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[qwert]

I suppose you could just require a tileset page with a classic tileset page and fallback to the old style tile definition in the raws in situations where nothing more specific is available (heck just make that the default tileset in non graphics mode). So basically for full graphical tilesets the fallback would be exactly like the current except that you can use an actual 'A' for the antman rather than an armorstand/A hybrid. Another option is drawing it with the truetype font.

[Baughn]

Ah, no. If we're doing this, I doubt very much that the old-style graphics raws would still be available. That's one reason I need to be very sure that it's actually an improvement..

A default mapping for old-style 16x16 tilesets would be easy enough, mind you.

[diriel]

Any idea yet what True-Type font will be used by default? What are the generally desired characteristics? I know CP437 as you stated, but any certainly Look? How about license type? I would think some kind of Open Source license that lets you freely use / distribute. Just thinking that the threat of legal action over a font would be a bit silly is all.

Just curious

[Baughn]

Exactly as you say.

Well, probably some sans-serif font; those tend to look better at small resolutions. But really, I haven't looked much into it yet. Picking a font is the *last* thing I'm going to do.

[Randomtask]

Yeeah.. I really don't know how it'd work. Whichever way works best, really, which is why I'm posting this here. It's very much at the request for comments stage.

The basic idea, I guess.. creatures (from the raws) have a tile tag in that hierarchical form, such as "humanoid.elf.carpenter".. tilesets contain tiles, specified somehow, which have fully qualified names such as "humanoid", "humanoid.elf" or "humanoid.elf.carpenter". The exact way tilesets specify this has not been defined yet, but is reasonably trivial; I'll come up with something simple.

Conceptually, when trying to display this carpenter, it'd first look for a "humanoid.elf.carpenter" tile. If that's missing, it'd look for a humanoid.elf tile; if that's missing, humanoid... if that's missing too, I guess displaying a question mark would be better than picking some other humanoid or an entirely unrelated tile.

Naturally, this would be optimized by doing the lookups/mappings at load time, but that's beyond the scope of what affects you.

Any questions? Comments? Please comment.

That system sounds pretty simple, and efficient.

How are forgotten beasts and demons created?
I have no idea what their raws or anything look like, but if the system parses entries for data, might it be possible to read body types? Probably not, but I figured I'd ask.

[diriel]

@Baughn,

The Liberation series of fonts have all of the support listed up front, and then some. They also have a serif, sans, and mono. They have been released by Red Hat under a very good license.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts

Under Characteristics it lists the various CP support ect. They are designed to be about as close in metric to MS type fonts as possible for maximum cross platform portability. One thing about it, there is no such thing as a perfect font

Have Fun

[Igfig]

The basic idea, I guess.. creatures (from the raws) have a tile tag in that hierarchical form, such as "humanoid.elf.carpenter".. tilesets contain tiles, specified somehow, which have fully qualified names such as "humanoid", "humanoid.elf" or "humanoid.elf.carpenter". The exact way tilesets specify this has not been defined yet, but is reasonably trivial; I'll come up with something simple.

Conceptually, when trying to display this carpenter, it'd first look for a "humanoid.elf.carpenter" tile. If that's missing, it'd look for a humanoid.elf tile; if that's missing, humanoid... if that's missing too, I guess displaying a question mark would be better than picking some other humanoid or an entirely unrelated tile.

Any questions? Comments? Please comment.

One comment/request.  Maybe add one more step between "elf" and "carpenter": "woodworker".  Most existing sets have generic "woodworker", "farmer", etc. tiles, after all.  It'd keep things nice and organized.

I guess that's more of a request for Ironhand, since I expect Baughn will build it to allow arbitrarily deep hierarchies.

FAKE EDIT: Oh, one question.  How do you expect this to interact with multitile creatures in the future?  Will they be defined all in one image file, or will we need a separate file for each tile?  (I prefer the former.)

[Deon]

I still object to a depiction of a "question mark" when you don't find the tile. Let it display a letter in this case. Otherwise it would be impossible to tell an elephant from a carp if the tileset is partial.

[Baughn]

Which letter, exactly?

The CP437 tiles are part of the tileset. If you can identify a particular letter, that means you did find the tile.

[Tormy]

Yeeah.. I really don't know how it'd work. Whichever way works best, really, which is why I'm posting this here. It's very much at the request for comments stage.

The basic idea, I guess.. creatures (from the raws) have a tile tag in that hierarchical form, such as "humanoid.elf.carpenter".. tilesets contain tiles, specified somehow, which have fully qualified names such as "humanoid", "humanoid.elf" or "humanoid.elf.carpenter". The exact way tilesets specify this has not been defined yet, but is reasonably trivial; I'll come up with something simple.

Conceptually, when trying to display this carpenter, it'd first look for a "humanoid.elf.carpenter" tile. If that's missing, it'd look for a humanoid.elf tile; if that's missing, humanoid... if that's missing too, I guess displaying a question mark would be better than picking some other humanoid or an entirely unrelated tile.

Naturally, this would be optimized by doing the lookups/mappings at load time, but that's beyond the scope of what affects you.

Any questions? Comments? Please comment.

Baughn - Would it be possible to "link" 1 profession/unit type to multiple tile variants, and randomize the tile which will appear in the game?
Example: humanoid.elf.carpenter.1:1 , humanoid.elf.carpenter.1:2 , humanoid.elf.carpenter.1:3 -> 3 tiles used to display a carpenter, and will be chosen randomly every time a carpenter is "being created".
If this won't be possible [I guess ], what about "splitting up" male/female units graphically?

[Baughn]

Either of those would require extra work from Toady.

It's not impossible (of course), but it's not something you should expect right away either.

[Tormy]

I see...oh well.

[Deon]

Which letter, exactly?

The CP437 tiles are part of the tileset. If you can identify a particular letter, that means you did find the tile.

Ugh, I mean that currently there're letters for creatures in ASCII mode and they are replaced by graphics if the game finds an appropriate tile.

What you said earlier: the game will use a question mark, which is unacceptable since it means that you won't know WHICH creature type is that until you inspect them.

[Baughn]

Which would be the fault of the tileset's creator, for not even providing the base CP437 characters.

It's a nonissue, trust me.

[Deon]

Eh, you mean that the game will "hook up" the "base CP437" characters for all the creatures which are not listed in the tileset as long as those base CP437 characters are provided by the tileset creator?

I was worried about those words:

I guess displaying a question mark would be better than picking some other humanoid or an entirely unrelated tile.

Here, I mean that you guess it wrong. The perfect way is to display a letter instead of a question mark to make the creature distinguishable.

Many people play with partial tilesets, so they should be spared from seeing a valley of question marks .