Images, was Re: [CF-Devel] And almost a year later...

[Tom Barnes-Lawrence]

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     From: Mark Wedel <
      
      mwedel at scruz.net
      
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     Subject: Images, was Re: [CF-Devel] And almost a year later...
     
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       Might as well have the subject represent what this is really >about.
     
     
  Yeah, sorry, I already made another reply with that subject.

BTW I've been splitting my large emails into paragraphs, with line
breaks between in an attempt to make them more digetible, but when
the list sends me back copies, hotmail shows them in one huge block.
  If anyone has been receiving them in similar form and finding
them hard to read that way, the list archive seems to show them
properly.

  Also, I am making replies, and changing "to" field to the list
address, but those replies are not appearing to be part of the
same thread. Could this be the fault of hotmail, or am I doing
something wrong? Hotmail sucks....

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       In terms of PNG - I think the big problem is with the isomorphic > 
     
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     monsters (and
     
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     some of the scaled up xpm images).  After MichT's mail on images and
     
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     perspective, it became pretty apprantly that the isomorphic >monsters are 
     
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     just
     
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     wrong.
     
     
  Part of my argument was that the monsters dont even need to
be in the same perspective as the walls, etc.; Strictly
speaking, it's the walls and buildings that *ought to* look wrong
in both tilesets- because they are angled to one side. But they
look right. They just scan properly. Ironically, making the
*monsters* angled that way in the PNGs should make everything look
better, due to it all fitting the same perspective that already
works for the walls, but it visibly doesn't.

  I think our minds see the angled perspective as appropriate for
the nice (semi-)permanent buildings and surroundings, but the more
vertical, looking-me-in-the-eye perspective as appropriate for the
things running around in them. It makes no clear sense, but you
can't really argue with it. It would have all been different if
the tiles and view had been diamond shaped, but it must be *way*
too late for that (it did sound like MichT had been suggesting that
as a change)
  My other problem was largely with the nasty looking colours, and
apparent lack of contrast in most of the PNGs I've seen.


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       In terms of other images in the PNG set, are there other ones >that are 
     
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     really bad?
     
        Personally, I've only seen the screenshots of the PNG set,
so I prolly sound a bit stupid now- but I also found the cobble-
stone tiles in the zoo pretty awful. I couldn't tell if they
were scaled or new. I didn't like the grates either. They looked
kind of ill-defined, like all detail and contrast had been sucked
out. Is the PNG set currently only usable on the GTK and DX clients?
If the GTK one does need imlib, I wont touch it with a 50ft pole...
I may try the DX client on my windoze box tho.



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       The idea of palletized images is that there is some number of >pallets, 
     
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     so someplace, the server can say 'display image X using
     
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     pallete Y'.
     
       That sounds kind of like what I thought he meant.
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       What I'm not sure is if pallete Y (or use of pallete Y) is some >global 
     
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     pallete for all images, or if each image has some number of
     
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     pallets.
     
        I'm not sure either. I got the impression it was sort of a hybrid,
where the map had a palette of all colours it wanted (but I'm still
hoping only 256 in total...), but then all the images had their
own virtual palette which hooked into that so it all worked...:P
   Actually, I'm not sure if what I've just said makes any sense,
or would be any more useful or possible, or anything much as
my brain is running down. I need sleep now. I also don't know
if what I'm referring to is what MichT was.
   NO Actually, Im sure that's right, just badly described. I'll
have another look at that tomorrow, whilst I try to document my
old idea...


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     Hopefully the later, as trying to deal with global palletes would
     
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     seem to not really work very well (for example, change the green in
     
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     the monster or orange via pallete may be cool, but you probably
     
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     really don't want to change the green in the trees to
     
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     orange for example)
     
       I am currently unable to consider whether my interpretation avoids
that. I think that was an aspect of it, I just don't know whether
it works or is mad stupid crap from my tired brain :P
Yes, see above. I'm sure it does.Ish.


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     In terms of code support, I would probably say that a hybridized
     
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     naming scheme. So the the pallet could be denoted by %(pallet_num)
     
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     -ie, instead of human.111, it would be human.111%5 for the 5'th
     
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     pallete.
     
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       Advantage of that is that if the image does not have a pallete, >it could 
     
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     just use the default one.
     
       I think maybe that approach sounds good.
Signing off for tonight, methinks
Tom Barnes-Lawrence (AKA Tomble)
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