Saturday, October 20, 2012

Graphical ADOM teaser...

While the NotEye integration is getting along nicely (although there are still a number of fiddly details to be resolved) I'd also like to point to a small preview from Krys about what we can expect for the graphics.

Here we go, enjoy!


25 comments:

  1. Little too happy for me (I imagined ADOM environment as a really grim one) but still really great :D

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  2. @Omlet: It's an early preview... right now we are still fiddling with sane ways to build all the tiles. Krys and I already discussed adding more grittiness to the tiles but that will happen with good measure once all the basic kinks have been worked out.

    After all the details that keep popping up I'm really curious to see some of the loudmouths (who decried building such a tileset as a trivial feat that never could take as much effort as we estimated) from the pre-crowdfunding-days step up with their own tilesets, BTW. That really will be interesting to see...

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  3. Is the plan to replace text interface with tiles, or to make it an alternative to text interface?

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    1. Just an alternative. ASCII will always be availible.

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  4. Yeah, have to agree on "too happy". Doesn't look like a dungeon brimming with ChAoS and corruption. Looking forward to that extra ration of grittiness :)

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  5. Yep, definitely still prefer ASCII. If I wanted games with stunning graphix, I'd buy a Playstation III or an Xbox, no offense.

    How the blazes are you going to put the sprites for writhing masses of primordial chaos (or whatever they're called)? Or ancient dragons which (according to their description) are supposed to be gigantic?

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    1. You'll always be able to play it in ASCII-mode if you don't like the tileset - from what I've gathered atleast.

      Looks good though, them handdrawn lootstuffs

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  6. This picture is wrong. You can't have two staircases next to each other. ;)

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  7. Looking good. I agree that it would be more fitting in the game world to have a darker look to it, but I still like the look of those at present. I've always found a great deal of humour in the randomness of ADOM, so a fun look would match that. Really I'd be happy with either.

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  8. Actually, THIS dungeon is probably fine to be "happy" and not dark/dingy/corrupted. I mean, he's fighting giant rats, it's not a dangerous dungeon!

    That PC character though... If that sprite changes based on what items you've got equipped... and the hair colour/eye colour changes depending on the "background" that the PC gets at character gen... and if you get hit by an aging attack, the PC looks older when he gets old/very old status... This will be amazing.

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    1. Now that would be some nice addtion, I agree!

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    2. I don't see this happening with the funds we have for graphics. Imagine the mind-boggling number of combinations... several age levels for each PC race... and then differentiated by gender... and maybe even by class... and all the stuff on the ground (armor, boots, weapons, ...) would have to be built to fit each of the races, from hurthlings to trolls. I guess that's a task that could occupy Krys for another 20 months ;-)

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    3. I'm curious, though - you're not planning on having just the human fighter dude, right? How many variations are you planning? All races male/female would be 24 - there should be room for more past that, right? Armor levels (robes/light/heavy armor)? A weapon for each weapon class (daggers etc.) and a shield? Have you made a final decision on this or is this a "we'll add stuff if there's time" thing?

      I love it whenever a game like this changes my look depending on the stuff I wear, sort of like Diablo II. (Even Diablo I, which had the three levels of armor for each character.) Makes me feel more like me.

      (You could also make special sprites for artifact armor that will look the same for all characters anyway, such as the ancient mummy wrapping. You'd only need that one in hurthling/human/troll size, right? Same goes for moloch armor, possibly?)

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  9. It looks like Dungeons of Dredmor (at least by 1st impression).I hope these tiles will turn out to be one of its kind,not yet another DCSS,DoD,RPGWO etc clone ;)

    After few minutes of looking at it it looks bit cartoonish (not in the bad meaning of this word).If you remember Diablo1 graphics, all textures were hand-made and therefore more 'harsh', evil, and climatic.To compare WoW3 where all shapes are fluent,soft,etc...I hope it will go with right direction (whatever path you choose)

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  10. Not a bad thing I guess, the man behind DoD's art is really good =).

    With that being said, DoD makes a point of being somewhat a tongue-in-cheek comedy/comic book affair. That kind of style won't work with ADOM, much too light hearted. The final tileset hopefuly will match ADOM's rather dark atmosphere.

    However, some of the cartoon feel will remain, if only because it makes features more distinguishable which is important for small tile sizes.

    And in the end, one can't please everyone I'm afraid. Especially that until now everyone's been playing ADOM using the most awesome graphics set of all - their imagination! Now that's hard to beat ;)

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  11. I think the character's appearance doesn't need to change with age or health (although corruptions might be another matter). also clothes don't need to change with every single equipment but maybe just with equipment-type. all this, I think, isn't that important. if I would want to play a roguelike where character-development is reflected visually, I'd play IVAN. there graphics are very simple and low-res so not much efforts need to be spent for the actual drawing and more is free for syncing up all the visual elements so that visuals actually become part of game-play. there is no real gain when you can see every single piece of equippment, you could as well look into the inventory. that I am wearing my gloves would however be an important info, but not which ones. I don't mind when my whip is displayed as a knife...

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  12. I'd definitely reduce the head size of the character... that alone would give a somewhat more serious air to the tileset. I, too, think it should have a darker air to it.

    Somehow, I was expecting the tileset to be in line with the drawings made for the funding campaign, with hand-drawn @'s and letters representing the monsters... That'd still be 'funny', keep with the original ADOM spirit and remove some cartoonish aspect. It'd also simplify the tiles (hence giving more time for little details like variations from age, sickness, etc) and remove the need to specify clothes and weapons.

    The main problem with tiles is that, since they are specific, you *expect* them to be specific. If the little guy is black-haired, blue-eyed and wears a sword, it won't match your blonde, brown-eyed guy wearing a halberd. Using antropomorphified @'s would simplify that.

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    1. So very true! In fact the idea has been discussed before but in the end we decided that one of the goals is to make ADOM more accessible, and @'s and letters don't meet that goal.

      The good thing though is that character and monster images can be easily replaced, so it's likely someone will make a set like that. With some 3D support one could make a complete isometric set of letters in a day or two, and flat letters would be even easier :)

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    2. We definitely should support different tilesets and provide an easy way to switch between them.

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  13. The whole point of tiles shouldn't be just to make the game look prettier (which is not an issue right now, since the tiles are so f********************ing beautiful), but provide more visual feedback and information.

    There is not point in replacing the @ with a good looking character tile that is just as static, Id rather have it looking worse, but show information about the equipment, weapons and character related stuff in general (like DCSS does), DCSS also shows a minimap and the inventory on the display. Sorry to bring up DCSS all the time, but I really thing it does all this stuff really well

    For these reasons I think DCSS tiles are far better than Dungeons of Dredmor animated ones, sure, they look pretty and funny, but they dont show more info than an @ would, and you have to open a menu thing to see info about your character, and I dont recall liking the minimap that much either.

    Maybe it would be cool representing the damage taken by each monster/character each turn with some graphical effect too

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  14. The problem here is that drawing all the details for such detailed character information takes a lot of time. We won't be able to afford doing that from the crowd funding budget as far as I can see right now. The community is invited to support us here once we start releasing ADOM versions with NotEye integration, though.

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