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[Meph]

Bumpedy bump, because these sprites are still awesome and people should know about them.

[HellishINC]

PTW, These are amazing! Hope Oab comes back and works on them more,

[Oab]

Hi all.

I released an update, you can check it out and download it on the first page.

Hope you like it!

[Meph]

Yeah, you are back.

[Oab]

Here is another update. This time I completed the subterranean sheet.

Spoiler: Subterranean creatures (click to show/hide)

 Cave Crocodile, Giant Cave Toad, Giant Olm, Giant Bat, Giant Rat, Large Rat, Naked Mole Dog, Troglodyte, Giant Mole, Fire Imp, Giant Cave Spider, Fire Element man, Magma Element man, Iron Element man, Mud Element man, Giant Cave Swallow, Amphibian Man, Reptile Man, Serpent Man, Ant Man, Rodent Man

[nightstick24]

Hey there, bit of a Necro, but I recently got into DF, I love the look of your set, and I'd love to use it. The problem is, I don't have even the slightest clue how to go about using it. Any chance I could get some install instructions for a complete and utter noob?

Thanks!

[Oab]

Hey there, bit of a Necro, but I recently got into DF, I love the look of your set, and I'd love to use it. The problem is, I don't have even the slightest clue how to go about using it. Any chance I could get some install instructions for a complete and utter noob?

Thanks!

Thanks!

You will first need to Download Mephs 32x32 tile set, as my set isn't complete on its own.

Once you have that you need to replace Mephs png and text files inside the raw/graphics and raw/graphics/mdf with mine. The Dwarf/Kobold/Elf/Human/Goblin png's go into the MDF folder and all other go into the raw/graphics including the text files.

On a separate note for those interested I have been working on making a full set for the upcoming steam release.

Although it was challenging to get the pieces to play nice together, I have also finished a rough version of the modular dwarf faces. I was a little worried I would lose a lot of the uniqueness of some of the characters and instead end up with many similar outcomes. It turns out I was worried for nothing as even just minor changes of one or two pixels with lengths make a noticeable difference. The potential is practically endless for variations in appearance.

I have also finished improving the proportion and size of many of my existing creatures/animals.

I am also in the process of making terrain tiles. For the terrain tiles I am going for a very clean look, but will probably be posting pics to get feedback as I go on everything.

I am not going to invest a ton of time with any of this yet because I am still not sure what the plans are for how the vanilla set will be setup, but once more information is confirmed I will allocate as much spare time as possible.

[nightstick24]

Thank you for the quick and helpful response, it's greatly appreciated!

As for your future plans, let me be the first to say I'm really looking forward to them, and I don't know if I can wait! I think the two biggest things that stop people from getting into a game as awesome as DF are the crazy thirty-layer-deep interfaces, and the unfamiliar graphics. There are guides that explain the interface well, and it only really looks complicated, once you start to use it the interface is actually shockingly intuitive, so that just leaves graphics - which awesome people like you and Meph have been kind enough to make and share for free!

Thanks, I'm looking forward to future iterations of your pack, I'll be keeping an eye out for news!

[Wannabehero]

Keep it up Oab!  Your sprites are fantastic and distinctive.  As someone who's done a small bit of pixel-smithing, I know how much work and time it takes (I have my own aborted 24px tileset that dropped simply because of not enough time to keep working on it).  We appreciate your wonderful and unique sprites. 

[Oab]

Thanks for the morale boost guys, much appreciated!

I see there may be concern that I’m not going to be continuing the tile set.

I am still working on it as often as I can! I probably won’t release anything until after the steam release though.  This is mostly because the new sprites I’m drawing are too big to fit within the grid restrictions currently in place.

@Wannabehero: It’s nice to know you can appreciate what it takes to produce this much art. I didn’t keep track in the past, but I am guessing I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into this. I can’t even imagine how much time people like Meph have devoted. Your post made me realize most of you may not know what goes into making a tile set of this scope.

For those interested here is a window into my process.

My original sprites were created much faster because I was using filters and painting with a brush over a 2 to 3 color palette with simplistically designed characters to help speed up the process. This allowed me to pump out a unique sprite in less than five minutes which included the design phase.  I didn’t really care for quality or accuracy as much doing it this way because it was mainly just a prototype at the time. This is why I had more frequent releases back then.

I switched to a more traditional pixel art approach once I realized there was interest with my set to improve quality.

Now I use custom palettes of 7 to 12 colors per palette and hand place each individual pixel. I do a unique palette for every sprite. Hand placing pixels is very time consuming process compared to just painting in highlights and shadows. Each additional color to the palette adds considerable amounts of time to this process.

Creating the color palettes using the raw colors is also a time consuming process. Some of the colors in the raw files are challenging to make functional palettes with. This is one of the more difficult aspects of pixel art. Paint brush and filters mimic this in a sloppy fashion, but drastically increase the production speed at the cost of quality.

Matching the physical descriptions in the raw files of creatures can be quite time consuming and occasionally frustrating. Some of the creatures are especially difficult to draw in pixel form and I find myself frequently reworking them to make them look as good as possible while staying as true to the description as possible. I try to maintain a front facing perspective to be neutral to directional movement, but some characters look awkward when drawn that way. Especially when considering proportional differences.

With grid restrictions planned on being lifted to a degree for the steam release many sprites are now much larger which takes much more time to produce.  I can paint a 16x16 sprite in 5 minutes with 3 to 5 colors, but the time goes up exponentially as the resolution and or the palette size increases.  For example a 32x32 with 7 colors takes about 20 minutes for me, but a 64x32 with a 7 to 9 color palette could take over an hour to draw from scratch.

With hundreds of sprites to draw this is going to take awhile. I am focused on redrawing what I have so far in preparation for the steam release and will hopefully continue producing new sheets afterwards.

Here is a few sprites I have been working on, feedback is always welcome.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 
Compare the dwarf for size differences. Mushrooms are prototypes for farm crops and cave flora with dynamic growth sizes in mind. All are WIP

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 
Here is an example of the modular dwarfs. The one on the left was the model I used from my set as a template.

Hair, moustache, beard and sideburns are all the unkempt style with only differences being hair color and skin tones. This is a very small sample size, so you can see the potential for variation.

This is all modular. The pieces are Sideburns style/color, Hair style/color, Moustache style/color/nose shape, Beard style/color, Skin tone, and eye color.

The modular approach has many challenges that will require a large amount of time to get right. Making sure that every possible hair style combination looks good is proving to be tedious, but I've mostly gotten it to work well.

Another issue I have been having is that the hair and skin tones are the same color in some cases so contrast is a problem. This just requires a lot of tweaking the palettes to create enough contrast, but its time consuming to test. Thankfully most of the colors are shared between humans, elves, and dwarfs for hair and skin tones.

I still have no idea what Toady, Mike, and Meph are planning for the overall modular design so I won't be devoting too much time to this until then.

[Meph]

A few details about oversized sprites: Currently the setup is planned for creatures only, with a max size of 96x96 pixels. Like the 3x3 wagon. Larger plants, like giant mushrooms, are still puzzles of multiple tiles, just like before.

Btw, the DF dragon has no wings. (Only cave dragons have wing stumps)

The sprites look great as always. Love the blizzard man, I guess you based it on one of Tarns crayon drawings?

The modular design sounds similar to what we have planned, beard and hair styles, colors... yep. I'll let you know a bit more once we are finished with the civs.

[Oab]

Thanks, and thanks for all the information Meph, very helpful as usual!

Glad the design is similar, my largest concern is how the modular layers will correspond with each other.

And yea I tried to use all Tarns crayon drawings as inspiration.

[Wannabehero]

Here is a few sprites I have been working on, feedback is always welcome.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 

My feedback currently:  Magnificent

[Meph]

If you have any other questions, please PM me.

[Oab]

Hey guys. Been awhile since I’ve posted an update, just wanted to let you know progress is still going well.

Here is a rough summary of how much I’ve completed.

Dwarfs: 80% complete.
Domestic Animals: 99% complete. (Need to improve color palettes)
Aboveground animals/creatures: 50% complete.
Animal People: 50% complete. (Included potential for visible equipment.)
Megabeasts/Semi Megabeasts: 95% complete. (Some minor edits needed)
Goblins/Elves/Kobolds/Humans: 30% complete (Framework for modular assembly is complete)
Subterranean creatures: 95% complete. (Just a lot of minor edits left to do)
Aquatic: 20% complete.
Items/furniture/objects: 25% complete.
Terrain: 20% complete.
Randomly Generated creatures: 0% (Waiting on information)

I have the modular design for dwarfs working great so far with the large amount of testing I’ve done.

Getting all the skin and hair combos to contrast well was surprisingly the most problematic issue to solve while remaining true to the colors. All the layering stuff was actually pretty simple with my current layer setup. I just need to maintain some rules with pixel real estate, but at almost no cost to quality and variety.

I managed to extract a bit more uniqueness between all the variations by altering the nose via the moustache types. I think I have over twenty nose shapes for the male dwarfs. This helps distinguish dwarfs much further which really helps due to dwarf skin and hair tones usually being the same if from the same civ due to how dwarf genetics work. For example I just looked at my test fort and all my dwarfs have dark tan hair and peach skin.

I have been sizing everything to be a better representation of their true sizes as much as a I can within a self-imposed 64x64 max.  I may draw some of the largest creatures within a 96x96 but I think it looks a little odd using 9 tile spaces versus 4 on my mockups. I may post some pictures in the future to get feedback on this though.

I would appreciate some feedback on a few things that I am currently working on.

1.   What do you think Rutherers should look like? I added my version to the pic, but I am not happy with it. Pictures would help even if they are super simple sketches.
2.   What about Dralthas? I posted this one as well. I was thinking a mix between a giant sloth and a giraffe considering they feed on tall tower caps.
3.   I need ideas for how elves should look. I was originally thinking similar to D&D/Tolkien styles, but that doesn’t seem to fit for DF elves.
4.   I need inspiration for the armor and clothing designs especially helmets and hats as they are the most visible pieces on my sprites. I would like ideas for all the races. Dwarf, Goblin, Elf, Kobold, and Human. There are almost too many directions I could go with this stuff so I would like to stick with a general theme for each race.
5.   Do you think it’s important to have a unique sprite for Animated or would a recolor work? If yes for animated I was thinking a skeleton. Thoughts? I haven’t played in animated biomes, but I am guessing they are pretty popular?
6.   I was thinking of just using skulls for corpses. Thoughts?
7.   For the tile set terrain I want simple and easy to read. Do you have any suggestions of pixel art tile set styles that you like that accomplish this?

If anyone has any of Tarn and Zach’s crayon art that isn’t easily found with a google search that would be ideal.
Feel free to give me any other feedback or ideas you have as well.



The hair color is Mahogany on most of the dwarfs, but all of the skin tones are present. These are all assembled from the procedural generation without additional alteration.