[crossfire] Graphism, tiles, size, and such

[Mark Wedel]

On 11/11/20 12:59 AM, Nicolas Weeger wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> 
> I've been thinking about game graphics, and I'd like to share some questions
> and thoughts.
> 
> 
> 
> Monsters like the hill giant (I can also think of the ArchAngel, the
> Retributioner, some dragons too) have an incoherent size IMO. They are 1x2 in
> tiles, but that only reflects their height, not their "planar" size.
> 
> So I'm wondering:
> - should we keep that behaviour
> - should monsters be only tiled squarely (eg 1x1, 2x2, etc.), and we adjust
> the sprite to reflect the height
> - should we allow sprites to overflow on top of another sprite, so the height
> would appear (the hill giant would then be 1x1 with a 1x2 sprite adjusted to
> its feet)
> 
> Other ideas?

  I think when things were changed a while back so that image size & footprint of the creature were not tied together, making hill giants 1x1 footprint (and other similar tall creatures have a square footprint) was either done or investigated, but not done or reverted back.  For players, higher density monsters tends to be an advantage (those AoE spells hits more targets).  I can't remember if there might now have been some map breakage by changing this, and monsters could now wander to places they were not envisioned going, etc.

  There are also some other cases where monsters should be rectangular - wyverns come to mind.  But there really isn't good support for going from a 1x2 monsters to a 2x1 monster as it changes direction.

> 
> 
> 
> Another thought was wondering about making 48x48 (or 64x64?) sprites.
> 
> 32x32 seems quite small with current resolutions...
> 
> I'm not saying to redo all sprites, but maybe clients could handle resizing
> from 32x32 to 48x48 when required or directly use a 48x48 sprite. This would
> allow to slowly rework some tiles as we feel it, introducing more details.

  The gtk client at least supported resizing the images used for the map and inventory.  As resolution has gone up (a 25x25 map at 32 pixels/image is only 800x800), bigger images could certainly be done.  I'm not sure the correct size - whether 128x128 would be best, and then scale down would be best way to future proof for a while?  Disadvantage is size.

> 
> 
> Been also idly thinking of changing players to be eg 3x3 tiles, so we could
> have really small monsters (1x1 tiles). But that would be quite a change... In
> this case, maybe on the opposite sprites could stay 32x32, or even go down to
> 16x16, but eg players would be bigger anyway.

  Multispace players will likely require lots of work (does every map now need to expanded, because otherwise that 3x3 player won't fit down those small passage or through small doors?) but things like what space does a spell leave the player from?  How about incoming spells, and does the player end up taking more damage if many 4 of his spaces are hit by a spell (I sort of recall this was the case for monsters)

  But I suppose it depends on what is the minimum reasonable 'unit' for most things to me.  For small monsters, I wonder if it would be easier to let small creatures share a space - instead of the 'is there something alive on this space', instead each creature could have how much of the space they use.  So small creatures might only use 25% of a space, so 4 of them could be on the same space. Though I'm not sure how you deal with what image is used for each of those creatures.