Have you seen what the artists have come up with for animal people so far? Generic human body with interchangable head. Works at tiny pixel art scale. Just as positioning a tiny axe near a tiny pixel-being's hands works OK. Would like to see it work as a hi-res actual picture. Not at all convinced so far.
I personally don't see the need for high-res, its the system itself that is impotent as the official art can be lower res and if people want they can mod in high res versions, if Toady makes the system then players can mod it to their personal preference and given that even games like Minecraft have high-res texture packs I can see that being done though modding here as well.
But high res portraits can only be modded into the game if the games supports a portrait system in the first place.
At least show me 7-8 variations of a forgotten beast as a hi-res portrait using just generic pieces.
Kind of hard to do as I'm no artist and forgotten beasts aren't exactly a common thing that artist make, but its not impossible, doing the art for forgotten beasts would be the hardest art in game but forgotten beasts are made form the components of existing creatures, if the artist are going to do the art of say a giant nematode then they'll need versions of it for undead critters which means skinless, rotten and skeletal variants of the giant nematode pieces add in proc-gen species pieces like 3 eyed and eyeless heads and you have a basic system which could call upon a vast verity of parts when the proc-gen needs to make a skinless three eye nematode with deadly gases or some other random thing.
I think its hypothetically plausible, might as well try.
Your idea is fine, you are also, I think, vastly underestimating the time and resources needed to see it through.
Lots of time, in fact time is the resources that is most used making something like this, but it is imho definitely doable on DF's development time scale, its already slowly developed and most of the work this would need over time and is something that Toady doesn't even do so aside from his work needed in setting up the system it can be worked on independent of Toady and not effect DF's long term development.
And, besides, no, Indie games don't need hi-res graphics to become "popular". Have you played Caves of Qud? Unreal World? These vastly outsell Dwarf Fortress thanks to Steam but don't rely on flashy graphics
If you think that Caves of Qud and Unreal World are popular then we have very different opinion upon what popular means, Minecraft is a popular indie title as despite its sale it was still developed indie.
Seeing as how DF is not for sale yet I don't know how you can say that they outsell DF with a straight face, yes the product that is currently being sold outsells the one that is not being sold means nothing until DF is also being sold.
My whole point is
More popular not just popular, I think that DF will sell reasonable well as is because people will want to try the infamous Dwarf Fortress but I also think there will be better word of mouth sales and wider overall appeal if DF has portraits, what takes 10 seconds to read can be seen in a single second.
Anyway, until one of the artists chimes in to say, hey yeah, this is easy I guess this back and forth isn't going anywhere.
True, also have to consider if this particular type of art is in their wheel house as it could be harder or easier depending upon the artists personal experience.
Every monster in the game. Yes, the procedurally generated main races that you can play in the game in the next release and will be able to replace all of the races with after Mythgen. Pixel art should just about be able to cope with these. Portrait images...well, lets wait and see what the artists themselves actually think about that.
Long term making the system handle everything is of course ideal and that's why DF long development waits are in fact good for this feature, if the system is made and implemented in a way where it can be expended by modder's then it should be possible to cover all things intricately as the artist can continue to expand what is represented during the big wait for myth gen, thats the thing if DF sell more then the dev can hire the artist for longer which can then work on continues expansion of the art assets.
Not hi-res? then why have them?
Because I want the system/feature more then the art itself? I play DF in ascii but only because I prefer adventure mode and tilesets need TWBT to work right and that fucks up adventure mode but I really like the idea of being able to see the character as I'm talking to them rather then having to look up their description and then talk to them.
You want a pixel art image to appear next to your pixel art character and somehow convey facial expressions?
I'm pretty sure lower res art can convey emotion, the idea is you make the facial features eye type 1, eye type 2, eye type 3 ect and then make variants of each of those to cover the emotions, use a script to colour the eyes iris using colour code.
human eye type 1 - variant 1 - stoic
human eye type 1 - variant 2 - happy
human eye type 1 - variant 3 - sad
Things like ears or face can be made to "flush" red when embarrassed or go pale when scared with colour codes tied to NPC emotions and then you have one render of the character that includes face and body and allow you to see as a player the emotions of NPCs, if you look closely even the example art I posted has mild facial expressions as even small changes to the eyes, mouth and colouring of the face can do a lot to show the player information about a characters emotional state and it can be exaggerated if need be.
And I said, it's a great idea. Fine suggestion. But op seemed to think it was an easy thing just because there are some artists with time on their hands.
Like most things ease is relative, I think a portrait system is simple when compared to the overall goals of DF's development, when you think about the end goals for DF a portrait system is quite simple and easy by comparison.
You know you'll need a set of features for every sapient race in the game right? You can't just make a "happy expression" for an elephant man and assume it'll work for the crab people. So, it's like the tilesets, which is already a huge amount of work, but multiplied by 10 or so. I guess many of the birds can share eyes to cut down on the workload.
I know that , I just see it as an obstacle to be overcome not a reason not to do it, with animal people I personally imagine it being like, cats eye types 1-5, dogs eye types 1-5, equine eyes types 1-5, and its closer to increasing the work load by 100-1000, but given that their will be a whole lot of time during the big wait that is plenty of time to expand it and if DF sells well enough plenty of funding for it as well.
Meh, if that's what the artists want to do, it's cool. Seems like focussing a lot of money and energy where it's not really needed.
Or, if there's cool AI shortcuts that can manage it, would love to hear about that.
I just remember when Toady first annouced that DF would be going to Steam and why, one thing that personally bothered me was he said that if DF did really well to the point of making more then he'd ever need he'd give it away and my first though was "NO! you reinvest that money into the product you're making so you can make it better" So I would much rather toady spend any extra money on more art then give it away to charity.
IMHO If Toady makes the system it'll bring in more money then it costs and only the initial setting up of the system needs Toady's work, once the system is made, so long as its made raw accessible then it can be expanded independent of Toady which imho means while its not needed its not a waste and is in fact a benefit.
Also its really about what Toady wants to do, if he's hiring artist then they make what they're told to and while I understand that the current artists are long time community members and contracted for the tileset and therefore not bound to a portrait system if neither of them wants to make a portrait system Toady could hire other artists that will, I doubt he would tho so I hope they would at least try and see if it is possible.
Note: I only bring this up because the analogy that immediately came to my mind was hiring a painter to paint my house, he accepts and takes the money but then refuses when he finds out I want it painted hot pink, if you took the money then you better get to painting or else give my money back so I can hire someone that will.
I imagine that DeepFake GAN's could be purposed into making something like this but it would be all new, need a massive data set, so still lots of art and whom ever did it successfully would make more selling it to animation companies then Bay12.
I don't actually think this suggestion will make it in I just felt the need to say it because now would be the best time to implement it, just as DF goes main
steam and right before the myth-gen big wait giving artists years to work on the art for everything.
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Topic: Paper doll portraits for the Steam release. (Read 6739 times)