Bay 12 Games Forum

Question:

Those blank looking squares, usually pebbles, bare rock, or boulders, can those be made to grow grass? I realize fully that those have been around since I started playing at the beginning of 40d and are probably hardcoded into the game. That said is there anything that can be done to make grass look uniform over them? (Perhaps even digging them down a z level to expose a fresh soil layer to the surface? )

Quote from: Japa on February 22, 2011, 04:06:37 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 22, 2011, 02:28:22 pm

Quote from: Flaede on February 22, 2011, 09:16:37 am

Will this change things? I know people were doing really cool things with the new grasses a few pages back, but i couldn't tell if they were getting the effects through overlaying multiple grasses sprites. If they were, then Toady removing that bit of coolness makes me sad.

IIRC it looked like crap when they tried to display multiple grass types at once, so they were already displaying only one grass type per tile.

Actually, we never even bothered. What we did that looked like crap was displaying the grass type that was the most dense, when DF shows the first one in the list regardless.

Not to be a bother, but could that be a flaggable option?

# stopped regrow from adding extra grass types on a tile

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Now, on to more serious business.

In my mind (Jonas might say differently), this is first and foremost a low-requirement Visualization tool; without Tarn stating that he is okay with us taking Stonesense in the direction of a GUI, I'm not going to push for it.

Through our participation in the development process of Dwarf Fortress, we all start to feel a little sense of ownership of the game... we've suggested features, tested for bugs, designed mods, spread publicity, and ultimately supported Tarn in this monumental effort. We all need to remember, however, that this is still Tarn's project, not ours, and it's an unpaid project at that. No matter how excited we all get about Dwarf Fortress, it's not at all fair to push him to do something that he doesn't want done... and he has already voiced his apprehensions about 3rd party graphical interfaces, and how that would impact the project.

Judging by how several on-line communities are viewing this project, especially the folks who say "Wow, now I might try Dwarf Fortress now!" or "I think I could finally get my friends to try this!" one can see that there is definitly a demand for a more accessable interface. Heck, I've even had friends I know in person say that this would get them into the game way more. The problem is that, if players start to rely on such a 3rd-party interface, the team designing it would have to be as dedicated as Tarn with updates and new features, or such an interface would have to be officially adopted... and collaboration is something he has also expressed great reservations about, as this is his brainchild.

But yes, in the universe where we are given the go-ahead from Tarn, interpreting mouse and key input with Stonesense, and translating it to input for DF would probably be the way to go. I'd imagine that drop-down menus for Constructions (a simple point-and-click for designating mining, sizing bridges, laying out roads and walls, etc.) would be doable, though anything beyond that depends entirely on the degree to we can interface with the program itself.

For now, though, the thing that keeps us from even being able to consider a GUI is the wealth of graphical issues that still need ironing out. We need tile rotations, fixes for some of the graphical hiccups such as the "Escher Effect", and a -Lot- more tiles and sprites. For now, focus on that, and if we can eventually pitch a solid visual display and interface to Tarn, and prove that this is a dedicated project, maybe we'll see such a thing down the road.