Print

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

Comic. (Example: Totem/Traps on screenshot)

Realism. (Example: Remains/Grass on screenshot)

Both, if it fits. (for example comic skull, realistic stone)

I dont care.

[Meph]

Here is a crazy idea. What about a 64x64 tileset? And 64x64 creature sprites? I know what the first reaction is: No monitor can display this correctly. You would need a native solution of (80x25 tiles) 5120x1600 pixels. Maybe, just maybe, some gamers have 2 24" screens next to each other that should be able to handle it, but I dont even know if DF supports multiple screens.

But... the 80x25 tile minimum does not matter if you play in window mode. Whenever I press F11 ingame the game adjusts the window size to fit these 5120x1600pixels. Even if most of it is outside the actual screen. It does not matter. You can scroll and see everything in your fort even with 64x64 tiles. At some point you cant scroll anymore to the right, but... if you open both ingame menus with tab, which fill 2/3 of the screen, you can still scroll all the way to the right map edge.

Obviously the game is unplayable while fully zoomed in on 64x64. You can either zoom out a little bit with your mousewheel, or simply use it to watch or make screenshots. Here some examples:

Fortress Defense Naga Race:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Arena Mode Creature Tiles, Comparison 16 to 64

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Arena Mode Creature Tiles(2), Comparison 16 to 64

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ingame screenshot Walls, Floor and Furniture, Comparison 16 to 64

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Example Creature Sprites (done by Shockbolt)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The most important part: This can be done to any tileset. You can play normally with your native solution. Doesnt matter... but as soon as you press F11, you get this extreme zoom. The problem I face is only the limits of my graphical skill, which is quite low as some people can attest. I am no GFX-artist or photoshop genius. I cant even get a tileset right... so before I start with the 256 tiles with correct opacity/transparency/alphachannels and before I do 1300 creature sprites, I wanted to ask what the community thinks of this. Because it is, quite frankly, a lot of work. There is also a small problem about tiles with mutiple uses. The level of detail is simply too high to disguise something as a weapon, an arrow and a slash. Or as a block and at the same time as a treetop. But we'll see.

Now the best part: The creator of the 64x64 (and 64x128) Tileset for Angband, Shockbolt, has given me permission to use his creature sprites. He has about... ~1200? And another giant batch of terrain, objects, items, whatever. All free to use for Masterwork. And/or a possible 64x tileset.

What I need to know is this:

• @Phoebus: Could I possibly get the sourcecode for the Phoebus Tileset Assembler?
• @GFX-Artists: Does anyone would like to design sprites for creatures still missing?
• @Whoever knows alphachannels: Any volunteers for work on the tileset?
• @Whoever knows simply DF graphics: Any volunteers for adding creature sprites? (this one is actually not that hard)
• @All: Would you use this?

The last question is the most important one. If people dont think that this is a good idea, I dont think I will do this.

Edit: With caldirs new utilitiy to port DF sprites directly into stonesense, you could even use the same 64x64 sprites for stonesense creatures.
Edit2: In case its unclear to some people: This has no effect on FPS.
Edit3: Slowly making progress. 1 line of tiles and 4 lines of "text-tiles" done. Not much, but "its something"

[Kire93]

ptw and would probably use this!!

[mocman]

dude if you popularize this lots more people might play
and you could specialize this to your mod id be amazing
id use it.

[smirk]

I gave this a try myself, back in the day! When 40d16 had its zoom function, to be precise: "Smirk's Folly"

The problem I ran into was that, with Baughn's OpenGL upgrades at the end of 40d#, the game rolls all the tiles into one giant texture and then goes from there. So you can only have so many tiles before the texture gets too big and your gpu won't load it. That's one limit for the standard 256 plus any creature tiles. Most cards these days load 2048 or 4096 textures, I think, so you should be safe at 64. Best to check anyway though; make some giant blank sprite sheets and see how many your game/gpu will load before crashing out. I was trying to make tiles at 512, which was the problem =P

If you make this set, I would use it. Might even be the inspiration to go back and shrink my own, make it workable again. We shall see!

[Putnam]

Oh man, there's no hard limit to graphics and tilesets? Perfect.

[smakemupagus]

This is a really great idea in principle, the idea of being able to zoom in for close combat images in community games and stuff is really nice.  I think if you get talented pixel artists (or yourself) to do the hard work of making images that work well in DF context at both zoomed in and standard playing zoom level it could be amazing. 

In these previews, though, to be honest I can't see what anything was until you show the zoom-in image. 

[smirk]

Oh man, there's no hard limit to graphics and tilesets? Perfect.

Yup! Not beyond yer own graphics card. Dug up the relevant Baughn quote here:

There's a limit on how large textures your card will accept; typically 1024x1024, 2048x2048 or 4096x4096.

40d creates one texture per tile, then switches between them once per tile. This is very inefficient. 40d16 creates a single large texture for all tiles, but this means there are limits on tile size.
...

In these previews, though, to be honest I can't what anything was until you show the zoom-in image. 

To me, actually, it doesn't look too much worse than some other graphics packs out there. I'd use it as is. If you can improve clarity further, Meph, you'd have a great set on yer hands.

[Meph]

In these previews, though, to be honest I can't see what anything was until you show the zoom-in image. 

I'd say thats because its a new set, and the icons look unfamiliar. I could just upscale Phoebus to 64x and start adding creature sprites. In that case the normal 16x gameplay looks exactly like it does now, but you have HD creatures if you zoom in.

In theorie I can do the sprites myself. I have maybe... half of the creatures I need here, or at least a template creature that I could alter slightly to fit the ingame description. Rest I have to beg, borrow or steal. Or use upscaled fillers from the 16x tiles. That would even look perfectly fine, until you zoom in.

What I do need help with, desperately so, is the tileset. I tried and failed and started a bit on the sprites instead, hoping that someone sends me an example file where I can see the alphachannel and/or how the transparency is set up. I wrote Phoebus, Ironhand, Mayday and deon a while ago, and got some helping tips, but I am too daft to really grasp the idea behind it. So far, at least.

Edit: I upscaled all the creature sprite graphics to 64x64. Filesize in total: 50mb. Yikes.... but many duplicates in there, leftovers from too much modding.
Edit2: Started it up, all looks ok. DF has no problem with the sprites.
Edit3: Yeah, I'd say it works.

Armored Elephant, Frilllizard, Burning/Frozen Skull, Bloodbeast and Hawk.



I will leave the background transparent, which will show as solid black ingame, till I know what kind of background the tileset will have. Its easy to add the fitting color/texture afterwards.

[Deon]

Good job. Your fell mood is nice.

[Heimdall86]

This sounds like an awesome idea Meph. Especially how the guy from Angband let you use his sprites, those are really amazing sprite art. I only wish i had the skills to help you out!
http://youtu.be/SmHeP9Sve48

[Meph]

Angband has no animals though, I downloaded a spritesheet from z + yngas farmville. I am not sure if thats a good idea, that company... I dont know. ^^ I dont know if I can use those. ^^

I added about 30 creatures, mostly for testing. They look ok from far away, awesome as a closeup. But the more complicated and detailed ones... they look awesome as a closeup, but random/unclear from far away.

I will upload all the files tomorrow... the old 16x sprites and the shockbolt/angband 64x sprites. Maybe some people will chime in at some parts. And I'll have a look at a 64x Phoebus tileset and see what can be done with it.

I also tested the stonesense converter for normal df sprites, works beautiful. Download Stonesense for Masterwork XMLs, all done.

[Boltgun]

That would be a good use of your graphic card, while the CPU is slaving calculating pathing. 
I already play fullscreen and zoomed in so I'd definitely use that.

Also on retina macs this may look good right out of the box. That only issue is actually the same issue with 16x16 sprites: making pictures that are easy to read in the middle of a sea of tiles. You will probably need bright colors and well defined parts.

[CaptainArchmage]

Normally, I use ASCII. However, this graphics pack is great, and allows better identification of creatures. Is this going to work on normal unmodded DF?

[Firehawk45]

Put it into Masterwork, i will definitly try it out

[Demonbutter]

This is just simply incredible.