Bay 12 Games Forum

We probably do a little bit of rock/metal design, with a dwarf logo on top. Here a mock-up. Overall Tarn mentioned something like the menu resembling a fortress, as an idea. Either way, nothing too fancy, and with a readable font.

Seems oddly thin. As if it's meant for your phone.

Everything about those decaying and skeleton sprites are cool as all get out.

Purple outline isn't bad at all. I'd be pretty thrilled with it.

I hope that changes at some point when more important things are finished. They're such a big part of haunted forts.

This looks great. I really like how you toned down the lone stone ground tiles. I'm not overstating it when I say it is pleasing to look at. I'm excited to see dry, bubble/feather, and wormy/eyeball grasses.

Anyhow, what do you guys think about the grass? We cut back on the more varied grasses after some worries about it looking too distracting.

I'd like you to reconsider this. Variability isn't distracting. Busyness is. Variability is very good and will help make different forts feel unique.

I don't think the contaminants is useful information, unless it has combat relevancy. Poisoned weapons would be good info to have and it'll presumably be easier to poison weapons in the future.

The quality differences are very nice to look at and you can still tell the material easily. When the battlefield is littered with copper, iron, bronze, and steel items, it's important to be able to distinguish by the material and I think you have a subtle enough difference in quality that it won't get in the way of that. Contaminants would make that more... busy, I guess?

Poisoned Weapon Attempts. Not skilled at all as a pixel artist at all, just proof of concept.



You can still tell it's steel at a glance. Clear green poison sheen on half. Quality/wear level won't get in the way of that.

I don't know how you solve the problem of quality levels looking visually distinct without adding a visual style that would only really fit for "Decorated" objects. Quality, Wear, Material, and Contaminant (as long as it matters for combat effectiveness) are important pieces of information that would be nice to not have to fiddle in menus to see. As much as I'd hate to say it, sacrificing a visual look for quality may be for the best. But it'd be cool if there was still a "decorated" and "artifact" sprite even if you can't get a unique sprite for the 6 other levels of quality.

Right now, latest test on my end, looks like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I like this a whole lot better, but do you think the gold pops a little too much? Draws your eye away from the important parts?

Here's a real dirty darkening, just to see if it feels better. Now it's the white text that pops, which is what you want your eye drawn to anyway. I tend to favor darker themes, and DF has always felt like a darker game in the past. Though I really appreciate the colorful direction the main game has taken.

double posted like an idiot

I have a fort that is 3 years old and has every possible stress reliever.  Plenty of taverns with every type of alcohol.  Three different taverns and temples.  New clothes.  All sorts of trinkets and trash for them to acquire.  Lavish meals.  You get the picture.

Now the negative side:  I attacked the goblins and in return weathered three sieges of over 100 goblins total.  I killed them all with trained and iron armored dwarves with only a few injuries.  Then I had my entire fortress run out and pick up the bodies.

The results were as follows:  Three dwarves went into a depression.  Some soldiers suffered post traumatic stress.  And one dwarf threw a fit and went to jail.

This kind of result isn't bad.  We want this.

You said here under ideal conditions after a mere 3 years of play that a strenuous amount of destressing was needed for just cleaning up a battlefield.

Players don't necessarily play in ideal conditions. Especially new players.

Experienced players who are playing in THE most ideal conditions would like to mitigate some of this.

Don't get me wrong. We want stress to matter and play a factor, but the game always feels like perfect happiness all the time or intense stress all the time. Despite people who want to parrot "losing is fun" at every inconvenience, this actually isn't fun.

Now imagine a fort someone has been playing for decades.