Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[The-Moon]

Expanding Beyond 256 Graphical Tiles....

I just noticed how much more difficult it would be to Debug a game, when your just using 256 tiles for graphics. The 256 tiles, limit the ability to debug the game. ASCII format is okay to use, but it is set to a 256 limit... DF is a very complex game and it has so many more Units, Objects, entity's, ect.... that need to be displayed, which just cannot in any way be fully and completely displayed by just using 256 tiles.

I really honestly believe, today you will make much more progress debuging the game (as would us tester),   If you implemented a better graphical system. I know everyone ever from what i can tell is so against upgrading the graphics because they think the game is fine as is with ascii art or whatever other excuses they want to make. But i think its time DF gets a graphical programming overhaul as long as it dosen't mean anyone having to start there forts over. Which i have no reason to believe it would as long as toady provides a map converter.

I believe i have provided a valid reason here to upgrade the graphics if anyone thinks about what i said logically. 256 tiles for graphics, is not in anyway a good way to debug a game this complex.... Id like to hear someone give me a reason how using only 256 tiles is better for debugging a game. I would really like to hear how hehe.

This is a serious post too. No flaming please serious discussion only. If you don't like what im presenting here, don't get mad just explain why you disagree, or don't say nothing.

~ Moon

[NW_Kohaku]

The new development page is up.

[...] For dwarf mode, we've incorporated many of the eternal suggestion voting items [...] Regarding the two of the top ten ESV items not specifically addressed on the new page, sped-up pathfinding and graphics support, the idea with the first is an upcoming date with the linux profiler now that we've got DF running over there to address the low-hanging fruit on the main grievance behind the suggestion (large, slow forts).  In the case of supporting tiles for each game object, I need to figure out the deal with all the new SDL code before I can lay anything out in stark terms.  The textures are stored differently (in a single atlas if it still works that way), and I'm not sure if it'll be feasible to move to full item/map texture support without altering the way that works.

Bolded the most relevant part.

[Sean Mirrsen]

On one hand, ASCII is a limit, of course, because you have too many things and too little characters to display them with. On the other hand, that's what ASCII is - it's a stylistic choice as much as it is a necessity for speeding up game development. It's entirely possible to have many more tiles than 256, and there will eventually be support for that (Baughn was working on a shader mode display for something to that effect), but for the immediate development of the game, ASCII is a boon, not an obstacle.

I also fail to see the point you're making... easier to debug a game with better graphics? You'd get more testers who are willing to play, sure, but apart from that I'm not seeing it.

And I'm pretty sure everyone here agrees that the game can use better graphics, but rather few people agree that making the game enjoyable for the eye is more important than making it enjoyable for the mind. Both against realism and graphics, gameplay usually wins.

[NW_Kohaku]

This is a serious post too. No flaming please serious discussion only. If you don't like what im presenting here, don't get mad just explain why you disagree, or don't say nothing.

~ Moon

You shouldn't tell people not to flame your posts.  It's implied.  Telling people not to flame your posts means you expect them to, which is fairly insulting.  Ending a request with "or don't say nothing" also cuts into your credibility, at that.  (And signing your posts is also annoying to some.)

I also fail to see the point you're making... easier to debug a game with better graphics? You'd get more testers who are willing to play, sure, but apart from that I'm not seeing it.

I believe what he is saying is that there is a finite limit on the amount of data that can be transmitted to the player, currently. 

I could go into a very long-winded argument about this, especially with regards to personality rewrites, and will probably have to do so eventually, but for now, let me just put it this way:  Right now, the graphics of the game only support showing data relevant to three things.

• The physical topography of the map, and the locations of the units on the map.
• The combat status of every creature on the map (such as by showing grappling through purple, death through red, mortal wounds through white flashes) and the immediate dangers or needs a dwarf faces (down arrows for hunger or thirst or critical unhappiness)
• The job of the dwarf in question, through the color of the dwarf icon.

If you want a more complex game, a game where there is more nuanced social interaction, you probably want to have some sort of visible indication to the player that at least tells you two different villagers are talking to one another, rather than just standing near one another.  You need to be able to tell when a dwarf is working in his workshop, rather than just happening to stand on top of the workshop tiles. 

You can't even tell if a dwarf is injured or happy or anything about their personalities or what they are wearing or doing through visible clues. 

In the absence of visible clues as to WHY something is happening, many people just assume that a doctor who never brings his patients water is part of a bug, rather than an (odd) feature that makes doctors who don't like helping people never bring their patients water.  Without a visible clue as to the cause, people assume effects are random and buggy.

Without having multiple "layers" of images, you can't demonstrate concepts like the tile that is 3/7ths full of sand and 4/7ths full of water. 

With multiple layers with a semi-transparent layer, you can do overlays, which let you see temperature differences in the landscape by painting a heat map over the game map without occluding everything else in the game.

The bottom line is that any sort of feature or function of the game needs an interface to convey the information that is contained in that feature or function, or it only hurts the game, no matter how brilliant it might be.  It doesn't matter how elegant the temperature functions are in the game right now - the player can't really see them or know how or if they are working.  Hence, many players just turn them off to save some FPS. 

[Dutchling]

I thinm it would be nice, but a lot of poeple play ASCII anyway and the current tile sets are very good even with limitations.
And suggesting something already on Toady's lists AND the eternal suggestions lists isn't really suggesting but whining imo

[Kogut]

I strongly suggest to make more descriptive topic titles.

[Maklak]

In one of DF talks Toady One mentioned something about hitting a wall with only 256 characters. He said, he was undecided, what to do about it, options being UTF or graphical tileset (downside: needs an artist). He also seemed hesitand to do something about it, because it is a lot of work.

I use a tileset, and some characters in text look weird. Overally its not that bad as is, but could be better. It will also get worse, as new stuff is added to the game constantly.

Oddly, Goblin Camp did the same thing, they have 256 chars plus colors, and thats it. Maybe its a limitation od their graphic library.

[Jeoshua]

Wh-- Unicode Rougelikes?

Me likely.

Me likely alot.

[NW_Kohaku]

In one of DF talks Toady One mentioned something about hitting a wall with only 256 characters. He said, he was undecided, what to do about it, options being UTF or graphical tileset (downside: needs an artist). He also seemed hesitand to do something about it, because it is a lot of work.

I use a tileset, and some characters in text look weird. Overally its not that bad as is, but could be better. It will also get worse, as new stuff is added to the game constantly.

Oddly, Goblin Camp did the same thing, they have 256 chars plus colors, and thats it. Maybe its a limitation od their graphic library.

The characters we use come from a bitmap, not any sort of font.  That's why we can change them.

The thing is, they just exported some characters into a bitmap instead of making fully-fledged graphics because they either didn't want to spend the time making graphics, and/or because they wanted to make it look more like a Roguelike, since some people prefer it with no graphics.

[Bohandas]

In one of DF talks Toady One mentioned something about hitting a wall with only 256 characters. He said, he was undecided, what to do about it, options being UTF or graphical tileset (downside: needs an artist). He also seemed hesitand to do something about it, because it is a lot of work.

I use a tileset, and some characters in text look weird. Overally its not that bad as is, but could be better. It will also get worse, as new stuff is added to the game constantly.

Oddly, Goblin Camp did the same thing, they have 256 chars plus colors, and thats it. Maybe its a limitation od their graphic library.

The characters we use come from a bitmap, not any sort of font.  That's why we can change them.

The thing is, they just exported some characters into a bitmap instead of making fully-fledged graphics because they either didn't want to spend the time making graphics, and/or because they wanted to make it look more like a Roguelike, since some people prefer it with no graphics.

Yeah, now that I'm used to it I like the graphics the way that they are now. To quote Cypher, "I don't even see the code anymore. I just see blond, brunette, redhead..."

That being said I wouldn't be opposed to the introduction of a few additional tiles, maybe, I dunno, 64 of them or so, perhaps encoded in a second bmp file, to prevent the need for too many tiles to be reused too much during the introduction of the many new planned features (I maintain however, that mapping old/existing objects to new tiles would merely alienate longtime players and be confusing to everyone involved, in addition to delaying new releases)

I also would not be opposed to the game going to 32 colors. That, in my opinion, would be a much better way to avoid hitting the wall and has the added advantage that remapping existing things to new shades of their original colors would be unlikely to alienate people.

(And now i'm going to stop typing because I sense that I'm becoming groggy and incoherent...)

[The-Moon]

This is a serious post too. No flaming please serious discussion only. If you don't like what im presenting here, don't get mad just explain why you disagree, or don't say nothing.

~ Moon

You shouldn't tell people not to flame your posts.  It's implied.  Telling people not to flame your posts means you expect them to, which is fairly insulting.  Ending a request with "or don't say nothing" also cuts into your credibility, at that.  (And signing your posts is also annoying to some.)

I also fail to see the point you're making... easier to debug a game with better graphics? You'd get more testers who are willing to play, sure, but apart from that I'm not seeing it.

I believe what he is saying is that there is a finite limit on the amount of data that can be transmitted to the player, currently. 

Yes in more technical terms that is what im saying.

If you see 2 'o's moving around the map with the same or different colors, you have to press a key and move your cursor over to them to figure out what they are. However with more graphics those 2 'o's would become a Ogre and .... umm something else that would be associated with the o.

The finite limit of the tiles currently restrict the visual data a player or even today can see, forcing us to have to resort to pressing 'v' and moving over it to figure out what it is. Even if your a experienced seasoned player. You still have to press 'v' and move to something.

I gotta goto work tho so i can keep backing up what im saying right now. But i also wanted to add that i Asked people not to Flame because i know how so often when people start talking about the graphics people get very very defensive about there ASCII art. But no one has to lose there ascii art, adding in more then 256 graphical tiles they can all still be characters and ascii. The only point would be to increase development time by reducing the time it takes to debug a game by giving player more data through visualization....

grrr i cant reread this sorry for typos and such.
 

[Teiwaz]

I don't know what you're talking about. Blender's interface is actually more efficient than 3DSMax or Maya. You just have to take a few months to learn it - once you learn all the keyboard shortcuts, it's really fast. That's why virtually every animation, architecture and games studio on the planet is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on licenses in order to avoid using it!

Wait, what? I think I'm on the wrong forum.

[zwei]

I don't know what you're talking about. Blender's interface is actually more efficient than 3DSMax or Maya. You just have to take a few months to learn it - once you learn all the keyboard shortcuts, it's really fast. That's why virtually every animation, architecture and games studio on the planet is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on licenses in order to avoid using it!

Wait, what? I think I'm on the wrong forum.

Actually, blender recently to major UI overhaul which made it user friendlier :-)

[Elone]

This is a serious post too. No flaming please serious discussion only. If you don't like what im presenting here, don't get mad just explain why you disagree, or don't say nothing.

~ Moon

You shouldn't tell people not to flame your posts.  It's implied.  Telling people not to flame your posts means you expect them to, which is fairly insulting.  Ending a request with "or don't say nothing" also cuts into your credibility, at that.  (And signing your posts is also annoying to some.)

I was going to say this, but thank you for filling in for me.

Also: Both against realism and graphics, gameplay usually wins.

Sadly, this is highly untrue. Look at today's console games. I'd be embarrassed to play them. I'm less embarrassed while playing ADOM and being called nuts for playing such an ugly game.

[Sean Mirrsen]

That's what I was basically getting at with the line. Console games have low realism ("complexity" could be a stand-in for that as well), a wide range of graphics, and fairly good gameplay - for a given value of "good" considering the primary input device the games are tailored to, and some other factors. If their gameplay wasn't good, they would not be successful.

Yeah sure, I realize there are other factors (movie tie-ins and popular series brand names can usually cover up for gameplay gaps), but primarily if the gameplay's not good enough, the game doesn't sell, that's the whole point of it being a "game", as opposed to an interactive frustration generator. Console games are just "brainless" sometimes, this doesn't mean they have bad gameplay.

You don't put graphics ahead of gameplay because people will only look at your game, not play it, and you don't put realism/complexity ahead of gameplay unless your target audience is history/science geeks (or masochists, in extreme cases). In DF's case, it's teetering on the edge of the complexity/graphics pit, held back by a tiny strand of solid gameplay. This is obviously a very unconventional setup for a game, and so there are bound to be lots of people who don't find the gameplay worth the fuss of getting past the initial double barrier.

Also, re: amount of information available to the player. As it is now, DF only gives the player essential information, that which is imperative to see. (As Burt Gummer once put it: "Critical. Need to know. In-formation.") All the thoughts and subtle processes aren't immediately necessary to see, and if they were to become visible on the screen (a-la Sims thoughts), there'd be nothing but a clusterfunk of these thoughts available to the player, which would distract - greatly, in my opinion - from the game itself.