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[Draco18s]

With the darkening, I think you could do it if you made the first layer below be significantly more dark than every other iteration (ie. 40% darker, then only 15% darker for every other layer rather than just 15% for all of them).

[Silverionmox]

Another advantage might be to make it possible to designate trees for cutting on a hillside more easily.

[G-Flex]

Any tests with this right now should use lots of weirdly-colored and diverse tiles, in order to examine how, say, depth-by-darkening or depth-by-fog would interact with having hillsides made out of eighty different materials, trees, etc.

Also, just throwing an idea out there, not sure if it would work: Throwing an actual textured effect layer on top of the lower levels, instead of just a simple darken/blend. I have no idea if this would work out well, but it would definitely provide enough distinction between levels. Even some kind of slightly animated fog or something, although DF isn't really much into animation at all at the moment.

[Granite26]

Another advantage might be to make it possible to designate trees for cutting on a hillside more easily.

I don't really like the idea, but this is a valid concern.

Wouldn't it be better to make trees really tall and selectable from any level?

[[NO_THOUGHT]]

I think a more grid approach would work best.

ex.       FNM    (current level)        #NM  (next level below where # is black)
           NCH                                 NCH
           VCX                                  VCX

           #NM   (two levels below)   #NM  (third level below ect.)
           NC#                                 NC#
           VCX                                  #CX

These blacked out tiles could be either whole tiles or single pixels. The single pixels would work great but not if you like using a 6x6 tileset. In this case you'd probably want the whole tile approach. This way creates it's own visual effect on the eyes by dithering (alternate two colors to produce a third). You could use black for lower levels and white for higher levels (vice verse if your eyes are wired different then mine). Of course the tile/pixel and colors for lower/higher levels could be init options.

[penguinofhonor]

With the darkening, I think you could do it if you made the first layer below be significantly more dark than every other iteration (ie. 40% darker, then only 15% darker for every other layer rather than just 15% for all of them).

This sounds good. I want to see a mockup of this. ACE91's darkening mockup looks brilliant, but I want to see how it would work with multiple colors and I think that making the current level significantly brighter than the next one down would help a lot.

[Draco18s]

With the darkening, I think you could do it if you made the first layer below be significantly more dark than every other iteration (ie. 40% darker, then only 15% darker for every other layer rather than just 15% for all of them).

This sounds good. I want to see a mockup of this. ACE91's darkening mockup looks brilliant, but I want to see how it would work with multiple colors and I think that making the current level significantly brighter than the next one down would help a lot.

I'd do one, but grabbing the bitmaps and cutting out the unwanted part is a b*tch.

[Footkerchief]

With the darkening, I think you could do it if you made the first layer below be significantly more dark than every other iteration (ie. 40% darker, then only 15% darker for every other layer rather than just 15% for all of them).

This sounds good. I want to see a mockup of this. ACE91's darkening mockup looks brilliant, but I want to see how it would work with multiple colors and I think that making the current level significantly brighter than the next one down would help a lot.

I'd do one, but grabbing the bitmaps and cutting out the unwanted part is a b*tch.

It really is.  I was going to do one in Gimp by turning all the sky-colored areas into a transparent alpha layer, which is easy, but ironically the game's current approximation of a depth effect messes it up -- you can't turn the black background into an alpha layer, because pretty much everything has a black background.

If there was a way to make the "dot" tile the game uses for Z-minus-1 tiles into a solid block of a fixed color...

[Xonara]

ACE91's examples are fantastic. DO WANT

[Tormy]

I like this idea, so I did a little GIMP magic and created examples for both the depth-by-darkening effect, and the depth-by-fog effect that a previous poster mentioned. I use a fairly large tileset, so the images are pretty big.

Depth by darkening:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Depth by fog:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Nice, thanks for making those.

The darkened one looks really good -- I'd definitely use that.

Agreed. 

[Silverionmox]

Another advantage might be to make it possible to designate trees for cutting on a hillside more easily.

I don't really like the idea, but this is a valid concern.

Wouldn't it be better to make trees really tall and selectable from any level?

I'm looking forward to non-bonsai trees, too. Selecting at any level would work as well, as soon as that is implemented. Especially since one wants to cut down mature trees, not saplings.

[Draco18s]

I'm looking forward to non-bonsai trees, too. Selecting at any level would work as well, as soon as that is implemented. Especially since one wants to cut down mature trees, not saplings.

Last I checked you can't designate a sapling for cutting.

[Silverionmox]

As a figure of speech, of course. Real trees at dwarf height aren't much more than saplings, unless they're bonsais.

[Mikademus]

I like this idea, so I did a little GIMP magic and created examples for both the depth-by-darkening effect, and the depth-by-fog effect that a previous poster mentioned. I use a fairly large tileset, so the images are pretty big.

Depth by darkening:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Depth by fog:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Nice, thanks for making those.

The darkened one looks really good -- I'd definitely use that.

The fogged one looks weird, but mostly because it looks like the hillside is covered with smoke -- I think the fog is too light gray.

The reason the fog looks weird is because ACE91 selected an unfortunate landscape to showcase. Against black background atmospheric fogging would create increasingly gray zones, but it would look much more natural against a green landscape.

When viewing from above you wouldn't visibly get blue-tinted fog because it takes much longer distances of atmospheric refraction to achieve that effect. Though it would probably look prettier with a gentle blueness to the fog colour.

[Footkerchief]

Bump because I thought of an alternative method -- blur.  Rather than fog or darken tiles on lower z-levels (or in addition to doing so), you could add a slight blur effect, kind of like a poor man's depth-of-field.  This would certainly help the top level stand out.  I think it could look pretty cool.

Obviously performance would be a concern, but I found this Gamasutra article on fast blurring algorithms for games.