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[Real_bang]

I was wondering if trees could be smaller and doubled by four.
It would change a cartographic style a bit to make more sense in scale-wise. Right-now those trees won't give me an impression of real forest, they are more like small park. They also make mountains look too small.

What do you think about something similar instead?

On the small scale tree map swamps look like lakes though.

[PatrikLundell]

@Cruxador: It can be noted that DF displays the color of sand in deserts at the expense of showing the Evilness. It took me a fair while to realize that desert color did NOT represent Evilness but sand color, as opposed to most other biome types. Hamlets on rivers show that it's on a river at the expense of showing whether it's inhabited or not (and elven resorts never distinguish between inhabited and razed, for some reason, resulting in an actual information loss), which is another case where one set of information has taken precedence over another.
Thus, you can argue whether Evilness or sand color is the most important thing to show for a desert, but it would only be a loss of information amount if the choice was to remove the sand color and not replace it with Evilness (which, in my opinion, is more important [as well as consistent with the display of other features], but that's obviously a matter of taste).

Once Evilness/Savagery gets added to the mix somewhat realistic colors get tossed out the door (and it's going to be even more complicated handling Spheres after the Myth&Magic release). One way to deal with Evilness/Savagery now might be to use saturation for Savagery, color for Evilness, and texture for biome (possibly letting each biome use its own unique RGB values for the 9 members of the set [18 if Tropicality is indicated by color as well, and although many biomes are directly tied to the Tropicality, some are not]). Another method would be overlays/alternative views in the same vein as the current tab view for the Local map, with one composite map (show as much as possible) as the default, sphere influences as another, a "realistic" map as a third, a detailed biome one as a fourth, and an elevation map as a fifth one (there may be other things you'd like to show apart from those, of course).

[Cruxador]

I was wondering if trees could be smaller and doubled by four.
It would change a cartographic style a bit to make more sense in scale-wise. Right-now those trees won't give me an impression of real forest, they are more like small park. They also make mountains look too small.

What do you think about something similar instead?

I think that makes the mountains look better, but everything else look worse. That suggests to me that a better action would be to make the mountains bigger, perhaps making a set of multi-tile mountains for when there's a 2x2 (or other shapes) area of mountain and tiling that, with little 1x1 mountains only coming into play in border areas where bigger mountains don't fit.

Regarding evilness and savagery, I reckon that would be better off turned into an overlay than sending different colors through the channel, though a separate set of sprites which reflect the sphere's theme (and specific flora, as appropriate) would probably be the best option. "Everything is purple" may be a handy way to show evil in ASCII, but the tileset has a bigger toolbox.

[Death Dragon]

I was also gonna say that mountains should maybe be increased in size. Right now there seem to be like 4 peaks per tile, which sounds a bit much and makes it look too spikey.

I also agree that alignment should probably be an overlay, but you could also just do what ASCII does and make separate sprites for good/evil versions of all terrain. Evil Forests could be shown as wormy tendrils and eye balls for example.
That would be a bunch of sprites though and would require a ton more once the magic update hits.

@Cruxador: It can be noted that DF displays the color of sand in deserts at the expense of showing the Evilness. It took me a fair while to realize that desert color did NOT represent Evilness but sand color, as opposed to most other biome types.

The wiki says that good deserts are cyan and evil deserts purple, is that not true?
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Map_legend#Biome.2FRegion_key

[Clatch]

WOW!  Looking at all this -- I'm tearing up.

[Clatch]

This has probably already been answered, but I'm too lazy to look -- so feel free to flame me:

Looking at some of the examples here, you'd need some of the current hacks and auxiliary plugins to produce this tileset and accompanying sounds.  Is Toady providing a new platform to launch this tileset off from or is dfhack and sound plugins now a part of the release?

[Cruxador]

This has probably already been answered, but I'm too lazy to look -- so feel free to flame me:

Looking at some of the examples here, you'd need some of the current hacks and auxiliary plugins to produce this tileset and accompanying sounds.  Is Toady providing a new platform to launch this tileset off from or is dfhack and sound plugins now a part of the release?

You... You haven't been following along at all, have you? This is for the premium version that Toady is making. It's all features that are part of the game, or will be at the time it's released.

[Manveru Taurënér]

This has probably already been answered, but I'm too lazy to look -- so feel free to flame me:

Looking at some of the examples here, you'd need some of the current hacks and auxiliary plugins to produce this tileset and accompanying sounds.  Is Toady providing a new platform to launch this tileset off from or is dfhack and sound plugins now a part of the release?

Basically, all (or most of?) the stuff that those plugins do now will be coded in and made baseline for both the premium and classic version, along with whatever other graphical upgrades are easily done or Toady feels are worth doing. Lots of stuff that's been talked about and shown all throughout the thread so worth a glance if you feel up for it ^^

[Clatch]

Basically, all (or most of?) the stuff that those plugins do now will be coded in and made baseline for both the premium and classic version, along with whatever other graphical upgrades are easily done or Toady feels are worth doing. Lots of stuff that's been talked about and shown all throughout the thread so worth a glance if you feel up for it ^^

OK, well, thanks for going easy on me -- I can hardly believe it though!  WOW.

[PatrikLundell]

@Cruxador, regarding sand: I stand corrected...

[Meph]

My personal choice would be something like this for evil/good biomes:

[PatrikLundell]

Meph's overlay principle looks like a good one for Evilness, and might be possible to expand to cover multiple spheres in M&M. I'm not sure what would work best for Savagery, but some alternatives are:
- Washed out/Normal/Saturated colors for the base tile (might be better for Tropicality?); [Would it work to use saturation to indicate elevation/depth, as another alternative use for that dimension?]
- Another overlay band (in which case they'd have to be narrower);
- A different overlay color (i.e. 9 versions, where the normal savagery, normal evilness would be absent/completely transparent);
- Another overlay with bands in the other direction;

[Meph]

Two examples with smaller trees. Half size and quarter size.

[Mike Mayday]

I like the way it looks, though I fret over the details lost on the trees. I've already suggested sparser but bigger mountains, so I'll try to mock it up and we'll see.
I obviously don't want to spend time making too many mockups when it's something we'll be able to work on "live" later on.

[Cruxador]

My personal choice would be something like this for evil/good biomes:

It conveys the information effectively, and is extensible to cover additional spheres, but it also mars the general aesthetic. I think it's fine as long as it can be toggled, but then that would still be better if combined with variant tiles.