Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[herrbdog]

Ok, this is not really important, but just a lil thing... I got a weird error, my hard drive was full. turns out i had over 100 screen dumps, with fonts at 12x12 and 16x16, all still in .bmp format. I also had a plethora of .psd files composed of those .bmps. I like to take plenty of shots and layer them to see my progress and plan. The .psd's are automatically compressed, so they weren't too big, though more space than I had really planned for. However, I had about 12 gb in just screen dumps.

Is it possible, down the road, anyway, to make alternate dump formats? The lossless PNG preferably, or JPG for those who just don't care.   :p GIF would even work. Just something compressed.

[Toady One]

I didn't figure out libpng for the few hours I put into trying to figure it out, since there weren't any good examples bundled with it.  And there was a giant security warning on the download when I got it, though that's probably gone now.  I'd like to use PNG.

[herrbdog]

And... PNG's support transparency, which would be juicy for tileset creation, even with the current base font and graphics set capabilities. If the format were PNG instead of BMP for the graphics, I could create some really nice smooth graphics, because my pixel edges wouldn't be constrained to on or off. That's a big wish list idea though. =D

Thanks

Edit: And I was wondering if you, Toady, saw my custom font I made. I preserved the original character set, so I could continue to use it through the DF iterations, no matter what the symbols come to represent.

[ May 03, 2007: Message edited by: herrbdog ]

[Toady One]

I don't know how PNGs store transparency, but if it is in a way that translates into alpha blending in OpenGL, that would work with some engine changes, although I don't understand quite what you mean.  It seems like it require something out of the engine to translate any change in format to an actual in-game improvement, since OpenGL displays in terms of alpha-blending etc etc rather than "png" or "bmp".

Yeah, I saw the tileset.  It was crafted, rather than a screenshot of a Curses program like mine, he he he.

[herrbdog]

Thanks. It's what I do to make money irl. =D Well, kinda sorta.

PNG's store transparency as an alpha channel. I believe there is direct interaction between PNG's and openGL. My programming is limited to non-graphics stuff, myself =/. I haven't played with any, yet. There are thus 4 channels to a PNG: R,G,B, and an Alpha, if enabled. This can then be used directly (as I understand) in openGL as the alpha channel.

Then tiles could be layered, instead of alternating depending on what's on the tile. So a rock on a bridge would be ON it instead of flashing. Multiple creatures in a tile would still have to alternate as now, or something else... *shrug*

[Mylon]

HTML, maybe?  It could support graphical tiles as well, and while it may not be compressed natively, it can be zipped.

[Captain Mayday]

I also find PNG to be fantastic. Far smaller than BMP and able to support transparency.
I think that if the game is going to get tile graphics, this is pretty much going to have to be how it happens, using the same sort of layering of objects that already exists, but it would allow items to be shown more easily.

Um, I can think of an eventual issue with severed limbs. Creatures will have to be created so as to have a tile for each body part.

[Fieari]

Tiles might be best set in terms of classes... use the most detailed tile if available, but if not, use a tile in the next higher up level.  So use a Sworddwarf tile if you've got one, elsewise just a generic military dwarf, elsewise a generic dwarf.  Limbs similarly.  Use the goblin foot tile if you've got it, elsewise use the generic foot, elsewise use generic gore.

Generic gore would be easiest, but if people have time on their hands, specific body parts might be fun.  It's not as if Toady has to do it, he just needs to provide support for it.