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[Flying Dice]

It's definitely not going to show as much on screen as ASCII.

Yep, there's the number one reason I still almost always play ASCII on roguelikes where there's a choice.

I am not sure what actual specific information ASCII conveys better besides volume of data. These tiles will show your current equipment at a glance for example, and it's much easier to tell zombie types apart.

With tiles? Sorry, but unless a player is colorblind and the tiles are incredibly distinctive, there's no way tiles are easier to distinguish than ASCII. I mean, maybe for a brand new player, sure? For anyone who knows what they're looking at, though, ASCII is always going to win on clarity for enemies. Usually for items as well, unless you're creeping around in the dark.

This is something I've harped on about re: DF tilesets and clarity, how a bunch of little creature tiles in no sense give a better quick-read of what things are than color- and case-coded letters, except to brand new players who don't recognize what the ASCII characters represent at all.

Tiles also unfortunately don't do much at all to solve the clarity issue caused by stacks of items. Though you'll already be miles ahead of other CDDA tilesets if you make vehicles more than a bunch of deformed red sedans--even without all the other reasons, that alone would turn me off them.

[vastaghen12]

It really depends,  for example that the dwarven sprites in Spacefox's tileset actually convey information more effectively than ASCII. I think it makes a decent study case about conveying information through sprites.


Really if I were making a tile-set, i'll imitate the one Caves of Qud uses, which is heavily abstracted and has very limited color palettes. Specially so vehicles dont end up looking horrible.

[Erk]

Man, I couldn't disagree more strongly on the ASCII vs tileset monster clarity. "g". Is it a goblin, or a goat? With a tileset I know immediately, with ASCII I have to check. E. Am I facing an elf or an elephant? On one hand we have a vicious creature of nature diametrically opposed to dwarves, and on the other we have an elf. What kind of wearable is that particular "]" today? In cdda most of your enemies will be represented by a letter Z, and there's only so many foreground/background colour combinations possible.

Nothing against ASCII mind you. I still DF in ASCII primarily.

[Flying Dice]

Man, I couldn't disagree more strongly on the ASCII vs tileset monster clarity. "g". Is it a goblin, or a goat? With a tileset I know immediately, with ASCII I have to check. E. Am I facing an elf or an elephant? On one hand we have a vicious creature of nature diametrically opposed to dwarves, and on the other we have an elf. What kind of wearable is that particular "]" today? In cdda most of your enemies will be represented by a letter Z, and there's only so many foreground/background colour combinations possible.

Nothing against ASCII mind you. I still DF in ASCII primarily.

Is it beige? Goat. Military labor color? Goblin. If it's a capital E you already know it's not an elf (and probably an elephant); if the E is light grey it's most definitely an elephant. And that's disregarding contextual clues like "hey I wonder why there are sixteen goats in a tight cluster running for my front gate".

That's doubly silly to make that argument in CDDA, since it lacks the confusing factor DF has (by virtue of not having ten fucking million different animals and animalmen). The most common enemies, zombies, all have their own color, character, or combination thereof, and they're nowhere near saturation. Most other groups of enemies also share common characters, which makes IDing simply a matter of color-matching (or "Did your head get exploded from three screens away Y/N?" when figuring out whether a turret is an AM rifle or not). Cataclysm has always had a pretty sensible setup for enemy characters, honestly.

As far as items go: if you've got more than one set of gear, organize your shit like a responsible hoarder. Lockers and trunks were put onto this horrid world for a reason. If you're looting and not using the function to display all items in the vicinity in a list to make it less tedious (and, say, gods forbid, actually walking over to every single item to see what it is), you're bonkers.

[n9103]

Also, in case it was too lightly impressed, I support this effort for a new tileset.
I like it's asthetic, and have moderate hopes that it's in a good place when/if I ever get back in to Cata.

[Rince Wind]

One thing that tilesets do better is item identification. In ascii I see that it is a gun, or some type of clothes. I have to "l"ook at it. With a tileset I can see that it is another useless pistol and military armor, which will come in very handy.

But it is really down to personal preferences. I play DF in ascii and I played CDDA with tiles (mostly).

[scriver]

If you're looting and not using the function to display all items in the vicinity in a list to make it less tedious (and, say, gods forbid, actually walking over to every single item to see what it is), you're bonkers.

We're all mad here

[King Zultan]

I thought that everyone used the "Shift-V" thing to see what all the random items on the ground are.

another useless pistol

So I take it you don't pickup every gun you see and add it to your gun heap, that will one day become a gun mountain.

[Egan_BW]

Show us a character standing on top of a counter, Erk.

[Adragis]

 

Show us a character standing on top of a counter, Erk.

Context clues, probably. Like the movecost of the current tile and the fact you don't just 'forget' you moved onto a counter.

[Random_Dragon]

Was definitely interesting to see this in action Erk, and to look at an early version of the file (even if it took a while to figure out how the layers were set up).

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, don't get me wrong--I tend to nitpick tilesets generally, and this one of yours looks a hell of a lot better than most in multiple regards.

[Erk]

Currently a character standing on a counter would look the same as a character not standing on a counter. But with a counter underneath them.

I'm looking into making the "mountable" tag already in the game shift sprites a few pixels up if they're on top of it. however I've got a fair bit of elementary tileset implementation stuff to improve first, and since I'm more or less illiterate in c++ I have to work out exactly how it would be done and then bug a coder to actually do it ... Little cool details can wait

[ollobrains]

good effort erk, its looking from the screenshots like a good step forward

[Erk]

I have now created a GitHub repository for this tileset.  Newer screenshots in the link!

If you're interested in adding stuff, it's pretty early days so far - I am still working out some of the basic standards - but it's not too early to try your hand at a few things. I would suggest that in particular monster sprites, item sprites, and floor tiles are something anyone could fiddle with now. Also any furniture tiles that don't require connections. The stuff that connects is a bit harder, I'm still figuring out some of the standards there and then plan to make some templates, I recommend steering clear until we figure it out. Fuji is making the character sprites and I'll get their layering info soon, until then they might be better to steer away from too.

If you're intimidated by GitHub feel free to submit images here and I'll add them or discuss them. However do look at the style guide on the GitHub front page.

Hope this provides a new and cool way for people who can't code to contribute to Cataclysm!