Working on a new graphical overmap font

Game Talk The Lab
1

after playing with the retrodays overmap font for a while i decided to make a few changes, currently WIP but this is what i have so far (literally just whipped this up in a few minutes so its nothing fancy but im working on it)
i was using the retrodays ascii overmap font as a base.

so far i replaced the F for forest and swamps with little tree looking things and the V^<> is supposed to be houses (though for some reason not all of them have changed - maybe they are using the lowercase v xD)

Edit 1* fixed some shops and the firestation showing up as a tree (had to edit the symbol for it in JSON)
Edit 2* some changes to the field
Edit 3* Added download for those who would like to see it ingame personally :slight_smile:

Image

cataovermap
cataovermap.PNG622×620 3.67 KB

Image Two

cataovermap
cataovermap.PNG751×779 11.6 KB

Image Three

cataovermap
cataovermap.PNG709×819 14.4 KB

Kept a seperate font file for people who prefer the old field ‘.’
I think ill have to leave the multi-tile buildings alone, i cant think of a way to make them look nice.

Downloads

https://www.nexusmods.com/cataclysmdarkdaysahead/mods/6/

hopefully one day the overmap will get some tileset love :wink:

9 Likes
2

Good work!
Can you add multi-language support?
Like /unifont.ttf :hugs:

3

I can try, the font I was working with is in a png format but I should be able to do that one as well

4

thank you very much :kissing_closed_eyes:

5

Not a criticism.

Would it be easier to make the map with graphic depictions?

I see some already exist in what you created. I was curious what the difference would be. How elaborate would the map allow in regard to graphic details?

6

Well the map can allow as many graphics as font allows, I’m basically replacing letters and symbols with some simple graphics, I can change their size which would allow more pixels to work with but would also decrease the amount of overmap you can see, though I’m not entirely sure what you mean by graphic depictions.

7

A tree is a tiny tree image. A building as a building in place of a letter. Just pondering is all.

I was not sure if the overmap had to be ascii or not

8

Thats what I was doing, replacing the letters with buildings and trees, since the overmap uses a seperate font from the game it works and since I didnt want to make the font too large (I’ve tried before and without scrolling or zooming navigating It would be painfully slow) I worked a letter into the buildings that didnt share a symbol with reisdentials, they aren’t all complete yet though.

9

The overmap uses a seperate font so you can still use your regular game font in addition to this one, if I edited the unifont it would replace the characters for the ui as well

1 Like
10

map
map.png1918×1001 60.4 KB

Yeah, I know, but not the 26-letter language.
City name and notes cannot be displayed.

11

Oh, I didnt think of that lol I think that will take me a bit longer to figure out, I dunno if fonts have a limit to how many characters they can have than them I could add them as new characters and just change the symbols for buildings and such, all the Google searches I’ve done never said there was a limit. Edit* turns out unicode can support up to 64k or more unique glyphs, I maybe able to work with it after all :smiley:

12

Could you upload the image in a high enough resolution that I could make changes to it please?

I am curious if I can get a little more detail out of it. Adding to your work.

Posting the image the same way as the sample. I don’t like going to 3rd party websites normally.

13

retroasciifont-RELOADED this is the only copy I have access to eight now, I’m repairing my PC atm due to an idiotic mistake haha. Plus if you want more pixels to work with you can increase the size but that also will make navigating the overmap slower since you will see less.

14

Cool thanks. I shall tinker with it in gimp a while and if I do not post back…it means I suck at art lol

15

Very nice! Keep going.

16

Ok. I tinkered. I have no idea wtf I can do with this image to make it look like those sample lol

17

Zoom in and use the pencil tool at 1 pixel, makes it easier for pixel art at small resolutions

18

Is it an over lap thing? Like layers? The white and pink don’t have color.

19

Layers are good if you want to work without destroying what was already there but you would end up flattening it when you export it, but I just built directly on it and kept a back up, the pink will show up as transparent in game so the white is what you’ll see though I’m unsure how the colors work out since the trees used multiple colors.

20

I’m not sure what you are trying to do, but I will break down how the overmap works.

Coded into the game is a .png file which contains every ascii symbol used in the overmap. This file is pink and white. The game ignores the pink color by design, the pulls every white pixel in a symbol, an 8x8 square, or whatever size it is, then places them on the over map.

After generating, the game looks up what is in an overmap tile. It assigns a symbol and a color, as denoted by the config file found inside the relevant json. This can be changed, but there are always some bugs that pop up when enough color combos are tried.

Assuming you wanted to add a detailed graphic of a house. At 32x32 pixels, you would have 1/16th the total viewable overmap of somebody displaying at 8x8. It would also require 16 times the processing power to scroll that map. (looks like the png is 20x20 pixel blocks)

Look at the trees, you cans see that by relation to the green tops, the trunks look colored, but in the actual png, they are just 1 shade off white. 256 colors here.

Assuming you added full 4 color blocks to the png, creating a nice colorful tileset, you would run into the issue of only having 256 tiles to work with. This is literally the problem they ran into with minecraft a few years back.

And just because something is tile based, doesn’t mean it is easy to run at higher graphical fidelity. Dwarf fortress the premiere ascii game frequently becomes unplayable after a certain amount of time in game due to the calculations requiring quite a few cpu cycles. This drops the game speed significantly. Call it frame rate death.

In summation, assuming you want to add detailed map icons, It will slow down the game, You will be limited in size, you cannot use any kind of aliasing or transparency, and you will give yourself a massive headache.