Questions
- What is ASCII-World and who are behind of it?
- What is ASCII?
- What is a text game?
- But why most of programs you offer to download, uses graphical screen?
- Why bother? No one cares these programs anymore since we have modern technology.
- Why does this place look bad when viewing it with console/text browser?
- Why do you have this site and you are not even great ASCII artists?
- You don't have skills to do some real graphics and thats why you have this site?
- So why do you like ASCII/text software?
- Pretty quiet place. Is ASCII-World dying?
Answers
1. What is ASCII-World and who are behind of it?
ASCII-World was origianlly created by Stephane Richards and Kristian Virtanen. Two men who just loved ASCII games, tools and applications, by coincidence happened to meet on internet and after a while of conversation decided to create an website that would present something they both missed on internet. Official date of "birth" for ASCII-World is 5'th Mar, 2005.
Today, ASCII-World is wikibased, controlled and edited by all it's friends.
ASCII(American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a character encoding based on the English alphabet. Also, extented ASCII character set includes 128 more standard characters. You can see them here.
A text game is a type of computer game that uses text characters instead of graphics you see in modern computer or video console games. Often, text games are also considered as games, which uses graphics, but are controlled by writing or choosing words from menu or some kind of a select box. To see what text game means for us, see our ASCII-World S.D.I. page.
4. But why most of programs you offer to download, uses graphical screen?
We can say that purely console using programs are very rare ones but point is not to use console. Point is to use ASCII characters.
5. Why bother? No one cares these programs anymore since we have modern technology.
You cant even imagine how wrong you actually are. ASCII/text applications and games naturally are not the hottest thing anymore, but they do have their faithful user base. In same spirit, we can wonder why books are sold any more? After all, would it be just easier to rent a movie and watch it and all its modern special effects instead of "wasting" days for reading it?
6. Why does this place looks bad when viewing it through console/text browser?
We love ASCII but we don't want to force people to like it too, just to visit our site. Naturally we support general web browsing ways so any one can enter here. We are not trying to create surroundings for "hard core" ASCII fans. We want to offer all people possibility to see programs, applications, games, pictures etc. what are made by using those 255 different ASCII characters.
7. Why do you have this site and you are not even great ASCII artists?
True, but we try to learn as much as we can. Every soccer club has their fan sites, even though 99% of fans are not necessarily so great soccer players.
8. You don't have skills to do some real graphics and thats why you have this site?
This is a question I hear often. To be honest, I am not very good with graphics. But it is probably because in last ten years, I haven't written any graphical programs. At least anything bigger than simple circle in middle of the screen. Why should I? I don't see any reason to do something I don't like to do.
9. So why do you like ASCII/text software?
Mostly because it leaves room for my imagination. Games are way better if you can use imagination instead of graphics that replaces it. Thats totally a opinion thing so you either see my point or you don't.
10. Pretty quiet place. Is ASCII-World dying?
Definitely not, if it's up to us. Since the day we decided to create this website, we knew that it wouldn't be the hottest thing on internet. Activity on our forums and website generally is very seasonal. From time to time, days go by without any new messages or updates and then from time to time it's hard to follow everything that is going on.