Ultimate Cataclysm (UltiCa) is a community made tileset for Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. It is inspired by old school pixel art games and tries to encapsulate a dark tone and atmosphere of utter desperation of the cataclysm.
This repository stores individual sprites for UltiCa in PNG format, and also source files with layering in PSD (Photoshop), XCF (gimp 2.10) or KRA (Krita) formats. PNGs will then be compiled into a tileset using a python script maintained by mlangsdorf (The script is located in the main Cataclysm repo under tools/gfx_tools/compose.py).
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Download the latest release from the releases page (Not the source code !).
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Extract the zip folder after you downloaded it.
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Put the UltimateCataclysm folder in your
cataclysmdda\gfxfolder.It should look like:
cataclysmdda\gfx\UltimateCataclysm.
⚠️ : If you have "Missing "tile_config.json" file" error upon loading tileset, this means that you downloaded and extracted the source code, and not the tileset. Consult #82.
We have rules for sprites these days. Not because it's important to keep the tileset consistent, but to keep things recognizable on the screen in the game. Without strict rules, UltiCa will quickly turn into the pixels mash up. Rules and guidelines are divided between groups: general, items (things on the floor), overlay (wielded/worn/mutations), monsters and terrain.
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Try to draw with realistic proportions;
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Use a limited set of colors as in pseudo-16 bit format. This means that each "colour block" should use 3-6 colors for shades. For example a blue shirt might have one light blue highlight, two medium blue main colours, one dark blue shade, and one very dark blue-green shade. See colors tutorials section on lospec if you're having troubles with palette.
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The default light source is assumed to come from above and to the left.
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Use hard-edges on foreground objects such as items and monsters. This is important because it makes things much more recognizable when zoomed out.
- 32x32 tile base; small items should fit within 16x16.
- Item tiles should be as close to scale as they can be while still recognizable. When in doubt, err on the side of larger, but avoid filling an entire 32x32 tile with a single nail or it would look like a nail as large as a survivor.
- Even for single items, putting multiple items into the icon could give it more recognizability without making it look comically huge.
- Containers, like jars or bottles, should be drawn empty as the game will use the same tile no matter the actual content of the item.
- 100% black underline; this helps to identify an item in the game world.
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32x64 tile base; use these as reference (base male and base female sprites):
- Take appropriate tile size; consider 32x64 a default human size.
- Monster sprites should have ~8px offset from the ground to give them a 3d look.
- Monsters should drop shadows when possible: 50% opaque black, ellipsis under the body.
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Walls and floors are 32x32, other things you should size accordingly to it's size in the world.
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It's important to keep value level of the background objects (terrain, furniture) about 60-80, because it would define foreground entities (e.g. monsters) better.
- Put files into the best appropriate folder (terrain, furniture, mutations, items, etc).
- Give files a name based on the JSON ID they suit, eg
t_floor. - If multiple files apply to that ID, make a subfolder eg
terrain/t_floor/for all the views. - For the moment, there isn't a clear naming convention after that. Working on it.
Cataclysm:Dark Days Ahead and the Ultimate Cataclysm tileset is the result of contributions from volunteers under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license. The code and content of the game is free to use, modify, and redistribute for any purpose whatsoever. See Creative Commons for details. Some code distributed with the project is not part of the project and is released under different software licenses, the files covered by different software licenses have their own license notices.