And then grab some popcorn, while you tell me how this, in a big future, could be added in some way. I don’t expect animations, just a refreshing new point of view.
To let people actually see that we are progressing. Not only sense. (averted with the tilesets… but… you get me, right?)
I’m really interested in (and slightly worried about) how this game is going to work graphically when/if it makes the jump to 3D maps. I’ve never really been satisfied with the way any other roguelike has done it, but there’s really no way to cleanly show everything in 3D without an isometric view (like in that screenshot).
I know you weren’t talking about when the game goes 3D, but what you’re suggesting there could work very well when it does.
I’d really like to play this. I am not a “graphic bitch”, but it looks amazing… and it would attract lots of non-roguelike players, and make them roguelike players!
I want to see what you guys think about this. It can be done? It is likeable? I am the only one here who would like this? If it coulb be made, you would use it?
Lemme give you a couple of tips first.
If you’re uploading an image to be viewed from the forums, please take care of the size. Your image is either rich in color, or more intensive with shape. If you’re wrapping up some photo-art or refined photography you may want to play with .jpeg format. It has its own parameters, and you can set _quality when you save the picture. Further on, if you’re capturing screens and selecting portions of art, you may want to store them in a Portable Network Format, the .png. That one’s built for use with humbler palettes, such as a screenshot from this screen you’re viewing right now (it has no more than 20 tones).
The more on-topic tip is that of game art. It’s a great thing that open-source is constantly changed by the community. As for now, the SDL library that improved on the tileset support is worthwhile when playing the 2D tileset. For added depth, the game needs a 3D renderer. Your 3rd person view came out nice and personally I like playing games like Doom I & II where objects, besides rooms and walls, are yet nothing but simple textures, bitmaps and pixels. You’d have to find some means to tell this game, the CataDDA, to build above-ground levels and draw structural shapes, and that’s something that’s been discussed, but only for the Curses and SDL versions and therefore only with top-down, RL 2D view.
Now, I know that there is a way to set your view with Tiles to a more isometric perspective, but it lacks the field of view (FOV) and a couple of other, even more crucial things to a roguelike. If you ever stumble upon such a roguelike game that allows you to switch views, and even more if it is free, please show it to everyone in the Other Games section of the forums. I imagine everyone would be thrilled.
And keep up your roguelike enthusiasm, it’s got a lot more than 16x16px tiles! Happy CataDDAing!
[quote=“vultures, post:5, topic:3093”]The more on-topic tip is that of game art. It’s a great thing that open-source is constantly changed by the community. As for now, the SDL library that improved on the tileset support is worthwhile when playing the 2D tileset. For added depth, the game needs a 3D renderer. Your 3rd person view came out nice and personally I like playing games like Doom I & II where objects, besides rooms and walls, are yet nothing but simple textures, bitmaps and pixels. You’d have to find some means to tell this game, the CataDDA, to build above-ground levels and draw structural shapes, and that’s something that’s been discussed, but only for the Curses and SDL versions and therefore only with top-down, RL 2D view.
Now, I know that there is a way to set your view with Tiles to a more isometric perspective, but it lacks the field of view (FOV) and a couple of other, even more crucial things to a roguelike. If you ever stumble upon such a roguelike game that allows you to switch views, and even more if it is free, please show it to everyone in the Other Games section of the forums. I imagine everyone would be thrilled.[/quote]
Oh, actually never saw if it had FOV or not. The things is that maybe, what your FOV can’t see, it will just display a black square with nothing rendered over it, and therefore nothing shown, like the game already has.
Also i’d like to see how it could be added this kind of sight, at least a very basic one. I know it got a lot of new things, but there should not only be gameplay features, also graphical ones. And i need to say again that i still know that we got tiles, and it is a really big step, so why, in about 3 builds or more, get this? In a basic way? At least to be able to render like that topic shows with the tiles over the squares woulb be a incredible update.
Doesn’t seem totally impossible (to my absolutely uninformed mind), but it’d definitely take some magic (aka coding and man-hours) A problem with most roguelikes is that the rogue ASCII format is chosen specifically to allow speedy content development and to hell with graphics (which works, see our beloved Cataclysm’s intense development pace as a shining example!) Not saying anything about the diligence of our tileset artists, but they’ll always be fighting to keep an up to date tileset as new content is fireballed in almost daily And the more in-depth the tiles the harder the work…
Yet almost any rogue with a good fanbase ends up with at least generic tile support eventually, no matter how funky they are at their cores Seems like any kind of truly drastic graphical improvement would require lots of rewriting and breaking of old systems, especially when trying to move it from top-down 2d into something grander than top-down 2d
Most folks would probably rather just start on a CataclysmDDA-like with the new graphics format in mind, but its a challenge to graphically represent all the varied content and interactivity, plus the new concepts involved when going from 2d to 2.5d or 3d… Also most people that value good graphics are action gamers, and that doesn’t lock in well with turn-based games (a lot of work would have to go into player and enemy animation when moving from square to square, because static tiles sliding around clashes with enhanced visuals…
Usually these attempts create games that look a lot nicer than their namesakes but never approach the gameplay depth of its ASCII counterpart… (I’m thinking about Gnomoria as a fine example of this, someone attempting to make a good looking Dwarf Fortress… It looks nice, but the development of new content just isn’t moving along very well. Project Zomboid is a fairly good graphical zombie survival game, though it isn’t free, but they’re having a hellacious battle with some bugs that just don’t want to die. Reminds me a lot of The Sims graphics…)
Sorry for the mildly related rambling… I’ll shut up now
It looks like you can implement that with isometric sprites (an example is Diablo II, I think DIII is a true isometric 3D environment). what you do is establish a fixed isometric perspective for the game, draw all your sprites (not talking about tiles anymore…) to that perspective, and the near corner of the sprite is anchored at the grid coordinate coresponding to its game position, but it’s allowed to overflow its containing tile in the “upward” direction. Then when rendering you draw the sprites furthest from the “camera” first, and other sprites on top of them.
This is… technically achievable I think… It’d be a decent chunk of work, and waaaay more work on the sprites compared to tiles, but achievable IMO. Having said that, I think what really makes your example stand out is the art quality rather than anything about the game engine required to render it. As your graphics presentation gets more sophisticated, it requires the art quality to increase to keep up. If someone were interested in producing the artwork, I think it could work.
As for development drag, that is a very real concern, we could probably make the SDL tile rendering we have be capable of ths, but that doesn’t guarantee a good sprite set.
Well, when i am not in paint, i am really good drawing.
I hate to post my drawing where i should not, it makes me think that i am trying to get something… i don’t know… well, here is my thing: http://stopsignal.newgrounds.com/art/
I could do some of the creatures, perfectly. There is people out there really talented to make bgs, creatures and such. We have lots of examples of this here.
We could make some of the tiles already made here HD, too. There are lots of options that could be done.
My post was kind of a downer, I didn’t intend it that way.
All I mean is as far as art is concerned, it’s out of my hands.
I think something like that would be technically achievable, and it’d be up to the community to make the art work.
Yeah a cataclysm with dont starve like art would surely be awesome and i would surely contribute on drawing art if the compatibility where to be introduced
shameless self promotion
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A problem with most roguelikes is that the rogue ASCII format is chosen specifically to allow speedy content development and to hell with graphics (which works, see our beloved Cataclysm’s intense development pace as a shining example!) Not saying anything about the diligence of our tileset artists, but they’ll always be fighting to keep an up to date tileset as new content is fireballed in almost daily 
And the more in-depth the tiles the harder the work…