I promised myself I'd update GemSet before starting other projects, but it's time to come clean. I've tried working on GemSet but I cannot work up the motivation to finish v0.43.05 support. After 2 years of artistic progress I've begun to loathe how the graphics set looks. It's too cutesy and clashes with the serious tone of Dwarf Fortress.
So instead, I've directed my attention to this newer graphics set. Now that this semester is finished, I can focus on curses_vector. While not as detailed as GemSet, I think this graphics set will accomplish what my ideal graphics set would do: clearly convey what things are but leave details up to the imagination of the player. No more chunky, goofy-looking dwarves sliding around the screen with a blank look on their face. Just a silhouette to convey the
idea of a dwarf like ASCII does.
So while I'm still shooting for the aesthetics of that mockup, I've made one significant change.
This will now be a 12x18 graphics set instead of 8x12. Here's a preview:
With 50% higher resolution I can now convey realistic human proportions (1:7 head ratio) and add more personality to each animal person. And once I vectorize these tiles to 24x36, one will be able to fit exactly 80x30 tiles onto a 1080p viewport. Perfect! I'm not throwing out my 8x12 tiles, either. I feel they can be reused for child sprites.
Now onto the last order of business...a name. It might be too early for this, but I think curses_vector is a little too stark.
Current considerations for names are Bitland, Textmode, Cursey, Zeddex and Twotone. If you have any other ideas, throw them out there! It'll be a while before I christen this.
