Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Tileset and graphics confusion  (Read 5933 times)

saharo

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Tileset and graphics confusion
« on: April 17, 2018, 10:35:24 am »

I guess I'm a pretty lazy player, and I did never get my head around on how to configure graphics, apart from using the Lazy Newb Pack.
I have a general question first, and a couple of others.
1) In the Lazy Newb Pack, what's the FONT used for, and what's the GRAPHICS_FONT used for?

2) I'm a fan (and patreon supporter) of KruggSmash, and I would love to play using his tileset and possibly add something on top of it.
The tileset he uses is published below his videos, and is a 2880x2800 png file.
I went through many iterations of choosing different Graphics (ASCII, CLA 18PX, Phiebus 16x etc...), Print Mode and on top of that use KruggSmash tileset for FONT or GRAPHICS_FONT only or for both, and in no case it really works in any satisfying way, and I got pretty confused.
I'd like to stick to LNP, as I'm to used to it, but I never got into studying the whole topic, when what I want to do is (in principle) quite straight forward.

3) What if I want to mix up things? I love the walls in KruggSmash tileset, and the trees and fungi in Phiebus, and the monsters in CLA. Is is a big deal to these stuff mix up?
Logged

mikekchar

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Tileset and graphics confusion
« Reply #1 on: April 18, 2018, 02:29:28 am »

I don't know how to (or if there is a way to) do it using the LNP UI, but here is how to set the tileset by hand:

Copy the png to the data/art directory.  Then edit the data/init/init.txt file and modify the setting where it says[FONT:whatever.png].  Put the name of the png file that you put in the data/art directory there (without any path).  This is *probably* the FONT entry for LNP, but I don't know.

IMHO, learn how to do things by hand because it is more straightforward than using a tool to do it (almost by definition ;-) ).  Basically, if you have to ask then you have gone beyond the usefulness of the tool (which was developed to increase ease of discoverability).  Configuration (and even modding) is super easy to do in DF -- it's just a matter of knowing what to do.

Tilesets, fonts, graphics sets, etc can not be mixed in any reasonable way in DF.  In the vanilla game there are 256 different "glyphs" (graphical characters).  Each "glyph" corresponds to a text character.  So if you change you "d" to look like a dog, then whenever you write the word "dragon" the "d" will look like a dog.  Also because a male duck (drake) uses the "d" character as well, then whenever you saw a drake it would look like a dog.

There is something called a graphics set to help with this.  If you set "[GRAPHICS: YES]" then it will look in the "raw/graphics" directory for  graphics to use on the map.  If you have a dog graphic, then it will draw the dog graphic for dogs on the map.  If you have a duck graphic, then it will use the duck graphic for ducks on the map.  The format of the graphics sets is much more complicated than the tile sets and I don't use them, so I don't know how to modify them.

There is also a mod called "Text Will Be Text" (TWBT) that (in part) tries to draw things on the map using a graphics set or tile set, but to write text using a normal text font.  It is massively popular, but has sometimes caused instability in the past.  Some people have never had a problem with it, though.  I've never used it.

The Print Mode option in the init file describes what techniques are used to draw onto the screen.  It's only relevant to this discussion insofar as you can use it to do a text only mode on Linux: "[PRINT_MODE: TEXT]".  This lets you play in a console.  I'll assume you don't want to do that.

Now the key here is that when using anything other than "[PRINT_MODE: TEXT]" on vanilla you are either using a tileset, or you are using a graphics set (the graphics set will use the tileset for printing text and the graphics set for printing things on the map).  Kruggsmash's tileset is a tileset.  CLA, Pheobus, etc are graphics sets.  If you are handy with graphics editor and you are willing to invest the time to learn, you could *definitely* modify one of the graphics sets so that it used different graphics (for example things from Kruggsmash's tileset that you redrew using your graphics editor).  Someone else can give you some advice on how to get started (there are many threads dedicated to graphics sets in the forum).

I hope that helps.
Logged

PatrikLundell

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Tileset and graphics confusion
« Reply #2 on: April 18, 2018, 05:16:39 am »

The LNP supports a number of options and provides an easy way to select one of them. If you want one that's not supported (either because it isn't sufficiently popular, isn't up to date, or the tile/graphics set author hasn't given permission to include it [there are a few such cases]), you'll have to do it yourself.
The a point with the LNP options is that you don't need to learn how to do it (like having the car serviced and they take care of changing the oil when needed rather than doing that yourself). If you're going to muck around with it, you definitely should learn how it works, which involves learning how it interfaces with DF and what the limitations are (mikekchar mentioned a couple).
Logged

Llamageddon

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Tileset and graphics confusion
« Reply #3 on: April 18, 2018, 09:30:08 am »

I've been messing around just downloading the base LNP without any tilesets pre-installed and making my own custom graphics/tileset directory to install over a clean DF Install.

mikechar covered most of the pertinent stuff. If you're gonna do your own custom graphics and tilesets install always save a clean install of DF to start from scratch again with, also copy it into in the baseline directory of LNP. Before installing any packs you also want a DF install that has DFHack and (ideally) TWBT installed. Then you can basically test out your custom graphics using LNP and tweak it if you have problems and due to the clean DF install and the clean but with DFHack and TWBT it is quite easy to revert things and start again from these two installs.

Things to watch out for if you're doing this is you probably need to edit DFhack.init (in the root directory), any onLoad.init the pack you are using might need (raw directory) and possibly any overrides, if it uses them with TWBT (in the data > init directory). That is the basic checklist for custom installs.

Make sure you have put the graphics/fonts you are adding in the graphics/tileset directorys of LNP rather than the copying over your install of DF. This means you can easily switch and tweak the packs you are experimenting with using LNP. It is kind of confusing given the term "tileset" but the actual pictures of dwarves etc go in the Graphics directory whilst fonts go in the tileset directory of LNP, though I think they are all interchangeable between FONT and GRAPHICS_FONT in the LNP Graphics > Customize tab.

This might have been answered but FONT is the writing you see in the game whilst GRAPHICS_FONT is the visual tiles you see in the main window when playing. You might get confused during woldgen and think you have it wrong but don't worry, the mapgen uses FONT not GRAPHIS_FONT.

A good way of working out the specifics of how all this works is looking in the LNP directory of the main bundled LNP install and compare it with your unmodded baseline LNP without the bundled tilesets extras. I recommend using the basic LNP install rather than editing the full LNP install as this avoids confusion whilst you are learning how to manually set up your own LNP install.

Also, keep in mind tilesets made for earlier versions of DF and TWBT might need some careful investigation and editing of init files to get them working on a new DF/TWBT version.
« Last Edit: April 18, 2018, 09:33:34 am by Llamageddon »
Logged

saharo

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Tileset and graphics confusion
« Reply #4 on: April 19, 2018, 03:36:34 am »

thanks everybody for the perfect answers. I'll put myself to work!
Logged