Alpha 4 is now available for download

[Jonas Ask]

The latest build of Stonesense is now available right here:
http://dffd.wimbli.com/download.php?id=1487&f=Stonesense.rar

Enjoy guys and gals!

Changelog for this version includes:
* View rotation.
* Much, much faster!
* Animated buildings.
* Dwarfs and humans with professions and genders.
* Child animals.
* Stability fixes.
* Thick floors to better distinguish levels.
* All plants added.
* Follow mode to make Stonesense display track DF window location
* Truncated wall mode to better display fortress interiors.
* Mouse controls.
* Many new buildings.
* Improved building configuration.

[John Beech]

Hey Jonas,

I've been working on my flash based isometric viewer for the DF Map
Archive- I've made some significant progress over the last few days and
have started looking at the XML and graphics from stonesense.

I'd like to start trying to make my viewer compatible with the data from
stonesense, but I don't quite understand some of the mappings. Any help
/ info you could provide about GroundMaterials.xml would be incredibly
helpful.

Great work everyone with the new version, looks stunning : )

Best regards,
- Markavian

[Jonas Ask]

Certainly!

We're gonna type up a tutorial, but I'll see if I can't give you a quick intro here:

There are two kinds of nodes, floors and walls. Representing floors and walls in DF (duh).

A simple floor entry might look like this:

<Floor spriteIndex = 6>
   <!-- Boulder -->
   <GameID value = 402/>
</Floor>

This means that floors which have the ID 402, will be drawn as image number 6 (remember, the first image is 0) from floors.png.

Adding more than one <GameID value = /> tag means that all floor matching ONE of them will be drawn as image number 6:

<Floor spriteIndex = 7>
   <!-- plants -->
   <GameID value = 231/>
   <GameID value = 34/>
   <GameID value = 24/>
</Floor>

All these floors will show up as image number 7.

Adding a <Material name=... /> tag makes exceptions based on soil layers.

For instance, all sand, clay, soil and dirt has the floor ID of 354. In order to draw a different image for sand or clay, you add Material conditions like the one seen below. Material conditions are ORed, so only one of them need to match.

<Floor spriteIndex = 25>
   <!-- Soil floors -->
   <GameID value = 354/> 
   <Material name="CLAY" />

</Floor>

Walls work the same way :)