{"id":540,"date":"2014-03-22T10:11:22","date_gmt":"2014-03-22T02:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gridsagegames.com\/blog\/?p=540"},"modified":"2014-06-20T15:19:02","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T07:19:02","slug":"ascii-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gridsagegames.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/ascii-art\/","title":{"rendered":"ASCII Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Traditional roguelike aesthetics are all about abstraction. Object representations are distilled to a simple symbolic form, thus it’s no surprise that roguelikes sometimes come paired with ASCII art. Of course this is also often due to practical limitations--the engine\/system itself may only be capable of displaying characters--but it’s also stylistically appropriate for art to use the same medium as the rest of the game in a similarly abstract way.<\/p>\n

Here “art” refers to still works composed of multiple characters arranged to depict a larger subject. The overall aesthetic of a roguelike can definitely be said to have artistic value (heck, even Dwarf Fortress can make it into the Museum of Modern Art<\/a>!), but ASCII art is a step in a slightly different direction.<\/p>\n

Unlike letters, numbers, and punctuation that rely purely on player imagination to flesh out that goblin, dragon, or cannon-laden death robot, ASCII art gives the viewer’s imagination a starting point. ASCII isn’t generally used to draw fully “abstract” art; it’s more suggestive than that, while still lacking enough accurate details that there is plenty of room for a wild imagination to interpret and\/or expand on the image. In terms of detail, ASCII art sits firmly at the bottom of a list topped by 3D\/textures, 2D\/pixel art, and more styles in between.<\/p>\n

ASCII art itself can also range from more to less abstract, mostly dependent on the number of characters used.<\/p>\n

\"nolithius_guild_portraits\"<\/a>

An example of highly abstract art used for character portraits in Nolithius’ 2012 7DRL “The Adventurer’s Guild,” which you can play online here<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ondras_goldfish_inventory\"<\/a>

Not exactly detailed, but much less abstract due to its larger dimensions, an example from the inventory screen of Goldfish, a 2014 7DRL you can play online here<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

For a collection of many more examples, check out this<\/a> thread on TIGForums. There you’ll find plenty of roguelike mockups, many of which include ASCII art. Very inspiring stuff!<\/p>\n

Art in Cogmind<\/h1>\n

While Cogmind’s animated GUI<\/a> and particle effects<\/a> can definitely be classified as (and are intended to be) art, procedural content aside I’ve decided to also add ASCII art to Cogmind. For now only items (components\/parts) will be drawn, “only” being a very relative term here because there are 600<\/em> of them! Good news is I’ve already drawn them all and imported them into the game, so that’s another task out of the way…<\/p>\n

The process began several months ago when I started drawing ASCII concepts for weapons to see whether it would be worth including them in the game. Initial concepts were well-received, so I expanded on them to make sure the necessary variety was possible within the restrictions of ASCII and the available dimensions in the item info window. Finally I sketched out other item types to make sure I could handle those as well.<\/p>\n

At first I wasn’t sure if I could produce enough art within a reasonable time frame, but after months of occasional practice a consistent style appeared as I familiarized myself with the available glyphs and found uses for each. That and I got much faster at producing interesting designs.<\/p>\n

Cogmind art sits between the two extremes described earlier: It’s a little abstract but there’s enough room to contain some more suggestive details.<\/p>\n

\"cogmind_quantum_rifle\"<\/a>

One of the earlier concepts that survived all the way to make it into the game: the Quantum Rifle.<\/p><\/div>\n

Cogmind art uses a traditional code page 437<\/a> font, meaning 255 characters including your normal alphanumerics and punctuation along with extended ASCII. No glyphs have been altered (though the font is slightly wider than the IBM font to suit a square cell aspect ratio). Art is always more interesting when working with a set of stringent limitations!<\/p>\n

The font is available at each resolution the game supports, thus art drawn with it can be scaled without any stretching\/shrinking.<\/p>\n

\"cogmind_ascii_art_scaling\"<\/a>

A Neutron Cannon. The art is drawn using the default 12×12 glyphs (middle), but can be viewed in other dimensions as well and retains much of the same look.<\/p><\/div>\n

Why<\/h1>\n

While not necessary, adding ASCII art provides Cogmind with another unique visual aspect and, more importantly, gives observers a little something concrete to latch onto. I love it just for what it is, neat-looking ASCII art, but from a more practical standpoint it’s a useful marketing tool for a game that honestly doesn’t have the most appealing screenshots. Cogmind is at its best when it’s in motion (the disparity is more apparent than with other games), and screenshots aren’t a very effective way to capture the feeling of playing the game. ASCII art is a quick and easy attention grabber that is likely to attract the same kind of audience that would be interested in this type of game. Or so I hope ;)<\/p>\n

The next post will look at the process behind creating the ASCII art you see in Cogmind.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Traditional roguelike aesthetics are all about abstraction. Object representations are distilled to a simple symbolic form, thus it’s no surprise that roguelikes sometimes come paired with ASCII art. Of course this is also often due to practical limitations–the engine\/system itself may only be capable of displaying characters–but it’s also stylistically appropriate for art to use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[171,62,64,4,46],"class_list":["post-540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-art","tag-ascii","tag-ascii-art","tag-cogmind","tag-roguelikes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gridsagegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gridsagegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gridsagegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gridsagegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gridsagegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.gridsagegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":551,"href":"https:\/\/www.gridsagegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions\/551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gridsagegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gridsagegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gridsagegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gridsagegames.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}