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Author Topic: DawnFortress v0.28 [Dead]  (Read 56145 times)

Meph

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Re: DawnFortress v0.17 [WIP]
« Reply #30 on: February 15, 2014, 06:48:15 pm »

Do you plan to replace the lines 9-10 (the special character from Cüè till áíú) with something more graphical, or will they stay letters? For example ì isnt used anywhere (and could be a new graphic), while Ä is a deity that you depicted graphically as a humanoid creature, but the next tile Å, which is a figurine, or æ, which is a toy, are still letters. Its a bit inconsistent. 
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DragonDePlatino

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Re: DawnFortress v0.17 [WIP]
« Reply #31 on: February 15, 2014, 07:45:38 pm »

Do you plan to replace the lines 9-10 (the special character from Cüè till áíú) with something more graphical, or will they stay letters? For example ì isnt used anywhere (and could be a new graphic), while Ä is a deity that you depicted graphically as a humanoid creature, but the next tile Å, which is a figurine, or æ, which is a toy, are still letters. Its a bit inconsistent.
I've been evaluating things on a case-by-case basis. It's inconsistent, but during gameplay you wouldn't notice. Looking back, I've realized the accented n's and A's are used in human names, so I've abstracted those. So far, the rules are something like...

  • Used once - Graphical. (Armor stands)
  • Used multiple times, one is very common - Graphical. (Cabinets vs. Fortresses)
  • Used multiple times, all are common - Generalize. (Coffers, quivers, backpacks, hamlets are all a box. Rivers, tracks and walls are all just lines)
  • Used rarely in words - Abstract image behind character. (All of the accented letters)
  • Used commonly in words - Text.

Keeping this in mind, this is the newest vesion of the tileset with a more unified set of accented characters:



Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure this tileset follows those rules to the T! Also...I just noticed Aesomatica uses colors, particularly in the switches and trees. How does that work and what does it do?

Clatch

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Re: DawnFortress v0.17 Released
« Reply #32 on: February 15, 2014, 10:58:41 pm »

412 bird sprites later, I've finally gotten over the largest hurdle of the graphics set! ...

I seriously didn't realize that there were that many!  How are you getting this done so fast?

Do you plan to replace the lines 9-10 (the special character from Cüè till áíú) with something more graphical, or will they stay letters?

Hey Meph, what's the history about deploying a graphic set without the accented characters?  So far I've only notice Phoebus pulling that off.  It doesn't seem to work with saved games brought into the Phoebus.  According to this page http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Utility:Accent_Removal there's a script being deployed to correct this?  Why aren't more tileset sets that have sprited out the accented characters deploying this -- or is there an option I'm unaware of?

Back to DragonDePlantino, I'm still tooling around in your first tileset.  The walls are really growing on me.  Are they from your previous work?
« Last Edit: February 15, 2014, 11:41:47 pm by Clatch »
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DragonDePlatino

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Re: DawnFortress v0.17 Released
« Reply #33 on: February 16, 2014, 01:06:24 am »

I seriously didn't realize that there were that many!  How are you getting this done so fast?

In the past I've made tons of tileset/texture pack mods, so by this point I know how to make a project realistic. :) In actuality, I've really only made 204 unique sprites! 102 adults and 102 children. Zombies are palette-swapped adults and skeletons/giants are just normal tiles with icons. Making both of those takes all of 30 seconds. I've limited my palette to 16-colors so that I won't overdo things and for the creature men, I've pre-prepared a "template" to speed things up:



I have yet to use the fourth row though...saving those templates for the big guys, like moosemen and tigermen. :D

Hey Meph, what's the history about deploying a graphic set without the accented characters?

Back to DragonDePlantino, I'm still tooling around in your first tileset.  The walls are really growing on me.  Are they from your previous work?
Yes...those are a very basic version of the walls used in my DawnHack tileset: http://bilious.alt.org/~paxed/nethack/nhsshot/?dump=0&tileset=dawn
Texturing the walls in NetHack was interesting because the top/bottom of a room shares a tile and the west/east sides share a tile. You can't do something like, say, Zelda and make each side have a unique tile:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

To fix this, I changed the perspective to a really artificial-looking axonometric one and made the light source of the entire tileset be directly from the west. It looks artificial, but works.

I know your question was directed at Meph, but I couldn't help but interject. Being able to disable accented characters would be a great boon for DawnFortress...As a matter of fact, I had an idea that could make the best usage of that! It's a bit complicated, so everyone, hear me out...

One problem with the current tileset setup is that Toady isn't fully utilizing all 256 characters. Some characters are used for tons of things, and some are used for just one! So let's say I went through the tileset, and erased every tile that isn't hard coded (eliminating accented characters would be great). I would be left over with just the characters you can alter in the raws. So next, I would use this nifty wiki page to make a list of every object that can have a tile assigned to it, including stuff like workshops. Then, I would categorize every single object to a very general shape...for example:

Box with 4 wheels - Minecart, Wheelbarrow, Trade wagon, etc...
Upright cylinder - Quiver, dark fortresses, mugs, logs, wells, barrels, etc...
Rectangular Cube - Chests, hamlets, Coffins, etc.

After I categorized everything and "assigned" them to tiles, it would be as easy as editing the raws to use this new graphical setup. You could even edit creatures to use general sprites! Like, instead of letters, all fish would use a generic fish character. Forest creatures could use a generic quadraped sprite, avians would use a generic bird sprite...I've already done this with the demon and @.

So would this idea work? Is it too out there? What kind of obstacles would I run into? Would people be willing to download edited raws to make this thing work? If this kind of thing would be possible, I'll be holding it off until I finish the standard graphics set. I have no idea how long this would take or how complicated it might become. But the implications would be incredible...Combined with a graphics set, every single creature and every single raw-editable object would have a graphic for it! Toady wouldn't need to add full graphics support, because Dwarf Fortress would make the most of Code Page 437, editing it for it's own needs!
« Last Edit: February 16, 2014, 01:13:52 am by DragonDePlatino »
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Hugo_The_Dwarf

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Re: DawnFortress v0.17 [WIP]
« Reply #34 on: February 16, 2014, 01:22:19 am »

From the last posted tilesets I have to say the drop shadows make it look so much more amazing.
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Meph

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Re: DawnFortress v0.17 [WIP]
« Reply #35 on: February 16, 2014, 07:25:42 am »

Quote
Hey Meph, what's the history about deploying a graphic set without the accented characters?  So far I've only notice Phoebus pulling that off.

Quote
(eliminating accented characters would be great)

Since accented characters are only used in text, and the text is made up of words in the language files, all it takes is replaces all á,à and â with a. And so forth. There should be several standardized word and language files flying around for this. I guess just borrowing the ones from ironhand or phoebus should be fine.

Getting rid of accented characters is easy.

Quote
After I categorized everything and "assigned" them to tiles, it would be as easy as editing the raws to use this new graphical setup. You could even edit creatures to use general sprites! Like, instead of letters, all fish would use a generic fish character. Forest creatures could use a generic quadraped sprite, avians would use a generic bird sprite...I've already done this with the demon and @.

So would this idea work? Is it too out there? What kind of obstacles would I run into? Would people be willing to download edited raws to make this thing work? If this kind of thing would be possible, I'll be holding it off until I finish the standard graphics set. I have no idea how long this would take or how complicated it might become. But the implications would be incredible...Combined with a graphics set, every single creature and every single raw-editable object would have a graphic for it! Toady wouldn't need to add full graphics support, because Dwarf Fortress would make the most of Code Page 437, editing it for it's own needs!
That doesnt work. You cant remap the tilenumbers for most items. Chests are always one tile, coffins are always the '0'. Barrles, wells, logs, mugs, quivers, all these are hardcoded to their respective tiles. They are not in the raws.

Only creatures are in the raws (you can ignore them, because they use sprites), tools, plants, inorganics. And buildings. I use a lot of unique graphics for modded buildings, but of course that doesnt make sense here, as this is a tileset for vanilla DF.

Vermin also use tiles, but can be edited in the raws. For example I use inverted letter tiles for them, as I mentioned before. Wouldnt work on your set, because of the drop shadow. Just saying that inverted tiles are a neat way to use the same tile twice, for different graphics. Ironhand made a nice example of that, showing his crab/spider/lobster or the mouse/snake/squirrel tile. 2 tiles, 6 graphics.

Quote
You could even edit creatures to use general sprites!
But why? People couldnt see the difference between a undead killer whale (I know, not a fish by definition) and a trout. Or between trout, eel or manta ray.

Quote
I just noticed Aesomatica uses colors, particularly in the switches and trees. How does that work and what does it do?
The ingame graphics are made up of 3 colors. The color of the tile. The foreground color. The background color.



The tile ingame will take the color the way its painted, as can be seen on the magenta mushroom. But all solid color in it will get a hue. The hue is the foreground color. So to make the magenta tile look magenta ingame, the foreground color must be... white. 7:0:1. This way its not changed. You can see I also made a yellow and a green hue, which is done in the raws. 2:0:1 and 6:0:1. The background color fills all the transparent parts. I made the grass around the mushroom transparent, so you can color the grass independantly from the mushroom. You can see its black, white, white, green, green, green on the six mushroom examples. Even if I make the foreground color green, white or yellow, the grass stays green.

This allows fancy tricks. For example the top right is a river tile, but inverted it looks like a railroad. The letter C includes a moth. Its invisible in text, but the vermin uses an inverted C as tile, and shows the background color. Foreground color is black, hiding the C. Also lobster/spider. I have beetle/crab, bee/bat and splint/rat that way.

Below the line you can see different uses for background color. You can fill containers, like the bucket. I use this on mugs, flasks, minecarts, buckets... example shows an empty one, a water and a blood bucket. The little spheres are either marbles, seeds or musket bullets. The 5 bullets on the left are foreground color, the 7 bullets on the right are background color, and in the center you can see both combined. Thats taken from the Phoebus set. :)

And the walls: Engraved walls. Green Runes (inverted wall with green background), and normal wall.

In the end it allows a lot more freedom when designing buildings and plants and inorganics.

« Last Edit: February 16, 2014, 07:29:18 am by Meph »
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DragonDePlatino

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Re: DawnFortress v0.17 [WIP]
« Reply #36 on: February 16, 2014, 12:22:57 pm »

The ingame graphics are made up of 3 colors. The color of the tile. The foreground color. The background color.
Hmmm....this all makes perfect sense to me now. I was a bit groggy when I read this, but after a few read-throughs I think I could apply a lot of these tricks to my tileset once my creature graphics are done. And that'll be super easy when I use this little program I found lurking around on the forums: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=54669.0

It's a little buggy, but if you keep away from the setup.exe and move your raws into there yourself, it should start up without a hitch. I loaded Phoebus's raws and tileset up into it, and it seems my idea was pretty close to his except in actuality, you can only do this sort of thing with plants, ores, and a few other things. Phoebus got everything down pretty nicely (aside from ruining the GUI) so I think I'll be using a combination of Phoebus's raws, removed accented characters and your tricks to perfect this tileset. When I was browsing Phoebus's tileset with the raw editor I really didn't see any usage of the inversion trick so I think I could pull off something much nicer with usable GUI. ;)

Meph

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Re: DawnFortress v0.17 [WIP]
« Reply #37 on: February 16, 2014, 01:29:25 pm »

What do you mean by GUI?

Better explanation of background color usage: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=56775.msg1232430#msg1232430
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Clatch

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Re: DawnFortress v0.17 [WIP]
« Reply #38 on: February 16, 2014, 02:15:10 pm »

Better explanation of background color usage: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=56775.msg1232430#msg1232430

Yep.. thats the link I wanted to share earlier.  Thanks Meph.  So I had no idea that there were several txt files missing from the stand alone distributions of both Phoebus and Ironhand packs.

I honestly haven't ran any of the executible packs because I'm usually on a Mac.  The altered files should just be distributed just like the rest of the pack.  I must be missing something obvious.
« Last Edit: February 16, 2014, 02:22:35 pm by Clatch »
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Meph

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Re: DawnFortress v0.17 [WIP]
« Reply #39 on: February 16, 2014, 02:39:23 pm »

Ironhand and MDF use the inverted tiles trick. Phoebus doesnt. Obsidian Soul is another, really nice graphical set. It uses animated grass, by adding alt-tiles to the grass-plant. I did something similar to MDF, but in the end decided against it.
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dirkdragonslayer

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Re: DawnFortress v0.17 [WIP]
« Reply #40 on: February 17, 2014, 06:24:17 pm »

Read this a couple days ago, starting playing Dawnhack, and now I am super stoked for this. A new tileset? Done by a really good artist? count me in!
Thanks DragonDePlatino for starting this project, and introducing me to Dawnhack(totally addicted now, but I keep dying anticlimatically, like falling off a horse...)
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"Games come and go, and we all get tired of some games after time, but Dwarf Fortress seems to grab me by the leg every couple months and drags me back with it's bloody, ASCII claw. I think this game has given me Stockholm syndrome, but I love it so, and it's simplistic style yet extremely complex mechanics are like fine art, like a beautifully crafted ☼Cave Spider Silk Sock☼" - Dirk 3/31/2014
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DragonDePlatino

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Re: DawnFortress v0.17 [WIP]
« Reply #41 on: February 18, 2014, 12:11:34 am »

Hey, thanks everyone for the feedback! It means a lot to me that this tileset has gotten such a warm reception so far. It's positive feedback like this that keeps me going. :)

== UPDATE 2/17/14 ==
 - KenranFortress has consistent accented characters.
 - 58 body tiles for gore and cooking.
 - 172 insect, arachnid and pest sprites.


And to celebrate the unnecessary addition of body graphics, a surprisingly relevant song from Adventure Time, courtesy of Jake.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UJgBetBDsE

And coming up next update is some exciting news! I've been patiently going through the raw files alphabetically, and I've finally gotten to "graphics_creature_standard.txt", which is the file containing all of the major races! This is going to be the most important (and fun) part of the graphics set, so I thought I'd get a bit of user feedback before I dive in.


Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Goblins, Orcs, Cutebolds

I'm aware that goblins are green and orcs aren't in DF, but I'd like to make some contrast between the two and add in orcs just for fun once the pack's done. :) What do you guys think? Any edits I should make? These are very important sprites which will serve as a base for every single job with skeletal and undead combinations included. If you don't like these sprites right now, you're going to be sick of them when I make the 300+ sprites necessary for each race. Be very harsh with critisisms, please, because once I start drawing these guys there's no going back.

SalmonGod

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Re: DawnFortress v0.18 [WIP]
« Reply #42 on: February 18, 2014, 12:41:09 am »

Been watching this thread and it's really exciting.  It looks like you do quality work, and I've really been wanting to see more tileset options.

My only input is to do your best to make professions as recognizable as possible.
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As the end will come so soon
In the land of twilight

Maybe people should love for the sake of loving, and not with all of these optimization conditions.

Roses

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Re: DawnFortress v0.18 [WIP]
« Reply #43 on: February 18, 2014, 12:57:26 am »

I know that this is off topic, but looking at your sprites and your comments about modular graphics and such. I always thought it would be pretty awesome to have a set of body part graphics (i.e. wings, tails, different body types, etc...) that would go along with something like this random creature script.
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Meph

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Re: DawnFortress v0.18 [WIP]
« Reply #44 on: February 18, 2014, 05:39:52 am »

I like them. :) Most other sets borrow from existing graphics and add their own twist, but completely new content is way better and breathes more air into the game. Best part is that sprites can easily be replaced in a running save.

Do you plan on doing full profession sets for all races? Thats hasnt really been done before, mostly because there was no need. But with the next update of DF, and the new sites, you will see the elven smith and similar graphics in adv mode. Or, if you enable them to be playable in dwarf mode. ;)

The only thing I can really critizise is the kobold. I dont think that they have tails. Or scales. Its described as a dog-like creature with long drooping ears, and I think a crayon art by Toady one showed something with brown fur and big yellow eyes.
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