ASCII/Retro tilesets

Game Talk The Lab
101

Whenever I try to execute the bigger versions (15x15 or 20x20), it just doesn’t work.
Looking trough the debug log yields this:

[code]src/cata_tiles.cpp[273]: gfx/DeonTileset/tile_config.json: line 115:19: leading zeros not strictly allowed

    {
        "id":"lighting_hidden",
        "fg":00
              ^
               ,
        "bg":00,
        "rotates":false[/code]

Tile number 00 is pitch black darkness, used to “draw” areas where you just can’t see.

Could this problem be related to my SDL image not being up to date or something?

102

No, it’s related to the non 10x10 versions being more lazily updated. I’ll fix this in a little while.

103

Marine… I love your profile pic…

104

HRose: Do you have a link to the ASCII font that you are using here: http://www.cesspit.net/misc/catatilelast2.gif

Both it and your ‘retro’ tileset are quite exceptional. If the latter was a complete tileset I would be incredibly interested in using it as its simply beautiful. I have not tried it out yet, or even played a recent build of DDA, but the 16x16 screenshot with the black background looked quite nice. (The vegetation, fence, road, and zombies in particular.)

I realize that the 16x16 was just a concept/test though, which is why im interested in the ASCII version of the font in that picture if it exists somewhere. Having it scaled up to be a tiny bit easier on the eyes would make that a particularly enjoyable font to use. Im guessing that its not just a ‘font’ though due to the fact that the game-area is square, while the interface text is rectangular?

105

No, it’s an old version of the current one.

Whenever coding is done (again, maybe never), redoing the ASCII tileset would be fairly easy. The problem is always the code, and current Cataclysm coders aren’t focused on the Windows version at all.

106

It is being worked on, looks like it just needs someone to finish it up: https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/4283

107

That part isn’t even remotely doing what I’ve asked, sadly.

108

What do you exactly need?
I could come up with some commit if I have the time.

109

There is a discussion linked from your ticket that is discussing how to actually implement what you want, btw. Things take time, and tileset stuff probably won’t be finalized until the next version anyway.

110

That looks to me just overcomplicating what is already the most straightforward way: a tileset image with all characters + all 16 colors already there.

The more control the better. The less code the better. There’s absolutely zero need to use mathematical formulas to calculate colors or luminosity.

What I need to know as a tilemaker is:
1- The right sequence of characters. Or the order they have to have in the tileset image.
2- The right sequence of colors they have to have in the tileset image.

That’s all.

All you say about “The index must be the same for every image, so it has to be decided in advance how many we’ll use” this makes no sense to me. No one has to “decide” anything because what is used and how entirely and solely depends on how the terminal game works. This is a fallback mechanic for tiles, this means that it need the same granularity as there is in the ASCII version. See how many ASCII and colors the console version uses, and that’s it. If there are 16 colors, we need 16 colors.

111

Here’s an example:

It took less than two minutes to make. Done.

112

This is a pointless post expressing my love and longing for this tileset, and an unreasonable demand that a new stable version with the tileset set as default be released immediately.

113

I thought the PR I linked was headed in the right direction. If the item does not have a specific tile it finds a ‘food’ generic tile (or whatever the category is) that I specify somewhere in the image and while it isn’t perfect it would work and be simple.

Creating an organized json template would be a step in the right direction, too.

To your original issue you wouldn’t have to make 80 item_bookblah, item_bookscience, etc you would just point and say image 174 is generic book and any item in the game that doesn’t have a tile finds ‘book’ and gets the image.

114

It wouldn’t be simpler than what I’m asking, and it wouldn’t work because ASCII would provide better functionality.

Until tile mode isn’t AS GOOD AS ASCII terminal then tile mode isn’t usable.

If different types of food use different colors or ASCII characters then having just one tile reduces granularity. I need tile mode to represent all ASCII+colors combinations that the terminal can display.

115

HRose, the PR linked would contain a feature which picks a random color for the specified tile if I’m understanding it right.

116

It seems to me there is a lot of confussion going here between devs and the tilemakers.

117

No, the problem is that all devs minus one work exclusively on the Linux version, and that one guy works on everything but tile mode.

There’s literally no one who’s currently working on tile mode/windows version.

118

I’m not getting you HRose, issues/4448 cares little about Windows and Linux. Is there anything we need to know about that Win_SDL version?
If you need to draw pixels after the image(regular tile) is loaded, you must have some way of handling that before the Draw() func is called for that particular square. For example, if you wanted to imitate the sun’s glare on pavement tiles, you would need to have a function that renders those bends and slopes, changing the color of the tile you’ve assigned accordingly - and still you need to wait for WorldGen to work out the space you’re handling.
As far as font chars go, adding a few pixels to imitate that subscript isn’t a problem at all, but with smaller tiles you’d have to scale them down even more, perhaps.

119

What’s the status of this? Is it still being worked on?

120

As I said, it’s not an issue of the tileset, but an issue of programming the game.

Right now absolutely no one is working on the Windows/SDL build. That’s sadly the truth. So no updates on the horizon.