This isn’t real. It’s not a new feature of the game nor is it even a mod. It is just a conceptual video…but can you imagine?
Four words: Dear GOD, that’s awesome!
It’s not exactly news that Dwarf Fortress has a pretty poor graphical interface. ASCII graphics are tough enough to interpret, but in DF, not only is that “d” actually a dog, but it’s also on a hill that is higher than the ground to the left but lower than the ground to his right. It becomes pretty impossible to mentally visualize our fort in 3D when we’re looking at the game world as 2D slabs, one stacked on another, unable to see more than one z level at a time.
This technique, however, allows you to view multiple levels are once. Lower levels are gradually darkened out to denote depth. There is even a little animation that plays whenever you raise or lower the level. It feels natural and I would be willing to be it’s infinitely easier than redoing the graphical engine.
A small change like this would go a long way to the readability of DF…and for most new players, that’s one of the largest hurdles to jump over.
Toady…make it happen!
Hi Josh, I’ve enjoyed reading your blog. It looks like you’ve gone on hiatus.
Any chance it’s gonna continue? It’s pretty useful as a kinda news feed which includes unofficial stuff (eg. mods), and which doesn’t require a person to hang around the forum (which is otherwise the only other good DF-news-source.
If it’s getting to be too much work I recommend setting yourself regular _short_ entries. Eg. Every tuesday write up a paragraph with what’s new (you can just include links if you’re short on time). If you’ve nothing to write, then mention something random related to DF (eg. a paragraph on carp, or on the virtues of beer) just so that readers know that the blog’s still active.
Best of luck.
check out stonesense.
Wouldn’t that be delightful? I’m digging it.