Here's a list of Graphical Display issues, suggestions, concepts, etc. for the consideration of the team, and for open discussion.
1) Displaying Mist Tiles:
Vapor clouds, like steam, miasma, magma-mist, etc, do not display as yet. I recall an earlier branch with particle mist on a beach, but haven't seen it since. Can mists be displayed, and if so are they handled with some simple catch-all that can pull appropriate colors and all that, or must different mist IDs be handled individually? I'd rather like to use textured alpha-tinted cubes if possible rather than particles, but either work.
2) Zooming In/Out:
Being able to change the zoom level to get a closer picture, or zoom out to get a larger overland picture would be very nice for high-res screens that display at finer resolutions, or lower-res screens that. Is it possible with the current engine? If so, what sort of difficulties are in the way of changing the zoom level? Alternatively, there is the potential for doing an alternate Bird's Eye terrain map, using a set of tiny isometric tiles that would display a much larger area?
3) Full Object Display:
Though framerate would be crippled if Stonesense were to render every object in realtime, could we create a static "Full-Rendering" mode that would show every barrel, stone, bloodstain, stockpile, bin, sock, and so on in a static view? This would keep the game smooth for people who are using SS paralell ti DF as an in-game visualizer, while also allowing people who want to export pretty screenshots with all the innumerable details.
4) Better Object Tiles:
Many object tiles, like plants, boulders, or pebbles, define the nature of the tile they're on (plants default the tile to grass [VEGITATION], pebbles to stone, etc.) However, plants grow in the desert, and when they are harvested, the tile below it is discovered to be sand, and not grass. Are plants, boulders, etc. treated as Floors to DF? Can we retrieve tile-type information (Dirt, Sand, Grass) in addition to the object type in the tile? Can we only know that the tile contains a Dead Plant, or can we know that it is a Dead Plant on Sand, or a Live Grass tile? If we can't get more tile details, would it be possible for SS to check, when displaying one of these tiles, for whatever tile type made up the majority of adjacent tiles, and estimate what the floor under it should be? It'd be similar to the Gem/Ore Vein display concept. Objects that override tile type that I know of are Dead Plant, Live Plant, Tree/Cactus/Mushroom, Boulder, Pebbles, and perhaps Webs. There may be more now too. Same concept would work for creating Floor-type Brook Tiles (they could pull from the material of the Tile type they're on top of).
5) Better Auto-Coloring Palette:
I'd rather like to standardize the Autocoloring Palettes used to colorize greyscale tiles, dwarves, etc. Where are these colors defined, and is it possible to redefine them on the user's end, similar to how colors can be redefined in the DF raws? If there's nothing else for it, I could take one of the programmers aside and discuss color theory, and brainstorm some equations for shifting Hue, Value, and Saturation to create a series of 8-color gradients from a palette of single, pre-defined RGB color values.
6) "Oversized" Tiles:
For the present engine, breaking up Ramp gemoetries into a Bottom and Top segments is needlessly complex, and creates uneccesary extra/separate sprites for the engine to display for a given tile object. Allowing for Tiles/Floors that were oversized by, perhaps, 8 transparent pixels on every egde (+16 pixles wide/tall) would both allow for some flexibity in creating non-cubic tiles (ala Beefmo's new stone tiles), single-graphic ramps (rather than splitting them between a "floor" and a "tile".
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Topic: Stonesense - Old Official thread - Now locked (Read 1732070 times)