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[G-Flex]

If you're using layers, there's almost no point to using an isometric perspective in the first place. And even then, you have to worry about stuff like occlusion.

We've just had way too many threads about this, and the problems related to the idea have been rehashed enough times. And that image doesn't help, particularly with how dishonest/flawed it is in its representation.

[MagicJuggler]

Um...isometric and layers is how the XCOM games did it, and there was no issue with them then. Dwarf Fortress with Xcom: UFO defense-styled isometric graphics would be pretty awesome.

[MuonDecay]

This image reminds me of an idea for a revamped height system. Instead of current Z-levels, we would have Z-levels that are only 1/7th the height. This way we could have smooth water to land transitions, no more ambiguous "floors" which seem to have no thickness, it would be easier to make a system for rainwater collection, ramps would be obsolete as creatures could "climb" smooth differentials in height naturally and huge creatures like the titan and the bronze tinman could climb steeper heights(Imagine a one of them stepping over your walls).

I know that this a little ambitious, but it would give a lot of improvements to the game.

That system would indeed perfectly resolve a long list of DF's more absurd quirks and also yield a less artifical feeling world. But it's also such a significant change that despite being very much awesome and more realistic than the current system, it's unlikely to ever be anything other than hypothetical.

The Terrain Data will be 7 times bigger too .

That is really of little practical concern. Storage space is dirt cheap, and getting cheaper by the month.

Increasing the space required 7 fold is not even a dent out of a pretty inexpensive hard drive. The only things this would impact significantly would be laptops and some older macs.

Even then, you could fit your entire DF directory into a single $10 MicroSD card or dirt-bloody-cheap DVD-R. I have multiple versions of DF each containing multiple regions in a folder which takes up all of ~310mb.

The criticism is factually correct however the net effect is like saying that packing things a different way would require an additional 100 cubic feet... out of the entire empty hull of a cargo freighter. It's not all that troubling.

[nagual678]

If you're using layers, there's almost no point to using an isometric perspective in the first place. And even then, you have to worry about stuff like occlusion.

We've just had way too many threads about this, and the problems related to the idea have been rehashed enough times. And that image doesn't help, particularly with how dishonest/flawed it is in its representation.

Isn't the visibility you get from isometric perspective still better than constantly switching the layer the view is on ? And occlusion can be solved by simply letting the user rotate the view by 90 degrees increments.

How is the image giving a dishonest or flawed representation ?

[dyze]

If you're using layers, there's almost no point to using an isometric perspective in the first place. And even then, you have to worry about stuff like occlusion.

We've just had way too many threads about this, and the problems related to the idea have been rehashed enough times. And that image doesn't help, particularly with how dishonest/flawed it is in its representation.

uh the point is, it looks good.
what is up with you ascii purists anyway? everytime there's a thread on the topic of graphics its instantly attacked by one of you, taking the thread off-topic. its not like adding a full graphical mode would deprive you of anything.

[dreiche2]

If you're using layers, there's almost no point to using an isometric perspective in the first place. And even then, you have to worry about stuff like occlusion.

We've just had way too many threads about this, and the problems related to the idea have been rehashed enough times. And that image doesn't help, particularly with how dishonest/flawed it is in its representation.

uh the point is, it looks good.
what is up with you ascii purists anyway? everytime there's a thread on the topic of graphics its instantly attacked by one of you, taking the thread off-topic. its not like adding a full graphical mode would deprive you of anything.

Seeing that the guy only outed himself as anti-isometrist, not ASCII-purist, I think it's unwise to speak generally against the latter population if you actually want to avoid that general discussion...

[Tormy]

Um...isometric and layers is how the XCOM games did it, and there was no issue with them then. Dwarf Fortress with Xcom: UFO defense-styled isometric graphics would be pretty awesome.

Exactly, but there are many other games using this display method also.

[bartavelle]

That is really of little practical concern. Storage space is dirt cheap, and getting cheaper by the month.

There still would be an issue with RAM. A 6x6 map with 40 z levels uses 27megs for tile data only (vectors and mineral events are not calculated here). Multiply by 7 and it will eat 187 megs. Plus, just everything else will probably use more RAM ..

Sparse storage could help.

[G-Flex]

That is really of little practical concern. Storage space is dirt cheap, and getting cheaper by the month.

Increasing the space required 7 fold is not even a dent out of a pretty inexpensive hard drive. The only things this would impact significantly would be laptops and some older macs.

The issue wouldn't be storage space; it would be CPU and RAM usage. You'd have seven times the amount of "tiles" in the game, and this would make calculating things a lot more challenging. Also, you could no longer assume that the game has a cubic grid for any purposes, making a lot of things (especially volumetrics) potentially more difficult.



Also: No, occlusion issues *can't* simply be solved by rotating the view. After all, what happens when you have, say, a 10x10 wall section with a single space in the middle dug out? You'd have to start getting into things like transparency in order to make it work. After all, we're talking about a game where you can be expected to look at every single tile sometimes.


And no, I'm not an "ASCII purist". Hell, I use a graphics pack because the concept of playing such a complicated game in pure, abstract text sort of frightened me (which I guess is my own fault), and I'm fully in support of DF having things like better color support (I don't see any reason why it needs a distinct 16-color pallette) and, at some point, better support for tilesets as well. I'm just trying to make the point that isometric graphics would be a much bigger headache to implement than anybody seems to give them credit for.

[baby_peacock]

A solution for the occlusion problem commonly seen in games is to make the occluding walls semi-transparent. Another way to address the issue is to allow the user to toggle the display of all walls on the current level. This is sort of similar to setting the cut-off height to one level lower, except all objects and characters on the current level would still be visible.

Anyways, my point is that occlusion for isometric view games is hardly an unsolvable problem.

[Soadreqm]

How about true 3d that you can rotate to all directions? Brain implants granting 4-dimensional vision are also an option, since late Interface Arc stuff is currently sceduled to take place some time after the Technological Singularity.

But yeah, the picture is pretty. And that smooth elevation thing is almost necessary, if we ever want to have proper brooks. Too bad all of this will happen in the far, far future, if at all.

[Tormy]

By the way, I've created a topic a while ago about the Presentation Arc:
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=21099.0

It's a quite long topic, but lot of good infos/chit-chat about the topic can be found in it.

Also take a look at this screenshot, and tell me that the isometric system wouldn't work in DF. [Keep in mind, I prefer the 2d top-down gfx system, this image is just an example.]

[Mike Mayday]

The increase in memory usage would be negligible if only the SURFACE tiles received partial height. The tiles underground should remain 7/7 same material unless you designate them specifically to be mined otherwise.

[MagicJuggler]

This however brings up the question of underground caves; we can safely assume that in general when you mine you'll have solid ground but it may not always be the case. Additionally, we can assume that air is entirely open-space except at designated low-oxygen zones, or when gas is inside an area (which would simply be a fluid that traveled radially)...

[Mike Mayday]

Well, the SURFACE of a cave floor could also be measured naturally 1/7th, but I don't see a reason to have the ceiling this way (since we wouldn't be able to view it comfortably).