ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

A simple question: Do you prefer that wall and tree tiles are solid blocks (the Windows default) or that they are the ASCII # symbol (the Linux default)?

My custom configuration has granite blocks as #s and permenant blocks as the default solid block.

I like solid blocks

The 'l'ook command exists for a reason. It tells the two types of blocks apart, should there be a need.

I use the option which allows you to change the character used for terrain features extensively.

Basically, anything I can't see through (walls, trees, etc) uses some colour solid block (I use grey for granite walls, brown for hills, green/dark green for trees, cyan for perma-walls).

Anything I can see through (like glass walls or mists) is a #.

For floor features (water, ice, lava) I use one of the non-standard characters which sort of looks like a stippled sqaure which is not a full block-size.

I find these choices give a more orthogonal look to the dungeon while delivering maximum information

In Annals of Ea (yes, it's a shameless plug ) I have set the walls to default as solid block, while trees are the # symbol, 'cos it looks more organic and allows me greater variation of wall types.

I like the solid block being used for walls. It would be nice to change just trees to a green '#' though. It would better reflect the 'porous' nature of forest in comparison to solid rock. I could do it with the "%" comand but I would have to do it every time. Is this a hard coded item or is it changable in one of the edit files, and if so, which one?

Would also be nice to permanently change the color of perma rock.

Use the % command. Change the features you want, and then select the "Dump feature attr/chars". It will default to a file called user-win.prf which gets saved in the lib/user directory. The game will use this file when starting up from then on.

I think the "organic" # feel is good for rock walls too, since with it any non-rectangular rooms look so much better. Dungeons like Orc Caves are meant to look rough and unfinished and not like someone has carefully constructed eccentric angular shapes.

The poll looks pretty divided... I wonder how the answers are divided along the operating system divide.

If you want to change the symbols themselves, they are found in the f_info.txt edit file.

However, features set as a solid block are done by one of the "pref" files. (graf-win.prf IIRC).

It is probably easier to change the symbols using the % command, however, since you would need to find the colour and feature codes for the pref file.

(Yet Another Shameless Plug...) Vaults are another thing I hope to change for Annals of Ea, so that there are far more "ordinary" interesting rooms, with different features. I am also going to implement a number of variations of rock type and other wall features for use in the dungeons, such as the old quartz/magma veins and the like.

Some of these may be #'s, or solid blocks, depending on the feature.