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Author Topic: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Ironhand - Discussion and Suggestions  (Read 430419 times)

Rekov

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #1305 on: March 29, 2020, 09:26:11 pm »

Oh, wait... so what is the second from left-to-right? Looks like a grate or something.
Cage/Animal stockpile
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Superdorf

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #1306 on: March 29, 2020, 09:32:16 pm »



I would suggest some kind of cast shadow beneath the bench tiles and whatnot on those workshops, especially for wood-on-wood. The transparent floors oughta work just fine, but as you've said-- you'll have to work a bit to make the wood-on-wood pop. A few shadows should do the job nicely.
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Meph

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #1307 on: March 29, 2020, 10:37:59 pm »

Speaking of casting shadows... (Just testing workshops without floor. Quick mock-up, you can still see a bit of rock floor I failed to remove XD)

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Uthimienure

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #1308 on: March 29, 2020, 10:47:42 pm »

Speaking of casting shadows... (Just testing workshops without floor. Quick mock-up, you can still see a bit of rock floor I failed to remove XD)


Nice without floor!

The stockpile sign for leather had me stumped... maybe make the hide's legs a bit longer.

The sign for logs would be more intuitive with a stack of 3 logs.

How would an axe look on the weapon sign? Dwarfs are more axey than swordy.
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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #1309 on: March 29, 2020, 11:01:59 pm »

Speaking of casting shadows... (Just testing workshops without floor. Quick mock-up, you can still see a bit of rock floor I failed to remove XD)



I like this new border around the grassy floor better than the one from a few pages back:



I don't noticed the stone floor below the tables unless I zoom in. It just looks like it could be shadow.
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Cruxador

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #1310 on: March 29, 2020, 11:56:23 pm »

Yeah, lets focus on sprites. :)

We had a few ideas we discussed, that aren't coded yet. I'm curious what you make of it:

1. Different floors/furniture for workshops based on material used; or transparent workshop ground so that you can see the constructed floor underneath. Examples show stone/stone, wood/stone, stone/wood, wood/wood. Pros are that it's more realistic and offer more variety and customization option by the player; cons are that it might look chaotic and less readable. (Hence why stone floors are dark and stone furniture is bright, to keep the contrast high. The wood example shows what happens if both have the same hue and brightness.)

2. Different sets of furniture and items for different materials. Again, more customization, but harder to build uniform forts. Sprite count spirals out of control fast considerin the amount of items to be made. I think glass had around 60-ish objects that can be made.

3. Items in containers. The biggest culprits of monotone copy+paste areas in the game are stockpiles. All the fancy new object sprites, all hidden inside the one bin or barrel sprite. What if we leave the bin open, showing one or a few of the items inside?

4. Item variations. Just like grasses and rock floors come in 1-4 options, the sprites for objects could have a small variety to them.


1. I think let the furniture source its color from the material's raws, but there's no need for a special floor. It doesn't make sense that dwarves would want to do that, in the first place, and it also doesn't make sense that you can make a whole workshop AND nine tiles worth of floor for one stone, when normally it's nine stone to make nine floor tiles. Furthermore, it only limits the variety of appearance, prevents come customization, and requires many exceptions for magma furnaces &c which don't necessarily have floor everywhere.

2. I don't think different materials need their own sprites except very rarely where the sprite clearly wouldn't work for one potential material. Although there are exceptions, just inheriting the color correctly should be enough in most cases, and it wouldn't necessarily make sense for the item to be different in other ways. Although your examples do look nice. But I don't think it's worth exploding the sprite count.

3. I think this one depends entirely on the performance impact. If it's not a big deal for performance, might as well do this. Otherwise, bins can hold a bunch of items anyway, and you won't be able to see them all (hardly anything is worth making a sprite for "loads of this one item" in practice), so might as well let stockpiles look a bit tidier. In fact, I reckon there's plenty of people who want their stockpiles tidy anyway. Also, the example is confusing. I can only guess maybe it's piles of super giant coins? If so, maybe reconsider and make coins a glittery pile instead. There's a limit to how much the scale can be disregarded, and they look like a bunch of baozi/steamed buns. Or the plate piles like you see at a buffet, maybe.

4. Seems like too much work for too little benefit. There are loads of different types of items in the game anyway, and loads of different colors. This isn't an area where artificial variety is needed. In fact, nowhere is really, as long as the variety that's already reflected in the game is realized, there won't be an issue of excessive homogeneity in practice. Again, your furniture examples look nice, but I'm sure there will be plenty of people who want to disable it anyway, so it seems like a considerably low priority.

Also: Stockpiles signs. (Last one is for custom stockpiles). I won't spoil the rest, the intent is to see if any are very unclear. ;)


I'm intentionally doing this without looking at anything anyone else has said about it. Tried to look at it as though I didn't already know the stockpile types, to varying success. From left to right:

1. Top looks like a fork, bottom like a nazi grenade. Or maybe a paint brush? Not really sure.
2. Cage, presumably animals. I can't say I'd recognize it without knowing what it was supposed to be.
3. Shield, presumably weapons.
4. Bars and blocks.
5. Cloth
6. Coins
7. Corpses, but if I was new to DF I might very well guess poison.
8. A ring. Finished goods?
9. A fan or mushroom and a perfume bottle or potion of some sort? Maybe a tear drop. I'm guessing the purple thing is meant to be a plump helmet, but I'm going on color for that, so based on that I guess food.
10. Furniture
11. Gems
12. Leather/hide
13. Not a fucking clue, from the image. I guess since there's no "powder" or "hill and cloud" stockpile and it kind of looks like a pile of some shit, must be refuse.
14. Paper/documents
15. Stone
16. Looks like ball bearings or cannon balls. Copper ones, on the bottom. So my best guess is siege equipment, but I wonder if a ballista wouldn't be more obvious for that.
17. Specified as custom. Looks like that star from the time Jesus was born, though, which seems like a weird choice to mean "non-specific stockpile" to me. Why not give it the jaggedy black lines that are universally recognized as "text but you can't read it from this vantage"? Bigger than on the paper, obviously.

I think it'll be easier to recognize in game though, since you'll only see them after designating, so you'll get used to it

And go with colored version, most people these days can afford the colored screen ink :)

Now, proceeding to the next page.

So it was arrows, and wood. The feathers on the arrows are pretty huge, but maybe it can't be helped given size constraints. The wood still doesn't look like wood to me, but I think it should be fine in context.

Speaking of casting shadows... (Just testing workshops without floor. Quick mock-up, you can still see a bit of rock floor I failed to remove XD)


As expected, the transparent looks great.

Although since we're talking about workshops, I'll mention a criticism I encountered which I agree with. The combination of top-down walls and not so top-down furniture is already a stress on people's perceptive abilities and there are a lot of potentials that something imperfect shatters the illusion that things make sense.* Specifically, the forge overlapping with the ostensibly taller wall to the north of it doesn't quite work. Not sure there's a good solution to this.

Speaking of casting shadows... (Just testing workshops without floor. Quick mock-up, you can still see a bit of rock floor I failed to remove XD)



I like this new border around the grassy floor better than the one from a few pages back:



I don't noticed the stone floor below the tables unless I zoom in. It just looks like it could be shadow.
They're representing totally different things, though. The stockpile borders are the main visual component of it, so they need to be a bit more noticeable, while the workshop borders are just to make it clear which area you can't build other stuff on top of.



*With regards to the game's geometry, I mean. With regards to life in general, that's a different story.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2020, 12:07:39 am by Cruxador »
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jecowa

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #1311 on: March 30, 2020, 12:24:47 am »

with the stockpile border, i thought it looked like the grass was on top of the border instead of the border being on top of the grass. i think it was because of the notches in the grass– like they had peeled the grass from the surface and placed it here
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Rose

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #1312 on: March 30, 2020, 12:26:07 am »



Rolls and rolls of toilet paper. Untold riches.
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Hommit

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #1313 on: March 30, 2020, 09:06:58 am »

Imo, workshops should be with floor, or options for transparency. Because really, unless in emergency, why would you want a building without a floor?
Shadow look very nice

On signs, 1st unrecognizable, cloth should maybe a "roll", money pile maybe a bit bigger, on food maybe bottle or cup instead of droplet?, leather also kinda unrecognizable, maybe larger sprite?, refuse probable shold pe purple :) and more "ewww", paper one maybe half-unfurled scroll?,
also, since "big" items like stone/wood/furniture/cages/... are all have sprites and easily identifiable, do we need signs for them at all?
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Lomax

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #1314 on: March 30, 2020, 09:47:06 am »

I am so impressed by the work you guys are doing, the sprites look absolutely amazing! Can't wait to see the finished product! My $0.02 on stockpiles & workshops:

  • For stockpiles I like the rope & posts option best, but the doubled up posts look like an error. Ideally rope & post materials should be selectable, maybe on the same page as the icon selection?
  • For workshops definitely transparent floor, but please remove the border too; it ruins the realism, and I don't really see the need for it? Would be nice if there was more sawdust/stone chippings on the floor and worktops too.

Edit: Oh and please make the stockpile icon selectable - most of my stockpiles are custom ones and it would be very useful to be able to differentiate between them.

Edit 2: Sorry, but I agree with those who think the cat is too big!
« Last Edit: March 30, 2020, 09:53:33 am by Lomax »
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Cruxador

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #1315 on: March 30, 2020, 10:27:22 am »

Imo, workshops should be with floor, or options for transparency. Because really, unless in emergency, why would you want a building without a floor?
Why would you want a building without walls or roof? A workshop isn't a building to begin with, and if you want an actual floor, you can build one the normal way. After all, adding the appearance of a floor to the sprite now won't change what's actually going on. But much of the time, it'll be indoors anyway since that's how dwarves live. I don't think the apparent silliness of grass all around your workshop is inaccurate to the situation and actually, if you look at relatively comparable things, for example in reconstruction medieval villages aimed at tourists, this is totally normal. There are never floors specially built for outdoor tasks. By the time you get beyond "medieval village" level of development, you can just build a building, floor and all, if you want to not be underground.

For workshops definitely transparent floor, but please remove the border too; it ruins the realism, and I don't really see the need for it? Would be nice if there was more sawdust/stone chippings on the floor and worktops too.
The reason for the border is that the workshop in game is always a 3*3 square like that, and the border shows its real perimeter. Although I agree that it would look better without it, forgoing that border has the strong possibility to be confusing to new players. For that reason, I think borderless workshops are the sort of thing that should be in the steam workshop - it's a good idea, but because it's mostly and improvement for people who already have an ingrained conception of the real situation, it's best as a mod option.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2020, 01:36:47 pm by Cruxador »
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Pillbo

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #1316 on: March 30, 2020, 01:51:34 pm »

Yeah, lets focus on sprites. :)

We had a few ideas we discussed, that aren't coded yet. I'm curious what you make of it:

1. Different floors/furniture for workshops based on material used; or transparent workshop ground so that you can see the constructed floor underneath. Examples show stone/stone, wood/stone, stone/wood, wood/wood. Pros are that it's more realistic and offer more variety and customization option by the player; cons are that it might look chaotic and less readable. (Hence why stone floors are dark and stone furniture is bright, to keep the contrast high. The wood example shows what happens if both have the same hue and brightness.)

2. Different sets of furniture and items for different materials. Again, more customization, but harder to build uniform forts. Sprite count spirals out of control fast considerin the amount of items to be made. I think glass had around 60-ish objects that can be made.

3. Items in containers. The biggest culprits of monotone copy+paste areas in the game are stockpiles. All the fancy new object sprites, all hidden inside the one bin or barrel sprite. What if we leave the bin open, showing one or a few of the items inside?

4. Item variations. Just like grasses and rock floors come in 1-4 options, the sprites for objects could have a small variety to them.



1. I like the idea, maybe just adding some shading to the floors underneath the workbench will be enough to distinguish them?

2. I like having the variety in your tileset for this though I occasionally absolutely hate an item that's make from fungiwood, or having a tavern with 30 different colored tables.  It would be cool to have the option either way, but generally I'm for it.  Maybe there can eventually be a mod to add Painting or Staining to furniture so I can still make them look uniform in the places where it matters to me.

3 & 4 .  Looks really good IMO. The 4 item examples add a lot more interest to standard furniture.
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Rekov

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #1317 on: March 30, 2020, 02:23:19 pm »

Although since we're talking about workshops, I'll mention a criticism I encountered which I agree with. The combination of top-down walls and not so top-down furniture is already a stress on people's perceptive abilities and there are a lot of potentials that something imperfect shatters the illusion that things make sense.* Specifically, the forge overlapping with the ostensibly taller wall to the north of it doesn't quite work. Not sure there's a good solution to this.
I suppose you could visualize the walls as being cut-aways at floor level, but you're right that it doesn't make much sense. I suppose it's too late to push for a complete re-think and instead of top down, going for a Stonesense style isometric view?

For workshops definitely transparent floor, but please remove the border too; it ruins the realism, and I don't really see the need for it? Would be nice if there was more sawdust/stone chippings on the floor and worktops too.
The reason for the border is that the workshop in game is always a 3*3 square like that, and the border shows its real perimeter. Although I agree that it would look better without it, forgoing that border has the strong possibility to be confusing to new players. For that reason, I think borderless workshops are the sort of thing that should be in the steam workshop - it's a good idea, but because it's mostly and improvement for people who already have an ingrained conception of the real situation, it's best as a mod option.
If the aim is to limit the display to things that make sense in the game world, what about doing the kinds of borders that dwarves might actually make themselves. I'm picturing those little stone path-markers you sometimes see.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You could use a similar approach if you wanted an alternative to ropes/stakes for stockpiles.
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Mike Mayday

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #1318 on: March 30, 2020, 02:37:07 pm »

Re: forge - I'm still heavily in opposition to Patrick's idea for it. To me it doesn't make sense visually or from a gameplay point of view.
My forge looks like this (just with the furnace made thicker):


Re: view - I was specifically proposing a 3/4 top-down view, but Tarn decided to go for 100% top-down for the initial release.
However, the only thing the game needs to support 3/4 top-down is giving an offset to the layers in multilevel view. So that's not totally off the plate (my personal opinion).

Re: workshop borders - the stone path makes sense above ground, not so much underground. It's purely a visual cue for new players that this is something special, not a bunch of constructed furniture. Since workshops as they are now are ultimately going to be replaced with a system much like the hospital one, I believe this is a good interim solution.

The problem here is that the diagonal floor tiles were used to reinforce that cue (to make the workshops stand out from other rooms). If we get rid of them and just leave normal grass underneath, the borders don't match the rest anymore.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2020, 02:43:56 pm by Mike Mayday »
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jecowa

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Re: Steam/Itch.io tileset - Mayday/Meph - Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #1319 on: March 30, 2020, 02:47:03 pm »

I don't have a problem with the size of the cat. It between the size of a bunny and a horse. That seems good enough. Maybe the glare on its fur could be toned down. Its body gathers my focus more than its head. I like the glare on the pig because it's on its head and draws my focus there.



I think the built-in floors for workshops made more sense with the vanilla text-based glyphs to connect the components of the workshop together visually. In a graphical version, I think the thin workshop borders around the native floor are enough to connect the components together.

Since workshops as they are now are ultimately going to be replaced with a system much like the hospital one

That sounds interesting. Could have a metalsmith workshop without an anvil. I'd be curious to see the tech tree for this system.
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