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That's right

That is right

[Footkerchief]

Can DFHack check dwarf`s inventory? The visualizer could render dwarves according to what they wear.

I don't think that is possible at the moment

Even if it was possible, I don't think Stonesense is ready to go there yet, though I hope it becomes more feasible in the future.  It's kind of a can of worms, since you have a draw a sprite for each clothing item for each race (maybe even for each caste), and then you'd probably want to get the skin color (in the next version) and draw each body part as a separate sprite, and so on, with no clear end in sight.

[Rose]

it doesn't necessarily need to show what they're wearing, just weather or not they actually are wearing anything

[Sean Mirrsen]

Since the sprites are static, all you really need is make a texture you can slap onto a designated area on a sprite, and different sizes of extraneous bits like shoulderpads for armor. Then you make a colormap for each sprite or sprite group, defining the texture overlay area and denoting the positions of extraneous bits with precisely-colored pixels.

[Footkerchief]

Yeah, I worked out a scheme along those lines last year.  If I understand what you mean about the colormap (the red area of the sprite gets filled in with the shirt color, the blue area gets the pants color), that was the first approach I considered, but it gets unpleasant if you have, say, a cloak that is drawn both in front of and behind the upper body -- you have to have special colors that operate in a conditional fashion, etc.  Additionally you don't get the flexibility of colorizing a grayscale sprite, so just treating each clothing item as a separate sprite (and major body part, if you want to show amputations) is much easier.

But honestly, once you get to this point, hand-drawn sprites start to get very impractical, especially if you want to do anything like animations.  If anyone ever attempts this for DF, they'll probably do it the way the Infinity Engine did -- sprites made from renders of high-res 3D models.

[Afthartos]

(and major body part, if you want to show amputations)

Oh yeah. that's what was missing from SS. was wondering why there weren't separate limbs on the ground when gobbo dropped 15 floors down

[Sean Mirrsen]

No, I meant an ADDITIONAL sprite to every group of sprites sharing the same pose/size. If you want your billowing cape, then you add two "extra bits", aligned to the "cape" pixel on the colormap. The engine sees the pixel, sees the fact the creature is wearing a cape, and draws two extra "cape" bits as determined by a description file - one behind the creature, one in front of it, both aligned to the pixel and likely textured/colored according to whatever material the cape is made from. With a complicated-sounding, but actually rather straightforward system like this, you only need to draw special clothing sprites for each creature that has a nonstandard size or pose. That billowing cape would be largely the same for most humanoids of similar size. Armor doesn't have to be all sprites - you can have the same outline for a jacket and a chainmail, but you will use different texture for them. If you want custom-looking armor, make a sprite for it, but only then. Plate armor can just have a shiny look with shoulderpads added.

Then again, you can always go with Total Annihilation's approach. Take a single sprite-resolution camera and a lot of simple 3D models. When you need to change a critter's looks, assemble it before the camera (off-screen, of course), take a snapshot, and use it as the sprite. That way you can always have a set of sprites for each critter at hand, without the need to continuously render stuff.

[Keita]

This looks excellent. I like the clean, crisp style going. I'll download it when I get home.

[LegoLord]

My vote's for purple/red royal guards.  Purple is, after all, the color of royalty, as well as what color the royal guards are represented with in-game.  But solid purple might not do so well.

[tefalo]

I like the red, desert and purple colored guards, all without the crown. The desert coloring might just be too plain for royal guards... so maybe just red and purple then. :P

I think the purple guard is a little too dark, maybe saturate (if i got the color terms right) the purples just a little bit? Just my opinion, though.

[Alexhans]

wow... this is great... Solifuge's pixel art rocks...

[Footkerchief]

No, I meant an ADDITIONAL sprite to every group of sprites sharing the same pose/size. If you want your billowing cape, then you add two "extra bits", aligned to the "cape" pixel on the colormap. The engine sees the pixel, sees the fact the creature is wearing a cape, and draws two extra "cape" bits as determined by a description file - one behind the creature, one in front of it, both aligned to the pixel and likely textured/colored according to whatever material the cape is made from. With a complicated-sounding, but actually rather straightforward system like this, you only need to draw special clothing sprites for each creature that has a nonstandard size or pose. That billowing cape would be largely the same for most humanoids of similar size. Armor doesn't have to be all sprites - you can have the same outline for a jacket and a chainmail, but you will use different texture for them. If you want custom-looking armor, make a sprite for it, but only then. Plate armor can just have a shiny look with shoulderpads added.

Yeah, that's the better technique, although since each sprite will always sit in the same location in the tile, you don't need an alignment pixel or whatever.  I'm still not sure what your "colormap" is exactly.

[Retro]

Give the Royal Guard black suits, ties, pants, and shoes, and a white shirt underneath. And sunglasses.

But seriously, I'm against the crown shape too. Giving them more of a face but still having insane armour would be a neat one. Really, I think just the more elaborate armour design and patterns, the better. These guys don't do jack for effective military structure anyhow.

[Sean Mirrsen]

The "colormap" is just a sprite silhouette with color-coded areas for texture, and alignment pixels. Alignment pixels are important - elves and humans may wear similar clothing, but its location on the sprite is different for them.

[Footkerchief]

The "colormap" is just a sprite silhouette with color-coded areas for texture, and alignment pixels. Alignment pixels are important - elves and humans may wear similar clothing, but its location on the sprite is different for them.

What are the color-coded texture areas for?  Do you mean having an actual 4x4 texture or whatever tessellated across that area?  Because that would look really horrible, like a badly dithered color or something.  You already have sprites for each item, so just use the grayscale to convey contours etc. -- this approach is already being used successfully in Stonesense.

As for the alignment pixel, I see your point, but it seems much simpler to just specify an X,Y offset in the text file that would map clothing items to sprites.

However, even done properly, this approach is kind of a dead end -- it'll never be able to cope with differently sized individuals, facial features, and of course animations.  Although those are arguably unnecessary.

You mentioned the TA engine, but what you described pretty much sounded like normal 3D rendering, though obviously TA had some quirks with terrain, parallel projection etc.  Anyway, if used for DF, that would basically be a return to Armok 1's procedurally generated models, and I'm not sure those will ever look good at all.

[Dante]

I love these royal guards. I'd say go with the purple as a base colour, with details or extras in either a deep red (burghundy / maroon) or navy blue. And I agree, the crowns are a bit ott, but if they could be made a little less crowny and a little more helmety they'd be fine.