I have no idea if that's hardcoded in the game
Yes it is.
The preview you did send me did not have the transparent spear/spike, and neither does the version you just uploaded. I am talking about the tile between the O and o. As far as I know i will show inverted in the game, so your spike is visible when the spike is retreated, and it is invisible when the spike should be shown. Phoebus uses complete transparency for the spike, while you use solid white color.Edit: Ok, now I am unsure myself about this. I think I was talking about the channel designation, in that case its perfectly fine. Maybe I confused myself.
I dont think its a big problem.
And I laughed when I saw your (). I changed them to bows as well ^^ And with arrows I did not mean the ballista heads, I meant the three arrows next to the trees, second line. They are only used for indicator (pointing to a dwarf) and showing the direction of the bridge. The christmas-tree next to them is actually the arrow up.
I did change all of them as well.
What exactly are your {} ? Worms? Rope-Ends?
I also saw you flapping wings-bird question. You can do it for all vermin birds, mammals, fish, insects and the like. Use alt-tiles with inverted color on them. See the Ironhand tileset vermin, it transforms a spider into a lobster using this transparency trick, or the phoebus prepared meals. It changes a few dots into twice as many dots. You can change the wingspan, or leg-position, or the rat-tail, or the fin/bubble position on fish. Not quite as fancy as you wanted to do it, for every creature in the sprites, but at least any vermin would do it.
You could also do wavy grass this way.
And trees that shake in the wind/move their leaves.
From personal experience this can hurt the eyes after a while. I made a writhing floor of maggots once for the third cavern. ^^
Tile 245 and 0 are free btw, 0 is only used in the intro video if I am not mistaken. '-' and '|' could also look like your sword/arrow tile, because it is used for flying ammo just as your '/' and '\'. Tile 10 should be free as well, I have never seen it ingame... someone mentioned powered millstones??
Before your walls start, there is one tile with a little white dot on it. Below the cactus. What is it?
'&' is dead demons.