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I consider it an essential part of Dwaf Fortress, and can't play without it.

119 (18.4%)

I use it for pretty screenshots, but otherwise don't use it during play.

211 (32.7%)

I only try it occasionally.

174 (27%)

I have no idea why I'm even in this thread, I don't use it.

141 (21.9%)

Total Members Voted: 642

[PeridexisErrant]

Gonna need to run a battery of tests to get all the little worries worked out, but it's working, and that's the main thing.

HOLY-   is it possible for me to test this?  It would be just about the ultimate interface for newbies...  Falconne, I suppose mousequery won't work with this - but buildingplanner etc would?

Posting to watch very closely and with great interest.

[Solifuge]

Caldfir, are you streaming the visualized info back to Dwarf Fortress itself, or is this some kind of overlay, or an entirely separate program that duplicates DF's interface and passes commands back to the game, or what?

I always thought a slightly more GUI approach could be neat. If getting mouse input on the overlay area itself is possible, it might be nice to include some more GUI elements.

[Tabris]

Just got pointed at the advancements being made here and it's amazing. Both the idea of having stonesense being a "tileset" and the more high quality sprites by Caldfir. Just want to give support to you guys.

[Caldfir]

HOLY-   is it possible for me to test this?  It would be just about the ultimate interface for newbies...  Falconne, I suppose mousequery won't work with this - but buildingplanner etc would?

Posting to watch very closely and with great interest.

At this point, it's just barely working, and actually trying to play like this is what I would call extraordinarily frustrating, so I don't think it's quite ready for testing.  There's some stuff like not properly scrolling to the edge of the map and not following the cursor that need working out, as well as the designation displays that Japa mentioned.  I don't know how much time I'll have this week, but I'll try to get something done next weekend. 

Currently all the mouse-stuff it totally broken, but I'm fairly certain it could be fixed by using the I/O indirection that dfhack already has.  Everything that doesn't actively happen on the fort/adventurer view should be mostly fine. 

Caldfir, are you streaming the visualized info back to Dwarf Fortress itself, or is this some kind of overlay, or an entirely separate program that duplicates DF's interface and passes commands back to the game, or what?

I always thought a slightly more GUI approach could be neat. If getting mouse input on the overlay area itself is possible, it might be nice to include some more GUI elements.

Yeah I think that's the eventual goal of falconne's work making a proper UI for stonesense.  What I've got here is just regular-old stonesense, but with the output redirected into the DF window (so all your DF keybindings, and dfhack stuff should still work).  It's a pretty dirty way to let you play through the visualizer, but it was... ok not simple (Allegro and SDL are not friends) but it was relatively fast to get up and running.  A real UI would be way better, but until that happens, this might do the trick. 

[PeridexisErrant]

At this point, it's just barely working, ... I don't think it's quite ready for testing.  I don't know how much time I'll have this week, but I'll try to get something done next weekend. 

So, it's already past proof-of-concept and into early alpha, with hopes of a version that's not hilariously broken before the next DF update?  Wow, that's actually a lot better than I would have expected.  As long as there's no crashing bugs, difficult to use is no barrier for a DF UI improvement!

[Raul]

before the next DF update

That's probably plenty of time, actually.

[DocDoom]

This is beyond Awesome. If you get this right, Players will be eternally grateful. If we could put this into the Lazy Newb Package, there would be even more people plaing it...

[mirrizin]

Relative Newb here. Ran Stonesense for the first time. So gratifying...

[Lac]

Very nice Caldfir!  Is it technically possible to include a toggle between stonesense and standard (probably from the stonesense side rather than the df side I'd imagine)?

[Caldfir]

Very nice Caldfir!  Is it technically possible to include a toggle between stonesense and standard (probably from the stonesense side rather than the df side I'd imagine)?

It's possible, but the way I currently have it implemented it's a separate DFHack command.  You type "stonesense" for the standard visualizer, and "stonesense overlay" for the DF-window thing.  The reason for that is there are a bunch of special structures that need to be set up to handle the translation to the DF window that would sort of get in the way of the regular rendering setup.  There is a shortcut way around that though - we'll see if it is practical to implement. 


In other news, I've got a new screen-follow mode working now that follows the DF cursor around if it's present, and the window otherwise.  It somewhat fixes the problem of not being able to scroll to the edges of the screen with the overlay up, but not completely.  The problem is that is you have the DF screen maximized, it is something like 100x100 tiles, and it doesn't let you scroll off the edge, so if the stonesense segment displayed is 60x60, then there's a 20-tile-wide belt around the edge of the map that you can't see, which is a problem.  I'm going to see about tricking the gridsize or something.

Oh, and I figured out why the screen-follow modes were offset from the main view strangely.  They weren't calculating the width of the menu bar.  Old bug fixed, woohoo!

[Apani]

Building on RoftMK.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As you notice, the grass is white. My guess is that it's because of modded grass not being recognized. How do you experts think I should deal with that?

Also, one thing that bothers me is: ramps on exteriors corners leaving half their tile flat, which is perfectly fine for grass slopes, but doesn't work well for rooves or pyramids slopes.
Example from this very thread, on the building on the left:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Caldfir]

As you notice, the grass is white. My guess is that it's because of modded grass not being recognized. How do you experts think I should deal with that?

Go into stonesense/colors/Colors_Grass.xml and add a new entry like the other ones for the modded grass to give it a color. 

Also, one thing that bothers me is: ramps on exteriors corners leaving half their tile flat, which is perfectly fine for grass slopes, but doesn't work well for rooves or pyramids slopes.

Yeah, this is an art choice that works well in some circumstances, but not in others.  I would agree that at least wood constructions should probably have a convex image, since it is pretty common for people to make a wooden roof.  I've got a tile set I've been putting together (from the wonderful artists who have submitted things to stonesense over the years) for quite some time, and I will make a note to change that at the very least there. 

My own buildings tend to avoid having corner-roof-ramps for this very reason:

Spoiler: very old screenshot (click to show/hide)

I would also like to take this opportunity to direct people to the stonesense screenshot thread - I for one would love to see more people's forts rendered

[Apani]

It also looks like you need rooftop ramps. Anyway, brick blocks buildings appear to be grey like stones. Shouldn't earthenware at least be brown?

[Rose]

If Stonesense doesn't have predefined color definitions, it will take from the state color in DF. Most likely that is Grey. Change either the color in the Stonesense xmls, or change the state color for bricks in DF.

[Apani]

Ok, now that I added [STATE_COLOR:ALL_SOLID:BROWN] to Earthenware and the appropriate one to other ceramics, it works. Thanks.
Here are the results... The building has Earthenware Brick walls and a Wood Logs Roof. Since they are both brown, the contrast is almost non-existant. Those white walls are stoneware.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)