Art Requests

A non-comprehensive list of tiles that we could use, either replacing current ones or newly existing. Submitting pull requests with them is the most appreciated means of submission so that they don't get lost. After that, Tavern threads will at least collect them in a semi-official place. Tiles submitted only via Reddit or the various Discords are very liable to be easily lost and forgotten, as well as not recieve much feedback, though they may grab attention for pull requests or tavern threads.

Please note the edit date on this page. This is likely to become out of date, so compare it to the state of the repo (in rltiles) before going too wild.

Also note that any tile submissions to Crawl, unless specified otherwise, are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license and enter the public domain.

Monsters

Hell-Pan Roulette

• Clothes for demonspawn of Yredelemnul and Xom.

• A mobile brazen bull for Gehenna, bronzed and filled with its own bottom-lit flame. [1] [2]

• A newer and much fancier silver star, which solely resembles a symbolic star and doesn't rely on attached angel parts.

• A Peri, both holy and fey, thin and feminine and short. Reference images: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5].

• A valkyrie in a thunderous blizzard dress, with a winged spear and winged helmet instead of the winged-humanoid format Crawl's angels and daevas already illustrate.

• An Oni Judicator of Zin, blue-skinned and red-horned, in decorated robes akin to the Buddhist or Hindu Yama. Reference images: [1], [2].

• Seraphim of Elyvilon and Zin, with the current one being designated to The Shining One. While they should preserve the six-winged tall-tile conceit the current one has, the former can de-emphasize or outright omit the humanoid lower-half as the artistic tradition deploys ([1], [2]).

• Much looser conceits: a illusory dijiang (demonic), a modernized version of shedu ([1], [2]).

Other future monsters

Most of these have no inherent guarantee to exist, but have a reasonable chance of being done, and if the tiles are quite good they may live for a while in rltiles' unused and player folders.

• Two variants of Erolcha for reflavouring plans: the current pre-Lair Branches one looking somewhat drunk and dishevelled, and a future-timeline professional version where she sobered up, changed outfits into more monk-like clothing, and works as a proper torturer for the Hells. To keep parity with console and differentiate from ogre mages, the technicolour choice of skin should probably be blue.

• Four rotating frames of a rolling boulder-sized snowball for a Lair arctic jackalope.

• A sinuous, flowing, flying skysquid, with an entire body in a snaking curves rather than splitting splayed tentacles, flying the way skysharks fly.

• A hwacha for a new yaktaur to forge and operate. [1] [2]

• A mire revenant for Swamp, dripping or coated from the bottom-up with mud and decaying plant matter, as if it just walked up from the bottom of the Swamp.

• A paired set of tiles for a sludge elf wild witch that turns into a sludge elf werewolf in ragged clothing.

• Much looser conceits: an octopode assassin mostly of dark colours contrasted with eerie bioluminescent lights, a balbal unique for Lair, a non-angelic life cob.

Tile improvements

• Spectral juggernauts are notably higher in danger and speed than the other form of giant-humanoid spectrals, and should have their own unique tiles retaining the helmet- refer to the current zombie juggernaut tile to see an example of doing such.

• Spectral demons and demon simulacra: These have no differentiation from the current humanoid spectre and simulacrum tiles, and a few steps of each for the three demon summoning tiers (plus winged variations for simulacra) would help with using Death Channel, Sculpt Simulacrum, and Yred in extended. Refer to the already-present humanoid spectral and simulacrum tiles for each, but with exaggerated horns and tiny / large wings to differentiate them.

• Wendigos: them having having antlered deer heads is completely inaccurate, appropriation at best (1), and should be replaced with a frostbitten bloodied-ghoul style of head: reference images include [1]. (It might be reasonable to just rename the monster entirely instead, though.)

• Nargun: The current stone creature tile has very little to do with the actual folklore of the monster, which explicitly describes a flesh chest, arms, and hands versus an otherwise stony body.

• Orcs could look slightly varied from each other with the 0.32 Beogh flavour overhaul indicating they come from all sorts of base species. New art for their heads and arms between each type indicating slightly different skin tones, the former presence of fins or scales or feathers, and so on would be appreciated (if understandably difficult).

• Fravashi: Their tile is currently a placeholder, though it contains the desired anatomy and colour schema as a useful reference point.

• Oblivion hounds: Their tile probably could do with not being half-phased-out and more notable as a large demonic Tartarus-styled hound, as the current tile is mostly just a reuse of ancient spirit wolf tiles.

Items

Talismans

• The current spider talisman and riddle talisman tiles are placeholders. (The spider talisman should look more abstracted than a literal segmented spider while still being made of spider parts, and the riddle talisman can keep the puzzlebox design with a smoother style between its grid and the string loop.)

• Randart talismans: All talismans currently lack differentiation between base types and artefact designs. Expanded decorative elaborations on current designs preserving their overall differentiating effects, with different palettes, would help with differentiating them fairly more.

  • All talismans artefact tiles are needed to push such tiles at once, to prevent people from missing a given talisman type having randarts in not having its own tile. Current acceptable ones are sitting in the rltiles/UNUSED/talismans folder; needed further ones include randart Quill, Inkwell, Scarab, Rimehorn, Medusa, Blade, Fortress, Wellspring, Granite, Dragon-Coil, Sanguine, Hive, Riddle, and Death talismans.

• Future talisman designs may be worked on in future versions. (Ideally, a lot of talisman designs here are more than representational, and have additional handles, jewels, eyes, or other-such attached bits). Designs that may be explored, but have no guarantees for being put into the game, and which will also need randart designs:

  • An abstracted small rose talisman
  • A tiny crystal head talisman
  • A reflective-glass turtle shell talisman.

Evokers

• Possible future evokers for the future, with both inert and active versions: an enchanted drinking gourd.

Unrands

• The artefacts the Robe of Folly and Gloves of the Gadgeteer could use new floor tiles.

• One or the other of the Fencer's gloves or Delatra's gloves could also do with being something other than a palette swap of each another.

• Cigotvui's Embrace and Brilliance could use more appropriate player paper doll equipped tiles.

• Future unrand designs and reworks: a fenstrider witch's swamp dragon scales.

Dungeon features

Walls and floor

• The Wizard Laboratories Alistair's Party Mansion and Yara's Duelist Academy both lack distinct wall or floor tiles.

• More vault theme flooring in general would be appreciated. Simple arrangements that invoke given elements and magic schools could go a decent ways towards helping with game-wide vault flavour restraints.

Entry and exit

• Stone arch variants: Tile variations on the arrival stone arches themed for each portal would also be usable for stone arches as decoration throughout the rest of the game, which would be usefully appreciated.

Decor

• Caches of meat could use additional tiles. They should integrate some of the flavour line contents in database/decorlines.txt if at all possible.

• Caches of pizza would be popular additions as callbacks to the previous presence of pizza in Crawl, and could also use at least two or more tiles.

• Granite statue variations: Using all 28 granite statue tiles everywhere throughout the game makes each of them more easily dismissed as random noise due to their lack of theme-matching purpose. Getting more specifically tailored to themes for given brances would help eventually making "sets" of statue tiles used in sets of branches each with minorly varying palettes. "Dungeon", "Lair and lair branches", "Bailies + Elf + Vaults", "Depths and Zot", "Abyss + Pan + Hells" would be a reasonable division set with slight per-branch splitting, but it would need a few number of further tiles added.

  • Potential themes for such: snake statues, spider statues, shark statues, sheep statues, eye statues, elemental statues, swirling vortex statues, wretched star statues, moth statues....
  • 8e166ad has started this for Depths and Zot, but Zot definitely need more to work with. At minimum, more statues themed after lightning, klowns, or the three orbs would be nice.
  • Wucad Mu's Monastery describes its statues as "strange and alien" to try and invoke its old eldritch divinations theme, and could also benefit from getting statue tiles of its own.
  • Variants for the gravestones of Necropolis to fit a small memorial statue on top of a placard (rather than the current plinths for larger statues or full gravestones), based off of the populations of given branches (e.g. merfolk or naga or elves), would help out the branch.

• Piles of debris variations: More visual design and colour variety in both the destroyed walls and nearby rubble would help the feature fit with more wall tile sets. Ideally, such would try to match it up to some of the more obviously unstable and broken-down branches around the game, like Lair, Swamp, and Shoals.

• Varieties of slimy rock wall: Ones somewhat resembles cracked and heavily worn-down stone wall designs (akin to but not confusable with stone wall designs elsewhere), and with green ooze seeping out of the cracks, would help with giving Slime more visual variety throughout the branch.

• Deep and shallow water variants: With water used constantly throughout the game for various level differentiation purposes, animated themed variants would help sell the presence of such throughout the game, as is done for Shoals and Necropolis and occasionally reused from Sewers. Potential forms for this: purple-cyan faint magic sparkles for magic-studying locales like Elf and Lom Lobon's level, small chunks of ice for Ice Caves and Cocytus, and floating bones and skulls for undead and demonic branches.

• Demonic plant variations: Compared to other normal plants and bushes and fungi, the fact there’s only a single option available for these makes them notably less varied than either when they're deployed in larger quantities. Getting a few extra versions would help with vaults deploying them; they could probably use some of the same motifs (if not the literal parts) as demonic trees at the tips of their stems.

• Future types of further reasonable potential decorations, to make the Dungeon more visually varied, branches more distinct from one another, and to sell given areas’ flavours of civilized dwellings versus ruined wilderness:

  • Metal and stone hearths: animated roaring flames held mostly inside walls that reasonably approximate other current stone and metal tiles
  • Battle-standard flags: draped-down flags mostly covering up their short stands with silhouettes of e.g. upright axes and spiked maces, a line of spears, crossed blades, a ring of daggers, a bow and arrow....
  • Crystal prayer mirrors: a use of crystal used sparsely as a framed standing mirror, especially since there's next to no crystal variety beyond colour throughout the game, for both housing and for the more contemplative gods
  • Additional flower patches: Preferably slightly magical colours rather than mundane varieties, for the large number of magical beasts the game already presents.
  • Additional bouquet vases: There's only one each for upright colourful ones, lonely dying ones, and two each for shattered ones.
  • Other varieties of fountain: ripe for all sorts of further magical emphasis in the lines of blood fountains and sparkling fountains, as long as whatever it contains doesn't look like it'd hurt to walk into (e.g. no flaming fountains, deploy heavy restraint for spiky ice fountains). Fountains of sand, slime, mud, weak sparks of electricity, and so on, are all plausible options. This may need a bunch of god write-ups in the style of 8966e59, however....
    • (Additionally, redrawing the other fancy fountains in the vaults folder to have dry and eye variations would help with deploying them for differentiation across branches.)
  • Apocryphal tapestries: See the long write-ups for these here.

Effects

Clouds

Clouds are mostly palette swaps of a few bases with a lot of overlap between the each of them, and would heavily benefit from a few more bases to work with (with multiple density tiles like other clouds use).

• Further differentiation needs in decreasing relevancy: thin mist versus steam, noxious fumes versus poison gas, flames versus forest fire spreading flames (with fragmented visible kindling of the former tree?), degeneration versus purple smoke versus translocational energy, and salt versus fluffiness.
• Full replacements include tiles for Acidic Fog and Holy Flames.
• The multiple types of coloured smoke from scrolls of fog and Xom's smoke are missing density tiles or variation tiles, also.

Spells

Components

• A catapult launching skulls as a Forgecraft / Necromancy spell.

Effects

Dramatic and highly specific spells that would benefit from not using the generic blast effects most spells use by default. In descending prominence:

• Grave Claw, with the new bloodprinces emphasizing it.

• Partially-resistable spells versus the base element effect: Flash Freeze, Chain Lightning

• Full-screen flash replacements: Drain Life, Singing Sword

• Strong debuffing spells seen via wands and later on elsewhere: Quicksilver Bolt (resembling actual grey liquid mercury, but with a prominent purple highlighting), Fastroot / Grasping Roots, Corrosive Bolt / Spit Acid / Acid Ball

• Important debuffs to not miss: Vitrify

• Limited-use early spells: Momentum Strike, Kiss of Death

• Monsters buffing and aiding each other: Berserk Other, Bestow Arms, Blink Allies Encircling, Haste Other, Might Other

• Lee's Rapid Deconstruction: actual shards for each wall type in particular would help mark the spell further away from normal beams and remove another use of non-lightning cyan blasts.

If a rewrite of hex code is done to remove the generic blue zap of enchantments, a variety of Hexes-blue-purple zap effects for other debuffs may also help out here.

GUI

Spells

• Gell's Gavotte has a placeholder tile at present.

• Eringya's Toxic Bog (and fenstrider Hurl Sludge) could use non-recolour tiles for toxic bogs.

• Generic monster spell icons: A couple dozen monster spells are using old-style icons that bleed past the smaller box border- mostly dragon breaths and summon spells. One can use ?/s spell in-game to list all of the spells. Many monster spells have duplicate icons, as well. Note that tiles that are just question marks are mostly spells not fully removed yet or player abilities that are incidentally implemented as spells, with neither state being visible in-game outside of this look-up.

  • Summon spells: Summon Air Elementals, Summon Earth Elementals, Summon Fire Elementals, Summon Summon Drakes, Summon Spiders, Summon Scarabs, Summon Emperor Scorpions, and Summon Eyeballs.
  • Breath spells: Steam Breath, Spit Acid, Cold Breath, Fire Breath, Miasma Breath, Quicksilver Bolt, Searinth Breath.
  • Other spells: Blink Other, Haste Other.

Invocations

• Yred's new abilities in the 0.32 rework (Light the Black Torch, Hurl Torchlight, Fathomless Shackles) have placeholder UI tiles at present.
  • The two Torch-emphasizing invocations can break the single-palette restraints most gods have, as it always overlapped directly with Dithmenos’s now very prominent use of purple and umbral torchlight itself is a dark turqoise-green. They should also both use the imagery of actual torches, and not candles or flashlights.

Mutations

A decent fraction of player mutations are missing tiles or are sharing placeholder ones. In-game, type ?/u mut to list all of the mutations with their tiles (if any). Note that many may need multiple levels- it should be mentioned in the description itself, but one can also check mutation-data.h to confirm which mutations have which levels of spells.

• Hooves currently lack three separate levels of mutation differentiation, and all still use the same one tile.

• Player species innate traits should prioritize the most popular ones (Minotaur headbutt, Mountain Dwarf runic magic and artefact enchanting, all Coglin traits, Octopode nimble swimmer and tentacles, Gnoll strong nose and distributed training), since they’ll be seen the most, and the most unconventional species (Barachi daystalker, Armataur tails and rampage-regen, Formicid four-arms), since their flavour needs to be more obvious and established in demonstrable and visible fashions.

• Remaining mutations that could do with tiles after that point:

  • Regular mutations: Deformed body, frail, sturdy frame, tentacle spike. These are also very high priority!
  • Other innate traits: drunken brawling, evasive flight, innate caster, iron-fused scales, slowness, speed, tough skin
  • Demonspawn mutations: augmentation, repulsion field, spiny.
  • Ru sacrifices: cowardly, disrupted magic, hated by all, no Conjurations magic, no Fire magic, potion hoarding, reduced AC, reduced EV, scroll hoarding, unskilled
  • Jiyva gifts: translucent skin

(Once most of the uses of the generic mutation icon get tiles, Evolution and Devolution can keep the generic appearance ones.)