Dwarf Fortress isometric! now trying animation
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: Pixel Art
Forum Name: WIP (Work In Progress)
Forum Discription: Get crits and comments on your pixel WIPs and other art too!
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9096
Printed Date: 27 December 2025 at 10:25am
Topic: Dwarf Fortress isometric! now trying animation
Posted By: mikemayday
Subject: Dwarf Fortress isometric! now trying animation
Date Posted: 07 September 2009 at 3:09pm
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If you haven't heard about it, the http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=43260.0 - Stonesense project is an isometric visualizer for Dwarf Fortress. We're looking for contributors so if you want to help create more pixelart or want to donate some of your old stuff- please join us! http://stonesense.wikia.com/wiki/Stonesense_Wiki I myself am also working on a modification that employs a cavalier projection (a la Ultima 7).  Thus, I dug up an old unfinished sprite and decided to try my hand at drawing a character from a pseudo-isometric angle (first time!)  Old one for comparison. AND here's the latest iteration:  I'm using a smaller head to make him fit in the environment.I seriously hope that standard pixel-iso sprites will work well with this projection. The plan is to divide all civilized creatures into parts (body with legs / head / left arm / right arm) and animate them separately. Do you think that will work? BTW: my attempts at giving the old one proper clothing (it needs to be gray) failed miserably, it just looks... boring. Any tips on that?  |
Replies:
Posted By: Souly
Date Posted: 08 September 2009 at 9:14am
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But... It's not isometric. Or psuedo isomtric for that matter. Really, it just looks out of perspective. The legs and feet are meh. I really prefer the platform perspective ones tbh.  Nothing lines up with a perspective, I tried "psuedo-iso" too and didn't see where you were going with this. When working with perspective it's good to have guider lines to point you into the right depth. Even the characters in the mockup provided aren't in the proper perspective. Though I guess it kind of works, I remember I had made this same mistake when I first tried iso-metric. ------------- 
I am the jesus of PJ. |
Posted By: mikemayday
Date Posted: 08 September 2009 at 12:51pm
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Well, cavalier projection, as it's called, IS pretty weird. The horizontal plane looks as if viewed from above, yet the vertical lines don't. This is confusing to me:/ It looks like this in U7:  http://amigaos.pl/pic/foto/ultima7.jpg(I just decided to rotate it 45 degrees). Currently in DF we're using side-view sprites for a top-down view... So I'm hoping it will look good enough. Anyway, thanks for the tip on the guidelines, I'll work on it. |
Posted By: mikemayday
Date Posted: 09 September 2009 at 4:35pm
Is this the right direction? I'm considering just leaving the head like that... |
Posted By: r1k
Date Posted: 09 September 2009 at 8:20pm
it would probibly look better to put the head in the right perspective too, it looks sort of awkward right now, (his) left leg is also sort of wierd. I did a sloppy edit to try putting it into the perspective more just added arms for fun, and perspective is probibly still a little messed up. |
Posted By: mikemayday
Date Posted: 29 November 2009 at 3:28pm
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Ok, got back to this project. Here's the progress! (more info in the OP). EDIT: update!  I'm not sure about his left foot, perhaps it should be one pixel lower?  |
Posted By: mikemayday
Date Posted: 01 December 2009 at 5:00pm
Well, due to lack of CnC, I've decided to try something different- a smaller sprite that matches the walls in height. BTW, the wall is a rotated and edited Ultima7 sprite. |
Posted By: A.B. Lazer
Date Posted: 01 December 2009 at 10:46pm
| Why not to use regular top-down view like in Zelda, Final Fantasy and the rest so you (and player) would not have to deal with diagonals? |
Posted By: mikemayday
Date Posted: 02 December 2009 at 9:17am
| Well, for the same reason that many pixelart creators choose isometric- it is a better representation of a 3D space. |
Posted By: Hapiel
Date Posted: 02 December 2009 at 1:41pm
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I agree with mikemayday, the DF game is much more suitable for isometrics.
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Posted By: mikemayday
Date Posted: 02 December 2009 at 3:42pm
 Ok this is hard.  I can see that he's shuffling a bit but I'm not sure how to fix it. Also I may have to stretch the animation so that he walks one full tile. EDIT2: moar  |
Posted By: mikemayday
Date Posted: 03 December 2009 at 4:47pm
Here's the last one for today, after some revisions: |
Posted By: Emme
Date Posted: 04 December 2009 at 4:57am
| Really cool, loads of personality I find :D |
Posted By: jeremy
Date Posted: 04 December 2009 at 6:43am
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I love the walk :D
The last wall isn't isometric either, fyi, isometric is half as wide as a pure topdown view. I assume you're not using that anyway, but are you sure that the original is cavalier? I thought that cavalier was oblique, but with the projected lines half the true length to imply perspective? |
Posted By: mikemayday
Date Posted: 04 December 2009 at 9:15am
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Yes yes, the last wall is also cavalier. I'm not too good with the nomenclature, but I believe in cavalier one plane is shown as from above while the other one is slanted? Anyway, I found lots of errors in the anim so here it is:  |
Posted By: Artisan
Date Posted: 04 December 2009 at 9:25am
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his right (our left) leg looks much thinner than the other one, animation is looking nice and smooth though. ------------- I like shiny things, i do indeed. |
Posted By: Minstrel
Date Posted: 04 December 2009 at 9:31am
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I wanted to do iso for DF for so long and I can actually contribute that way to the community! Unfortunately, I kind of suck... :P Anyway, are you sure you will need the walk? DF is a roguelike, so the dwarves will kind of teleport from tile to tile. Also, remember that dwarves have different movement speeds, which will make coordinating the animations a bitch. Oh, and your graphics pack rocks! |
Posted By: mikemayday
Date Posted: 04 December 2009 at 9:42am
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Originally posted by Minstrel Anyway, are you sure you will need the walk? DF is a roguelike, so the dwarves will kind of teleport from tile to tile. Also, remember that dwarves have different movement speeds, which will make coordinating the animations a bitch. For now this is just a practice activity :) Perhaps if I made two animations- walk and run and play the second one for the faster dwarves, while adjusting the animation framerate for the slower ones? |
Posted By: Minstrel
Date Posted: 04 December 2009 at 10:26am
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Me - I'd just make static animations of dwarves walking, running, working, sleeping, etc. When they would move it would just turn on the walking animation, take how many cycles this dwarve would need to move and then teleport him to next square over. |
Posted By: Manupix
Date Posted: 04 December 2009 at 11:47am
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A few issues: The bg is cavalier and the dwarf is iso or near: will it work together? (Possibly, I dunno in fact) Is it a good idea to animate the walk without the arms? (same thing) About the anim: mostly, the feet look weirdly short, and there are some frames with pixels 'shooting out' at the ankle, see arrows in the edit. Also, it seems from the outlines, that you show the underside of the feet in the leg-forward frames: this is not visible in the anim because it's not shaded properly. I'm not sure you could actually see the underside in proper iso, but it seems to work once shaded. I did that, also made a longer right (his) foot (first step only), and made a few changes to the frames where the right knee is up. All my changes are far from good, I'm just pointing things that need to improve. I like the looks of that project, I'm just so geeky about mining stuff anyway.  PS: error message when using the image button, have to use tags. Why is it that ImageReady turns a 9 kB anim into a 48 kB elephant? Edit: there is still a weird inside turn of the foot in the backward-most frame, I don't understand exactly what does it so I didn't address it. |
Posted By: mikemayday
Date Posted: 04 December 2009 at 5:05pm
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Ahmmmmm yeah The small feet are a later addition of which I am quite fond. The idea is that the head gets the most detail and the legs+feet get the least, hence the small size. I corrected the shooting-out pixels and darkened the soles (looks great!). I'll need to spend some time on the other stuff because I'm not sure how that works. Thanks for the comments and do-over, I have much to learn! :) Also I still can't see how his right leg is thinner :/ They're both 3px wide on all frames. EDIT: In the meantime, here's a first pass at adding some arms:  |
Posted By: jeremy
Date Posted: 04 December 2009 at 6:03pm
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Ah, planometric is the word I was looking for, not cavalier. Planometric uses the 45° lines projected straight up, and so it can use a normal circle rather than an isometric one.
Not that that matters. |
Posted By: mikemayday
Date Posted: 05 December 2009 at 7:24am
Second pass: |
Posted By: smk
Date Posted: 05 December 2009 at 8:52pm
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Originally posted by Manupix I like the looks of that project, I'm just so geeky about mining stuff anyway. http://www.minecraft.net/ |
Posted By: Manupix
Date Posted: 06 December 2009 at 12:14pm
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smk: thanks! But, that link crashed Firefox for me...  |
Posted By: mikemayday
Date Posted: 06 December 2009 at 1:52pm
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Update your Java! Minecraft is a truly relaxing activity :P And it's (in a wicked sense) PA! |