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[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

The maddening addiction of creating something beautiful and fun that thousands with enjoy and worship you for.

That is what you have gotten yourself into. Also eagerly waiting for a release

[Clatch]

I will not make a tileset for this graphics set, as I think shared tiles are silly.

This sounds amazing!  The great advice you've been given already will make a lot more sense the more you move along.  Although I don't know how long you've played DF exactly, a project like this will really bring you up close and intimate with a great game.  If anything, you'll get an auxiliary hobby along with your graphic work  .

I'm afraid though that you'll eventually find the need to modify a tile set to achieve your goals. Phoebus' work is probably the most complete from the standpoint of content.  There are special effects like ground color bleeding into the background tile underneath the unit or item.  There are some really great threads on the history of how this and animations started.  Hopefully someone else that has saved those links can share those here.

Putting together a solid tile set with DF is nothing short of art.  There are a lot of ideas you have to give up and reshape in order for all the screens to come together.  It's almost like building puzzle pieces that form a different picture on each screen.

Dwarf Fortress is one of those games where you spend quite a bit of time in front of the screen managing resources and exploring.  I eventually dropped the use of graphics sets because even Phoebus' work gets on my nerves after a while.  I dislike all the artifacts and clutter of the text since that's what I'm mostly reading.  And even if you have TrueType on, some of the screens still load the fonts from the tile set.  There's been no mention from Toady about addressing that bug either.  He's busy with content at the moment - which is what fans care about most anyhow.

Not to plug Vherid again, but take a look at some the balance of that tile set where you still have access to the frequently accented characters while the characters you'd otherwise not use in the interface are dolled up graphically.  Aesomatica and Red Jack (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Tileset_repository) are also good examples from the past.  With the Phoebus tile set you're forced to turn TrueType on because nearly every tile has been pixeled.  With the right adjustments to the tile set, you can also allow for varied ground surfaces which add a lot of depth to the game.  There's not one graphics set that looks good with varied ground surfaces.

It would take a LOT of scripting, as you've said, to get around some of the issues I mentioned.  Unfortunately, it would have to take a really talented graphic set to get me to change back to graphics mode.

[fricy]

Posting to watch...with anticipation.

[Meph]

Please, for the love of Armok, dont do it in 16x. We already have all creature tiles in 16x, you will only make people chose between apples and oranges. Use a different size, so people can chose between apples and monster trucks.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

I wouldn't mind a 24x or 32x set.

[DragonDePlatino]

Unfortunately, it would have to take a really talented graphic set to get me to change back to graphics mode.

Oh ho ho, is that a challenge I hear? It's definitely one I'll take up! I took your words to heart and am currently working on my own tileset that's a heavy edit of Kenran. I'm referencing both Aesomatica and Red Jack to see what the general consensus is on tiles, and if both sets disagree on something then I'm just leaving it as ASCII. So far, I'm about halfway done and have tiled roughly the same amount of graphics, give or take a few. There is some stuff I've tiled in KenranFortress that wasn't tiled in either tileset which I think will still look nice.

Posting to watch...with anticipation.

Replying to notify of progress...WITH ANTICIPATION.

Please, for the love of Armok, dont do it in 16x. We already have all creature tiles in 16x, you will only make people chose between apples and oranges. Use a different size, so people can chose between apples and monster trucks.

OTL It's a little late for that, man. I already have a good half of the tileset done and about 15% of the creature graphics ready, so I can't turn back at this point. And anyways, this is going to be the first complete graphics set with everything in the same style done by only one person. Now THAT hasn't been done yet.

And keep in mind that style is a much bigger factor in determining size than resolution. More detail will give the illusion of a higher resolution. A heavily anti-aliased 16x16 tileset (like mine) will appear to be just about the same size as a sparingly-shaded 18x18 tileset while still giving you more view distance to work with. On the other hand, my tiles are a tad more realistic than most sets so they rarely break out of a 12x16 resolution. Really, it's just how you look at things.

But what I CAN promise are multiple versions of this graphics set. Expect some reasonably-readable 24x and 32x versions when everything's finished. I'll be using Hylian's BRh algorithm, which was well-received with DawnHack. Here's a little example of how well it works:

You see, it's very hit-or-miss but it's incredibly faithful (resizing it back to 16x16 with some algorithms will give you the original image pixel-for-pixel) and gives tiles a nice painterly look. It also works well with my style of heavy-antialiasing and is reasonable at 24x with bicubic resizing.

I wouldn't mind a 24x or 32x set.

How odd. You posted that right as I was about to submit my post. Well, I hope I just answered your question.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

Sounds great, also liking both of those example versions.

[DragonDePlatino]

Today was a fun day! Made lots of progress in the graphics_birds_new raws all the way down to "giant grey parrot"...Learned a lot of interesting facts about birds, one of which is that kakapos make terrible love partners and baby keas are possibly the most hideous creatures in existence. I'm not quite ready to upload the main download yet, but I did manage to finish my tileset, KenranFortress.



This is a very rough version, composed of some hastily-made decisions and questionable artistic choices. I'm not fond of the lower-case letters in particular. All of the letters are fully outlined and shaded so that they will seamlessly fit in with the graphical tiles of DawnFortress. I referenced Aesomatica, Red Jack and Jolly Bastion while deciding on some tiles. Please shoot me any comments or criticisms about this tileset and I'll get to them tomorrow. Some screenshots would also be nice.

And before anyone makes the suggestion...no. I would rather not create an edited-raw tileset. I know how to create such a thing, but I'd like to keep downloading and installing this graphics set as simple as possible.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

oh wow this tileset is so nice, it just made me put down grim fortress.

EDIT:
I want to make a suggestion, but I don't know what to say. Other than can there be a version of it that has a shaded background? even if it's a really low alpha?
But it is great as it is now, just would like some variety to switch between.

And if you do try a shaded background could make varieties of those too:
Full back (so the whole tile is lit up like mayday)
a circular shape (so the corners of 4 tiles make a star shape of blackness/bg color if that makes any sense)
a star field (random dots just to fill the blackness)

Like I said I like it how it is now, but some more things to try out is great too (Sorry if I sound a bit pushy?)

[Clatch]

That's the first time I've noticed blocks like that for the solids.  That's pretty cool.  The outlining and shading makes the fonts much easier on the eyes as well.

[Meph]

What raw set is this based on? Ascii?

[Clatch]

What raw set is this based on? Ascii?

Yeah, thats all tileset, baby!  I really love how the rocks subtlely mix in with the varied ground covering.  Thier outlines are amazing.  Even the commas and other ascii mixed in look great with them.  Even if you now mixed in graphical creatures over the top, the game interface  isn't broken. I'm sure you'll be adjusting things more to your own preferances soon - but this will be a refreshing face lift. Thank you for sharing this with us.

[DragonDePlatino]

oh wow this tileset is so nice, it just made me put down grim fortress.

Nope, man. Don't sound pushy at all. I need more people like you to throw ideas out there ^.^ I've played around with a lot of ideas, and for very many reasons I think a nice drop highlight would be perfect for what you're asking for. It'll also make this tileset stand out as no other tileset has drop highlights. Things will also be more apple-and-monster truck.

That's the first time I've noticed blocks like that for the solids.  That's pretty cool.  The outlining and shading makes the fonts much easier on the eyes as well.

I can't thank you enough for taking the time to make and post these screenshots! They're exactly what I was looking for.

But...they also show the innumerable flaws in this tileset. Some tiles look rather ugly, and some don't really work at all. I hastily posted this last night to get some feedback, but now I think it's time to take this tileset seriously. So ready yourselves, because here it is...



Update List:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 - Drop shadow beneath characters to fill in blank space.
 - Aligned all lowercase letters to 10px block height.
 - Made ores and ground textures more sparse and added floor pattern below + and -.
 - Made wall/river/track tiles more abstract, but consistent. They're much thicker and quite smooth.
 - Smoothed out dithered tiles
 - Abstracted uppercase ash (Æ) as a box, stone as a plain sphere, paragraph letter as a cylinder and characters 9-11. Abstracted faces of @ and &.
 - Changed the silly military human and elf tiles. Much more dignified now.
 - Embossed seige engine tiles.
 - Lots of other tiny changes...

And if you go to this link, click one of the images then press the left/right arrow keys, you'll be able to visibly compare the updates.

Overall I'm very happy with this version of the tileset. I made a few more graphics for things and took some things away, and I've struck that perfect balance between abstraction and identification. Embark looks great, fortress is OK, adventure mode looks decent...From here on out, I'll probably only be making very tiny tweaks. But I think a screenshot or two of each gamemode would help me put the final touches on this if need be any.

Well, and with the tileset side of things complete, I think it's time to get back to...drawing more birds? Man...so many birds. I swear, Toady One must have some sort of hidden bird fetish or something.

== EDIT ==

Oh, and here's a 2x version I whipped up with Hyllian's xBr algorithm for those aliens with their space-age monitors. If anyone can, can they test this one too?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My monitor can only show this with a 20x20 resolution. :C

[Clatch]

Pine trees in DF! I knew something was missing.  I like your spin on CLA's work too with some of the letters.  The background shadows might stand to be less pronounced, but I'm falling in love with this.

I'm out of town, so I apologize for the fortless pictures - I didn't have any save games on my laptop.  I had to install DF when I saw this though...

[DragonDePlatino]

Well...several ASEprite crashes, a few days and 412 bird sprites later, I've finally gotten over the largest hurdle of the graphics set! Here's what's new in DawnFortress v0.17...

Spoiler: UPDATE LIST (click to show/hide)

== UPDATE 2/15/14 ==

 - DawnFortresses's Kenran-based tileset, KenranFortress, added to main download.
 - All creatures in bird.txt and birds_new are finished.
 - Glow shadow added to all tiles.

And to celebrate, I bring you a short completely unoriginal short poem.

The Confused Dwarf
(With apologies to Edward Lear)

There was an Old Dwarf with a beard,
Who said, "It is just as I feared!—
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all build their nests in my beard!"