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Author Topic: Why NonSquare?  (Read 4442 times)

PopTart

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Why NonSquare?
« on: April 16, 2016, 12:46:36 pm »

I don't want to gunk up the Tilesets & Graphics board with my questions, so I'll ask it here.

Why NonSquare? What do you have against the vertical and horizontal dimensions representing themselves accurately?

blue sam3

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Re: Why NonSquare?
« Reply #1 on: April 16, 2016, 04:37:31 pm »

The game ships with square tilesets as well. I think the non-square ones look better, in general.
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Vattic

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Re: Why NonSquare?
« Reply #2 on: April 16, 2016, 06:31:29 pm »

I play with square tilesets, but non-square have the better looking text in my experience.
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Re: Why NonSquare?
« Reply #3 on: April 16, 2016, 08:10:29 pm »

The Golden Ratio is 1:1.618~, my sets are 1:1.167~ and are able to both preserve the classic curses ascii feel, update it for modern resolutions, and make use of more screen real estate. A 24x24 is limited to 80x45, while a 24x36 fits natively at 80x30.

Comparison:




Then, here's a tileset making full use of the tilesize (rather than being an upscale, this is completely redrawn), with transparency and tilemagic along with touches of anti-aliasing to smooth the edges nicely.

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PopTart

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Re: Why NonSquare?
« Reply #4 on: April 16, 2016, 09:47:04 pm »

I think I'm finally getting it. I am understanding now something about the right "feel" of a "native" screen. Even though I can show more than 40 lines, 80x40 feels more correct.

I will admit, Max, that the elongated aspect is pleasing to the eye, especially your redrawn version. I just wish that a vertical tile's in-game distance was 1.618 (or whatever) times the distance of a horizontal tile.

NW_Kohaku

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Re: Why NonSquare?
« Reply #5 on: April 16, 2016, 09:54:03 pm »

Mostly because it makes text look better because script, especially when you include capital letters, looks better when it's taller than it is wide. 

Once Text Will Be Text is working reliably enough again, you can actually have square tiles and "tall" text, which gives you the best of both worlds.

Some people like Max do it because the game "originally shipped" with ASCII, and they want to preserve the "original feel of the game" with elaborately overproduced graphics that look like high resolution HD versions of the original sloppily resized pictures of text.  Because tradition.
« Last Edit: April 16, 2016, 10:03:42 pm by NW_Kohaku »
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Putnam

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Re: Why NonSquare?
« Reply #6 on: April 17, 2016, 12:26:05 am »

The Golden Ratio is 1:1.618~

I see no reason to see how an arithmetic triviality is relevant to representing tiles that are 2 meters on each side.

god calling phi an "arithmetic triviality" is technically correct but it makes me feel vaguely dirty, like i'm trying to be smart or something

PopTart

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Re: Why NonSquare?
« Reply #7 on: April 17, 2016, 01:03:31 am »

The matter—is phi trivial?—is itself trivial.

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Re: Why NonSquare?
« Reply #8 on: April 17, 2016, 04:14:22 pm »

This statement is nontrivial.

(like the liar's paradox, only trivial)
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Re: Why NonSquare?
« Reply #9 on: April 17, 2016, 09:22:12 pm »

I think I'm finally getting it. I am understanding now something about the right "feel" of a "native" screen. Even though I can show more than 40 lines, 80x40 feels more correct.

I will admit, Max, that the elongated aspect is pleasing to the eye, especially your redrawn version. I just wish that a vertical tile's in-game distance was 1.618 (or whatever) times the distance of a horizontal tile.
The specific value isn't as critical, I worked through the math and such and it would be 24x38 I think which doesn't fit the screen evenly.

Some people like Max do it because the game "originally shipped" with ASCII, and they want to preserve the "original feel of the game" with elaborately overproduced graphics that look like high resolution HD versions of the original sloppily resized pictures of text.  Because tradition.
Technically I do it because twbt doesn't work well with adventurer mode but I liked having the ability to zoom in which it gave me before I got sick of the crashes. Mine are fully redrawn (and centered!) versions of the cp 437 based curses_640x300 rather than the somewhat sloppily resized curses_800x600. Because aesthetically it pleases me having all the crisp lines and clipped corners and such, and autistically it pleases me that I can zoom out and it looks the same as the 640x300 set with the trimmed walls.
The Golden Ratio is 1:1.618~

I see no reason to see how an arithmetic triviality is relevant to representing tiles that are 2 meters on each side.

god calling phi an "arithmetic triviality" is technically correct but it makes me feel vaguely dirty, like i'm trying to be smart or something
It's just an aesthetic concidence that rectangles near that ratio tend to "look right" ultimately.
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Putnam

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Re: Why NonSquare?
« Reply #10 on: April 17, 2016, 09:23:59 pm »

8x13 is reaosnably close, as is 13x21 and so on.

Max™

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Re: Why NonSquare?
« Reply #11 on: April 17, 2016, 09:31:29 pm »

240x83.023jkljlskjfdlksjdf and 147.69...x51.428lkjlkjasldjf on a 1920x1080 so the game would have to rescale and it's not as good at it as we are.

I do play with the window borders disabled and the df window locked to the 1920x1080 via the window manager (since full screen tries to spread it across the left monitor too) though it's technically in windowed mode, so that might work better if part of your 1920x1080 were taken up with borders. 24x38 is 80x28.42105blahblahblah while 24x36 is 80x30 and fits exactly as I drew it.

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pisskop

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Re: Why NonSquare?
« Reply #12 on: April 17, 2016, 09:37:49 pm »

Square tilesets hurt my eyes and restrict my viewrange.  They half the time force overmap tiles to look like beds or dressers and the other half break actual text.

So why would I?
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Re: Why NonSquare?
« Reply #13 on: April 17, 2016, 09:51:08 pm »

Square tilesets hurt my eyes and restrict my viewrange.  They half the time force overmap tiles to look like beds or dressers and the other half break actual text.

So why would I?
This was pretty much the impetus for mifki to create the Text Will Be Text plugin.  Although I think the one that got him was zeros that look like coffins.
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Re: Why NonSquare?
« Reply #14 on: April 17, 2016, 09:59:40 pm »

Yup, and it's an amazing plugin, and I miss stuff like weapons and armor having their own tiles when I'm sifting through a mead hall for gear. Not to mention multilevel, but the risk of crashing every time you try to fast travel (in particular when near a site so you are in the local travel map rather than the wider wilderness map) just killed it for me, leading me down this path of NonSquare glory!
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