Design Resolution
 

I'm curious at what resolution people prefer to play designs. I'm not talking about creating art, as I know each of us has our own preferences. (Right Uatu? ;))

Re: Design Resolution
 

I don't mind, as long as it looks nice and plays nice! :D

(But yes, 640 x 480 is always nice to make and play, too (might be good for the FRUAers as a mid-point as well))

Re: Design Resolution
 

I voted for "don't care". However, if "Manikus' 800x600" means the bigger, quadratic viewport, I want to state that I like this more than the others. But this is not a matter of resolution, I would also like a quadratic viewport in the 640x480 resolution.
I agree with Uatu that 640x480

Re: Design Resolution
 

I guess I probably should have explained in my initial post what I meant by "manikus' 800x600", but part of that was to see if anyone had been paying attention. ;) I do mean the larger (relative to resolution) square viewport.

I would like some further explanation on why the 640x480 is a good starting point for FRUAites. Please. :)

As for a square viewport for 640, that's doable, but a larger one...doable, but not as easy as what I did for 800x600. For my efforts, I took the viewport from the next size up, chopped off the bottom to make it square and went from there. But, the 800x600 viewport in 640x480 doesn't leave enough room for display of the party names and stats because even though CocoaSpud added an end of line feature, it never worked properly for making them small enough. I wanted to use the other viewport width because all of the wall stuff was already figured out. It is completely possible to put in any size viewport you want (within reason). I'll try and look at this again i the new version of DC. :D If needed, Paul could probably help.

Re: Design Resolution
 

I guess Uatu (like I) assumed that the FRUA users are used to a 320px width, thus, working with 640px is exactly doubling the horizontal effort. :D

I would have assumed that transfering art from FRUA to DC is easier when changing to the 640 resolution...

By the way, I am not used to FRUA... Is the viewport quadratic? Or is it more or less half of the DC viewport (88x105)?

Re: Design Resolution
 

FRUA plays in full-screen unless you use DOSBox (and then you can still go full screen). When viewed full screen, the normally square viewport distorts to appear to be the same dimensions as DC (which is how DC ended up with the rectangle).

I think perhaps you guys were thinking of designers preferring to use 640x480, as opposed to players. As DC plays full screen no matter what resolution...

I do grant for designing in DC that they may indeed prefer the smaller resolution for the reasons you mentioned and that there are just less pixels to worry about.

On a semi-related note, it looks like CocoaSpud's effort while it didn't work in .914 does work in the new version of DC. :)
Here's my initial effort at a new, larger, square viewport (the green area) that is the same width as the viewport for 800x600 so figuring walls should be easier. :)

If anyone's interested, I'd be more than happy to share my config.txt file. Note: this won't work as well in .914 as 'HP' will likely not be viewable.

Re: Design Resolution
 

As one of the FRUAites, let me try to explain what uatu was hinting at. The higher the resolution, the more the look will defer from what FRUAites are used to. That's not a bad thing, it's all about personal preferences and nostalgia, I guess (e.g. remember my initial comments about font size, the use of lower case vs. upper case letters etc.?).

As a player, I'll happily accept any resolution and art style. Dinonykos' style is different from what FRUAites are used to, and manikus' 3D rendered graphics even more so. And they're all good. As a designer though, my personal preference in art lies with colorful, detailed and elaborate 2D illustration-like types, not too realistic but neither too cartoony. I loved the early 90s graphics in games like Eye of the Beholder for example and I love evrything drawn by hans. Now, the higher the resolution, the more difficult it becomes IMO to make something look good. I'm not an artist myself so I have to rely on cheap tricks and artwork I steal from other people. That's why I prefer lower resolutions because they offer a trickster more possibilities. ;)

Not sure if that's what other FRUAites think, too, but FRUA is a game with a low resolution, therefor easy to manipulate.


EDIT:
Yes. That. :)

Re: Design Resolution
 

So your argument essentially boils down to system shock? Or does it boil down to FRUAites not liking good art? :D I'm just joking with you. :D

I think you have a legitimate point Olivier (or else I wouldn't even bother with the response). But, I think it really boils down to having good art. If someone could do a) high quality and b) contextually appropriate appropriate artwork, it sounds like you wouldn't have a problem with higher resolutions.

As a long time FRUAite myself, I don't mind the higher resolutions, in fact I was drawn to them. :) Before DC became my drug of choice, I played the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games. Even after I was really into DC, I played (and continue to play) NeverWinter Nights.I think it could be agreed upon that the graphics in those games are higher quality than FRUA, but I will concede that they are not necessarily contextually appropriate, i.e. their style is different.

In the DC pool of artists, I think Uatu comes close to the old GoldBox style, but better because of more options for DC. I think some of Ziroc's art fits as well, especially his walls and overland maps. Dinonykos and I are clearly doing our own things, though. I look forward to DC adding some new artists so that we can add even more of what people might want. :)

I've mostly just been playing devil's advocate as I don't really what resolution I play in, as long as the art's good and that includes 320x200. :D:D:D

Re: Design Resolution
 

I had arguments? I had a point? I thought I was just rambling as usual... :D

Actually I voted for "Don't care, just make it good" because if you ask what resolution I prefer PLAY designs, that's it. I don't care as long as I think the style looks consistent and the space available has been put to good use.

And yes, you guessed that right, uatu's style is very much after my own heart. Hope to see a design by him someday. :)

Re: Design Resolution
 

We should hold a FRUA-ite/DC-ist reunion in NWN some day. I already met Ben S. and Kaz Keith in-game and I know others (like Nol Drek) are still involved with NWN, too. :D

Re: Design Resolution
 

I've played in Ben Sanderfer's game a couple of times, but I haven't been able to play online much lately. I'll have to see if I can rectify that. :)

I know that DC lost Ziroc to NWN and then NWN2. I played in his game a few times - it's a massive Undermountain romp, which is hosted on his site here.

If only CocoaSpud had gone to NWN instead of WoW. :D Then, maybe we'd get him back around here once in a while.

Re: Design Resolution
 

It's funny, I was just checking back in to edit my post to apologize for rambling. ;)

I had noticed that everyone has voted for "Don't care" except for me. :) It's because I prefer the square viewport and the larger viewport to screen ratio.

As I mentioned, I was mostly looking to stir up trouble. ;) But, I do think that some important issues were brought out, such as bigger does not necessarily equal better, and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, er, maybe not so much on this?

Re: Design Resolution
 

Yes! Go, Uatu, go!

Interestingly, for my AGS project (sleeping since 2005), I used a style which is very similar to Uatu's (at least, I think so). I am still wondering if I should start another project with this kind of art for DC once "Helmetlands" and the related stuff is completed.
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/139/agshives.png http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/5076/agslab.png http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/2791/agsvilla.png

By the way, this was for 320x240 resolution... :( :D

Re: Design Resolution
 

Hey, that game looks a lot of fun, too! Looks very reminiscent of the old VGA-era adventure-type games, very, very nice work! I do think it is similar to my own stuff, but more "soft" and fairy-tale like, perhaps (even with the PC there!).

In part, since the whole screen is graphics, it looks perhaps better than some things we can do with DC (although as it was 320 x 240, you were able to do more in less time, I guess :D )

Guess it is time for me to do more graphics (and walls!) so that I can get to work on my mod, too :D (The more time I have, the less cartoony my work looks... (I.e., I can use more colors and shading :D )

Re: Design Resolution
 

Those look very nice, Dinonykos! You've just risen in my esteem even more, showing versality in art style and outing yourself as a disciple of the Blue Cup. ;)

Apart from UA, NWN and now DC, AGS is another of my favorite game 'engines'. I adore playing AGS adventures and would love to play yours one day! :)

Re: Design Resolution
 

Unfortunately, I see no chance that this thing will emerge from the demo status in the near future. I would need 3-4 weeks of completely free time together with another guy who developed the story together with me - but this is illusionary at the moment.

Hmm, again I caused a distraction from the original thread topic! I apologize... :) For those who do not now, Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is an editor for games like Monkey Island, Loom, King's Quest, Legend of Kyrandia (the latter made by Westwood, who also were responsible for the superb art of Eye of the Beholder 1 and 2 [I guess it was Dan Huling who transfered the respective walls to DC] and Lands of Lore) and so on.

This is not totally off-topic, though, since the situation in AGS is quite similar: You can chose between resolutions from 320 to 800 (1024?) px width, and in the beginning, I played around with high resolutions, but realized that the effort is (naturally! :) ) 4 to 8 times higher.
And, in my opinion, those adventures I have seen made in high-resolution do often not look better, since the authors often were not capable of using the hi-res in an appropriate way.

Thus, to come back to the main topic, as long as the hi-res is used in a nice way (Manikus' 3-D-model based art is a good example), I would of course prefer to play a hi-res DC game, as long as nothing else is different!

However, some designers may get lost in the process of producing hi-res art and come up with "empty-looking" designs, although they would perhaps have been capable of designing a nice 640x480 design.

Re: Design Resolution
 

Very nice art there, Dinonykos. :) I don't believe I've ever played any of the AGS family of games.

Dinonykos, please finish Helmetlands (and related stuff) before you go off on any forays into another style and (possibly) resolution. But, then when you are done with it, go for it! :D:D:D
Uatu, more art please. I would like to see more, because I like you work and I want you to finish your design. :)
Olivier, it's time for you to start doing some more graphics as well. I quite like the modifications you made in 'The Lesson'. As of yet, there has been very little modifying of artwork in DC. I've often felt that if some of Steve McDonald's walls wee lightened up a bit and/or made a tad less grey, that they would rock (but I guess that's something for me to work on). :D

I think we're all in agreement - if it looks good, then any resolution is fine. But, if it doesn't look good, then making it bigger doesn't help. ;)
Hmm, now I feel like I need to go rework some of my stuff...

Re: Design Resolution
 

Blargh. Did a bit of work on the "other" (downward) stairs today - now it is at about 5% finished :D (Seems that the first few will always take a lot of time ...hope I get used to doing this kind of thing quicker soon!)

Re: Design Resolution
 

It took me about 3 hours to do the upward stairs for my design. :( Considering I use the second attempt, I would say 6 hours total.
But the way I did the downward stairs was very simple because the perspective didn't let you see any of the stairs themselves, just a 'hole' into the level below. :)

It does get quicker - at a point you will get a feel for the perspective walls. Really. It will happen. :D

Re: Design Resolution
 

If you refer to the titles Dinonykos listed, they're not related to each other or AGS except for being graphic adventures. AGS is more like a game creator than a simple editor, a great freeware tool that allows everyone to create their own freeware graphic adventures without requiring knowledge of programming languages. Much like DC, but even more dependent on the vision of the authors, two games created with AGS could look and feel completely different and unrelated. I like it because it's another of those powerful editors that offers creative people a chance to share their stories and ideas for free and without censoring. Like with UA and NWN there are some very professional custom made games created with it. The difference is you don't need to buy a commercial title or download the editor to run the game, they all come with a run-only interpreter like DC. Let me conclude my eulogy with the obligatory link before they're going to take me away for going OT again: AGS - Adventure Game Studio community. :D

(Don't click on it though, succumbing to the temptation might result in losing precious DC time!)

Ahem.

You'll probably rather see me darkening walls than lightening them up. ;) Anyway, all I did was load them into IrfanView and mess with the Brightness and Contrast settings. But I don't really like how some of them turned out (maybe they were flawed from the start, but darkening them revealed some ugly lines in places I wouldn't want them to be). And the walls I created myself are all front view only, without the side views - I wouldn't know how to complete them and make them look good and I fear I'm also lacking the patience for such work... Not saying I won't do any graphics stuff, just don't expect it to be top quality and available very soon. ;)

Re: Design Resolution
 

Yep, my sentence could have been misunderstood. King's Quest is from Sierra, Monkey Island from Lucasfilm Games/LucasArts, and the Kyrandia Games are from Westwood.

Re: Design Resolution
 

I meant not only Dinonhkos and the AGS created games, but all the games he listed. :) I'm avoiding clicking on the link for now...I know that if I do, DC might lose me for a while. ;)

As for graphics creation and manipulation, it takes a lot of practice. I'm just starting to produce stuff that I like and I've been doing this for years and years. :D
I recommend starting with icons and use them to learn your graphics software.
As for adjusting Steve's walls, I'm not sure wat software you're using, but look into hue, saturation and gamma levels. You can also do stuff like darken only the light colors, lighten only the dark, etc. :D

As I was mentioning to Uatu, walls are a bit of a pain until you get the feel for the perspective walls. Dinonykos has some wonderful guides here in the forum that lay out grids to help you get a feel for the perspective.

Re: Design Resolution
 

The grids for 640x480 can also be downloaded from the wall-section of my homepage - it's a Zip-file with most of the grids I have done so far.

Re: Design Resolution
 

That's right. I forgot. :)
I don't think I've visited your site in the last couple of weeks (or Uatu's). But, I have opened the main page a couple of times just to stay within XT Hosts policy of using at least once a week. :D

Perhaps I should make some grids for the new square viewport walls...I will need them to figure out the floors for the hyper walls anyway... :ninjas:

Re: Design Resolution
 

I have used some of Dinonykos's walls (and grids) as guides/tutorials at times :D

I do hope that it gets faster and easier soon, as Manikus said! :(

Thanks for keeping our pages alive! :D I do have some new stuff hidden in my page, but... they are in secret URLs for now... but I might as well just show it all soon... (no walls, as usual! :D )

Re: Design Resolution
 

Let me know when the secret becomes, er, non-secret. :D

I"ve been working on something new today as well. ;) (Also, not walls) The only hint I will give is "mauve". ;)

Re: Design Resolution
 

The only thing I can think of that is mauve is mind flayers :D

Re: Design Resolution
 

:D:D:D

Re: Design Resolution
 

Bingo? :D

Re: Design Resolution
 

Have you ever seen an Illithid assassin? :ninjas:

I've always liked these guys, so I'm going to advance an idea I had for an Illithid city. At this point, it's not part of any design, just images and maybe a resource book. :)

If I could upload without getting on the laptop, I would share an image now... (How's that for a tease?)

Re: Design Resolution
 

Many types of illithids in 2e, like the illithid liches of the Forgotten Realms, or the weird "psionic variety" that was added in the Monstrous Manual (that had a beak! I don't like that...).

In terms of NPCs, there was an interesting illithid in the Realms that was not evil - he was a priest of some human god (Oghma? I forget).

I think there were some more in Spelljammer, but I forget...

Re: Design Resolution
 

I feel kind of bad about injecting a resolution comment into the middle of a discussion of Illithids, but not enough to make any difference.

I voted for 640x480 because that's what I use on my old 15" piece-of-junk monitor, mainly because I'm getting old and my eyesight is going. Plus, it looked lonely sitting up there with no votes.

I'd probably like a higher resolution on my laptop, but I hate Vista enough to go with the old beast instead.

Re: Design Resolution
 

I used to have the same situation (well, okay, my monitor was 17")... now I am running Windows (and DC) on an iMac using VirtualBox, which unfortunately means that my 640 x 480 DC games are played as little windows only taking up about a quarter of my (Mac OS) desktop... (Of course, some of you WANT that, but...)

Re: Design Resolution
 

Illithids: I'm ignoring everything 2e and later and just going my own way. :) I do realize that technically, Illithids are 2e, but I like that name better than mind flayer (which I like other creatures to use to refer to them in a derogatory manner).
In fact, I like to think of my way of using 1e as the way I used it before I started getting the 2e books, which was a couple of years after they started coming out. I use it as the base for my world/universe and add what I want for the story, but continuing to use the 1e mechanics. However, I also have some house rules that "suspend" some of the 1e rules, most notably level caps for demi-humans. ;)

Resolution: I respect that vote, nologgie. In fact I identify with it. :) Something that hasn't been mentioned so far is that the combat icons, walls, etc. are the same for all resolutions, so the higher the resolution the smaller they appear. I have a 19" monitor, so it isn't too bad, but my laptop which is 1024x768 only has a 12 and a half inch screen - if I play a game in the highest resolution, I have lots of squinting to do during combat and for that reason only play around with the 640x480 resolution on it.
The strained eyes during combat was one of the main reasons I originally came up with the 800_square resolution - improve detail during "3D" play without losing as much in combat. :) For this reason, I might do some work in my new 640_square resolution. :D:D:D

Re: Design Resolution
 

I do like your new square resolution... but I don't want to do new walls, so I guess I am stuck with the default :D

Re: Design Resolution
 

I figure not too many people will use it because of the idea of doing new art. Not a problem for me, but I've been doing the square viewport thing a while now, not to mention before that doing only 1024 res walls. I've always had to make all my own, so I've become rather skilled (if not good) at it.

Re: Design Resolution
 

I believe the term "Mind Flayer" fell into disuse largely because of confusion with other terms. To wit:

Mind Flair: Characterized by a certain mental panache.

Mine Flair: Result of subterranean interior decorating, often performed by effeminate gnomes, usually involving the color mauve.

Mine Flare: Incendiary device used for illuminating mines. Sometimes used in conjunction with other combustibles to dispose of Mine Flair.

Mind Flare: A popular drink of the 1960s, consisting of two jiggers of whiskey, twelve hits of blotter acid, and a cinnamon stick.

Re: Design Resolution
 

From what I've heard from my buddy, Dirk Thundermug, the term "effeminate gnome" is a bit redundant. But you know how dwarves get, always judging others by the length of their beard...

Re: Design Resolution
 

You can try to use the "mind flair" pun on mind flayers, to see if you can make them laugh... :D

Dwarf view of masculinity:

1. Dwarf - MAN!
2. Gnome - boy
3. Half-elf - baby
4. Elf - girl!
5. Dwarven woman - WOMAN!

Re: Design Resolution
 

Ha ha ha. You guys are cracking me up, along with Vix over in the FRUA Community forums. :D

Uatu, what do dwarves think of humans and half-orcs? What do dwarves think of human mages with their long flowing beards?