StuartK
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The current monster art is optimised to look good on only one type of background, usually the darker of the two theme colours e.g. dark purple on the lava theme. Monsters don't look quite so good on other backgrounds though - it's just about noticeable on light purple if you've got a big monitor and you put your nose up to the screen (or zoom in) but on doors, walls, tar etc creatures can look downright, noticeably, ugly. The art is 'pseudo' anti-aliased. It could be modified to include an alpha channel so that it displays properly, no matter the background art.

From what I figure (and if this is the same as previous versions of DROD) there is an entire tileset, including monster art, for each of the seperate themes. Another advantage to this approach would be that the monster art would blend in, and be reusable, for all the tilesets (plus any new ones ) without any unnecessary duplication.

[Edited by StuartK on 07-13-2003 at 12:52 AM]

zex20913
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Oh my god...what would this mean for Wesley's second puzzle?

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StuartK
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zex20913 wrote:
Oh my god...what would this mean for Wesley's second puzzle?

I don't know the level you're talking about. I'm quite a bit behind with the holds I've been playing. I wasn't aware that this would be anything other than a cosmetic tweak.

I have though made some bad assumptions in my initial suggestion (I hadn't actually had a look through the game resources before now - didn't even think they were browsable, and I was basing my suggestion on observations I've made ingame) The renderer does it seems try to merge the art in with the background (kinda - theres a light blue colour used to indicate that the background tile should be shown shadowed) but it doesn't appear to work when monsters are on certain tile configurations, so this is really more of a bug report (in the wrong forum, dammit) I guess.

zex20913
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No, I'm not talking about a hold. On the General board, there is a question (by Wesley) that asks how many different tile configurations there are for a 2X2 block. I wondered if he would consider the tilesets/way the monsters are drawn as part of the puzzle.

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agaricus5
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zex20913 wrote:
No, I'm not talking about a hold. On the General board, there is a question (by Wesley) that asks how many different tile configurations there are for a 2X2 block. I wondered if he would consider the tilesets/way the monsters are drawn as part of the puzzle.

Hee hee. Don't worry - different tilesets do not count (The poor people had enough trouble arranging everything and getting all the materials in the story). Oh, and it's my fourth, not second puzzle.

[Edited by agaricus5 on 07-13-2003 at 07:49 PM]

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zex20913
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Really? It's your fourth? I thought the first two were riddles...whatever. They're all tough stuff. Kind of like your hold...but we won't go into that.

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Mattcrampy
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As has been discussed elsewhere, I've been trying to customise DROD's graphics. A discussion of the graphics then is probably in order.

The graphics are made up of the room tilesets and the object tileset. The room tilesets include everything about a particular room's theme - including force arrows, and in AE, trapdoors. It also has a different tile for each shadow. The object tileset contains all the monsters (as well as Beethro and the mimics) and all the doors. Modifying these tilesets produces direct results in DROD - a good sprite artist could turn DROD into, say, Star Wars.

The lightning, Beethro heads, background art and everything else are in seperate files, so it's possible to change most of DROD's graphics using something as simple as Paint. Making it look good is another matter.

To do alpha blending at the moment, you'd need another file. Transparancy is handled by picking a colour and making it transparent, which probably leads to the anti-aliasing effects you see.

Erik, being a programmer, is more interested in ensuring the editor works than the graphics looking cool, but unlike a programmer, grudgingly admits that something needs to be done. This may have to do with the fact that the current solution is unelegant and involves a lot of special cases (namely, the shadows.) He plans a graphical rewrite after AE is released, possibly to go with Journey to Rooted Hold and/or the new monsters.

Matt

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trick
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Making all the BMP files PNG files in stead would fix this.. PNG is lossless, allows anything between 1-bit indexed to 48-bit truecolor, and has support for both on/off and partial transparency (so anti-aliasing could be done automatically). It would also save space. The only bad thing is that it would be slower, as drod would have to unpack all PNGs before use (could use a low or non-existent compression ratio, tho), and it would probably up the system requirements a bit.

- Gerry