Portrait Generator for Characters [BETA 0.2.2] - Opinions

[RustKnight]

Hey there.

So around 2 years ago I started a project that allowed realtime in-game portrait generation of creatures according to their textual description.

(All info on this thread with image examples)

Dwarf Fortress Forums [www.bay12forums.com]
After forum release, development shortly stopped since it didn't seem to catch much interest at that time.

I am aware that it will not be available for steam Dwarf Fortress for testing, but at a glance:

How you feel about it?
What do you like or dislike
How would your dream feature sound?


Would like to have a chat about this, so write me some feedback! :)


PS: found this as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26Lz823ZmKI

[Dotterian]

Sadly, there's no dfhack for Steam version yet, so I doubt that people here will test it and give you some proper feedback.

Personally, I always wanted this feature and even started writing exactly what you've done here myself. But at some point grew tired, ditched the project and eventually lost all source files after migrating to another hard drive.

Glad to see that someone eventually did this and can't wait to see some mod or third-party utility that does something similar for Steam version. Or I'll just wait for Steam version of dfhack and try this thing.

[Xenai]

I would absolutely adore having this! I can't really think of anything I'd want from it beyond what you were already doing with it in the link you posted, but it would be a must-have for me if you somehow got this into the Steam version!

[McFuzz]

Procedurally generated portraits?.....

Dwarf NFT's

(It's a joke please don't hit me lol)

[RustKnight]

Originally posted by Dotterian:

Sadly, there's no dfhack for Steam version yet, so I doubt that people here will test it and give you some proper feedback.

Personally, I always wanted this feature and even started writing exactly what you've done here myself. But at some point grew tired, ditched the project and eventually lost all source files after migrating to another hard drive.

Glad to see that someone eventually did this and can't wait to see some mod or third-party utility that does something similar for Steam version. Or I'll just wait for Steam version of dfhack and try this thing.

Thanks for the reply! So cool to hear about other people's project. Yes, I've noticed there were some attempts in the past for visualizers.

I'm more interested to hear the opinion about this at a glance, rather than an in-depth test, which at this moment with DF steam is incompatible.
Sure, if you ever get the chance to try let me know how it went :) !

[davedoubleedev]

Oh, I remember this feature! Yes please keep working on it <3
Procedurally generated content is always awesome!

[marusnazzarov]

Would be great if you continue working on it. Had a lot of fun with the portrait generator !

[RustKnight]

Originally posted by Frank McFuzz:

Procedurally generated portraits?.....

Dwarf NFT's

(It's a joke please don't hit me lol)

To be honest, when we started on this, we didn't even knew the term existed. Granted, maybe some news were circulating about it, but I didn't really pay much attention.
Later on, it exploded with generators and such.

I'm not really a fan of NFTs, but who knows what crazy sort of currency we would be using 40 years from now :))

PS: yes, it is indeed a bit sad to think that people would see more potential in it as an NFT generator, than for what it was actually made, which is Dwarf Fortress.

[RustKnight]

Originally posted by davedoubleedev:

Oh, I remember this feature! Yes please keep working on it <3
Procedurally generated content is always awesome!

Hey Dave, nice to have you by! And thank you for the praise :P
How's being a game dev turning out for you? Hope you will keep on going with it. 🕹

[RustKnight]

Originally posted by Xenai:

I would absolutely adore having this! I can't really think of anything I'd want from it beyond what you were already doing with it in the link you posted, but it would be a must-have for me if you somehow got this into the Steam version!

Hey Xenai, cool that you find it that way!
I think this will be manageable in the near future to make it work with Steam. (one way or the other, but I HOPE it will be the DF Hack way)


As for the features, yes - it's a balance. Either go with higher quality portraits, but maybe not so animated, or maybe make it more feature rich while dropping a notch on the aesthetics.

I actually had an update planned if I recall where I wanted to play with 2D body parts deformation algorithm, which would have meant an explosion of combinations of features.
Was something I was really looking into at that time.

[davedoubleedev]

Originally posted by RustKnight:

Hey Dave, nice to have you by! And thank you for the praise :P
How's being a game dev turning out for you? Hope you will keep on going with it. 🕹

You deserve it!

Me I'm looking forward to the winter sale 🥳🥳

[Halls_of_Fear]

oh yes. I loved this thing in vanila game and just searching now for steam viersion of it. If i understand it correctly - for now there is no way to do it with steam version? But for your question : Yes. This feature MUST be here. It was pleasure to look on those portraits and imagine your dwarves - so immersive.

[RustKnight]

Originally posted by Halls_of_Fear:

oh yes. I loved this thing in vanila game and just searching now for steam viersion of it. If i understand it correctly - for now there is no way to do it with steam version? But for your question : Yes. This feature MUST be here. It was pleasure to look on those portraits and imagine your dwarves - so immersive.

Yes, I stopped development at that time. I really did a poor job creating visibility for the tool and I should have made constant postings with my progress.
I already see a number of people are interested so it doesn't hurt to spread the word around. If the sound is loud enough I'd get back into it :)

As for Steam DF, as soon as dwarf hack is compatible with it, I can then update the source for it to work with Steam DF as well, not much of a problem.
I can do a workaround and create the pipeline myself but that would be much more time consuming so I'd rather wait a bit and see how things develop.