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
