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[Ethnar]

Hello there,

I've been playing this game for quite a while already, I simply love it. It's awesome work.

There's just one thing that can't get off my mind at the moment - the look of bins.
I've spent about 2 hours looking for any hints regarding possible change to no avail. Not a single note, suggestion, question.

The problem is: in the tileset I'm currently using (my own mix of many, many tilesets) bin looks.. well, it simply doesn't look - it's just 3 brown pixels.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For what I know bins are using inverted "X" graphics, but due to the fact my current tileset (and many I've seen) it's used to represent stairs, with only 3 pixels that are transparent. I'm already used to floodgates/cursors looking like that, no problem at all (they are not inverted), but my eyes hurts seeing those black holes.

From what I've read on wiki it seems bin icon cannot be changed by editing raw files. I was trying to poke around for some mods, but none mentions any changes in items symbols.

What I'm asking is - did I miss anything? Can I somehow change it in my working version of DF? Or perhaps it'd be a valid suggestion to change this symbol in future releases?

If all else fails I guess I'll have to have bin-less fortress..

Thanks,
Ethnar

[Sowelu]

Is there any chance you'd get better results by making your bins out of a different material?

Just throwing it out there...

[puke]

or, since its an ambiguous tile with multiple uses, and sice it appears in TEXT anyway, you could just use the regular ASCII for that one.

personally, i cant stand tile sets that substitute images ambiguously or put graphics in places that will mess up text displays.  i'd rather use a nice looking ascii set until a full tile-based interface is available.  or until something like lifevis becomes fully useable for play.

[Ethnar]

Is there any chance you'd get better results by making your bins out of a different material?

Just throwing it out there...

AFAIK bins can be made only using wood. Correct me if I'm mistaken.

or, since its an ambiguous tile with multiple uses, and sice it appears in TEXT anyway, you could just use the regular ASCII for that one.

personally, i cant stand tile sets that substitute images ambiguously or put graphics in places that will mess up text displays.  i'd rather use a nice looking ascii set until a full tile-based interface is available.  or until something like lifevis becomes fully useable for play.

It's just a matter of personal preference. I like it the graphic way, you prefer chars until each symbol has only one meaning. And that's cool. I'm just asking if there's a way to enhance my experience. And I'm really used to that look of stairs already, floodgates looks neat with that icon too actually - I'm not going to switch back to ASCII.

Any other suggestions how to change bin symbol?

[Tormy]

personally, i cant stand tile sets that substitute images ambiguously or put graphics in places that will mess up text displays.  i'd rather use a nice looking ascii set until a full tile-based interface is available.  or until something like lifevis becomes fully useable for play.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. This is why I am preferring ASCII sets now. We must be patient....txt/gfx separation is on the dev list. 

[Rilder]

Is there any chance you'd get better results by making your bins out of a different material?

Just throwing it out there...

AFAIK bins can be made only using wood. Correct me if I'm mistaken.

They can be made out of metals.

[Ethnar]

Ah, thanks for the notice.

But I presume it still uses inverted X char, isn't it? In any case, I'm going to make one metal bin soon, it's least some hope, slim - but still hope.

EDIT:
Neat... it actually gives better result, X is not inverted. Thanks for the tip, it'll make it far more bearable.
Still, I'd be nice if there's any possibility to change it to some other char.

[SolarShado]

AFAIK, bins, u/d stairs, and floodgates are all hardcoded. Nothing in the raws that you can change. I recall seing a tileset (Mayday, i think) that used just an X. You could try making your own.

[Ethnar]

AFAIK, bins, u/d stairs, and floodgates are all hardcoded. Nothing in the raws that you can change. I recall seing a tileset (Mayday, i think) that used just an X. You could try making your own.

Yup, I already mentioned I read on wiki (here to be precise) it's nothing that can be changed in raws.
Sure I could go and change the icon for something more suitable for bins, but there are some things (habit, disliking bins a bit in general) that made me seek for alternate solution.

As for the hardcoded data - anyone got an idea where this kind of information is actually stored (exe, data/objects/)? It'd be perfect if simple hex-edit could get the job done, thou I have no idea where to start looking for it.

Now that I think of it... it'd be nice to change the tile used by grass too.. or square brackets.. or "O".. ^.-
There are still couple unused chars according to that wiki page I linked... *ponders on possibilities*

[SolarShado]

There's an option in init.txt for grass (all floors actually) that you might want to use. I forget exactly what it's called, but it'll change your floors from random "`'.," to all '.'s, IIRC.

OT: I wonder why the mayday set doesn't use that?

[Shoku]

When we say something is hard coded we mean that it's part of the .exe and not in any of those files we can edit.

If you got rid of those 3 transparent pixels perhaps the game would handle it like a regular font graphic and just invert the colord vs black space?

[Ethnar]

There's an option in init.txt for grass (all floors actually) that you might want to use. I forget exactly what it's called, but it'll change your floors from random "`'.," to all '.'s, IIRC.

I already did that, first time I was editing my init.txt, thanks. I only meant to use something different than "." for grass so texts won't get messed up.


EDIT:

When we say something is hard coded we mean that it's part of the .exe and not in any of those files we can edit.

Is there some hope for that I can change that one byte in exe? ^.- Guess not...
Anyone thinks it'd be a valid suggestion?

If you got rid of those 3 transparent pixels perhaps the game would handle it like a regular font graphic and just invert the colord vs black space?

Thanks for the tip, but it just makes it completely black.

[Shoku]

How do you narrow in on a hex value that never changes?

[Ethnar]

I thought about looking for clusters with similar format, that store symbol information on items. But I'm aware that it's nearly impossible. Especially that taking simplest scenario (i.e. assume that bin symbol is saved as 0x58) it's even more ridiculous, that one value has thousands of occurrences (too lazy to check, but I expect some common assembler call is using that byte).

It's beyond hope now, I'll resort to metal bins for now, waiting for split between graphics and ascii.

[Shoku]

Does the making those 3 pixels not transparent thing do nothing?