Style Guide discussion. Shadows, Lighting (and maybe more).

[clort81]

Hello! I've followed CDDA from the sidelines for a long time, but not been active.

I noticed there's no convergence on shadows and lighting for the UltimateCataclysm tiles. Some are 'top' lit, others have shadows at 20°, 30°, or 45°.

• fillergiant.png trees have ~20° shadows.
• normal.png most tiles have no shadows, the rest are a mix of top-lit or 30% or 45% shadows.
• huge.png some tiles have toplit shadows, some have no shadows.
• giant.png top three have toplit shadows, the other tiles are trees with 20° shadows.
• human_body_plus.png have no shadows.
• human_body.png no shadows.
• incomplete.png no shadows except 8 tiles with 45 degree shadows.
• large.png no shadows, except 8 tiles with toplit shadows and 8 with 45° shadows.
• small.png only one tile with shadows from top.
• tall.png a few with top shadows, some with 45°.

For comparison cutecylsm has a clear style guide, that calls for top-lit shadows. https://github.com/pixel-32/CDDA-tileset

I submit this issue as a request for comments, by the contributers and maintainers of the tileset, to discuss creation of a style guide.

I'm happy to assist in re-shadowing tiles to whatever gets decided-on.

Cheers!

[clort81]

From Discord chat: I think@barsoosayque is agreeing that inconsistent shadows are a problem, and this is something that a Style Guide addresses.

IMO, If the monsters have shadows from top lighting, then the furniture and trees should (at most) have some mild ambient shadow around the base, not a hard shadow cast at an angle.

You can't have global lighting coming from the top for for some objects, and from the side for others -- Light doesn't work like that.

[vetall812]

I can clearly see your point here, but we should consider following facts: 1) this is pixel art game with a thousands at sprites (literally). 2) as pixel art there are some allowances like black underline on items, colored status icons and so on 3) there is some limitations of the rendering engine.

According to (1) there are a lot of sprites that should be redrawn, and almost all of them have no source files.

(2) will lead us to the fact that we have to divide monsters from furniture, items and terrain. Would it be shadow, or icon, or something else is a question. Right now it is a shadow.

(3) limit us not to draw anything right next to base of the sprite (32x32 in Ultica), so we cannot draw shadow at the right of the tree trunk. Also shadows wouldn't follow terrain behind the object.

Anyway, your idea is good and can be done with an effort. For example AlbertTheTerrible decided to put light source at the right, so shadows will go to the left. Another option to drop shadow from top to bottom and let monsters have a hard edge and furniture\terrain - soft one.

I think that we should ask maintainers what do they think about this issue.

[clort81]

Alternatively, could the shadow-adding code just use a 45° shadow instead of top-lit oval?

[clort81]

Algorithmic shadowing for floor-standing objects is also not too hard to implement:

[vetall812]