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[Savok]

Through a long, convoluted process, I arrived at my 16x16 tileset, which I fancy to have been pretty good DFtileset art for the times in which it was born, being the fourth tileset to have any sort of graphics.

I have since become quite frustrated at how it does not represent Toady's ASCII art properly. Attempts to remedy such a fault have all pointed to "scratch that and start over."

Thus, that is my plan. I intend to redesign nearly every tile (I count 13 that might need no alteration) with the default tileset as a model. Accented characters and those with no known use in DF will be used for creatures/objects/stones/etc with modable tiles.

The current image contains a bunch of temporary stuff.

Suggestions? Comments? Questions? Advice?



EDIT: Tileset updated

[stoned funeral]

Well for what it's worth, I think the look that Plac1d is going for here: http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/images/1/1e/Plac1d_640x300tileset.png and Anikki made here: http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/images/4/43/Anikki_square_8x8.png are really the best looking right now. What I like best about them is the font, (the IBM CGA or whatever, which I can't find online, looks really good, as well as the original curses) and their keeping an eye toward the iconic/symbolism side of things rather than actually graphical. What I mean is each tile doesn't try to look exactly like what it represents, but can still get the point across with relatively simple symbols, which I think is what Toady's original ASCII is all about.
I've spent a day or two with a 12x12 tileset, and I'm finding that changing the size of the alphabet while keeping the look of the font is definitely the hardest part. The tallness of letters is what makes most square sets look empty when you just add some magenta pixels to the side and call it a day, so I'm trying to fatten the origninal curses without distorting pixel by pixel 
Anyway, have fun making it and I can't wait to see the end product!

[Savok]

I agree, the alphabet is the most difficult part.

What I've done for now is a straight resizing of curses_600x300 to make the area of each character 8/3 the previous amount ( 8/3=(16*16)/(8*12) ). With the alpha channel, this doesn't look that horrible.

[stoned funeral]

Hate to be an idiot, but what is alpha channeling? And could you teach me how you did that? The straight resizing and alpha channel I mean...

[Nesoo]

The alpha channel, to put it simply, is the level of transparency for each pixel; anywhere from totally opaque to totally transparent. I'm assuming that by straight resizing he meant that he just scaled the picture from the original 128x192 size to 256x256. He's probably using Photoshop or GIMP or some other similar software which would handle the alpha for him automatically (by anti-aliasing) when he resizes.

[Savok]

Not quite that simple.

• Take the 8x12 tileset and insert a black 1px wide line between each tile. By hand, in MSpaint. And color all magenta black.
• Calculate linear ratio of areas. sqrt[(16x16)/(8x12)]=~1.633
• Multiply dimensions of altered 8x12 by said ratio, then resize said image to said dimensions with a program like GIMP or Photoshop.
• Take said program like GIMP or Photoshop and use flood-fill or something like that to turn all black and near-black to magenta.
• Take your image over to your tileset artistry program of choice (mine is MSpaint) and move each tile over to a 16x16 magenta box. Some will not fit, which results in hard choices.
• Clean each tile up by hand. I probably end up spending at least a total of 30min per tile during the whole tileset creation, given that I've gotten some experience at this from my first tileset.
• Use something like tileset tools (click on the homepage link to find out how to work it) to resize your dev file and convert various grays and magentas into desired alphas.
• Build a fort using all sorts of tiles in all sorts of different situations. Compare the look and feel with the 8x12 by switching to and from fullscreen.
• Tweak your tiles, spending five minutes staring at some before deciding to change those four pixels to a slightly lighter shade of grey.
• Realize that it's a hopeless cause, that, even though your new tiles have the same, undistorted shape and visual area, your tiles with a 1:1 height:width ratio cannot imitate a 1.5:1 ratio.

To give you an idea of how I've been working on it, see this, this, and this for three versions of my dev file. In the multicolor grid on the last one, green, black, and blue all mean finished, whereas dark and light red indicate work needed.

[BSPiotr]

I wasn't sure if this issue was resolved somewhere (new to the forums and the search wasn't bringing up any actual answer to this)
but I was wondering:

I have version 28_181_40c and when I apply a new tileset (a 16x16) the default for it is 80:25 - 1280x400

I understand that I can increase the # of tiles by changing resolution and GRID

So in the init file, it is now 1280x960
and the GRID is [GRID:80:60]

However, when I run the game, the graphics are still 80x25, and continue to be so even after loading a game.

I was wondering if anyone had ever experienced this problem and if they have an actual solution.

[Vaiolis]

The ability to change the grid size was introduced after 40c, so the version you're using can't use [GRID:X:Y]. You'll either have to live with the 80x25 default, or if you switch to the most recent version you should be able to use that without any trouble.

[BSPiotr]

Ahh Thank you for your help   I will be transferring over to the new version then =D

[Nesoo]

I guess that is a bit more complex than just resizing the image, yes