Mod: Blast from the Past, Return of the Underkings

[Aezeal]

Good call on teh no cavalry, but dwarves are not so small that it justifies size 1. I figure their shoulders are about 1.5 as broad as humans so it just won't fit.

Personally I'd be a greatly for having recruitable battle golems

[Endoperez]

Saulot said he'd have preferred size 2 dwarves, but the sprites were all size 1...

[Saulot]

@BandarLover:

That's good to hear about Zepath.

I'm glad to hear about the write-up, otherwise all that typing would have been for no reason, heh.

Yeah, the cavalry would be nice just for the coolness factor. Unfortunately, if I just threw in everything that was cool, it would be kind of like... throwing in 20 of your favorite types of food into one pot. Not exactly edible.

1-2 weeks is not too bad. I could have started this thread much earlier.

Patience is after all, a dwarven virtue.

@Aezeal:

Yeah... like Endo said I agree. But spritework is quite time-consuming. Smallscale spritework is even more difficult. My typical method of starting with a bigger picture, and then scaling down (such as scaling x3, so 9 pixels turn into one, and a palette of 5 colors, plus black and white, turn into a palette of a broad spectrum of colors and shades), doesn't work well when the downscale end result is tiny (15-30 pixels tall). What is a relatively easy method to get great results turns into something which turns into blurry blobs. I found this out the hard way when working on kobolds. As a result the kobolds were made quite tall.

(Though his wide color pallete would seem to indicate otherwise, I believe it's some mask or blur feature to blend the colors a tiny bit.) Based on the edges, shapes, and outlines, Zepath seems to do it at-scale one pixel at a time, probably zooming out and in to see how changing the color of one pixel looks different overall. This is most likely incredibly time-consuming.

So, while I'm not opposed to doing sprites from scratch... especially considering Zepath's organized method is one I could learn from (as in how he has several dwarf bases, plus armor overlays, shield overlays, weapon overlays), it would take up a lot of time, and that's time I wouldn't be spending working on several other mods I want to get to.

Anyway, just to give you a comparison, the Zepath Dwarves are around 20 pixels tall and 16 pixels wide (with weapon and shield). Typical humans are 32 pixels high and Hoburgs are I believe 16.

If I was going to do it from scratch, I'd probably make them 26 pixels tall and 24 pixels wide.

[Cor2]

I am excited. I look forward to this release. I like the idea of size 1 dwarfs. Fits with the dominions world and does not break drastically from D&D.

By the way, what do you mean Dwarven Fortress is unplayable in its standard ASCII version? Its the only way to play!

[Aezeal]

Saulot there must be miscommunication I mean, regardless of sprites that dwarves (what kobolds) should not be size 1 but size 2 (for example take the lord of th rings movies) Gimli is more equal sized with aragorn than with hobbits bulk-wise.

[Sombre]

He understands what you mean Aezeal. He's just saying the sprites he's using, which were made by Zepath when this was a dom2 mod, are the size of other size 1 units like hoburgs. Roughly speaking.

Therefore Zepath intended the dwarves to be size 1. You'll find the same thing in Kharam Dzu, the dwarven pirate mod Zepath made for dom3. Size 1 dwarves.

Sure, you think they should be size 2. But zepath didn't.

[Aezeal]

sprites aren't that important and no reason not to just make them size 2.

I'm right and everyone who thinks dwarves need to be size 1 are wrong.