My response was to him responding to me for mentioning money instead of responding to you (now that's a confusing sentence.)
Actually, I don't think the tiles will be that much of a problem, because currently the ASCII characters aren't "true" characters, there's a .bmp file with all of them (two files actually, one for 640*300 and one for 800*600), so making a .bmp file with tiles instead shouldn't be a real problem (coding the graphic engin however, could be a problem, so would coming up with so many tiles and sprites O
Anyway, I'm in the middle of a very interesting Fortress building right now, just thought people would like to learn from my huge mistakes which are probably going to cost me that game: (in order of noticing the mistakes)
1) When making a Farm Plot, use the u/h/k/m keys to change the size of the plot, it took me a while to notice which is a major blow to my food income this early. Luckily I fixed it soon enough to at least have hope of surviving winter.
2) You can't trade raw gems. I guess you have to process them somehow (I don't have a jeweler yet)
I was counting on trading away my many (many!) gems for some food from the caravan, and was quite surprised when I couldn't.
3) (O)ffer means give that item as an offering to some king >_< (and not offering something to be traded)
4) Caravans have limited space aboard (measured in weight), so make sure to trade light trade goods (especially since food is light, and you want to buy food)
5) Don't make the same extremely stupid mistake I did and gift the trader with a huge stone door that weighs 250 godamn (weight units) and thus make him unable to trade anything with you due to overweight >_<
Now, since I'm posting anyway I might as well add in a question:
1) How long does winter last? (Real Time and Game Time*)
2) How much food do you need to survive winter?
Winter will be upon me soon and I only have ~70 food units (according to the [z] menu, which doesn't make sense since I have ~20 plants and ~10 meats), am I going to make it?
*-Yes, I know in game time Winter lasts exactly one season. What I wanna know is how many days does it last (considering most Dwarves go to sleep roughly at the same time, which makes me think of that time as night)