Dwarf Fortress has graphics now! You don’t have to install the Lazy Newb Pack! What a time to be alive
I came to ask if I could still play dwarf fortress… Now that the make it understandable to me
You can still play the ascii-version :P
The game is free, the graphics cost extra.
After seeing that docuseries on the brothers I felt even better about buying it. They seem like genuinely nice people who managed to get rich doing what they love without exploiting anyone. That’s the dream right there, and I wish them and the Balatro guy happy lives
Bought it as soon as it released. I got my moneys worth long ago.
it is very much baseline understandable now, almost RimWorld levels of graphics
But do you still need dwarf therapist to actually see what you are doing?
Idk I never used it. I’m just playing the raw Steam install, it’s come a long way
Check out DFhack if you haven’t yet. It can be used as a cheat engine but there is way more to it then that.
I use it all the time and I’ve never used cheats in it.
You can installing through the steam storefront. Just search dfhack
A way better job management subsystem was implemented that resolved at least all my personal issues.
Thanks, that’s an answer to my question.
I needed the steam version. I’ve been watching DF from the sidelines and wishing for it for a long time. Yes I know about the tile sets and they didn’t help much.
Going through the menus was way harder in the previous version as well. Excited to see future changes. I think a big siege rework is coming up next!
Definitely how it feels sometimes talking to the gamers who literally care about graphics over everything. I care about gameplay…
You think games have to be fun?
You will play pathologic and fear and hunger until the situation improves
…and then there’s the second Fear and Hunger, where my first run ended with the Woodsman because I chopped off the arm holding the giant axe instead of killing his dick, and then the dick detached and went all Alien face hugger and stunned me while he beat me up with his remaining arm.
Of course I like explaining Pathologic to people as “the game that looks at a glance like it’s an FPS adjacent RPG but in which when you first get a gun you will probably immediately sell it to buy some bread”. Fucking plague caused by an infected wound in a very unusual location.
Ice Pick are amazing. I’m a huge fan of The Void, where you are a soul in purgatory trying to survive, while appeasing the two other factions: brutish mutant Brothers that roam around taking all the resources, and docile naked Sisters that need your help to survive. The art style is utterly unique and the music/atmosphere is darkly beautiful. But it’s a stressful resource management sim at its core.
I see both sides of the argument and generally lean on the older games are fun side, but my God, just let people enjoy what they want. Gaming eletism is so annoying and doesn’t even stop people from playing new games anyways.
Get them knowledge that duenvo is an issue, not that they should be still playing super mario bros 1 or snake on a Nokia if they want to own their games.
Saving this ty
I see your point, and I don’t think anyone is seriously proposing banning graphics. Realistically, this is more of a call to action to focus on fun.
Shoutout to Caves of Qud, because it wasn’t mentioned yet. I’ve been looking for a game that comes close to ZAngband which I played in the 90s. COQ has a tileset, so it’s not ASCII and I didn’t like the looks at first but it’s fun when you see how deep it is. Complex character creation, quests, factions, ‘bosses’… I think the world map is not randomly generated, the rest is afaik (ruins, multi-levelled lairs, most villages…).
And yet Clair Obscur Expedition 33 is both super fun and breathtakingly beautiful
It’s also proof you don’t need a massive team and an obscene budget to push good looks
Largely because it has such strong art direction. They really make use of the high resolution to make the humans look more human, and the non-humans look more alien
That said, if I have one criticism about the game, it’s that there isn’t really a lot of cohesion between character/creature designs. It’s the same thing that bugged me about Stellar Blade, as opposed to something like Nier Automata or Gears of War. The nevrons don’t really look like they belong in the game the way locusts do in Gears.
But I am only in Act 2. Maybe this criticism will wane as I learn more about them
I feel like the older, pixel sparse graphical style is making a comeback.
A lot of recent surprise hits were of that style:
Valheim is also a game that’s low pixel count but due to sweeping landscapes and amazing lighting is gorgeous.
Cannot recommend valhiem enough. Don’t let anyone convince you to do a no portal run though. Traveling is a big component to the game but doing no portal runs just makes traveling such a burden and I feel takes the magic out of it.
I wish I could get my friends to do another run but they are all waiting for the deep north update (the final one AFAIK).
Growing up, one of my best friends parents set us up with a terminal MUD connection. Basically an old school, text based only MMO. You had to type in your commands, “look north”, “walk east”, “attack <enemy name>”. I was able to make a Sayian character, walk around town and Kamehameha my foes. I recall finding Smurf village and getting killed many times by Papa Smurf.
I wish I remembered what server it was or if any even exist any more.
I remember on igorMUD we had inter Igor ballistic aardvarks
MUDs and MOOs were quite fun. I played at University as I didn’t have internet at home then, only BBSes
I played a MUD based around the combat school in Ender’s Game. That was amazing to my 2002 brain.
I’ve been running one of these since 2009, it’s a ton of fun. No saiyans or smurfs though
How can I get started? I have a full homelab ready for hosting one!!
Mine is self written, but there are engines out there you can get and customize. I hear good things about Evennia
That’s awesome, thanks man. Yet another thing to add to the never ending list!
Graphics are cool, but I’d rather prefer a fun game over a good looking game
The only roguelike I play is Rogue.
You should check out Wazhack. Its surprisingly deep
I’m in the middle of my first playthrough of Morrowind right now. Maybe I should go find a mod that makes the graphics worse. Maybe one that limits the resolution to 480p and makes everything monochrome wireframe with a viewing distance of just two or three meters.
That wasn’t the original experience on Xbox? 😜
480p and 3 meter draw distance definitely was, I can tell you that much.
I remember getting on PC and installing the Longer Draw Distance mod for the first time, and discovering that you could throw a rock farther than the distance between Seyda Neen and Pelagiad. The illusion of distance was only preserved by the close draw range and the fact that you walk at half the speed of smell at level one.
OG Xbox could barely run morrowwind. The load times were so long because the game had a memory leak or something and the Xbox had to be “rebooted” during the load screens sometimes.
There actually was a famous mod for an Elder Scrolls game that made it look worse: Oldblivion for Oblivion. The game had high system requirements for the time, and the mod did things like removing the 3D foliage/grass so crappy GPUs could run the game.
OK, but… Does anyone have recommendations for obscure text-based games? Sounds rad tbh
West of House. You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
Start pulling the lumber off the house to build a fortnite tower into the sky so I can see further.
You’ve been eaten by a Grue.
I was going to recommend The Great Machine: A Fragment by Jonas Kyratzes (writer for The Eternal Cylinder and The Talos Principle, if you’ve heard of those), but it looks like it’s not on his website anymore :( It’s probably been close to 20 years since I played it, but I remember enjoying it. It’s about being a soldier in a war.
Holy shit, nice! Time to go back down the rabbit hole
If you count ASCII graphics as text-based games you could play CDDA. Better requirement is games that could be played over an SSH session.
You can try any of the still running MUDs, multiple user dungeon
Does Radical Dreamers count, or not obscure enough?
I recommend NetHack
Back in my BBS days I enjoyed Trade Wars quite a bit.
Do visual novels count? They are text-based with images added on top.
Also check over at !retrogaming@lemmy.world
First, I can’t afford a new computer or even a new graphics card. All these “gaming on a budget” type things are all priced in USD, and I’m in Canada after conversion and the Canada tax, local shops are selling it for a lot more… I can only imagine that going up with the tariffs.
Second, graphics ain’t shit. Look at some of the most popular games around and some of them have the “worst” graphics. I don’t mean to pick on any game in specific, but I’ll mention two notable examples: the first is Minecraft. Square voxels and pretty basic visuals all around. Easily one of the most popular titles of all time. I don’t play it, but I get it. The other example I want to point to is schedule I. Honestly the graphics in the game, when compared to the nearly realistic content that games like assassin’s Creed has, and it’s basically trash by comparison. The game is huge and hugely popular. The graphics, or lack thereof, is not a detractor from how fun the game is.
Don’t get me wrong. High graphics can contribute to a good game; and therein lies the problem. You need to have a good game that you can apply the graphics to, in order for it to be valuable. If you take away the graphics and replace the visuals with something far more basic, and the game loses its appeal, your game sucks. Fix that first, then try again.
I have a pretty massive collection of steam titles that I’m planning to play as things start to devolve into higher and higher specs for basically no gains. Like ray tracing, it’s cool, looks good… But I don’t need it to have fun in a game. I usually turn it off because it compromises performance for basically no real gain. Sure, shadows look a bit more shit, and lights aren’t as glowy, but I don’t care about that. I just want to play. Why is RT a requirement for some games now? The hell?
Anyways. High graphics are better in more cinematic games, but publishers have gotten so obsessed with making cinematic content that they forgot to include a game with it.
Give me more substance, more character development, more scenes, not just action.
I never understood the point of realistic (or heavily stylized) graphics. Maybe it’s just me, but after about 5 minutes of “wow” my brain’s visual processor starts treating it as anything else, whether it’s Doom 2, Borderlands 2, or Stalker 2.
Doom 2? From 1994?
I should play that game again
I would agree that schedule 1 has very high graphics.
Graphism allows to convey story and emotion much clearer. Imagine playing baldurs gate 3 with gta4 stiff low poly faces. The character would be much less expressive and thus emotions become harder to convey.
My person in Chrysler, BG 2 existed and was just as expressive with just voice and still pictures. And half the lines weren’t even voiced.
I think that had more to do with the whole eastern-bloc trope.
San Andreas is even older and the story comes across great thanks to voice acting and good story telling.
I find it more irritating when people post two screenshots to make the argument: This picture looks better than this picture, therefore the graphics in this game are better than in this game, therefore this game is better than this game. The most complex form of media to date is luckily very easy to compare.
