Print

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

[Sheb]

Maybe we should just assume one cell is 1*1*2? Or do it the DF way and not think too much about this?

[voodooattack]

That does become a bit of a problem, although it's one that's relevant for multi-cell creatures of any height past the first. But of course those then become the exception rather than the rule. Still, something that has to be dealt with eventually.

How important is that to your goal with the game eventually?

Obviously, given the source material, most of the enemies are going to be humans or at least roughly human. Are Dragons, Giants, and Mammoths going to be in? Are they important to have in a useful way?

Now's the time to change rederers if you're going to do that, but it's also a giant pain to change renderers completely. So I understand if you don't want to do that.

Dragons, giants, and mammoths are the reason I wanted multi-cell entities to begin with. Also ships and huge wagons worthy of queens.

I was thinking of having entity 'parts' where each part is cell-sized and is linked to the other parts, which would allow for 'deformability' since you could literally break a vehicle or tear a creature apart into pieces. I've seen it done in an artificial life simulation (Evolve4) and I think I can figure out a good approach to apply it to 3D voxels.

Or I could use DF's quantum tile concept and avoid multi-cell entities altogether.

Maybe we should just assume one cell is 1*1*2? Or do it the DF way and not think too much about this?

It's tempting, I know why Toady chose that approach now.

Maybe a combination of increasing the cell size to accommodate humanoids and linked entity parts for larger creatures?

[Mephansteras]

Hmm...could work.

Another option would be to keep the layers approach and have everything shown from the Head z-level of the player by default, with 'air' spaces not being rendered and instead having a shade change to show the levels below.

So normally grass would be a little darker to show that's the ground you walking on, and if you hit a slope up to a z-level at the height of the player you'd see that grass as brighter.

I've seen a post in the DF Suggestions forum about this kind of approach and it looked really good. If I have some time later today I'll see if I can go find it.

[voodooattack]

Hmm...could work.

Another option would be to keep the layers approach and have everything shown from the Head z-level of the player by default, with 'air' spaces not being rendered and instead having a shade change to show the levels below.

So normally grass would be a little darker to show that's the ground you walking on, and if you hit a slope up to a z-level at the height of the player you'd see that grass as brighter.

So something like this:


As per your approach, that would be the player standing on the ground with a second layer to the right at head level. I'll have to do something with the ramps to reflect this though.

I've seen a post in the DF Suggestions forum about this kind of approach and it looked really good. If I have some time later today I'll see if I can go find it.

I'd really appreciate that.

[Mephansteras]

Yes, exactly like that!

Found the thread I was thinking about. Has a TON of different UI suggestions for Dwarf Fortress, including the part I was talking about. There is a link to a Youtube video of how it would look at the bottom of the OP.

[voodooattack]

Yes, exactly like that!

Found the thread I was thinking about. Has a TON of different UI suggestions for Dwarf Fortress, including the part I was talking about. There is a link to a Youtube video of how it would look at the bottom of the OP.

That's an absolute gold mine! Now I can steal and implement the awesome suggestions directly into my game.

Now I need to render at least one more z-level (that's a total of 3) for this to work, can't say it'll be easy.. I'll certainly have to rewrite half of the base renderer's code. (I have an inheritance tree for renderers)

But what about the curses renderer? This will basically render it dysfunctional (if you pardon my poor pun), it can't support multiple layers at all.

[Mephansteras]

That part I'm not so sure about, sorry.

[voodooattack]

That part I'm not so sure about, sorry.

No worries, I'll figure something out. Might even remove the curses renderer entirely some time in the future.. I'm kind of fed up with its limitations and it only gets worse with every feature I add.

[Mephansteras]

Good luck!

[voodooattack]

Good luck!

I'm really going to need it, because frankly, I can't say I'm liking the looks of this



I know that when I add foliage it's all going to be different but I can't help it.. It looks hideously confusing in my eyes.. or is it only me?

[Mephansteras]

Makes perfect sense to my eyes. The shade difference between eye level and foot level is a bit subtle, but that's partially because everything is the same shade everywhere. Also, that doesn't matter too much most of the time since the important thing is that you can see everything on both levels all the time. The differences in height is there if you need it but can otherwise be ignored.

Granted, that's just a still image. It could be more confusing or ugly in motion? I can't really tell.

Maybe make a short video of it in motion? That way more people can weigh in on how it looks.

[voodooattack]

Here's a preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQbD_krM_Uo

[Mephansteras]

That actually works really well for me. It's a little harder to tell what's going on than I imagine it will be in the full game, simply because all of the terrain is the exact same shade and you don't have any other entities or shrubs or anything to give your eyes a reference point. Plus, yellow is about the ugliest shade progression you can get in an ascii game. But I think it'll work really really well when you have more stuff on screen to work with.

Not sure about other people, so hopefully they'll come in and give their opinions soon.

[Xantalos]

Seems decipherable to me. It'll be nice to play, it seems.

[Sheb]

It does look really nice to me.