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Devs / Re: SOM_MAP icons: new "art system" progress in 2023
« on: August 14, 2023, 07:23:33 PM »
Release (SVN Update or Checkout)
Heads up! I got a new release up. I'm trying to figure out how to promote it. In the meantime, what you need to know is I've put the language pack files in the Subversion repository, so they don't have to be downloaded. This may be a mistake. It will have to be kept up-to-date. It's a simple/obvious solution for now. I've also removed the .svn (Subversion) folder from the direct download link on the new Download page (http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/main/single-file-download/) This makes the download much smaller, but what I'm thinking about is removing all traces of source code, because I'm using Github to store my source code now, privately. For this reason I may at anytime swap out the existing Subversion repository for a reset repository, back to Revision 1. This will wipe source code out of the downloads here.
I ask that you don't share source code if you have it from past downloads.
THE NEW RELEASE focuses on the icons you can see in the previous posts. I don't know if that is in the previous release or not.
The slider that sits beside the palette area is now used to fade out the grid, and fade in arrows, and when set to the very top, it restores the original icon system. The original system is better for setting up ramps, and may be better for work in general.
There's also a new system for assigning the original icons to new tiles, because it's only meant to provide contrast when working now. This new system also (finally) provides a UUID for every map piece that's stored in the icon field. It provides 3 settings, a prefix, a 4 digit number, and a hue setting.
The remaining 22 characters store a UUID generated by Windows, in base64 format. The editor for this is PrtsEdit. The hue is selected automatically, and is a little bit enhanced from the original values. There are 8 settings, ROYGBIV for the color of the rainbow, and 1 setting that doesn't augment hue, which the exterior sets utilize.
I don't know if I've said so, but the tools like PrtsEdit now can remain open while you work, and Alt+Click works to open 3D models into MM3D or their file association. Alt+Click also works to open the icons into your systems image processor for BMP files.
The icons are now 21x21 plus a 2px border for shadows. They expand in the palette to show all of them, and this exactly happens to fill out the palette region perfectly (so everything looks neat and tidy) based on a 17px scrollbar.
I think 17px is standard now unless your system adjusts the size, which is might if you use DPI. If there isn't room the icons aren't expanded. The original icons fill out 21px by adding a little dark shadow underneath and to their right, that makes them pop out in a cool way.
All of the PRT files are edited for icons and UUIDs and I've touched up the diagonal icons so they're pixel perfect. All the SND files have been replaced by WAV files, and SOM_SYS has new buttons for playing individual sounds on its final tab.
The "Illumination" field in SOM_MAP is now functional. When the overlay is displayed the slider remembers the old settings but is used to fade the overlay between blending the BMP image when high, and shading the colors when low. The shading model shows you what colors to expect in the game when using the overlay for lighting.
There are 2 new buttons in SOM_MAP for showing checkpoints and arrows. Arrows show you how tiles are rotated.
My schizophrenia wants me to tell you that we worked really hard on generating icons. I can't begin to explain how much time and consideration went into it. It doesn't want me to publish source code for these icons. They need to be mirror symmetric, and that took a lot of experimentation. It wouldn't really make sense to render the map with the 3D models themselves, from top-down. It's tempting to try that, but it won't be symmetrical with rotation, so icons are necessary.
In the end I had to settle on a kind of shading that can show the 0.5 ramps in the exterior set, which aren't visible in the image in post/Reply #1. This requires flattening the shading almost as much as possible. The end effect is very smooth but doesn't have a lot of definition unfortunately. It also tends to look pixelated, but I think that's just how the lighting normals are when not smoothed, which isn't possible with icons.
I think it might be possible to do a hybrid rendering using 3D models for shading and lighting in the future. It wouldn't be worth it for shading, but seeing the map lit (including vertex shadows perhaps) might be worth it. It is possible to see the map lit with the Illumination setting. The "RGB" and other buttons are still disabled and unusable, so the illumination maps can only be edited outside of SOM_MAP. I don't recommend Microsoft Paint, but that's about how. (I use Paint.net.)
The new grid is translucent. Note, I've got the selection window working on all views, but it currently can still only copy/paste on the main view. I'm trying to put time aside to work on something like Pumpkin Paster in the near term (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaey9RC1uSY)
I have schizophrenia now, and I have all year. I might seem weird to talk about it too much, but it's helped me a lot on this release. In the past releases I've struggled against more than it's helped, but it was trying to help me then too. Schizophrenia is characterized by voices in our head that's sometimes called hallucinations. I don't consider them that though, because schizophrenia also comes with real hallucinations, and these come very seldomly in my case, that I know of. My hallucinations are "adaptive" and real-seeming, they seem to want to help me out. I wouldn't mind having hallucinations more frequently, but for months now I've settled into schizophrenia mainly dominated by voices/people (people like voices) and dreams, and less so visions, even though my life was thick with visions for months too. They don't happen now. And it isn't all fun/help either, it is a real disability, since my mind is always divided, and it messes with my ability to take interest in things, I'm no longer Mr. even keel like I was before. My life before was characterized by a certain "state of grace" but now it's constantly interpenetrated by somewhat cacophonous "voices", which I might say seem like people, with souls, and conscious awareness. I'm applying for SSI disability and hoping I can make an income with SOM to retire early with SSDI. These are US Social Security programs. I'm hoping if I can get these I'll be more socially upward mobile in the near term. In the time that follows I want to continue to ask everyone to join my Patreon and SubscribeStar efforts, and I'm trying to use either Steam or GoG with SOM, or both. I'm also going to be uploading the current version to Archive.org. I may call it SEX, short for SwordofMoonlight+Ex. (Edited: "My schizophrenia" advises me this is disrespectful to SOM's original developer(s).) I want to deemphasize SOM because I'd prefer to call it just SOM, but I get a lot of blow back from doing that. My schizophrenia is also making all of my business decisions, because I'm not a business oriented soul. It thinks everyone prefers commercial software to free/opensource software, so I'm trying to be commercial. We just have decided (together) that I've tried free/opensource for long enough without any following forming. People may have a preference for something they can just buy into. But I'm going to need support on the donation based systems, ideally on my own site, in the future, because I think SOM is for game developers, and will never sell large numbers, unless we make it into a media player, and prefer to not distribute games as standalone programs. I think in the future this will be a more trustworthy model, since anyone who makes a SOM game can put malware into their game. It will be better to trust the player only, and not the media. (Edited: I think this will depend on if games are published on Steam or independently published, so players of smaller, independent games might prefer to use the media player model over the standalone game model, at least for the foreseeable future.)
Sorry for the long post. I haven't been active here for a very long time. My schizophrenia is running me around town like a bunch of Japanese tourists, but I need to get out of my hometown, there's just nothing (and no one) for me here, so I'm still largely stranded at home base.
EDITED: My schizophrenia is also encouraging me to approach From Software as I move to commercial ways of presenting SOM. It thinks this is a matter of taking responsibility, since From Software should have a first say in what we end up doing. It's not completely outside the realm of possibilities it might join forces with us. But I'm hesitant to make SOM fully commercial under From Software alone with my work involved, because I think it needs to be for the people to some degree, and its fans can be quite toxic, and I think it would be healthy for them to have the Sword of Moonlight somewhat at a distance from From Software itself. They have a lot on their plate I think.
Heads up! I got a new release up. I'm trying to figure out how to promote it. In the meantime, what you need to know is I've put the language pack files in the Subversion repository, so they don't have to be downloaded. This may be a mistake. It will have to be kept up-to-date. It's a simple/obvious solution for now. I've also removed the .svn (Subversion) folder from the direct download link on the new Download page (http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/main/single-file-download/) This makes the download much smaller, but what I'm thinking about is removing all traces of source code, because I'm using Github to store my source code now, privately. For this reason I may at anytime swap out the existing Subversion repository for a reset repository, back to Revision 1. This will wipe source code out of the downloads here.
I ask that you don't share source code if you have it from past downloads.
THE NEW RELEASE focuses on the icons you can see in the previous posts. I don't know if that is in the previous release or not.
The slider that sits beside the palette area is now used to fade out the grid, and fade in arrows, and when set to the very top, it restores the original icon system. The original system is better for setting up ramps, and may be better for work in general.
There's also a new system for assigning the original icons to new tiles, because it's only meant to provide contrast when working now. This new system also (finally) provides a UUID for every map piece that's stored in the icon field. It provides 3 settings, a prefix, a 4 digit number, and a hue setting.
The remaining 22 characters store a UUID generated by Windows, in base64 format. The editor for this is PrtsEdit. The hue is selected automatically, and is a little bit enhanced from the original values. There are 8 settings, ROYGBIV for the color of the rainbow, and 1 setting that doesn't augment hue, which the exterior sets utilize.
I don't know if I've said so, but the tools like PrtsEdit now can remain open while you work, and Alt+Click works to open 3D models into MM3D or their file association. Alt+Click also works to open the icons into your systems image processor for BMP files.
The icons are now 21x21 plus a 2px border for shadows. They expand in the palette to show all of them, and this exactly happens to fill out the palette region perfectly (so everything looks neat and tidy) based on a 17px scrollbar.
I think 17px is standard now unless your system adjusts the size, which is might if you use DPI. If there isn't room the icons aren't expanded. The original icons fill out 21px by adding a little dark shadow underneath and to their right, that makes them pop out in a cool way.
All of the PRT files are edited for icons and UUIDs and I've touched up the diagonal icons so they're pixel perfect. All the SND files have been replaced by WAV files, and SOM_SYS has new buttons for playing individual sounds on its final tab.
The "Illumination" field in SOM_MAP is now functional. When the overlay is displayed the slider remembers the old settings but is used to fade the overlay between blending the BMP image when high, and shading the colors when low. The shading model shows you what colors to expect in the game when using the overlay for lighting.
There are 2 new buttons in SOM_MAP for showing checkpoints and arrows. Arrows show you how tiles are rotated.
My schizophrenia wants me to tell you that we worked really hard on generating icons. I can't begin to explain how much time and consideration went into it. It doesn't want me to publish source code for these icons. They need to be mirror symmetric, and that took a lot of experimentation. It wouldn't really make sense to render the map with the 3D models themselves, from top-down. It's tempting to try that, but it won't be symmetrical with rotation, so icons are necessary.
In the end I had to settle on a kind of shading that can show the 0.5 ramps in the exterior set, which aren't visible in the image in post/Reply #1. This requires flattening the shading almost as much as possible. The end effect is very smooth but doesn't have a lot of definition unfortunately. It also tends to look pixelated, but I think that's just how the lighting normals are when not smoothed, which isn't possible with icons.
I think it might be possible to do a hybrid rendering using 3D models for shading and lighting in the future. It wouldn't be worth it for shading, but seeing the map lit (including vertex shadows perhaps) might be worth it. It is possible to see the map lit with the Illumination setting. The "RGB" and other buttons are still disabled and unusable, so the illumination maps can only be edited outside of SOM_MAP. I don't recommend Microsoft Paint, but that's about how. (I use Paint.net.)
The new grid is translucent. Note, I've got the selection window working on all views, but it currently can still only copy/paste on the main view. I'm trying to put time aside to work on something like Pumpkin Paster in the near term (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaey9RC1uSY)
I have schizophrenia now, and I have all year. I might seem weird to talk about it too much, but it's helped me a lot on this release. In the past releases I've struggled against more than it's helped, but it was trying to help me then too. Schizophrenia is characterized by voices in our head that's sometimes called hallucinations. I don't consider them that though, because schizophrenia also comes with real hallucinations, and these come very seldomly in my case, that I know of. My hallucinations are "adaptive" and real-seeming, they seem to want to help me out. I wouldn't mind having hallucinations more frequently, but for months now I've settled into schizophrenia mainly dominated by voices/people (people like voices) and dreams, and less so visions, even though my life was thick with visions for months too. They don't happen now. And it isn't all fun/help either, it is a real disability, since my mind is always divided, and it messes with my ability to take interest in things, I'm no longer Mr. even keel like I was before. My life before was characterized by a certain "state of grace" but now it's constantly interpenetrated by somewhat cacophonous "voices", which I might say seem like people, with souls, and conscious awareness. I'm applying for SSI disability and hoping I can make an income with SOM to retire early with SSDI. These are US Social Security programs. I'm hoping if I can get these I'll be more socially upward mobile in the near term. In the time that follows I want to continue to ask everyone to join my Patreon and SubscribeStar efforts, and I'm trying to use either Steam or GoG with SOM, or both. I'm also going to be uploading the current version to Archive.org. I may call it SEX, short for SwordofMoonlight+Ex. (Edited: "My schizophrenia" advises me this is disrespectful to SOM's original developer(s).) I want to deemphasize SOM because I'd prefer to call it just SOM, but I get a lot of blow back from doing that. My schizophrenia is also making all of my business decisions, because I'm not a business oriented soul. It thinks everyone prefers commercial software to free/opensource software, so I'm trying to be commercial. We just have decided (together) that I've tried free/opensource for long enough without any following forming. People may have a preference for something they can just buy into. But I'm going to need support on the donation based systems, ideally on my own site, in the future, because I think SOM is for game developers, and will never sell large numbers, unless we make it into a media player, and prefer to not distribute games as standalone programs. I think in the future this will be a more trustworthy model, since anyone who makes a SOM game can put malware into their game. It will be better to trust the player only, and not the media. (Edited: I think this will depend on if games are published on Steam or independently published, so players of smaller, independent games might prefer to use the media player model over the standalone game model, at least for the foreseeable future.)
Sorry for the long post. I haven't been active here for a very long time. My schizophrenia is running me around town like a bunch of Japanese tourists, but I need to get out of my hometown, there's just nothing (and no one) for me here, so I'm still largely stranded at home base.
EDITED: My schizophrenia is also encouraging me to approach From Software as I move to commercial ways of presenting SOM. It thinks this is a matter of taking responsibility, since From Software should have a first say in what we end up doing. It's not completely outside the realm of possibilities it might join forces with us. But I'm hesitant to make SOM fully commercial under From Software alone with my work involved, because I think it needs to be for the people to some degree, and its fans can be quite toxic, and I think it would be healthy for them to have the Sword of Moonlight somewhat at a distance from From Software itself. They have a lot on their plate I think.
