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Total Members Voted: 305

[Rose]

Just flat, unless somebody wants to make hundreds of 3D models.

[BlitzDungeoneer]

This...
This is glorious.
ALL HAIL JAPA

[Alzapua]

You got some neat stuff going on here. I worked on some Unity games in the past and I'm an experienced 3D artist. I would love to create a full 3D version of this game, but I talked to some programmers and it's probably too design-heavy and too much for a small team with a full time job besides it. I was actually thinking about using Houdini for designing the mine system underground (I believe houdini also has a plugin for unity). And I could easily create most visuals, but I know nothing about programming, so that's as far as I could get. I think a 3D visualiser like this is cool of course, but it would be brilliant if it had all the interactivity you have inside DF itself. So that you don't have to deal with the dwarf fortress window at all and just get the entire interface in Unity. But since I think this would be too much for the average PC, I started thinking about creating a more optimised game in 3D. With a big focus on visuals. Probably never going to happen, though. Have you thought about this too, perhaps?

By the way, say if one would create 3d models, what would be desired resolutions, to have it remain at an acceptable performance? I have no idea what it means render wise if you throw the screen full of shiny minerals and characters. Although most blocks could possibly use the same texture maps (for example all tiles of stone could use the very same normal map and specular map, having only a different color but the same structure).

[Rose]

The only hard limit on the models is 255 vertices, because a 16x16 group of tiles is merged together in Unity for performance reasons, and together they can't have a total vertex count exceeding 65k.

Besides that, just keep within a reasonable polycount.

I'm using a PBR shader for textures, which takes a color map, a roughness/AO map (red and blue channels, respectively) and a normal map. The color map is multiplied by the material color, which also sets weather the material is metal or not.

The color map is chosen according to material, and the roughness/ao/normal maps are set by tiletype.

Models should be made assuming no tiling textures, due to the way the textures are assigned, and should assume when modelling that they use the whole texture.
During runtime, the UVs are transformed to a texture atlas.

If you need any other info, let me know.

[k33n]

Here's what undeground looks like with the default view.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Does anybody want another release?

There is a certain visual appeal about the simple blocks and textures which is totally coherent with the style of ascii DF.

[Alzapua]

-Is there any possibility to add specular maps to the materials? since this will make a big difference in how fancy you can make for example gems. When you use colored specular.

Models should be made assuming no tiling textures, due to the way the textures are assigned, and should assume when modelling that they use the whole texture.
During runtime, the UVs are transformed to a texture atlas.

This is a bit unclear. Do you mean that, taken into account this texture atlas, every side of a piece of stone wall, for example, should be the same texture? Normally, I don't know why you would use tiling textures on a single model which is just one piece of something, like is the case in dwarf fortress. I assume that, when you place more of the same blocks next to each other, it will look like it's tiling, if you textured in the proper way.

edit: although my inclination would be to use tiling on a wall tile of 4 sides, using the same map for every side. I'm a bit confused.

[Rose]

-Is there any possibility to add specular maps to the materials? since this will make a big difference in how fancy you can make for example gems. When you use colored specular.

There is specular, but it works a little differently than
the way traditional specular works. gems would use a colored diffuse map, and a very shiny but uncolored specular map. I'll try to get an example together.

Models should be made assuming no tiling textures, due to the way the textures are assigned, and should assume when modelling that they use the whole texture.
During runtime, the UVs are transformed to a texture atlas.

This is a bit unclear. Do you mean that, taken into account this texture atlas, every side of a piece of stone wall, for example, should be the same texture? Normally, I don't know why you would use tiling textures on a single model which is just one piece of something, like is the case in dwarf fortress. I assume that, when you place more of the same blocks next to each other, it will look like it's tiling, if you textured in the proper way.

edit: although my inclination would be to use tiling on a wall tile of 4 sides, using the same map for every side. I'm a bit confused.

I mean that you shouldn't have the same texture tiling multiple times on the same face. If you open the UV editor, none of the UVs should extend out of the base texture.
If you want different parts of the model to use different textures, then they should be different objects, though that logic isn't implemented yet, so I don't know exactly how it will function.

[Rose]

Spoiler: This would be some sort of gemstone. It's tough to get it to look right without transparency. (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: And here's the same material just changed to metal. (click to show/hide)

[Max™]

I'm curious if you've heard what Toady thinks of this, and I love the blues on the metal one... that's the same sort of colors I picked for my first modded metal earlier today actually.

[Raidau]

Could you make some sort of user-friendly system of extentions to your visualizer? At least a place where users can put their models and the programm checks them and uses as graphics for appropriate item/material/creature? Could you implement sprite graphics for certain objects (Like item graphics in minecraft)?

[Rose]

I'm making everything moddable, using a content loading system based off of Stonesense, using XML files.

As for sprite graphics, I'll have to see, but it makes sense to use them for items.

[Plo]

would be cool to have some sort of data templating, so that users could extend the templates and add stuff like speech balloon with additional info

[Scoops Novel]

You got some neat stuff going on here. I worked on some Unity games in the past and I'm an experienced 3D artist. I would love to create a full 3D version of this game, but I talked to some programmers and it's probably too design-heavy and too much for a small team with a full time job besides it.
...

 And I could easily create most visuals, but I know nothing about programming, so that's as far as I could get.

I wouldn't throw out the idea of patreon to be honest, assuming toady's fine with it.

Japa, have you thought about some adventure mode specific features? Like maps and inventories?

[Rose]

Regarding collecting money and stuff for Utilities, Toady had this to say:

I was asked to come in and weigh in on this.  I don't have a problem with the app as it regards "gutting" DF.  Looks cool!  The main problem we have with people selling "Dwarf Fortress" stuff is that sometimes people assume we are seeing part of the money, which is bad for us.  Along those lines, we'd not want people to be confused that they are buying a complete mobile version of DF, as people might again assume they are contributing to Bay 12 when it is not the case.  The sale of DF apps/mods in general gives me an uncomfortable feeling, but that's probably all it amounts to.  On the other hand, overall, these sorts of efforts are good for the game.  These are the issues, anyway.  If somebody had something specific they wanted permission for now or when the time is right, I can handle that via email or PMs.

And just to be clear, I'm not sure what the plans were overall, but we are completely against anybody selling DF itself, however it is bundled.

That said, I myself am not comfortable taking money for anything DF-related I do.

[Orange Wizard]

You'll just have to be content with appreciation, then.