Bay 12 Games Forum

I wanted a creature graphic ready to go if a certain profession or similar replacement profession was thrown back in the game (philosopher, arsenal dwarf, dungeon master, etc). Also, if Toady implemented a way to once again provide profession concurrently with the undead state as he did previously, I wanted those graphics ready to go as well.

Right, right. Same reason I made creature graphics for vermin and included them in the creature list. I'll definitely include a note about deprecated professions and that train of thought on the graphic set page.

So, I don't know the current profession list versus the outdated, since my reference is everything that is and was. For instance, I clearly went overkill when creating the elves with more professions than they actually have (thankfully nothing breaks if you have something that doesn't exist).

Yeah, I've been thinking, for a possible template, I would include every profession for every civ and all creatures, including vermin. Especially for creatures, that makes it easier to sort them in columns with child, -men and giant below the standard adult.

I believe entity_default.txt does list all possible graphics with odd inconsistencies; it's not clear which syntax name you should be using in the graphics_mygraphics.txt. For example, while a princess or queen for the elf civ is named such in the game it is actually a GENERAL and LEADER respectively in the raws. Yet, the queen for the dwarf civ is under MONARCH alongside the king. To confuse matters further, I am positive [QUEEN:MYDWARVES:1:12:AS_IS:DEFAULT] works and [BARON_CONSORT:MYDWARVES:3:12:AS_IS:DEFAULT] works, but I am not sure if [KING_CONSORT:MYDWARVES:1:12:AS_IS:DEFAULT] or if [BARONESS:MYDWARVES:1:12:AS_IS:DEFAULT] works. Maybe they both do?

I see. I will include a notes column on the entity token table for quirks like the elven terminology and a verify tag for the others.
What about the hierarchy of the entity tokens mentioned in graphics_example.txt? Is that complete? The first one, I assume is a placeholder for all positions (monarch, baron, leader, etc), and in the absence of that, it uses FORCED_ADMINISTRATOR, HIGH_PRIEST, PRIEST, SLAVE, PRISONER, in that order. Anything you think is missing from there?

I think for now I'll just list all entity tokens; and add a note that some entries might not work, but you can always assign them to graphics anyway. If it doesn't work, it's not like DF crashes. What would be a good channel to ask Toady about it? Email? FotF question? Though I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't remember either. "[...], he he he."

Also, I am not sure if all the listed professions in the entity_default.txt are truly used in the game. Is there a way to spawn a specific profession in the Object Testing Arena, you know, to test it? Heh.

Not that I know of.
There's Raw Explorer, but that only shows creatures. I figure you could request display of child, animated, etc, as well as professions. Though I suspect it would just read the raws and graphic folder, with no knowledge of how it works, given that it displays graphics for vermin as well. Testing that kind of thing is really a pain in the ass.
EDIT:
You might be able to write something for DFhack. TWBT already allows you to reload the tileset with a command already.

Life is probably more of just a categorical simple thing for most of the simulation like: none, then simple chemotrophes (which fix carbon that matters geologically), then photosynthesizing (which starts affecting oxygen levels), then eukaryotic (which starts making shells and limestones and things), then land life (which will contribute to erosion or lack thereof, global temperature, and fossil fuels, etc.).  That sort of level of detail.

Yeah, that's what I had in mind. I don't think it's necessary to model individual species. It's enough to have data like "this tile currently produces that much oxygen; reduces erosion by that much; leaves that much lime, and that much coal"

I am led to believe that dfhack (from asking their IRC channel) can pretty much already just change any tile, possibly even just using a modified existing tiletypes script. So after embark, you sould be able to read from a geological world file and just replace tiles one by one, with fairly minimal porting code, until the whole map is an equally sized section from the 3rd party app.

It seems to me creating the world like Perfect World does would be a good starting point, only using dfhack for things that can't be saved in "world files".

Thanks for the clarification, burned.

I finished the first version of the tutorial and I think it's a bit too complicated, long winded, and/or could use some better formatting.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/User_talk:CLA#Editing_a_tileset

Right now, I'm thinking it's better to make the tutorial simpler by taking out the non-destructive parts. I.e. instead of copy part of layer, mask original, draw on new layer; just: erase icon, draw new icon, save.

The whole thing about layers, masks, organization, etc would then go in a new section called "good practices" or whatever right below. After that, the advanced stuff about tile magic.
What do you think? Any other comments on the tutorial?

Edit: added table with texture and profession tokens to the graphic set page. Which Civ uses which professions is still missing If anyone knows about it, please add it. Creature table isn't done yet either.

Right, I originally thought it should be the last DEFAULT as well. The only reason I knew it was reversed was because of geoduck who says he got it from Phoebus' txt files.

Does that apply to GHOST (i.e. it's a "profession"), or to all creature texture tokens? Looking at my own graphic set, they're all set to the first DEFAULT, except GHOST, which I put on the first and second. Fuck me if I remember why.

Hrm. I am intimidated by the idea of editing the wiki, but I'll give the note a shot (below). Perhaps someone with more knowledge than myself could explain it better.

Prior to the SDL version of 40d you had to worry about everything mentioned on the custom grid page, which lead to things like the Dwarf Fortress Custom Grid Calculator. The custom grid information is still relevant if you use the legacy version of DF, but in 40d19 "The grid size [was] autogenerated on startup; such init.txt settings [were] ignored " if you left them at 0,0.

In other words, x and y at zero will calculate the numbers for you.

Ahhhh, that grid. If you don't edit the wiki in the end, don't worry, I'll write something down.

@Dirst
Great, thanks.

Thank you, burned!

ANIMATED replaced SKELETON and ZOMBIE, yes. The GHOST token is used in the same way as ANIMATED (e.g. [GHOST:MYDWARVES:12:0:AS_IS:DEFAULT]).

Wait, the first DEFAULT is used for that? I thought the one at the end is the one. [DEFAULT:MYDWARVES:12:0:AS_IS:GHOST] is what I expected.

These are the tokens that are used outside of the professions.

Great, thanks for that link. I will add the table to the graphic set page when I get to it.

This has a list of the animals you can train for hunting/war.

So this part

       [TRAINED_HUNTER:MYANIMALS:4:0:AS_IS:DEFAULT] ← TRAINED_HUNTER profession only works with animals that have the [TRAINABLE] tag.
       [TRAINED_WAR:MYANIMALS:5:0:AS_IS:DEFAULT] ← TRAINED_WAR profession only works with animals that have the [TRAINABLE] tag.
is correct, right?

if your grid init settings reflect 0 for both X and Y (default)

Could you elaborate on that? Or better yet, add it yourself under notes.

Adobe used to offer a student license for Photoshop. Try if your university offers that. <- Misread your second sentence.
GIMP is more than good enough, (there's also Krita although I haven't used it myself).
But really, any bitmap editor that has layers and masks, supports png with alpha transparency and has basic tools such as pen, eraser, and selection tool is absolutely sufficient.
Apart from MSpaint, I can't think of a single program that wouldn't be good enough.

It is fairly widely agreed in the coding world that crashing is a superior outcome to mysterious and unexpected behavior. Crashing makes you go find the answer and download a new init file and have the game work. Hardcoded defaults drive you crazy and maybe kill your fort when you weren't expecting things constantly, etc. And possibly ALSO crash the game halfway through when some old, forgotten preset Toady used way back when is now invalid.

Very good point and I'm having a hard time finding a reason to disagree with you here.

I have to admit I still don't understand the logic of why that is desirable...

Really, at first, it was just a thought to make version migration (seemingly) easier for, well, me as a graphic set maintainer.
Then I thought about how some other programs handle user settings (global config files in program directory and user settings in OS specific user directories), and just went from there.

There are better options than either, though. The best would probably be a big prominent error message that fills up the screen when a corrupt or missing init is found, with a helpful permalink to the download page and a description of what went wrong and that you need a new init file. Or maybe even if tells you what couple of lines were in error.

Yeah, more verbose error messages would of course be welcome.