Print

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

[Wokko]

Is it possible to add simple post-processing, to modify the hue/saturation/luminance for everything except the UI and interiors? (example below)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This looks very good, but wouldn't suit the environment if it was raining:


But just lowering the saturation and luminance makes it feel pretty apt:

Good Idea.

The terrain is very bright and colorfull.

What youve done looks way more like a rainy day, its pretty effective. A critical strike.

The contrast to the bright Sunny environment, is very extreme tho. Also, just a bit too dark. It would be pretty good for nighttime (if tweaked a bit), assuming nighttime Shouldnt be pitch black, for the sake of gameplay, and being able to Tell Where your dwarves are.

Maybe, if you could lower the saturation a bit less, it would be more in line with the general brightness, that seems to dominate the current artstyle.



Also:
could we have something like this for day and night?
That would be AMAZING. An actual day and night cycle, visible to the player. Yet another previously invisible mechanic, seamlessly  integrated into the visual picture of the world, the player recieves.

This should actually be pretty high priority IMHO.

Maybe have several stages like, sunrise, morning, midday, evening, Sunset, night, and so on.

I mean, this could be somewhat easy to do, right?

Huge payoff tho. Great for immersion, and generally, just getting a sense of time(Very usefull), the world spinning, day and night coming and going.
An actual World, where time passes, and that creates an effect, that you can see.

And make the picture MUCH less static + make for more varied, potentially Beautiful scenes.


This is not on you, toady, or anyone.
But, it would almost be a bit dissapointing, if dwarf fortress: steam version, didnt come with a day and night cycle. (At least at some point).


Good night everyone

I think people mentioned day-night cycle in fortress mode would make the screen flash because of how fast time passes.
It should be planned for adventure mode though, even ascii currently has day-night cycle in there.

[PatrikLundell]

Day/night cycles in fortress mode would likely be horrible, given that time passes quickly in that mode. I assume it would be at home in adventure mode, though. If day/night cycles are introduced, they definitely should be optional, at least for fortress mode.

[Starver]

Daily cycles have almost no effect in fort mode. Echoing the (much more useful) Moon indicator on the UI with a whirring Sun would be the better option (one way or another, it can bs a shared commonality with the Adventure Mode screen, only that no longer whirring - and I presume that the graduated 'sight radius' will be re-emulated in that, somehow).

As a game that has no real (Fort mode) use for illumination, in any explicit manner, we rather assume that the demi-Godlike player has infravision to cope with all the (known) corners and depths of the world. If the dwarves themselves have that, or sneakily make beard-hair into everlasting torches as they plumb the depths, is left open to interpretation.


The effect, I like. As an optional filter. BHETs aside, I presume that the internal areas would remain unfiltered (by masking the effect by tile-status, much as already seen with sublevel-fogging), to enhance?  But that does seem a little topsy-turvy, I suppose the excuse being respective dwarven attitudes to surface and subterrainean locales. Needs a bit of thought there, I think.

[Rekov]

Day/night cycles in fortress mode would likely be horrible, given that time passes quickly in that mode. I assume it would be at home in adventure mode, though. If day/night cycles are introduced, they definitely should be optional, at least for fortress mode.

You could theoretically borrow a page from Cities: Skylines where the day/night cycle isn't actually attached to days, but takes place over the course of a week or a month or something. It doesn't actually make any sense, but it's a way to abstract the concept so that days can pass quickly enough where mechanics are concerned, but the length of the day/night cycle is long enough that people can focus on each phase as it arises.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Day/night cycles in fortress mode would likely be horrible, given that time passes quickly in that mode. I assume it would be at home in adventure mode, though. If day/night cycles are introduced, they definitely should be optional, at least for fortress mode.

You could theoretically borrow a page from Cities: Skylines where the day/night cycle isn't actually attached to days, but takes place over the course of a week or a month or something. It doesn't actually make any sense, but it's a way to abstract the concept so that days can pass quickly enough where mechanics are concerned, but the length of the day/night cycle is long enough that people can focus on each phase as it arises.

But why would you introduce day/night at all if there's no mechanical reason for it? (Fortress mode critters don't sleep at night, werewolves just change at the beginning of the day of a full moon, etc).

[Maltavius]

Regarding the chair graphics. They look nice, but they aren't chairs. Those are stools 

Stools are seats featuring three or four legs. ... Stools may also stand taller than the typical table to fit a tall counter and bar. Chairs usually have four legs, a seat and a back. They can include arms or footrests.

Quick mockup to hopefully somewhat illustrate what I meant about the font and the green buttons.

Oh please NO!

Fonts that try to look fantasy-ish are the worst to read.
Please have a standard Serif or sans-serif font.

[Bumber]

Regarding the chair graphics. They look nice, but they aren't chairs. Those are stools 

Stools are seats featuring three or four legs. ... Stools may also stand taller than the typical table to fit a tall counter and bar. Chairs usually have four legs, a seat and a back. They can include arms or footrests.

They aren't getting backs because the direction of DF chairs is ambiguous.

[JesterHell696]

Quick mockup to hopefully somewhat illustrate what I meant about the font and the green buttons.

Oh please NO!

Fonts that try to look fantasy-ish are the worst to read.
Please have a standard Serif or sans-serif font.

I see nothing wrong with that font, I think its easy to read and prefer it over a standard font.

[Starver]

As past calligrapher[1], I'd say it's not an overblown font, like ror6ax suggests, but it could easily be a bit simpler. At least an option of switchable serif/non-serif typeface. It doesn't need to be Transport, Johnston or Gill in nature. (I suppose Tarn and his geographically close circle would be more familiar with Highway Gothic.) And, to continue the theme, perhaps something like Rotis Serif (or R. Semi Sans), as apparently used in Singapore, for the non-Sans choice.

Maybe choices of Scandiwegian/Germanic/Hibernian fancy fonts (greater or lesser rune-like nature, etc), but not default unless they're a light-touch on the decorations. At least for anything that needs instant reading. Without going overboard, there'd be possibilities to use multi-typeface designs (not more than two whole families), perhaps to delineate between interface and 'lore' text. Menus (bar/drop-down/mouse-click, usually) the more serious, perhaps the psychology/thoughts display about the nature of a resident/visiting entity can be given a "life book" look..?

The one in the image examples makes me think of mediæval manuscripts, with perhaps a Celtic twist (notably the "C") which is probably not far off from that intended. I could probably live with it if it doesn't get too far into the low px values.

[1] My handwriting was bad as a child, so I was enrolled on a course. My normal cursive handwriting is still very bad, but I can now also write "minimum" in Black Gothic with a wide nib so that each of the 15 verticles look pretty much identical, and the eight cross-strokes almost invisible compared to their accompanying serifs. Even more unreadable, but absurdly neat!

[voliol]

I definitely find that font a bit difficult to read/straining on the eyes. Could be the relatively low contrast colors or the general composition of the image though.

The happiest smiley looks off to me, I think it has to do with corners of the mouth not being raised enough. Currently it's more of a "very fast rollercoaster face" and less of a wide toothy smile, which is what I'm guessing you're going for.

[MoltenIdol]

I definitely find that font a bit difficult to read/straining on the eyes. Could be the relatively low contrast colors or the general composition of the image though.

The happiest smiley looks off to me, I think it has to do with corners of the mouth not being raised enough. Currently it's more of a "very fast rollercoaster face" and less of a wide toothy smile, which is what I'm guessing you're going for.

I agree with all this.

The text could be a bit more fat. I Think that would help a bit.
But id just go with another font entirely if it was me.

In general, id have loved to see the UI compliment the tone of the game more, with stone buttons and stone panels with engraved texts, and some decorations here and there.

But since youre not taking that route, you should go all in on readability.

[Cruxador]

Regarding the chair graphics. They look nice, but they aren't chairs. Those are stools 

Stools are seats featuring three or four legs. ... Stools may also stand taller than the typical table to fit a tall counter and bar. Chairs usually have four legs, a seat and a back. They can include arms or footrests.

Quick mockup to hopefully somewhat illustrate what I meant about the font and the green buttons.

Oh please NO!

Fonts that try to look fantasy-ish are the worst to read.
Please have a standard Serif or sans-serif font.

That is not a fantasy-ish font, and is a pretty standard serif. The problem is that it's slightly italicized and also makes use of varied line width. Both of those look fine in print, but because of the way pixels work, it means that the font relies on anti-aliasing to look right on screens. This makes the letter forms far fuzzier and less distinct, and therefore less legible at the same size. Naturally, something to avoid.

As past calligrapher[1], I'd say it's not an overblown font, like ror6ax suggests, but it could easily be a bit simpler. At least an option of switchable serif/non-serif typeface. It doesn't need to be Transport, Johnston or Gill in nature. (I suppose Tarn and his geographically close circle would be more familiar with Highway Gothic.) And, to continue the theme, perhaps something like Rotis Serif (or R. Semi Sans), as apparently used in Singapore, for the non-Sans choice.

It's not really an issue of complexity but of whether or not the typeface is optimized for digital. Your examples are only incidentally better.

Maybe choices of Scandiwegian/Germanic/Hibernian fancy fonts (greater or lesser rune-like nature, etc), but not default unless they're a light-touch on the decorations. At least for anything that needs instant reading. Without going overboard, there'd be possibilities to use multi-typeface designs (not more than two whole families), perhaps to delineate between interface and 'lore' text. Menus (bar/drop-down/mouse-click, usually) the more serious, perhaps the psychology/thoughts display about the nature of a resident/visiting entity can be given a "life book" look..?

Decorated fonts are not appropriate for body text or at comparable sizes. They should be used for headers only. Dwarf Fortress does not tend to use headers. Although this may change with UI work, and it's certainly true that orthodox design principles would encourage Toady to add them and in general to add more white space and break things up into sections more, DF has conventionally tended to delineate sections in large blocks of text by color and otherwise not at all.

I definitely find that font a bit difficult to read/straining on the eyes. Could be the relatively low contrast colors or the general composition of the image though.

The happiest smiley looks off to me, I think it has to do with corners of the mouth not being raised enough. Currently it's more of a "very fast rollercoaster face" and less of a wide toothy smile, which is what I'm guessing you're going for.

Contrast is part of the problem; compare how legible "Accept" is compared to the others. But it doesn't tell the whole story, and too much more contrast than that button would quickly start to be garish and unpleasant on the eyes. It's more that the low contrast exacerbates the indistinct nature of the letterforms caused by anti-aliasing; it would be adequate otherwise.

[Starver]

As past calligrapher[1], I'd say it's not an overblown font, like ror6ax suggests, but it could easily be a bit simpler. At least an option of switchable serif/non-serif typeface. It doesn't need to be Transport, Johnston or Gill in nature. (I suppose Tarn and his geographically close circle would be more familiar with Highway Gothic.) And, to continue the theme, perhaps something like Rotis Serif (or R. Semi Sans), as apparently used in Singapore, for the non-Sans choice.

It's not really an issue of complexity but of whether or not the typeface is optimized for digital. Your examples are only incidentally better.

Digital optimisation isn't really part of it.  You can digitally anti-alias or not anti-alias any font rendering upon direct rendering. If you're doing it with pre-prepared rasters of every size you are going to use, you can tweak as necessary from a base vector descriptor - if you go for definite raster then rescale by non-integer values then you're no better and possibly worse through double-rounding errors for each edge-pixel, etc, whether 'aliased' or not.

l give examples of fonts made to be readable, just for that 'being readable'. I'm not saying to use those exactly.

I think I'd go with a serifed one, if I were developing, but a clear one. And I (perhaps relying on my own level of sight ability) find that font (barely 1px of slope sideways over the entire height of a long riser, the 'nib' wider horizontally than vertically but not terribly so) Ok in the format that it is. Perhaps a single-bit bitplane version might be better but would need extensive tweaking for every case, not dynamic rendering without risking confusing artefacts in their outlines.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Regarding the chair graphics. They look nice, but they aren't chairs. Those are stools 

Stools are seats featuring three or four legs. ... Stools may also stand taller than the typical table to fit a tall counter and bar. Chairs usually have four legs, a seat and a back. They can include arms or footrests.

They aren't getting backs because the direction of DF chairs is ambiguous.

Do hope that's not confirmed.
Golden stool in the king's "throne room" will just look rubbish.

[Schmaven]

Regarding the chair back having a directional component, I've sat in chairs facing just about every possible way at some point: normal, backward, sideways, half laying on the floor, etc.  If they were to have chair backs, making them automatically face an adjacent table would cover most cases of chair placement.  If some dwarves end up sitting backwards on chairs, I'm cool with that.  Otherwise some orientation option would be needed like how ballistas are aimed in the cardinal directions. 

A throne in the throne room does make more sense than a royal stool.  Royal stools belong in the sanitation arc.