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[Fleeting Frames]

Was watching a video on rollers, and learned that in addition to speeding up minecarts to the proper speed, they will also slow them down to the proper speed. I'm having trouble imagining something that would do that.

Not exactly; rollers don't slow down faster carts traveling in same direction, but will slow down ones traveling in opposite direction by 100k per tick (until they reach roller speed), and can give sideways velocity that then immediatelly results in a turn that resets cart speed.

So you need a system that would massively brace the carts (twice as heavily as track stops) going opposite way, be independent sideways and have either certain or no effect opposite way.

On a side note, these corner track rollers seem rather a misnomer tbh; it's more like the roller pushes a cart towards a direction that just happens to hit corner; here's a select watergun thread snip:

Spoiler: "seems like context-sensitive animation would be needed" (click to show/hide)

Powered:

Code: [Select]

.WF       WF       WF
 RR       ╗═       ew
~▼▲W     ~║╚W     ~▼▲W
 RR       ╔╚       nw
 W        W

visible     track   rollers
Fairly tricky, because i optimised it for the fastest single-cart cadence i could conceive. It uses roller-on-corner features to shave off a few steps. Loading water happens just like in the powerless version, on a non-accelerating ramp in a water-filled trench, which is passed from north to south.

The cart then rolls onto the north-pushing roller on the SE track tile. That one turns the cart back north and "around the corner" immediately, at highest speed (50k). I.e. it leaves to the east on the very next turn.

On that tile, the west-pointing roller once again tries to turn it around instantly and, again, pushes it around the corner, this time to the north. That roller, too, works at maximum speed.

The cart now rolls onto an impulse ramp. That's required to get it to shot-worthy speed, and it must get three steps worth of acceleration there. One step will get neutralised by the checkpoint effect upon leaving the ramp and >55k speed are required for a shot. The chain of two opposing highest-speed rollers moving the cart onto the ramp means that it enters at a sub-coordinate where it has enough space to get the full three turns of acceleration.

The cart rolls off the ramp and onto a medium-speed west-pointing roller. On the next step, it will crash into the fortification and releases its load, in a northwesterly direction (~58k northward speed, 30k westward speed). It technically stops at the fortification but is instantly re-accelerated to the roller's speed, which now moves it off to the next tile west.

On that tile, there's yet another opposing-mode roller, pushing east to move the cart south via corner redirection. That roller works at "high" speed. That's the highest speed compatible with loading water onto a cart in a one-tile trench loader.

[Maltavius]

I think the left looks better, but the right might be closer to how rough walls usually look. The door on the left is interacting with the walls as if they were smooth walls.

Maybe the door on the left needs a doorpost on the right side and not just on the left side where the hinges are.
That would also make it obvious that there is a door there if it is open.
Just remove the "door" and have the two posts there.

[Uthimienure]

And another direction... how about doors that look like real doors (viewed from mostly top-down) rather than how they are now, looking as if they're laying flat on the floor.  Could that work?

[Schmaven]

And another direction... how about doors that look like real doors (viewed from mostly top-down) rather than how they are now, looking as if they're laying flat on the floor.  Could that work?

Like an architectural blueprint door?  It could be shown swung open or closed easily enough.  It would have to be shown as double doors to be in the middle of the tile.  And a single door would have to look like it's flush with 1 wall but with a little cove on the other side.  That might make it look pathable.  I like to imagine that the stone doors slide down into the floor as they open, like in Indiana Jones.

[Uthimienure]

And another direction... how about doors that look like real doors (viewed from mostly top-down) rather than how they are now, looking as if they're laying flat on the floor.  Could that work?

Like an architectural blueprint door?  It could be shown swung open or closed easily enough.  It would have to be shown as double doors to be in the middle of the tile.  And a single door would have to look like it's flush with 1 wall but with a little cove on the other side.  That might make it look pathable.  I like to imagine that the stone doors slide down into the floor as they open, like in Indiana Jones.

Yes, basically like an architectural blueprint door. Of course then we would need variations for which orientation that would need to be chosen when built. This is why I asked if it could work. This is not a big deal to have because we're all used to what we have now and it works. And many other cans of worms might be opened by this, so maybe it should be ignored 

[jecowa]

I was looking through the posts for examples of a Steamtileset door with north-south walls, but could mostly only find ramp posts. I think I mostly build doors on east-west walls when I use doors, so I never really notice. I used to also always build dining tables east-to-west so it would look like a continuous table, but that was before I realized that only 1 dwarf can use each table.

Here's an example of doors on north-south walls from another tileset:

Spoiler: screenshot (click to show/hide)

Does this look like they're flat to you too?

Yeah, I think our styles and natural choices differ quite a lot, but we're trying to put the differences to good use. Meph is always there to point out when I've gone too far (or not far enough).

Anyway, dragon, cyclops (repurposed from the small colossus), plus small colossus fixes:


Dragons may grow to be even larger than colossi so I was tempted to make the sprite larger as well, but wide sprites will look reaaally dumb when next to walls:



This is what the dragon looks like in a 1-tile corridor. Do you think I should squash it to have both left legs visible in the tile?

It might be fun to have 2 forms for large creatures. 1 big sprite and 1 cramped-into-1-tile sprite. Maybe a dragon would lower her head and wrap her tail around herself. And maybe the bronze colossus would need to kneel down when there's a roof a tile above him.

[MoltenIdol]

I think you should have walls show their border texture, also when next to a door, as in the image on the right. It looks way better, and is more consitent. The other makes no sense at all.

[Starver]

For top-down doors (or, indeed, ¾-angle-onto ones, etc) note that as we as E-W doors and N-S ones, you should further differentiate (N|S)-(E|W) corner doors, which may or may not cover T-corners (any door that opens in/out/across between areas defined by any three cardinal directions of abutted wall) and X-way dooring (the nexus/transit tile of all four corners, with walls coming in N,S,E&W).

Not sure what any of that would look like. Could be a turnstyle-type thing to be omnidirectionally usable/blockable, but I'm not sure that fits expectations as well as practicality.

[Schmaven]

Those other door configurations make it seem like if doors were to change to be directional, that many different door sprites would be needed, not just 2 standard up/down, left/right versions.  The more I think about it, the more I think just having 1 generic door image to symbolize that this tile functions as a door, is probably the most clear option in terms of relaying gameplay mechanics to the player.

Edit: Having the walls change in some way when adjacent a constructed door would help differentiate between actual doors and stray unbuilt doors, or doors in a stockpile.  I think this differentiation is shown to some degree in the above picture with the 2 doors.

[Starver]

The thing with the doors in Jecowa's spoiler is that they have integrated door-jams (as well as door lintel, as a flowing arch).

Jams might satisfy the termination of the wall (E&W, lintel for the N, not sure what could be done for S except with a sill/threshold bar at the bottom as well) that is considered lacking in the image last posted by Pillbo (with its undrawn centre-of-wall left black).

And the jams/etc would remain bounding the wall-ends equally at all times if there's a version of the graphic with the door element currently open, which is when I'm sure an undrawn centre is most incongruous.

[Schmaven]

Sort of on the subject of showing when a door is open or closed:  Do you have plans to show a difference in 1 tile wide raising draw bridges for the raised and lowered states?  If a lever wasn't named well enough, I don't know of any other way to tell them apart without using DFHack right now.

[Uthimienure]

Sort of on the subject of showing when a door is open or closed:  Do you have plans to show a difference in 1 tile wide raising draw bridges for the raised and lowered states? ...snip...

+1

Oh, and also floodgates when open should show something to mark their position.

[bloop_bleep]

Why not just superimpose the dragon upon the wall tiles? Why would the creature layer be above the terrain layer on the tile it's on, but below the terrain layers on adjacent tiles? I think it would be best to just keep the dragon tile on top of all terrain.

[vettlingr]

Why not just superimpose the dragon upon the wall tiles? Why would the creature layer be above the terrain layer on the tile it's on, but below the terrain layers on adjacent tiles? I think it would be best to just keep the dragon tile on top of all terrain.

My opinion is that it is better to try to extend the creature sprite in the y direction as much as possible, then maybe add a little bit of overlap to the extra x dimensions. Use the tools you have to the best extent. Use the serpentine dragon body to Convey size in y rather than let it occupy a wide X dimension. IT works better with effects such as fire breath and fireball.
When restrained to a single square, rather than going for a uniform perspective, you can conpartmentalize the perspective to isomeric at the base, legs etc. with a side perspective extending upwards to convey size, while small animals are fully isometric. I donðt know if that makes sense, but I think it is way better than having small animals have a realistic size compared to a larger one - rather let the perspective components convey the size difference.

TLDR: Head centered in X, extending to y, while tail can slither around in x.

[Fleeting Frames]

Sort of on the subject of showing when a door is open or closed:  Do you have plans to show a difference in 1 tile wide raising draw bridges for the raised and lowered states?  If a lever wasn't named well enough, I don't know of any other way to tell them apart without using DFHack right now.

JSYK, I use building track stops on tile - building present is lowered, blocked is raised.

However, good idea.