# ASCII Art in Item Description
**URL:** https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462
**Category:** The Drawing Board
**Created:** [March 30, 2019, 11:39am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462 "2019-03-30T11:39:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Bence](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Bence)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2019, 11:39am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/1 "2019-03-30T11:39:34Z")
So… I had this crazy idea.
I added an ASCII art in to the description of the butcher knife. I separated the lines with `\n`
This is the result.
**Craft menu:**
**Debug menu:**
**Inventory:**
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### Author:  [@Mr.Denton](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Mr.Denton)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2019, 12:25pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/2 "2019-03-30T12:25:25Z")
Thats awesome, i always wonder what some special weapons in the game looks like
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### Author:  [@Valiant](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Valiant)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2019, 12:41pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/3 "2019-03-30T12:41:33Z")
This kind of feature will require a convention on maximum size of the window an artist can use, so it could be displayed properly on small screens.
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### Author:  [@Mr.Denton](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Mr.Denton)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2019, 2:03pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/4 "2019-03-30T14:03:04Z")
Or downscale the ASCII to match the size of the info box
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### Author:  [@Tazeell](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Tazeell)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2019, 5:43pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/5 "2019-03-30T17:43:30Z")
That’s actually really cool
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### Author:  [@Bence](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Bence)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2019, 6:26pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/6 "2019-03-30T18:26:17Z")
Made it smaller, it works:
This is pretty exciting. I wonder if this could be a thing in game.
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### Author:  [@Bence](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Bence)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2019, 8:38pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/7 "2019-03-30T20:38:32Z")
**Combat knife**
**Hunting knife**
**Pocket knife**
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### Author:  [@Axema](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Axema)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2019, 9:08pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/8 "2019-03-30T21:08:30Z")
I wonder how a butter knife looks like…
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### Author:  [@Mr.Denton](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Mr.Denton)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2019, 10:00pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/9 "2019-03-30T22:00:31Z")
I hope you would consider making art for food items also, especially herb and plants
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### Author:  [@BushElito](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/BushElito)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2019, 9:26am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/10 "2019-03-31T09:26:03Z")
I think the best course of action is to add another parameter, “ascii\_art”, that shows up under description.
The reason why to introduce a new variable is so that you could turn off ascii art in options, to have shorter description.
I’m sure some people might not want to see ascii art as some would want a faster scroll.
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### Author:  [@Bence](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Bence)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2019, 3:48pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/11 "2019-04-01T15:48:07Z")
> I wonder how a butter knife looks like…
> I hope you would consider making art for food items also, especially herb and plants
Toast-em
Yeah, of course, but those are hard to make. Especially for a beginner like me.
> I think the best course of action is to add another parameter, “ascii\_art”, that shows up under description.
That’s a good idea. I can see why some people wouldn’t like to see it. However this requires some code knowledge, so this feature won’t be a thing any time soon.
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### Author:  [@Valiant](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Valiant)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2019, 5:36am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/12 "2019-04-02T05:36:46Z")
> [@BushElito](#):
>
> I think the best course of action is to add another parameter, “ascii\_art”, that shows up under description.
Adding another field to the json is easy, but imagine how LARGE the file will become after adding all the pictures to all the items.
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### Author:  [@Fris0uman](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Fris0uman)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2019, 9:33am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/13 "2019-04-02T09:33:59Z")
> [@Valiant](#):
>
> but imagine how LARGE the file
You mean very hard to scroll through or actually large in term of file size ?
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### Author:  [@Bence](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Bence)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2019, 11:32am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/14 "2019-04-02T11:32:04Z")
The ascii takes up only one line of code, one very long one. The “art” is about 300 characters long.
EDIT: it’s less, the toast-em one is 179 characters large. I think that’s the largest one. The pocket knife is just 160 long.
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### Author:  [@Mr.Denton](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Mr.Denton)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2019, 11:46am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/15 "2019-04-02T11:46:10Z")
Adding a few 1000 letters should only change a files size by a few kilobits, in other words very LITTLE file changr occour
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### Author:  [@Fris0uman](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Fris0uman)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2019, 11:56am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/16 "2019-04-02T11:56:25Z")
So the tricky part would mainly be to make it display correctly on any screen size ?
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### Author:  [@Axema](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Axema)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2019, 1:01pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/17 "2019-04-02T13:01:39Z")
> [@Fris0uman](#):
>
> make it display correctly on any screen size
I agree to this. Mobile devices has its limit in viewing item informations, so the ASCII arts might look terrible at that ☹
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### Author:  [@Trigon](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Trigon)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2019, 1:08pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/18 "2019-04-02T13:08:37Z")
A stopgap might be to make the ASCII art toggled through the options. I’m sure either way some people might not care for it, but if it got borked on your particular screen for some reason you could at least disable it so you don’t have a paragraph of weird, disjointed characters.
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### Author:  [@Valiant](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Valiant)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2019, 3:17pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/19 "2019-04-02T15:17:03Z")
> [@Fris0uman](#):
>
> You mean very hard to scroll through
This.
Character limit.
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### Author:  [@Fris0uman](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Fris0uman)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2019, 3:18pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/ascii-art-in-item-description/19462/20 "2019-04-02T15:18:55Z")
Would it be possible to dedicate a json file to it ? With a two entry system : one with item id and one with actual ASCII art .
This way it would not clutter the actual item file
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