ID:135172
 
Just a thought, I'm a fan of ZZT, It was my first encounter with anything remotely like computer programming, I liked the way it looked and the way it played, I moved on from it to BYOND and only recently remembered it's charm, I think implimenting support for the IBM extended ASCII{4} character set would add a whole new attraction to text mode, currently, though cool, text mode lacks a certain spark, for those who've never played ZZT:

http://www.gamehippo.com/screenshots_label_1/945.png
There's a screenshot.

Now, Anyone would say it's pretty pointless adding something for textmode, that nobody uses it, but maybe if it was added it would be used?, I love it to bits and would love to see it reach BYOND.

-Thorg

Some ZZT resources:
http://www.autofish.net/zzt/index.html
Everything you need to get started in ZZT :)
Looking at that screen shot makes me want ANSI Text Support too :D
ZZT was great, but of course your request has bupkus to do with ANSI. What you're talking about is ASCII, in an older PC form.

ANSI is the system of escape codes used for display commands in simple text output systems, notably old bulletin boards and BYOND's telnet support.

I'd like to see something more like old character support myself, so Roguelikes could do the job properly with the old style walls. However this is harder than you might think. Although those characters actually exist in standard Unicode fonts in Windows, there's no standard for displaying them in the kind of text mode BYOND uses; they can't simply be stretched to fit. For this reason among others, I never put more work into a Unicode-friendly text mode.

Lummox JR
In response to Lummox JR
The only one which would neccessarily be "stretched" would the (shaded) walls - but they would be a particularly nice attraction to BYOND text-mode.

splatty
In response to splattergnome
splattergnome wrote:
The only one which would neccessarily be "stretched" would the (shaded) walls - but they would be a particularly nice attraction to BYOND text-mode.

Line walls would be too. You can't connect them horizontaly if their default aspect isn't square.

Lummox JR
In response to Lummox JR
True - I totally forgot about the line walls. And BYOND already supports foregrounds, backgrounds, AND animation - so it is already ahead of ZZT in THOSE aspects - now it just needs the extended character set.

Say, what would it cost to motivate you to work on it, Lummox?

splatty
In response to Wizkidd0123
Wizkidd0123 wrote:
Looking at that screen shot makes me want ANSI Text Support too :D

i'd rather be able to display that many tiles than have full ASCII support =)
In response to Wizkidd0123
Here's some other screenshots, since the posted screenshot doesn't work for me for some reason.

http://members.tripod.com/~Hydra78/shots.htm (Beware of popups.)

But then, those aren't 16x16 tiles...
In response to OneFishDown
OneFishDown wrote:
Wizkidd0123 wrote:
Looking at that screen shot makes me want ANSI Text Support too :D

i'd rather be able to display that many tiles than have full ASCII support =)

Actually - is there any good reason why it couldn't be possible to expand the size of the displayed text-map (larger than the displayed graphical map)? The text-map could be expanded to an equivalent size of the normal map when using big icons.

splatty
In response to splattergnome
splattergnome wrote:
Actually - is there any good reason why it couldn't be possible to expand the size of the displayed text-map (larger than the displayed graphical map)?

Yep. The current design of BYOND only sends display information about atoms in a certain area.

Lummox JR