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[Shonai_Dweller]

and how many animals/monster parts must be made when we get "intersexual breeding"

You mean inter-species breeding? Like half-elves?
Lots!

Although we're likely to have procedurally generated races before then (including all the main playable ones) so some kind of sane solution for all the combinations and how they wear their clothes may have been worked out by then.

[Meph]

Just wanted to let you guys know that work continues behind the scenes.

[voliol]

Nice to hear. Could we get a sneak-peak of whatever creatures/map features have been drawn during this pause in updates?

[Meph]

Not at the moment, sorry. Otherwise I would have already posted some.

[Meph]

What the heck, this seems to be harmless enough. Plant_standard.txt. Criticism always welcome.

[Rose]

What are the different stages?

[Meph]

Seeds, wild plant (terrain), picked (object).

Prickle berries, straw berries, fisher berries and sun berries also have a separation of plant (full of berries) and plant (devoid of berries).

To be honest, making super-tiny individual seeds for plants is fun, but in the long run (112 plants/seeds) might be confusing for players. I do like the option to give them unique sprites, but maybe a single seed-sprite would suffice, while at the same time would be easier to recognize for the player. On the other hand, seeds are mostly in bags or planted in farmplots anyway. What do you think?

I also proposed the idea of growth-stages for farm plots, like this:


It hasn't really been discussed yet. It does raise the plant sprite count up by about 560 extra sprites though. (I just dislike how farm plots change from "empty" to "fully grown plant" in 1 ingame tick, giving players no warning that their food might be ready)

[Manveru Taurënér]

Seeds, wild plant (terrain), picked (object).

Prickle berries, straw berries, fisher berries and sun berries also have a separation of plant (full of berries) and plant (devoid of berries).

To be honest, making super-tiny individual seeds for plants is fun, but in the long run (112 plants/seeds) might be confusing for players. I do like the option to give them unique sprites, but maybe a single seed-sprite would suffice, while at the same time would be easier to recognize for the player. On the other hand, seeds are mostly in bags or planted in farmplots anyway. What do you think?

I also proposed the idea of growth-stages for farm plots, like this:


It hasn't really been discussed yet. It does raise the plant sprite count up by about 560 extra sprites though. (I just dislike how farm plots change from "empty" to "fully grown plant" in 1 ingame tick, giving players no warning that their food might be ready)

Looks good! I'd say for seeds having most of them represented by a few generic tiles (like say small/medium/large seeds, mushroom spores as well as whatever other visually distinct subgroups there are) would be well enough. It's not like one would be able to distinguish most kind of seeds that easily anyhow, and being able to instantly tell that something is seeds, rather than some other type of picked plant is probably more useful in most cases than being able to tell at a glance what seed it is. Special cases that can always be given their own tiles where it feels appropriate. Also as you say they will be in bags mostly anyhow ^^

Growth-stages sounds like a good idea too, and you could always settle for 3 stages if it ends up too much (and I assume some would be easier than others, ie swapping the color on the berries to show if they're ripe or not?), curious how it would look in a field though? The empty soil is already looking a bit jarring when it comes to stuff like wheat (I know you answered it but felt like seconding this guys post, if it's in any way doable to some extent that'd be just amazing...)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Could adjacent wheat/crop tiles in general 'merge' for a more natural look? Here's what I have in mind:

1. Horizontal merging only


2. Vertical merging (an additional row of wheat added in between fully grown tiles)


It's a really quick photoshop hackjob, but I think it gets the idea across well enough. IMO it makes the field look more like proper, lush farmland, and looks more aesthetically pleasing in general. Would this be possible/hard to implement?
...

[Putnam]

I'm pretty sure sliver barbs are black...

[PatrikLundell]

While growth stages may add eye candy, I don't think it adds much from a game play perspective. It may be useful to be able to see if plants are ripe (when hunting for plants to provide seeds for your farm plots, and, in particular, the one(s) that can't be cultivated, like Valley Herb), but otherwise there isn't anything you can do about it: dorfs will harvest whenever it's the most inconvenient to the fortress anyway.

I agree a limited number of "generic" seeds ought to be enough. They're typically found cluttering the Tavern as a result of dorfs eating there, but otherwise are kept in bags, as mentioned. Unless seeds get some kind of function in themselves (exploding, or whatever, requiring caution or special collection efforts), it's not of much importance.

[FantasticDorf]

Plants aren't even visible until they are ready to harvest or recognised in the T inspection screen other than seeds, i agree to disagree with the creeping in of a feature that won't be represented in the vanilla game in any capacity that simply makes more work for yourselves. How would this convert to steam-versions ascii alternative with no mechanical detail to base it on?

[Cruxador]

Something looks very off about those strawberry plants. I think because you've made them tight little individual plants (they're a groundcover in real life) and you made the berries huge like tomatoes.

They're are others that look weird and botanically implausible, but they don't exist in real life so I don't know how they're actually supposed to work.

Regarding seeds, I somewhat disagree with Manveru. In real life, just about anyone who gardens can tell most seeds apart readily at least to the level of genus, and someone who has specific experience can tell apart similar seeds of closely related species such as mustard and cabbage. Furthermore, there's really no reason that they couldn't all be depicted to look like seeds while still looking distinct. But taking into account what you've come up with to represent seeds, and the fact that time spent  here isn't spent elsewhere, I'm gonna say don't bother. Just make a few different seed sprites for broad groups of seeds and make special ones for any with especially unique seeds.

Regarding intermediate growth sprites, I don't think you need to commit to the same number for everything. For commonly grown plants, your five stages make sense. For all other plants, even one "growing" stage would be a very good amount.
Also regarding the example, uh, that's not how wheat grows. It might be a good idea to consult with people who are generally knowledgeable for some of these sprites, such as a farmer or an older person in general. Although perhaps it can be said that that's what this thread is for. In the case of wheat, it stays about the color you have it in the second stage until it reaches its final stage and becomes ready to harvest, turning yellow means the plant has died and it doesn't keep growing after it dies. It also doesn't grow seeds straight out of the ground, first it grows in a purely vegetative form (looking like grass, because that's what it is) and then after reaching its full height (or nearly so) it "flowers" (though grass flowers don't look very floral) and then the flowers grow into seeds. You could probably do the first three as just a grass sprite offset different amounts like what you've done for the ripe sprite. On the plus side, you can use the whole sprite set for similar looking grains like barley and rye, and the first part before the flowering and seeding should be shareable among other more distantly related grains like oats and rice.

Plants aren't even visible until they are ready to harvest or recognised in the T inspection screen other than seeds, i agree to disagree with the creeping in of a feature that won't be represented in the vanilla game in any capacity that simply makes more work for yourselves. How would this convert to steam-versions ascii alternative with no mechanical detail to base it on?

I'm not sure I understand the meaning of your last sentence. Surely the ASCII version would simply have the ability to show this while in actuality retaining current visuals?

[FantasticDorf]

It would mean a new symbol set just for individual plants (or re-application), and the visibility of the plant would betray whether they are ready to harvest without inspecting further detail just through caveat of ascii being devoid of typical graphical detail that the graphical version allows to say "oh that plant needs another five minutes before its growth duration is done".

Steam version and vanilla are meant to be mechanically similar if not identical in given statements, though i know the steam version is fancier. Id wait for Toady to change all the farming mechanics in line with the main game on the development goals before anything like this would take place.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Regarding seeds, I somewhat disagree with Manveru. In real life, just about anyone who gardens can tell most seeds apart readily at least to the level of genus, and someone who has specific experience can tell apart similar seeds of closely related species such as mustard and cabbage. Furthermore, there's really no reason that they couldn't all be depicted to look like seeds while still looking distinct. But taking into account what you've come up with to represent seeds, and the fact that time spent  here isn't spent elsewhere, I'm gonna say don't bother. Just make a few different seed sprites for broad groups of seeds and make special ones for any with especially unique seeds.

Meant more at the scale that's available to work with here, unless one wants to make them even bigger than what's done here (which would probably just make things worse). There's only so many ways one can make dots and squiggles distinct, and with enough of them there'll probably be too many to remember and identify anyhow.

[Meph]

Plants aren't even visible until they are ready to harvest or recognised in the T inspection screen other than seeds, i agree to disagree with the creeping in of a feature that won't be represented in the vanilla game in any capacity that simply makes more work for yourselves. How would this convert to steam-versions ascii alternative with no mechanical detail to base it on?

I got bad news for you then. Most if not all of the graphical enhancements that are planned won't be represented in the vanilla ascii version. Since when is this a negative? I've yet to see someone complain that rilesets have 200 profession sprites for dwarves, while ascii dwarves only have one icon. It would be the same for the plants: graphical version could show growth, while ascii shows an empty field till they pop up.

Seeds should realistically be only the fraction of a pixel. Even for most plant growths, catkins, cones, buds, pods, flowers... All of those are so small that I need to abuse artistic liberty and enlargen them.

Strawberries are larger than life, I needed the pixels to give them their recognizeable shape. Same problem as described above.