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[Cruxador]

It looks better, but couldn't that be confusing when building minecart tracks?

[Death Dragon]

A suggestion for grass and other natural ramps:



Currently what you have is on the right.

Left looks a little more natural.

I think you're probably right. Quick mockup:


What would it look like when you have ramps on the top left 3 tiles of the plus sign situation though?

[Rose]

The inside corner ramp would have the flat part on top.

[Death Dragon]

Kinda like this?

It does sorta make the inside corner tile look higher up than it actually is though.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Kinda like this?

It does sorta make the inside corner tile look higher up than it actually is though.

All we really know about what "actually is" there is that within that 2x2x3 meter area there's a grassy slope facing roughly northwest, pretty much (with countless different all technically correct ways to display it with a tileset). The minecart tracks is probably the biggest issue with doing it like that, even if it looks much better imo, unless there's a good fix for it somehow. The whole straight vs diagonal walls/ramps feels like a pretty big can of worms to open up though, can't remember if anything had been said about that here previously.

[LordBalkan]

Phew, good to know that we are all back in topic

No, it won't. It's not a thing in the base game and it makes sense that it isn't.

Well, is never too late for dwarfs to learn how to do new tricks hehhehehehe

That's just Meph being Meph )
Most of those sprites are not currently planned for use in the base game anyway.

Better be safe then sorry.... what?

Business is slow on the project forum for now, so I wanted to check your opinions on this solution:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

WARNING, as the text says, this is not something currently being considered for DF by Tarn, it's a solution I'd like to propose.

WOW!! Thats awesome!! Agreed with Superdorf about the mist, but also with Cruxador about it's density.
Even knowing that just a mockup and probly not going to final version.

Only thing is... do you intend to put back the rounded edges from your last mockup? I really liked those.

I know, right!!
Sad story is, like Cruxador said, Mike himself said that the round corners would not work well with multi-level view.

Good thing is, now that I saw how that sharp corners look in multi-level they make more sense for me.

[Death Dragon]

WELL, I'm afraid smooth ramp corners would make multilevel view a LOT more difficult for Toady. So I'm skipping that one for now, sorry.

Why do smooth corner sprites make multilevel view more difficult?

[Mike Mayday]

Because the smoothing needs to be extended to neighbouring tiles, which means extra coding and lots of extra considerations. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm trying to keep things minimal for the first release.

[that_eye]

Hey Meph - I'm super into the Egyptian themed tileset you posted a while, and I'm wondering if such things as greco-roman, egyptian, nordic, celtic, and so on would be available in the new tiles? Or if there's any plan to have such themes selectable by default?

[Starver]

(PPE: I see I didn't check for new page of thread when I started to reply!)

That is correct! Thanks Meph and Japa

I don't like that as much. What you have with that is the inner point of the ramp being the only 'steppable' access up the ramp from the bottom. If you tried to come straight south in the midde of the tile (also straight east) you'd come up a cambered slope and have half a Zed's step to climb up unless you moved somewhat to the corner then back to the midtile position upon crowning the slope.

The topology is always going to be weird, because the first version of this that (to my eye) meets flat at top of the slope on both edges asks for the centre 'fold' in the ramp (see Lego brick example, with the diagonal slope of the first like the diagonal slope of this brick, but with the orthagonal slopes being built up to straight-sided abuttments) and presents a full triangular cliff to the transition onto the ramp from the lower level.

What you maybe ideally (or better than either of these?) want is to have the half-way points flush with the surfaces they should be flush with by making it a compound slope that doesn't go out of joint with either end.

I was thinking the following. The strings of numbers between the *s are the orthogonally adjacent tiles (which match at all the midpoints), the *s themselves you can assume as the diagonal corners meeting the tile whose heightmap we are actually framing. The numbers are of course 0 at the lower level and 8 at the higher.

edited to change the edges. The Ls are the (flat) Lower level tile neighbour edges, assume @0, the Us are thr similarly flat and level but elevated Upper neighbouring tile edges, which you can assume are @8. Hopefully it looks slightly better.

Code: [Select]

*LLLLLLLLL*
L000001234U
L000012345U
L000123456U
L001234567U
L012345678U
L123456788U
L234567888U
L345678888U
L456788888U
*UUUUUUUUU*
That means theoretically that if arriving at the slope from around the corner-cliff it provides access to (or descending to go round there) it might be thought more necessary to dodge sufficiently to the west/north side centre to get onto the slope, but you basically do anyway (insofar as the granularity of moving entity positions is, anyway, on DF as it always has been).

Does this make sense, without actually digging up an art program of my own (which would take time to make available for viewingmon forum, sorry!) that might still not remain clear?

But it's just my thoughts, I'm sure the artists of this thread don't need my guidance in this. (And, while I'm having On-Topic thoughts, I can now properly apologise to the self-same artists for my somewhat off-topic jest the other day. I've dialled it back to Strictly Relevent, since then, among other things.)

[Vince]

Business is slow on the project forum for now, so I wanted to check your opinions on this solution:



WARNING, as the text says, this is not something currently being considered for DF by Tarn, it's a solution I'd like to propose.

The main problem I have with this is that it still looks like walls to me.
Yes, the perspective wouldn't make sense, but my brain still screams "walls".

That is correct! Thanks Meph and Japa

That looks a LOT better.
I wonder how it would look combined with Mephs tiles.
Those were the best in my opinion, since they look more natural and provide a better stylistic contrast to the angular fort.

<snip>

I see what you mean and thought a bit about it.
What about this, that would add a slight curve:

[Sanctume]

Congrats Mike and Meph!  Geez, page 14 and I just saw this today.  PTW.

[Meph]

I don't think this is going anywhere.

What exactly was negative about the directionless top-lit ramps? Did anyone misunderstand those; did anyone mis-read them as walls or confuse up with down?

We'll add the nice cyan/blue fog shading, and that's it. I even made a version that simply uses a shading overlay, without any new sprites. Mike I know you are putting a lot of work into the ramps, but I don't think they'll ever work with the directional shading, next to top-down terrain.

[Mike Mayday]

I think the discussion we've been having is rather separate from the method of showing ramps. And if I understand correctly, (almost) no one is confusing up and down with my method either after the revisions.

Besides, this particular method of generating ramp graphics is so automatic that I can very well see implementing both as an option.

[Vince]

I like Mephs variant best.
I still mistake yours with walls, Mike, it's those hard lines.

Of course, if both get implemented, everyone would be happy.
Also this will be modable as well, right?