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[Toady One]

I had to change how creatures are saved and loaded on the world map in order for more of them to be active at one time.  It's sort of a tie in to caravans and armies which will be up on the menu shortly after the alpha is out.  The req itself was just a little perk related to all of that...  it's the reorganization that's been annoying.  Should be several more days still, but I'm on about the schedule I expected.

[ June 05, 2006: Message edited by: Toady One ]

[Beleghoul]

It seems that Req 248 is causing some serious eye strain.

[Toady One]

Yes, it's quite irritating.  It should be gone in three or four days.  I wonder if I can think of enough pictures for that.

[Toady One]

That one is now out of the way, though there are still some areas where it needs testing.  In any case, now I'm moving on to Core31, another nuthin.  I'll also be finishing up some of those map-related tasks that I began before, like making your fortress start locations look like they do on the world map.  I haven't finished certain aspects of that yet, although it's mostly correct now.

60 days until August 8th, at which point the alpha thingy will sort of appear and continue to be worked on.

[Curiousepic]

quote:Originally posted by Toady One:
<STRONG>like making your fortress start locations look like they do on the world map. </STRONG>

Does this mean no more straight north-south rock walls?

Hi, btw, just stumbled across this from the UnRealWorld forums, and it looks simply scrumptious    One question though, I appreciate the fact that it's pure ASCII at this point, but with the code you're using, WILL it be possible to add tile graphics at some point?

[Toady One]

It would take a little bit of work to add graphics, but it wouldn't be the end of the world or anything -- I think people might want the mouse first though.  Either way, we'll figure out what kind of priorities these are once everybody has played a bit.  I don't want to rush into it or commit to anything at this point.

Anyway, there are lots of people that would say this isn't pure ASCII since I'm using the IBM extended characters.  I did put in a little hack to support the 128 character people, but...  well, there's a limit on the information you can convey with lower ASCII!  It's almost impossible to play (although I haven't tried to select the 128 characters carefully).  TT suggested as a joke having a chair in 128 mode be displayed as C-H-A-I-R cycling through the letters one by one.  I'm not sure what else the purists could want...  there are too many important distinctions to make with the furniture, especially if I want to reserve letters for creatures.  If you don't reserve letters for creatures, people that are used to these text games would get heart attacks whenever they build an emerald door.

Right now, the cliffs are still straight, although that wasn't supposed to be north-south, since the perspective is relative.  What I'm working on now is making swamp sites look like swamp sites, and making glacial sites look like glacial sites, deserts like deserts etc.  At first, everything was just a temperate forest.  Most of the changes are done, but there are a few outstanding issues mainly with trees and wildlife.

Later on, I'd like to allow different cliff shapes, for a variety of reasons -- right now, it would be a bit of a hassle, since the dwarves can think about things like "inside" and "outside" really easily the way it is now (they just look at the x coordinate).  On the other hand, I've also got these other map bits that let them tell inside from outside in a different way, so it's easy to change...  but there are lots of things to work on...

[Solara]

Tiles would be a great addition, though  of course not completely necessary.

I'll happily play without graphics, but I'm not a purist by any stretch of the imagination*, and if they were added I'd probably take them over ASCII any day. I never was able to go back to vanilla Nethack after I discovered Slash'Em, for instance.

*except when in comes to interactive fiction, in which case keep your filthy pictures away from my game! Ahem...

[ June 10, 2006: Message edited by: Solara ]

[Aristharus]

I'm exactly the opposite to Solara. I'm pretty sure I'd stick with the ASCII version if there'd be the option to choose tiles.

I've never been able to play Slash'Em, or any other modification of Nethack which introduced graphics..

[Toady One]

I could only play tile games that started with tiles, like early Ultima or old SSI types games, etc.  If it started in ASCII, making the adjustment is too hard for me.  That said, it depends on demand...  there aren't thaaat many pictures, and I've done a lot with graphics.  The ASCII is rendered as OpenGL quads from a bitmap image as it stands -- the main obstacle (aside from the artwork) is having the terrain/units render themselves to a non-curses style buffer.  Right now there's a 80x25x(character + color) buffer.  It would have to be extended to allow abstract tiles, possibly with color variations etc etc.  Like I said, before I'd touch it, we'd need to be very clear on where it's headed and what the limitations are.  Or we'd end up with another Armok-style game...

[Curiousepic]

Well I'd be happy to do some pixel art for the game if you'd like.  It might be cool to do tiles that are monochromatic (per tile), just like the current Ascii(ish) graphics are, to keep the old-school aesthetic, but be a lot more distinguishable/accessable to players apprehensive of character graphics.

Pixel art is one of my obsessions, though I haven't done any in a while.. I have a thing where I can't seem to produce any art unless it's FOR something, and this would be a good opportunity, and would be fun to try out a new style (very low-bit, monochromatic).

[Gezol]

I guess I'm in the middle on tiles. I think you can never really go wrong with ASCII, and that's generally what I prefer with these things... but on the other hand, I pretty much exclusively play the tile version of Dungeon Crawl now. That's probably because it's an unusually good tileset- I like the art style, you can customize the look of your character, there's little bits of attention to detail like different things having different blood colors when they die, etc.

Nethack, on the other hand... The tiles there were kind of ugly and simple, as I recall. I went back to ASCII pretty quickly. (The weird thing is that I think the same people did both sets.)

So, when it comes to what this means for Dwarf Fortress- I get the feeling I'll prefer ASCII with it, but we'll see. It seems like it would be a huge amount of work to make it a good tileset- there's just so much stuff in the game. I do kind of like the idea of monochromatic tiles, though. If they could capture that really old school Ultima/Phantasie feel, I definitely think I might use them...

[Toady One]

Of course, if we went to CGA tiles, we'd be using fewer colors than I'm using now.  We could even have an RGB/CYM mode switching button.  It would be like Adventure Construction Set or something...  was ACS CGA?  I don't even remember.  Or Temple of Apshaii, however you spell that.  I think Bug's Bunny Cartoon workshop was EGA...  we did so many horrible things with that.  If you take the balloon that pops after 8 frames and color it monochrome red, then move it off screen, you can bring it back on screen right when the pop frame shows up.  Then superimpose that over Bugs Bunny and it looks like Elmer Fudd shoots him in the face.  Special stuff.

[Gezol]

Wow, I haven't thought of Adventure Construction Set in a long time. I had it on the Apple ||c, where it was one of my favorite games. (Temple of Apshai, too. That one was almost a roguelike.) I don't know about the PC version, but it was four colors on the Apple, like most things on there. The Apple || color set was green, pink, blue, and orange. Back then, of course, that was all you needed as far as we were concerned. I'm not sure I would go for CGA tiles, but that's mostly because my nostalgia is triggered by the Apple II's four colors, as opposed to the CGA ones. By the time I got my first PC, things were in EGA.

It probably wouldn't kill the old-school look to keep the color range, though. I think that look is more created by the graphical style than anything else. The game already has way more detail than anything that was made back then... still, I kind of like the idea of a mode-switching button. Options are good.

[Captain_Action]

Man, you guys were deprived as children. My atari 800 could render the monsters in Apshai in many colours, animate them even!

Seriously, if you are iffy on graphical tiles then you should play IVAN for few hundred games. The tile system they used is great.

For me I don't care which way the Dwarf Fortress goes.

[ June 12, 2006: Message edited by: Captain_Action ]

[Aristharus]

I love IVAN's graphics. The tiles are very well made and the way you see your equipment on your character is cool. So are the blood spatters and other liquids (sweat, vomit etc). It's strangely satisfying to hit a zombie with an axe only to see the zombie's arm flying off and your clothes and all the adjacent tiles covered in blood.