Print

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

[Meph]

I'm currently working a bit on furniture, which is more involved in the Steam version than just one sprite for each piece.

For example the spritesheet for a bed looks like this right now:



As you can see there are four materials (wood, stone, metal and glass), and a difference in quality from left to right. Then a selection of pillows for some variety, and different decorations, scratches and spatter.

Some examples:


Right now I'm looking at armorstands and weapon racks; trying to implement a similar system, but there are so few pixels on these thin stands, that I can't show much in terms of quality or wear. Instead I'd go for the armor or weapon on it to show this. What do you guys think? It's technically completely incorrect, since the quality of the armorstand shouldn't affect what armor is shows, but using the armor is the best visual tool I have to easily show the difference to the player.

[Starver]

Could you make crooked/askew stands and racks for low-quality? Getting progressively more 'well built' until you can 'glow' the top tier?

If you ever have to overlay the particular armour or weapon stood or racked upon it[1], is there latitude to skew and/or (more easily) shift the subsprite helmet/etc according to where the leaning stand's 'head' ends up? So you wouldn't have to customise armour-for-wobbly-stand vs armour-for-stoutly-constructed-stand add-overs, that is.


Just my first thoughts. Probably silly. Totally divorced from the necessary art or coding, so maybe imagining more freedom of expression than you/Tarn are considering catering for.


[1] I suppose you could count the stand like the race-specific 'dolls' you adorn with the true(ish) wearables, the rack would 'wield' a weapon in a somewhat different fashion.

[PatrikLundell]

For the armor stand I'd consider using the base to indicate quality. That way it doesn't matter if the rest of it is covered by more or less actual armor. Also, for at least my play style there are three quality levels that are important: less than masterworks, masterworks, and artifact. The reason for that is that anything less than masterworks should be replaced eventually, but I won't go through the hassle of doing gradual upgrades. Thus, from my point of view the differences between the lower qualities can be very small, so small that you don't really see it unless you look carefully at them standing beside each other, while I'd like to be able to see that I've got a masterworks item in place (I use the same replacement strategy for all furniture, by the way: when needed, place the best one available and then upgrade to masterworks when one becomes available).

[Manveru Taurënér]

Yeah, I'd put my vote for not showing quality levels at all if it just risks causing confusion for little gain, which would very much be the case with armor stands.

(if those appearances could show based on the actual armor that's on the armor stand that'd be amazing tho)

[Meph]

Sure, if dwarves would actually store weapons and armor properly, the graphics could represent that. I thought they are still bugged. I know DFhack has a fix for it, but regular DF doesn't.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Sure, if dwarves would actually store weapons and armor properly, the graphics could represent that. I thought they are still bugged. I know DFhack has a fix for it, but regular DF doesn't.

You're going to design your graphics based on bugs?
Seems like a good opportunity to fix armour stands rather than design confusing placeholders.

[Meph]

Yes, I'm designing my graphics based on the game people will play, including weapon racks that never store any weapons.

That armor stand/weapon rack bug has been in the game for ages, and I'm not fixing anything, since I don't have any access to any code.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Yes, I'm designing my graphics based on the game people will play, including weapon racks that never store any weapons.

That armor stand/weapon rack bug has been in the game for ages, and I'm not fixing anything, since I don't have any access to any code.

This is the official graphics pack thread, isn't it?
You personally may not fix the code, but the person who does is involved in the Steam update, is he not? Do the meetings you all used to have no longer take place?

[Meph]

When there are sprites to be done, or systems to be figured out, we discuss it almost daily on a forum. Tarn knows of the bug of course, and I mentioned the way I'd set up racks/stands to him before I made this thread. He thinks it's ok to do it the way I proposed above, because the bug most likely won't be fixed for the steam release.

It's out of my hands, I can just mention bugs, it doesn't mean they will disappear.