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Author Topic: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Ironhand - Discussion and Suggestions  (Read 454203 times)

Meph

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #2280 on: October 07, 2020, 07:37:46 am »

The code is already there, since it's the same that allows people to rotate ballistas/catapults. It's just that it's a lot of work for artists. The idea right now is to enable the code support, but don't do the sprites right now.
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Starver

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #2281 on: October 07, 2020, 07:51:00 am »

(Sorry that my last post was far too long and rambling. Literally everything said after it, apart from that bit about the bulls, was actually what I had just pondered and concluded. But with added pictures. Let me try better next time.)
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #2282 on: October 07, 2020, 11:00:35 am »

The code is already there, since it's the same that allows people to rotate ballistas/catapults. It's just that it's a lot of work for artists. The idea right now is to enable the code support, but don't do the sprites right now.
I'd suggest delaying the code support until it's time to work on the sprites, as Toady is rather short of time currently, but I'm sure Toady will do whatever he feels is best/most satisfying.

Any independent tile sets will have a lot of work to convert to the changes, both in the form of how it's integrated and in the functionality supported, so they'll most likely won't run out of work before you do, assuming it's intended for introduction within first year or so after the initial Premium release.
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Manveru Taurënér

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #2283 on: October 07, 2020, 11:15:14 am »

I'd suggest delaying the code support until it's time to work on the sprites, as Toady is rather short of time currently, but I'm sure Toady will do whatever he feels is best/most satisfying.

Any independent tile sets will have a lot of work to convert to the changes, both in the form of how it's integrated and in the functionality supported, so they'll most likely won't run out of work before you do, assuming it's intended for introduction within first year or so after the initial Premium release.

I think the implication is that enabling it is a negligible amount of work, unlike actually doing the sprites.
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Meph

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #2284 on: October 07, 2020, 11:42:08 am »

I'd suggest delaying the code support until it's time to work on the sprites, as Toady is rather short of time currently, but I'm sure Toady will do whatever he feels is best/most satisfying.

Any independent tile sets will have a lot of work to convert to the changes, both in the form of how it's integrated and in the functionality supported, so they'll most likely won't run out of work before you do, assuming it's intended for introduction within first year or so after the initial Premium release.

I think the implication is that enabling it is a negligible amount of work, unlike actually doing the sprites.
Yeah, that's what i meant.
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ror6ax

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #2285 on: October 07, 2020, 01:00:07 pm »

Tables and chairs are very basic items.
Not being able to set them in a common-sense way will confuse the hell out of newcomers and will happen A LOT.

I would not have a lot of patience to try some of the more subtle game mechanics if even placement is buggy.

...which brings us to the overall topic of item/workshop placement.
One way of indicating prohibited placement is very much needed. Like magma kilns should not be placeable unless correctly placed relative to magma pool. Either tables have to be shareable(more reasonable IMO) or chairs should not be allowed to be placed in a way that is not compatible with the table. Same goes with stair digging - it should just work, or clearly indicate what's missing instead of allowing to build a maze that dwarfs will not be able to traverse due to some arcane internal logic of the game.

Sorry to be sounding demanding but not fixing stuff like this is akin to releasing FPS that does not allow to change weapons because coding that is somehow problematic. This is the core mechanic of the goddamn game. You(everyone involved) just can't release this to general public on Steam and expect the game not to be demolished in reviews.
« Last Edit: October 07, 2020, 01:11:29 pm by ror6ax »
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Rekov

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #2286 on: October 07, 2020, 01:52:40 pm »

The chairs are demonstrably fine as is. Really the problem is that they're called "chairs" or "thrones," and not simply stools.

A square or round stool doesn't need to be rotated toward any of the cardinal directions, so it makes sense to use this as a representation for the time being. If the mechanics of chairs are altered at some point such that they only face in one particular direction, then the art ought to reflect that. But until that point, it would be unnecessary and confusing.

Not that this has anything to do with graphics for the Steam tileset, or graphics at all for that matter, but the reason you don't want to restrict where you can place tables or chairs is because it constrains the order in which you have to place them. Maybe I want to install a row of chairs first, because they're built and I'm still waiting on the tables. Maybe I want to have tables that don't have chairs next to them.

Dwarf Fortress seems to be moving in a direction where it is going to be much friendlier to new players in terms of teaching them the mechanics as they play. Players can learn the optimal placement of tables and chairs without forcing them to only play "correctly."
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Meph

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #2287 on: October 07, 2020, 02:16:30 pm »

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One way of indicating prohibited placement is very much needed. Like magma kilns should not be placeable unless correctly placed relative to magma pool. Either tables have to be shareable(more reasonable IMO) or chairs should not be allowed to be placed in a way that is not compatible with the table. Same goes with stair digging - it should just work, or clearly indicate what's missing instead of allowing to build a maze that dwarfs will not be able to traverse due to some arcane internal logic of the game.

None of those examples make sense. Kilns could be placed before the magma channel is dug; chairs could be placed before tables, or placed alone to make an office; stairs allow access to new tiles to construct stairs, even if they can't be carved into the rock.

We are all for tooltips and giving players better info through the UI, but restrictions like you mention are not planned at all.
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Cruxador

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #2288 on: October 08, 2020, 01:20:57 pm »

Simplicity: Wear is extremely rare on furniture. Spatter is relatively rare and will be cleaned. Decorations are player controlled. Variations are player controlled. In the end, most of the furniture should look like regular furniture, unless you go out of your way to make it fancy on purpose.

The decorations would take on the color of the material used.

Wider stand for the chair makes sense. :)

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How far are you guys in the artistic part of the process? Are all creatures done?
The creatures are mainly done. All regular creatures are done, I think there are only 30 ish animal men missing or so. The giant animals mostly use an enlarged version of the base animal sprite, so they don't look super pretty; and the zombies are currently a recolor instead of a unique sprite. Procedurally generated creatures aren't done yet, though I did make one as a test, the Nightcreatures. FBs are more complicated, and I'm part way through the werecreatures. Those two are tricky because they have creature types in them that otherwise don't exist in the game, like snakefly, lacewing, antlion larva... there are 211 base bodies for FBs, most of which are unique to FBs. ^^

This is how the creature sheets look atm: Adult, child, Adult zombie, Child zombie, war trained, hunting trained, female adult/child/zombies, adult/child corpse. The zombies are more or less placeholders, I'd love to replace them with actual zombified versions. The corpses are desaturated, turned 90° and have a blood-spatter effect... in theory we could do unique corpse sprites too (look at the top-right at the llama corpses) but that would be a lot more work. A stretch goal for sure. ;)


We will go over the sprites before release and fix anything that stands out a lot. For example I prefer to stick close to relative size (smaller cat for example), and there are some stylistic differences here and there. For example I did all the vermin, which include some fish, and I made them side-view; Mike did the creature aquatic file and drew them seen at an angle. Now we have two different looking styles for fish. ^^ 

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Are you doing Some work here and there, or are you generally focusing on one category at a time eg. furniture?
Mike focusses on one thing at a time and perfects it, I prefer to jump around, having a lot of discussions with Tarn about how to code certain parts, how the mod support would work best, test v.1, make a v.2, while waiting for it do something else... ;)
Looks like sprites we already knew but more efficient, aside from the headless llamas and spread-winged chickens. Generally solid, but various things I've noticed:

• I think the zombies would be better a bit less saturated. The overall effect is nice but right now it's headed too much in the "cartoony" direction; people like their grim to be dark.
• Child versions of turkey and peacock should be based on the female adult sprites regardless of sex, they don't grow the display feathers until they're older. Actually, the female ones are also not correct but I'm assuming these sprites are just made by resize and maybe slight clean up, making completely new child sprites for every bird would be good but a lot of additional work.
    ○ Also the colors of the male peacock around the wing are still wrong.
• Is the blood spatter effect on the corpse necessary? One would think that they often produce a blood spatter anyway, and when they die nonviolently somehow, that's also noteworthy information.
    ○ I kind of wonder if some of them might look better all the way upside down... Might be better to stick to a single convention though.

I always thought of rings as dangling, rather than these....mug holders? Makes sense I guess...

(Looking at the table specifically. Cabinet seems OK).
I parse them as hanging vertical, but it's hard to do perspective at this scale.

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One way of indicating prohibited placement is very much needed. Like magma kilns should not be placeable unless correctly placed relative to magma pool. Either tables have to be shareable(more reasonable IMO) or chairs should not be allowed to be placed in a way that is not compatible with the table. Same goes with stair digging - it should just work, or clearly indicate what's missing instead of allowing to build a maze that dwarfs will not be able to traverse due to some arcane internal logic of the game.

None of those examples make sense. Kilns could be placed before the magma channel is dug; chairs could be placed before tables, or placed alone to make an office; stairs allow access to new tiles to construct stairs, even if they can't be carved into the rock.

We are all for tooltips and giving players better info through the UI, but restrictions like you mention are not planned at all.
The "best" place to put the magma channel is under an impassible tile though, to prevent dwarves from falling in, so it should be made before. That's something worthy of mention tooltip. Maybe a basic explanation of what it is/does and then a paragraph break and then "TIP: If you place the channel under the _____ which is impassible, the dwarves can't fall in". Doing that (with "TIP" in a different color, especially) would be very consistent with existing conventions and therefore clear to incoming players.

As for the stairs, there should DEFINITELY be a warning that clarifies that down stairs require a corresponding up stair or up/down stair on the z-level below. Maybe even an option, on by default, to automatically channel an up-stair below. Since you can channel it into an up/down later if you want anyway, I can't think of a case where you want the one without the other, so I reckon the only people who wouldn't want this would be capable of finding the option and turning it off, and it would remove a significant potential stumbling block for new players. But barring that, a warning that stands out in the tooltip would help.

Come to think of it, I don't know what kind of markup Toady is doing with the new text implementation. This might be beyond the scope of graphics and this is kind of a tangent anyway, but it would be cool if as much text was accessible/editable as possible, both for modding in the usual sense and for translation purposes. Even if doing it to hardcoded text might be outside the focus of the Steam release, I would hope that at least the "accessibility arc" stuff (tooltips and tutorial) would be done in a way accessible to translators.
« Last Edit: October 08, 2020, 01:29:21 pm by Cruxador »
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Pillbo

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #2289 on: October 08, 2020, 02:33:17 pm »

I for one will keep my fingers crossed that the artists find a lot of free time to implement furniture/workshop directionality.

Steam update shows dwarves:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Can we see a beautiful bearded baby?
« Last Edit: October 08, 2020, 02:35:26 pm by Pillbo »
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Rose

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #2290 on: October 08, 2020, 03:48:08 pm »

Can we see a beautiful bearded baby?

You have to mod the game for that.
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #2291 on: October 08, 2020, 05:15:22 pm »

Can we see a beautiful bearded baby?

You have to mod the game for that.
No, all male dwarven babies have beards. Unless they change it for Steam.
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Pillbo

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #2292 on: October 08, 2020, 05:26:15 pm »

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They are well known for their stout physique and prominent beards (on the males), which begin to grow from birth;
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Dwarf

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At birth, a male baby dwarf has a beard of length zero. After that, they gain 1 length every day until they have 1000 length.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Beard

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Bring on the bearded babies!
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Rekov

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #2293 on: October 08, 2020, 08:53:43 pm »

Would it be possible to have a graphics option for whether clothing color reflects profession as opposed to the actual fabric/dye color? It wouldn't require any additional art, right? Just a change in which color is referenced in terms of the tint.
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clinodev

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #2294 on: October 08, 2020, 09:38:18 pm »

Would it be possible to have a graphics option for whether clothing color reflects profession as opposed to the actual fabric/dye color? It wouldn't require any additional art, right? Just a change in which color is referenced in terms of the tint.

That's how I'm reading today's Steam announcement, the best of all worlds, imho:

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This is in the basic profession=clothing display mode. You can still see the actual clothing the dwarves are wearing, but it is recolored based on their job, so you can easily spot them. This one has gloves and a dress; each dwarven civilization generated by the game chooses different preferred clothing types as well as hair styles (on top of a ton of other information.) Typically, they'll have a variety of options, and you order them up to be made in the workshops once you have a leather, silk, wool, or plant-based fabric industry going.

This stoneworker for instance, has stuck with the same basic fashion plan clothing-wise, in stoneworker-white, but has shaved her head.

There are of course other ways to display dwarves, and other preferences that can vary even with the same player based on what they are doing. At the bare minimum, you'll also be able to see the items in their actual colors. This makes the fort look more drab, especially before you start up your dye industry or trade, but sometimes you don't want to see the profession colors when looking at your dwarves dance in the tavern. Also generally expect a lot of this to be updated as we see other screenshots in the future. These are the most important graphics in the game, in some ways, and they'll receive a lot of iterations.

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