Print

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

[Mike Mayday]

Guys, I've been reading the discussion here and I wanted to give a word of assurance.
I appreciate the unique beauty and elegance that Tarn managed to achieve by playing with just symbols and colours. I appreciate the insane amount of detail, variety and changes in the game. If I didn't find it artistically inspiring, I wouldn't have agreed to join the project. I'm going to do my best to translate all that into graphics.

The reason why I was mostly working on creatures for now is that there is very little interdependence between them. You just make a sprite in the right style and that's it.
Civilised multi-layer folks, ramps, walls, floors and trees however are a huge effort to produce a coherent, clear and good looking overall product - and that effort is so much harder when you don't have a version of the game to test on, which has been the situation until now.
Another thing is that (for me at least) it is important to release an MVP (minimum valuable product) as soon as possible to receive feedback from actual players, rather than from viewing screenshots. This means we're making a conscious decision to limit the amount of "flair" for the initial release. Like in the example therahedwig posted, it's silly to base a lot of work on a concept that might itself be completely rejected after user review.

So yes, coloured clothing, seasonal changes, multiple grasses - I really hope we'll be able to do all that, but for now we've gotta focus on the basics!

[mko]

So yes, coloured clothing, seasonal changes, multiple grasses - I really hope we'll be able to do all that, but for now we've gotta focus on the basics!

Also, projects tend to be more complicated than expected. So it is a good idea to have minimum viable product before spending time on polishing some specific 1%.

[jecowa]

I don't really know how armor works in this game. Does the game already keep track of which race made some armor? If you put on armor made by another civ, will you look like that other civ when you put it on, or will it look like your own civ's armor?

[bloop_bleep]

I don't really know how armor works in this game. Does the game already keep track of which race made some armor? If you put on armor made by another civ, will you look like that other civ when you put it on, or will it look like your own civ's armor?

I'm pretty sure that, yes, the race that constructed each item is recorded. In adventure mode, it's already recognized in-game that armor you can wear is different depending on which race made it, since armor can be too large or too small for you, so it's probably at least possible to implement different-looking armor for different races.

[Vordak]

As part of the fight against clones - is it possible to make each type of armor have several alternative variations when displayed on a character?

[Manveru Taurënér]

While the game doesn't have much in the way of cultural differences between races now, it's a fairly safe bet as something that'll be expanded on somewhere down the line I'd say, and regardless, that looks awesome indeed! By civ, do you mean that say an elf in a dwarf civ would be wearing dwarven civ armor or based on civilization type the race is from?

[Mike Mayday]

As part of the fight against clones - is it possible to make each type of armor have several alternative variations when displayed on a character?

I'm certainly hoping we can do that as well. Not possible yet, but Tarn has only just started the actual coding (and it's going fantastic).

[Mike Mayday]

So yes, coloured clothing, seasonal changes, multiple grasses - I really hope we'll be able to do all that, but for now we've gotta focus on the basics!

Also, projects tend to be more complicated than expected. So it is a good idea to have minimum viable product before spending time on polishing some specific 1%.

To illustrate this point, we're currently pondering accurate depiction of gouged out eyes...

[voliol]

I don't really know how armor works in this game. Does the game already keep track of which race made some armor? If you put on armor made by another civ, will you look like that other civ when you put it on, or will it look like your own civ's armor?

I'm pretty sure that, yes, the race that constructed each item is recorded. In adventure mode, it's already recognized in-game that armor you can wear is different depending on which race made it, since armor can be too large or too small for you, so it's probably at least possible to implement different-looking armor for different races.

Hmm, no, I don’t think so. The armors are modelled after a certain race for size-reasons, and in fortress mode it keeps track of the items made in your fort, but afaik there shouldn’t be any data about what civ the armor was made in except that. This means e.g. dwarves serving a goblin (EVIL) civ will have to use the same iron armor graphics as your own dwarves, unless variables for tracking that is added.

If armor is to be specified for both race and civilization (and they have to be specified for race not to look strange) that means ~4 times as much armor graphics will need to be made. No idea how big the armor burden is though, perhaps that wouldn’t make much difference...

[Mike Mayday]

If they are only posted on Steam Workshop, are edits of the official Mephday/premium graphics okay? If they are, people could alter the graphics to their own preferences and conflicting standpoints like this would be largely dealt with.

Do you mean like a graphics mod that only adds more vibrant blooms but keeps all other graphics the same for example?

Yeah. I imagine it’s an legal issue which is why the question is directed at Kitfox and not Meph/Mayday.

Definitely. From my perspective it's an icky subject. I personally wouldn't mind because hey, I'm getting paid for it - but Kitfox / Tarn are the ones paying for it and it IS a form of unauthorised distribution in some way at least.

[jecowa]

The good thing about making each item being its own png is that people can share small modded graphics without having to redistribute an entire sprite sheet.

[PatrikLundell]

Well, the number of armor variants would actually explode worse than 5 times if it was per race and civ, as the number of entity templates is 6 (founded by 3 sort of civilized races, demon overlords, kobolds, and animal people), while each civ is of one of these templates. Also, race provides an issue as well, as you've got all the non civ founding races as well, i.e. animal people (a huge bunch), oddballs like Plump Helment Men and Gorlak, and subservient races such as Ogre, Troll, Blizzard Men, and Gremlin (who are too small to actually wear armor and move at a reasonable speed), plus intelligent semi megabeasts such as Giants and their stupid Ettin cousins.

Thus, even if you "only" make armor per entity template, you'll still need small and large variants.

I don't know if you can pull it off, but I'd want an army to have a similar look, but at the same time allow me to distinguish between a dwarf and a goblin. One possible approach would be add some very simple insignia on the largest items, or tint the armor items (I guess it gets tricky given that I assume you'll also want to indicate the material). Based on the mockup, only the fully armored creatures would be hard to tell apart, as the medium ones show enough of the critter to make it apparent.
I'd definitely want to be able to tell the difference between my dorfs and enemy dorfs.

And, to complicate it even worse, imagine an adventurer encountering a battle between two armies of dorfs...

[Meph]

My idea was that it's purely ornamental. A visual cue, not actually different items. Otherwise we suddenly have 5 times the item entries in the stockpiles.

[bloop_bleep]

I don't really know how armor works in this game. Does the game already keep track of which race made some armor? If you put on armor made by another civ, will you look like that other civ when you put it on, or will it look like your own civ's armor?

I'm pretty sure that, yes, the race that constructed each item is recorded. In adventure mode, it's already recognized in-game that armor you can wear is different depending on which race made it, since armor can be too large or too small for you, so it's probably at least possible to implement different-looking armor for different races.

Hmm, no, I don’t think so. The armors are modelled after a certain race for size-reasons, and in fortress mode it keeps track of the items made in your fort, but afaik there shouldn’t be any data about what civ the armor was made in except that. This means e.g. dwarves serving a goblin (EVIL) civ will have to use the same iron armor graphics as your own dwarves, unless variables for tracking that is added.

If armor is to be specified for both race and civilization (and they have to be specified for race not to look strange) that means ~4 times as much armor graphics will need to be made. No idea how big the armor burden is though, perhaps that wouldn’t make much difference...

Actually, I checked df-structures and there is a maker_race member variable of item_crafted, which is a superclass of item_armorst and thus should be applicable.

And yes, I mean purely ornamental too.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Anyone who's played adventurer will know that armour sized for xyz species is a thing throughout the world.

However, an elf and a dwarf are the same "size" (in DF's very abstract sense of the word). If an elf takes off a beautiful suit of elven armour and a dwarf puts it on (which it can) it will transform into typical lumpy dorf protection.

And that goes for animal people too, no matter how weird their heads, if it's the same "size" as a human, their helmets are interchangeable.