Free the dungeon

[Zyx]

High res: Gambit has made very interesting experiments blending high and low res. I would like to hear his final thoughts about it.

[Gambit37]

Not directly in the game view though. It doesn't work to mix higher res stuff AND lower res stuff in the playable viewport, but using higher res stuff for the interface and low res for the viewport works very well.

Oh... and I've finally decided to give up working for myself and get a new fulltime job. I just can't handle the stress of self employment anymore. So you never know, once my life is back on track, I'll have some free time again. Yay! But I have far too many other projects to complete first, so I still wouldn't get involved in this particular venture. Good luck to anyone who attempts it though!

[zoom]

Gambit,
do you mean walls and creatures with "by mixing higher res stuff and lower res stuff in the playable viewport "?
or do you mean items lying around and wallsets not mixing when different too well?

or just walls and wall ornamentation? - so that it would not matter to have low res walls and high res creatures, both seen in the viewport.
I also have a vivid memory of the stuff you produced, worked quite well altogether.
Best of luck finding a new fulltime job.
the constant flow of money it should produce will be soothing I guess and give you a bit more freedom back even if it has other constraints!

The aim would be to have everything be highres, or maybe not?
---> On another thought, The vibe could probably be kept with a standard dm -looking wall (same resolution) but a bit more change :
e.g. a desert wallset(linflas did that once when I remember correctly) and then have all/most other things be highres.

This is all speculative, nevertheless: thoughts on that?

[Gambit37]

Remember this?




The player's view uses graphics at the same resolution as the original game. Everything around that -- the interface -- is done at twice the resolution. But you'll notice that the torch in the first player's hand is still an older low-res torch and it doesn't look right in the higher quality interface.

In the same way, you wouldn't want to use high-res walls and low resolution monsters or items in the player viewport -- it would just look wrong.

[zoom]

yes, I remember. Thanks for showing that really fits in here.
___> Though I doubt that the viewport uses the same resolution as the original game..ok, after a while it occurred to me :
Is it just that there are more colours around that you can get better looking results at the same resolution? Somehow I cannot really believe that this is the old screen resolution. Arent the monster too detailed? Is this an RTC thing, where there probably is a higher reso at place? Sorry for going off topic, but I just cannot make head or tails of it.

[Gambit37]

The resolution is nothing to do with number of colours you can show. Original game was in 16 colours. That screen shot has thousands.

The original game ran at 320 x 200. That screenshot is 640x480 (double the original resolution + 80 extra pixels vertically). However, the images shown in the player viewport use DOUBLED PIXELS. So 1 pixel in the original game is now represented by 2x2 pixels which makes the images exactly the same as the original game in terms of their resolution.

I'll do a diagram when I get some time so that you can see what I mean.

[RAF68]

Hi gambit37 from what games comes this screen picture???

[beowuuf]

His own dungeon he is creating

[RAF68]

Ah OK beowuuf I did not know.

[Rasmus]

@Gamebit: It's a real nice troll you have created there.. I can see that the "sideflipping" would work out real nice.. I guess that's another challange when it comes to creating a new set of creatures. Good work, I hope you have time to go back to it soon

[Gambit37]

I didn't draw it, it's taken from Eye of the Beholder 3 / Dungeon Hack. I did the walls and the interface.

[Rasmus]

Then I must say that the interface and the walls match the troll perfectly.. (I hope this saved me)

No seriously.. The interface looks great! I have tried doing something simular but I am having problems getting the theme and colors right, the contrast beetween one area to another always gets messed up. But this really have a soft touch

[Chaos-Shaman]

looks good gambit. nice bricks. there must be something to get this dungeon idea going.

[Gambit37]

As I said before, getting a team effort going is only going to happen if people can devote a SPECIFIC AND FIXED amount of time every week to the project. It also needs a realistic deadline and a full time project manager to keep it on track. You can't treat team projects like some little hobby single project where only one person is involved* -- it has to be managed carefully and properly. The more people and tasks you add, the more management it requires. While also remembering that people have busy real lives and don't simply spend all their spare time sitting in front of the computer.

Unless volunteers can to commit to this, and take charge of it, and can invest significant amounts of spare time into it, you should probably accept that it's not going to happen. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh; I am just being realistic.



* Probably all personal projects should be run just as effectively too, but that's another issue

[Chaos-Shaman]

yes, it can be challenging. there are probably enough wallsets as is, all that is needed is the hires objects and monsters. the objects should be easy to find and replace, heroes should be easy, but the creatures will be much more difficult. i can cover the heroes side with hires, have a bunch already.

[linflas]

FoD has approximately a dozen of highres monsters : took me 3 years... ok i should motivate myself a bit more, for sure.

[Chaos-Shaman]

hi linflas time is something that i get trouble with too. with a family, you get disturbed while working. finding stuff i was working on months later, oh, and think, oh yeah, that's what i was doing, hehe. what monsters have you done so far linflas? i have a few ideas on monster creation. it would be easy to use little toys, just take a childs monster and get all the shots, and use them. add some blood and a scary expression. this should work well. there are so many toys. even the little monsters at the end of a pencil would do nicely. will give it a go and see how it works out.

[Ameena]

I've suggested this before in another thread somewhere but I'll give it a mention again - creatures made in the Spore creature creator could be tweaked in some kind of arty program to fit their appearance more to whatever dungeon they were gonna be in. Saves the trouble of drawing something from scratch - even if you just make a monster-shaped blob with legs and add in the actual details later, at least the basic anatomy will be sorted .

[biffo666]

I have been playing around with some levels in the editor, and made a few new graphics. Anyone's free to use them. The Beetle shell shield is meant to be a dropped item from the beetle graphic I found in one of the monster graphic sets.

[biffo666]

Oh Foorgot this one. It's the BugSHield in Hand.

[biffo666]

Oops, Forgot meat in hand. Also, I set up the moldy bread in the editor to fill up a player but detract HP. Good for starving situations, where the player has time to heal. I'll prolly do a wormy apple soon too. The New characters are my daughter and step son.

[linflas]

@chaos-shaman : there are approximately 30 monsters in FoD bestiary. here's a list of some i've penciled : wolf, goblin, ogre, orc, shapechanger, giant worm (not DM one ), razorback, witch, wyvern (made with spore as Ameena mentioned). Yaztromo is also a monster with all views.

[Zyx]

Well, what about starting with what you have, Linflas, and see what graphics can be merged to yours respecting your style? Or do you wish to keep them secret or restrict the project to the developer section?

[linflas]

honestly, there are a few things i'd like to keep restricted but i haven't done anything new for months... what do you mean by "starting" ?

[Zyx]

Start to create a graphic library that we would collectively own (or under a CC licence for example), that would allow us to publish our dungeons or work on a common project with DSB (maybe CSBwin too?).

[biffo666]

I'm trying to organize the art I submit for open source use to this board. In this vein, I've created a page all art I create will be linked on.
Here's a few new items I've added.







The page is buried in my site directly accessible via
http://www.benfischer.com/Pad/

Use of course as you see fit in your own endeavours, my thoughts with the broken falchion is that the broken falchion is dropped by most skeletons, and deals damage between a dagger, and a low grade sword. IE better than nothing.

[Gambit37]

Very cool work Biffo, that Falchion looks awesome

[Ameena]

Aaww, the worm is quite cute - he has little eyes .

[linflas]

Start to create a graphic library that we would collectively own (or under a CC licence for example), that would allow us to publish our dungeons or work on a common project with DSB (maybe CSBwin too?).

That sounds good, as my artwork can fit with most of what i have seen here for years and are all transparent PNGs. So what about a shared picasa/photobucket account only accessible from members of Developers forum.
If RTC is still used, every picture comment should contain position values too... Same for DSB.

[Sophia]

Nice graphics.