"Wobjects": An Alternative
Method for Adding
Furcadian Walls
Before Furcadia was constructed, Dragon's Eye
produced "DragonSpires". In DragonSpires, walls
were done as impassable objects.
One disadvantage was that a wall took up a
full tile of space. Because of that, Furcadia
was made with walls that go between the tiles.
Another possible disadvantage is that walls can
be difficult to place in FSHeditor.
However, Furcadia currently has a limited
number of spaces for walls. There is currently
no walle.fsh, no extended wall set, because we
want a new editor that places new wall types
in a system which automatically, correctly
insert wall corners, T- and +-junctions. That
will require a way to make wall pieces that get
chopped up in a specific fashion, sparing the
Patcher from having to construct all these
junctions.
There is room for exactly two auto-
placed wall sets in the current graphics
system. These walls are done "programically"
or "algorithmically", using the half-width
shapes visible in the Dream Editor but
not found in wall.fsh.
As there is currently a point to finding
another way to do walls, I've reintroduced
the DragonSpires method of walls that are
actually one-tile block objects. To keep
these from being confused with Walls (as in
wall.fsh), they are called "Wobjects"-
wall-Objects.
Building one's Dream in Wobjects has
many side-benefits. Variation art (like
cracks, moss, and windows) can be put into
a Patch that replaces the old Wall.fsh
shapes. Decorations like swords, decorative
shields, banners, paintings, etc., can be
done this way as well. These decorations
do not take up a full space of floor the
way they would if they were Items.
The standard Furcadian wall system
allows for only two wall colors, but
using Wobjects, there is no limit to the
different wall-types.
The behavior of the official Walls
is appropriate to fences, and Patching-in
Wobjects allows the available slots for
wall.fsh shapes to be used as fences
that do not take up a tile space.
Unlike the original walls, Wobjects
are not given shadows; this is because
they are most likely to occur in a Patch,
and that keeps the Patch significantly
smaller. It also allows many more Wobjects
to be put on one .GIF page of art.
A template for Wobjects can be found here:
wobjects1.gif
The same file, with gray baseboards added, is here:
wobjects3.gif
(The veteran might note that Wobjects are taller
than the original walls. The original pinkish
rock walls are the height that they are in
order to make the walkabouts look larger.
Wobjects, however, are more efficient if one
is displaying the exterior of a building,
where the point might well be to make the
walkabouts seem small and the buildings, tall.)
CUSTOMIZING THE TEMPLATES
The easiest way to do this is to make
a 2-layer picture, using Paint Shop Pro
or PhotoShop. (WARNING: This task is
beyond the capabilities of MS Paint.exe!)
I will give the PSP procedure here,
because that is what I use (because it
is faster).
[ ] Complete Frame 1 (a southern corner).
Make the right half roughly 15% darker
than the left half.
[ ] Take wobjects1.gif and Select the green
wall areas using the Magic Wand.
[ ] Raise the number of colors to maximum,
instead of 256.
WARNING: When you reduce the colors back to
256... If you have introduced any colors NOT
in the 256 color palette, then Paint Shop Pro
will interpolate. That will introduce specks
of color ALL OVER, so close to the original
shade that you might not see it unless you
magnify! So, do not use colors that are not
from the Furcadia palette when doing this
operation! If you have only used colors that
are in the original palette, then when you
use the Furcadia palette to reduce the colors,
there will be NO pixels introduced this way.
A copy of the Furcadia palette as of January
12, 2003, is kept here:
/art/furc.bunny.pal
[ ] Select all occurrences of those two
shades of green.
In PSP, "Selections --> Modify --> Select Similar".
If these options are grayed-out, it is
because you are still in 256-color
("Indexed") mode.
[ ] Press the Delete key to empty these areas.
[ ] Invert the Selection.
[ ] Promote the Selection to a Layer (Layer 2).
[ ] Temporarily set Layer 2's Preferences
to 50% Opacity.
[ ] Erase everything on Layer 1.
[ ] Complete Frame 2 by reversing and
precisely placing the 2 halves of Frame 1.
[ ] Using a magnified mode and the see-through
nature of Layer 2, place copies of your wall
template behind the remaining frames.
[ ] Merge all layers.
[ ] Cut each frame out and save it as a
series of .BMP's. If they have the same
name, and an ascending series of numbers
(for example, apple1.bmp, apple2.bmp,
apple3.bmp, etc.) then they can be automatically
loaded into an FSH using the
Import --> Multiple function of FSHEditor.
[ ] Alternately-- Select a frame, and
control-C ("capture-to-buffer"). Switch
from PSP to FSHEditor. Control-V and
the frame will be placed automatically
at the upper left corner.
[ ] If the background color did not go
away, you can get rid of it in FSHEditor
by pressing Control and clicking on
Transparent (depicted as a bluegray) to
make it the Current Foreground Color.
Press Control and right-click on the color
you wish to get rid of, thus making it
the Current Background Color. From the
pulldown menu, choose
"Edit -- Foreground to Background Color".
(It's misnamed, sorry.) This technique
will easily get rid of the background
color from inside of dithers.
INTERIOR TRANSPARENT WALLS
Some weavers of Dreams like to
leave off the foreground walls (SE
nd SW) in an interior room. A different
effect can be achieved by making it
translucent. Simply place a dither of
background color over the original layer.
wobjects2.gif
wobjects4.gif
Diagonal beam templates:
wobjects5.gif
wobjects6.gif
Diagonal beam + vertical beam templates:
wobjects7.gif
wobjects8.gif
CAVERN WALLS
My Bookstore Patch has cave
walls done as Wobjects:
/bookstore.patch.zip
=================================
SOME PERTINENT FURCADIA ART CONSTRUCTION NOTES:
Furcadia's textures are built using
multiples of 2. Lines can be drawn in
perspective by going up one pixel and
over two, for example. The correct
"camera" angle is 30 degrees off the
ground.
PERSPECTIVE
Known as "orthagonal projection",
there are no "vanishing points" in
effect. Like in Asian paintings, lines
remain parallel. To achieve this in
a 3D program, either a perspective
parameter needs to be disabled, or
the window needs to be set to
"orthagonal perspective".
There is also no foreshortening
in the "Y-axis" (up/down). Technically,
if you saw a person from a 30 degree
angle, they would appear slightly shorter.
Furcadia's furres remain just as many
pixels tall as if you were looking at
them direction from the side.
There is foreshortening in the
X (northwest-to-southeast) and
Z (southwest-to-northeast) axes.
WALLS
It is easy to make a wall texture
or painting or poster fit this perspective.
First, the art is reduced to 90% of
its width. Then, it is skewed
26.5 degrees. (In Paint Shop Pro,
use 27 degrees.)
FLOORS
A floor tile is 32 pixels tall,
and 64 pixels wide. If two tiles are
placed north and south of each other,
they will touch. Tiles that are
directly east and west of each other,
however, do not touch, but are separated
by a distance of two pixels.
To make a flat design fit the
floor, reduce its height by 50%. A
circle inscribed on the floor looks
like an oval twice as wide as it
is tall.
DOORS AND WINDOWS
Flat fixtures like doors and
windows are easier to construct by
painting or drawing them face-on.
To fit an existing shape that is
skewed, it may be necessary to
unskew it. Do this by first
expanding the width to 112% of
what it originally was, then skew
it 26.5 (or 27) degrees in the
opposite direction.
