New 8x16 Graphical Tile Set for 3.1.2v2

[d_m]

Okay, here, very very belatedly, is the updated version of my 8x16 tile set. No significant changes: it's mostly just tweaks to the colours and fixes for a few minor errors.

Thanks! Just in time for 3.3

[Nomad]

Updated version for 3.3.0

Okay, here, very very belatedly, is the updated version of my 8x16 tile set. No significant changes: it's mostly just tweaks to the colours and fixes for a few minor errors.

The main change is that, hopefully, floor tiles should now be more visible on darker monitors. I had to rebalance some of the other colours to compensate, so in particular, the greys and browns have been lightened. (So beware of acidic cytoplasms masquerading as silver jellies and the like.)

I also changed the colours of some monsters - cave spiders, winged horrors, and a few others - to bring them in line with the altered ASCII colours in 3.2 and 3.3. Uniques are still purple, but where possible I've tried to incorporate the new ASCII colours into the design as well.

Files are downloadable from here.

(I also managed to find the One Ring while I was testing the tile set in a game where I had a bunch of cheats switched on. On the plus side, I can now confirm that the tile mapping for 'plain gold ring' is correct.)

[Nick]

There's a text file (tileindx.txt) included in the zip that lists all the tiles with their coordinates and what game feature they're associated with. But creating pref files for variants is probably going to be a bit of an epic "find, copy, paste" job, I'm afraid.

Text file is helpful. And finding, copying and pasting is what maintainers do best

[Nomad]

Just wondering, for the purposes of variant pref files - how similar in arrangement are these to the Adam Bolt tiles? A cursory glance seems to indicate that items are similarly arranged, monsters are not.

I pretty much reordered everything really: there's some overlap with the dungeon features and flavoured items, but most things have been shifted around. I decided the Adam Bolt tiles were in such a mess where rows and rows of random new tiles had been added on the end that it was probably better to just restructure the whole thing. So all the items and monsters are now grouped according to ASCII symbol (alphabetically in the case of the monsters) and in the order that they appear on the knowledge menu.

There's a text file (tileindx.txt) included in the zip that lists all the tiles with their coordinates and what game feature they're associated with. But creating pref files for variants is probably going to be a bit of an epic "find, copy, paste" job, I'm afraid.

[Nick]

Just wondering, for the purposes of variant pref files - how similar in arrangement are these to the Adam Bolt tiles? A cursory glance seems to indicate that items are similarly arranged, monsters are not.

[d_m]

Excellent! Yeah, part of the reason I was keen to get it included in 3.2 is that it's a real shame to have to swap another set out to use it, but altering the source code is a bit beyond me. It was much easier to just replace the existing tileset graphic than try to add the code to use a different one.

Yeah, it was a bit fiddly to get it to work, and I had to dig inside the various main-* files. I agree that it would be nicer to have less of it hardcoded, and more of it available via pref files, but it would probably be a pretty big refactor.

Incidentally, I know you had shown off some work to indicate lit/unlit/seen/unseen squares; currently the tileset makes it hard to tell which squares you can see and which you can't. If you ever get any updates you're happy with let me know and I'll drop those tiles in.

[Nomad]

Excellent! Yeah, part of the reason I was keen to get it included in 3.2 is that it's a real shame to have to swap another set out to use it, but altering the source code is a bit beyond me. It was much easier to just replace the existing tileset graphic than try to add the code to use a different one.

It would be great if some day it were possible to define the source graphic and tile dimensions in the graphics pref files instead of it being hard-coded somewhere. Then switching to a new custom tile set would just be a straightforward case of selecting the appropriate pref file.

[d_m]

I just got this working for SDL and GTK and am working on Windows. It will definitely be in 3.2.

The only reason it's taking awhile is that your instructions replace the Adam Bolt tiles (which we didn't want to do).

Thanks for creating the tiles, and please let me know if there are any updates!

[Magnate]

Well, I was going to go with the simpler Attribution licence, but I've changed it to the Share-Alike for the version uploaded now. (Same link as before.) I've added in the rest of the pref files for the other systems too.

Magic, thank you. We now have a ticket to include your tiles in 3.2 (#1216).

[Nomad]

Nomad - did you decide on the "share-alike" version of the Creative Commons licence? If so then I can include your tileset when 3.2 goes into Debian. If not I can't.

Well, I was going to go with the simpler Attribution licence, but I've changed it to the Share-Alike for the version uploaded now. (Same link as before.) I've added in the rest of the pref files for the other systems too.

[Magnate]

According to Debian (who IIRC are the most stringent) the Share-Alike variant is definitely OK - it has an extra condition about redistribution, if I'm reading it correctly.

Nomad - did you decide on the "share-alike" version of the Creative Commons licence? If so then I can include your tileset when 3.2 goes into Debian. If not I can't.

[EpicMan]

To answer Takk's question, yes, please add these in to the distribution.

[Nomad]

So that means to do with the coding instead of the tileset itself?
I was just thinking of the extra large tile display in FAangband (even triple big tiles) and Nethack...

Yeah, that's done with coding. Nick recently made a version of vanilla Angband for Windows that supports double and triple tiles, though I haven't tried it out with these. Here's the thread:

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=3761

[rogueliker]

A bigger version shouldn't make any difference at all: it'll just scale down to look exactly the same. There's no smoothing being done when the tiles are scaled, so it needs to be displayed at exactly the correct 8x16 font size (or a multiple like 16x32) to look perfect. If you use a different aspect ratio like 9x15 the tiles are always going to end up slightly distorted.

So that means to do with the coding instead of the tileset itself?
I was just thinking of the extra large tile display in FAangband (even triple big tiles) and Nethack...
I will try this tileset on FAangband to see how good it looks.
Your tileset looks like somewhere between the old 8x8 and the 16x16 Adam Bolt's. On small display the icons are neither too blockish nor too detailed.

[Nomad]

Would you like this included in V 3.2?

That'd be great! The tile set should be fully complete: there are graphics in there for bucklers and mining gloves (commented out in the pref file) and the unused junk objects as well, in case of future need. The only things it doesn't implement are the pile symbol and green dot border for trap-detection, neither of which I could figure out a way to handle with tiles.

Just wonder if you would create an extra-large (64X64) version, which would make the small device display look even better!

A bigger version shouldn't make any difference at all: it'll just scale down to look exactly the same. There's no smoothing being done when the tiles are scaled, so it needs to be displayed at exactly the correct 8x16 font size (or a multiple like 16x32) to look perfect. If you use a different aspect ratio like 9x15 the tiles are always going to end up slightly distorted.