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[MoltenIdol]

The lowest quality beds could be hay, strewn over a bed-frame. Next step is linnen sheets, something like that  to give that sense of progression.
I Really like the Idea of hay and linnen being "used" as lowtier bed materials.

7 Humble dwarves, haybeds, clothes falling apart, drinking rainwater from wooden cups. Its Perfect.

Maybe some furs and hides for the artifact quality?


Even though it might send the Wrong signals, eg: "do i need cloth to make hightier beds?" and so forth, i still think it would be cool, to follow your carpenters rise to mastery.

[Cruxador]

I've been toying with the idea of a more elaborate furniture layout

Spoiler: collapsed for post length (click to show/hide)

to portray not only material, but also quality, spatter, wear... and add some toggleable variants... and add the actual decorations. I'm curious what you guys think. Initially we also wanted to add orientation, aka rotating the furntiure piece N, E, S, W, just like the siege engines can be rotated, but that multiplies the sprite count by 16, so we are holding off on that for now. Tarn might code-support it for modders though.

The current setup we want to test looks like this:



That's a bed.
 - Four materials, wood, stone, metal and glass. Shown using texture on the bed-frame.
 - Seven quality levels, from regular to artefact. Shown on the creases and embroidery on the cloth.
 - Four varieties (optional ornamental changes to avoid copy+paste effect) that you can cycle through. Shown by different pillows.
 - Five decorations, which are colored depending on their material and copied on top.
 - Four wear-states, which are copied on top.
 - Four spatter effects, which are colored depending on their material and copied on top.

Examples would look like this:


Individually those can be read easily, it gets more harder if everything happens at once: A very decorated bed with two spatters and heavy wear for example. Luckily spatter is rare on furniture, as is wear; while decorations are controlled by the player, you can pick yourself how much you want to put on a given piece.

Here the table:


And an example with ten random tables (empty), ten with spatter and wear, ten with decorations, and finally ten with everything at once.

It looks great, but how many furnitures are there in the game? The sheer amount of extra work you're putting on a full plate seems pretty up there. 44 sprites per furniture adds up quickly, depending on how loosely you define "furniture". If the time can recently be allocated though, this level of thoroughness is great. As far as the details, the only thing I notice is I think the spikes (or studs?) on top would look better with the side that's "attached" to the table not having an outline.

There's a few things others have said that I basically agree with:
• The wood grain table doesn't scream "high quality" necessarily. Arthur's round tale wasn't famous because of the table itself, after all.
• It's very unclear to me what the table "bars" represent.

Maybe in the futures future, it could be tied to cloth dyeing somehow, Even en tho beds dont require cloth atm.
Hay beds anyone?

Hay beds would be the most correct representation, but considering bedding isn't modeled by the game at all, I reckon it should be treated as abstracted, like how axes could have wooden hafts and not necessary all be made in the style of the Indo-Persian Tabar, for example.

Because the textile/bedding aspect doesn't actually exist in-game, I think emphasizing it too much would be misleading.

[Zesty]

This looks great. I really like how you toned down the lone stone ground tiles. I'm not overstating it when I say it is pleasing to look at. I'm excited to see dry, bubble/feather, and wormy/eyeball grasses.

Anyhow, what do you guys think about the grass? We cut back on the more varied grasses after some worries about it looking too distracting.

I'd like you to reconsider this. Variability isn't distracting. Busyness is. Variability is very good and will help make different forts feel unique.

[Starver]

The current (vanilla) variability of various punctuation marks is probably a good benchmark. Though I can't now remember what I 'saw' when I first ever Embarked (I probably had a lot more problems with the Z-slicing that cut through the landscape of rolling hills), I'm fairly sure I understood it was aesthetic variation. If there was any problem, I probably missed Gatherable plants for being what they were and thinking they were yet more variation, not realising that the scene was as truly busy.

If there's any improvement I would suggest, it's to make/keep more prominent the non-turf elements you then find atop. Though this is not particularly lacking right now anyway.

[Hiul]

regarding bed quality, i can imagine poor quality been shown full of patch or hole in the bed sheet, for better quality maybe with some decorative bed frame or sheet motif like some typical royal medieval bed.

can just copy paste the bed sheet motif from the table motif like this one for example just maybe with different color.

[Eric Blank]

I like the furniture sprites, except the metal tables. The diagonal bars/slabs don't look as good as or seem to fit in with the other examples. Would square tiles or a single sheet with an indented edge/border of varying quality look good, do you think?

Also, glass and stone might be hard to tell apart if they had the same material colors. Since theres not a lot of obvious difference between quality levels now, what about exempting stone tables from inheriting the base, and make the shape/quality of the base the obvious difference in table quality? From like a slab of rock with the top smoothed over to an ornate single pillar with fancy "feet"? Then glass tables then can have the obviously wooden legs, so you can tell the difference at a glance even with very similar material colors.

The shear number of sprites for quality levels and variations you're thinking about doing is impressive, honestly. I would be content with a single sprite for each material type, but it's going to look amazing with all that extra stuff

[Wokko]

Imo, making bed quality depend on the sheets (hay-look->cheap cloth->royal cloth) would look both better and clearer, more intuitively understandable.
Players wouldn't be confused into thinking that they need cloth materials because they would notice it only after they make some beds, so there are probably no downsides to that approach.

edit: artifact beds shouldn't have drawers underneath, especially that prominent

[MoltenIdol]

Imo, making bed quality depend on the sheets (hay-look->cheap cloth->royal cloth) would look both better and clearer, more intuitively understandable.
Players wouldn't be confused into thinking that they need cloth materials because they would notice it only after they make some beds, so there are probably no downsides to that approach.

edit: artifact beds shouldn't have drawers underneath, especially that prominent

I agree with all of this i gotta say.

[Starver]

edit: artifact beds shouldn't have drawers underneath, especially that prominent

That's not a drawer. That's a roller.  It's a fancy convertible (transformable!) version of...

Spoiler: ...this! (click to show/hide)

[Pillbo]

It looks really good, but I also think this is a good idea:

Imo, making bed quality depend on the sheets (hay-look->cheap cloth->royal cloth) would look both better and clearer, more intuitively understandable.

Also wanted to say that varying the color of the sheets to some degree would help keep them from looking too much the same. At least those examples make it look like a wood beds get red sheets, stone another color, and so on.

[voliol]

If you end up making the quality levels even more visually distinct (say, using the sheet suggestions above), please add a toggle for that. If there isn’t one, I’m pretty sure I’ll go from ”aargh, some of these beds/tables look shoddy, I better upgrade them, aren’t my dwarves lucky now” to ”I’ll just turn off quality levels sprites”, and I don’t think it’s just me.

[Meph]

I wanted to keep the progression through the quality levels very gradual, since players don't have much control over it. If the furniture looks very different, it will be much harder to build anything symmetrical or similar-looking.

Hay-beds would make sense for the lowest quality, but I'm not entirely sure how that would look with the few pixels at the disposal for the sheet.

Longer legs for tables: They are dwarves. They need low tables.

I cant recall; did you already talk about tables visually changing and connecting with adjecent tables? Both vertically and horizontally?

I mentioned it, but it makes tables very difficult, especially when merging those with multiple different qualities, decorations or materials.

It looks great, but how many furnitures are there in the game?

10-30, depending on what you count.

[Hiul]

oh i dont notice the bed frame already has some decorative in it, i am not sure the poor quality one has hole or not it look like scratch hole though or is it just stain.

and would be nice to have some round ball thing near the edge for the gradual upgrade which either made of wood or paint with ornamental color or just small protruding wood frame near the edge for aesthetic.

like this one

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

regarding hay bed, seems like some cover it with sheet anyway so its not that showed, maybe add some hay hint near the edge, also it would help to enhance the hole by showing some hay protruding out of the sheet for poor quality, the most poor definitely just show as hay without sheet though.

like this one

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Meph]

Well, there are two ways to go about this: Have a big difference between the quality levels, or make it a gradient. I decided to use a gradient, since players can't control the quality level. No one can say "hey, please build 3 superior beds and 3 exceptional beds, thanks". If that would be the case, I might go for more unique designs between the quality levels.

I finish the chairs and cabinets in this style as well:

[Cruxador]

Imo, making bed quality depend on the sheets (hay-look->cheap cloth->royal cloth) would look both better and clearer, more intuitively understandable.
Players wouldn't be confused into thinking that they need cloth materials because they would notice it only after they make some beds, so there are probably no downsides to that approach.

edit: artifact beds shouldn't have drawers underneath, especially that prominent

Please don't underestimate the capacity of players to get confused.

Also, I do think on principle, in cases where the game is limited it's not good design to emphasize or call attention to those limitations as it would do if we made the type of bedding appear to matter without the type of bedding actually being modeled.

Well, there are two ways to go about this: Have a big difference between the quality levels, or make it a gradient. I decided to use a gradient, since players can't control the quality level. No one can say "hey, please build 3 superior beds and 3 exceptional beds, thanks". If that would be the case, I might go for more unique designs between the quality levels.

I finish the chairs and cabinets in this style as well:

Spoiler: I collapsed the images (click to show/hide)

I think this is a concept issue rather than an issue with your representation but the spikes and rings look kinda nonsensical. Partly that can't be helped because putting spikes and rings on a stool or cabinet is already something we never see in real life, but I also think it's emphasized by the contrast between the stark white and the various browns. It might jump out less, visually, if those decoration graphical elements will inherit the color of the decoration material. Of course, if they're microcline it could get way worse, but at least then it's accurate.