Talk:Tileset repository

Tilesets requiring edited raws

I'm noticing more and more tilesets on the list which require edited raws, in most cases they require the raws from DFG. Shouldn't those be separated to prevent confusion among newbies? They are likely to try these tilesets with an unmodded DF and get frustrated. --Mikemayday 00:07, 21 September 2009 (GMT)

I agree, those heavily edited tilesets should be seperated, preferably with a link to the matching raws. --Pugi 10:09, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Mike for doing this, this explains some of the confusion I had with others (I knew yours required RAW mining, but not the others.) My only problem is that many of the others don't seem to have any explanation of which RAWs to change. Anyone know of any links? 3lB33 14:15, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Mac user

Can these tilesets be used on a mac as well?

• Yes. I'm using them right now. --Bombcar 19:12, 17 October 2008 (EDT)

Tiny tilesests

Sets smaller than 8x8. Used for playing in tiny windows, display of massive maps and perhaps videos.

I thought it wasnt possible to change the size of the map (number of tiles rendered on screen), am I wrong or does the author mean display of maps outside the game? --Mizipzor 21:09, 4 November 2007 (EST)

I imagine the only current use is in exporting bitmaps from the game. —0x517A5D 15:30, 14 November 2007 (EST)

I've used one of 'em to hide a DF window on my work computer, and they're fun to use at 4x size,too. But yeah, they make real nice maps. --Maus 09:10, 18 December 2007 (EST)

Note that it's now possible to change the 80x25 in the init file.--Bombcar 19:13, 17 October 2008 (EDT)

Can anyone say PocketPC Dwarf Fortress? I imagine with a low popcap and a 3x3 or less area, it wouldn't be too bad on most PDAs out there. Now, if only someone would port the code... --Edward 20:40, 8 January 2008 (EST)

Page Split

There are too many character sets on this one page, I propose splitting the page into twopages:

• one for 'classic' code page 437 fonts/glyph sets/character sets with no graphical characters whatsoever
• one for 'semigraphical' character sets which have one or more of the normal glyphs replaced with a df-specific graphic (a barrel instead of the division sign, for instance) - Lord Nightmare 19:18, 9 December 2007 (EST)

I disagree; there's no reason to split content into two different areas when it's already easily comparable and all in one place. --Maus 09:12, 18 December 2007 (EST)

Why png?

If they all have to be resaved as bmp, why the heck are they uploaded as png? These are small files, you're not saving significant disk or bandwidth by keeping them in png. This is particularly irritating since I can't seem to get any of these to work even after resaving/converting them -.- --Nunix 14:14, 20 February 2008 (EST)

If you're not just renaming the files, then your problem isn't with the files being .png format. Making an exception to Rule I would only cause confusion as there are many images that are quite large indeed. --Edward 15:32, 20 February 2008 (EST)

No, it's not just a rename, I'm going into GIMP and doing a Save as... The file size changes, so it's doing SOMETHING, but when I go to use the font the screen comes up blank (but if I hit down twice and enter, I still exit, so everything works, there's just no display.) I hadn't seen the style guide/list, however, so that's fair enough. I'll post on the message boards and see if I can troubleshoot there. --Nunix 16:58, 20 February 2008 (EST)

Simple solution: Open the image in MSPaint and save as a 24-bit BMP. If you don't have Windows, then you should have enough computer savvy to do it in whatever program you choose.

Also, bmps cannot be uploaded to the wiki.

Furthermore, we do actually save significant page size. If those were all bitmaps, that would be a few megabytes, which is annoying to load. Converting to png makes it only a couple hundred kilobytes. --Savok 22:59, 12 March 2008 (EDT)

Length, and how we can decrease it

This page is the twelfth longest page in the wiki. Ten of the eleven pages longer than it are lists. It has forty tilesets, less than a third of which are at all good. This is obviously a problem – sludging through all forty of those is not at all fun and, for most of it, not at all useful.
As a fix, I propose that we copy this page to "Full list of user character sets" and keep only the best fifteen (or maybe ten or maybe twenty) here. Of course, that brings up the difficult question "how do we determine which tilesets are best?" To determine that, we could try getting as many DF players as we can to tell us which tileset(s) they use. Of course, that would need some rules, a forum thread, etc.
I'll write more about this later, assuming that some interest exists. The time is late and sleepiness impedes thought. --Savok 00:53, 12 March 2008 (EDT)

To solve Nunix's Why png? problem and to determine the popularity, I suggest we upload all tilesets to Dwarf Fortress File Depot in .bmp format (so nobody have to convert images from .png anymore). Dwarf Fortress File Depot has download trackers for all its downloads. The end of the week, we can determine the 15 most popular based on the download count. Anybody interested can compare the download numbers and edit the 15 best list for the wiki anytime they feel like it to keep it updated often.

The current tileset Template will need a download bit added to it as well. Plac1d 17:01, 12 March 2008 (EDT)

That could work...

• downloads his tileset fifty times*

I don't think it would work at all. --Savok 22:59, 12 March 2008 (EDT)

What about making one sub page per tile set. Classify each with 'size', 'shape' and 'style'. Use categories to navigate. Have each character set include a 64x64 pixel chunk of the screen - of these, then use gallery tags to browse with links to the sub page. The why png and link and supporting information for downloads is not a bad idea, but given the small DF playing population, the downloads are likely to be very skewed and cutting off at 15 may remove some very good ones that people have already downloaded and don't see a need to download again. --Shagie 17:52, 12 March 2008 (EDT)

I don't think that the tilesets & tileset descriptions are large enough to warrant that. --Savok 22:59, 12 March 2008 (EDT)

Hmn. Perhaps, we could ask all the dwarves on this wiki to submit a list of their top 20 tilesets, roughly in order of preference. If we get consensus on the best ones, that could work. --Savok 10:32, 30 May 2008 (EDT)

What about splitting the tilesets into separate pages by size, e.g. a page for all 16x16s, another for 12x12s, etc? About favorite tilesets, I could barely name my favorite three, so I think picking a favorite 15 or 20 is a bit extreme, and I don't think we can rely on download counts or people just happening to vote, unless we specifically say that voting is going to determine something. So, what do you think about this idea: First, ask forum-goers to nominate user character sets for archiving (removal to an archive page). Second, after the nomination period is over (say, a week), upload those to the file depot, link to the pages, and give forum-goers a month or so to vote down the character sets they want archived, and to vote up ones they don't want archived. At the end of that time we can check their ratings and archive the lowest-rated ones. --SL 01:37, 21 July 2008 (EDT)

I think that splitting the tilesets by size into subpages could be handy: Resolution is a key factor in determining usability of a tileset. For instance, I'd never need to use a 48x48 tileset by a user named "AAAAAAAAA", but in our current sorting system, that'd be the first one displayed on the page, for all to see. I must however raise a question about the direction this line of discussion has gone: Do we really want to prune content based on some standard of quality? If so, whose standard of quality? The problems with this page seem to arise from the fact that this page is unusual for a wiki: It's goal doesn't seem to be "disseminate information" as much as "Host tilesets for download". Which is a valuable service, granted, but an unusual shift for a wiki. This different focus in purpose should be considered before deciding to begin pruning. An excess of content and options is arguably a good thing.Teeto K 05:53, 24 October 2008 (EDT)

Now that we have many different subsections here perhaps it's time we took those subsections into separate pages with this page as the central navigation point to those other pages? Would that help? It might be useful so that way each subsection can have whatever explanations are required here, thus important distinctions such as with the tilesets that need different RAWs will be noticed before someone dives into the repository. 3lB33 14:18, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Page name

List of user character sets is long and unnecessarily wordy. I propose List of tilesets. --Savok 10:32, 30 May 2008 (EDT)

Sounds like a good idea. Seconded. Isenhertz 07:41, 2 June 2008 (EDT)

New grid sizes

Will someone please explain to me how I can make a 960x300 (Markavian's) tileset work with the new grid sizes larger than 80:25? 96:60 used to work until I tried to us .40c, now it doesn't. --DDouble 18:38, 5 September 2008 (EDT)

Oops I had forgotten to change the size in the init to

[WINDOWEDX:1152]

[WINDOWEDY:720]

[FONT:mkv_solidcurses_960x300.bmp]

and

[GRID:96:60] --DDouble 18:41, 5 September 2008 (EDT)

Problem with Fullscreen

I changed the fullscreen settings in my init to 1280x400 like Aesomatica's 16x16 tileset says, but every time I start DF it gives me a 'Mode changed failed, switching to windowed' error, with or without blackspace. How do I get it to run full? --KittenyKat 16:27, 2 March 2009 (EST)

Edit: Checking several different tilesets, for some reason none of them want to work fullscreen other than curses.. I'm wondering if I screwed something up, or if I still just need different measurements.. D: --KittenyKat 17:20, 2 March 2009 (EST)

Edit 2: Nevermind, I figured out the problem and now I just feel like a doofus for not recognizing it sooner :p To those who also end up with this problem, here is the solution: you have to set the fullscreen resolution to one your monitor can actually support. Matching the listed res is nice if it works cause it makes everything big and easy to see without stretching it if you have black space off, but if your monitor can't go to 400 Y for example, then you should just go to your current desktop res (in my case 1280x1024) and turn black space on.. Tweak to taste. I'm certain others can clarify this better, though :) --KittenyKat 17:47, 2 March 2009 (EST)

Tileset Transparency

So, I learned that 0.28.181.40d11 (And possibly earlier versions) supports png format files natively. I know that pngs support an alpha layer (transparency). I tested how transparency works in 40d11 and was quite pleased with the results. Basically, when you add an alpha layer to the png, the magenta color is no longer considered the 'transparent' color, but this allows you to add shading to the transparent color, like for barrels (which has a black normal color and a brown background color). So, white to black shades the normal color, alpha to black shades the background color. Just wanted to share! Belathus 07:23, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I tried dabbling with this recently ("dabbling tileset artist" ftw!) but I haven't been able to get pngs to work at all. The game simply doesn't load. Is there a link to any discussions on the Bay12 forums about this? I tried searching but didn't find anything there 3lB33 15:04, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I see now what I was doing wrong. Belathus was referring to early release 11 which is part of an open-source project towards using OpenGL as the DF graphics engine, which should allow PNGs. They are now up to 16 now and the testing is being managed by Baughn on the forums. Depending on the success of the testing, Toady One might put it into the next version, but people need to help test it. So go there and help dammit!! 3lB33 01:48, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Standard preview

I can't seem to find it anywhere, but where is the fort many of you have been using for a standard preview? I'm talking about the one pictured in Lord Nightmare, Markavian, Zaratustra, and Herrbdog's previews. I feel a bit out of place with my tilesets and no direct means of comparison. --Kein 15:40, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Adding a date field

Some of these entries are quite old, dating back to the ol' Boatmurdered days. Many more are based on the old classics, and generally say so, but right now it's hard to find the difference between a new entry and an old one. Someone, (ok, me) should find the date stamps on the graphics and add it to the description. Barring any objections, I'll start adding them tomorrow... --3lB33 01:42, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Request

I'm quite intrigued by the graphical 16x16 tilesets, such as Aesomatica's, but have one minor problem - my monitor only supports up to 1024x756, meaning that the 1280x400 resolution required is way too big for my monitor. Since I won't be able to get a larger monitor for a while yet, would it be possible to add in a section for 12x12 tilesets for the slightly smaller resolutions, or do you not think it's really worth it? --Libelnon 22:47, 27 March 2010 (UTC)