Texture Pack

[Corran Horn]

Hello Devs,

First of all, I love the game. I recently picked it up and after finally making it through a campaign I found that I could edit game’s the texture files. This was a golden opportunity and I set out to create a total conversion texture pack. I don’t have any intent to distribute it at this point, as it is far from finished and I would want your approval beforehand. As I’ve worked through the art files a few peculiarities have popped up. Particularly, the map screen currently uses the terror_trap.png file to mark defeated enemies. Assuming it’s not a hassle, could this be separated into its own file? I would be very appreciative.

Additionally, there are several potion texture files but only one is used (as far as I can tell). It would be nice to have more variety as far as they go.

It would also be nice if ore spawning was restricted from the edges of claimed tiles. Currently this can throw off a dungeon layout by requiring you to expand into places that you wouldn’t want to, or ignore certain ore deposits. Further, ore deposits restrict your ability to reinforce walls, which I tend to use for aesthetic purposes at the end game.

Currently, you are unable to place floor tiles under traps. Also, I think that floor tiles could have more diverse effects on different rooms. By that, I mean, a library with carpet makes sense, but not a forge. It might make work better to have Carpet most effective in the library, stone in manufactory, wood in training room, etc. There are also many floor tile files that aren’t being used. It would be nice to have more options for creating interesting layouts with the different tiles.

Also, the current efficiency bonus for floor tiles requires them on all sides of the working tile. It would be nice to have it cap at four or six tiles, so that you can still place workbenches, etc., on walls or in corners. Perhaps make it nine tiles, but within two tiles of the working tile so that a tile in a corner would still get the benefit of the nine tiles around it.

Anyway, these are some of the thing’s that I’ve thought about as I’ve been playing, and playing with, the game.

Texture Pack – Album

• This topic was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Corran Horn.

[Michal Brzozowski]

Hey, your pack looks awesome, I would love to play it! Is it all your original work? I can definitely see adding it to the game as an alternative sprite set once it’s complete.

I’ve already separated the terror trap sprite and the campaign skull. I’ll add more potion sprites too. Anything else that’s stopping you?

Corran Horn wrote:

It would also be nice if ore spawning was restricted from the edges of claimed tiles.

Corran Horn wrote:

Currently, you are unable to place floor tiles under traps.

Sure, wrote down to fix those two things.

Corran Horn wrote:

By that, I mean, a library with carpet makes sense, but not a forge. It might make work better to have Carpet most effective in the library, stone in manufactory, wood in training room, etc.

I agree, although I couldn’t come up with any simple rule for that, and the players need to be made aware of it somehow. The floors are already a bit confusing, for example I see many players not place floors directly under furniture.

In general, I do want to extend the floor system by adding more floors and rules, but I don’t have solid ideas yet.

[Corran Horn]

Thanks Michal.

Yes, everything is original work. I’ve made it through about 75% of the files so far. I’m currently an art/design student and the quarter is just wrapping up, so I’ll have a few weeks with nothing to do, so I shouldn’t have any trouble getting through the rest. I haven’t really touched the UI at all yet, so that’s probably the biggest part left. All but a couple of creatures are done (though I would like to go back and redo some), all items and nearly all furniture objects are done.

One thing I’ve noticed was that there’s a key sprite, but I don’t believe it’s used in the game. This could be a cool tool to create interesting adventure-style dungeons for people to explore. If you could acquire a key to lock part of your dungeon, then hide the key somewhere so that people would have to find it to get to your hidden loot. It could spice up some of the retired dungeons. It could also be nice to have a small description to include with your retired dungeon to give people an idea of what to expect.

I also think that it could be cool to have allies visit your dungeon from time to time as well. Perhaps they could also make requests of the player, such as defeating a dragon that’s been pillaging their region. Maybe there’s some ultimate boss that can only be summoned once all of the main villains and lesser villains have been defeated, and a series of artifacts are acquired by completing tasks for your allies. This boss could even be multi-tile. It could require a summoning room of sufficient size. I’m thinking of the Kraken as a potential, which could require a body of water to spawn and could have multiple parts. Perhaps a beholder, or necromancer lord who summons a horde of skeletons and zombies.

Anyway, these are just some more ideas I’ve been thinking about. As for the texture pack, I think I’ll put together a more comprehensive post of my progress and artwork for feedback.

Thanks again.

[Michal Brzozowski]

Which parts of the UI were you thinking about touching? This wouldn’t be as easy as redoing sprites, as all the UI is hardcoded in the game, which means it expects assets of exact dimensions. So you either would have to respect the existing dimensions of every texture or we would have to work together on this.

[Corran Horn]

Yeah, I was thinking more along the lines of changing the wrapping graphics/icons. I assume all of the text fonts and colors as well as the solid backgrounds are hard coded.

One thing I would be particularly interested in reworking a little bit more is the map screen. I could do a mock-up of what I’d want to do with it.

[Michal Brzozowski]

The font can be replaced, but colors and text sizes are hard coded. I could export them into a config file if that helps you.

Sure, I would gladly see a mock-up of the map screen.

[Bas Testerink]

Unless you mean another sprite, you can see a key when you lock a door (by clicking on it).

[Corran Horn]

@BasTesterink: Oh, I know that. What I was referring to is the key.png file in orig16. The locked door has its own sprite in orig24 (locked_door.png). My point was just that keys could have an interesting use in game by giving players a way to set up little adventures in their dungeons, kinda like adventure mode in minecraft.

[Michal Brzozowski]

I remembered one thing that might be useful, the game doesn’t care about the dimensions of specific sprites, as long as they are in the appropriate directory (orig16, orig24, orig30). So you can make some things larger or smaller.

[Corran Horn]

Hey Michal,

I’m just wondering if it would be possible/easy to incorporate some kind of functionality to reload the UI. Perhaps through a console command? It would make iterating through UI changes much easier.

I’m currently on OSX El Capitan (10.11.6), and when I close out of the game it doesn’t fully terminate. The process quits but it remains in the dock and as it’s own desktop. It also tends to eat inputs (mostly mouse clicks) until I force quit the “launchservicesd” and “Dock” services, in that order, as well as closing the “keeper” desktop. This occurred before I’d made any changes to game assets and is very consistent, but may be an issue with my OSX because my laptop is fairly old and I’ve started to encounter other issues as well. I tried reinstalling OSX, but it didn’t change anything.

Anyway, every time I reload the game it creates another instance of the game in the dock/desktops. It’s not a problem for normal gameplay, but constantly reloading the game to test the UI makes it a bit of a pain.

Album

[Michal Brzozowski]

Ok, I’ll try to do that. Do you need reloading of all UI or just map sprites?

Does that happen regardless of how you exit the game, like closing the window or the quit button in main menu?

Btw, I’ve been using your pack for the last week and it’s awesome, it gave me a new fresh look on the game 🙂

[Corran Horn]

Yeah, it happens however I close out of the game. Whether I close out through the menu, or Cmd+Q out. If I’m in windowed mode it doesn’t have the extra desktop problem. I’m not exactly sure how OSX handles full-screen modes, but it seems to use the multi-desktop functionality, which isn’t closing out properly.

I’m glad you like the pack. As for reloading, it’s mostly the UI that would be nice to reload. The sprites are easy enough to design out of game. The UI takes a lot more work going back and forth.

[Corran Horn]

UI album

I just wanted to share the progress I’ve made with the UI. I’ve had some ideas for possible improvements/changes that I’d like to propose, so I’m going to work on putting that together next.

Again, love the game and I thank you for making it in a way that is so open to this kind of modification.

[Michal Brzozowski]

Looks great!

Yeah, a lot of the colors are hardcoded. The ‘✘’ and ‘✓’ that I use in some places are unicode characters, also hardcoded. For now I’ll try to move the color definitions to a file, and add a button to reload all textures. Although it looks like you’ll be done before I get to that.

I was never completely happy with the main menu graphics, so I’m eager to see what you come up with.

I’m not sure I like that flat blue background of the windows, perhaps they need some texture or a gradient.

[Corran Horn]

Yeah, I’m mostly trying to work out a good color/value scheme right now, though it’s a bit too “glossy,” which can be distracting. It’s a lot easier to iterate through different color schemes without textures, though. Once I’m happy with that I think that adding a subtle texture will help subdue the UI. This is where I am now. I’m much happier with the feel of it.

[Author]

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