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[Starver]

"Slopes" are mechanically just a tile floor with a "can step up a level" feature (given the right neighbouring tile conditions to do so in whatever direction is applicable). The visuals are being revamped (at great pains) to make it more obvious what they are and how passage may be gained (mostly) but the form is dictated by the pathing function.

Again, I would highly prefer against disallowing stockpiles (and zones, etc) where they used to be allowable, just to make the graphics less trouble. Starting from what we are now, I suggest a more intelligent graphic solution to represent what there is now. It's not impossible to place a rock on a slope, either in-game or IRL. To make the physics into a more marble-run scenario would change game-play (not the least some additional mega-trap/material-moving options, that might look good but might be a step too far).

[Uthimienure]

How about if stockpiles just can't be put on slopes?
That would be reasonable in my opinion.

Can stockpiles actually be placed on slopes in the game right now?

When I try, it allows them to be placed on Up slopes, but not on Down slopes.

[Starver]

Up-slopes are floors with ramps on them (built or remaining). As a floor, it naturally accepts a stockpile.

Down-slopes are no-floors, immediately below which is a floor-with-ramp (it's just a visual thing). As open space, it obviously doesn't.

[Rekov]

If we accept the rough 2 x 2 x 3 m dimensions of tiles, that means that ramps have a 56.3° incline, which is really quite steep indeed.

I think there are really two different categories here:

1) The graphics make it clear that the mechanics are improbable in some cases. Ex: Stockpiles on ramps, or wagons being able to go up ramps.

2) The graphics make it clear that the mechanics are actually impossible. Ex: The scenario depicted below:



There would be no possible way to make this work IRL. You couldn't create a geometry that would allow movement here as it is in DF.

[Starver]

(There is, actually. It would look more like an open-petalled flower rather than a central spire... I haven't seen what SteamDF graphics actually do with that. I know it'll be messy, though.)

[Uthimienure]

Up-slopes are floors with ramps on them (built or remaining). As a floor, it naturally accepts a stockpile.

Down-slopes are no-floors, immediately below which is a floor-with-ramp (it's just a visual thing). As open space, it obviously doesn't.

Yes, if you were explaining that for me, thanks I already knew it and was just answering the question about the game mechanic. 

[Starver]

Well, you or anybody else who might not appreciate the difference. Which the new graphics should attempt to clarify, ideally.

I also realised that my wording might be confusing (and was too late to change, having been read) in:

(I would prefer that stockpiles on ramps look not quite right than either 'invisible' stockpile squares - at the extreme, a 1x1 stockpile on a slope just not being marked - or changing game mechanics to disallow stockpiles just to make the graphics work better. But that's merely my view.)

i.e I would prefer some visual anomoly (which might be tweaking a stockpile boundary to make it more clearly look like it 'rides up' the slope) than:
a) Have a stockpile de facto but with no marking on ramp-spots - confusing enough in an edge of a larger stockpile nibbled awag, but a 1x1 'invisible' stockpile totally unmarked because it sits on a ramped tile would be dangerous, or
b) Change the existing game 'physics' for the sake of aesthetics alone*. Not that it couldn't be changed for other gameplay reasons, of course.

Slopes are just one (probably minority) visual feature. They are an improvement on the 'ramp spires' of old, but don't let this dominate the conversion.


As an incidental issue with slope visualisation not yet seen, though the bridge example does invoke the same sort of confusion, you can build a wall on a slope (it would trivially block passage at the lower level, but also provide a new floor jutting out from the upper) and I think there could be incomprehension when viewing that (from either 'slice-camera'  height).

And have we seen the current difference between constructed fortifications (non-top-walkable) and [optionally-constructed-and-]carved fortifications (have a potentially walkable 'wall-top')? I know we've discussed crenalation variations in the dim and distant past somewhere, but I don't think in any current graphical context.


* Which you then asked about, as new, as your reasonable solution, and getting the question "can they..?", from another, cluing me in on the impenetrability of my original quote which had meant to roll on the fact that they could. Not that I've done much better this time, I'm sure.

[Starver]

Ok, my money where my mouth is.  Some mockups.

Spoiler: What if I built a wall away from a slope? (click to show/hide)

Had to do a lot of editing to get this 'right', in leiu of being generated in the engine.
Used (for sake of argument) the rough-rock floor of inside the hill, so assume it's a rouch rock constructed wall (though that'll look different), seen at a slice of ground that you see the walkable top of it (very similar, but not quite, the 'bare rock' also seen in occasional spots of other parts of the source image). You'll note I put the grass edging of the main level back over it.
Building over a tile with a ramp, it has to adjust the adjacent ramps. I actually chose the wrong orientation, so I had to cheat a bit with hues and lightness to match the ramping. (After having to remove those bits of overhanging grass, which you wouldn't get from the wall-top.)
I applied wall-shadowing off of the (further) jutting wall. I', not sure I got it quite to match what you'd actually see in-game, but I was experimenting with various gradient-dodging and darkening and that's what I came up with.

Spoiler: Four-way up-ramp (click to show/hide)

This is the single tile, only, that is supposed to be what the ramp-designate should look like situated between walls at its four orthagonal neighbours. It might make more sense in context, but I've not yet applied directional shading, just height-shading, so it'd look odd there as well.
It's just one of several 'solutions' to corners at ground-level, mid-edges at top-level, rather than the generic 'spire' that's ground at edges, the centre is the height.

The general version that serves walkability up to Z+1 on each diagonal and level access in from the orthagonals looks 'better'.

Spoiler: Making the bridge not look so much like it's on the level above (click to show/hide)

I've added some wall-shading onto the bridge (from the sheer wall either side of the entrance, and a bit in from the edges of the cut-through ramp-slope too). A bit better than the wall-shading on the first image, after having that as practice. But I think I should have done it at twice the density.
I'd say it looks like it's not coming out from the top of the wall, but still looks like it's mid-wall.  A few more attempts and I think I could get that just about right.
The screenshot of the view from the Z+1 slice might well look a lot better, with it done this way (will include tile-overflowing grass as well, I presume).

These are just concepts of my thinking, quickly edited up on a laptop (wish I'd have a mouse, not this touchpad). Me and my lack of artistic skills, so just relying on a few GIMP filters, etc, rather than redrawing everything.

(Which reminds me, I was also going to do something about the stockpile-on-slope... No time right now, maybe later.)

[MoltenIdol]

Spoiler: Making the bridge not look so much like it's on the level above (click to show/hide)

I've added some wall-shading onto the bridge (from the sheer wall either side of the entrance, and a bit in from the edges of the cut-through ramp-slope too). A bit better than the wall-shading on the first image, after having that as practice. But I think I should have done it at twice the density.
I'd say it looks like it's not coming out from the top of the wall, but still looks like it's mid-wall.  A few more attempts and I think I could get that just about right.
The screenshot of the view from the Z+1 slice might well look a lot better, with it done this way (will include tile-overflowing grass as well, I presume).

This is exactly what i was talking about.

In order to complete the illusion, you need to add shades being cast from the ramps onto the bridge, as well, to indicate the ramps are also 'taller' than the bridge.

As in, the ramps end abruptly when they meet the bridge, thus creating a sudden drop in elevation, which then produces a shadow being cast over the bridge.

So like a wall shadow, but for ramps. A kind of triangular shadow.


Right now, the ramps still look flatter than that bridge.

[Rekov]

This is the single tile, only, that is supposed to be what the ramp-designate should look like situated between walls at its four orthagonal neighbours. It might make more sense in context, but I've not yet applied directional shading, just height-shading, so it'd look odd there as well.
It's just one of several 'solutions' to corners at ground-level, mid-edges at top-level, rather than the generic 'spire' that's ground at edges, the centre is the height.

The general version that serves walkability up to Z+1 on each diagonal and level access in from the orthagonals looks 'better'.

The whole being able to walk through tiles diagonally is an entirely different problem which I've tried to address elsewhere, so let's leave that aside for now.

Your tile doesn't read at all for me, which may be because it lacks directional shading.

The simplest "working" version of this tile is the following, where dwarves would have to climb up and down incredibly steep and sharp ridges and valleys, which doesn't make much sense tbh.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You can try to widen out the 'paths' that dwarves would be walking on a little, but it still leaves you with a fairly ridiculously complex tile, and "ramps" that are so steep as to basically be walls.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That this is possible at all, I would hazard a guess, is the result of ramp mechanics interacting with diagonal movement mechanics to create a dynamic that doesn't actually make any sense.

[Starver]

(Yes, my multiway needs a lot more work and context. I'm between machines, so am nowhere near my better rendering software.)

Back to the bridge cutting through the ramps...  (@Molten: If you look at the prior example, I do have shading from the sliced ramp-edges, trapezoid not triangular for various aesthetic reasons. But it's significantly (too much?) fainter because I found going the same strength of burning/darkening as the sliced wall-edge made it very ugly in the corner.)

Spoiler: A little animation to show various constructions (click to show/hide)

(Done entirely from scratch, so lacks some of the problems I left you in the static example, as well as letting me play with combo effects more.)


Plain / Wall-shade-area (Red) / + Wall-shade directions / Wall-shade-filled
Plain / Ramp-shade-area (Blue) / + Ramp-shade directions / Ramp-shade-filled
Plain / Both shade-areas (Red+Blue) / Both shade-filled (overlap*) / ...without outline
... / Both shade-area / Both shade-filled (diagonally abutting**) / ...without outline
Plain / Combined-shade-area (Magenta) / + Combined-shade directions / Combined-shade-filled*** / ...without outline

* - double-density in the corner
** - slight gap left due to not fully dealing with the feathering issues during editing
*** - maximised at the corner, which therefore wouldn't match further afield along the edges than in this example (I seem to have lost the square-cornered-shading frame I thought I put after that in that sequence, I probably just didn't make that last layer visible again before exporting it all to GIF and bringing it away from that machine for posting)

I could have upscaled it (before or after annotation), but I'm sure you can easily zoom in with a screen-pinch or Ctrl+ command for a closer look.

NB: The shading is just straight darkening (petering off to half a tile away from the vertical edge(s), give or take ramp-slice adjustment), not the hue-biased illuminated shading that Tarn clearly is implementing in the source screenshot. Nor did I (in this example) take the shading boundary beyond the tile boundaries involved (which I'm not sure is currently being done, but perhaps ought to be, e.g. on the diagonal flat tile next out from a convex corner-ramp).

[MoltenIdol]

We'll, that looks way better, and is exactly what i was talking about. Glad somebody understood !
At first, i didnt notice the ramp shadows in your mockup.
Thats the reason i said it might solve the problem in most situations, depending on the material-color of the bridge.

EDIT:
The left wall connecting with the bridge is missing some shadow at the walls south-east corner, connecting the new shadows you are showing, with the old shadow that already exists in the hallway.

And I think the trapeze shadow works really well.
It should basically be applied every time there is a ramp like this. As long as theres is a 'floor tile' for the shade to be cast upon, ofcourse.

[waterphage13]

Will steam version be support per-material sprites with randomisation?

[[HYBRID BEING]]

Something was bugging me about the bridge and I finally realized what. Aren't bridges accessible from each side? The railing (unless it's supposed to be a chain) makes it look like it's only accessible from top and bottom.

[voliol]

The ”floating” platforms could use a border, like the grass does towards the water, or the leaves towards the air.