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That's right

That is right

[DennyTom]

"If you ever wished that Dwarf Fortress ever looked like FarmVille," erm...

Yes, this is awesome. But unfortunately I refuse to play DF until the new verions here

I guess this is because of the dwarf sprite. He really looks like a farmer.

Anyway ... the windmill looks very good!

[Christes]

Huzzah! An animated Windmill that links appropriately with Mechanisms!
Yeah, its a simple 2-frame affair, and looks kinda like it jiggs back and forth until your brain is fooled by the illusion, but there you go!

Sweet!

I love 2-frame animations.  You can view it going forward, backward, and back-and-forth all within a 5-second interval.

[Solifuge]

>_<; That dwarf sprite is a farmer/peasant. Thats the only one I did, and it was done in 10 minutes... but yeah, we need moar dwarf, IMHO.

As for a list of needed sprites, I'm cooking that one up now.

List of Constructable Materials, and what they look like:
Natural Stone (Smoothed)
Raw Stone (Cobblestones)
Stone Blocks (Bricks)
Raw Wood (Trunks/Branches)
Wood Blocks (Planks)
Metal (Forged Bars/Plates)
Glass Blocks (Carved/Shaped)

[Impaler[WrG]]

Hey guys congrats on all the publicity, I've always felt DF would be at least 10 times as popular if it had a decent UI and my Khazad project has been my own attempt at demonstrating that, I've also focused a lot on having a good button based UI and mouse controls for the camera.  The latest version is now available and it demonstrates what I think is the best possible 3D interpretation of DF and while I liked a lot of the things that Khazad dose I'm now convinced that 3D models of tree, buildings and creatures aren't going to work, they are too slow to render and artists are in too short a supply to produce whats needed, so I'm planning to switch gears and try 2D sprites on billboards in place of models.  I was wondering if the StoneSense team would be willing to share their art assets with the Khazad project, we would in turn share our nice UI elements and extensive XML files, after all were both open source and should borrow what works from each other rather then re-invent the wheel as were already doing with DFHack.

[KaelGotDwarves]

This is hilarious that it's being posted everywhere. I only emailed a few guys about it. Apparently the demand for isometric sprited DF is huge.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

just as planned 

Impaler, I know a lot of the Khazad, Lifevis, and 3Dwarf development all plays a part with Stonesense, and it would be great if they all can play well together/bounce ideas to develop the slick presentation that DF (and my video ) apparently lack. Jonask, I forgot to properly credit people on the video so any attempts at naming names of those who have added to Stonesense project would help, or if anyone wants to step up

From a marketing standpoint (Not that I'd know anything about that), I feel we should just continue pushing the visualisers in the direction of of being real-time, seamless side-by-side integration with DF. Focus on what we're good at before making claims of GUI and rushing out elements of a GUI without Toady's wishes. There's still plenty of room for improvement here on sprites, incorporating elements of other visualisers, and optimization.

High fives all around on you guys being the amazing coders i'll never be. 

[Afthartos]

And with that I'm off to sweeden to smuggle some booze

For stronger stuff you should come to Finland

[7¢ Nickel]

Test.



I think I'm leaning too heavily on my solid outlines, need to work on loosening them up.

[DennyTom]

The wheel looks too low. Its center should be where the stick ends

[Footkerchief]

so many comments on all the sites about not getting into the game cuz of the UI, i really hope he starts to think about at least improving it in some way before he starts his next yearly arc project, i think he'd gain *alot* of players by doing so.

There's a good chance you'll get your wish.  Toady is going to be working through the top 10 Eternal Suggestions items soon after the upcoming release, on which "Full graphics support" stands at #7.

[JanusTwoface]

so many comments on all the sites about not getting into the game cuz of the UI, i really hope he starts to think about at least improving it in some way before he starts his next yearly arc project, i think he'd gain *alot* of players by doing so.

There's a good chance you'll get your wish.  Toady is going to be working through the top 10 Eternal Suggestions items soon after the upcoming release, on which "Full graphics support" stands at #7.

Although he's also said that he may jump around or ignore items in this list as he sees fit (as it should be).  Still, fingers crossed for options in the future.

[Footkerchief]

Although he's also said that he may jump around or ignore items in this list as he sees fit (as it should be).  Still, fingers crossed for options in the future.

Yeah.  I'm encouraged by the fact that better graphics support is already a Core item, though:

# Core50, TILESET SUPPORT, (Future): Allow graphical tiles to be used for all game objects.

[Mike Mayday]

Ummm, full graphics support is about 1% of the current UI's problems in terms of importance...
Comprehensive, uniform menus, tooltips, context based- menus, full mouse support... now THAT's where it's at.

[dyze]

There's a good chance you'll get your wish.  Toady is going to be working through the top 10 Eternal Suggestions items soon after the upcoming release, on which "Full graphics support" stands at #7.

well, now that we have stonesense, a real user interface feels a lot more urgent imo

edit: ninjad by mayday!

[soul4hdwn]

Now, on to more serious business.

In my mind (Jonas might say differently), this is first and foremost a low-requirement Visualization tool; without Tarn stating that he is okay with us taking Stonesense in the direction of a GUI, I'm not going to push for it.

Through our participation in the development process of Dwarf Fortress, we all start to feel a little sense of ownership of the game... we've suggested features, tested for bugs, designed mods, spread publicity, and ultimately supported Tarn in this monumental effort. We all need to remember, however, that this is still Tarn's project, not ours, and it's an unpaid project at that. No matter how excited we all get about Dwarf Fortress, it's not at all fair to push him to do something that he doesn't want done... and he has already voiced his apprehensions about 3rd party graphical interfaces, and how that would impact the project.

Judging by how several on-line communities are viewing this project, especially the folks who say "Wow, now I might try Dwarf Fortress now!" or "I think I could finally get my friends to try this!" one can see that there is definitly a demand for a more accessable interface. Heck, I've even had friends I know in person say that this would get them into the game way more. The problem is that, if players start to rely on such a 3rd-party interface, the team designing it would have to be as dedicated as Tarn with updates and new features, or such an interface would have to be officially adopted... and collaboration is something he has also expressed great reservations about, as this is his brainchild.

But yes, in the universe where we are given the go-ahead from Tarn, interpreting mouse and key input with Stonesense, and translating it to input for DF would probably be the way to go. I'd imagine that drop-down menus for Constructions (a simple point-and-click for designating mining, sizing bridges, laying out roads and walls, etc.) would be doable, though anything beyond that depends entirely on the degree to we can interface with the program itself.

For now, though, the thing that keeps us from even being able to consider a GUI is the wealth of graphical issues that still need ironing out. We need tile rotations, fixes for some of the graphical hiccups such as the "Escher Effect", and a -Lot- more tiles and sprites. For now, focus on that, and if we can eventually pitch a solid visual display and interface to Tarn, and prove that this is a dedicated project, maybe we'll see such a thing down the road.

ok i hear often that toady doesnt' want to support third party stuff but everyone is missing the point...make teh third party tool fit dwarf fortress not the other way around. this "mod" like visualizer indeed is the perfect thing for the gamers that get eye-bleed/head-ache from ascii stuff or minor graphics.

this mini project so far is totaly capable to getting info from dwarf fortress and make a pseudo GUI. but remember, read or use DF not make DF use gui. just have some sort of "send" and "get" and everything should be safe for compatibility issues.

[CobaltKobold]

Huzzah! An animated Windmill that links appropriately with Mechanisms!

Change the coloring on the right vane. It looks like it's oriented same as the left vane (which looks right to me). Which makes it look like one (or, if you believe it's spinning) all of the vanes invert mysteriously in that position, then invert back.

List of Constructable Materials, and what they look like:
Natural Stone (Smoothed)
Raw Stone (Cobblestones)
Stone Blocks (Bricks)
Raw Wood (Trunks/Branches)
Wood Blocks (Planks)
Metal (Forged Bars/Plates)
Glass Blocks (Carved/Shaped)

Omitted materials (40d): Metal Blocks. Less important but also omitted: Ash/potash/pearlash. Soaps. Charcoal.. And that smoothed stone doesn't look like smoothed stone- it ISN't constructed after all, but smoothed bedrock. You need a nice, flat surface to engrave after all.
Furthermore when (I hope you're planning to) you include the metal colors...adamantine will look like glass.