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Iconic ASCII sim 'Dwarf Fortress' will hit Steam and Itch on December 6th with major upgrades
The new version of the 16-year-old game has pixel art, a new sound track, a tutorial for new players and a revamped UI.
Legendary ASCII game 'Dwarf Fortress' is coming to Steam
The 17-year-old classic Dwarf Fortress is considered a pioneer in gaming through its massive, highly interactive world, but it's a tough sell to modern gamers with its ASCII graphics and its absence on modern game stores. That won't be an issue for much longer: Bay 12 and publisher Kitfox Games have announced that Dwarf Fortress is not only coming to Steam and Itch.io, but will launch with honest-to-goodness artwork. While it won't ease the learning curve for the game, you at least won't have to squint at your screen quite so intensely as before.
Google's Tenor slips GIFs into your command line interface
If you live in the command line, you probably like to give that otherwise plain interface your own distinctive touch, like ASCII art. But wouldn't it be nice if you could spice it up with a GIF? You can now. Google's Tenor team has released a GIFs for CLI tool that, as the name implies, turns short videos and GIFs (including those sourced from Tenor's search toolkit) into animated ASCII art you can use as a greeting when you open your terminal. The Deadpool 2 skydive you see above is in black and white, but you can include GIFs in glorious color.
Facebook, Instagram make text art from your photos
Who knew that Facebook had a secret artistic side? Mathias Bynens did, at least. He recently noticed that Facebook and Instagram automatically turn many public photos into ASCII art just by adding a file extension to the end of the web link -- ".html" if you want a color image, or ".txt" if you'd prefer it in black and white. I've tried the trick with a few of my photos (see above and below for examples), and it definitely works -- the results have a great lo-fi vibe that could work well for a Facebook background image or even a poster.
'Windows 93' is like your childhood computer on acid
Flat design. Pfffft. You know what's really cool? ASCII renditions of Star Wars: A New Hope in what appears to be its entirety. This bonafide internet gem (and who even knows how many others) are hidden in Windows 93, a web app spotted by The Verge that mimics a bygone time of cathode-ray tube monitors and dial-up internet connections. The Redmond-inspired desktop has all manner of callbacks in addition to that ultra-low-fi version of Episode IV. Easter eggs include a game of solitaire with a twist, a pop-up "virus" and too many other goodies that we don't want to spoil. What were you able to find, dear readers? Let us know in the comments.
Clack-Clack FACE gives a typewriter new life as a text-based portrait painter
There's something oddly romantic about taking a piece of archaic technology and giving it new life as a work of 21st century art. Take the Royal Empress typewriter you see above. This particular model was built in 1961 and eventually landed in the hands of Amanda Gelb as graduation gift. She and her fellow classmates, Jinyi Fu and Quingyuan Chen, looked at the hunk of aging metal and saw potential instead of an obsolete writing tool. For their installation at the ITP Winter Show, they wired up each of the keys to an Arduino for tracking what a user types, then paired that with a tiny projector that displays the letters on a sheet of paper wrapped around the platen. The "face" part of the equation comes from the webcam mounted to the top of the typewriter case. It uses brightness to map a silhouette of the person sitting in front of it and fills only the darkened areas with letters, creating an ASCII portrait in real time. The code also automatically loops the letters you type, so even if you press only a single key the picture will appear. Of course, you could also type out a love letter or a quick blog post and the whole thing will be wrapped inside the confines of your outline. When you're done, you can press the re-labeled print key and a laser printer spits out your portrait. While there are already plenty of apps and sites out there that will automatically create ASCII versions of images, there's something alluring about sitting in front of gorgeous piece of hardware and creating it live. Plus, there are few things in this world as satisfying as pressing down the stiff keys of an old typewriter, hearing the titular onomatopoeia and seeing the letter appear before you. Especially when you know you're creating a work of art, even if you're a terrible writer.
Free browser RPG Candy Box 2 is your next click-for-sweets addiction
Candy Box 2, the ASCII art-based sequel to the click-for-candy RPG is now available to freely play. Set up like other simple all-you-do-is-click games like Cookie Clicker and Clicking Bad, Candy Box 2 has players collecting pieces of candy in their browsers, trading candies in for items and equipment to aid them in quests. The game's blog describes changes to the formula introduced in the first game, noting that there are more items as well as hidden goods and fun Easter eggs; not every piece of equipment can be found in the text-based missions. French developer aniwey introduced an offline save system for Candy Box 2 so players can transfer their addiction progress to other computers.
YouTube celebrates Geek Week with Unix overhaul, eyes flinch universally
To celebrate its upcoming Geek Week event, YouTube has started an Easter egg hunt on its Twitter feed. If you wanna see just what the video giant has planned but can't decipher its cryptic 140 character clues, we've got you covered. Simply (spoiler alert) enter "/ geekweek" minus the quotation marks into the site's search field for a Unix terminal-style conversion and gawk away. Fair warning: Your eyes might hate you for what you'll see.
Google Street View goes retro with unofficial ASCII treatment
Nostalgia is a powerful force. It's driven some to search Google through a Bulletin Board System-like interface or, in the case of programmer Peter Nitsch, it's compelled him to graft ASCII art onto the physical world. Simply plug an address into his project's website and you'll be able to pan through an ASCII facsimile of a real-world Street View vista. Leveraging WebGL and Javascript, the system samples the search giant's images and generates text art using the appropriate characters and hues. Nitsch's fondness for retro visualizations don't end there, however, he also created a system that superimposes a gaggle of characters in the wake of a physical paintbrush using a Kinect and a projector. Built as a plugin for the openFrameworks toolkit, the code relies on a GPU for the real-time image conversion and is freely available for tinkering. Hit the source link below to see the modified Street View in action or head past the break for a video of the ASCII painting. For some of the technical nitty-gritty, tap the more coverage link.
BBS version of Google takes you back in time, won't hog your phone line
If the third digit of your birth year is a nine (or heck, a zero), you'll likely never have experienced the true agony joy that was BBS or Bulletin Board Systems. Well, thanks to nostalgic developer Norbert Landsteiner, you can take a glimpse at how your dad got online with an HTML / JavaScript emulation BBS Google. Likewise, more seasoned travelers of the internet can take a trip down memory lane and see what Mountain View's search engine might have looked like "back in the day." All the details are there, right down to the familiar modem tones and ASCII graphics, it's even somewhat functional (when the API isn't over its limit.) So, want to appreciate that browser you complain about on twitter all the time over your LTE connection? Tab on down to the source link for a lesson in gratitude.
URL Hunter game takes place entirely in your browser's address bar, courtesy of HTML5
That's right, kids: the tyranny of the browser window is over! Thanks to Corey from ProbablyInteractive (as well as clever use of HTML5 and the Canvas tag), we now have URL Hunter. Using the left and right arrows keys, the player controls an ASCII "O" that has nothing better to do all day but kill the letter "a." When you find yourself on top of the "a" key, hit the space bar to earn a point. Simple? In theory, yes. But trust us -- It's harder than it sounds! Hit the source link to try for yourself.
PSP is Japan's best-selling console of 2010, Pokemon Black/White the top game
You could probably guess the two best-selling games in Japan this year: Pokemon Black and White and Monster Hunter Portable 3rd. The DS monster collecting adventure and the PSP monster murder adventure sold 4,734,064 and 3,163,750 units respectively, according to a year-end report by ASCII. Monster Hunter managed to finish in second place after less than one month of sales -- it was released on December 1. It should come as no surprise, given the blockbuster status of those two, that the DS and PSP were the best-selling hardware platforms in Japan as well. The PSP was the only console to show growth in sales versus 2009, selling 600,000 more consoles than the previous year. 2,719,544 DS systems were sold in 2010, down a million from 2009. Find out how other systems did, and see the rest of the top ten best-selling games, after the break.
ASCIIpOrtal is now available, full of character
We admit, this post started out as a "hey, check out this quirky ASCII remake of Valve's transporting masterpiece" kind-of-post. At least, that's how we intended to write it two hours ago, at which point we were ambushed by how incredibly fun and charming the game actually is. Now, with two hours of play time under out belt, we're trying to write it again. It's not going very well, is it? Sorry gang. ASCIIpOrtal is difficult to write about, because we feel bad pausing it to continue writing this terrible, terrible post. You're going to need to go ahead and download it, because it's free, and you'll love it.
ASCIIpOrtal strikes a chord with us
Sometimes the creativity of the indie game scene can help push forward a development style the mainstream has left behind; in the case of this post we're referring to the wonderful world of ASCII! Indie dev Cymon's Games is hard at work developing ASCIIpOrtal, an ASCII-coded game inspired by the popular Valve puzzler, Portal. While a video of the game in action (found after the jump) has been the talk of the Internet for the last few days, everyone at Joystiq wanted to chime in and shower Joe Larson -- and the rest of the people involved at Cymon's Games -- with high-fives and fist-pumps. Expect ASCIIpOrtal to land on a PC near you "soon-ish." New-school, meet old-school ... have fun hanging out.[Via Total Action Adventure]
Gaze at the stars in Hoshizora Navi, feel like an insignificant speck
From this March, DS owners in Japan will be able to navigate the night skies, thanks to astronomy magazine publisher Astroarts. Hoshizora Navi (Starry Sky Navigator) was first revealed in March 2008, but now an official site has opened, rich with details.Apparently, the software comes packed with star charts containing 9,300 stars, the sun, planets, the moon, various constellations, and assorted meteor groups. Also, budding astronomers will be able to view the night sky at any point between 1900 and 2099, and even stargaze from several viewing locations across the globe. To help you differentiate between your Apastron and your Aphelion, there's an onboard astronomical dictionary of more than 400 terms.But allow us to remind you of the best bit: the Hoshizora Navi cartridge will come with a built-in positional sensor, meaning that as your DS moves, so does the view on your screen, to match your own! It's undoubtedly very clever, even though the tech has clearly pushed the price sky-high -- Hoshizora Navi goes on sale on March 26 for ¥8,190 (around $90)!
No More Heroes dev. will rerelease their first game on PS Store
Some of you might not know who Suda "Suda51" Goichi is, but perhaps you've heard of his game, one of the most talked-about titles on the Wii, No More Heroes. Another American release he was involved in was the PS2 title killer7, which featured a unique twist on the FPS genre. If you are a fan of these niche titles, you are in luck. Developer Grasshopper Manufacture's (where Goichi is CEO) very first title, released in Japan for the original PlayStation back in 1999, titled The Silver Case, will be headed over to the Japanese PS Store. The game yet another one-of-kind adventure title that featured usually deep characterization and unconventional plot, containing a story about murders that seem be committed by a dead man.No word on whether The Silver Case will get a stateside release; though a remake and a spinoff of the original is currently being ported and localized for the DS. That gives us a glimmer of hope of an English version, but don't count on it. Of course, we'll keep you updated if any of that changes.
Crackwhip, your source for MUD-style D&D gameplay
One of the greatest things about the Web is that there's no such thing as obsolescence. Anything you have ever loved is out there, somewhere, waiting for you to find it and love it again. Such is the case with old-school MUDs, where virtually everything, from gameplay to character creation, is text-based. Well, the creators of Crackwhip have been missing those days, so they've brought the glory back with their browser-based text adventure. Alongside the text you'll find simple graphics that represent objects, areas, and characters from the game. Additionally, these guys understand addiction -- from the press release: 'Want to play CrackWhip at work? No problem; at the top there are check boxes, uncheck these to turn graphics off, this way your computer screen will not reveal graphics as you quest for glory and coinage at your place of work.' Ironically, of course, those of us with jobs that are somewhat graphics-rich will be firing off a huge flare when our supervisors see a text-only screen.Regardless, if you've been pining for the days of yore and want to return to a time when imagination was the killer app, check out Crackwhip.
ASCII Curtains redefine interior design
There's absolutely no shortage of ways to geek up the inside of your domicile, but few creations posses the perfect balance of class and geekiness like the ASCII Curtains. Reportedly hand-crafted by designer / artist / undiscovered genius Nieke Sybrandy, these nerdalicious curtains feature a light gray tree motif that is compiled entirely from code. Breathtaking, no? Hit the read link for one more look -- and don't even bother phoning up Bed Bath & Beyond, we already tried.[Via gearcrave, thanks William]
Keep reaching for the stars (with your DS)
Astro Arts' Hoshi Navi (Star Navi) is an interactive star chart for the DS. It features a guide to star names, sunrise and sunset times (as well as those for the moon), and an encyclopedia of astronomical phenomena. It's designed by Astro Arts, who operates the Astro Arts astronomy website and also publishes astronomy magazines in Japan. They seem to have an interest in sharing astronomy with the masses, so it makes sense that they'd be looking to the DS.Hoshi Navi has a feature that would set it apart from other star-navigating software on the DS even if there were some: it has six-way tilt sensitivity, and allows you to look around the sky by tilting the DS. We assume you have to enter a starting location so it will start its display near you.
Widget Watch: Mac ASCII Text with Figlet
Continuing on with what has turned into ASCII Sunday here at TUAW, a comment from Micah Cooper led me to FIGlet, which has been around roughly since the dinosaurs roamed the earth. It allows you to to create large ASCII-based text using various fonts and styles. After Micah reminded me about it, I Googled around and found a Dashboard widget based on the venerable Figlet (not to be confused with the venerable Bede or my personal iPod, which is also named Figlet). You can download Figlet Widget (say that 5 times fast) from Apple's Dashboard widget site. It allows you to enter text and choose from 18 different text-based styles. You can then cut the text art from the results field, paste it into your favorite email program and annoy all your friends. Who could ask for more?
