Graffiti pictograms need work about exile HOT 8 OPEN

Instead of removing the more abstract glyphs entirely, we could move them to a different colour of painting kit. The comments in the graffiti.lua file suggest two more colours: ochre and charcoal. We could move most of the abstract ones to ochre, add more to white, and put tally marks in the black.

from exile.

That's an excellent suggestion.

But should we add ochre to the clay, or red chalk to the limestone layer? Or is our "ironstone" actually red limestone already, since it occurs in the limestone layer? (The red chalk formations of England get their color from containing traces of hematite.)

from exile.

Yea, I think ironstone should be used as ochre pigment. Adding anything would just be a disappointing discovery for older worlds: imagine discovering that to draw some symbols you need to travel to ungenerated land and mine some obscure mineral.

from exile.

New mapgen is coming regardless, thanks to the "new biomes" issue, so people are going to want to move to new worlds or what-have-you. We might as well do it up right. Exile needs more things, and I don't want to make ironstone boulders even more valuable than they are now. If it's a choice between "make iron" or "make a fourth paint to have more symbols" only the rich endgame players will ever bother to make the ochre paint. Which is silly; IRL ochre is a red clay that's cheap and common.

What's more, one of the things the endgame needs more of is reasons to go off on an expedition. Why have airboats and teleporters if there's nowhere you want to go?

from exile.

Some project history:

I based many of the pictograms off real cave paintings.
e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJnEQCMA5Sg (Why are these 32 symbols found in caves all over Europe | Genevieve von Petzinger)

In hindsight, you are exactly right. That's how people are using them. e.g. I'd like compass directions (EWNS).

Balance issue:

I'd planned on using ironstone for red ochre, but you raise a good point about balance.
Historically, I suspect red ocher wasn't "cheap", despite being unsophisticated if you will. Red ocher could be highly prized.

( Fun story. A Maori tribal history I was told as a child: One tribe came bearing many baskets of red ocher as a gift to another tribe. This was unbelievably extravagant. The guests were welcomed in. Turned out it was a trap. The baskets were full of dirt, with ocher only sprinkled on top. The guests massacred their hosts, and took their territory.)

" is our "ironstone" actually red limestone already"?:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironstone
It was the most generic sedimentary iron ore I could find that was both real, and not extremely obscure and confusing e.g. rattle stones.
The name sold it. Iron... stone...

from exile.

Just dropping by to make a quick note:

I made some more pictograms over the Xmas break then forgot about it.
https://github.com/DokimiCU/exile_experiments/tree/master/more_grafitti

Don't think I'll do anymore, but that fills a few gaps. :-)

from exile.

I was looking at the new v4 paint. Seems a couple of them got missed? The texture is there, but they are not registered.

Happy face was the obvious one. Maybe one or two others?? (maybe a "kiln" one. I done them a while ago, so it's hard to remember - I just noticed some are missing, seems to be by accident)

from exile.

I had two glyphs for "kiln" between yours and one submitted by noodles, and I just went with the one I thought was clearer.

from exile.