Bay 12 Games Forum

Dwarf Fortress => DF Modding => Tilesets and Graphics => Topic started by: bearwasdead on March 16, 2020, 11:18:19 am

Title: BEARWASDEAD Tileset [Square, 16px or 13px, Custom Colors]
Post by: bearwasdead on March 16, 2020, 11:18:19 am
Introduction

I think I'm finally ready to release this to the public, so here goes.
BEARWASDEAD is a tileset and color scheme that I made for myself out of total dissatisfaction with other available tilesets (as I imagine every tileset comes into existence). The tileset was made from scratch with a loose basis on a monospaced font by the name of Gohufont (https://font.gohu.org/). I'm now releasing this set as complete under creative commons license. Feel free to take, use, and modify as desired.


Design Goals

When setting out on making this set, I gave myself a set of design goals:
    1. Text must be easily readable
    2. Overall design shouldn't deviate too far from Curses
    3. Graphical icons should reflect their most common use
    4. The tileset should be usable without extra utilities or tools

I believe I've hit these goals, but I'm always open to feedback and suggestions (many changes have been made over time based on feedback in the past).


Variants & Examples

 There are 4 variants of BEARWASDEAD:Some example screenshots can be found below.

Spoiler: 16px Overworld Map (Graphics) (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: 16px Menu (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: 16px In-Game (Graphics) (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: 16px In-Game (ASCII) (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: 13px Menu (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: 13px In-Game (Graphics) (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: 13px In-Game (ASCII) (click to show/hide)


Download

BEARWASDEAD on DFFD (http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=14939)
Title: Re: BEARWASDEAD Tileset [Square, 16px or 13px, Custom Colors]
Post by: sybir on March 17, 2020, 08:28:43 am
The overworld map looks very clean, it's great, I like it.

On the font, the kerning is too wide - I find it very hard to read. But that may just be me, I prefer concise fonts.
Title: Re: BEARWASDEAD Tileset [Square, 16px or 13px, Custom Colors]
Post by: bearwasdead on March 17, 2020, 12:28:54 pm
Quote from: sybir on March 17, 2020, 08:28:43 am
The overworld map looks very clean, it's great, I like it.

On the font, the kerning is too wide - I find it very hard to read. But that may just be me, I prefer concise fonts.

Glad you like the overworld! For the font, there's a lot of compromises that have to be made when making a tileset, and I went with compromising on space between letters. The trouble is, non-square tilesets end up with better readability because it more closely matches how fonts are rendered in other contexts, but icons end up looking squished and stretched out and there's a lot less space to work with for clear graphics. With the way the base game works, there's no perfect way to work around this (or at least none that I know of), so I went with square graphics and tried to make the text look as good as I could.

If you know of other square tilesets that have more readable fonts, definitely let me know, because there may be ideas I could source for another version that makes a better balance between icons and readability.
Title: Re: BEARWASDEAD Tileset [Square, 16px or 13px, Custom Colors]
Post by: jecowa on March 17, 2020, 01:35:19 pm
I like the colors. It's like a rainy day at twilight.
Title: Re: BEARWASDEAD Tileset [Square, 16px or 13px, Custom Colors]
Post by: bearwasdead on March 17, 2020, 02:28:03 pm
Quote from: jecowa on March 17, 2020, 01:35:19 pm
I like the colors. It's like a rainy day at twilight.

Thank you! Another person said it looked sorta like color on a chalkboard, but I like your description better.

Honestly, they were really difficult to nail down because of the way the game renders colors. I'm still not 100% satisfied with it because of the lack of contrast between the brown and the light colors, but any slight change can break a ton of other things (e.g. blood being rendered as brown instead of red, or dirt being rendered as red instead of brown), so I'm gonna leave it as-is.
Title: Re: BEARWASDEAD Tileset [Square, 16px or 13px, Custom Colors]
Post by: sybir on March 18, 2020, 03:46:14 am
For hills/ n letter you could also try to make the letter symmetric with slope on both sides. It's not very visible in the text and would blend in better on world map.

Modified my current tileset, but you know the gist
(https://i.imgur.com/fXyqLVr.png)
Title: Re: BEARWASDEAD Tileset [Square, 16px or 13px, Custom Colors]
Post by: Jack-22 on March 18, 2020, 07:32:20 am
Wow! how elegant. I like it.
Title: Re: BEARWASDEAD Tileset [Square, 16px or 13px, Custom Colors]
Post by: bearwasdead on March 18, 2020, 11:02:24 pm
Quote from: sybir on March 18, 2020, 03:46:14 am
For hills/ n letter you could also try to make the letter symmetric with slope on both sides. It's not very visible in the text and would blend in better on world map.

I fear that removing the small serif will impact the readability of text, but I might experiment with removing some of the serifs and see if I can make an even better mid-ground between readability and map coherence.

Quote from: Jack-22 on March 18, 2020, 07:32:20 am
Wow! how elegant. I like it.

Thanks! Getting any kind of positive feedback on this is really nice. I've never released a project like this before and I've put a lot of time and care into it (which feels a bit silly given that it's just a few pixels in specific orders, but still).
Title: Re: BEARWASDEAD Tileset [Square, 16px or 13px, Custom Colors]
Post by: SuperPluck on March 19, 2020, 04:19:03 am
I'm not really a fan of ASCII (i need more graphics), but your world map is a thing of beauty!

Does anybody know if there's a way of using this tileset for the map and keep using mayday during gameplay?
Title: Re: BEARWASDEAD Tileset [Square, 16px or 13px, Custom Colors]
Post by: Jack-22 on March 19, 2020, 06:02:01 am
Quote
Thanks! Getting any kind of positive feedback on this is really nice. I've never released a project like this before and I've put a lot of time and care into it (which feels a bit silly given that it's just a few pixels in specific orders, but still).

I want to inform you that I am part of the Brazilian community and will be including your tileset in the collection of our national launcher for the next version.

The quality is really great.
Title: Re: BEARWASDEAD Tileset [Square, 16px or 13px, Custom Colors]
Post by: bearwasdead on March 19, 2020, 05:41:28 pm
Quote from: SuperPluck on March 19, 2020, 04:19:03 am
I'm not really a fan of ASCII (i need more graphics), but your world map is a thing of beauty!

Does anybody know if there's a way of using this tileset for the map and keep using mayday during gameplay?

Thanks! As far as I know, there aren't any tools that specifically only affect the world map. Closest tool would be Text Will Be Text, but that doesn't quite fit the same usage. It would, however, work with TWBT if I were to make a separate version of BEARWASDEAD that had all tiles replaced with graphics. Then you could use that all graphic version with the all ASCII version and have clear text and graphics. That might be doable for another version in the future.

Quote from: Jack-22 on March 19, 2020, 06:02:01 am
I want to inform you that I am part of the Brazilian community and will be including your tileset in the collection of our national launcher for the next version.

The quality is really great.

National launcher? I've never heard of anything like that before, but that's definitely fine with me! The more people that get to use it, the better.
Title: Re: BEARWASDEAD Tileset [Square, 16px or 13px, Custom Colors]
Post by: Jack-22 on March 29, 2020, 12:39:05 pm
Quote
National launcher? I've never heard of anything like that before, but that's definitely fine with me! The more people that get to use it, the better.

Yeap. See here: http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=14943

It has the same features as the already known LNP. But it is a little simpler and dedicated to experimenting with tiles.
Title: Re: BEARWASDEAD Tileset [Square, 16px or 13px, Custom Colors]
Post by: bearwasdead on March 27, 2021, 08:48:55 pm
I've pushed a new update for BEARWASDEAD, bumping the version to 1.2.

Changes:

These changes only affect the graphical versions of the tileset, so if you use the "pure" versions, you don't need to grab the update.

Examples of 16px version:
(https://puu.sh/Hta7g/2050261645.png)
(https://puu.sh/Hta7E/679ab2a88b.png)

Examples of 13px version:
(https://puu.sh/Hta55/529179aeb8.png)
(https://puu.sh/Hta5B/150636ba45.png)
Title: Re: BEARWASDEAD Tileset [Square, 16px or 13px, Custom Colors]
Post by: XzatriX on April 24, 2021, 04:37:52 am
Very nice and clean, i love it !
Title: Re: BEARWASDEAD Tileset [Square, 16px or 13px, Custom Colors]
Post by: Iklistkel on October 17, 2022, 11:48:15 am
I liked a lot of the pale dark blue background and the thin text style. Fits perfectly with the thin lines of the pixel art. This tileset is one of my favorites now.