream and get yourself some fish. The map is just intended to be a help for the player, so he doesn't loose his orientation and knows a little about his sourrounding. It is to hard for the player not to loose the big picture just by descriptions. (Sometimes they are great, sometimes they are hindrance.) II. Expandability and Flexibility The second point I want to point out is that it is a lot easier to expand a game that uses ASCII rather than graphical tiles and sprites. Say you wanted to add something to it. You wouldn't have to make new graphics, then plug 'em somehow into the game and make it work. Sure, you still have to go through the same process using ASCII but it's a lot simpler and a lot more flexible. Flexibility is one of the major features in this game - reacting to different situations, different conditions with different actions. III. Immersion In my personal opinion, this is the most important point. Okay now, imagine I would do the game with graphical tiles. I could have one tile for each type of terrain. And then I could make monsters, I could even animate them. But then...have you ever played games like Diablo (which is nothing more than a graphical roguelike) or something similar? Now, the monsters are always just the same. Same animations - same sounds. (Until Diablo II comes out...then we'll have a different set of sounds and animations).But you are always stuck with the same stuff. At first it looks cool, when them monsters drop to the ground dead. But after 200 kills the same old "wuaag" dying sound will become annoying. If you look at a skeleton you will always see the same skeleton. Now imagine your skeleton is nothing more than an "s". You know that "s" stands for a Skeleton. Now you kill that monster. In Diablo you'd said "Hey I killed that same old skeleton on the screen" again. In a roguelike you wouldn't say "I killed that s again". Because there's no information given how the skeletton looks like on the map. Your FANTASY and IMAGINATION will have to make up for it. And that's the point. You will not simply "kill s", but do this instead: "You swing your club at the skeleton after barely avoiding his cold and white fingers. Your club hits the skull of the skeleton, you can hear the spine break, the skulls shatters and slowly drops to the ground to shatter again and to spread out across the rough stone floor. A rat or another small animal, you cannot identify it clearly because the light of your torch is so dim, is alarmed and scurries off to seek cover. The body of the skeleton is still standing upright, help in position by some unholy magic. Just as you take your club back to give him a finally jab, the skeleton shivers and topples to the ground. The spell that held the bones together vanishes and the bones lie on top of each other. You can hear the dry sound of bones falling upon bones. As you watch the heap of bones you see that the bones begin to wither and to crumble, and soon become nothing more than black dust. All that remains is the tainted smell of death and decay..." PS: Even my lil' sister asked me why I was going throuh the hassle of setting up DirectX, making a bitmap just to get some characters on my screen. She wanted to know if I couldn't have done that in any old DOS or console mode... SHe was right in a way, but on the other DX offers much more flexibility... (And then, have you ever seen ANTIALIASED characters on YOUR DOS prompt? Hey, that be an Idea: DirectDOS featuring vocalized Error messages ) - Sleepwalker Edited by - Sleepwalker on 2/21/00 9:35:17 AM Edited by - Sleepwalker on 2/21/00 9:37:01 AM Edited by - Sleepwalker on 2/21/00 9:39:16 AM

I''ll agree with you to a certain extent... Being a very avid MUD player and coder, I certinally have a great appriciation for good room descriptions and an "anything goes" kind of world (by that I mean that your descriptions are never limited the way your graphics might be). Text-based adventure games tend to draw their pictures in one''s head very well. I can see the rooms I''ve played and coded just as clearly as I can see Terra, Wedge, and Vicks marching their Magitec toward Narshe while the credits scroll.

So what''s the difference? Well, first of all, I don''t really believe your "Diablo gets old" statement has very much merit, at least when used to promte text-based adventures. "You stand in an open field..." gets just as redundant as walking down to Hell. If you''re going to write a complete non-repeating text game, I suggest switching to an English major

Also, I think there needs to be a distinction between _who_ is playing the game. I don''t mean this in terms of what kind of person the play is, but literelly how many people are playing. I thought Diablo was just plain dull at first, but when I hooked up to Battlenet it added a whole new dimension. It made it just like the old arcade games, with buddies standing around yelling and carrying on and having a good time. I think a game like Diablo needs that real-person interaction because the graphics/sound/story isn''t enough to carry a player through to the end. The same applies to a text game. If you wander about killing lots of little ''s''s and have no one to enjoy the time with, I''d call that an "empty" gaming experience.

On the flip side, look at games like FFIII and Ultima 7. Both are (for the most part) single player games, but I find myself playing through them again and again. They give to you what Diablo needs multi-player-interaction to provide, and that''s something that you can take with you when the game''s over. This translates perfectly to text based adventures, because the same ol'' thang over and over gets just as dull as Diablo.

To sum this rambling up... There really is _no_ difference between graphical and text games when you look at why people play and what they want to take with them when they''re done. A poorly made graphical game will suck just as badly as a poorly made text-game, and like wise with games of excellent story-telling and disign and/or player interactivity.

Ere

Go for it, I say. If you want a textual experience, then as the game designer and programmer, you should get it. You obviously have a lot thought invested in your project. One of the many upsides is that your level files can be just text files. This means that you, or anyone else who happens along, will have an extremely easy time making levels. Anyway, take my comments with a grain of salt. Ultimately it is your decision, but I thought I would share my thoughts.

I. Sufficiency - If I had a large map which instantly told me everything I needed to know about the environment, why would I want to read the description if it just echos the map, albeit more elegantly? Roguelikes, I believe, just have the map, with just a line or two console to explain results of actions. As far a location is concerned, the map will more than suffice.

However, you might want to put a nice description to set the mood when you hit specific locations. Enter a shop and get a description. Enter the first level of a dungeon - "The smell of death surrounds you."

II. Expandability and Flexibility - Not going to disagree here. ASCII characters have a strange effect of aluding to details. If you colored all those squares in solid colors, the map screenshot you have up would just look horrid. You would need a lot of transition tiles to make things look better.

III. Immersion - Never got into Roguelikes. Mostly because of the non-intuitive control schemes, but also because I had a hard time telling if ''q'' was something I kill, or
something I pick up. There was this old BBS game called Operation Overkill. It used ASCII graphics for the overworld maps, but combat would occur in textual-only context. For an overhead map, text works wonders. For badguys...well...

Why does an ''s'' succeed in distancing a player when a 16x16 image of a skull wouldn''t? ASCII is an abstraction of a concept, so if you have the ability to use specialized images, there is no reason why you can''t use abstractions that make better sense to a player. In Diablo, the skeletons aren''t meant to be abstractions, but actual skeletons. In Roguelikes, they use ''s'' because a better abstraction isn''t available. What do I see when I see an ''s'' approaching me: Skeleton? Squid? Squirrel? Stone? Stork? Shambler? Shell? What do I see when an image of a skull appears: Skeleton, perhaps death.

I hope you see my point. Roguelikes were created with severe limitations, and didn''t have the benefit of abstractions outside the realm of text. If a Roguelike were made today, and not modelled after the text-based games, the result would probably be not unlike the early Ultima games, or possibly the old ZZT game series (used the IBM extended ASCII graphics sets).

Just my opinion. I see ''s'', not ''skeleton''. People familiar with all the roguelikes would probably have no problems with it however.