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[Oab]

No way. That's a game-play mechanic change adding new items and uniforms, just for graphics. That won't be done.

Yeah I understand that, and figured as much. Contradictory visuals is a big negative for me. Maybe I am the minority with this line of thought, but I can't help but think this is going to be a common thing being seen in the con categories on steam reviews.

That's what we are doing already with the equipment and procedually generated stuff. If injuries are shown, it will work the same way.

That's great. I didn't see it anywhere that you had plans on matching the descriptions beyond the heads and equipment. Is this the plan for all the races or just dwarfs?

It does look good, but... why do trees give shadows, but a roof wouldn't? The game has inside/outside light/dark tiles, which are ignored. Trees would be the only exception, and the tiles below them are certainly outside/light... yet darkened by shadow. ^^

I think that's obviously something else to consider for roofs. It would make sense for shadows to exist just for the sole purpose of adding a visual indication that it is indoors.

This type of art doesn't apply logic to begin with. The point of view isn't consistent.

Light and shadow are tools to show form. The gradient of your ramp is a good example. Which also happens to look the best imo.

I don't understand how shadows wouldn't be feasible.

I think the shadow of the canopy looks good on your example and definitely implies the canopy is above. A thick forest will actually look like it has a thick canopy using this style so that's a plus.

[Meph]

Community feedback bonus round: Kennels!

Kennels are only used to tame small animals. That's it. They only need 1 boulder, block, log or bar to be build. Kennels are 5x5. Kennels are weird.

In vanilla DF, kennels are shown with 4 grates and 2 earrings (?), which makes no sense to me. Instead I'd go with 4 animal-traps and 2 chains/ropes, since that has something to do with catching animals. I would make the kennel floor tranparent, with rock/dirt at the animal-traps, like a little barn or cattle shed.

What do you guys think? (#1 vanilla setup, #2 my idea, #3 on constructed floor with vermin added for fun, #4 on grass.)

[TwistedMinds]

I just make new figurines. ^^

Looks good (I also liked your previous one so.. yeah..).

What I meant by flipping them horizontally is, what if all items/constructions that looks like humanoid looked to the other side (right) instead of to the left. Might make it easier to differentiate dwarves/creatures and items(figurine)/construction(statue if they looks like humanoid)

[Meph]

Yeah I understand that, and figured as much. Contradictory visuals is a big negative for me. Maybe I am the minority with this line of thought, but I can't help but think this is going to be a common thing being seen in the con categories on steam reviews.

We have a lot of time to figure this out before the release.

That's great. I didn't see it anywhere that you had plans on matching the descriptions beyond the heads and equipment. Is this the plan for all the races or just dwarfs?

Current plan is to do hair/beard/skin for entities (dwarf, human, elf, goblin, kobold), equipped weapons/armor/shield (for everyone) and frankenstein FBs, Demons, Titans and Nightcreatures together (that will be a difficult one). Maybe equipped axe or pick for woodcutter and miners, since they are the only professions that requires tools to work.

I was playing devils advocate a bit with the shadows. ^^ I do like the look too, let's see if something like that can be added. In secret, I want Warmist to show up here and throw Rendermax into the mix.

What I meant by flipping them horizontally is, what if all items/constructions that looks like humanoid looked to the other side (right) instead of to the left. Might make it easier to differentiate dwarves/creatures and items(figurine)/construction(statue if they looks like humanoid)

I might want to do that to undead. They turn undead... muhaha. ba-dum-tsss.

[Manveru Taurënér]

I just make new figurines. ^^

But if everyone thinks that they look like creatures, so be it.

Maybe go for some more stylized approach that makes it clearer that it's not a creature? Like a figurine without arms or legs like this. Imagine it's hard with the limited pixels still.

Community feedback bonus round: Kennels!

Kennels are only used to tame small animals. That's it. They only need 1 boulder, block, log or bar to be build. Kennels are 5x5. Kennels are weird.

In vanilla DF, kennels are shown with 4 grates and 2 earrings (?), which makes no sense to me. Instead I'd go with 4 animal-traps and 2 chains/ropes, since that has something to do with catching animals. I would make the kennel floor tranparent, with rock/dirt at the animal-traps, like a little barn or cattle shed.

What do you guys think? (#1 vanilla setup, #2 my idea, #3 on constructed floor with vermin added for fun, #4 on grass.)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Looks nice, could you show one without the rock/dirt as well for comparison?

[silvernocte]

vanilla DF, kennels are shown with 4 grates and 2 earrings (?), which makes no sense to me.

I never really questioned the use of earrings in kennels, but now it seems 100% dwarven that they'd tag their livestock and the like with earrings rather than, well, tags.
Anyways, cages and ropes makes a whole lot more sense, but what are your thoughts on maybe having a straw bedding rather than the dirt/stone? Eh, it looks fine as it is, though.

[CLA]

Non directional shadow on the ramps looks also much better I think (the ones titled "Meph"). I think it would look better when the gradient between floor and ramps leading upwards is more soft, and there's a more visible barrier between the floor and the ramps leading to the level below. It makes it visually clearer that the "up ramps" belong to the current level and the "down ramps" are just "up-ramps" of the level below.
That way it's communicated to the player that a level consists of a floor and its wall/ramp etc on top. The shadow seen on the middle mockup ("Mayday") feels wrong to me for that reason.

It's a first try, I just wanted to know if people understand that style better than the ramps with directional shadow. I kinda like that they blend in that well, but it would be easy to add something like a 1-pixel edge somewhere to make it clearer.

It doesn't have to be a literal edge, making all lower level tiles consistently darker (including the ramps) would be enough I think.

[Hapchazzard]

Some really interesting stuff here! How will items made of unusual materials be handled? E.g. artifact floodgates made of ruby? It seems a bit excessive to make sprites for every edge-case, but it would still be weird for them to have regular appearances when they're made of such an exotic material. Would applying some sort duocolor filter, with RGB values given in the raws work? For example, a "ruby floodgate" would look something like this:



As a bonus, maybe add a "PRECIOUS" flag in the material defines, with PRECIOUS materials possibly having a sparkle or two superimposed on the image itself.

Also, how hard/easy is it to make the appearance of specific items modular? For example, making the jewel on the crown actually change color depending on the gem used (if any)?

[Death Dragon]

The Mayday ones look graphically fancier, but the Meph ones do solve this one problem I mentioned before:

I like the ramps a lot, but when you have them just on one side, then there isn't really much indication that you're looking at ramps:

I think the gradient from low to high could be more uniform though.

Current plan is to do hair/beard/skin for entities (dwarf, human, elf, goblin, kobold), equipped weapons/armor/shield (for everyone) and frankenstein FBs, Demons, Titans and Nightcreatures together (that will be a difficult one). Maybe equipped axe or pick for woodcutter and miners, since they are the only professions that requires tools to work.

One of the screenshots showed beakdogs with slightly different appearances. Are those not actually planned for the released game or are they an exception?

Some really interesting stuff here! How will items made of unusual materials be handled? E.g. artifact floodgates made of ruby? It seems a bit excessive to make sprites for every edge-case, but it would still be weird for them to have regular appearances when they're made of such an exotic material. Would applying some sort duocolor filter, with RGB values given in the raws work? For example, a "ruby floodgate" would look something like this:

I agree it would probably be best if there could just be a colour filter automatically applied to a thing's graphic sprite that depends on its raw file. Not sure how feasible this is code wise, but if modular sprites for proc gen'd creatures are feasible, then maybe this could be, too?

[Death Dragon]

I just made a 5 second mockup of what the Mayday directional shading ramps would look like with an additional shading gradient:

I think this is the direction to go in.

[Meph]

Some really interesting stuff here! How will items made of unusual materials be handled? E.g. artifact floodgates made of ruby? It seems a bit excessive to make sprites for every edge-case, but it would still be weird for them to have regular appearances when they're made of such an exotic material. Would applying some sort duocolor filter, with RGB values given in the raws work? For example, a "ruby floodgate" would look something like this:



As a bonus, maybe add a "PRECIOUS" flag in the material defines, with PRECIOUS materials possibly having a sparkle or two superimposed on the image itself.

Also, how hard/easy is it to make the appearance of specific items modular? For example, making the jewel on the crown actually change color depending on the gem used (if any)?

My current idea is sets for items of stone, wood, metal and glass. Gems would just use the glass version.

Modular colors: I only know how it works in TWBT, Toady hasn't coded anything in that regard yet, and I don't know if we will get such a feature. More control over color would be fantastic. I think everyone who ever made a tileset for DF would agree. ^^

Beak dogs: Ups, no. Mike made an updated version, somehow both ended up in the screenshot. But we could probably use one for male and one for female beak dog.

Color filters ARE automatically applied in DF. Which is actually kind of a problem.

I also made something completely different... the trade depot. I don't know if it makes any sense, but my reasoning was this: The trade depot is one large open area. Dwarves would surely decorate such an area, but they only have the floor. So they either do engravings or a mosaic... well...

The trade depot:

(I know already that we won't use that and I'll make one more fitting to the other workshops, but I thought it looks nice. It's like a mini-version of the giant mosaics that people do with floor tiles. Pixelart in pixelart )

[LeoCean]

I'm not a fan of the dark wall insides at all. Why are all the walls dark? You get a few pixels of what it is, then bam they are all the same? I like the Mayday ramps but we're only seeing 1 ramp, it may be better to show multiple layers of ramps(I suppose it may not have twbt like features...yet)..

I think if you want to make the flood gates bigger, you'd probably have to change how they work. Say make it 2 tiles, like the waterwheel/axle it requires "power", there's no reason it couldn't work similar for flood gates.(without the actual power)("Nope. As I've said, objects will be 1 tile. But you could make creature sprite that is 3x2 tiles in size. The actual creature will be single tile, with multi-tile graphics. That's planned for sure." scratch what I said, that is more or less a feature)

(It'd be nice if he made the military "gear" system like gnomoria, that was very simple to set gear for your "gnomes")

[Alehkhs]

Yeah, I'm more in favor of the Mayday ramps with their shadows (as long as the light is coming from above )


Also, people keep discussing "profession=appearance" and having concerns about dwarfs not holding appropriate weapons, etc. I was under the impression - reading Meph's comments - that this really would only apply to the color of clothing (similar to the colors of faces in ASCII). Is that correct? I would prefer that a dwarf not be shown holding anything in their hands unless they're actually holding it / armed with / equipped with it (EDIT: thus a dwarf carrying a sword would be shown holding a sword, but a dwarf with a mining profession would not constantly be shown carrying a pick unless they're actually carrying one).

[Meph]

We have thicker walls, for soils and ores and the like. The thin walls are rock (not important) and the thicker ones, with more surface area to show info, are flux, ores, gems, etc. (important)



Can't make them any thicker than that, otherwise they start to merge in the center.

(It'd be nice if he made the military "gear" system like gnomoria, that was very simple to set gear for your "gnomes")

I have no idea what you are talking about

Also, people keep discussing "profession=appearance" and having concerns about dwarfs not holding appropriate weapons, etc. I was under the impression - reading Meph's comments - that this really would only apply to the color of clothing (similar to the colors of faces in ASCII). Is that correct? I would prefer that a dwarf not be shown holding anything unless they're actually holding it / armed with / equipped with it.

It's up for debate. I'd prefer if professions are visible, even if it means adding tools that aren't there; Mike takes your stance, with professions being not very important.

[Rose]

Regarding trees, I think one thing that will help them not looking like stumps is to have the center black, just like the way stone walls are right now.