Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Meph]

Now that I think of it, strange moods should probably show a workbench or something.

I don't that would fit, because some moods are textiles/leather (soft), others rock/gems (hard), others make metal objects (smithing), and the workbenches and tools required would look different.

[Bumber]

Now that I think of it, strange moods should probably show a workbench or something.

I don't that would fit, because some moods are textiles/leather (soft), others rock/gems (hard), others make metal objects (smithing), and the workbenches and tools required would look different.

It's symbolic. Almost anyone should be able to recognize that a woodworking bench with a vice on it relates to crafting stuff.

A saw and chisel/hammer would also work. Those could have a colored outline/glow instead of an exclamation point.

[Meph]

Personally, I'd be more of fan of something like this:



or this:



Aka an "I have an idea and need to start thinking/working real hard"-icon. Obvious issue is that lightbulbs didn't exist back then, but it's a UI element for the player, not an ingame item.

[PatrikLundell]

Replace the light bulb with a candle.

[Criperum]

Or with several stars.

[Cruxador]

I like the gearhead idea, actually. In addition to gears being a thing in DF, it conveys the fact that the dwarf's mind has been overtaken by mechanistic concerns, beyond just the idea that he's thinking. That's consistent with putting normal life on hold.

[Superdorf]

+1 to the gear thing. It needs a beard, tho!

...Actually, a gear-head might be a bit finicky to do with so few pixels to work with. What if you just did a gear or two by themselves?

[voliol]

The problem I see with the gear/gearhead idea is that while strange moods currently are more or less sudden ideas, they will be getting more (explicit) reasons behind them in coming versions. The exclamation marks might be better for those future expansions, as fairies or possessions by non-dwarven minds may not be too interested in gears.

[Manveru Taurënér]

One could perhaps use a lightning bolt to represent it being a flash of genius kind of thing, and have it be yellow for a regular mood, blue for supernatural inspiration and red for fell or whatever would fit the  moods we have/eventually end up with.

[Bumber]

Brainstorm. Brain with lightning bolts.

[Pillbo]

I was curious about the mix-and-match type of character sprites.. would it be realistic for mods to use that system for things like transmutation spells? 

Like if some wizard cursed dwarves with slug bodies, or animal heads, or wings could those parts from the animal men be swapped in/added to?

[Meph]

There is an internal discussion about showing things like individual limbs (for injuries) and how many different sprite-parts we can use (number of layers that are baked into one sprite) without making it too resource intensive. For now the focus is on improving the vanilla system, once that is done I can pester Toady a bit about mod support.

That being said, forgotten beasts should use correct sprites for their limbs, wings, etc, so I think at the very least, the basis should be there. Even if mifki has to TWBT-magic it together in the end for us modders. ^^

[Fleeting Frames]

Regarding performance tests, the old "compare surface and underground fps" might be worth adding as a comparative test case. Though in this case the 'surface' might be dining room.

Edit, since this is kind of old:

Not sure what can usefully be done, extra. I know I'd not be reaching for the mouse to right-click and start the necessary cascade of options and sub-options and sub-sub-options, etc, until they rejiggle the hotkey menu nesting too (which will probably annoy me for a while, but may be done so each input method matches the structure of the other) as also mentioned - all this as being under Zach's purview, I think it was said, to investigate.

I mean, Meph might be able to clarify better detail, but AIUI it's still way up in the air, so it'll probably change from what's imagined at the moment (even by someone closer to the project) anyway.

Kind of late here, but maybe you'd be interested in taking a look at how photoshop does menus - option chosen depends on mouse movement direction after choosing.

Another option is to have user-sensitive menus with most (recently) used options quickest to choose, rather than in the order they were developed; similar to how one can encode most used letters to use least number of bytes.

[Real_bang]

There is an internal discussion about showing things like individual limbs (for injuries) and how many different sprite-parts we can use (number of layers that are baked into one sprite) without making it too resource intensive. For now the focus is on improving the vanilla system, once that is done I can pester Toady a bit about mod support.

That being said, forgotten beasts should use correct sprites for their limbs, wings, etc, so I think at the very least, the basis should be there. Even if mifki has to TWBT-magic it together in the end for us modders. ^^

Would individual limp system be hard on old CPU? also maybe toady would add multi core support for the steam version? heheehe. Yeah i know

[Pillbo]

That being said, forgotten beasts should use correct sprites for their limbs, wings, etc, so I think at the very least, the basis should be there. Even if mifki has to TWBT-magic it together in the end for us modders. ^^

Very cool, the possibility of modded races being able to mix and match body part sprites to retain the game's look is really exciting.