ENHANCE!

Over the past month, Glyphscape has been the subject of a substantial visual overhaul. The original visual presentation was inspired by Rogue and Dwarf Fortress - mapping tile contents to an abstract set of glyphs that often must be studied and interpreted to understand what is being presented in game. However, I have also been making every effort possible to make the game approachable via composite glyphs, custom ASCII, color selection, etc.

The most significant change is a new set of rules for how walls are displayed. The original wall tiles used rotated bricks to show direction, creating an impossible squashed perspective. As a result, they don’t really look like walls. The updated walls display the same crosshatch character on the wall tiles themselves, and display the side of the wall in place of the tile to the south, assuming it’s not also a wall.

The impact of the change is noticeable but not game-changing, however most of the other improvements I will discuss were made possible by this change, in some way. For example, I was able to apply a similar rule and a lighting effect to give chasms a sense of depth. Now that it’s clear what is and isn’t a wall, I could give stone and dirt floors a simpler look.

Another very noticeable change is the changes to how unseen tiles are displayed. The gray cross hatching was replaced with a flat black, and tiles that are once-seen-but-not-currently-seen are darkened in color rather than being masked with a crosshatch character.

I applied a similar set of rules to water tiles, and replaced the baby blue cobwebs with a more realistic lightly rippling surface. I also added roof tiles to be displayed on interior spaces while you are outside, which really sells the impression that these are supposed to be buildings. Weird, noisy characters now stood out on the screen, making it easier to identify further improvements. Flowers and sand received a fairly marked improvement.

Crates and barrels, ladders, and iron bars got some slight adjustments to match perspective as well.

Unfortunately I was a bit overzealous with my changes and broke some key aspects of the demo build, so these changes will only be available in the next update, which contains some very (very) exciting changes to the world. I regret that I referred to ‘Glyphscape 2’ in my last post because the next update will truly feel like a different game.

Follow for some major updates!