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[sphr]

Since I'm pretty much occupied with gfx lately, thought I propose another gfx-related idea.
One of the problem with customizing the creature gfx is that I had to try to keep the tiles gender neutral as there is currently no way to specify gfx for genders.  So I will console myself with things like "all dwarves have beard, and we can't really tell males from females under all that facial hair" and things like "all elves are sissies so they look pretty much feminine" and also "All humans in this world are clean shaven."

Another related issues is for creatures with clear male/female gfx... example (throw in example here.  my brain is not working fully.)

So my proposal is for an additional optional gender tag to be added to gfx text data, to be supported by a extended condition in tile selection codepath.

I think the current tile selection precedence order is CREATURE_TYPE > PROFESSION > VARIANT
CREATURE_TYPE is just the creature's species/race, currently represented by the creature tag.
PROFESSION is the creatures profession like DEFAULT, MINER, WRESTLER etc.
VARIANT is one of the following: DEFAULT | GUARD | ROYALGUARD | SKELETON | ZOMBIE | ADVENTURER

Gender tag can be of a precedence order after the variant.

E.g.
Consider this sample specification:

code:

[CREATURE_GRAPHICS:HUMAN]
   [SWORDSMAN:MY_HUMAN_TILEPAGE:1:0:AS_IS : DEFAULT]
   [SWORDSMAN:MY_HUMAN_TILEPAGE:2:0:AS_IS : DEFAULT:FEMALE]
   [BOWMAN:MY_HUMAN_TILEPAGE:1:1:AS_IS : DEFAULT]
   [BOWMAN:MY_HUMAN_TILEPAGE:2:1:AS_IS : DEFAULT:MALE]
   [SPEARMAN:MY_HUMAN_TILEPAGE:1:2:AS_IS : DEFAULT]

   

In the above example, a female human swordsman will use tile 2:0 as specified, but a male human swordsman, for which there is no gender-specific tile specified, will use the gender-neutral tile 1:0.

For bowman, the opposite situation occurs where there is a male specific tile but no female specific tile.  A male bowman takes 2:1 while the female takes the default at 1:1.

For spearman, no gender specific tile at all.  This falls back to exactly the current situation where there is no gender gfx support.

Hope Toady can give this some consideration and perhaps estimate the amount of efforts required + conclude on the feasibility?

EDIT: damn smilies..... lol

[ January 02, 2008: Message edited by: sphr ]

[valcon]

~

 
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[PTTG??]

This sounds like a rather efficient way to run this; sounds great. You might want to have a few other specific tags, for instance, skill levels, current injuries, current happiness. Just imagine if you could observe the happiness of your fortress at a glance just by the faces on the dwarves!

[Rob Allen]

I used unicode characters in my mod to differentiate Elves from Dark Elves.  Elves remain E's, but the Dark Elves are É's.

Maybe something like that could be used for genders (dwarves have their own graphics so we don't need to rely on unicode for them, but humans perhaps.)

Example:

Human Male: U
Human Female: Ü

goblin male: g
goblin female: ģ

and so on...

Edit: on the subjet of happiness, maybe they could flash a ( if they were unhappy.  We don't need one for happy, that's the assumed default.  It's unhappiness you want to watch out for (and we don't need them to be flashing too many symbols at once).  Also, maybe they shouldn't flash the unhappy if they're already flashing injury indicators (it would be assumed that they're unhappy if they're injured).

[ January 02, 2008: Message edited by: Rob Allen ]

[DR]

quote:Originally posted by PTTG??:
<STRONG>This sounds like a rather efficient way to run this; sounds great. You might want to have a few other specific tags, for instance, skill levels, current injuries, current happiness. Just imagine if you could observe the happiness of your fortress at a glance just by the faces on the dwarves!</STRONG>

At least until we're able to play around with larger sprites (ie, when the viewport restriction is removed) most of these wouldn't really be practical.

[Red Jackard]

Yeah, would only only work with something like this.

The idea of telling a mood just by glancing at the face is a really good one though. See dwarves walking through the fort with   or   :confused:

The gender tag is a good idea, too.

[sphr]

Just realised this is redundant post.  It is already listed as Bloat368.  Sorry for the dupped idea.

[Tahin]

Can I just mention that this idea has no place in the Dwarven world, and male and female dwarves look identical to the non-Dwarven eye. Maybe for humans and such, though.

[Red Jackard]

quote:Originally posted by Tahin:
<STRONG>Can I just mention that this idea has no place in the Dwarven world, and male and female dwarves look identical to the non-Dwarven eye. Maybe for humans and such, though.</STRONG>

Another misguided soul under sway of such obvious elven propaganda. I can only feel pity for you.

[ January 03, 2008: Message edited by: Red Jackard ]