Now I'm wondering what it'd take to be able to show what's actually on the statues.
Certainly tons of sprites. Every creature, plant, and shape, is a possible candidate.
Too many. Statues can show entire stories, not only every creature/object, but a combination of them, and in combination with a posture/gesture, or a historical event. Far too many options.
I think the random variance of tiles is getting out of hand, honestly. Water and magma were OK, but webs and statues being randomized isn't something I would want. I like symmetry and consistency. Your work looks great Meph, but it's just not something I would want to turn on. At this point it would kind of be a dealbreaker in my choice to use the tileset
Is there or will there be a way to disable the random tiles? Hopefully with an option to keep animated water/magma (although I am still worried that will get annoying, haven't tried it yet).
The random selection comes from a single line in the overrides txt, it would be easy to disable. I can kinda understand that you dislike statues not looking the same, but why webs? Their design is consistent, but you won't find perfectly symmetrical spider webs in RL.
What do you think?
I think the high dwarven art is antagonist for ungodly realism - only totem-like and other abstractions.
And now seriously - yet there must be a clear difference for a dwarf and his statue - especially when consider, that the legendary dwarves are blinking gray.
It's only my opinion.
Being grey, unmoving, non-blinking and with a socket should put the statues apart from dwarves. I kinda like the idea that they look similar, since dwarves are great craftsmen and their statues probably look really well made. And you made 216 extra military/undead/skeleton dwarves, which are never used anywhere, plus the evil dwarves... I could easily use 256 dwarven sprites that never made it ingame so far.
That sounds like a good idea! Would that mean that you'll use the other statue sprites for other materials and have only the stone one be randomised?
Also, love the spiderwebs
Yes, that's the idea. Stone statues can be mass produced, and they get the new feature of different looks, while people that like symmetry (like Radgh) can use other materials to get uniform statues that look the same.