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[Bumber]

DwarfMockup

[mirrizin]

I generally just use the "marker-only" designations within DF to come up with schematics. It helps me match them to the landscape I will be building/digging in. What advantages do you find to using 3rd party program to design? (other than interface)

(See the avatar? I made that in MSPaint.)

Damn that's impressive...

For one thing, I'd find it difficult to make circular or non-square designs on DF without using a schematic. With paint I can use the "draw circle" tool and simply count the pixels.

Also, I've recently started working on 3D designs using specific color patterns, which don't show in the "designate" menu. I also don't think you can do that for surface constructions.

[mirrizin]

DwarfMockup

Oh, that looks very nice...

[Pirate Santa]

GIMP is terrible for doing fine point pixel art. You need pixel precision for that. GIMP fuzzes everything!

(See the avatar? I made that in MSPaint.)

Aseprite is my favorite pixel art tool. So many useful features. It's great for animating too. I tried GIMP a couple times and always came back to Aseprite.

You're making me want to get back into my pixel learning. Various other projects mean I haven't touched it in many months.

I looked at Aseprite, but I'm a cheapskate and don't really need animation just at the moment so I've been using Grafx2.
It's free, but has layers and transparency, and I really like the way the view is set up.

I've yet to use it for DF but I have mapped one of my D&D dungeons with it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[milo christiansen]

GIMP does not fuzz everything! You simply use the pen tool rather than the paint tool, and set the eraser to "pixel perfect" mode. One annoying thing: If you want to paint single pixels you need to set the brush size to 1 instead of the default setting of 20 (and pick the "pixel" brush for best results).

Once you know what settings to use GIMP makes a good tool for multi-layer blueprints...

[Starver]

GIMP does not fuzz everything! You simply use the pen tool rather than the paint tool, and set the eraser to "pixel perfect" mode. One annoying thing: If you want to paint single pixels you need to set the brush size to 1 instead of the default setting of 20 (and pick the "pixel" brush for best results).

You can also deselect the "antialias"/"feathering" tickboxes to make hard edges (whether on a 1px 'dotter', or a larger brush/eraser of some kind), which would as useful in DF-planning as the antialiasing/feathering are useful in touching up photo images...

Once you know what settings to use GIMP makes a good tool for multi-layer blueprints...

GIMP is my go-to application for anything even mildly complicated, with every single filter/effect I normally want and even the ability to program rather specific transformations into it, should the need arise.  (The load-up time makes it awkward for the most simple tasks that Paint/etc can handle.)

Not that I'd suggest it for everyone, because it is so jam-packed full of features that you're as likely to be lost, or be desperately trying to move a selection with cursor keys, etc, but actually have the Layers window in focus so it's not doing what you think it should be doing.  (It takes practice, for example, to work out how and when a cut/copy-and-pasted selection then needs either Merging Down, making into a New Layer or just allowed to 'drop' when you create your next clipboarded layer...)

[TheHossofMoss]

I just use graph paper occasionally...

[mirrizin]

Anyone tried building blocks?

[wierd]

Square legos would work reasonably well, with some caveats:

You will need LOTS of space.
you will need LOTS of blocks.

[Pirate Santa]

So this went from a discussion on blueprints to a real life megaproject?

[Starver]

Square legos would work reasonably well, with some caveats:

Firstly, I checked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego for the text "legos", and it could not be found.

(In my opinion, "lego" is like "sand".  When not fully described as "LEGO^® bricks"¹ , with or without specific capitalisation and/or trademark acknowledgement, you must usually treat it as an uncountable mass-noun.  And if you don't have enough Lego for it to be uncountable, you don't have enough!)

¹ Or "...pieces/blocks/whatever".

You will need LOTS of space.
you will need LOTS of blocks.

I suggest 2x2 pips per DF 'block'.

Vertically, define eight 'thirds' per full-Z (bottom-most being natural/constructed floor, if any, with (above a 'spacer'/not-floor piece, where necessary) up to seven further thirds of liquids (red or blue translucent pieces for magma/water), vapours (clear for mist, purple for miasma, etc) or a full seven thirds-worth (could also be a full-thids-full stack, a third-third-full-third-third one, etc), of mixed colours to represent natural/constructed material;

Flowing water can be represented using 2x2 slope-pieces of various kinds, or even dot those 1x1 'third-with-sloped-flat-tops' around, to taste;

Ramps can involve various combinations of double-height 2x2 slopes (of less than 2x2 top-pips) or else standard-height  2x2-based slopes (ditto) with the sloped-flat-topped-thirds covering the pip-tops, whilst stairs use stacked 2x1-based/1x1-topped slopes in an overhanging spiral, with or without spacers.

Use 2x2 circular blocks for (constructed/smoothed) wall-ends, especially two wall-ends that are connected only diagonally, through which creature-passage/liquid-flow would be expected to be observable.

All kinds of obvious furniture can be constructed: e.g. single-pip-round set in the mid-point of the four floor-pips with a 2x2-round-third centred astride atop would be a table; 2x2 third-height turntable used as the base for rotatable doors; hinge-pieces (especially the 1x2 standard-height composite) used to create floodgates.

And, above all, at this scale, various available disembodied minifig heads (especially 'themed' ones, with beards) can represent dorfs and other sentients.  You can top'n'tail them with 'flavour' pieces (coloured to indicate race/job/martial-speciality), like various spaceman-helmets for militarisation.  I've just checked, to make sure, and standard minifig heads (like 1x1 'rounds') nicely interstitially click into the central gap of a 2x2 brick-top.  (Although a disembodied 'Yoda-head' theme headpiece does not, so I unfortunately can't suggest a bucket full of yoda-heads on stand-by for the next goblin siege diorama, unless you are already prepared to put the head atop a handy 1x1-round (third/full) that would fit betwixt the two.)


(I have thought a lot about this.  Mostly I've thought "They've done Minecraft in Lego, with quite a lot of artistic licence with regards to geology/architecture, so why not DF?"...)

[wierd]

The argument of if LEGO is a mass noun or not seems to have many pedantic linguists in a snarl. Naturally, those that DO think it is a mass noun are very vocal and unyeilding about it, while most other people just consider them as just plain obstinate.

http://painintheenglish.com/case/4639

Ironically, the best answer I have seen is that LEGO is an adjective, not a noun at all, making both of us incorrect. This makes sense, because there are LEGO bricks, and there are LEGO minifigs and playsets. All are "LEGO".

Typically, in US vernacular however, "Legos" refers to the bricks, and the minifigs are referred to as "Lego men."  (It never ceases to amaze me how the linguistic pedants out there fail to grasp that language is NOT static, and is constantly evolving, and the engine of that evolution is the vernacular usage. The usual argument is that without rigid adherence to the structure they harp on all the time, nobody will understand what is being said. To that, I just point out the use of the "Double S" letter from the middle ages, and a number of other interesting grammatical structures from the time. Yup-- Nobody but a person well versed in middle English is going to be reading that without lots of head scratching. Them's the breaks kid. The language moved on in the vernacular, and now nobody uses those old rules anymore. Because the vernacular moved on. Which is the point here.)

[mirrizin]

You guys are awesome.  So awesome. 

[Starver]

Spoiler: As my point about construction blocks never being sufficient until they're uncountable seems to have been missed (click to show/hide)

That PainInTheEnglish article is arguing against a different argument from my own.  Apart from the fact that I'd never sully my collection with clone-type blocks, I am perfectly willing to do things like hoover with any number of dysons (one at a time, naturally), even if I would never dyson with any number of hoovers.  But that's not the complaint.

Evolution of language is all well and good, but evolution is progress through an incidental process of transformation that serves a useful (non-contrary) purpose¹, and yet I don't hear any talk of an American child making a castle on the beach with a "bucket of sands", just like I would never build a LEGO^TM Block Construction Set from a "box of legos".

Also, from the many prior times I've been engaged in this particular argument, it seems that it's overwhelmingly those from the US² who use this term, whilst the rest of the English(/Danish!)-speaking world tends to fall pretty heavily upon the side of is use as an uncountable noun.

¹ Just like "decimate" being a synonym for "devastate" is not.  Please can I still have a word that I can legitimately use to specifically summarise the process of the removal of (within a reasonable margin of fuzziness) roughly 10% of something?  It's an old battle, but I'd still like to fight it!

² A place that appears has coined such terms as "write me", creating a strange mental image by omitting the operative 'to', or is it perhaps just wishful thinking that the 'me' in question is a fictional character requiring further narrative construction from the author with whom they are conversing?

...anyway,off-topic, and doubtless infected by the Pedant's Curse.  Never mind me.

I was also intending to mock up a DF level in Lego [non-sic], by now, but I appear to have become distracted...