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[Slogo]

I've decided to invest some time in making a mod that involves a new tileset and graphical tweak but with a slightly different aim than just a straight up tileset. Pretty much I have three goals:

• Keep the ASCII feel of the game
• Make it easier to distinguish important rocks and trees from the surrounding terrain
• Improve the graphical quality of the ASCII

I'm looking for some input on what would work well for these types of changes. I'm also curious how many people are interested in a tileset like this. So far my plan is this...

Retooling Stone and Plants:
I have two plans for the stone in the game. The first is I want to organize the stone icons by a set few types rather than the wide variety of icons we have now. Currently my planned groups are this:
Sand
Soil
Sedimentary Rock Layers
Igneous Rock Layers (both types)
Metamorphosis Rock Layers)
Rock that appears in veins or clusters
Metal Ores
Flux Stone
Coal + Lignite
Bauxite + Obsidian

I think that will give users a good quick way to look at stone. Igneous, Sedimentary, and Metamorphosis rocks will have a similar graphic/character while more important ores like metal, flux, etc will have something that makes them stand out. Part two of this is that I'll also be tweaking the colors. Stone like gypsum will probably be desaturated a bit to make them less uh offensive to the eyes. I've already done the reclassification and am working on the new characters so this part is coming along nicely.

Likewise I intend to meld the trees and shrub icons a bit. Some tree icons like the club and spade symbols work well but others blend in a bit too much for my liking. I'll probably squash the tree icons down to 2-3 types. Likewise with the shrubs, they'll have something that pops out a little bit more than the " do.


Improving the tileset
So I don't want to make a real graphical tileset like some of the great ones we already have. Mostly I want to avoid situations where gear assemblies look like ore, and other such collisions. My plan right now is to do away with accented characters and add in just a few altered or changed characters. I'll probably come up with something new for doors and something a little nicer looking for smoothed walls. I'm also going to soften the characters (including the text) like a lot of other tilesets do to make it a little smoother. I've already started on this a bit and it's coming along kinda nicely. Most certainly I will not change the look of icons that have multiple uses like the male/female signs.

So is there anything else people recommend I should do? There are a few things I want to stay away from, mostly changing game logic and creating a graphic set for characters. I know there's nothing to really get people interested yet but does this also sound like anyone's cup of tea?

[RantingRodent]

The modified matgloss files in my mod already divide things up like you're suggesting. Feel free to grab them if it'll save you some time.

[Slogo]

I'm actually using your tile set right now for the copy of DF with my active fortress. My only problem with it is everything is a little dark for my monitor so I may play around with the colors for that. But more on point I'm kind of hankering for the old-school ascii art stye that the base game has but the colors and lack of pop for certain things keeps me from playing without a tileset.

Thinking it over I may try to avoid making a tileset all together (my art sucks so it'd mostly be bashing together tiles from other people) but just throw out some config files that make a more uniform ore/tree setup. Of course with such a setup I'd be pretty limited to using the tiles that have a certain look regardless of setting (like * and the 3 'dust' tiles)

[Grimlocke]

Your tileset idea sounds like mine, I orriginally downloaded a number of sets and put them together, but was rather annoyed by those things like my cursor being up/down stairs. So right now im just making my own, focussing on every way the icons are used, rather then just the most common one.

Ill put it up somewhere when its done if you want.