32x32 Universal Tileset

[PowerWyrm]

I've taken a first look at the monster mappings for V.

- seems like all undead were swapped around, probably to fix one duplicate; I'll have a closer look
- changing the mapping for spiders doesn't feel "right"; the original mapping was preserving the colors from the txt file (cave spider - black, mirkwood spider - green...)
- gold dragons were remapped to the bronze tiles... feels strange
- with the darkness tile being black and not transparent, lurkers and trappers appear as a black tile; this probably needs to be reverted to transparent tile
- hounds have been swapped around too; again I'll have to look at that more closely
- Sauron uses the silly "djinn in a lamp" tile... please change that

[buzzkill]

I've taken a first look at the monster mappings for V.

You're looking at V right, cause you're suggestions are eerily similar to changes already made to NPP.

- seems like all undead were swapped around, probably to fix one duplicate; I'll have a closer look

I did some undead rearranging in NPP to keep the undead races distinct. I open to suggestion but unlikely to tackle this on my own in the short term. Please offer suggestions in the format old tile (hex)should be new tile (hex) because of something. ...edit: and or reference the NPP changes when reviewing V. It wold be nice if we could keep indeticial monsters mapped to identical tiles across variants and I currently have no system in place for checking this. You could apply this to any and all changes.

- changing the mapping for spiders doesn't feel "right"; the original mapping was preserving the colors from the txt file (cave spider - black, mirkwood spider - green...)

That wasn't me, but I do agree with you here.

- gold dragons were remapped to the bronze tiles... feels strange

I think they may have been that way for a while, recently reverted in NPP.

- with the darkness tile being black and not transparent, lurkers and trappers appear as a black tile; this probably needs to be reverted to transparent tile

That is my doing, I'll add a transparent tile for the lurker.

- hounds have been swapped around too; again I'll have to look at that more closely

That's news to me, I'm all for the original colors, except for a few maybe. I always wanted the fire to be redder, like the nexus.

- Sauron uses the silly "djinn in a lamp" tile... please change that

OK. I'll ues NPP style Saurn and Morgoth, The old Morgoth was nothing special, right?

@ Magnate.. If you have an opinion on any of this please chime in. Vanilla is your baby, and since it seems that my changes will be adopted into the Vanilla distro, they're your changes too.

[PowerWyrm]

Cncerning Sauron, the NPP tile (if it's the one I'm thinking of) is great. Please use that. For Morgoth, the original tile is ok.

[PowerWyrm]

Review of monster tiles, part I: spiders

Here you should really keep the original mapping, which corresponds to the colors in the txt file:

Elder aranea (r) 0x8F:0xB3
Mirkwood spider (g) 0x8F:0xB8
Aranea (R) 0x8F:0xB6
Phase spider (B) 0x8F:0xB4
Wood spider (U) 0x8F:0xB5
Cave spider (D) 0x8F:0xB7
Giant spider (V) 0x8F:0xB2

Considering the Giant spider, I've filed a bug report IIRC about monsters using the light purple color, which is now used for the special "Display uniques in purple" option. But it shouldn't affect the tile...

The only problem concerns the Giant tarantula (o). In UT32, there's a new tile that isn't used for anything in V and could match: 0x99:0xD3

[buzzkill]

Here you should really keep the original mapping, which corresponds to the colors in the txt file:

Elder aranea (r) 0x8F:0xB3
Mirkwood spider (g) 0x8F:0xB8
Aranea (R) 0x8F:0xB6
Phase spider (B) 0x8F:0xB4
Wood spider (U) 0x8F:0xB5
Cave spider (D) 0x8F:0xB7
Giant spider (V) 0x8F:0xB2

I'm going to have to flip-flop on this. Given the tiles we have at our disposal right now, I like the current mappings. I'd rather phase was light blue than purple, but I've got no problem with the rest. AFAIK, the current mappings are the original mappings or at least that's the way they been for the past several years since I started hanging out here at oook.

[PowerWyrm]

Cncerning Sauron, the NPP tile (if it's the one I'm thinking of) is great. Please use that. For Morgoth, the original tile is ok.

In fact, I fear the current tile for Morgoth is the one that was supposed to be used by Sauron. So basically the mapping for V could use the old Morgoth tile for Sauron and the new Morgoth tile for Morgoth.

[PowerWyrm]

Review of monster tiles, part II: undead

As hard as I tried, I couldn't come with something completely acceptable. There are clearly tiles missing for the zombified/mummified creatures, and a lot of useless skeleton tiles. Here's how I would see the mapping for V (with the associated comments):

Vampires (changed mostly to match color in the txt file)
Master vampire 0x94:0xC7
Vampire lord 0x94:0xB3
Elder vampire 0x94:0xB4

Wights & liches (the original mapping simply doesn't match the description of the creatures -- corpse-like undead; using same tile family, with tile matching color in txt file)
Forest wight 0x94:0x90
Grave wight 0x94:0x8E
Barrow wight 0x94:0x91
Emperor wight 0x94:0x8F
Lich 0x94:0x99
Master lich 0x94:0x9B
Demilich 0x94:0xC5
Archlich 0x94:0xCA
Black reaver 0x94:0x93

Wraiths (the original mapping simply doesn't match the description of the creatures -- skeletal ghosts; seems like the person who did the mapping inverted wights and wraiths; using same tile family, with tile matching color in txt file; for Nightcrawler, its description mentions a giant wormlike creature, the tile was simply inappropriate; for Nightwalker, its description mentions a giant black figure, the tile was changed accordingly)
White wraith 0x94:0xCC
Grey wraith 0x94:0x8C
Black wraith 0x94:0x8D
Nether wraith 0x94:0x89
Nightwing 0x94:0x8A
Nightcrawler 0x91:0x99
Nightwalker 0x99:0xDC

Ghosts (changed mostly to match color in the txt file)
Poltergeist 0x94:0x94
Green glutton ghost 0x94:0x82
Lost soul 0x94:0x97
Moaning spirit 0x94:0x95
Banshee 0x94:0x80
Ghost 0x94:0x96
Shade 0x94:0xC3
Spectre 0x94:0x86
Dread 0x94:0x84
Shadow 0x94:0xC8
Phantom 0x94:0x98
Dreadmaster 0x94:0x81
Dreadlord 0x94:0xCB

Skeletons (just changed these two tiles to keep the proportions to human/troll size)
Skeleton human 0x94:0xAA
Skeleton troll 0x94:0xB8

Zombies (remapped to the "mummy"-like tiles instead of the original "skeleton"-like tiles; "zombified" and "mummified" creatures have been remapped to the same tile, since no distinct tile currently exists in the tileset; other tiles changed mostly to match color in the txt file)
Zombified kobold 0x91:0xB1
Zombified orc 0x91:0xB1
Zombified human 0x91:0xB1
Mummified orc 0x91:0xB7
Mummified human 0x91:0xB7
Ghoul 0x91:0xB6
Ghast 0x91:0xB0
Greater mummy 0x91:0xB3
Mummified troll 0x91:0xB7

[buzzkill]

In fact, I fear the current tile for Morgoth is the one that was supposed to be used by Sauron. So basically the mapping for V could use the old Morgoth tile for Sauron and the new Morgoth tile for Morgoth.

We both agree that the old Sauron tile is unsuitable. Jeff and I had a lot of trouble creating a tile for Sauron that looked good and we both liked. Sauron is staying put in NPP which means that I'm very inclined to use that same tile for Sauron in all variants including Vanilla.

If old Morgoth goes anywhere, he'll probably go away. I not a big fan of the tile itself. The multi-colored robes don't do anything for me. I'm content to leave him as he is now in Vanilla, but other variants will get the new Morgoth.

I'll post the latest version of everythnig later today.

[PowerWyrm]

Review of monster tiles, part III: hounds

This is mainly a remap to match colors in the txt file. The only problem I have with this one concerns clear hounds, which would probably need a more "transparent" tile.

Light hound 0x90:0xC6
Dark hound 0x90:0xC3
Clear hound 0x90:0xBB
Fire hound 0x90:0xC5
Energy hound 0x90:0xC7
Acid hound 0x90:0xC2
Vibration hound 0x90:0xBD
Nexus hound 0x90:0xBE
Gravity hound 0x90:0xBA
Inertia hound 0x90:0xC9
Impact hound 0x90:0xC0
Nether hound 0x90:0xC8
Time hound 0x90:0xCB
Plasma hound 0x90:0xCC
Ethereal hound 0x90:0xBC
Chaos hound 0x90:0xC1
Aether hound 0x99:0xDB

[PowerWyrm]

Hmm I've just looked at the updated 32x32 graphics for NPP Angband... Many tiles have been redrawn/remapped for monsters/objects/terrain that are present in all variants, eliminating many duplicates in the process, still the mappings in graf-dvg files differ. This completely breaks the purpose of an universal 32x32 tileset...

What would be perfect is to add a graf-dvg-base.prf file with the mappings for all common tiles, and load this file at the end of the graf-dvg.prf file for each variant. This would improve readability and ease maintainance...

[PowerWyrm]

I've just downloaded the new UT32 file and found this:

03-07-2012 Reassigned the lurker and trapped to a transparent tile 0x80:0xFF.

Unfortunately, this won't work. There seems to be a problem with displaying tiles having their char set to 0xFF, which seems to explain why there are no tiles in that column (except on the second line, which is not used).

Why did you put a dark tile at 0x80:0x80? It's not required, as the code puts a dark background anyway when drawing tiles. Reverting to a transparent tile and leaving lurkers/trappers at 0x80:0x80 should be ok...

[buzzkill]

Hmm I've just looked at the updated 32x32 graphics for NPP Angband... Many tiles have been redrawn/remapped for monsters/objects/terrain that are present in all variants, eliminating many duplicates in the process, still the mappings in graf-dvg files differ. This completely breaks the purpose of an universal 32x32 tileset...

Yep. Vanilla Angband is still the special case. I'm very hesitant to make changes to Vanilla in deference to David Gervais, who's tileset has been the gold standard forever, but I wouldn't say that breaks the purpose of UT32. There are many variants that support tiles, 1/2 a dozen I can think of. The main point of UT32 was to have the all the tiles in one location so that variants can easily share tiles and even non-graphically inclined maintainers can do some of the (prf tile assignment) work themselves. Don't forget, UT32 is still a long way from completion.

I wasn't my intent for UT32 to alter Vanilla in any significant way. I just wanted it to be compatible with Vanilla so that there would be only need for one 32x32 tileset.

[nppangband]

What would be perfect is to add a graf-dvg-base.prf file with the mappings for all common tiles, and load this file at the end of the graf-dvg.prf file for each variant. This would improve readability and ease maintainance...

The difficulty in that is coming up with a standard where each variant can read the tiles. Many of them are assigned to different monster race numbers or slightly different names, so it would be a challenge to create a universal graf-dvg that could be loaded by all variants.

[buzzkill]

Why did you put a dark tile at 0x80:0x80? It's not required, as the code puts a dark background anyway when drawing tiles. Reverting to a transparent tile and leaving lurkers/trappers at 0x80:0x80 should be ok...

Because it's referred to as "darkness" in the prf, and I thought that it might be a good idea for it to represent darkness rather than nothing. At the same time, I figured that any unused space would suffice as the lurker/trapper tile. I chose 0x80:0xFF because I thought it would remain unused long into the future. Will fix.

[nppangband]

Unfortunately, this won't work. There seems to be a problem with displaying tiles having their char set to 0xFF, which seems to explain why there are no tiles in that column (except on the second line, which is not used).

There is probably some sort of overflow issue with 0xFF, since that would be loaded into a byte or char variable. Maybe the code would be adjusted to properly read it, but is reality we would have to fill up a 127x127 grid with tiles before that becomes an issue.