Tile contributions...

[dd]

Why don't we reduce the resolution to 320x200 and use a 16 colour palette for all the tiles while we're at it... of course this means all the tiles have to be 8x8 but what the hey.

You know, get that authentic, pixely 8-bit look.

Oh and by the way, we should make sure the next version of Crawl doesn't use more than 640 KB of RAM... it's not a REAL roguelike if you can't run it in a 286.

[dd]

Anyway, I improved my axe designs somewhat. Some of the dwarven ones looked a bit dull, and some needed some extra contrast. I also modified my regular exec axe designs a bit.

all_axes-x.png (30.81 KiB) Viewed 10025 times

Warning: following is a boring rant which represents my personal opinions only and should be considered as such.

To the argument that my tile designs don't fit crawl because they're "not pixelated enough", I have to say I appreciate that people have different opinions, but personally I find that argument laughable. For one, my latest designs use anti-aliasing very sparingly, I've actually only used it in shadows and edges that are non-straight/diagonal or curved, because those edges tend to look really bad without anti-aliasing. Even in those cases I've limited the alpha-channel variance by certain tricks that I've basically made up as I went along (which incidentally is my modus operandi 99% of the time).

Either way, I find the whole anti-aliasing argument a bit silly - it's of course noticeable when the tiles are posted here or in mantis with a transparent background, against the off-white background of the website, but when the tiles are put against the actual floor tiles or other backgrounds you can't really see the anti-aliasing unless you're really looking for it. On the other hand if there is no anti-aliasing at all on curved edges, like axe blades for example, you will notice it as it will look choppy and ugly.

I am making an effort to conform my designs with the general style of Crawl - if I were in charge of all the tile designs, there wouldn't be any pixelation ANYWHERE, period... but since I'm a team player and willing to make compromises, I've amended my style and put aside my personal preferences... hence I've limited the use of anti-aliasing to the very specific cases already mentioned.

Lastly, I don't mean to come off as arrogant, or to imply that I know anything better than anyone else. I'm also always willing to listen to feedback or criticism to my work, when it's given in a constructive way. But I've had the impression (although I could be wrong, it happens) that most people have been fairly satisfied with my latest work, including most of the devs, and that most people don't see a problem with the style of my tiles. If I'm mistaken about this, fair enough... otherwise, I don't really think my work is unusable as such.

[Grimm]

I think your tiles look extremely good for the most part. But I do agree with oiseaux that your randart tiles tend not to "pop" enough. Randarts need to look significantly more awesome. See the way that e.g. the old normal war axe blade is a dull grey but the randart war axe is bright blue.

[dd]

I think your tiles look extremely good for the most part. But I do agree with oiseaux that your randart tiles tend not to "pop" enough. Randarts need to look significantly more awesome. See the way that e.g. the old normal war axe blade is a dull grey but the randart war axe is bright blue.

Actually, there currently is no separate tile for randart war axes. There are only tiles for regular + runed war axes at the moment, and the runed war axe is used also for the randarts. The same is true for most weapons. So for most weapons, there already isn't a "significantly more awesome" tile for randarts.

If you look at my axe tiles for example, the 7th column is the randarts, whereas the runed/glowing tiles are the even columns - those are the "blue" weapons. I think in most cases there is a clear difference between the regular weapons + the randarts (taking the war axes again, my randart war axe has a much brighter, greenish handle and slightly different head design, compared to the regular & runed design).

Anyway if there are some specific cases where you think improvement can be made I'm always willing to listen.

[Grimm]

Actually, there currently is no separate tile for randart war axes. There are only tiles for regular + runed war axes at the moment, and the runed war axe is used also for the randarts.

You're right, my mistake. But with the recent change, the blue axe is guaranteed to be either randart or branded, meaning significantly more valuable than a regular axe, and the colouring reflects that. And there are randart tiles for broad and battleaxes.

With yours, specifically: Axes: column 7 row 4 could be more distinguished from column 2 row 4 and column 6 row 4. Column 7 row 1 almost looks less awesome than column 2 row 1, when it should be much more awesome.

Column 7 row 2 is IMO perfectly distinguished from column 2 row 2.

Not sure what your latest proposal is for crossbows.

And please understand that in general I find your stuff fantastic.

[evktalo]

Your stuff is so good that it gets pretty specific critique Seriously, thank you for your excellent contributions. I mostly play console online, but I usually build tiles when I dev (sadly, not often these days). I'm always blown away by the tile improvements that have piled up in between, and this is just the kind of stuff.

--Eino

[dd]

You're right, my mistake. But with the recent change, the blue axe is guaranteed to be either randart or branded,

Only if there isn't a randart tile... for weapons that do have a randart tile it will always be used for randarts. The current situation is a bit inconsistent that way - for some weapons a blue weapon means branded, for others, it means either branded or randart. That's why I think all weapons should have specific randart tiles.

With yours, specifically: Axes: column 7 row 4 could be more distinguished from column 2 row 4 and column 6 row 4.

Hm. I get the similarity between 7 and 2 but 6? 6 is a totally different design...

Column 7 row 1 almost looks less awesome than column 2 row 1, when it should be much more awesome.

Those are actually almost the same as their current designs... all I really did was improve them a bit. Anyway what do you think it is that makes #2 more awesome? Is it only because it has a bigger blade?

Not sure what your latest proposal is for crossbows.

See -> https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=5843

And please understand that in general I find your stuff fantastic.

Your stuff is so good that it gets pretty specific critique Seriously, thank you for your excellent contributions.

Aww, thanks

[dd]

So how's this for the artifact exec axe (c7 r4)?

[Grimm]

With yours, specifically: Axes: column 7 row 4 could be more distinguished from column 2 row 4 and column 6 row 4.

Hm. I get the similarity between 7 and 2 but 6? 6 is a totally different design...

The shape is different but the colouration is almost exactly the same, which makes them look somewhat equivalent.

Maybe blue with gold trim could be reserved for runed, and white-and-sparkles for randarts. This would actually match well with those weapons' text colours, which would ease players' transition between tiles and ascii.

Edit: I see the new one and like the shape but I'd still like to see the colour scheme changed as I suggest here.

Column 7 row 1 almost looks less awesome than column 2 row 1, when it should be much more awesome.

Those are actually almost the same as their current designs... all I really did was improve them a bit. Anyway what do you think it is that makes #2 more awesome? Is it only because it has a bigger blade?

Bigger blade, gold knob on end of handle, brighter appearance due to blue. I'd take the sparkles off at the very least. The size isn't so important.

Not sure what your latest proposal is for crossbows.

See -> https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=5843

The longbow randart pops well, but the randart crossbow not so much, even the blue and red ones. The colour code I proposed above could be extended to all weapons and perhaps even armour.

[dd]

Maybe blue with gold trim could be reserved for runed, and white-and-sparkles for randarts. This would actually match well with those weapons' text colours, which would ease players' transition between tiles and ascii.

The colour code I proposed above could be extended to all weapons and perhaps even armour.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "white and sparkles", but changing the colour scheme of all existing designs would be a fairly big project... also, as I'm not the only one making tiles here, everyone else making weapon/armor tiles would need to agree to the same policy. And, you know, trying to get graphic artists to agree on anything is kind of like herding cats...

Also, the same colour scheme isn't necessarily suitable for all weapon types. For example, we have the colour scheme for axes and such, where blue indicates runed (except for dwarven weapons, where runed weapons only have the gold decorations), and artifacts are just generally fancier looking. Then we have the maces, morningstars etc. where the runed weapons are indicated by gold decorations only, and only the morningstars have an artifact design (ahem). The blade weapons are an even bigger mess - blue is reserved for quickblade, and there's no consistent rule for the distinction between regular/runed. I tried to propose making it so that only runed weapons would have gold hilts, but no one was really interested in that idea... Then the polearms, again, have blue blades for runed. And of course we have weapons where neither blue nor white would be suitable, such as slings, staves, bows etc.

Long story short, creating a colour-coding system that would work for all the weapons (and armour even) would probably be difficult if not impossible, and at the very least would require a complete rehaul of the entire weapon tileset. Not that I disagree with the idea in principle - I just don't know if it's feasible to implement.

[dd]

Revisions.

[Grimm]

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "white and sparkles"

c7r2 has a dominant colour of white and little dots on the blade near the haft. (c7r1 also has some dots.) When I am o-ing swiftly through the dungeon the white and dots pop out and say "randart!" to me, because it is so different from the other battleaxes. Taking the blue off and having the white and dots be the signature randart style would improve the readability of tiles, IMO. And the dwarven runed axes, for example, could easily have the dots taken off and the blades turned blue.

I take your points though about it being a gigantic project.

[Galefury]

I had a long post written up, but it was depressing, so here's the gist with the depressing bits removed: adding a few lines about antialiasing to "tiles_creation.txt" in docs/develop would be nice, but not super important. I know kilobyte likes antialiasing, and he doesn't frequent the tavern, so this should probably be brought up on IRC. Generally I like dd's submissions, and I applaud him for dealing with criticism (including my own) so well.

[roctavian]

I think things are as consistent as they need to be -- currently, most tile submissions are by dd, myself, and ontoclasm, and all our work is compatible. That's incredible! I didn't expect dd to adopt my dwarf-style equipment and didn't think he even needed to, but there it is. I saw ontoclasm incorporate my new kraken tile into his kraken simulacra tile, and frankly blushed. I'm incorporating a bit of the anti-aliasing into my own submissions, and I'm always trying to match everyone else's styles. This is a crazy level of collaboration for three people who don't actually talk to each other much.

As far as a notion of Crawl's visual style, I have strongly suspected that it was more of an emergent aesthetic rather than a pre-determined one. I imagine that most tiles currently in the game are present simply because they are the only tiles available. Now that there are options, there will be no end of discussion and hand-wringing, but that's the brave new world we're moving toward. And that's good and fine, and will result in a better game.

[dd]

c7r2 has a dominant colour of white and little dots on the blade near the haft. (c7r1 also has some dots.)

Actually, it has the same yellow dots on blue that the runed weapons have. It's just that the edge part of the blade is much wider in it. I've made some attempts to replicate the style on other axes but it just doesn't seem to work that good on most designs...

adding a few lines about antialiasing to "tiles_creation.txt" in docs/develop would be nice, but not super important.

I think a good rule of thumb is: if it looks ugly and choppy without anti-aliasing, use anti-aliasing. Otherwise, don't.

I think things are as consistent as they need to be -- currently, most tile submissions are by dd, myself, and ontoclasm, and all our work is compatible. That's incredible! I didn't expect dd to adopt my dwarf-style equipment and didn't think he even needed to, but there it is. I saw ontoclasm incorporate my new kraken tile into his kraken simulacra tile, and frankly blushed. I'm incorporating a bit of the anti-aliasing into my own submissions, and I'm always trying to match everyone else's styles. This is a crazy level of collaboration for three people who don't actually talk to each other much.

We talk through our contributions!

They do say a picture says more than a thousand words... Well, I did the math and it turns out each 32x32 tile says exactly 1024 words.

[dd]

That's incredible! I didn't expect dd to adopt my dwarf-style equipment and didn't think he even needed to, but there it is.

Well actually, at first I didn't, but back then I didn't know anyone else had started making race-specific weapon designs, as I hadn't actually played the trunk version. I adopted the style mainly for consistency, although I do think your designs look good (well, I had some doubts at first about the dwarven axe blade shapes, but they kind of grow on you). On the other weapons I've taken more freedoms for the styles, but I think there are some pretty good design ideas that have already been established: dwarves don't use wood in almost anything, being all about the metal and mining and stuff... orc weapons tend to look more cruel, have jagged edges, hooks, that sort of thing, and sometimes look more primitive than the others... and elven weapons generally just look more "sophisticated" and light-weight.

[oiseaux]

Why don't we reduce the resolution to 320x200 and use a 16 colour palette for all the tiles while we're at it... of course this means all the tiles have to be 8x8 but what the hey.

You know, get that authentic, pixely 8-bit look.

Oh and by the way, we should make sure the next version of Crawl doesn't use more than 640 KB of RAM... it's not a REAL roguelike if you can't run it in a 286.

You know that's not what I mean. I just want consistent looking tiles. Your last bunch you posted are very good! But don't get snarky when people offer you constructive criticism, nobody owes you anything, regardless of how much you think your work is worth.

[dd]

Actually, you now owe me lunch. I'll accept cash and cheques.

[dd]

Sabres.

[rchandra]

For some reason that artefact sabre looks really nice to me, even more so than most of your other tiles. I wouldn't object to hanging that on my wall, but swords are expensive.

[white_noise]

Sorry for offtopic (if it is) but I can't find the answer by myself and I don't know any better place to ask. So, please, tell me where I can find any description of tilesets? I've like to change some things to my taste, but don't know where to look for it. For example, I open gui.png in search for inventory cells and can't find it.

[BlackSheep]

You should probably have started a new thread with a specific question. We've got a handful of active tile contributors who could answer your question. Since you've found gui.png, you know where the rest of the tile files are. I'm not sure what you mean by "inventory cells" though. Do you mean the borders around the items in the bottom right corner of the main screen? Yeah, I can't find those either. Maybe it's a combination of a floor cell with a black overlay?

[white_noise]

Yes, borders and background. Mainly background. I want it to be pure black (or dark-gray), without any pixel noise.

[roctavian]

I was going to come in and say that the inventory shares its tiles with certain floor tiles, and that any graphical edit to the inventory will also affect certain floors.
But then I looked more closely at the inventory tiles and I don't know any floor in the game that uses that graphic -- if not in gui.png it'll probably be in feat.png or floor.png. Hope that helps!

[white_noise]

Found it in second last row of feat.png. Thanks.

...
Also, is there a list of objects that needed to be done (or redone, or whatever)?
I have some expirience with graphics and gamedev, so I can contribute a bit if it help.
Although I look at dd's work and doubt I can do any better...

[galehar]

Also, is there a list of objects that needed to be done (or redone, or whatever)?

The list of missing tiles and the ones in need of improvements is here. You can also just try to improve the ones you don't like, which is what most tiles contributors do.

[dd]

Also, is there a list of objects that needed to be done (or redone, or whatever)?

The list of missing tiles and the ones in need of improvements is here. You can also just try to improve the ones you don't like, which is what most tiles contributors do.

Yeah, but a good idea is to play the latest version (trunk) because chances are someone has already fixed what you plan to change... happened to me a couple of times.

[ClawlessVictory]

Just wanted to chime in and say excellent work! Sent you a PM...