Some forges have 4 uses, and the number of uses is not shown in the ASCII at present but rather when you walk over them. I think one hammer would be preferable.
I think Orc Champions are the blue guys.
I'm certainly looking to liven up the walls a little bit at some stage, yes, once we've got the basics more or less up and running. I should probably get a build with what I've got over to you at some point soon. There are various fixes including the artifacts that are currently ASCII; I've been meaning to sort out the alertness status but it's a bit more work and I haven't got round to it yet.
I like the new wolf design, and the serpent's great.
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Bluish swordsman is an Orc Soldier. If I remember correctly, Orc Soldiers are blue in the ASCII, so I wanted to maintain this convention and use it to visually distinguish them from other orcs. Scrawny orcs isn’t a bad idea, I will look into it. I’ve found that it’s not uncommon that I improve my tiles when I remove excess pixels anyway. Our purple friend is a wight; the purple denotes a draining attack.
The point about the orc captain is taken. This tile has actually changed since the screenshot to represent the fact that this orc will only have a blade in the next version, instead of the blade and whip they have in the current version of Sil. There is a new tile for an Orc Slaver, which has a whip.
My man with big muscles is a regular old Troll. The massive shield-bearers are Troll Guards. The monster above them in that picture is a Greater Werewolf.
Ahh, yes I see what you are asking in the rubble image-- those are herbs. Since you asked about items, I’ve provided a picture with lots of items. Lots of items : )
For the other images, I considered explaining each tile, but maybe it’s better to let people guess. The only one I will point out in the Darting Horror in the second image, since I don’t think that there is any physical description of this monster anywhere and I just made up an image for it.
As for the forge-- the three hammers represent that the forge has three charges left. They are one of the few things in the tileset that are an abstraction, so they may look out of place… let me know what you think with this new information. Whether I keep them the same or not, I plan to keep some visual representation of charges.
I got some new wolves for you. In my original post I was actually lamenting the tiles for the wolves from before the posted screens, but I have remade them since then. Let me know how they feel.
It’s good to know that different walls would be so well received. Having the walls change as you descend is something that Quirk and I have discussed a little, but he would have to vouch for the difficulty of implementation.
More Tile Images
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Yo, mate,
I figure we should not allow the thread to die - besides, this way other people can also find their way here, look at your tiles and provide some valuable feedback.
So, first things first: whenever you feel like having some help, tell me and we can try to arrange something (and I appreciate the compliment towards my rendition of IA's church). I have been thinking about going back to GIMP and trying something, so regardless of how limited my free time is, I'll likely put an effort into finding some room for it. As for the clarity of tiles in that little compilation, I dig what I see there (minus the ToME picture - it seems a bit too clogged, even though unlike the large majority of players, I hold no grudge against ToME's tiles). Rescue Timmy does feel quite nice and clear, I have to say.
Now, I wanted to go back to some of the tiles we have not discussed before.
Gorgol - I truly dig this one!
Third picture: blueish swordsman to the left of the player and purpleish one to the left of the "birds" - which enemies do they represent?
Mountain troll - again, I like them very much!
Orcs - I like them as they are, but I agree with the other poster in that I believe a rendition more similar to modern fantasy goblins could be beneficial. However, trying to depict anthropomorphic figures of differing heights can be quite challenging on a 16x16 canvas - so perhaps making them slightly scrawnier overall could be worth a shot... if the end result does not look good, do know that these are quite OK as they are, in my opinion.
Orc captain - I like it, as it is easy to see that it is meant to be set apart from the others. This much is quite obvious, mind you; detecting that it holds a sword and leash on its hands, however, requires a bit more effort (but only a tiny bit more, anyways). So I guess this tile works in a way kinda like an ASCII character in that your brain first grasps that it should be interpreted differently rather than immediately "seeing" what there is to see... but this is just rambling. Well, I like it, but maybe coloring it a tad differently than the other Orcs (think the bloodied blade on Gorgol's hand) could be good for the sake of furthering the tile's clarity and enhancing the "hey, player - you better halt autopilot for half a minute and pay attention to this fella" factor.
Massive/bulging white model on the seventh picture, next to the player - what is that? Unless you tell me this is meant to be a bird (lol), I like this one and it seems quite clear to me (even though my brain is not making the connection as to which enemy this one could possibly be - but I am very noob at Sil and never played Sil-Q, so there are plenty of foes that I am yet to meet).
Next picture, two equally massive ones wielding a shield next to a zombie/wight kinda of creature - what are those and what is the wight/zombie? I feel the zombie/wight thing could also be a shadow or vampire, and once more, what I said above applies - whatever these tiles are trying to convey, I think they are all quite successful as they are.
Object which is NOT rubble - I think I might not have been clear with my directions the last time, mate. The tile for rubble is quite clear as it is and I see it on many different pictures, but my question concerned the tile that shows up twice on the ninth picture, to the left of the player, the dragon and the rubble itself. The second one is inside the other room, to the right of a "grenade" and a clear potion. It resembles a T with two little curved heads on top or something like that (there is another one on the previous picture, above the zombie/wight creature). What is it?
Objects on the floor - I like most of them as they are, save for some little tweaks which I think could help in terms of clarity (the blade on the first picture as we have discussed, the arrows and perhaps the dagger/sword on the eighth picture, if you go left and down from the massive shield-wielding enemies... it seems like it could be far too many things at once [meaning either a dagger or different kinds of sword]). In any case, perhaps you could post pictures of the different kinds of body armor so that more detailed feedback can be provided, as these might be the ones to generate the most confusion.
Forge - perhaps having a single hammer instead of three would actually make it clearer, mate. Also, perhaps a different position for the hammers would be beneficial, as they feel... oddly orderly, right now. It seems like they are (unnaturally) propped up, just waiting for the next hero to come by and use them. Maybe a having a single hammer positioned roughly like the blade on the very first picture could yield a nice result.
Wolves - would you mind posting a picture of your new rendition of the wolves? Would be nice to have some perspective in relation to those on the first picture.
Lastly, colored walls - how cumbersome is the implementation of colored walls for different levels, as far as programming goes? Not that the walls/levels should mean anything in particular, but IA does it and I find it highly atmospheric (to the point of having sent an e-mail back in late-2016 or early-2017 to the developer upon finding out that he had them removed from the game, and prompting him to re-include them; he afterwards admitted liking them quite much, too). Simply descending and finding redbrick walls, maybe dark green or mudbrown, feels quite atmospheric and does not break the flow of the game in any way, as we are merely talking aesthetics (of a relatively non-important object) here, so it is an "easy" way (bar potential programming issues, obviously) to bring added-value to your tileset. In case there is some little programming work to be done here and provided it is indeed only a little, I insist that you sit down and think about it - perhaps sit down with Quirk and talk to him, as again, colored walls add a ton of atmosphere to the game.
That is it for now, and this post already seems as big (if not bigger) than the other lol
Cheers!Leave a comment:
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I feel your pain. I did see your post about the Gervais tiles when I was looking into the history of Sil tiles.
What Quirk and I found when implementing tiles was that there were some monsters and items that were represented in ASCII that could actually be fixed by cross-referencing the monster.txt, object.txt, and terrain.txt files, against graph-new.prf and flvr.prf.
I also did the very tedious thing of assigning all seemingly unused reference ID numbers to one specific bright pink square on my tilesheet, up to ID 500. Then I could check in the game if this caused them to use the pink tile instead of an ASCII character in-game. This caught a few entities that were not defined in the .txt files or the .prf files. In the end, the biggest issue has been artifacts, which I believe need back-end changes to support.
Once my own tiles have been implemented, your work of converting to the Gervais tileset should actually be doable!Leave a comment:
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When Sil-Q was starting to stabilize I made an attempt to get the David Gervais tiles, as I've preferred that tileset since the days of AngbandTk. After making some good progress with the .prf files I ran into a roadblock. The person who did the original Sil was apparently not interested in tiles at all and put definitions of ASCII characters in various source files with no connection to the .prf files. Not really wanting to try to change these source files, especially while Quirk was modifying, I gave up on the project.Leave a comment:
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Wow, thank you for the in-depth critique. It helps to see these images from someone else’s eyes. I started writing a reply which addressed each concern individually but it was turning into a novel. I do agree with most of your input, especially concerning the player tile and the doors.
The walls are a little tricky because any added visual interest can look strange when repeated over and over. There is currently some slight tile variation, but I will definitely experiment with it more.
You were wondering about the tile to the left of the player in the penultimate image-- it is a pile of rubble. As for the tile to the right of the Tanglethorns-- it is a curved blade. I think a couple of extra pixels in the handle might make that more clear.
The color palette is an interesting question. I set out to keep the palette limited and desaturated. As it turns out, we need to use an indexed 256-color .bmp in order for the tiles to work correctly on Linux. While this is a limitation, I’m actually glad because it forces me to stick to my original ideals.
Speaking of ideals, I mentioned the idea of clarity in my original post. My feeling is that very detailed tiles are at risk of blending together; I want tiles with areas of solid color that form lines and curves that are easily identifiable. The grimhawks are a good example. Basically I’m trying to capture some of what people like about ASCII. I have nothing against more detailed tiles, or less detailed tiles, I’m just making the tileset that I personally want to see in the world.
My tiles are a bit of an experiment really, and this may be the cause of them feeling unfocused. Now, having said that, I don’t want to use this as an excuse to make ugly tiles. I believe that they can be made both clear as well as beautiful with enough work.
Here is an example of four roguelikes that I think are good examples of how form, color, and large vs small frequency detail can affect clarity: Tileset Comparison. You probably recognize DCSS, TOME, and ADOM, but the one in the top left is called Rescue Timmy. I really like the style.
I appreciate the offer of help! Your rendition of the Infra Arcana church is actually very impressive. I think it may be helpful to let you take a pass. But I don’t think the time for that has come quite yet. Although I’ve been enjoying my time with the tiles I do have other projects-- I’m planning to let them go for just a bit and see if there is other feedback. Major changes to artwork are always less painful after some time away. After the second iteration I will let you know.Leave a comment:
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Hey, mate,
It sure does answer my question - I dig tiles and am yet to try Sil-Q (in fact, I have barely devoted the time I think Sil deserves because life gets in the way so often), so I guess your tileset will likely make me jump into Sil-Q as soon as it is deployed.
Having slept on your tiles, I came back to provide proper criticism, as merely mentioned that tiles are "unfocused" is not nearly enough lol
So:
Some tiles feel unfocused - again, perhaps I feel this upon looking at the tiles as my eyes are yet to acclimatize** to what they are actually seeing (reading). In any case, yes, I shall emphasize that some delineation of the models (let's call monsters and the PC this way) could do, but perfectly I understand how tricky this is on a 16x16 canvas.
**I say this for today I had a far better time looking at most tiles and making the connection to what they are in reality, going as far as realizing that the reddish model found on the penultimate picture is a dragon. I know this sounds like it was an issue on my end as it now seems pretty obvious that it's a dragon, but yesterday for the life of me I could not figure that out. Also, it is relevant to mention that players will very likely be reading (as in, literally) whatever shows up as tiles, by means of the log. I won't ever be able to experience this scenario as I realized that the model referred to is that of a dragon, but if I were to play the game not knowing that said model is a dragon and [l]ooked at it, upon realizing that it is a dragon, I am fairly sure I would be able to immediately recognize it, as the brain often does these things.**
Wolves - read your post claiming that you did some work on them, which is good. I admit they were rather unconvincing as wolves, as they were. Perhaps you could post a picture of the up-to-date rendition, so that we could provide feedback?
Grimhawk - perhaps cutting a bit on the angle of its right wing (thus, the one we see on the left, as I take it the creature is facing west, right? Well, in case not, I mean the wing which is slightly higher than the other) could have the desirable effect of making it better resemble a bird. Another idea which would likely render similar results would be to simply make it look more bird-y and less monstrous (have a look at Infra Arcana's tile for the raven - quite an efficient rendition of a bird, if you ask me, so perhaps you could draw some inspiration from it?). And again I'll refer to the observation inbetween ** anyways as yesterday, upon reading that this was a Grimhawk, I could finally perceive it the way I did.
PC - I would not mind sacrificing some of its... attempt at all-encompassingness/neutrality/defaultness for the sake of some flair. Meaning, I feel as though the player character would benefit tremendously from wielding anything on their hands - be it a sword and shield, a mace and shield, even a single weapon without a shield (think dagger) would do. Or perhaps some tan/brownish colors on its body to convey a sense of armor/clothing being worn (any other color could do, so long as it matched the universe). So yes, there is the question of "why is my Elf wielding a mace and a tower shield?" or "why is my dwarf wielding two daggers (being bold here lol)?", but again, I feel as though the end result of such a push would be more beneficial than detrimental. As of now, it resembles something like #player.dummy.01 for any given 3D game, still lacking Texture&Lighting.
Tanglethorns - I like them as they are, honestly. They look effectively thorny, which is how they should look lol
Object to the right of the Tanglethorns on the first picture - what am I looking at? Greaves? Or a bladed instrument of sorts? Perhaps this could be reworked (given my question lol), but it seems far closer to "greaves" than "bladed instrument" to me.
Walls - I like them as they are, but perhaps making the bricks a little less aligned/symmetrical would be interesting, for the sake of giving them some of that rough-hewn flair that a place like Angband would possess. Perhaps adding a single black dot here or a little dash there could achieve an interesting effect here (again, I understand how a 16x16 can limit one's scope).
Arrows - Those are arrows on the floor, right? I am fairly sure they are, which is in itself a compliment to how they look right now. In any case, I... am not really digging their look, despite almost immediately recognizing them as so. Perhaps enlarging the left end of the arrow or trying to make the its head a tad more angular would be good.
Broken doors - I feel they look as much as broken windows as they do doors. I think this is caused by the representation of the damage it suffered - that is, a hole in the middle. Maybe reworking them so they show signs of depredation on their right side (as it is the side opposite to the hinges, thus more susceptible to damage) rather than as a hole in the middle would be interesting.
Object to the left of the dragon and the PC, penultimate picture - what am I looking at? I do not have the slightest clue as to what that might be... :S
Color palette - How are we in this department?
Volunteering - the last time I went to GIMP to try anything was in late 2018, but the end result satisfied me and most people who saw it, included the game's developer. This is what I am talking about:
It is my rendition of Infra Arcana's church. I am no expert by any means, but if you feel as though there remains a plethora of small things to tackle on most tiles (as often happens), I could help tackling some of those for you. No worries on rights/acknowledgements/credits - they obviously remain yours. Still, I have a full-time job and a nine-month old, so assistance coming from my actual hands could be... sporadic lol
Cheers!Last edited by Mechapede; April 14, 2020, 21:59.Leave a comment:
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To add a little to MicroChasm's answer:
- Sil tile support is so broken on Linux that hitting an enemy crashes the game on my installation. I have traced this and fixed it but for Sil 1.3 there is no practical prospect of Linux tile support as I don't intend to continue maintaining 1.3 as a separate project.
- Listen won't have tile support on either Windows or Linux in 1.3.
- It's likely as testing happens that more code changes are going to be necessary. One thing I'm looking into at present is how to signal enemy status in tiles, particularly awareness status.
- Since Sil 1.3 won't be fully functional with tiles, it's a little questionable as to whether it's worth putting the effort in for cases where 1.3 and Sil-Q differ e.g. filthy rags.Leave a comment:
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I will have to ponder how to focus the tiles more-- it may be a lack of contrast, or just refining their forms more. It may be that I should let them go for a couple of weeks and come back with fresh eyes. I am very acclimated to the tiles right now.
The question of getting the tiles to work with vanilla Sil is a little complicated. I'm fairly new to Sil if I'm being honest. Do a lot of people still play vanilla?
Sil wasn't developed with tiles in mind, and many things were changed in Sil from NPPAngband. These changes created issues that need to be resolved in order for the tiles to work.
There are two parts to the current tile implementation (other than actually making the art): changes to .prf files, and changes to source code. I am changing the .prf files, which determine how objects (monsters/items/etc) are routed to tile locations, and Quirk is changing the source code. I can't speak much for Quirk's part, other than I know that he is working on fixing a crash bug with tiles on Linux. Also, artifacts and special items are handled differently than regular items and need additional back-end work to route them to a tile.
You could technically just replace a few files here and there in your vanilla Sil installation and the tileset would mostly work. In fact I tested it today to answer your question. There will be a few issues related to differences between vanilla and Sil-Q though. New tiles would have to be made along with slight modifications to the .prf files to accommodate those differences. This would be very achievable. However, without changes to the Sil source code, the tile implementation wouldn’t be complete.
Hopefully that answers your question.Leave a comment:
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Hey, folks!
Great job on the tileset, MicroChasm!
I do share some of the criticism of the other fella, though - some of the tiles seem a bit unfocused, for lack of a better word (but perhaps this is just the result of not being used to the tileset).
In any case, I wanted to ask: will this be Sil-Q exclusive or available to vanilla Sil as well?
Cheers!Leave a comment:
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I don't plan to upscale the tileset at the moment. It's an interesting point, I think that I will experiment with up-rezing and seeing how I feel about refining the tiles from there. At the moment, I like the limitations of 16x16 px.Leave a comment:
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Cool
Do you plan to resize it to 32 later on? It's always possible to downscale tileset in game settings...
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Sharp eye! The stairs are very very close to the Crawl stairs. I'd started with another design, but my stairs were difficult to tell apart at first and I felt that the Crawl stairs are very clear.looks great. Is `stairs down` are from DCSS? (it's fun, as it's CC0; I use stuff from there too in my tileset)
please could you share some technical details? what the size of this tileset? which license?
The tiles are 16px by 16px. I've been interested in tile art for a while but this is my first attempt at making a tileset, and anything larger than 16x16 felt a little intimidating. Constraints inspire creativity anyway, right?
If you want more details, I'm making the tiles in Photoshop, which I feel has worked well. I'm trying to limit the palette, so no more than five shades of any particular color on a tile. Also, a lot of reusing colors between monsters.
I'd like the tiles to be free and available for anyone to use. I guess the question is whether I want to ask for attribution or not. I'm more or less aware of the creative commons licenses, but I'd like to hear your opinions if you want to share.Leave a comment:
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I appreciate the feedback, and I'm glad you like the color scheme. The player is looking at studded leather armor, a grimhawk, and four wolves. There are some tanglethorns above them.
The studded leather armor is an early sprite I made... I will reconsider it if it is not clear. I've never loved it but I haven't figured out how to improve it yet. I wasn't happy with my wolves either, so I redid them right before posting. They are better than before for sure! Overall I am fairly happy with them, but I do think that some tweaking of the shading will make them more clear.
I think you are right about the orcs, especially the ones you meet early in the dungeon. I like this suggestion.Leave a comment:
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