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[Starver]

If it's flying, have whatever-the-shadow-is disconnected, like the Amazing Invisible Log. Either shift the shadow below the 'normal' mask, or shift it up. Things on the ground need to be footed in a shadow or they will look like they're levitating.

(Though given Toady's acquiesence on the faction-spotlight idea, I'm not sure it would fit. It'd be the same area, if shadow is an oval footprint too and not a mutually-exclusive pair of selected-options. Unless they're different sizes, and I'm not sure if a halo of shadow round a spot of light or a halo of light around a shadow would be better. With a 'shaped' shadow, could be overlapping and revealing of light-edge, though...  Something to think of, probably.)

[Pillbo]

Disclaimer: I'm not trying to start an argument, I'm trying to help.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm using Spacefox which is universally held to be one of the few best tilesets. I wouldn't been able to spot a kobold(or anything else) in whatever tileset or ASCII version either - after certain number of dwarfs/animals it's quite hard to be sure where is what in reasonable amount of time. Especially true if I have friendly kobold visitors - who of them is the thief? Dunno.

Are you playing modded? Normally you can't get kobold visitors, so any kobold in your fort would be hostile and up to no good.

When there's a dwarf announcement, like a fey mood there is a path from announcement list -> fey mood for Urist -> zoom on him -> follow to see what's up. Thievery is an announcement, but unlike the dwarf one, I don't have a way to see where those thieves are. I've had a few cases where I send military to kill them via "pick from list of enemies" feature but military went "no reachable target" immediately. I'd like to be able to tell whether my thieves ran away/somehow hidden themselves on the map (in that case a last known location would be cool). A highlight of enemies would at least give me an information they are no longer on the map.

The game should recenter the screen on the thief when it's spotted, unless you changed the announcements settings. This is the code from the data/init/announcements.txt:

Code: [Select]

[AMBUSH_THIEF_SUPPORT_SKULKING:A_D:D_D:P:R]

That "R" at the end tells the game to center on the thief when the announcement happens.

You you lose it at that point you can also go to the "Others" tab in the units list if a kobold is spotted, it should be shown as Hostile and pretty noticeable. I'd guess if your military couldn't reach the kobolds it's because they fled the map.

Back to graphics. Hurray for more rotting corpses! Simple shadows would probably be a good idea.

[Starver]

QuickNDirty visualisation:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Took a few rows of the snakes recently posted.
1) Converted all non-alpha to a basic, slightly blurred shadow-mask on a rearward layer.
2) Rescaled each row's shadow heights to half (did *not* rescale shadow widths to intended 125%, to further squash). For ground-perspective purposes. Technically should be keystoned, I suppose, but it seems to work directly linearly like this.
3) Shifted these up a few pixels (because the way I rescaled shifted them down too far), but definitely could have been shifted up a few more.  (IRL the rescaling should be to nominal tile-centre, not tile-boundary base, and then then shifted down a few pixels (to taste, establish during mass rendering testing).)
3b) Accidentally deleted Row 2's shadows, without noticing, but didn't redo as it makes a good comparison for the 'unshadowed'.
4) Added a set of 'colour-spots' for allegience (rows 1,2,4 only, for deliberate comparison) in an even more rearward layer (choosing a green/'allied' for not too acidic but still contrasting a little with the grass-colour... YMMV. I'd suggest a neutral smudged white/grey edging. Easy to do, but that's beyond the scope of this little mock-up.)
5) Shifted rightmost snakes "up" to demo flying skeletal snakes!
6) Pasted (naively, in this case, no attempt to be pixel-perfect) over a sample-background.

Took longer to type this than to manually do in GIMP. Shouldn't be too far beyond producing instantly on-demand from each Steam-tile graphic. (SMOC!!!)

Realistically, steps 1-5 would be done once per creature on arrival (or even creature-template, where multiples of same type appear). And again if they rot a bit/get injured/add/change clothing/etc. Step 6 is what is always done anyway.

NB. Not at all "You should do it exactly like this/at all", just "*I* might do it like this, if I had opportunity..."

[PatrikLundell]

@Starver:
I have to say I don't like your take on shadows, because it looks like all of them are levitating (sorry for being blunt).

I think you'd need to have at least parts of the critters seem to touch the ground, and can't really have any shadow under any part that should touch it. I'd probably try to have the implicit light source to the South, resulting in the critter hiding most of the shadow, as any other direction would demand shadowing of the critter itself (a very slight shift to one side or the other might work, though). If shadows are too messy to implement in a good looking manner, I think the graphics are better off without them.

The affiliation indicators, in contrast, work out well.

[Starver]

@Starver:
I have to say I don't like your take on shadows, because it looks like all of them are levitating (sorry for being blunt).

No, s'fair. I chucked that together in two minutes[1], and I probably needed another three-to-five pixels of shadow-shift to put the (grounded) ones in the right position.

But I wanted to see what the spotlights looked like (the green, at #080-ish, is the least visible on grass, the yellow looks light-green because they're all made better than 50% semi-transparent to the green below, the red looks Ok[2] and if you assume that's Hostiles then it's what you need to see most) so I rushed past that bit.


[1] Ok, more like three, because I kept forgetting to merge-down a change onto the right layer, part of the reason why I lost the second-row of shadows.

[2] On grass-tiles, I imagine there'd be definite problems if displaying on red-sand. Note my suggestion for a neutral (desaturated?) edging, to highlight where it would blend in, possible blend in when the inner highlights.

[Uthimienure]

Comment deleted because it added nothing to the conversation and shouldn't have been said because I am in a bad mood right now so apologies to any that it offended, to each their own and to all a good day, good evening, and good night. DF is and will continue to be and awesome game regardless of how the graphics turn out so I'm a gonna chill out. 

[Cruxador]

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.

I was about to be like "Uh, no I said-" and then I realized actually at some point when I wasn't looking, time passed.

Toady saw the suggestion and thinks a small color-coded something below the creature, with friendly/neutral/hostile would be a good idea. With an on/off button.

Meph, that sounds amazing.

I Also agree with a uniform oval shadow under all units and creatures.
It wouldnt nescesarily make units easier to distinguish from one another, but it would make all units pop out of the terrain.
Both grounding them to the environment, but also just to help distinguish them from terrain in general, when the screen is paused/static.

Maybe, flying creatures Shouldnt have a shadow (or a much smaller one).That way it would also be easy to Tell if a creature is flying, or actually standing on the ground.

Hard to say whether that would actually look good, without seeing it. I don't think it would add much, though. Units already have pretty dark outlines. The main issue I can foresee about them popping, based on what's already out, is  plants which also have dark outlines. But I think that we also shouldn't forget: Units move. That makes them a lot easier to notice. I still hope it can be possible to show them sliding from the midpoint of one tile to the next, rather than just teleporting between adjacent tiles, but even if that doesn't happen it'll be enough change to catch the eye.

If something is flying, one way you can tell is because it's in the sky without ground below it.

QuickNDirty visualisation:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Took a few rows of the snakes recently posted.
1) Converted all non-alpha to a basic, slightly blurred shadow-mask on a rearward layer.
2) Rescaled each row's shadow heights to half (did *not* rescale shadow widths to intended 125%, to further squash). For ground-perspective purposes. Technically should be keystoned, I suppose, but it seems to work directly linearly like this.
3) Shifted these up a few pixels (because the way I rescaled shifted them down too far), but definitely could have been shifted up a few more.  (IRL the rescaling should be to nominal tile-centre, not tile-boundary base, and then then shifted down a few pixels (to taste, establish during mass rendering testing).)
3b) Accidentally deleted Row 2's shadows, without noticing, but didn't redo as it makes a good comparison for the 'unshadowed'.
4) Added a set of 'colour-spots' for allegience (rows 1,2,4 only, for deliberate comparison) in an even more rearward layer (choosing a green/'allied' for not too acidic but still contrasting a little with the grass-colour... YMMV. I'd suggest a neutral smudged white/grey edging. Easy to do, but that's beyond the scope of this little mock-up.)
5) Shifted rightmost snakes "up" to demo flying skeletal snakes!
6) Pasted (naively, in this case, no attempt to be pixel-perfect) over a sample-background.

Took longer to type this than to manually do in GIMP. Shouldn't be too far beyond producing instantly on-demand from each Steam-tile graphic. (SMOC!!!)

Realistically, steps 1-5 would be done once per creature on arrival (or even creature-template, where multiples of same type appear). And again if they rot a bit/get injured/add/change clothing/etc. Step 6 is what is always done anyway.

NB. Not at all "You should do it exactly like this/at all", just "*I* might do it like this, if I had opportunity..."

Yeah, I mostly agree with Patrik on this. I kind of might prefer the faction indicators to be more clearly UI elements rather than something that looks a bit like it's part of the world. At least, that's what I had in my mind to reduce ambiguity. Perhaps some rather iconic design (as opposed to realistic or intricate, not in the slang sense) in 2-bit color with one bit being transparency and the other inheriting the "faction" color; you don't have a ton of pixels to work with (your example snakes are at about four times the correct size, relative to backdrop) so anything too fancy you do has the potential to undermine the visibility on a feature for which visibility is the primary purpose.

[ror6ax]

Friendly/hostile could be marked by procedurally generated banners of the fortress and attackers, respectively. At least it would not (if of artifact quality) break immersion in the game.

[Hommit]

^ this will make it too busy. i can see maybe small red angled sword(s), but not banner

[Meph]

[Starver]

I like the ground-halos best. Assuming the interior is dark (or dark-filtering) the background, so it stands out on (typically) grass, for that colour.

c.f.

[...]and I'm not sure if a halo of shadow round a spot of light or a halo of light around a shadow would be better. [...]

If the solid-spot has a dark border (reverse option) I can't currently tell on this Darkling backround... No wait - opened image in new tab and not obviously unternally/externally darkened. (Overlay... properly/representationally... on grass terrain and I think it'll be too subtle. You need to do that to be sure.)

Anyway, that apart, I do like #2. Perhaps #1's non-feathered(/-antialiased) edging looks more "not a direct part of reality", though. Popover (though partially 'tucked under') HUD element as it might be.


A single sparse[1] contrasting pixel (suggest grey) could outline the circle (and also inline the halo, if not making that into a shadow-circle/oval).


[1] Next px round, orthagonally or diagonally 'next' to the neighbour border-pixel. Maybe even every two such pixels?  Simple 'demo' as follows, in text-art as I'm away from my GIMP again:

Code: [Select]

sssssssGGXggg
ssssGGGXXgggg
GGGGXXXgggggg
XXXXggggggggg
ggggggggggggg

s:shadow/shade over tile background, G:colour-of-ring (green, here), X:greyish solid, g:normal tile background (green mottled for grass, theoretically)

sssssssGGgggg
ssssGGGgXgggg
GGGGXgXgggggg
XgXgggggggggg
ggggggggggggg
...not sure the latter works at this level of 'zoom', but might look better at 1px=1px.

[Wokko]

The first one looks good, very baldur's gate-like. Perhaps the circle should be moved slightly down, to make the dog appear inside the circle, rather than on the edge.
The fourth one is also good, more like wc3.
The third one looks empty on top, and solid circle doesn't look as good as other variants.
I don't know if blurred circle would look better during gameplay than crisp one. If we are allowed to vote, I'd vote for the first.

edit: is it going to be color coded on Player-Friendly-Hostile with Green-Blue-Red?
(I wish we could have all of those variants)

[PatrikLundell]

@Meph: I prefer #1 and #2 as they're both rather obviously aren't part of the scenery, but still quite legible. #2 and #4 look more like something in a colored spotlight.

When it comes to affiliation, you an use various color schemes, such as the NATO one (Blue = Friendly, Red = Enemy, Yellow = Unknown, Green = Neutral), where the "unknown" ones would be all the non participants, such as visitors. Merchants and diplomats would then be Neutral (usually), as they belong to a known faction (rather than belonging to unknown factions, including the enemy one in the case of [frequently goblin] performance troupe members).

Distinguishing between own and allied forces currently has little meaning, as there usually are no allied forces since the game currently doesn't support player (fortress) alliances. Might be different in adventure mode, though.

[ror6ax]

The first one looks good, very baldur's gate-like. Perhaps the circle should be moved slightly down, to make the dog appear inside the circle, rather than on the edge.

+1

[El_Stono]

I also think #1 and #2 look the most fitting.

When it comes to affiliation, you an use various color schemes, such as the NATO one (Blue = Friendly, Red = Enemy, Yellow = Unknown, Green = Neutral), where the "unknown" ones would be all the non participants, such as visitors. Merchants and diplomats would then be Neutral (usually), as they belong to a known faction (rather than belonging to unknown factions, including the enemy one in the case of [frequently goblin] performance troupe members).

Distinguishing between own and allied forces currently has little meaning, as there usually are no allied forces since the game currently doesn't support player (fortress) alliances. Might be different in adventure mode, though.

I think adding a green aura for non-hostile and a red aura to hostile animals and/or visitors would help new players, especially for cave creatures like dralthas or randomly generated creatures. A purple ring/spot/whatever could also be used for highlighting undead instead of a purple outline, because they attack all living creatures and are not just a "regular" enemy faction. The citizens and animals of the player shouldn't be highlighted imho.