A short guide to Tiles creation
===============================

This is a short guide to creating tiles. We assume that you've got some kind of
image editing software (such as Photoshop or the GIMP) as well as some basic
knowledge of how to use it. While the fancier functions can occasionally come
in useful, the simple tools for drawing, selection and erasing of pixels will
usually suffice.

You may want to download the latest source or even the trunk version. Either
way, the source/rltiles/ directory contains all tiles used in the game, and
some more that are currently unused. While you can create new tiles without
having access to existing ones, it can be useful to have them around for
comparison. Also, you'll probably want to compile them into the game to test
your creations. (You don't have to, though.) For compiling the game, see
INSTALL.txt.
If you're going to change anything in the main code you'll probably want to
create a patch. See docs/patch_guide.txt for help with that.

Crawl's tiles are png files in a format of 32x32 pixels. Larger tiles such
as for the pandemonium demons are possible, but require additional coding and
should be used sparingly. The tile background should be transparent, but if
your image software doesn't support png files with transparent background you
can also submit a png or bmp with the background coloured differently from the
rest of the tile, so we can easily remove it later.


1.) Before setting out to draw a new tile, you may want to check out the
    UNUSED/ directory in case there's already a tile that could be used for
    this purpose.

2.) When creating new tiles you often don't need to start from zero. A lot of
    the time existing tiles can be repurposed to other uses. If you tweak them
    enough no-one will even notice you cheated.
    For example, the spell tile deaths_door.png is basically a modified version
    of the reaper, with the hour glass copied over from the slowing potion's
    i-slowing.png that was then changed significantly.

3.) For items and monsters don't forget to add a shadow. You can use standard
    black for this.

4.) New randart weapons and armour items need not only a tile for the item
    itself but also a smaller variant for the player doll to wield or wear.
    To define the new artefact tiles, you'll need to modify two files:
    source/art-data.txt, and rltiles/dc-player.txt, with the details nicely
    described in art-data.txt.
    If you have perl installed, run "perl art-data.pl" from source/util. If you
    made any mistakes in modifying the two files the script will complain.

    If an artefact doesn't get a special equipment tile the base type's tile
    will be used instead.

5.) Otherwise, add the tile to the relevant dc-xxxx.txt file and use the same
    (uppercase) definition in the matching tileidx_xxxx() function in
    tilepick.cc. Note that the latter is not necessary if you are adding tiles
    for the player doll.

    Tiles are assumed to have been placed within the rltiles/ directory
    structure. You can use a relative path for the tile definition, or you can
    use the %sdir command to change the current default relative path.

    Use the %rim property to control whether Crawl needs to draw a black
    outline around your tile or whether it already has one. To change the rim
    property for your tile, use e.g.:
        %rim 1
        new_tile NEW_TILE
        %rim 0

6.) For humanoid monsters' tiles you may want to add a line in
    get_weapon_offset() in tilemcache.cc to allow it to be drawn with a wielded
    weapon.

7.) New monsters may also need a unique corpse tile. In that case you'll also
    need to modify dc-corpse.txt and add a tile in _tileidx_corpse() of
    tilepick.cc.


When compiling the game you may need to delete or rename the relevant tile
section's png file, i.e. main.png (for items), player.png (for player, doll
equipment, and monsters), dngn.png (for dungeon features) or gui.png (for
spells), to make the changes take effect. The first step during the compilation
will be to rebuild this file, so you can check right away whether your new tile
was added correctly. Changes in dc-xxxx.txt automatically cause the relevant
image files to be recreated.


In case you'd like to draw some tiles but have run out of ideas, here's an
incomplete (and possibly outdated) list of suggestions:

* tiles of the various runes
* zombie/skeleton tiles taking into account the monster type
* tiles for abilities
* alternative tiles for dungeon features to allow for "animations"
* equipment tiles for the player doll
* improvement of existing tiles
etc.

You can also check the SourceForge Feature Requests for tracker items
containing the "\o/" emblem in the title. At least one of them will be a call
for more tiles.

Please submit your new tiles as a new item on our feature request or patches
tracker, or send one of the tiles developers (ennewalker, evktalo, j-p-e-g) an
email containing your tiles.

Thanks a lot for your support!