did anyone have an answer to my earlier question about making graphics? i could try to make some small graphical symbols like in the graphics mods, but i was wondering how difficult it would be to put them into the game.
Looking at the MayDay tileset, the way it works is you make png file with the character sprites arranged in a grid pattern without lines, then you make a txt file that tells DF which tiles to override and replace with a sprite:
graphics_mayday
[OBJECT:GRAPHICS]
[TILE_PAGE:DOMESTIC]
[FILE:thrin/creature_domestic.png]
[TILE_DIM:16:16]
[PAGE_DIM:22:6]
[CREATURE_GRAPHICS:DOG]
[DEFAULT:DOMESTIC:0:0:AS_IS:DEFAULT]
[CHILD:DOMESTIC:0:1:AS_IS:DEFAULT]
[STANDARD:DOMESTIC:0:2:AS_IS:ZOMBIE]
[STANDARD:DOMESTIC:0:3:AS_IS:SKELETON]
[TRAINED_HUNTER:DOMESTIC:0:4:AS_IS:DEFAULT]
[TRAINED_WAR:DOMESTIC:0:5:AS_IS:DEFAULT]TILE_PAGE seems to just be used to declare the DOMESTIC tag, which may be arbitrary.
FILE declares which file is the png with the sprites is in. In this case, the file is the creature_domestic.png in the thrin folder, which is in DF>raw>graphics
TILE_DIM i.e. tile dimensions, tells DF how many pixels wide and tall the sprites are, in this case 16 pixels.
PAGE_DIM i.e. page dimensions, tells DF how many sprites wide and tall the picture is. The creature_domestic.png is 22 sprites wide to contain that many varieties of animal, and six tiles high to fit in adult, child, zombie, skeletal, hunting and war variants.
CREATURE_GRAPHICS declare the name of the animal whose sprites are being replaced. The DEFAULT, or adult sprite, is the very top left creature in the creature_domestic file, so its position is 0:0, beneath that is child, 0:1, and so on.
Unless I've got the whole thing terribly wrong, that seems pretty simple, the hard part is actually drawing that many pretty sprites in neat squares. If you have difficulty, it'd be pretty easy for me to do the programming bit. It'd be the least I could do, considering I'm going to be inflicting a vast hoard of animal ponies on you. I don't envy you, it's easy enough to declare raws for a penguin pony, but working out what it's supposed to look like is another thing entirely.
Spent a fair bit of the last couple of days clearing up error spam from some animal ponies, various errors regarding tissue layers and attacks. Three or four still throw up errors about not being able to find a body part to use an attack with, but are able to use those attacks in the arena. Dunno what's going on there, but they're functional. I was able to nuke almost all vanilla animal men with [CV_NEW_TAG:DOES_NOT_EXIST] in the animal man variation entry, so I'll be able to fully replace animal men with animal ponies without leaving too big a footprint, mostly just adding [DOES_NOT_EXIST] to some entries in subterranean and savage raws. Diamond dogs and Buffalo should be pretty easy, then I'll do the update before I think of yet another thing to add. Famous last words.
