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[Cruxador]

A concern regarding the critters in various states of decay (I really like the images themselves, though):

What was shown earlier made it very clear which critters were undead (having the undead color scheme), and which ones were alive. The mockup/tentative "more realistic" (whatever a realistic zombie is) images makes it hard to see the difference at a glance, unless there's something else that tells you "look here! an undead!" or at least "an enemy".

I mean, this is also applies to living enemies. I think it might be ideal to just slap an underlay/highlight to denote allegiance (as in, wild animal, invader, similar to the descriptions listed in the unit list) as an optional display to resolve this. Make it pop up by default when you've got the military menu up. I mean, I know that's beyond graphics but I feel like this is a problem that exists beyond just the undead, and also one that was solved by other games in like the 90s.

[Meph]

Yeah, if people are worried that they can't identify the undead hostile dog, I wonder why they shouldn't also be worried about the life hostile merchant horse or human merchant guard, vs. their friendly horses or friendly human taven visitors. They look identical.

Maybe a bit of both? Undead sprite + a purple color hint:

[Zesty]

Everything about those decaying and skeleton sprites are cool as all get out.

Purple outline isn't bad at all. I'd be pretty thrilled with it.

[Wokko]

Imo, purple outline make them stand out too much.
Maybe just white eyes with black glow like on placeholder zombies would be enough to make undead distinguishable. Making large outline would make the sprites too busy.

[Starver]

"Discussion and Suggestions" remit aside, and I find myself liking all this evolving art with or without each entirely likable microrefinement, but am worried that too much back-and-forth-and-fine-tuning is going to take time away from the gazilion other little jobs that are probably piling on.

I speak as one who gets stuck into the "making 'perfect' the enemy of the 'good-enough'" cycle often enough. You ought to have seen the first three versions of this very paragraph!

[ror6ax]

This thread, back-and-forth and all, has become a very nice source of stability and positive emotions - can't say that about a lot of other areas in the year 2020

[PatrikLundell]

Yes, it's a conflict between "realism" and "legibility", and I'm in the "legibility first" camp, but would surely like if it could be combined with "realism". An aura is one way, a reasonably clear marker is another.

(Quotes for the terms as there are no real zombies to compare with, and legibility isn't really the correct term as we're not dealing with text).

The current version of loyalty cascades is sending very bad vibes: two completely unmarked teams fighting to the death with absolutely no in game means to see who belongs to either team (it can be teased out with DFHackery). I definitely don't want to see that repeated due to the graphics not conveying "loyalty" clearly.

[Meph]

I'm sure there could be a toggle-able marker somewhere, which indicates civ-members, friendlies, hostiles, etc. As Cruxador has said, if games can do that 30 years ago, we can do that too.

[Starver]

Some systems might put 'shoulder icons' (non-diegetic 'floating' markers, like health-bars or current-task indicators) up there over each sprite that needs them. The aura/glow method might work for perma-factions (assuming we don't get 'allied/citizen necromancers' popping up worrisome but not actually hostile zombie slaves/pets, which I think we might).

I could imagine that upon a loyalty-situation suddenly happening, the appearance of a red/blue/etc pennant or flash over everyone in your bar could indicate the factionising. Just triggered upon any (non-sparring) combat. Could also be useful if invading forces, that are not just hostile wildlife, arrive (given a marker) and pre-infiltrated allies of this force reveal themselves. Perhaps military get the designated 'home colour' (typically blue) at the instant the invaders are detected/revealed (red), but civvies/visitors stay unmarked until they get involved/disturbed. Revealing red/blue/yellow[1]/whatever as soon as it is applicable.  It'd be visually stunning. And (with possible coding nod to reposition on awkward cons, like Giant- creatures) could be implemented without having to detail an icon-specific overlay for all umpteen-thousand sprites, even if many of those could be 'easy' copy-paste from their Ur-icon.

For 'internal' factionism, cyan/magenta/etc. Yes, if RGB was outward conflict, CMY could be (increasingly complex) internal splits, but I don't see straight-green pennants as suitable. Unless we preassign a Green for the hostile goblins, etc, which I think takes too much thinking and won't survive the more complex extensions of worldgens and alliances we're promised in future.


Not sure it's actually right for DF, but it's yet another option. Not cluttering up the view, unless it is relevent (and/or selected to happen in selected options), and needn't be very many pixels to be indicative, perhaps as small as...

Code: [Select]

#######   #=black/outline pixel
#?????#   ?=indicator colour pixel
#?????#
#??#??#
#?# #?#
##   ##
#     #
...and if you could get away with no (or partial, by half-shaded/alternated) bordering, without 'hiding' on the background it lays upon, you could have extra flood of the chosen hue over this overlay. This shape of pennant wouldn't look like anything 'real', also.

[1] Neutrality, such as as-yet ininvolved traders and their guards.

[Wokko]

There was that idea somewhere about making partially decayed corpses change their color to slightly yellowish like in Rimworld.
Might be good to make corpses stand out more.

[Eric Blank]

What about drawing an Ñ in the space behind the creature? Just barely visible, like the glow

[Pillbo]

I like the glowing corpse/skeleton (especially the skeleton eyes), it seems like it would satisfy the both groups and it's pretty unmistakable.  I don't like the idea of forcing ASCII art back into a graphical tileset with an Ñ.

Related to the labeling hostiles conversation here's a suggestion from a while ago that's a similar idea- A visual tagging system for the graphical release

I think it would be helpful [for the player to be able] to add visual tags to creatures or items with the graphical release. An icon [or simple colored flag/border] to show up on the creature tile during play so you can see where they are without pausing or searching.

I think it would be good for a lot of different uses- keeping track of your suspected vampires or werebeasts; labeling some family members you're interested in; monitoring some visitors you distrust; labeling items made with a material you need to keep track of; identifying a puppy that killed a goblin; watching the constant tantrummers; separating dwarves by gender/job/nobility/beards/cave adapted/disabled etc.

[MoltenIdol]

I Think the best solution so far, is having a colored aura around units, when you open the combat screen.
 
Maybe toggleable, but have it be 'on' by default, to let players know that its a feature, immediately.

This could álso be a toggleable overlay when looking with 'k'.

It would be very helpful and simple, without breaking immersion by having little symbols everywhere on the sprite.
If you to decide go down the small symbols route though, make it toggleable, as I think that would be pretty disturbing to look at, during a big war.
Plus, it wouldnt relay the information very effectively and quickly, as opposed to a really visible aura around the whole sprite, which would be much more clear immediately, and give a great sense of "which blob of troops is my blob of troops".

Imagine where the enemy line meets yours.
With the aura being around the whole sprite, it would really make that line perfectly clear in all situations.


Regarding zombies and skeletons:
I think glowing eyes should suffice. Maybe not red, since that could be mistaken for blood.
Maybe purple?
They do loose some of their creepy factor (i think the "realistic" looking take is pretty creepy), but surely purple glowing eyes cant be mistaken?

[Wokko]

How about faint colored circles underneath creatures?
Like warcraft 3:
They are too colorful in wc3, I'd suggest make them more transparent, or as an outside circle.

[Uthimienure]

Coming from a different gaming background than most younger people these days, I just want to share my thoughts on the auras or colored shading to identify which creatures are friendly and hostile.

I don't like it at all.

If it gets put in the game, I sure hope it is *optional* so I can turn it off.